The rhyme may be true of Ala.n.u.s de Lenna; it does not matter much whether it be true or false; but it is undoubtedly false about Chaucer, who was the son of a London vintner and was born at Charing Cross, and at Charing Cross, London, not Charing Cross in Norwich, as the learned have now discovered for certain. Still it is a peculiar fact that it is, or is reported to be, the custom of Norfolk farms to apply the name Scot to a very large proportion of their farm horses, and it is true that Chaucer's poetry shows a very intimate knowledge of rural life in Norfolk. The explanation may be found on family tradition, for Dr. Skeat says "It is probable that the Chaucer family came originally from Norfolk."

The second reason was soon to come on the left-hand side of the road in the form of a park, boasting superb trees and ensconcing Kimberley Hall, the seat of the Wodehouse family, who are of far more ancient standing in Norfolk than is the present hall. It was built on Italian lines in the reign of good Queen Anne, but the Wodehouses, of whom Lord Kimberley is the head, had been in the land long before Philip Wodehouse, Member of Parliament for Castle Rising, was created a baronet by James I. Not that the honour attached the family to the Stuart cause, for Sir Thomas, the second baronet, sat in the Long Parliament and, I think, fought for it against Charles. Clearly they were a fighting family. "Agincourt" is inscribed under their coat of arms; their crest is "a dexter arm couped below the elbow, vested argent, and grasping a club or, and over it the motto Frappe fort." The quotation comes appositely, or at any rate one striking word in it does, because the "supporters" are "Two wild (wode) men, wreathed about the loins, and holding in the exterior hand a club, raised in the att.i.tude of striking, sable." Yet with this explanation always before them, staring them hard in the face whensoever a head of the house of Kimberley has been summoned to sleep with his fathers, some good folk of Norfolk have, as the _Notes and Queries_ show, been content to puzzle their brains and to seek far for an explanation of the Wild Man as a tavern sign. They have even gone so far as to drag in the historic Peter the Wild Man, quite unnecessarily, for he is modern by comparison with the "wode" men who support the Wodehouse crest now, as they supported it no doubt in the s.p.a.cious days of Queen Elizabeth, when she visited in 1571 a Kimberley Hall which modern taste would probably prefer to the present Italian edifice.

Almost immediately after pa.s.sing Kimberley Hall we came into full view of Hingham Church, which is exactly what a church should be, and stands exactly as a church ought to stand, for the purposes of the motorist. That is to say, it is a very commanding edifice, which has the appearance, at any rate, of standing with its length at right angles to the road, and both tower and clerestory--surely there are more clerestories as well as more churches to be found in Norfolk than in any county--are visible, and very imposing, from a great distance. It was built for the most part by Remigius of Hethersett, who was rector for forty years from 1319, and is of most remarkable height. Inside, most motorists will be content to believe, are some interesting tombs and much stained gla.s.s of admirable quality, presented by Lord Wodehouse in 1813. In fact, Hingham is emphatically one of the places at which a halt ought to be made, for old stained gla.s.s of high merit is, unhappily, very rare in this England of ours. This secluded village of Hingham ought to be--perhaps is--one of the places in England to which Americans make pilgrimages, for far away in Ma.s.sachusetts is another Hingham owing its origin to an emigration, early in the seventeenth century, of one Robert Peck, vicar of Hingham, and many of his parishioners. Apparently, parson and parishioners were Puritans of the violent order, who pulled down the altar rails and lowered the altar, insomuch that they incurred the wrath of the reigning bishop. Parson Peck deemed it wise to flee from the wrath to come, and many of his parishioners went with him. Settling down in Ma.s.sachusetts, they gave the name of the old village in Norfolk to the new home, and although the parson returned to his cure when Puritanism got the upper hand, parishioners stayed in the new world. At any rate, Hingham, Ma.s.sachusetts, exists to this day, not, indeed, as one of America's mammoth cities, but with a population (in 1900) of 5059, of whom oddly enough more than 900 were foreigners. In fact, in its minor way, it is as much more important than Hingham in Norfolk, as Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts, is greater than Boston, Lincolnshire. But it is not likely to be more pleasing to the eye, and it is very safe to conjecture that, in fact, it is not a tenth so pleasing as the Norfolk village.

Before long we reach Scoulton Mere, a silent sheet of gleaming grey, with not a bird to be seen on or over it, a fine expanse of sedge-girt water.

"Here," says "Murray," "the black-headed gull breeds in enormous numbers, and their eggs are collected, to be sold as plovers' eggs, by thousands for the London market." This may readily be believed, for the eggs of _Larus Ridibundus_, although they vary a good deal in marking, are often practically indistinguishable from those of the green plover, or grey plover, except that they are not so sharply pointed at the small end. The imposture does not matter a straw so long as the two kinds of eggs remain, as they are at present, identical in point of flavour. Indeed, the subject prompts a digression, flagrantly irrelevant, but certainly pardonable for its practical value. Ten or twelve years ago the owner of Hanmer Mere, which is situate at about the point where Shropshire and Flintshire are so inextricably mixed that an ordinary atlas will not tell you which is which, desiring to reduce the number of the coots, spent an afternoon with a friend in taking some two hundred eggs. It seemed a pity to destroy them without trying them cold, and hardboiled, like plovers' eggs. They were every whit as good to eat, and they were distinctly the _clou_ of luncheon at Chester races next day. This is certainly worth knowing, for, if plovers be more numerous than coots, there are enough coots and to spare, and their nests are as easy to find as those of plovers are difficult.

But "Murray" proceeds: "There are only three breeding places of this gull in Britain." This must be quite wrong. The late Mr. Henry Seebohm, whose _Eggs of British Birds_ (Paunson & Brailsford, Sheffield) is both admirably produced and of the highest authority, wrote, and Dr. Bowdler Sharpe left the pa.s.sage in editing the book after Mr. Seebohm's death: "The Black-headed Gull is one of our commonest species. Its colonies are not so large as those of the Kittiwake, but they are much more numerous. It is a resident in the British Isles, frequenting the coasts during winter, but retiring inland in summer to breed in colonies in swamps." Now Mr. Henry Seebohm was a mighty ornithologist, and the most indefatigable birds-nester at home and abroad who ever lived, and, having read often before, and now again, all he has to say of the nesting places of all kinds of gulls claimable by Great Britain, I am convinced that this claim set up by "Murray," perhaps on the word of some local fowler, cannot be maintained either in relation to the Black-headed Gull or any other kind of gull or tern that breeds in England.

Leaving Scoulton Mere behind we were again in a land of flat heaths of wide extent, and of sheltering hedges of dense Scotch fir. It was a country of the most pleasing face but, apart from that, no use for any purposes save those of the motorist and the rabbit-breeder. That it had been well used by the latter evidence was soon apparent on the roadside in the form of a gang of men, with nets, dogs, and ferrets, pursuing their operations on such a scale, and so completely in the open, that they must surely have been authorized rabbit-catchers and not poachers. Still the thought occurred to me that, in bygone days and in far-distant North Wales, we always found from the advertis.e.m.e.nts that ferrets, who are the poachers'

best friends, were to be obtained more easily from Norfolk than from any other part of the country, and that they knew their work very well when they arrived. In fact, there is a huge head of game in Norfolk, and where that state of things exists, there poachers will be. Theirs is a lawless pursuit of course, but Lord! as Mr. Pepys would have said, what good sport it must be "on a shiny night in the season of the year," and what a vast and intimate knowledge of animal and bird life these poachers must possess.

If it was a rabbit-catcher's paradise it was a motorist's paradise also.

There was no possible danger to human beings, for, after the rabbit-catchers, there were none; after the fir hedges had been pa.s.sed the road became an unfenced ribbon of tawny grey running through the bare heath, with no other roads debouching into it, and no cover of any sort for a police trap. There was no reason in life against a good spin at top speed except that superst.i.tious regard for the letter of the law which not one man in a thousand really has. The car simply flew forward; the speed indicator marked 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, and even 50 miles an hour; the road seemed to open wide to our advent, to stretch out its arms, so to speak, to embrace us; the motion, smooth, swifter and swifter still, even as the flight of the albatross that stirreth not his wings, and absolutely free from vibration, was, in a single word, divine. Suddenly, a few miles in front of us, a dusty cloud hove in sight over the road. "There," said my friend, half in jest, but only half--for a motorist's paradise is at its best when solitary--"is one of those beastly motor-cars. What a foul dust it is raising!" So it turned out, on rising and looking back over the cape hood, were we; not that it mattered, for no wayfarers had been pa.s.sed or, therefore, powdered, for many a short mile--I had written "a long mile"

from force of habit, but it would have been inappropriate. Was the other car meeting us or going in the same direction? In the same direction surely, for though the cloud of dust was coming nearer to us, it was not approaching very fast. So we determined to pa.s.s as soon as might be, and "giving her a little more gas," we were very soon "on terms," as a racing man would say, with a two-seated car going along the middle of the road at a fair pace. Once, twice, thrice our horn sounded, but the occupants of that car never heard us. At last, keeping well to the off-side of the road, and when our bonnet was level with their rear off-wheel, Mr. Johnson and I gave a simultaneous and stentorian yell; and the two pairs of goggles that were turned upon us, who were then, as nearly always, un-goggled, clearly covered four eyes starting with surprise. It was a lesson to them and to us of the very poor penetrative power of a motor-horn in relation to motor-cars in front, and of the necessity of looking behind you now and again, especially if you be in a noisy car. So that two-seated car was pa.s.sed as if it had been standing still, and the lot of the dust-recipient, which one or other must needs endure for a while, was transferred from us to them; but they were not called upon to endure it, nor could they have kept it if they had so desired, for any length of time.

So hey for Watton, near which lies Weyland Wood, fondly famous in local story as being the identical wood in which the ill-fated babes in the wood were lost. That is a tradition as to the origin and true locality of which, so far as I know, even the most ardent folk-lorists have not concerned themselves very seriously, and certainly the likeness of sound between "Weyland" and "Wailing" may have caused it to be localized here. As it happens, however, there is a very much simpler explanation of the name of the wood and of the Hundred in which it is situated. Weyland is simply the modern representation of the "Wanelunt" of _Domesday_, and that again is simply descriptive, like Blacklands in Berks, and the names of scores of Hundreds besides. For "Wanelunt" is just "wan land," and a more wan land than this, from the agricultural point of view, it would be hard to find.

Islington in Norfolk may be, in all probability was, the place in which the Bailiff's daughter lived and was beloved by the squire's son, but Weyland Wood cannot detain us. It has no more claim to this particular honour than a hundred other woods in other parts of the kingdom have, except upon an etymological basis, and that has the trifling disadvantage of being quite wrong.

Nor did Watton detain us, any more than it need detain anybody else.

Brandon, the next place pa.s.sed, was renowed in ancient times for its rabbits and its quarries of gunflints, and the "Grime's graves" in the vicinity are said to be interesting earthworks. The glory of the rabbits remains, but the gunflint trade was, of course, vanished. "Murray," it is true, says that flints "are still (1875) exported to Arab tribes round the Mediterranean," but that was more than thirty years ago, and Mr. Rye is, no doubt, correct in saying that the old industry has, naturally enough, died out of late years. But those desert tribes on the African coast of the Mediterranean still use some charmingly antique pieces, and it may be that Brandon flints are still fitted to some of them. They were the same kind of flints which the ancient Briton, or perhaps Neolithic man, used to dig out at Brandon, for excavations some time since revealed a stag's antler, says "Murray," in what was clearly a "working" of a prehistoric flint quarry.

Thus much the writer tells us and no more. It would really have been much more interesting to know something of the nature of the antler; but on that point he is silent.

If one were in a hurry, and a train happened to be convenient, it would, for once, be simpler to reach Ely from Brandon by train than by car: for the railway follows the course of the Brandon River across Mow Fen and then cuts straight across Burnt Fen and Middle Fen to Ely. On the other hand the road, dating very likely to a period long before the reclamation of the fens, and keeping to the high ground, turns south-west by south to Mildenhall and then, skirting Mildenhall Fen, nearly due west to Fordham and Soham, and from Soham north-west to Ely: and this is a long way round.

Here there would be a first rate opportunity for saying something of the romantic history of the Fens, for it is truly romantic, and of the real glamour which they exercise upon a traveller through their midst. The opportunity is deliberately reserved to a later point for three reasons.

First, there is much to be said on other matters; secondly, you really do not see very much of the Fens by this line of route; thirdly, it was found later that the drive from Lynn to Ely is _par excellence_ the occasion upon which the peculiar character of the Fens, their limitless extent, their rich and black soil, and the reflection that all this wealth has been reclaimed from the wasting waters by the industry and the enterprise of man, the very spirit of the Fens in fact, enter into the traveller's soul.

Fordham and even Soham, with its remarkable church and its legends of Canute's pa.s.sage over the long-vanished mere upon the ice, were pa.s.sed almost unnoticed, for our eyes were fixed upon the horizon in front in longing for the vision, often seen from a train, of Ely Cathedral rising in beautiful majesty from the centre of the plain-girt isle, once fen-girt, in which the Saxon made almost his last heroic stand against the all-conquering Norman. Truth to tell, for this once only, the train has the advantage of the motor-car in providing a splendid and memorable spectacle.

Approaching Ely from Cambridge by rail one sees the cathedral, and the cathedral is the only object that catches the eye, for miles, and miles, and then miles. It is a divine sight, stirring up memories of Canute and of Emma his Queen, of ravaging William the Conqueror (concerning whom the Saxon chroniclers probably wrote without exaggerated regard for truth) and of the heroic figure of Hereward the Wake. Memories of this vision, often seen, never to be forgotten, had prepared us for something really great and for prolonged enjoyment of it. As a fact, and it was one which intelligent study of a contour map might have prepared us for, the vision did not break upon our eyes until we were through Soham, and speeding along the causeway built by Herve le Breton early in the twelfth century across the mere which stood where the golden corn is reaped and tied and carried every autumn now. When it came it was, be it stated with the more warmth now in that what is to be written shortly is not entirely the conventional view, supremely lovely. The air was of that pellucid transparency which is the sure prelude of rain. At a distance of four miles or thereabouts the eye could distinguish shades of colour, could follow all the delicate tracery of the central octagon and of the huge western tower; and it was natural, remembering that Ely is one of the largest cathedrals in Europe, to observe that, so excellent are its proportions, it does not impress the spectator from a distance by its length. This very excellent effect is due doubtless to Alan of Walsingham's fourteenth-century design for a grandly broad basis to the octagon tower under which he lies.

And here rhapsody must cease at the command of candour. I had visited Ely before as quite a young man; I had read much of the history of the cathedral, much concerning its architecture. Yet this time it failed to please as a whole, within or without, when viewed at close quarters. The octagon, regarded from a distance of not many hundred feet, looked to be wanting in substance rather than possessed of airy grace. Somehow or other, in the perverse fashion which is at once irresistible and fatal to cordial admiration, it suggested to my mind a ludicrous comparison. Resist as I might, I continued to think of wedding cakes. The western tower, so far as it was built by Bishop Riddell in the twelfth century, that is to say up to the level of the clerestory of the nave, seemed, and was, and is, proud, substantial, ma.s.sive, impressive; but the Decorated superstructure, an octagon with turrets alongside, did not satisfy at all; nor do I believe that it would have been more satisfying even if the slender spire of wood, long vanished from its top, had survived. On me it produced, and I found that it has produced on other and more highly cultivated men, an impression of flimsy and jarring incongruity. Far other was the effect of looking at the honest red brick of the Bishop's Palace near the west door, for the gently warm tone of the bricks builded as our forefathers loved in the reign of the first Tudor king, was a joy and a rest to the eye.

Before entering the cathedral itself we took luncheon at the "Lamb," for a hungry man is an impatient sight-seer. But even after that, to one returning in contented mood, the outside of the western tower satisfied only up to the level of the clerestory. In fact, the original impression, whether it argued cra.s.s inept.i.tude or no, remained; and it is better to write oneself down a boor than to invent raptures which would be untrue.

Inside our experiences were unfortunate. The ladies had gone before, had seen and enjoyed a good deal. My friend and I entered with due reverence.

The vastness of the nave took seisin of us at once; but the charm was rudely broken. To us approached a verger of immemorial age--he had informed the ladies that he had been attached to the cathedral for half a century--wearing a velvet skull-cap and saying in strident tones, "It is a fine cathedral, gentlemen; have you seen it before?" "Yes," said I, shortly, and hoping to be rid of him, for to have a babbling guide at one's elbow on occasions of this kind is fatal to intelligent enjoyment. But the hope was vain. He joined himself to us and went on talking. In despair we divided forces, and walked briskly away in opposite directions. Nothing daunted he stood in the middle and talked louder than ever. So, after admiring the inside of the octagon, which is very fine, and failing to admire the roof of the nave, we left in despair without having studied the architecture in detail, without seeing the hammer beams of the transept roofs, without lingering over the original Norman work in the transepts.

To us it was a loss and a bitter disappointment; but there are some inflictions that are beyond bearing, and this doubtless worthy old gentleman was one of them. Still, there are compensations in things, and nothing is made quite in vain. One of the objects for which this verger was created was that of saving the reader from the infliction of an essay on the architecture of Ely Cathedral by one who has, by his unashamed candour, demonstrated himself unworthy to indite such an essay.

The rest of this expedition may be condensed into a paragraph, and that not unduly long. Leaving Ely we reached Cambridge easily by a flat, straight, excellent, and perfectly uninteresting road, marked in the maps as Roman; but the wise man, for reasons already given, calls no road Roman until he knows for certain that it is such. There is, however, some evidence for this "Roman" road. Pa.s.sing quickly through Cambridge and over the Gog Magog Hills without noticing them, we were soon at Royston, and from that point--to Oxford as it happened--we were beyond my manor. Two things happened, though, which may occur any day or night. It began to rain hard just after Royston, and went on raining, and we had trouble in lighting the acetylene lamps after Aylesbury. Neither mattered. It was something to have an opportunity of testing the cape hood, and the acetylene lamps were, after all, only a reminder that everything does not always go absolutely smoothly even in the best-regulated motor-cars. We got wet, of course, on the driving seat; but that was of no moment, for we were homeward bound; and as for the appet.i.te that was carried home, the face glowing with clean rain, the feeling of overflowing health, and the dreamless sleep of that night, they were well worth a king's ransom.

CHAPTER VI

LONDON, FELIXSTOWE--DUNWICH, FELIXSTOWE

In an 18 White steam car--Best exit from London eastwards--General ignorance of the White steam cars--Some interested prejudice against them--An account of them--Independent testimony to them--Woodford and Chingford--Popularity of Epping Forest--Pepys on the roads--Little improvement--A haunting cyclist--Impression of the Forest--"Seeing's believing"--True woodland unkempt--Thorn trees as evidence of antiquity--Motor-cyclist's rivalry--Epping--Ongar--Chelmsford--Rich country--Colchester--The "Red Lion"--Memories of the Civil War--Deaths of Lucas and Lisle--Through Ipswich--Trimley's two churches--Felixstowe--A hotel half awake--Felix the Burgundian--Rainy morning--Glance at Felixstowe--Mr. Felix Cobbold, M.P.--His perfect home--Rock-gardens and pergolas--The walled garden--A Jersey herd--An afternoon drive--Nature's garden of Suffolk--The motorist's independence--Machine feels no pain--A circuit to Woodbridge--Wickham Market and Saxmundham--Hey for Dunwich!--Course laid over farm tracks--Desolate Dunwich--Irresistible coast erosion--Skeletons "all awash"--The lost forest--Dunwich in the past--Steady loss of land--Back to Felixstowe through byways and by road.

At precisely ten minutes past three in the afternoon of the 17th of March an 18-h.p. White steam car glided out of Kingly Street, Regent Street. At ten minutes to four, without any undue haste in driving, it was out in the open country at Ponder's End, the route taken being by way of York Road (hard by King's Cross Station) and Seven Sisters Road. This route, which involves but three turns, if the right ones be chosen, is at once the quickest way out of London to the eastward; far less unpleasant to eye, nostrils, and ears than the drive through Whitechapel; far less difficult in the matter of traffic; and it has the further advantage of leading the traveller almost at once into scenes of sylvan beauty more often raved about to the sceptical than seen by the eyes of the wise. For these reasons it is given with pharmaceutical detail in the "Practical Observations." The occupants of the car were Mr. Frederick Coleman, London manager of the White Steam Car Company of the United States; Mrs. Coleman, a lady possessing the rare gift of a remarkably exact topographical memory; their child, my wife and myself, and a mechanic who sat contentedly, after the manner of his kind, at my feet. The car was fitted with cape hood for use if necessary, and, in the way of luggage, it carried two fair-sized suit-cases upon a platform astern, containing all the impedimenta which could reasonably be required by folks who intended to travel by day and to rest comfortably at hotels in the evening. It may be added that we had no absolutely fixed plan, for we meant to drift whither we pleased, allowing fancy or inclination to dictate to us the time for halting and the resting-place for the night.

The expedition had been antic.i.p.ated with considerably more than ordinary interest, because, although it had been my lot to be much in motors since motors invaded England, it had not been my fortune ever before to take a long drive in a White steam car. A very large number of motorists must be--as in fact I know that they are--without personal experience of a White steam car, although it may well be that they are familiar with reports to its prejudice, or silent shrugging of the shoulders and raising of the eyebrows when it is mentioned, which are perfectly natural and excusable. I can readily imagine that if I had a pecuniary interest in any of the leading types of petrol-driven cars, between which there is next to no room for choice, I might show no headlong desire to testify in favour of a car moving more smoothly than any petrol-car, free from the nuisance of a starting-handle (it is a danger too sometimes, as the broken arm of a friend's careless chauffeur has shown recently), absolved from the necessity of change-speed gear, capable of an astonishing turn of speed, singularly strong in hill-climbing and--considerably less expensive than any petrol-driven car of equal power--by power I do not mean horse-power.

The best plan, perhaps, of avoiding the temptation to give such testimony would be to avoid the preliminary experience, and not to try a White steam car at all. Having no financial interest in any kind of car, being well aware that even among motorists cra.s.s ignorance on the subject of this type of car prevails, having heard from private friends, complete strangers to the motor-car industry, that White cars have given them complete satisfaction, and that, in their opinion, the public needs enlightenment on the subject, I deem it right to give some account of the 1906 model of the White steam cars.

Now this is an age of advertis.e.m.e.nt and, therefore, of necessity, an age given to suspect latent advertis.e.m.e.nt. It is therefore prudent to state that no consideration of any kind has pa.s.sed or will pa.s.s from the White Steam Car Company or anybody connected with it to me, or to the publishers, that n.o.body connected with the company has even a suspicion that I am going to attempt to describe the car, that anybody connected with the company could do it more accurately, and that there is no other motive in writing than a desire to make known a good thing to those who may be fortunate enough to be able to obtain it. Every motorist, and many a man and woman not fairly to be described as such, is familiar with the general principles underlying every petrol-driven car; and the distinctions between types of petrol cars are due entirely to little differences of detail in the application of those principles. That is why no description of a petrol-driven car is necessary in these pages or could be tolerated in them. Very few motorists really know anything about White steam cars, and that is why they are described in short and popular language.

Perhaps the best justification for it is to be found in a personal explanation. A week or so after this expedition ended I met in Piccadilly a friend, high in the service of the Crown and of large private means, whose name it would be a breach of faith to publish; but, as a guarantee of good faith, I here state that, in the margin of the ma.n.u.script, I have written the name for the private information of the publishers. It is one which would carry a great deal of weight if it were printed. I had left my friend's house in May, 1905, after trying with him a French and English car, both of well-known makes, of which he was very proud. After our first greeting in March, 1906, I remarked that I had been trying a White steam car exhaustively, and that I was simply astonished by its capabilities. It turned out that, in the interval, he had acquired one, and he was entirely at one with me. "I am delighted with it; so is my man; the public ought to know about it." Those were the _ipsissima verba_ of an absolutely independent man, whose mechanical and engineering knowledge is far above the average, whom, as an exacting judge of sheer comfort, his friends believe to have no superior in this world. After that, let him who pleases suspect latent advertis.e.m.e.nt. In fact, _Honi soit qui mal y pense_, and let the truth be told.

A White steam car is, in general outline and appearance, very like a petrol-driven car, and the cautious Mr. Worley Beaumont, who is honorary consulting engineer to the Automobile Club and consulting engineer to the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, has written thus: "The makers of these cars are to be congratulated upon the possession and development of a type of steam generator which, in combination with a cleverly designed engine and well devised and constructed auxiliary gear and parts, has made it possible to produce a car capable of continuing to compare favourably with those propelled by the petrol engine." The essential points are the steam generator, which it is simpler to call the boiler, and the burner, or fire. The generator is an ingenious arrangement of coiled tubes, fed with water from the top, always containing, when the fire has been kindled, some water as well as a sufficient supply of superheated steam. The burner is, to quote Mr. Beaumont, "in form a shallow drum, the upper face of which is annularly ridged. The ridges are sawn or slit through at close intervals, and provide openings through which the combustible gas and air mixture combines with additional air flowing upwards through the numerous openings in the tubes." In other words the fuel, petrol, or benzolene ingeniously vaporized, is forced into the annular ridges, there mixes with air, and the mixture burns fiercely. The steam temperature is most cleverly controlled by the "thermostat," which may be described sufficiently for popular purposes by stating that it regulates the force of the fire automatically by the temperature of the steam, the automatic regulation being founded on the different expansions of bra.s.s and steel under varying degrees of heat.

There are great opportunities, too, for humouring the engine, through the burner and generator of course, by the adroit use of the throttle.

These are the essentials. The drawbacks, if such they be, to this kind of steam car are that it needs to have its burner lighted for a period varying from three to five minutes in the morning before starting, and that it requires a fresh supply of water for every 150 miles or so. The second requirement is really of no moment in this country; the first, it has been argued with all appearance of seriousness, renders this steam car inferior to a petrol car in "efficiency." Now this, unless "efficiency" has merely technical signification, is absurd. Substantially, even if the hour of setting forth has not been fixed beforehand, one can always afford to wait three minutes before starting on a drive; if it comes to that so much time is usually occupied in wrapping oneself up and in bestowing pa.s.sengers; and, in any ordinary acceptation of the word, the starting-handle, which must be applied after every substantial halt, is the most inefficient device conceivable. Other drawbacks, candidly, I found none, except that, on our first day, some new asbestos packing made itself perceptible to the nostrils; and there was no question that the absence of change-speed gear, and the absolute smoothness with which more power could be applied when necessary on hills, were a genuine pleasure.

That, however, was the lesson learned in the course of several days. So far as the narrative went we had only pa.s.sed out of London to Ponder's End, which was of no interest. Then we were at Chingford, on an absolutely lovely day, and the beauty of the Forest of Epping, its popularity among Londoners, and the villainous quality of its roads became simultaneously apparent. Concerning the roads, "Murray" says "the Forest Roads are no longer as in Pepys's days--when he complained that riding in the main way was like 'riding in a kennel.'" On verifying the quotation it appears possible that Mr. Pepys has been misunderstood, but not too clear what he really meant. He had reached Epping overnight, after a visit to Audley End House, "where we drank a most admirable drink," and his entry of 28 February runs: "Up in the morning. Then to London through the forest, where we found the way good, but only in one path, which we kept as though we had rode through a kennel all the way." The meaning of the last clause is perhaps a little obscure; but it is at least clear that Mr. Pepys, following the road by which we travelled in 1906 in all probability, found it tolerable when all the rest were bad. He was more fortunate than we were, for all the way from Chingford past Buckhurst Hill to Epping the road was atrocious. It was the sort of road, too, which promised to remain scandalously bad, until such time as it should be taken thoroughly in hand on some new principle, since it appeared to be made of gravel and dirt, fairly firm in the middle, but shockingly ploughed up at the sides. On this fine day it was crowded with holiday traffic, with persons walking on the footpath by the side, with bicyclists innumerable struggling over the broken surface, with hired carriages carrying family parties for a drive in the sun through the heart of the Forest. If popularity of resort be a reason why a road should be good rather than bad, as surely it ought to be, then some authority has a good deal to answer for.

This was, shameful to relate, my first visit to Epping Forest, but, before giving a first impression of it, there is a ghost to be exorcised. So often as my mind recurs to this pa.s.sage through the heart of the Forest it is haunted by the memory of one particular cyclist. He was thin, pale to the point of haggardness, anything than robust to look at. He crouched forward over his handle bars, in the manner beloved of the "scorcher" and depriving the exercise of any health-giving effects it might produce, until his back was parallel to the road. We were travelling, designedly as a test of the car, and accurately as the speedometer bore witness, at a steady and unvarying pace of twenty miles an hour, on the level, on downward gradients, and up hills which, while they offered no sort of trouble to a powerful car, would have made me grunt and grumble and go slowly if I had been on a bicycle. Yet this apparent weakling clung to us, being in fact never more than twenty yards behind us for many miles, without showing any signs of severe effort save in the tense features of his pallid face. It was really a great achievement, greater probably than the bicyclist was aware; it exemplified the effect of an air-shield and the value of a pace-maker in races; but it was a relief when, at last, the pale-faced bicyclist relinquished the pursuit.

Is it wrong to give an impression of Epping Forest in early spring, an impression resulting from a single pa.s.sage through it? Surely not. Did not James Anthony Froude say, or did not somebody say in defence of James Anthony Froude--it really does not matter which--something to the effect that a man may write a tolerable description of a country from a single visit, or a thorough account of it after prolonged study, but that in the intervening period he cannot describe it at all? Whosoever said it, or even if it was never said until now, it is a true saying, for in the period between first impression and thorough knowledge the mind is so much hampered with details that it cannot survey the whole in proportion. It cannot see the wood for the trees. Of this Epping Forest I knew, as most men do, something from hearsay and from desultory reading. I had read of the ancient rights, apparently rather problematical as a matter of history, of the City in the Forest, of the Epping Hunt, of the saving of seven thousand wild acres, lying cheek by jowl with London, by the Epping Forest Act of 1871; had read also countless articles, wherein the sylvan beauties of Epping Forest, its ornithological and entomological treasures, were proclaimed with emphatic sincerity. Yet the place itself was a revelation.

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aurem Quam quae sunt oculis submissa fidelibus.

So wrote Horace long ago, and "seeing's believing," is a blunt but adequate translation of his verses. Epping Forest was and is a sheer delight. Apart from the roads that traverse it, it is as distinctly genuine and unkempt a piece of English woodland as is to be found on these islands. The reference here is not to fine timber or to monumental trees, but to the tangled thickets of ancient hawthorn, rising from beds of bracken--they were the brown relics of the last year's glory as we saw them--with here and there a natural alley through their midst, which stretched far on either side.

Nothing of the tree kind gives such convincing testimony of antiquity as obviously old hawthorns, which have been left to the care of nature. Your huge and venerable oak may be, and very often is, historic; its story may be, and often is, traced back over several centuries. Men mourned over the Fairlop Oak, in Hainault Forest hard by, when it was blown down in 1820, because it had been forty-five feet in girth "and its boughs shadowed an area of 300 ft."--the pa.s.sage is quoted because its meaning is not too clear--and it is said that the pulpit and lectern of St. Pancras Church were made of the timber. Your historic oaks are the aristocracy of trees; their annals are chronicled by the Debretts and Burkes of forestry. But as there are ancient families of English peasants, their simple pedigrees never kept because they seemed to be of no moment, which are probably far older in the land than any n.o.ble family, so there are, in all human probability, thorn trees more ancient by far than the oldest oak. They have survived, or at any rate they give the impression that they have survived, which is what really matters, longer than the oaks for the same reasons which have led to the survival of the rustic families of men. As peasants were left alone when peers went to Tower Hill, so thorn trees have been pa.s.sed unscathed by storms which have torn off the limbs of oaks or laid them prostrate on the ground, have been spared by the woodcutter in search of his raw material for England's wooden walls. They were insignificant, very tough, of no particular value as timber. They have lived on, unnoticed, growing into impenetrable thickets, bearded with time-honoured lichen, garlanded with fragrant blossom in the season of the year, haunted by nightingales which find in them nesting places defying even the most hardy boy. A few of them have been famous in story, the Glas...o...b..ry thorn, for example, and the _unica spinosa arbor_, round which the battle of Saxon and Dane raged fiercest at Ashdown; but most of the old thorns in the country are, like most of the old peasant families, simply of immemorial antiquity and, when once they have attained maturity, particularly in an exposed spot, they seem to change little from year to year, or in ten years, or twenty, or thirty. That is why, to my mind, a thicket of gnarled and lichened hawthorns, such as you may see by the acre in Epping Forest, and to a greater extent there than in any other forest known to me, is the strongest testimony of genuine antiquity; and it is the thorn brakes, therefore, which charm me more than any other feature of the famous Forest of Epping. They embody the very spirit of wild and untended woodland.

So we pa.s.sed on through the long and rather pleasing street of Epping, and here the cyclist elected to remain behind, being succeeded by a motor-cyclist, a cheerful wretch who, since the road to Ongar is one of many angles, had us somewhat at his mercy. His pace was nearly equal to the best speed it was prudent for us to achieve; he could catch us and go ahead at severe gradients, especially if there were a corner in front, and he never failed to do so with a triumphant grin on his face. When he was behind he knew that the way by which we pa.s.sed would be clear to him; when he was in front of us we could entertain no such confidence for ourselves in relation to him. Barring accidents he could probably have clung to us all day--that is to say, unless he had jolted his heart out through his mouth. Motor-cyclists say, of course, that they feel no jolting. They may say the thing which is true, but motor-cycling looks so vibratory that their a.s.sertion produces no sort of effect on my mind. However, this particular motor-cyclist grew weary of haunting us before we reached Ongar, and he was not regretted.

Ongar, though it owns a mound and an entrenchment, made no deep impression on us, and we pa.s.sed on quickly to Chelmsford, trim, neat, ancient, and modern, for the county town of Ess.e.x bulks fairly large in far-away history, and, as for the modern appearance of its environs, especially those through which we pa.s.sed _en route_ for Colchester, it has been written: "The Colchester road, through the northern suburb of Springfield, is enlivened by an avenue of villas and gardens." Comment, as the newspapers used to say, would be superfluous.

This Colchester road, through the northern suburb of Springfield, was the old Roman road of our first tour, through Boreham and Witham and so far as Marks Tey, at any rate; but we travelled it in more genial conditions this time, and could see all there was to be seen. The villages and towns--for Witham is quite a town, and an ancient one at that--did not seduce us into a halt, although those of more leisurely mind may make one for the sake of examining Witham Church, in the walls of which are many Roman bricks. But the country, which pleased Arthur Young by its fertility and by virtue of the intelligent pains with which it was treated by the Ess.e.x farmers, is, in its peaceful way, one of the most fascinating and characteristic to be found in all England. I shall not attempt to do justice to it at this point, partly because our journey was taken too early in the spring for a landscape, of which the trees are the chief glory to be seen at its best, but princ.i.p.ally because, as I think has been explained before, some account of the scenic beauties of Ess.e.x can be given more suitably in an attempt, to be made later, to record some of the experiences acquired, during a more than commonly golden September, in the course of ten days spent in motoring about Ess.e.x from Colchester as a centre. Let no more be said here than that the Ess.e.x elms, or most of them, are not "shrouded," as is the custom of many southern counties--that is to say, their side branches are not lopped off periodically, to supply fuel and pea-stocks, a mere tuft being left at the top--and the result of leaving the trees in their natural state is to make the roads shady and delightful, although road surveyors might take a different view of them.

Reaching Colchester, whereof any description is postponed for the reason already given, in the late afternoon of a market-day, we betook ourselves to my old head-quarters, the "Red Lion," for afternoon tea. It is a delightfully old-fashioned house, having much oak timber, carved and black, on the front, and the motor enters under an overhanging archway into a courtyard shaded by an immemorial creeper. Here, usually, are military officers to be found, and the house has military traditions, for it is at least said that in the "Old Red Lion" were gathered together the ill-fated Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle and their officers, after the surrender of the city to Fairfax and Ireton had become inevitable, and, if tradition be true, as there is no reason to believe that it is not, it was from the "Red Lion" that they went forth gallantly and cheerfully to meet their deaths. It was a fine episode, and a sad one. "Lucas was first shot, and he himself gave the orders to fire, with the same alacrity as if he had commanded a platoon of his own soldiers. Lisle instantly ran and kissed the dead body, then cheerfully presented himself to a like fate. Thinking that the soldiers, destined for his execution, stood at too great a distance, he called to them to come nearer. One of them replied, 'I'll warrant you, Sir, we'll hit you'; he answered smiling, 'Friends, I have been nearer you when you have missed me.' Thus perished this generous spirit."

Darkness was beginning to threaten before we left Colchester for Ipswich, and it had fallen before Ipswich was reached by the same road used in leaving it heretofore. So we pa.s.sed through the streets of Ipswich, still crooked, of course, still infested with giant tramcars, and still crowded, into the open country beyond, the light of the acetylene lamps piercing the gloom for fully a quarter of a mile ahead. We pushed on partly because our minds had been half made up to spend the night at Felixstowe, partly because, on the whole, it seemed that Felixstowe would be a more pleasant resting-place than Ipswich. The drawback was that we saw nothing more of the country than that, apparently, we crossed a good deal of heathland, and that at Trimley the towers of two churches appeared in quick succession.

They were in fact in the same churchyard, as was seen another day, and one was and is Trimley St. Mary and the other Trimley St. Martin. Why they stand cheek by jowl in this wasteful fashion I am unhappily not able to say, not for lack of inquiry or curiosity, but because inquiry has not been addressed to the right authorities and curiosity has therefore been vain.

Of Felixstowe that night we saw nothing much. We gathered an impression of streets of new villas, detached and semi-detached, leading at last to a large hotel which, albeit in a state of semi-hibernation, was welcome.

Semi-hibernation means that the dining-room proper was not in use, and that only the first floor bedrooms were ready for the reception of visitors.

Still, there was dinner ready, and its readiness quite made up for cramped quarters. Need it be added that the hotel is named after Felix the Burgundian, as is the town? Felix, every schoolboy knows, but a good many grown men and women may have forgotten, was the first Bishop of East Anglia, imported by King Sigeberht in 630 A.D., and had his see at Dunwich, perhaps the most weirdly forlorn place in all England, which we visited next day.

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 const.i.tution 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 mult.i.tudes 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 t.i.tle 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 s.p.a.cious 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 gra.s.s and flower-borders, of sheltered rock-gardens and ingenious intricacies of light and shade, with gla.s.shouses 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.cious 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 ill.u.s.tration 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.