One more short passage is quoted here, as tending to round off the subject under discussion, although, perhaps, it might have been quoted when we were at Yarmouth. Still, the shifting shore did not thrust itself upon our attention then, and now it is pushing itself forward as steadily as North Weir Point has made its progress on the maps. "The sands of Yarmouth, like those of Lowestoft, have, in recent years, been comparatively stationary. The town of Yarmouth stands on a spot of sea-driven sand, thrown up in 1008 a.d."—it is no use therefore to look for Roman remains at Yarmouth itself—"and which crosses the outfalls of the Waveney and the Yare, enclosing a large mere—Breydon Water—the outlet of which, like that of other Suffolk rivers, is being constantly forced southwards by the accumulating sand from the north." All this is due to the steady trend of the beach from the north to the south, tending to form a barrier across all harbours and estuaries, to denude outlying capes, to fill up hollows in the coastline; and less calculable than the influence of the tide is the spasmodic influence of storms. What, then, is the moral? Of a truth there are many morals. He who buys a promontory may become a landless man. His neighbour in a hollow of the coast to the south may find himself endowed with salt marshes, whereon the sheep of his posterity will attain a flavour of supreme excellence. A port may become an inland community. River beds, the boundary of many an inland county and of many an estate out of reach of the sea, because they are accepted as eternal and immutable, are the most unstable of metes and bounds in the low ground by the side of the North Sea. Lastly, when we find the old maps failing to tally with the configuration of the land to-day, we shall only be exposing ourselves to ridicule if we laugh at those who made them.
So we have mused, looking at Landguard Point; and the indulgence has been taken without hesitation, since travel without thought is mere waste of time and of the opportunities of amusement. The motorist is not an infatuated adjunct of a hurtling machine; rather is he one who, passing through scenes rapidly, learns to observe and to think more quickly than others, storing, as on a photographic film, memories to be unfolded and developed later, and by no means averse to linger in here and there a spot promoting easy reflection. Only he is a motorist still, and, until the rudimentary device of the starting handle has been improved upon, he will make his long halts for looking round at leisure simultaneously with luncheon or tea, or some other reason for stopping the engine.
Home then to Colchester we will go through Dovercourt again, Little Oakley, Great Oakley, Weeley, and Elmstead. It is no great distance, and there is no reason why we should not pause for tea on the way in a village inn; for the inns of these parts are not half bad, the silvan scenery and the hedges are delightful, and there is no occasion to hurry. Besides, the roads are exceeding curly, apt to be greasy under the trees also, and altogether the peninsula between the Stour and the Colne is no place for fast travelling. It cannot honestly be said that, apart from the tranquil scenery of the country, combining abundant leafage with plenty of little ups and downs and a freshness of atmosphere due to the adjacent sea, which is in view frequently, this drive of the afternoon is worth taking for the sake of any antiquities or associations which may be taken into account. That is not to say that there are none such. Personally, perhaps, I should never have explored this peninsula but for the soldiery, who, I remember, had a great camp at one time in a park near Great Bentley, and a fierce battle at another time in the same district. It was rather an interesting battle, since it exhibited the difficulties of hedgerow fighting, and, still more, those of umpires compelled to adjudicate upon its results when cartridges were blank. But to me the most amusing part of it was to come at one point upon scouts of both armies, theoretically foes to the death, stealing green apples in brotherly amity from the same orchard. Still, I think, if the opportunity came without much trouble, I would explore that peninsula again in early autumn, for, apart from associations in literature or history, apart from architecture, about which it is far easier to rhapsodize in print sometimes than it is to spend many interested minutes over it in practice, there is an undying charm in these green lanes, in the oaks and elms, in the heavy laden orchards, and in the luxuriant blackberries of the wayside. They are just England, or one of the features of England, at its best; and those who have travelled most of this world of ours will agree that any feature of England, at its best, takes a very great deal of beating.
CHAPTER VIII
COLCHESTER AND GAINSBOROUGH'S COUNTRY
An afternoon's drive—Lexden—Close to Colchester—Earlier visit assumed—Probable site of Cunobelin's city—Position described by the Quarterly—Boadicea's revenge—Stoke by Nayland—A commanding hill—The church—Constable's praise—Gainsborough at Sudbury—"Damn your nose, madam!"—Gainsborough at school—"Tom Peartree"—Gainsborough's Suffolk landscapes—Long Melford—A halt for an exceptional church—Seventeenth-century monograph on—Inscriptions in flint—Long Melford a centre of the cloth trade—The Martins, or Martyns, and the church—Its past glories—Its splendid treasures—Ancient customs—The Cordells—Cavendish, the home of the Cavendish family—Clare and "the illustrious family of Clare"—Strongbow—The Valley of the Colne—The De Veres and Castle Hedingham—Macaulay on their fame—Their end—Little Maplestead—A round church—Back to Colchester.
A nice little drive, with a pause for tea and antiquarianism, of forty or fifty miles may be taken from Colchester any fine summer's afternoon by following something like the route here laid down. Thirty years ago this sentence would have been held to be proof positive of lunacy in the writer; now it is a conspicuous illustration of his willingness to be contented with moderately long journeys. It is a willingness, save the mark, which grows on the motorist with experience and familiarity with the new locomotion.
We will start by way of Lexden, but we will not halt there, full of interest as it is; for Lexden is but two miles from the heart of Colchester, and it shall be assumed that, at some time or other, the motorist will walk these two miles for the sake of his health and of his figure, and spend a little time in examining a spot of real interest. Still he shall be told its story now. Not many pages back there was occasion to mention the colony planted near Colchester, as it now is, by Claudius, and of the lethargy of the veterans who were the first colonists. They ought to have settled themselves as a community ready for defence at once. Historians agree that, instead of doing this, they found the dwellings hitherto occupied by the British sufficiently comfortable for their purpose, and never troubled themselves upon the question of defensive position. Those ancient British dwellings, due to Cunobelin's migration from St. Albans (which is historical, whereas much concerning Cunobelin is mystery), probably stood where Lexden stands now. Such, at any rate, was the opinion of a Quarterly Reviewer, who thought the surroundings fitted in well with his theory, as in fact they do. "To the north of it flows the Colne in a deep, and what must have been in those days a marshy valley, while on the south it is flanked by a smaller stream still called the Roman River, which probably made its way through dense forests. These two streams, meeting in the estuary of the Colne, enclose on three sides the peninsula on which Lexden stands, and across this neck of land, or such part of it as was not occupied by marsh or wood, two or perhaps three parallel lines of ramparts may now be traced for two or more miles, supposed to be British, from the flint celts which have been found about them." (This last sentence would certainly not be permitted in the Quarterly Review of these days, but its meaning is quite clear.) "... Near the centre of these lines a conspicuous mound still exists, which we would gladly believe to be the sepulchre of the great Cunobelin. A small Roman camp, or more properly a castellum, is still well preserved at no great distance from the south-west angle of this British fortification." The comment of "Murray," probably in this instance the late Mr. Augustus Hare, is "Whatever may be thought of these arguments, the suggestion is interesting and gives a certain importance to Lexden." As to Cunobelin, obviously there is no attempt at argument, nothing more than a pious aspiration; the rest of the argument is, on the whole, rather better than the English in which it is expressed, and perhaps as little of it rests on mere supposition as we have a right to expect in a case of this kind. The only weak part of the hypothesis appears to be that the august Quarterly Reviewer assumes marsh or forest where he does not find the lines of the ancient rampart. It would be safer, it is suggested, to assume marsh only or, where the elevation of the ground is against marsh and there is no rampart, vanished rampart, rather than vanished forest. The "celts," to one who does not profess to have made a profound study of British antiquities, seem to be neither here nor there in the argument. South-eastern Britons had some civilization even before Cæsar came. They were tillers of the soil and, apparently, had commerce with the Continent, even in metals. They resisted Cæsar by force, and their scythe-chariots (afterwards the model for the Roman travelling carriages) were not without their effect upon the legions. A people who could make these scythe-chariots, who severed the mistletoe with a golden sickle, were hardly likely to use flint knives in daily life. It follows, or at any rate seems to follow, that the "celts," if they are evidence of any period at all, as of course they must be, are evidence of men who lived near Lexden long before Cunobelin.