Es lächelt der see, er ladet züm Bade.
As the sea laughed and said, "Bathe in my sun-warmed waters," so the "Angel" smiles, broadly and hospitably, saying, "If you are spending the night in Bury, spend it in the house full of the cheerful memories of Pickwick and the faithful Weller." That invitation was assumed, for the "Angel" is most decorously modest, but it was also accepted and never regretted for a moment, least of all when the time came for discharging the reckoning. We reached the "Angel" sufficiently early to be able to order dinner and to stroll about in the darkening town while it was in preparation. They set our feet in large rooms. Bedrooms, coffee-room, and sitting-room were spacious and comfortable. Dinner was plain but excellent in the old-fashioned coffee-room, and I will almost, but not quite, pledge my word that the wall-paper was of that mellow and ruby red beloved of our forefathers, probably because it suggested port wine. A pilgrimage through the hotel, and the yard too, showed that it had altered little, if at all, since it was described by Dickens, except that the pump was gone. Assuredly there ought to be a pump, for the sake of appearances, if for no other reason, although a tap, fed from the Corporation Waterworks, may serve equally well to cool heads throbbing of a morning from overnight unwisdom in the still-existing tap-room. The "Angel," in fact, is a thoroughly good hotel of the old-fashioned type, which it is a rare pleasure to enter and to praise. More than that, and to complete the well-earned panegyric, one leaves the "Angel" in a satisfied mood. It is plain truth that we dined there, slept, had tea in our bedrooms, breakfasted well, and paid for the car's lodging in a coach-house, and that the bill for three of us was precisely one shilling less than was paid one day later for the same accommodation less dinner, and less the storage of the car for the night. That is why praise is gladly given and those who have suffered from heavy charges elsewhere will be the first to protest that it ought to be given out of a grateful heart.
ABBEY GATEWAY, BURY ST. EDMUNDS
In the morning there was more delay. The same wheel which had given trouble by the mysterious dyke on the preceding afternoon was found to be standing on a flat tire again. Messages to the station brought back no substantial answer in the form of a cover. A local garage had none that fitted in stock, and had to send a special messenger to fetch one from a distance of ten or twelve miles on a motor-cycle. As a matter of fact, we found later, the tire-cover had been at the station all the time, but it had been addressed to the mechanic, and our messenger had made inquiries for one addressed to his master. The delay was really welcome. Who could desire a better fate than to spend a perfect spring morning in sauntering through a town which was historic not only in fact but also in appearance? My own case was the more happy in that, during the interval, I had not only refreshed my memory of Bury and of its associations, but had also learned a good many things in connection with it which were new to me. Of course, we entered the Abbey Gateway, to find the Botanical Garden, noted by Carlyle, less conspicuous than we had feared it might be. In fact, there was no demonstration of labels, helpful to the student but distressing to the idle eye, and it may be that the garden is no longer botanical, except in the sense in which every garden is such. It is a garden in any case, a garden with such broad stretches of close green turf as England alone can show; and on this turf little boys were playing games in the morning. A notice at the gate implied that the ground was not absolutely open to the public for games; if it were the turf would soon perish; but the price of play seemed to be very moderate; and perhaps the ground within those ancient walls serves as useful a purpose by encouraging the young men and maidens of Bury to take healthy exercise in the open air as it did when it permitted the student to realize that cheiranthus is another way of saying "wallflower," or that the weed best beloved of canaries may be called Jacobea. Of the Shakesperian associations of the Abbey we spoke last time we were at Bury; they came to mind none the less pleasantly for the fact that sturdy little boys were kicking a football about on the ground often trodden by kings and abbots. Of course, too, we went to see the Norman Tower, to the southward of the Abbey Gate and close to it, and St. Mary's Church. Most pleasant of all, however, was it to linger in the sun about the spacious square, having the "Angel" on one side and the Abbey Gate on the other, to rejoice in the abundance of old-world houses, to reflect that the square, and most of the houses, if not all, looked much the same as they did when "in order to avoid the public gaze, and also to recuperate, Defoe repaired in August, 1704, to Bury St. Edmunds, where he took up his abode in a handsome residence called Cupola House." Defoe was then fresh from eighteen months in "that horrid place," as Moll Flanders called it, Newgate Prison. He had stood in the pillory more than once, but, as his biographer of 1894, Mr. Thomas Wright, observes, we must not pity him too much. He suffered, after all, as others did in a brutal age. Moreover, Newgate was not all misery. He was allowed to exercise his pen freely while in prison, and he published one of the products of his incarceration, "An Elegy on the Author of the True-born Englishman," while he was living at Bury. That he did not come out penniless will be very plain to every pilgrim who is at the pains to look at Cupola House, which is still standing and, from the outside at any rate, very inviting.
Such are some of the memories of Bury, "the Montpelier of Suffolk, and perhaps of England," as Defoe called it, and we were not in any hurry to leave it or them. Still the sun shone, the roads were in good order, and when the car was ready about midday, we also were ready for the pleasures of the road. Our road, good and fairly flat, through what may best be described as comfortable and rich country, lay by Farnham St. Mary, Ixworth, where Euston Park was five miles to the north along the Ipswich and Thetford Road, Stanton, Wattisfield, and Richinghall to Wortham. That is only seven miles in all, and we bowled along merrily, in no mood to stop if we could avoid it, observing the spacious area of many village greens, thwarting to the best of our ability the efforts of the geese (which accounted for the close shorn turf of those greens) to immolate themselves under our wheels. A fussy turkey-hen, too, courted the same fate, but so far as our chariot was concerned, the geese and their offspring may have been eaten with apple-sauce at Michaelmas, and the turkey-hen's poults may have been hatched and reared, and fattened in the fashion best understood in East Anglia for the London market.
At Wortham came more trouble. Once more there was the ominous shriek. The rear off-side inner tube had been blown into a rent in the inner canvas of the outer cover; it was clean gone, and so, unfortunately, was the mechanic. Cheerfully philosophical as ever, Mr. Johnson, with such help as the bystanders and I could give him, addressed himself to the task of fitting the wheel for the road again and, apart from the trouble and inconvenience to him, of which he made light for our sake, the experience was even positively pleasant in its incidents. Bystanders were many. Our little disaster had come to us half-way on the road passing through a village green, very spacious, fringed on the left with stray cottages, of which one turned out to be the post office. Village children thronged round the disabled car in great numbers, light-haired and rosy-faced children, all of them wearing the yellow favours of the Liberal candidate. Were we not in the middle of the Eye constituency, the bye-election in which, coming shortly after the General Election, was regarded with exceptional interest by the public? Was not this the election of elections in which, to judge from the public press, the issue lay not between two mere men, but between Lady Mary Hamilton and another lady. And the result was due that day. The district was at least warmly interested as the general public—it is not always so—and the children were in a fever of childish excitement. They were "yellow" down to the very babies in arms; they hooted in shrill and childish derision whenever a carriage passed with blue favours, as some did, the occupants themselves looking blue in another sense. The most hardened Tory found it as impossible to be annoyed at their enthusiasm as to regard their opinions seriously. They were too eager, too delightful, too healthy. Nobody could have been angry with them. Further than that, they struck us all as being exceptionally bright and intelligent, and the keen interest with which they listened to a boy in his shirt-sleeves, not much older than some of them, but emancipated from school and now a wage-earning creature, who had attended some village meeting, was entirely charming. A man or two came up and proffered help, which was accepted. A Suffolk constable arrived on a bicycle and, seeming to have plenty of time to spare, remained to talk and to help me in expelling the air from the discarded tube, and in packing it into its bag for future treatment; and the children were round us all the time. Suddenly there was a shout, "The talleygram's come!" and a stampede across the green to the post office. In a minute or two they were all back, yelling in glee, "Pearson's in!" and at least one stubborn Tory was not half so sorry as he ought to have been. The Tory cause in the then Parliament was past praying for in any event; a Liberal vote more or less really seemed hardly to matter; the disappointment of those children at the failure of the Liberal candidate, if it had been announced, would have been far more distressing to me then than was the defeat of him for whom I should have voted if a vote in the Eye division had been mine.
On at last we went, merrily enough at first, and in 3-1/4 miles crossed the Waveney and the boundary of Norfolk and Suffolk simultaneously at Scole; Scole of the true Roman road, Scole of the ancient hostelry, of both of which full notice has been taken in an earlier chapter. Four miles more we carried on gaily, 4-1/4 miles perhaps, for we were almost free from the long townlet of Harleston when more trouble came. It was precisely the same trouble in the same tire and cover that had been met with at Wortham. This time there was a garage, where the rent in the canvas was effectually repaired, while we took a hearty luncheon at the "Magpie"; and that was the end of tire-trouble for this expedition. We had certainly had at least enough of it. And here, since the road immediately in front of us positively teems with wayside subjects, let a pause be made and a short chapter ended.