That next day opened ill, with abundance of warm rain which, at first at any rate, showed no signs of abating. That rain was really a blessing in disguise, for when it abated sullenly, Mr. Coleman proposed a morning call on Mr. Felix Cobbold, m.p., whom in fact he had been helping in the election, which ought to be known for all time as the motor-car election, and Mr. Cobbold was hospitality personified. He kept us willing prisoners, taking us with him as hostages while he went in search of the ladies, and hence comes it that, without stepping outside my rule never to inspect another man's house save as his guest, I can at least attempt to describe a very perfect gem of an earthly paradise. You must know first that Felixstowe is fitly, one must not write "happily," named, in that, being situate on the east coast of England, where the air has been known to exceed its duties in the way of bracing the constitution of man, it has a little aspect of its own nearly due south. Along the front of this for some distance runs a parade, esplanade, promenade, or whatsoever they may choose to call it, and from this, unless memory is playing a trick, the usual pier of the modern watering-place runs into the sea in the usual way. It would appear then that Felixstowe itself made no abiding impression, exercised no strong fascination, on my mind. That is so. It is just a seaside town, with lots of new houses, which lays itself out to attract sojourning visitors in summer, and such places differ little. Some, Clacton-on-Sea for example, which is also within my manor, are a little worse than others by reason of the multitudes and quality of the company; some are a little better, and have golf-links. Felixstowe is of the latter kind, and the golf-links, which we saw next day, look distinctly good. But for seaside places, as such, I have frankly no use, and it is the rarest thing in the world for them to be possessed of any architectural interest.
Such were the feelings with which I walked with Mr. Coleman, having first seen that the car was feeling well, to the end of the sea-walk, whatsoever its proper title may be. Edward Fitzgerald, I felt, would not visit Felixstowe now if he were still in the flesh, and the author of "Murray" would not recognize "the pleasant village of Felixstowe, frequented in summer by a few visitors for sea-bathing," and apparently accessible only by coach from Ipswich even in 1875. At the east end of the walk we reached a barrier of oak palings, delightfully weathered, and in the palings in due course a gate, which led us to the haven where we would be. Imagine a long escarpment of land, facing the midday sun and the sea, and raised above the sea some forty or fifty feet. On it stands a long, many-windowed house with spacious verandas, from which, as from the windows, man may look down on the vast highway of the sea, sometimes smooth, sometimes grandly rough, and at the wayfarers upon it. He may enjoy all the advantages of being at sea without what some regard as its disadvantages, may look at the regular sailings of the Harwich boats, may speculate upon the destination of this or that "tramp" of the ocean. Between him and the sea are terraced walks, wonders in the way of rock and wall-gardens, glorious with plants which revel in the soft sea air and will live in no other. Away to the right, on the slope towards Felixstowe, is a sheltered yet sunny rose-garden, and above it a glorious pergola of the substantial kind beloved of Miss Jekyll. Off to the left, past tamarisks and fuchsias, is a cunning mixture of trees and grass and flower-borders, of sheltered rock-gardens and ingenious intricacies of light and shade, with glasshouses far away, not obtruding themselves on the eye, but glorious when entered. To a garden lover there could be no more unalloyed pleasure than a tour round the outside of this house, especially under the guidance of the owner and maker of the garden, who possesses not merely learning, but also that sympathy with plants which is of more value than all the horticultural books ever written by man or woman.
Of the inside of the house it is not fitting to speak in detail. Suffice it to say that it is, in every respect, the fitting environment of a man of advanced middle age, sometime scholar of Eton, still a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, much travelled, able to indulge a refined and catholic taste in literature and art, of whose inner life books, pictures and plants are the most familiar friends. But surely something may be written of the great walled garden, behind all this and across the public road. It is emphatically the most perfect "kitchen" garden I have ever seen, and on this particular I may almost venture to claim to speak with some authority—the authority, that is to say, which belongs to one who is a natural lover of gardens, even of those which are useful, and who has had the good fortune to see many of the finest gardens in England. How great the space is 'tis hard to guess; it is ample. It is girt on all sides by high brick walls, and these walls, although by no means ancient, have already taken a glorious colour. Against them is trained all manner of wall-fruit, the best aspects being chosen, of course, for the apricots, the peaches and the nectarines, which delight to "drink the splendour of the sun." The spacious area within the walls is divided into four parts by pergolas converging upon a central circle of green turf. Those pergolas, covering a wide avenue, are delightfully solid, their pillars united at the top by stout timbers of cambered oak, sound enough to stand for centuries. The life they support is that of cordon apples and pears, set close together, and trained to absolute perfection. Both when the blossom is out, especially when the pink of apple-blossom is at its best in May, and when the fruit, ruddy, russet and golden, has taken its colour from the sun, these pergolas must be a sight simply lovely. The central oasis of green has, if memory serves accurately, a fountain in its midst, and round it certainly are pillars clad with rambling roses, their tops united not, as is customary, by drooping chains, but by stout hawsers, two inches or more in diameter, for which it is claimed that they suit the roses as supports better than metal, which is subject to rapid changes of temperature and also to electrical influence. This last consideration was new to me, but doubtless it rests on substantial ground, and the whole idea is an illustration of what may be achieved in gardening by sympathy, which we can all try to give—and by an expenditure which men of moderate means may well shudder to contemplate.
To round off the picture of this ideal home by the sea, be it added that Mr. Cobbold farms, and that his dairy cattle are of the gentle Channel Islands breeds, some Jerseys, all of ascertained pedigree, to which a little Guernsey blood has been added. At Norwich, seeing the Red Polls in great numbers, I ventured an expression of opinion that, on the whole, the native breed of a district is usually "most in the picture" and most profitable in that district, and the opinion remains unshaken, so far as wayside pastures and the ordinary stock on farms are concerned. But for the home farm no cattle are so pleasing to the eye, none are so gentle in their manners, and none give such eminently satisfactory milk as the Channel Islands cattle; and Mr. Cobbold's herd is most decidedly a thing in place. In answer to a leading question, based on personal experience, he writes: "One of the bulls (imported) was a Guernsey one; and his progeny are in some instances still to be distinguished by their whitish noses and lighter-coloured shins. This, of course, would make the cows larger; but apart from this, I have noticed a decided tendency in all the pure bred Jerseys to grow larger on our pastures and subject to the conditions they find here." As a matter of fact the same tendency is visible on pastures less favoured than those of Felixstowe.
It may be said that this is not motoring; but it was a glorious episode on a motor tour, and those who pass these modest oak palings on the way to Bawdsey, as we did next day, may like to know how complete is the paradise that is close to them. Still we did go a-motoring that afternoon, on the principle, perhaps, that although true hospitality may have no limits, nature has supplied one, a fairly high one it is true, to the absorbent capacities of the sponge. Our expedition of the afternoon, by this time soft and rainless, was merely half a Sabbath day's journey, from the point of view of the motorist, for there is no revolutionary pursuit of our age to which the Greek author's saying concerning the mutability of the meaning of words is more applicable than it is to motoring. The saying, by the way, is that in revolutionary times the signification of words as applied to things is always changed. A Sabbath day's journey, for example, was to the Hebrew of old seven miles. In the course of that afternoon, merely pour passer le temps, without overstraining ourselves or the car, we travelled at least eighty miles, starting well after three o'clock, taking our afternoon tea at a supremely interesting spot, and returning to the pleasing shelter of the hotel more or less in time for a rather late dinner.
Our policy, after the first few miles, which were to take us through nature's wild garden of Suffolk, was a policy of drifting, determined by circumstances. There is a Greek word αυταρκεια, which exactly describes one of the chief fascinations of the motor-car for those who have the strength of mind—for it is really strength and not weakness—to allow happy chance to determine their course in some measure. It means "sufficiency in oneself," or "independence," and I am emboldened to refer to it because it is much beloved by Plato, and because Plato, I am given to understand, is quite a popular author among the ladies of our day. Here let a suggestion be offered to the learned gentleman who delivers lectures to note-taking ladies on Plato in the sympathetic atmosphere of one of our huge modern hotels. There is nothing like a concrete example for bringing home to the modern mind the truth of these expressions used by the wise men of the old world, and two illustrations of αυταρκεια are offered freely. "Good horse between my knees" was the very embodiment of the feeling of independence before motor-cars were in the land. Subject to sundry risks, not numerous or probable enough to stop a man of courage from setting forth, the mounted man can go pretty much whither his fancy leads him and change his mind as often as he pleases, within certain obvious limits. The motorist is even more happily situated. For the horseman the risks and the limits remain practically unchanged throughout the ages; for the motorist the risks, save those of tire trouble, are always being reduced and the limits are always being extended. There is now practically no limit, save that of his personal choice and his physical endurance, to the distance he may go, and he need never be troubled, as the horseman must be from time to time, by doubts whether his pleasure may not be causing pain to the organism which carries him willingly from place to place. It is of course just conceivable that the metals may feel, but it is not in the least likely that they do. Everybody has heard of mysterious movements inside apparently solid steel—did not Mr. Ruskin speak beautifully of the "anarchy of steel"?—and it is a frequent experience that an engine will seem to grow tired and to require to be driven with consideration for a while, for no apparent reason. But at any rate, even the wildest fancy can hardly picture steel in pain in the same sense as the overdriven horse or the patient ricksha coolie whose short cough is a reminder that the race is short-lived. No, in motoring, so far as the use of the machine is concerned, there can be no inhumanity.
It was in this spirit that we set forth on that soft afternoon, with a half-formed intention of taking tea with friends near Saxmundham and of going no farther on our outward journey. As it happened we went a great deal farther, taking a predetermined course at first along roads clearly marked on every map, and then, having found a new objective, and having ascertained the direction in which it lay, we made for it by such roads as seemed, on the face of them, and without any regard to their quality or surface, most likely to lead towards it. It took a little longer perhaps, but it was interesting; it gave some exercise to the topographical intelligence, and it led us out of the beaten track. The first part of the route was simplicity itself. We simply retraced our tracks from Felixstowe to Trimley of the twin churches along the Ipswich road, and a mile or two beyond. Then we turned at an obtuse angle to the right and found ourselves in what has been called the wild garden of Suffolk, not in any classical work perhaps, but by word of mouth. A wide stretch it was of gorse and heather, with trees here and there, singly and in groups, the greater part of it some eighty or ninety feet above the level of the adjoining North Sea and, roughly speaking, forty feet above that of the plain, ten miles in width or thereabouts, following the coast northwards for ever so many miles from the left bank of the demure and rather dull river Deben. The "garden" was hardly at its best for, whether kissing was out of fashion or not, the gorse was very certainly and completely out of blossom; and of course there was no glory of bracken; but no strong effort of imagination was called for, no very intimate knowledge of wild nature, to perceive that, later in the year, this must be a divinely attractive run. As it was, the memory left is of clear air and wide prospect, of russets and sombre greens, of two villages—their names turn out to be Brightwell and Martlesham—of no particular note, and of a nameless brook, a tributary of the Deben, forded near the former. The surface of the roads, perhaps, left something to be desired by the fastidious, but that is a matter to which experience and intelligent curiosity lead one to pay less and ever less attention. Through such a country, growing a little more disciplined as our route, nearly due north, took us away from the sea and on to higher ground, we passed to Woodbridge, whereof enough has been said before, and through Wickham Market to our old acquaintance Saxmundham, the original objective of this easy-going drive. But, as it happened, my charioteer's friends at whose house we called had also been tempted abroad that afternoon, and it appeared to be considered probable that they had gone to Dunwich. In came αυταρκεια, independence, and the happy thought, Why not go to Dunwich too? A hasty glance at a map showed that if we pushed on along the high road not quite so far as Yoxford, and then began to think of turning eastward, we must in due course find a road leading us to Dunwich. This was really hardly a case of "taking chances," as our American friends have it, for on that desolate coast the dreary remains of Dunwich are the only point between Southwold and Aldeburgh at which roads converge. Towards Yoxford was some three or four miles through eminently English scenery, undulations of land, which the auctioneer's catalogue would describe not ineptly as "park-like," showing a remarkable succession of well-grown oaks. So "park-like," indeed, was it that, no doubt, much of it was the real thing. As it turned out a general sense of direction suggested the wisdom of bearing to the right, not much more than half-way to Yoxford, and the suggestion was obeyed. It led us by roads no better than farm tracks, and probably never intended to be any better, through Middleton and Westleton, neither of them a village of any note, to a winding road adorned by a sign-post with the legend, "To Dunwich and the Sea." The latter piece of information was not necessary to anybody who had learned to note, by the evidence of the trees, the effects of salt-bearing winds. Wheresoever near any of our coasts you see single trees all sloping in one direction, or coverts almost penthouse-shaped, rising gradually from a puny height of a few feet on one side, to a wall of respectable elevation on the other, there you may be sure that you are quite near to the sea, and that the salt-bearing winds have beaten first on the low side of the covert. So the sign-post was hardly needed on this narrow road of many rectangles, at one of which my charioteer's friends were happily met. A few more turns, a sharp descent under the almost overhanging walls of a long deserted priory, and we were in Dunwich.
DUNWICH AND DESOLATION