Through East Anglia in a Motor Car Part 12

[Ill.u.s.tration: YARMOUTH FROM BREYDON]

The early-printed volumes, stately and calf-bound, are a luxury to read, and in spite of Sir John Fenn's omissions they contain all manner of curiosities, the best of them perhaps being a letter written by one of the young Pastons in 1467, from Eton, where he was at school. In it he shows anxiety about a consignment of figs and raisins, promised but not arrived, discusses the fortune of a young lady recently met whom he thinks of marrying, and says to his brother: "And as for hyr bewte juge you that when ye see hyr yf so be that ye take y'e laubore and specialy beolde hyr handys for and if it be as is tolde me sche is dysposyd to be thyke."

(Here, by the way, is an example of Sir John Fenn's weakness as an editor, since, the original sentence being innocent of stops save at the end, he places a comma after "hands," and after "be" and another after "me," thus making his own unnecessary translation far more obscure than the original.) It is worth while to remember that Eton College had at this time been open for twenty-five years only, was in fact quite a new school, and that the headmaster was William Barber.

It was during this run by a circuitous route from Caister-by-Yarmouth to Acle and Norwich, and when the wide sheet of Filby Broad smiled on either hand, that the feeling of opposition to Mr. Rye's view of the Broads grew strong. That magnificent stretch of water appealed with a strength almost irresistible to one for whom sailing was, before motoring came into existence, the most perfect of pleasures; and although circ.u.mstances, and circ.u.mstances only, tendered resistance possible, it seems but right to glance at the Broads, to say what they and the country around them are like, and how, in the opinion of one fairly well versed in watermans.h.i.+p, they might best be enjoyed. There is a stock delimitation of the Broad District. Draw a line from Happisburgh to Norwich, another line from Lowestoft to Norwich, and the rough triangle formed by those lines and the sea shall be the Broads District. Really the southern side of the triangle is drawn much too low on the map. Except Oulton Broad and Lake Lothing, which are close to Lowestoft, and also a long way from the other Broads, all the Broads, including Breydon Water, would be included in a triangle having a line from Norwich to Gorleston for its southern boundary. They are Filby, Ormsby, Burgh, and Rollesby, all connected and covering no less than six hundred acres between them; Hickling, Heigham, Horsey, and Marlham Broads, Hickling the finest of them all; and Irstead and Barton; and each group is approached by its own river. Now, travel by motor-car is not recommended in this district, for it is much too flat to be enjoyable.

Since that is not recommended, nothing is said about the churches, although they are of some interest; for so long as men and women remain what they are, they will not stop to study relics of antiquity, unless they are very exceptional indeed, when travelling by boat. Nor are they in the least more likely to linger in this way when voyaging by motor-boat than when using a sailing-boat. But shall we, voyaging in the spirit, use either sailing-boat or motor-boat, in the ordinary acceptation of the latter term. In truth, neither is suggested, but rather a compromise. Candour compels the admission that, knowing by sight, and in some cases from personal experience, most of the types of motor-boat built in Great Britain, I cannot recall one of them which, being roomy enough for comfort, would not draw too much water to be serviceable. In fact, if one could rely on the wind, a sailing vessel of one of the types which have been evolved in the district to meet its needs would really be preferable. Elsewhere than in these pages I should certainly take it, and enjoy it vastly. But what I might take in these pages, and what would be much better than either, would be one of those big flat-bottomed sailing craft with auxiliary motor-engines, of which one may see some at English exhibitions, but many more at the annual exhibition in Paris. With them you can really sail, when there is a wind; and, without a breeze, you are independent. As for the joy of it, so long as there is wind to fill the sails, the mere act of das.h.i.+ng through the water and gliding over it, the very sound of the water, the sense of absolute control that comes to him who holds the tiller and trims the sails to meet every need, are enough, without worrying over scenery.

Moreover, the wide flatness of the Broads District, the rare buildings rising as from a lake, have a special charm of their own. As for the sport, from all that I can learn it is largely a thing of the past so far as duck and wildfowl are concerned. All the same, it is a bad mistake to omit the Broads, and one which, _experto crede_, the tourist in East Anglia regrets deeply when it is irretrievable. However, there is no doubt I made it, but happily hardly less doubt that, if I had not made it, the results could hardly have been relevant.

On, then, we went to Norwich by way of Caister, not as before through Acle, and dined at the "Maid's Head," as on our last visit, and admired the ancient hotel and the red waistcoat of the head waiter as much as ever; but afterwards, instead of seeing something of the famous city by night, we pushed on towards Cromer on the high road by moonlight. That is not the best way to see the country of course, and it would be sheer hypocrisy (which happens to be unnecessary) to say anything in detail of the normal aspect of the places pa.s.sed, or of their a.s.sociations if they had any.

Still, of all kinds of travelling yet tried by me, it was emphatically the most delightful. The air was very transparent and not too cool, the moon bathed the landscape, which was fairly free from hills, there was little traffic on the roads save here and there a farmer jogging home in his dog-cart from Norwich market, the acetylene lamps were doing their duty n.o.bly (which is by no means always their custom), we felt as if we should like to go on all night. At Cromer certainly we would not stop. We would make the coast there and skirt the sea by moonlight, certainly so far as Wells-next-Sea, possibly so far as Hunstanton. All things went merrily as marriage bells, the car sped smoothly as a soaring albatross, silently as death itself. But stay, what was that? A sharp little report, like the crack of a miniature rifle, was heard from below. It was not a tire again; that was sure; we knew by heart every noise that a failing tire could make.

A little farther the car went quite well--Cromer was now some five miles distant--and then the noises began again in quick and _staccato_ succession. In another environment they might have reminded us of a _feu de joie_; to our present predicament no words could have been more completely inappropriate. What was the trouble? Was it something wrong with the ignition? "No," said our philosophic friend at the wheel, "it is not ignition. There is one of the blessings of experience. A little time ago I should have wasted time in fiddling with the ignition; now I know it is not that; and I know there is nothing to be done to-night. There is no strainer fixed to the tank in this car; the good man who refilled for us at Norwich used no strainer; and some grit has got into the petrol. To find it I must first put out all lights and then go right back, piece by piece, from the carburettor backwards, until I can discover the obstacle. That is impossible in the dark. We must bear the noise and push on, if we can, to the hotel at Cromer. Possibly the foreign matter, whatever it is, may have dissolved by the morning." So, seeing from excellent example, that misfortune faced with a smile loses three-quarters of its annoyance, we went on, at quite a good pace too, sometimes silently for a hundred yards, sometimes with loud reports as of a gun at the covert side, sometimes with spluttering as of boys' crackers on the 5th of November. But we laughed at them all and won our way to Cromer, won our way too up the steep and sinuous hill that leads to the Links Hotel. There we had good fortune indeed. The hotel had been opened that day only after the winter of sleep and desolation; a huge fire roared in the ample hall; belated guests were none the less welcome in that, so far as we could see, there were but two other guests, golfers both, in that vast hotel. Had we come a night earlier our fate had been bad indeed. The hotel, judged by bed and breakfast, seemed to me of the first order of merit. The charges, compared with those of the "Angel" at Bury, seemed high. Still, it was more "replete with every modern luxury" than the "Angel"; it possessed bathrooms, for example, which are indispensable to the motorist, and it was a very present help in trouble. Such was our view the next morning, when the inevitable bill, not a very big one after all, having regard to the cla.s.s of the hotel, was presented.

Other things also came to mind that following morning, a morning of gauzy mist not obscuring the view, even lending enchantment to some of it, and promising a fine day. Some of them were obvious. The position of the hotel, looking down from a commanding height on town and sea, was perfect for prospect and for bracing air; the golf-links, close by, were an undeniable attraction to the large army of men and women who have yielded to the seductions of that most fascinating game. It would have been unreasonable to expect low charges; but all the same, the contrast between this bill and that paid at Bury was a little stronger than it ought to be in a well-regulated country. Other things were not so immediately obvious, since for some it was the wrong season, and others were hidden in pleasant and well-remembered books. We were in the heart of Poppyland, concerning which Mr. Clement Scott and others raved, but it was too soon for the poppies--poor Dan Leno's "Red, Red, Poppies," now to be heard only on the gramophone--to be on view. It was, however, not difficult to conjure them up in imagination, having seen them before all over those sandy uplands in the Runton direction. They are very pretty beyond doubt; they add glorious lakes of colour to a rather monotonous landscape, but they mean poor and sandy land, and that (although it does not matter to the motorist, unless he happens to own some of it, and to be unable to let it for building) spells dust in dry weather, and lots of it too.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH STREET, CROMER]

Is Cromer a choiceworthy place in which to spend a summer holiday? The answer, not perhaps the answer which appears at first to be given, lies in or under this extract from _The Gurneys of Earlham_. Mr. Hare began by saying, "A picture of the summer family life at Cromer, much like that of the present day, is given in the following letter." It is one from Richenda Gurney to Elizabeth Fry--the Elizabeth Fry, good angel of gloomy Newgate Prison, of course.

"_Cromer, September 8, 1803._--Our party is now complete, as John continues with us, and the Buxtons arrived yesterday; it was extremely pleasant to us, seeing them both again, particularly Fowell; their being here will add very much to our pleasure, as there is a suitability between us and the Buxtons which always makes it pleasant for us to be together. Our time here is spent in a way that exactly suits the place and the people. All are left in perfect liberty to do as they like all day, or to form any engagement.

Yet the party is so connected that hardly a day pa.s.ses but some plan is fixed for us all to meet. When all are met it is an uncommonly pretty sight, such a number of young women, and so many, if not pretty, very nice-looking. I wish thee could have seen us the other afternoon. Sally gave a grand entertainment at the Hall, where everybody met--the ladies almost all dressed in white gowns and blue sashes, with nothing on their heads. After dinner we all stood on a wall, eighteen of us, and it was really one of the prettiest sights I ever saw.

"To give thee an idea how we are going on, I will tell thee how we generally pa.s.s the day. The weather since we came has on the whole been very fine; so imagine us before breakfast, with our troutbecks [hats] on and coloured gowns, running in all directions on the sands, jetty, etc.

After breakfast we receive callers from the other houses, and fix with them the plans for the day; after this, we now and then get an hour's quiet for reading and writing, though my mind has been so much taken up with other things, that I have found it almost impossible to apply to anything seriously. At eleven we go down in numbers to bathe and enjoy the sands, which about that time look beautiful: most of our party and the rest of the Cromer party come down, and bring a number of different carriages, which have a very pretty effect. After bathing, we either ride on horseback or take some pleasant excursion or other. I never remember enjoying the sea so much, and never liked Cromer a quarter so well. Some of us continually dine out, whilst the others receive company at home.... John has been a great addition to our party. I hope he has enjoyed himself; we have had two or three most merry days since he came. The day before yesterday we spent at Sherringham, wandering about the woods and sketching all the morning. Every one met at a beautiful spot for dinner, with three knives and forks and two or three plates between twenty-six people. All manner of games took place after dinner, which John completely entered into and seemed to enjoy as much as any of the party. We completed our day by a delightful musical evening. Miss Gordon, our old Cromer friend, came to tea: she played and sang to us all the evening in a wonderful style. John goes away on Sunday; he stays over to-night to be at a dance which some very agreeable people who are at Cromer--Mr. and Mrs. Windham--are going to give, and which, I think, must be very pleasant."

"Could anything be more simply delightful? What can the man mean by hinting that the answer to the question whether Cromer is a choiceworthy place for a summer holiday is not plainly to be read on the face of this artless letter?" Such, it is easy to imagine, would be the question asked if the early Victorian practice continued, if somebody read these pages aloud, with pauses for comment and criticism, while ladies of various ages embroidered or contrived trousers for unwilling heathens to wear as a cover for their natural nakedness and as a testimony of recently acquired Christianity. My dear Madam, as Thackeray might have said, pause for a moment and reflect. Are you a Gurney, a Fry, a Buxton? Do you bear any of the other names, perfectly well known, which are a pa.s.sword to this most admirable and worthy society? Read also what Mr. Walter Rye has to say on the same topic. Pray note that the letter is of 1803, but that Mr. Hare's book, published in 1895, says that the picture of 1803 would serve very well for a picture of the present day. Have you ever tried, as a stranger, a summer holiday at a seaside place which has been frequented by the same families for a few years, let alone a place to which the same families have resorted for generations, as is the case at Cromer and in its vicinity? Or, again, have you ever, being a member of such a society, known what it is to see new families discover the oasis which seemed your very own, and what have been your feelings towards those new families? Have you not in the first case felt uncomfortable, a goat among sheep, in the second case perceived at once that the new-comers were of goat-like nature? In all this vivid letter there are but two allusions to persons outside the charmed circle, Miss Gordon and the Windhams. Miss Gordon was clearly a Cromer inst.i.tution, and it is probable to the verge of certainty, if only from the name, that the Windhams were a Norfolk family. Less than ten years before "William Windham, the statesman and darling of the county" had distinguished himself, when stoned during an election at Norwich, by jumping out of his carriage and collaring his a.s.sailant. He was the same William Windham who quelled a mutiny in the local militia by "seizing the leader and thras.h.i.+ng two of his followers." Such conduct was not, perhaps, entirely to the mind of the Gurneys and their friends, but, for all that, the chances are that this Mr. and Mrs. Windham were kinsfolk of one who was no man of peace at any price.

Cromer seems to me on a priori grounds and, if the truth may be told, "from information received" also, to be entirely the place for the members of a justly respected circle, whose t.i.tle to it is clear and not to be begrudged, but a place in which a stranger to that circle is, as the common saying goes, "out of it." It is emphatically a good place for a golfer; but otherwise, all along this piece of the coast, there is precious little for the ordinary man or woman to do. There is the sea of course, but the coastline is too regular and the sea too open to provide that variety of scenery which gives to little pleasure cruises their chief pleasure. Also, of course, there are the roads, upon which the motorist may take his pleasure, and some of them pa.s.s through or near places attractive in the present as they were in the past, nay, even more attractive, since to see them stir up the memories of the past. But two things must be said. A seaside place, as a centre for motoring, walking or bicycling, is by its very essence one-sided or even less. Lay a pen across the map horizontally at Cromer, and it is plain that there is no way for the motorist towards more than half the points of the compa.s.s. As for the coast scenery, of which we shall shortly take a considerable sample, it is full of individual character, the kind of scenery one may visit with pleasure once or twice or even three times, but, to a man not of Norfolk blood, it seems no more than that. Such, certainly, is the final impression left by the coast drive to the west of Cromer, and in Cromer itself are far too many new houses. To the eastward, especially if the coast be left behind, the scenery is better, possessed of, if it may be so put, more abiding charm. To the westward it is more strange, weird and individual than beautiful, and its weirdness is of the kind inspiring to melancholy, not to awe. This summary of opinion, however, is in the nature of an antic.i.p.ation. It shall be justified piecemeal so soon as we are fairly under way so that a new chapter can be begun.

Let this chapter close with the last unhappy episode in a supremely happy tour, with which episode it would be discordant to mix the undiluted pleasure of the next chapter. We started, for us, rather early; that is to say we breakfasted at half-past seven and left the hotel door slightly after eight. All down the zigzag hill into the town the machinery said nothing at all. There was no reason why it should make any demonstration, since it had no work to do. Once called upon to work, however, the car soon began to crackle and to splutter again. There was no room for doubt what was the matter. Foreign matter had found its way into the petrol tank and beyond; and it was hard stuff, genuine grit, undissolved by a night's soaking. Whether the ostler at the "Maid's Head" or he of Bury St. Edmunds was to blame, and in justice to the former it must be said that it might have been either, the nuisance was beyond question. It was Sunday morning, too; it was hardly likely that the repair shops would be of any a.s.sistance, at any rate so early in the morning, and, empty as the streets were then, it would not have been seemly to begin in them, at about the hour of the earliest service, an operation which might very likely consume an hour or more. So up the hill on the far side of the town we crawled--for Cromer lies in the hollow of a cup--snorting and grunting not a little, in sickly fas.h.i.+on and with much trouble, as the Latin exercises used to put it, and out on to the sandy road, leading between sandy and wind-swept fields, towards Runton.

There, thanking our stars that few wayfarers were astir, we stopped, and Mr. Johnson, cheerfully remarking that those who could be of no help, because there is only room for one big man face upwards under a car, had better go for a little walk and see some of the country, addressed himself with a smile and a half-groan to his odious task with its infinite possibilities in the way of black and viscous lubricant dropping into his hair or on to his face. In this posture I left him, his legs alone visible, for a little tour of inspection; but there was no temptation to prolong it.

A walk of a hundred yards or two along a bank, covered spa.r.s.ely with harsh and wiry gra.s.s, and dividing two fields, both equally poverty-stricken, brought me to the crumbling edge of a sandy cliff, not high enough to impose by its grandeur, not rugged enough to please by its outline. Below was a beach of sand, beyond that the smooth, grey, hazy sea with not a vessel of any kind visible on its sluggish surface. To the westward was Runton, a conglomeration of commonplace brick houses, glaringly new, obviously intended for lodgings. A windmill and its house were the only buildings in any way calculated to give satisfaction to the eye. From there it roved on to undulating hills, probably of sand, as indeed was everything else except the raw houses of Runton. Rambling, in this Poppy Land _sans_ poppies, seemed weary, flat, stale and unprofitable. A return to the car revealed Mr. Johnson still in the back position, as riflemen say, and sundry stray bits of the car and tools lying on the road by his side. A glance at him, obtained by crouching, showed him to be much hotter, much dirtier than before, more smilingly determined than ever, if possible, to make nothing of his personal trouble. He was not so much a good man fighting against adversity as a master of science wrestling with a problem he knew that he could solve in time: and solve it with triumph he did. A few minutes more and he half wriggled half rolled into the open road, dusty, but jubilant, holding a little piece of pipe some five inches long and of infinitesimal bore in his hand. "Here is the little brute," he said, with a gentle smile--and then made his one mistake of the day, and it cost him dear. Just touching one end of the pipe with his lips, and holding his hollowed palm by the other end, he blew one breath. Out came the obstruction, hardly bigger than a snapdragon seed, surely the tiniest little imp of a particle that ever hampered the circulation of a mighty machine. The mechanical trouble was over for ever, or at any rate for that expedition. A very few minutes sufficed to prepare the car for the road again, and she accomplished over two hundred miles more that day without, so to speak, turning a hair. So did the man who cured her, because he knew her complaint to a nicety; but he was in my company all that day until seven or eight in the evening and the thoroughly abominable taste of petrol was in his mouth to the end. In fact

You may rinse with raw brandy your mouth if you will, But the reek of the petrol will cling to it still.

Such is a valuable little piece of experience gained by proxy. The morals are three and obvious. First, every tank or funnel should be fitted with an irremovable strainer. Secondly, if this be not so, superintend refilling yourself and see that a temporary strainer is used. Thirdly, if grit does get into the petrol through omission of these precautions, and blowing a pipe becomes necessary, wrap up the mouth of that pipe with care, or preferably get somebody else, and best of all an idle bystander, to do the blowing for you. For this service, if rendered by a boy, a s.h.i.+lling is a sufficient recompense, and you may depart at your leisure; but if it be done by a man, especially if he be large and rough, give him half a crown, and stand not on the order of your going.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BLAKENEY--A CHARACTERISTIC LANDSCAPE]

CHAPTER XII

A PRIORY--GREAT HOUSES AND THE FENS

Troubles over--Road via Lower Sheringham, Salthouse, Cley-next-Sea, Blakeney, Stiffkey and Wells-next-Sea--Impressive desolation--Wells--Binham--The building and making of Holkham--"c.o.ke of Norfolk"--The c.o.kes--Walsingham--Remains and history--The Shrine--Ecclesiastical trickery and temporal gain--Froude quoted--Ceremonial at the shrine--Its miraculous transportation--Houghton--The Walpoles--Sir Robert's pictures--Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill--The mad Lord Orford--His ruling pa.s.sion--Stag "four-in-hand"--The hounds pursue--Motor-cars many in these parts--Fakenham--Lynn--Glanced at in the rain--The Fens--Kins.h.i.+p of the Useful and the Romantic--The beauty of the Fens actually, and enhanced by imagination--The great reclaimers--Resistance of the old Fenmen--Charles Kingsley quoted--"The inspiration of G.o.d"--To Ely and Cambridge--The "Bull"

unready--Homeward bound and a narrow escape--Motor-cyclist towing a girl on a bicycle--A wicked practice--Value of care in motorist.

From this point we never looked back, as the saying goes, mechanically. Our troubles were over, and we looked forward to our drive along the north coast of Norfolk with intense eagerness. It is a pleasure in retrospect now, but it was not quite the same sort of pleasure as had been antic.i.p.ated in previous topographical innocence. The road we had taken designedly on leaving Cromer, when it was determined to follow the sea as closely as possible, left Felbrigg and Sheringham, justly beloved of artists, on one side, pa.s.sed through Lower Sheringham, Weybourne, Salthouse, Cley-next-Sea, Blakeney, and Stiffkey to Wells-next-Sea. They were not in themselves particularly interesting villages, although I remember that at one of them--I think it was Weybourne--to which the road winds inwards from the sea a little, and where there is some shelter of a hill from the salt winds, there were fine trees about the church, and another little church, on the left-hand side of the road at Blakeney, had one full-sized tower at the west end and another funny little tower at the east end. The prevailing impression left by the whole drive is of impressive desolation. The road, dead flat for the most part, but not half bad in point of surface, runs as close to the sea as its makers dared to lay it. On the right, as one journeys westward, are wide stretches, half sea and half marsh; on the left is a range of low hills. Sometimes it is close at hand, at others it recedes a little, and the s.p.a.ce between the road and the hills is again a species of half marsh. The streams, running parallel to the road often, have a look of being partly tidal. The sides of the road are guarded by a fence, the bottom part of which clearly shows that at spring tides, especially if they be aggravated by the wind, the sea must flow over the road also; else whence came that fringe of withered seaweed hanging round the bottom of the fence? Small wonder that the folk in these parts have preserved, in Cley-next-Sea and in Wells-next-Sea, the reminder that the sea is close at hand. It is with them always, threatening them, devouring their land, strewing their flat sh.o.r.e with wreckage. From Cley for some miles to the westward extends a bill of sandy land, not very high, enclosing a long lagoon, apparently very shallow, and the outlook over this lagoon, with the dreary ridge of land broken, if memory serves correctly, only by a lighthouse, is intensely and absolutely characteristic. One feels no sort of desire to see it again unless indeed it is, as by its appearance it well might be, a haunt of wildfowl worth shooting; but at the same time it is good to have seen it once in order to know what this scenery of the most remote and northerly district of Norfolk is like, and to realize the kind of life which its scanty population must lead. They live face to face with Nature in her sourest mood, Nature never majestic, except when the storms come from the northward, smiling but a hard smile when the sun s.h.i.+nes. In fact, this is a stretch of land, when it is worthy of the name, dismal as the mind of man can conceive.

When you get to Wells-next-Sea, where the houses are plain but of some age, and there is a little port on a winding creek, the aspect of the country changes for the better; or rather it so changed for us, because we determined to give the coast up and to take the inland road via Fakenham and Flitcham for King's Lynn. For this route there was ample reason close at hand, in Holkham Hall, Walsingham, Binham Abbey, and Houghton, about all of which a good deal must needs be said with as little tedium, be it hoped, as possible. Before saying it, however, it may be as well to state that in another chapter, and that the last, King's Lynn will be treated as an imaginary centre for many little drives. Imagination, since it has happened to me often to stay at Lynn for many days together and to explore the surrounding country and roads, will not be severely taxed, and the method is adopted for the convenience of writer and reader. In this chapter we have before us the historic houses just named and, after them, the Fens from Lynn to Cambridge. These last we drive through in the early afternoon, taking in the character of them better than on any previous occasion. So the material for this chapter is at least ample. If we added to it Castle Rising, the birthplace of Nelson, the Sandringham country, divine in its kind, Hunstanton, Brancaster, and King's Lynn last of all, the chapter must run to unwieldly and intolerable length.

At Binham we have part of the Benedictine abbey, enveloped in ivy and part still used as a church, a very fine piece of unspoiled Norman work. For Holkham, _Abbeys, Castles and Ancient Halls_, by Mr. John Timbs and Mr.

Alexander Gunn, is a treasure-house of information. Holkham is Hoeligham, "Holy Home," and it was the work of the famous Kent under the direction of Thomas c.o.ke, Lord Leicester, who himself spent many years in Italy studying the works of Palladio. "c.o.ke of Norfolk," as the Lord Leicester of George II's time was called, was emphatically a landowner who deserved to be magnificently housed. An inscription over the entrance to the Great Hall records the fact that "this seat, on an open, barren estate, was planned, planted, built, decorated and inhabited in the middle of the eighteenth century by Thomas c.o.ke, Earl of Leicester." It naturally does not record the fact that the barren estate, for such it was, is now, mainly by virtue of c.o.ke of Norfolk's sagacity in planting, one of the most n.o.bly timbered to be found anywhere in the kingdom and a perfect paradise for game first and for those who shoot game later. In one respect the great Lord c.o.ke's plans were changed, one might almost write providentially. It had been intended to build the outside of the Hall of Bath stone, but an earth was found in a neighbouring parish which produced bricks of much the same colour as Bath stone, but heavier and closer in texture. That was as it should be. c.o.ke of Norfolk had bought much of the land and, by enclosing, cultivating and planting, had practically made it. It was part of the fitness of things that a "mansion of almost peerless magnificence, as far as its n.o.ble proportions, its gorgeous decorations, and its art and literary treasures" were concerned, should be built out of bricks baked out of Norfolk earth. The Hall stands in a s.p.a.cious but level park, and a glimpse of it may be had from the road. In the middle is a great quadrangular block having, at each angle, a wing, 70 ft. by 60 ft., connected with the central block by a corridor. The wings are: the stranger's wing, the family wing, the chapel wing, and the kitchen wing.

The library and the MSS. rooms are in the family wing; the gallery of statues and the state apartments are in the central block. This is 114 ft.

by 62 ft., its most n.o.ble feature being the hall, suggested to Lord Leicester by Palladio's plan for a Court of Justice, and having a gallery round three sides of it. Of the pictures the most notable are Claude's Apollo and Marsyas in a landscape, and other landscapes, Vand.y.k.es, Poussins, a Raphael, and a Rubens. There is also a group of nineteen figures by Michael Angelo. The ma.n.u.scripts are of great value and curiosity, and contain, amongst other things, the papers of the great Chief Justice. In fact, Holkham is, in itself, for its contents, and for the story of its creation, one of the most wonderful places in this marvellous England of ours; and that is why so much is here written concerning it in a book whose author is not at all eager to pry into the houses of other and greater men.

Who were these c.o.kes who attained so much magnificence? That is a natural question. The name is first traceable in a deed of 1206, referring to a c.o.ke of Didlington. From him descended Edward c.o.ke, the commentator on Littleton, who was Attorney-General, Speaker of the House of Commons, and Chief Justice of the King's Bench in 1613. Oddly enough, from our modern point of view, it was after this that he was elected member for Buckinghams.h.i.+re, and drafted and moved the Pet.i.tion of Rights. No doubt he made a great deal of money himself; he acquired more by marrying first one of the Pastons, and after her death, the Lady Elizabeth Cecil, daughter of the first Earl of Exeter. Such was the real founder of the family, who bought, or acquired by inheritance, much of the existing Holkham estate.

His grandson died unmarried, and the estate fell to a kinsman, Henry c.o.ke, of Thorington. From him sprung Sir Thomas c.o.ke, the first Earl of Leicester, whose son died in 1739, when the peerage became extinct. But the estate went to Sir Thomas c.o.ke's nephew, Wenham Roberts, who naturally took the name of c.o.ke, and also naturally called his son Thomas; and this son was "c.o.ke of Norfolk," "the handsome Englishman," as he was called at Rome, in whose favour the peerage was most justly revived. It was due not so much to his magnificence as to his service to agriculture. "All the country from _Holkham_ to _Houghton_ was a wild sheep-walk," writes Arthur Young, "before the spirit of improvement seized the inhabitants; and this spirit has wrought amazing effects; for instead of boundless wilds and uncultivated wastes, inhabited by scarcely anything but sheep, the country is all cut up into enclosures, cultivated in a most husbandlike manner, richly manured, well-peopled, and yielding an hundred times the produce that it did in its former state. What has wrought these great works is the marling; for under the whole country run veins of a very rich kind, which they dig up, and spread upon the old sheep-walks, and then by means of inclosing they throw their farms into a regular course of crops, and gain immensely by the improvement." For this c.o.ke of Norfolk was princ.i.p.ally responsible, and for this his name deserves all honour.

At Walsingham the remains of the Priory are interesting: a magnificent door, a gateway, the walls, windows and arches of the refectory, a Norman arch with zigzag mouldings--the rest of the remains are later, Decorated and Perpendicular. But the record of the foundation and of the pilgrimages to the shrine, which was second only to Canterbury in importance, is much more entertaining. First the Chapel of the Virgin was founded by the widow of Richoldie, the mother of Geoffrey de Favraches. (Of course everybody knows all about them!) Then Geoffrey himself started on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, having previously executed a deed in which granted "to G.o.d and St. Mary, and to Edwy, his clerk," the chapel which his mother Richoldie had built at Walsingham, and other real property, to the intent that Edwy should establish a priory there. The supreme treasure was a relic, the alleged milk of the Virgin, purchased, as an inscription seen by Erasmus high upon a wall stated, from an old woman at Constantinople with an a.s.surance that it was far superior to any other relic of the same kind, as it alone had been taken from the breast, the other having fallen to the ground first. It was enclosed in crystal and set in a crucifix. This, says the matter-of-fact Erasmus, occasionally looked like chalk, mixed with the white of eggs, and was quite solid. That the more pilgrims, the richer the better, might be attracted to visit this relic and to lay down their offerings, often very costly, it was stated by the monks that the Milky Way in the firmament pointed to Walsingham. So it did no doubt, so it does on occasion now, and to a lot of other places besides. "The Virgin and her Son, as they made their salute, also appeared to Erasmus and his friend, to give them a nod of approbation."

The sentence last quoted, wherein the meaning is a great deal clearer than the construction, comes from Messrs. Timbs and Gunn. Let me place side by side with it another quotation from Froude's lecture on "Times of Erasmus and Luther." "The rule of the Church was, nothing for nothing. At a chapel in Saxony there was an image of a Virgin and Child. If a wors.h.i.+pper came in with a good handsome offering, the child bowed and was gracious; if the present was unsatisfactory it turned away its head, and withheld its favours till the purse-strings were untied again. There was a great rood or crucifix of the same kind at Boxley, in Kent, where the pilgrims went in thousands. This figure used to bow, too, when it was pleased; and a good sum of money was sure to secure its good will. When the Reformation came, and the police looked into the matter, the images were found to be worked with wires and pulleys. The German lady was kept as a curiosity in the cabinet of the Elector of Saxony. Our Boxley Rood was brought up and exhibited in Cheapside, and was afterwards torn to pieces by the people."

No sort of disrespect towards the Roman Catholic religion is involved in recording this absolutely true statement of historical fact. The trick described was undoubtedly played upon pilgrims in Saxony and in Kent; whether it was justifiable from some points of view matters not at all. The Roman Catholic religion is a great truth, may conceivably be the most exact and precise truth, behind all this kind of thing. It is considerably more than likely that similar devices were employed at Walsingham. They may even have been employed by ecclesiastics otherwise blameless, for the rules of professional practice still occasionally justify strange conduct, or seem to justify it. But the evidence, if there was any, was destroyed at the Dissolution, when Thomas Cromwell took the sacred image away to Chelsea, and burned it. Henry VIII on this occasion, by the way, got some of his own back. He, too, like other kings and queens, native and foreign, had made the pilgrimage to Walsingham before his quarrel with Rome, and had walked the last four miles or so, from Barsham, barefooted. _Quaere_, whether, when a king was on pilgrimage bent, the roads were spread with soft sand as they are now, with sand and gravel, when King Edward is going to make a progress in London. Henry gave an offering in the shape of a priceless necklace; but he secured it again in later life, and may even have given it to one of the wives, of whom, it may be remembered, he had several.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WALSINGHAM PRIORY]

An account of the ceremonies used, quoted again from Messrs. Timbs and Gunn, is not without interest. "The pilgrim who arrived at Walsingham entered the sacred precinct by a narrow wicket. It was purposely made difficult to pa.s.s, as a precaution against the robberies which were frequently committed at the shrine. On the gate in which the wicket opened was nailed a copper image of a knight on horseback, whose miraculous preservation by the Virgin formed the subject of one of the numerous legendary stories with which the place abounded. To the east of the gate, within, stood a small chapel, where the pilgrim was allowed, for money, to kiss a gigantic bone, said to have been the finger-bone of St. Peter. After this he was conducted to a building thatched with reeds and straw, inclosing two wells in high repute for indigestion and headaches; and also for the rare virtue of ensuring to the votary, within certain limits, whatever he might wish for at the time of drinking their water. The building itself was said to have been transported through the air many centuries before, in a deep snow; and as a proof of it, the visitor's attention was gravely pointed to an old bearskin attached to one of the beams. The 'Tweyne Wells,' called also 'the Wis.h.i.+ng Wells,' an anonymous ballad speaks of:--

A chappel of Saynt Laurence standeth now there Fast by, tweyne wallys, experience do thus and lore; There she (the widow) thought to have sette this chappel, Which was begun by our Ladie's Counsel.

All night the wedowe permayning in this prayer, Our blessed Ladie with blessed minystrys, Herself being her chief artificer, Arrered this sayde house with Angells handys, And not only rered it but sette in there it is, That is twyne hundred feet more in distance From the first place folk make remembraince."

Of a very truth, as Froude said, "The world is so changed that we can hardly recognize it as the same." Imagination retires baffled from the effort to picture kings and queens walking barefoot over primitive Norfolk roads, pa.s.sing through a wild waste too, for c.o.ke of Norfolk was not yet born, to go through these ceremonies and to present their gifts. Erasmus, with his tongue in his cheek, is easily conjured up; so are the robbers whom the shrine attracted. But why were there not any number of pilgrims in the sceptical mood of Erasmus? There seem to have been plenty of robbers.

We pa.s.s (the roads hereabout are flat as the sands of the sea, the land about them richly timbered, and there is nothing else to be said of them) from the ruins of a religious house to one indissolubly a.s.sociated with the names of two men, each exceptionally worldly, each in his own singular way, and with that of one remarkably eccentric. Houghton Hall was built by Sir Robert Walpole from the designs of Colin Campbell, while the former was Prime Minister, and Ripley, say Messrs. Timbs and Gunn (who speak with authority), undoubtedly improved on Colin Campbell. Pope, it is true, wrote:--

Heaven visits with a taste the wealthy fool, And needs no rod but Ripley with a rule.

So Ripley, till his destined s.p.a.ce is filled, Heaps bricks on bricks and fancies 'tis to build.

Pope, always bitter and not a little of a sn.o.b, was hardly likely to have a good word to say for an architect who had been a working carpenter. It is true, too, that Lady Hervey wrote in 1765: "I saw Houghton, which is the most triste, melancholy, fine place I ever beheld. 'Tis a heavy, ugly, black building, with an ugly black stone. The Hall, saloon, and gallery very fine; the rest not in the least so." Time, it may be, has given the stone mellowness; certain it is that Houghton now, in spite of a certain pretentiousness of Ionic columns, is really pleasing.

Of Houghton's most noted masters, the Walpoles, a few words must be said, but of two of them not many, for they are well known to all. The first Lord Orford was Sir Robert Walpole, the great Prime Minister who believed in letting well alone, in corruption as a method of Government, in the venality of all men, and in the collection of pictures. It is curious, but true, that this most sagacious statesman was, in a scholarly age, no scholar, and that this fastidious connoisseur of Art was, in a coa.r.s.e age, exceptionally plain spoken and free-living. When the then Lord Townshend heard that Lord Orford was at Houghton he made a rule of leaving Rainham and Norfolk himself. The second Lord Orford was of no account. Of the third I shall write a little more here than of the fourth, because the eccentricities of the third are not so well known as are many of the details, whimsical rather than eccentric, of Horace Walpole, the fourth and last Lord Orford.

Sir Robert Walpole collected pictures by Guido, Vand.y.k.e, Claude, Rubens, Rembrandt, Salvator Rosa, Teniers, Paul Veronese, Wouvermans, t.i.tian, Poussin, Snyders--in a word, by most of the best of the old masters, and housed them in his majestic Norfolk home, girt by a park whose trees testify to this day to his skill in planting. Horace Walpole, who had loved Houghton in his youth, himself wrote in after life a catalogue of these pictures and a description of the apartments in which they hung. The first Lord Orford slept with his fathers--they had been Walpoles of Walpole in Marshland since the time of Richard I--and his son reigned in his stead.

Meanwhile his youngest son Horace, of whom it has been suspected on good grounds that he was not truly the son of the Prime Minister, lived that curious life in that curious house, Strawberry Hill, details of which are known to many because they have pa.s.sed into English literature. He was the best letter-writer of modern times, or of nearly modern times, and his eccentricities are easily forgiven. He could afford them by virtue of two sinecures for life which his all-powerful father had secured for him; and he appears to have been perfectly happy building and altering his toy palace, collecting all sorts of curios, writing the most charming letters to his lady friends, writing for the press also (and childishly vain of his work), and hardly dreaming that he might succeed to the estate and the t.i.tle. Even when, after the death of the second earl, the property fell to his eccentric son, Horace Walpole hardly seems to me to have realized that he might some day succeed to the t.i.tle and the estate. He was growing to be an old man. His grief over the sale of the celebrated gallery was not that of an expectant heir.

What of the third earl, who died without issue, and so left Horace Walpole to be the fourth and last Lord Orford? The world at large knows him as the madman who sold the first Lord Orford's unparalleled collection of pictures to Catherine of Russia. But he did many madder things than that for, commercially speaking, he did not make a bad bargain over the sale of the pictures, for which he received more than his father had given. In him the English love of sport ran to insane excess. Indeed it even brought him to his death. At a time when he was under restraint the date came when his greyhound Czarina was matched to run a course. Devoted to coursing as he had always been, he determined to be present and, with the cunning of a madman, he jumped out of a window while his attendant was out of the room, ran to the stable, saddled his favourite pony, a piebald, galloped to the scene of the match, refused to go home in spite of all entreaties, saw Czarina win, fell from his saddle, and died there and then. George, third earl, could not have died more appropriately, nor, from his own point of view, more happily. He was mad, of course, very mad indeed; but he was a thorough sportsman. Perhaps the maddest and at the same time most sporting thing he did was to train four stags to go four-in-hand. "He had reduced the deer to perfect discipline and, as he sat in his phaeton and drove the handsome animals, he, no doubt, fancied he was performing no inconsiderable achievement." If the writer of that pompous sentence tried to break four stags, or even a pair, to harness with his own hands, he would not have much doubt of the quality of the achievement; that is a.s.suming he survived the effort. But the stag four-in-hand almost brought Lord Orford to a sporting death before his time. He was driving his strange team to Newmarket, where he was a familiar figure, when a pack of hounds came across the scent and gave chase in full cry. The sequel, except for Lord Orford, must have been simply paralysingly funny. Picture it for a moment.

Think of the stags, thoroughly panic-stricken, no longer trotting, but tearing along the road with huge bounds; of Lord Orford helpless on the box as the phaeton leapt and swayed; of the hounds racing behind and of the savage music of their cry. It was, it must have been, a sight for G.o.ds and men; and many men saw it; for the run ended in the yard of the "Ram" at Newmarket, where phaeton, stags, and n.o.ble driver disappeared into a barn and the doors were shut in the face of the clamouring pack. Surely this is the maddest, funniest true story that ever was told, and the oddest part about it is that Lord Orford was not then and there clapped into a madhouse. Yet one cannot help feeling a lurking regard for this mad sportsman. His foibles are more to the taste of some of us than the affectations of Horace Walpole.

By the road over which the mad Earl of Orford used to career with his extraordinary team, over which Horace Walpole doubtless drove when he left his beloved London and "Strawberry"--for so he called it "all short"--to fight an election at Lynn, we also drove in a chariot which, to the eighteenth-century Norfolkian, would have seemed just as strange as the phaeton and four stags would appear to us in the twentieth. The motor-car, however, attracts less attention in north-western Norfolk, perhaps, than in any other part of the kingdom; for at Sandringham are many motor-cars of many makes, and some there are at the Cottage also. This part of the country learned before others did the elementary truth that there is no essential connection between speed and peril, and it was good for automobolism that an object-lesson should have been given in this respect by the magnificent cars, Daimlers for the most part, of him whom the law regards as incapable of offence, because he is the spring and source of the law itself. Of this country of heather, bracken, fir and oak, of glorious gorse and of glowing rhododendrons, of the numerous acclivities and declivities, sufficient to give variety to the scene without trying the powers of any competent car, of its air, an incomparably sweet mixture of the breaths of the sea and of the moorland, little will be said at this moment, for the simple reason that, in the next and final chapter, I hope to be able to give an impression of its beauties at many times of the year, from the point of view of a frequent eye-witness.

The whole distance from Wells to King's Lynn, by way of Fakenham, which was our way, is a generous thirty miles; but the going was so good and the roads were so clear that we entered the great square of the old-fas.h.i.+oned Lynn a little too early for luncheon, having regard to the fact that engagements in the world which we had put out of sight began to bulk rather large in the near future. The single town of any interest we pa.s.sed through before reaching Lynn was Fakenham; and we agreed with Mr. Rye that it is "a particularly clean and pleasant market town, with several good old-fas.h.i.+oned inns, especially the 'Crown.'" That is to say the first statement is endorsed from experience; as to the second the responsibility rests with Mr. Rye. Here also, for those who care to halt, is a singularly fine church showing many a crowned "L" in stone to testify that Fakenham was once the head-quarters in Norfolk of the Duchy of Lancaster. As for Lynn, some of us had visited it before, one had sojourned in it long (but his tale is postponed), and time, as has been mentioned, began to press a little. Drifting on the roads, careless of where you shall eat or where sleep, is delightful, but for most of us it cannot go on indefinitely, and therein, probably, consists its chief charm. It is of the essence of a "treat," to use the good old word of childhood, that it should be more or less exceptional. So, at King's Lynn, we did but halt for a s.p.a.ce at the "Globe" in the corner of the wide and cobbled square and, although a little rain began to fall, compel the new-comers to walk about a little, and look at the narrow streets, the estuary of the Ouse, and the Custom-house. The compulsion had better have been omitted, for Lynn with its streets empty of people, with the rain falling, and with the tide out, a.s.suredly does not allure, and that was the state of things on this Sunday morning in April.

In other circ.u.mstances, as it is hoped to prove ere long, Lynn and its people are much more attractive.