CHAPTER VI—(continued)
FELIXSTOWE, BAWDSEY, WOODBRIDGE, IPSWICH, DUNMOW AND LONDON
A stormy morning—Past golf-links to Bawdsey Ferry—Sir Cuthbert Quilter's work of reclamation—A short climb but very stiff—Some remote byways to Woodbridge—Heavy rain—Value of cape hood—Drawbacks of transparent screens—Ipswich again—More Cobbolds, more hospitality—Ipswich oysters and gloves—The "Crown and Anchor"—An architect and antiquary—Jingling prophecy—An abbot's bones and "extra dry"—Another car arrives for us—Off for Dunmow—A frightened horse and an awkward rider—Rules of conduct in such cases—Through Braintree (remarks postponed) to Great Dunmow—Little Dunmow the true locus classicus—Leland and the Flitch—Far-fetched theories and an obvious explanation—The heart of the forest country—The old forest included Epping, Hainault, and Hatfield Forests—Hainault restored—Hardships of old forest law—Dunmow to Takeley—Hatfield Broad Oak and Heath—A view of hounds—High Ongar, Epping, and London, reversing original order—The drive reviewed.
Next morning, in a tearing wind, full of the promise of rain, we took a road running as nearly N.N.E. as might be, making for the steam ferry which crosses the mouth of the river Deben, a river whose banks are rich in memories of the late Mr. C. J. Cornish, one of the brightest open-air writers of our generation. Golf-links we passed, having plenty of natural bunkers and hazards, having also that close turf, whereon the ball "carries" well, which appears to be in better harmony than any inland turf with the spirit of the royal and ancient game. Martello towers there were too, on the flat and lonely beach, towers probably more useful now as affording shelter and concealment to the wild fowler than for any purpose of defence; and beyond them the shallow sea whipped by the wind into angry little wavelets. Then the ferry hove in sight, the boat, or floating bridge, being on the far side of a fretting strath from a quarter to half a mile in width. On the far side also was the curious house of Sir Cuthbert Quilter, and around it a considerable area of cultivated land, doing infinite credit to the enterprise of that most ardent agriculturist; for has he not converted a wilderness into fairly fruitful land, and is not the man who does that a benefactor of humanity? Crossing seemed at first likely to be no easy matter. The boat was on the far side, out of hearing in such a wind as was blowing; a witless boy of the district, himself desirous of crossing apparently, thought it came at fixed times, and had no idea when those times were. It seemed that we might wait for hours; but prowling round I found a signal post, and thereon directions how to raise the signal for the ferry, and soon the boat was making for us. Entering it with the car was no trouble; Avernus has always been easy of descent; but when the craft had creaked to the far side we were faced with the stiffest task I have ever seen offered to any motor-car in the shape of a sharply sloping bank of soft gravel to be ascended without any preliminary run of any kind. The steam car, however, ploughed slowly through the gravel and up the hill, and I look back upon those ten or twelve yards of hill-climbing as the finest exhibition of sheer strength in a motor-car it has ever been my fortune to witness. So we went by devious and very bad roads, through Alderton and Hollesley to Woodbridge, through a country not particularly interesting, I imagine, at the best of times, and rendered less interesting than ever by the angry curtain of clouds which hung over our path. Rain had been an open question when we started; it was certainly coming now with a will; and it was a case of up cape hood and down with the front screen, in which a large piece of transparent talc, or celluloid, gave something of a view to him who drove. It was better than getting wet through, that is all that can be said. The rain for a short time was simply torrential, and as it poured in waving streams down the transparent surface, one could see as much as, but not very much more than, one can see with eyes opened six or eight feet down in fairly clear river water. Outlines of objects were blurred in the same fashion as they are to the diver (without a diving dress of course), and one felt as doubtful of the distance of this or that as one has often felt under water when catching sight of the saucer, the white stone, or what you will, thrown in beforehand that it might be searched for afterwards. So there is nothing to be said of this run from Woodbridge to Ipswich, along the road followed in my first journey but in the opposite direction, save that it was taken in "demmed, moist, unpleasant weather," to quote Mr. Mantalini.
However, the rain abated before we reached Ipswich and halted, by previous arrangement, at Mr. Cobbold's Bank, as a preliminary to receiving open-handed hospitality from yet another member of that most hospitable of Suffolk families. It is not suggested that all motorists should do likewise, although, upon my word, judging by Mr. Cobbold's kindness to a party upon two of whom he had never set eyes until that day, it seems probable that a call at the Bank would be a promising venture for any strangers. But into the secrets of comfort in Ipswich which he revealed to us others may be admitted without his personal guidance. He showed the old-world glove shop already mentioned. The oyster shop he showed us also, almost next door to the glovers, both in a narrow street running parallel to the main street on the far side from the "Crown and Anchor," and the "Great White Horse," and better oysters were never eaten by man or woman. Then he took us to luncheon at the "Crown and Anchor" which, sooth to say, was more to my taste than the "Great White Horse"—of its charges it is manifestly impossible for me to speak, but its fare was of the simplest and best. Last, but not least of the kindnesses shown to me by Mr. Cobbold was to invite to meet me Mr. Corder, architect and antiquarian—would that the combination were universal—profoundly versed in the old-time legends of the district. Mr. Corder it was who gave me a most fascinating print of the back of the "Crown and Anchor" when it was the "Rampant Horse," and quoted a jingled prophecy of days gone by, concerning the fate of the various inns of Ipswich, which appears to have come true—
The Rampant Horse shall kick the Bear,
And make the Griffin fly,
And turn the Bell upside down,
And drink the Three Tuns dry.
Again, as our talk wandered over matters ancient and men of the past, the name of the famous Abbot Sampson, much noted in his day as a preacher, was mentioned, and Mr. Corder had a humorous story of his disinterment in modern times. With the bones of the clarion-voiced preacher, in the same coffin, was found the skull of a woman, a grim jest perhaps of those who were left behind him in this world. The bones, pending reinterment in decent form, were placed in the first convenient receptacle and, only some time later was it observed, the relics of the preacher had, by the irony of fate, been placed in a champagne case labelled "extra dry." Chance, very likely, supplied an epitaph more truthful than is usual.
At Ipswich too my host and friend had prepared a surprise. Not entirely satisfied with the behaviour of the car which had covered us, as well as carried us, hitherto, he had telegraphed to London for another, and it awaited us in the inn yard. It was uncovered, but the sky was now clear, so we sped in it merrily along the already familiar route to Colchester, entering Essex, "ful of good hoswyves," as Leland quotes, as we crossed the river at Stratford St. Mary. Had we turned to the right a little before this point we should have made ourselves familiar with the beautiful and very characteristic scenery of those Stourside places Stoke-by-Nayland, Sudbury, and Long Melford—all interesting places concerning which something is said later. But all these matters and places come more fittingly into the chapter describing a series of short day's drives from Colchester as head-quarters. So do Marks Tey and Braintree through which, as a matter of fact, we passed that day to Dunmow. In fact the only fact about this little run which can be mentioned without impoverishing the mine to be dug from later is an incident. We had the misfortune to meet a man who was no horseman mounted on a half-broken colt which had the strongest apparent objection to a motor-car. The man held up his hand. We stopped. The horse, more frightened than ever, turned and bolted in the other direction; but then the rider turning on to the grass beside the road, dismounted hurriedly and we passed on. It was almost a solitary instance in which, during much motoring of late, I have seen a horse thoroughly frightened by a car, all the more alarmed probably because, by that curious intuition which horses possess, it knew its rider to be incompetent. The incident exemplified the folly of the existing law requiring a car to be stopped completely whenever a person in charge of a horse, or with a horse in charge of him, holds up his hand. Almost every petrol-car brought suddenly to a stop makes far more noise and is far more alarming to a horse than when it moves at a reasonable pace, and the car-driver, in a voice at once audible and soothing, cries "Woa, my lad," or something of that kind, thus convincing the animal that motor-cars are connected with human beings, with whom he is familiar. In nine cases out of ten, however, the man is more frightened than the horse, so that, tugging suddenly at the reins, after being half asleep before, he compels the animal to start. In any event the complete stopping is an error from the point of view of horseman and motorist. It annoys the latter without being of the slightest use to the former. Moreover, it gives irascible squires an opportunity of exasperating the motorist, whom they detest. "My horses don't mind a car at all," said one such to me not long since, "but I always hold up my hand when I meet the beastly things; I hear they hate stopping." These are the ipsissima verba of one who, in every other relation of life, is exceptionally kind and genial.
Passing through pleasant Braintree, and going at a spanking pace along an open road, we left Little Dunmow, which is the real Dunmow of story, unnoticed on the left through sheer ignorance, and went on to Great Dunmow. Our ignorance was in some measure to be excused, because the custom of Dunmow, although in old times it was established in connection with the Priory of Little Dunmow, was revived in connection with Great Dunmow. And, after all, in this case it would probably have been folly to be wise. We should have found little, if anything, remaining of the Priory of Little Dunmow, and we were quite happy, in our ignorance, over our tea in a picturesque inn at Great Dunmow, believing all the time that we were at the classic spot itself. Of the various accounts of a quaint custom, mentioned in Piers Plowman and by Chaucer, I prefer that given by Leland, for its brevity. Writing of "the bacon at Dunmow," and referring to "Robert Fitzwalter, Lord of Woodham and famous in the time of King Henry the Thyrd," he continues, "In which Priory arose a custome, begun or instituted either by him or some of his successors, that he that repenteth him not of his marriage sleeping or waking in a yeere and a day may lawfully goe to Dunmow and fetch a Gammon of Bacon." The quotations from Chaucer and Piers Plowman have been used too often in "seasonable articles" to be repeated here. It is easy to agree with the curiously learned Dr. Samuel Brewer that "the attempt to revive this 'premium for humbug' is a mere get up for the benefit of the town"; but his quotation from Prior is distinctly apt and unfamiliar:
Ah, madam! cease to be mistaken;
Few married fowl peck Dunmow bacon.
Also we may hope that the eight successful pairs of claimants from 1445 to 1772, Essex folk all, took the matter more seriously than those of later time. One pair, Thomas Shakeshaft, Woolcomber of Weathersfield, and his wife, are said to have made their successful claim in 1751 in the presence of Hogarth. The most recent fame of Dunmow arises from its violent resistance to uninvited Socialist propagandists. It is just the sort of quiet place in which one would expect a rustic to describe the Socialist ranters as "a passel o' fools"; and this is precisely what occurred.
Perhaps after all it is well to repeat the oath in verse as preserved by Fuller, since to do so may save the trouble of reference for the curious:
You shall swear by the custom of our confession
That you never made any nuptial transgression,
Since you were married man and wife,
By household brawls or contentious strife;
Or otherwise, in bed or at board
Offended each other in deed or word;
Or, since the parish clerk said Amen,
Wished yourselves unmarried again;
Or, in a twelvemonth and a day,
Repented not in thought any way;
But continued true and in desire,
As when you joined hands in holy quire.
If to these conditions, without all fear,
Of your own accord you will freely swear,
A gammon of bacon you shall receive,
And bear it hence with love and good leave;
For this is our custom at Dunmow well known,
Though the sport be ours the bacon's your own.
There is a like custom of Wicknor in Staffordshire, but the ultra-learned seem to me to have overstrained their fancies in imagining a common origin for these flitches of bacon, and the "sow and pigs" which, according to "Murray," are frequently seen on the carved bosses of church roofs in Devonshire, and in suggesting a connection between the Dunmow flitch, which after all was but a gammon, and the flitch which according to Dion Halicarnassus, was kept at the Temple of Alba Longa until the time of Augustus, because Æneas found there the white sow and pigs. It may be true that it was the custom of the Prussians of old time to offer a flitch of bacon to the thunder-god whenever a thunderstorm came. As for the sow and pigs on the roofs of Devonshire churches, they seem to me to have no more direct connection with the Dunmow flitch than "the sow and pigs" as an inn sign (which may be seen in Oxfordshire and perhaps elsewhere), or than the Gadarene swine. Surely, when there is an obvious and historical explanation there is no sort of need for plunging into the troubled waters of comparative folk-lore. Robert Fitz-Walter desired to establish a reward for conjugal fidelity. That is plain, and there was nothing out of the way about such a desire in times when foundations similar in character, rewards for constancy in servants and the like, were by no means uncommon. It probably never occurred to him that the claimants would be other than peasants. The recorded claimants in fact were in 1445, a labourer and his wife; in 1510, a fuller; in 1701, a butcher; in 1751, a woolcomber; the three last with their wives of course; and in the other cases the callings of the claimants are not recorded.
Fitz-Walter's domain was situate in the heart of the forest country, a land of innumerable oak trees, whereon herds of swine were fed upon the acorns in autumn, under the care of the successors in title of Gurth the Swineherd. To the peasantry the pig was, economically speaking, everything; for that matter he is a great deal to them still since, take him for all in all, he is the most profitable of domestic animals. What could be more natural than that the great landowner should establish as the reward of fidelity among peasants a part of the familiar beast whom they knew best, and whom, to this day, they like best on the table. Those who have seen the excitement of pig-killing at a cottage home, who know how it spells plenty of fresh meat for a while, and how large a part fat bacon plays in the meals which the agricultural labourer eats under the lee of a hedge, will not desire to go to Alba Longa for an explanation of the Dunmow flitch; nor, in a country where "chaw-bacon" was once synonymous with farm labourer—unhappily they now consume tinned meat instead—need we think in their connection of the sacrifices of the ancient Prussians. Robert Fitz-Walter could not have devised a benefaction more to the taste of the intended recipients.
Yes, we were some way from the spot truly sacred to the custom at Great Dunmow; but we were uncommonly near to relics of the ancient forest, in which the swine, the Dunmow flitches in process of formation, grew fat upon the abundant acorns.
We were, indeed, in the very heart of the forest land, its principal products timber, game, which was sacred to the king, and swine growing fat, as obesity of pigs was reckoned in early days, on the acorns of autumn. Hard by in Hertfordshire the country folk to this day collect acorns in great quantity, feeding thereon the swine which, cribbed, cabined, and confined, no doubt grow fatter than their predecessors roaming in the woods. A perambulation was made in the twelfth year of Henry III (1228 and Fitz-Walter's time), which showed nearly the whole of the county to be part of a Royal Forest. From the Thames on the south to Stane Street, the road between Colchester and Bishop Stortford, to the north, was a great forest running right up to the walls of London. It was known as the Forest of Waltham; it included Epping Forest, part of which has happily been preserved, to the enduring credit of the City of London, Hainault Forest, the relics of which have been reafforested of late, and Hatfield Forest, along the margin of which we were shortly to pass on our way to London. Hainault Forest once lay, and now again lies, south of Epping Forest, being to the south of the river Roding. It once consisted of four thousand acres, but was disafforested by Act of Parliament in 1851, the Crown receiving an allotment of two thousand acres which, at an expenditure of more than £40,000, were converted into arable farms. Of the whole six thousand acres only a small tract retained its character of primitive woodland. This, through the exertions of the Commons Preservation Society and of Mr. E. N. Buxton, has now again been dedicated to the public, being vested in the London County Council. In addition, thanks to Mr. Buxton and also to the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, five hundred acres of tilled land, formerly known as the "King's Woods" and later as Fox Burrows Farm, have been reafforested after being forty years under the plough. For three years Mr. Buxton, with the aid of the County Council, has been engaged in the effort to make the tame land wild again. Grass has been sown, acorn and beechmast have been inserted, seeds of bramble, briar, holly, blackthorn and whitethorn have been introduced, and some saplings have been planted. Bracken, perhaps the most essential feature of wild woodland, has come of itself. So the tame is on its way to become wild and natural again. It will be a long process which few living men can hope to see fully accomplished; but that the experiment was well worth trying cannot be doubted.
Nothing, perhaps, illustrates more forcibly the difference between the conditions of modern life and those of the thirteenth or even the seventeenth century than our present attitude towards forests by comparison with that of our forefathers. When, in the time of Charles I, an attempt was made to declare the boundaries of the Forest of Waltham to be identical with those prescribed in the perambulation of Henry III, it was regarded as, and in fact it was, an outrage. It meant the effort to revive the harsh Forest Law and to expropriate private owners who had acquired rights by a prescription more than adequate from our modern standpoint. It meant a determination to extend the rights of the Crown, to deny the rights of the public. In the days of Edward VII all men rejoice over the patches of forest which have been preserved, all England congratulates itself when that which has been disafforested, as Hainault was in 1851, becomes forest again. This is because the meaning of words as applied to things is changed when the country passes from an unsettled to a settled state, just as, according to one of the Greeks, it is changed in revolutionary times. "Forest" in old times denoted a district and, in respect of that district, connoted a wicked restriction of public rights, or of rights which, to our mind, ought to have been public. "Forest" now means a district in which the public have abundant liberty, limited only by consideration for the rights of all, and the rights of the Crown in relation to it hardly come into account. Every remaining forest, whatsoever its governance may be, is a treasure-house for the naturalist, a sanctuary for wild birds and beasts, a place to be prized above measure since, in it, the dwellers in our congested islands may walk face to face with wild nature in pure air.
Of the relics of such a forest we were soon to have a pleasing view. From Dunmow to Bishop Stortford, as one of the guide-books has it, there is nothing of interest. We followed this high road along the railway, which did not make for beauty, for some four miles until, climbing a slight acclivity, we were at Takeley, where the church is said to possess a very fine Perpendicular font-cover. Such minutiæ, however, are not for the motorist. There we turned sharply to the left and, passing along the brow of a gentle hill for three miles, we were at Hatfield Broad Oak, amid true forest scenery of wide stretches of turf bordered by wild woodland. Whether the storied oak, carefully fenced around, still stands, this deponent is not absolutely prepared to avouch; but his eye was arrested by a tree which would certainly serve well to represent it. It was good going hence, among charming sylvan scenery, through Hatfield Heath to Harlow, for five miles, and at Harlow, as at Hatfield Heath or at Takeley for that matter, we might have run to the right a little and so have struck the most eastern of the two main roads from Cambridge to London. But we were out to see the country; so we stuck to the byways, well worthy of following for their own sakes and for ours, and we had our reward in a pretty picture. Passing along an unfenced road, having broad stretches of turf backed by woodlands on either side, we saw in the distance the pink coats of three or four riders, and soon we were going slowly and gingerly past a staunch pack of hounds returning to kennel under the charge of huntsman and whips after their day's sport. They were good horses, workmanlike hounds, a thoroughly characteristic English sight and one which, somehow or other, one never sees from a train, partly perhaps because masters of hounds are prone, for obvious reasons, to avoid the vicinity of railways as much as possible. This little spectacle was secured by making a detour from Harlow almost to Chipping Ongar, and High Ongar and thence back to Epping, from which we returned to London as nearly as might be by the route taken on our outward journey. This involved a few more miles of travelling than by the main road, but it produced a very good general impression of the character of the forest country. It is an impression well worth treasuring in remembrance. It also produced an abiding respect for Mrs. Coleman's topographical memory. Not once or twice but many times was this lady able to point out the right turning and to save us from going astray. Once only did she fail, and that was after we had entered the continuous houses of London. The failure was but the exception proving the rule; indeed it may not even have been that; for the din of the streets may have drowned her warning voice. Be that as it may the return to London was not quite so artistic in point of route as the exit had been.
How far had we travelled that day? An estimate is given in the practical observations earlier, but in truth distance really hardly counts within limits which grow wider every year, when one is motoring for pleasure. The essential things were that we took breakfast at a reasonable time and at leisure in Felixstowe, went by characteristic cross-country routes to Woodbridge and to Ipswich, strolled through Ipswich and shopped and lingered over luncheon, took tea at ease in Great Dunmow, explored many pleasant byways between it and London, and were back in London in plenty of time to dine and to go to a first night at the theatre, and not in the least too tired to do both with enjoyment. That is the new kind of pleasure which the motor-car has rendered possible, and it is a very real and genuine one.