CHAPTER X
IN SPRING. TROUBLES MADE EASY
Paucity of incidents so far—They often mean bad driving—Good driving and bad—The Grey Ghost in Berks—A burst tire—A warning—A puncture at Thame—Treasure trove—Meet mechanic at Aylesbury—Unready Hitchin—Royston—Advancing vegetation—Partridges paired—Tire blown off rim—An ancient dyke discovered—Plans changed by delays, but the motorist needs no plans—To Newmarket—Exit mechanic—To Bury St. Edmunds—A race with a train—Bury St. Edmunds and the "Angel"—Moderate charges—Spacious rooms—Memories of Pickwick—Mr. Weller's pump gone—Two hotel bills compared—Morning in Bury—The Abbey Garden—Norman tower—St. Mary's Church—The Square—Defoe at Bury—Start at noon—To Wortham—Fourth tire trouble—Pleasant children and a bye-election—Scole—Harleston—Fifth tire trouble—End of tire troubles and chapter.
Hitherto it may have been some cause for dissatisfaction to others, it has certainly been none to me, that with regard to the portion of this book which may be considered strictly narrative, there has been a monotonous immunity from accident of any kind. Yet so it was, and although, unlike George Washington, I do not profess that I cannot tell a lie, there would have been no point in telling one, and it would have been unfair. To touch a human being, another vehicle, or even a dog, with a motor-car, even in circumstances involving no culpability or legal responsibility in the driver of the motor-car, is in the vast majority of cases still not to his credit. The best drivers know it to be their duty never to expect that any other user of the road except a motorist has himself or his vehicle under absolute control. The good driver looks out for the signs of alarm in horses, realizes that cyclists, especially those of the female sex, "wobble" in their course when they hear the horn, knows that dogs will try to commit hari-kari, is aware that some men are blind, some deaf, some obstinate, and some drunk, feels that it is always best and safest to take stupidity for granted, and to give as wide a berth as possible to every living object on the high road. It is wiser to miss a horseless cart by half an inch than to try to pass a carriage and pair with a yard to spare. If these principles be borne in mind it is astonishing, at least it would be to the anti-motorist, to see how many thousands of miles may be travelled without harm done. How many thousands of miles I have travelled in motors of many kinds in England alone, to say nothing of Scotland and Ireland, I do not know; certainly a good many. In England, although I have sat beside some inconsiderate drivers, have I ever been at all near to hurting a human being; but I have sat beside considerate drivers in circumstances which, if one of the inconsiderate though skilful ones had been at the wheel, would have made it worse than a near thing for careless or frightened wayfarers.
Up to this time in the narrative, although at no period was any superstitious regard paid to the speed limit, I had not been caught in a police ambuscade (not that "ambuscade," except for its length, is a word in the least degree more dignified than "trap") during my travels in East Anglia; nor need I hesitate to write thus, for, in the first place, I am touching wood in the shape of a cork penholder, and, in the next, the narrative being but part accomplished, the travelling days which were its preliminary are, as the hymn says, o'er. In the journeys by motor-car from Colchester, which have been pressed into service during the preceding chapter, I was exempt from the speed limit. Again, so far as the narrative has gone, I can lay my hand on my heart and say that never, save once during the Essex manœuvres, through a burst tire, and then not in the Lanchester car, did I meet with tire trouble or suffer an involuntary stop through any failing of machinery.
On the expedition now to be recorded, in itself one of the most interesting and delightful ever taken by me, we had a whole series of troubles of different kinds—misfortunes of this kind never occur singly. But I hope to be able to show that these troubles were, some of them, providential, in other ways than that of supplying me with topics, which were abundant in any case, and that skill of hand and knowledge, combined with perfect imperturbability of temper in a gentleman who drives, and has all the trouble on his own hands, may convert trouble into sheer pleasure for the other persons delayed on the road.
Early in the morning of 6 April, a sunny morning worthy of the spring, Mr. Claude Johnson arrived at my Berkshire cottage with the Rolls-Royce owning the sobriquet of the Grey Ghost. I had ridden in the car first in Paris, outside the salon during the exhibition of 1904, and had been fascinated by its silence and controllability as Mr. Rolls at the wheel threaded the traffic in the Champs Élysées. Mr. Johnson had been expected overnight; the chamber in the wall had been prepared; but "he came not, for the ships were broken in Ezion-Geber." In other words, the back near tire came to grief on the Oxford Road. Taking it off with his own hands and substituting another, he had elected to sleep at a favourite inn and to come on to my house in the morning. This particular burst was simply the act of giving up the ghost accomplished by canvas which had reached the end of its natural life; and this, since the term of the natural life of canvas varies, is the kind of mishap which may occur at any time. Knowing that the tendency of troubles to come in groups is not mere matter of proverbial superstition, or, perhaps, being not entirely free from superstition, Mr. Johnson said, "You must be prepared for plenty more of these pleasant little interruptions. But, however, I have wired for a mechanic to meet us at Aylesbury, with more inner tubes and covers, and with luck we may last till then."
So at 9.35 we started in one of the first Rolls-Royces ever made, four cylinder and, I think, a 20-h.p. (but horse-power is a mere figure of speech, and the folks who prattle of it as a basis of taxation talk more nonsense than they realize). It had a cape hood, glass screens in front of the driving-seat and between it and the tonneau, and it carried my wife and younger daughter, with two suit-cases of fair size, in the tonneau, Mr. Johnson being at the wheel, and I by his side. We did not last so far as Aylesbury without trouble. On the contrary, just as we were leaving Thame a sharp whistle of escaping air gave notice that something was amiss, and the back off-side tire was found to be flabby. So we crawled back to a garage in that ancient town and wandered in the sun through its empty streets what time the defect was being made good. The process took the best part of an hour, and the delay proved to be providential in a small way for, in an old curiosity shop, we discovered an ancient "Bible box," of oak, curiously carved, and reputed to have belonged to the great Duke of Marlborough. It was acquired at no great price, and, whether it belonged to the great Duke of Marlborough or no, it was in the nature of a treasure, for these Bible boxes, made to contain family Bibles of large size, are rare, and little known because they are rare, and likely to become expensive when they are known because, besides rarity, they can boast substantial beauty.
From Thame we bowled on to Aylesbury without incident, and the scenery must not be touched upon now. At Aylesbury we had to wait again some time for the mechanic, whose train had not arrived; however, it came at last, and, with him on the step, and tire covers strapped on to all sorts of places, we fared onwards. But our arrangements for luncheon were marred. Mindful of the pie that vanished at Royston (ubi supra as the pedants would say), we had planned to take our luncheon there. At Hitchin Nature vowed that she would no longer be denied. Still Nature was very nearly compelled to take denial, for the hotel—it looked the best—professed itself destitute of cold meat; time did not permit of waiting for hot meat; and only after pressure did the waitress consent to produce some hacked fragments of discarded joints from which, with bread and butter and cheese, hungry motorists made a sufficient meal. True the process of finding the fragments that went to make it called to memory the supper in Tom Brown's School-days, and the wonderful deeds wrought by East with his pocket-knife. That was no matter. Fames est optimum condimentum, as the old Latin Grammar used to say, and no doubt it was good of the unready hotel-keeper to give us anything. But why, O why, are hotel-keepers so often found unready?
Reaching Royston without further mishap we entered our manor, for the purposes of this book, and glided on at a fine speed along the road, already traversed, towards Newmarket. Vegetation was more alive, hedges were growing green, partridges, a heavy stock of them, were paired; that was all the difference, or seemed to be all. But two miles short of Six Mile Bottom, or thereabouts, there was not merely a whistle from below but a loud report. The front off-side Dunlop tire had been blown out of the rim, the cause being that it was a "retreaded" tire which had stretched until it was no longer held in its place. This burst also turned out to be providential. While the mechanic, who was a blessing, was engaged in attending to the off front wheel, I wandered up and down the road, thinking at first that this was a dull piece of country. Then my eye was caught by a bank running from the road on the more southerly side up a gentle slope until it was lost on the horizon. The bank was several feet above the level of the ground to the eastward; on the western side was a deep ditch. Both were clearly visible, were indeed large and unmistakable on the southern side of the road, which seemed to be old pasture. On the north side they were traceable, and no more, having been obscured on the east side by trees and brushwood, and having yielded on the western side to the plough. If trouble we were to have it was surely lucky to meet it here for, beyond question, we were at one of those ancient ramparts piled up in the days of long ago to enable the warriors of Eastern Britain to keep out their foes of the West. In all probability it was Haydon Ditch, which runs from Melbourn to Haydon. It really does not matter what its particular name was, or is. To give it a name teaches one no more than my friend the antiquary taught me by calling the excavations at Grays "dene-holes." Some race, at some time long ago, piled up this vast mound with immense labour. It was an Eastern race, that is certain from the relation of mound and ditch, making provision against enemies from the West, whom they might harry with stones and javelins as they strove to climb from the ditch, whose shock heads they might hammer, with stone axes or clubs perhaps, from above, as they swarmed up from below. So much is certain inference; the rest is absolute mystery, and to delay at the rampart for a day would not solve the outermost wrapper of it. Indeed, so much as a halt is not advised, unless an involuntary one should occur conveniently, or an excuse for prudent adjustment to avoid future trouble be desired. Slow down to five miles an hour, or even to ten, and look towards the off-side when you are approaching Six Mile Bottom. Then shall you see as much as is necessary, or indeed possible, of this ancient rampart and its fosse, and understand all that can be understood about it, to wit that is there, and has been there since prehistoric times.
Those who worked over the substitution of a new tire and cover were skilful and expeditious; but it is a task which even in the most competent hands is tiresome and must not be hurried over unduly. At the best it means dirt and perspiration; before it reaches the worst it is very likely to involve broken nails and barked knuckles; and the least excess of haste is likely to bring in its train a subsequent nip as Nemesis, when all the dusty labour becomes vain. So, by this time, our plans as to a resting-place for the night were receding into the distance, or rather our place of abode was coming nearer to us, if we were not getting appreciably nearer to it. That is to say the plans of other people in the like circumstances would have been suffering thus, but ours were not quite definite. We had debated in an easy-going way the question whether we should dine and sleep at Lowestoft or at Yarmouth; whether perhaps we might not even push on to Norwich whither the memories of the "Maid's Head" beckoned us. This was out of the question now, but the beauty of motoring is that, unless one has made a definite arrangement to meet friends, nothing of this kind matters. As a matter of fact we took our tea at Newmarket—we have travelled the intervening piece of road in print before—and, then deciding where to sleep, went no farther than Bury St. Edmunds that night and, greatly daring, having regard to our run of ill-luck up to that time, we shed the mechanic, as a snake sheds his skin, instructing him to telegraph for yet another tire and cover to be sent to Bury that night if possible, but at any rate by the earliest train in the morning.
So on to Bury by the same road as we had followed on the Panhard in January; but Phœbus! how marked was the difference between the late afternoon of a mild day in April and the fading light of a frosty evening in January! Few of the trees were yet showing much green, but the buds were swelling and we could enjoy the stateliness of the trunks. "Joy runs high, between English earth and sky" on such afternoons as this. The road was clear and good, it invited speed, and for a space we raced a train which, it must be admitted, beat us in the long run pretty handsomely. So a second time we entered Bury, and this time made no mistake in the selection of our inn. Let there be no misunderstanding here. Lord Montagu's Road Book, which is good as any other, and strongly bound to stand the hardships of travelling (with a flap to fold over the front edges of the pages, which reminds one of Archbold's Criminal Pleadings armed against the rough usage of circuit), specifies the "Suffolk"; and the "Suffolk" may be a very good hotel, but to the pilgrim who has a spark of sentiment in his composition, the "Angel" addresses a more compelling invitation. One line of German poetry do I know—no more—and the luxury of quoting it (candidly confessing that it was got by heart by way of punishment for inattention, with some others now passed out of mind), shall not be denied to me—
Es lächelt der see, er ladet züm Bade.
As the sea laughed and said, "Bathe in my sun-warmed waters," so the "Angel" smiles, broadly and hospitably, saying, "If you are spending the night in Bury, spend it in the house full of the cheerful memories of Pickwick and the faithful Weller." That invitation was assumed, for the "Angel" is most decorously modest, but it was also accepted and never regretted for a moment, least of all when the time came for discharging the reckoning. We reached the "Angel" sufficiently early to be able to order dinner and to stroll about in the darkening town while it was in preparation. They set our feet in large rooms. Bedrooms, coffee-room, and sitting-room were spacious and comfortable. Dinner was plain but excellent in the old-fashioned coffee-room, and I will almost, but not quite, pledge my word that the wall-paper was of that mellow and ruby red beloved of our forefathers, probably because it suggested port wine. A pilgrimage through the hotel, and the yard too, showed that it had altered little, if at all, since it was described by Dickens, except that the pump was gone. Assuredly there ought to be a pump, for the sake of appearances, if for no other reason, although a tap, fed from the Corporation Waterworks, may serve equally well to cool heads throbbing of a morning from overnight unwisdom in the still-existing tap-room. The "Angel," in fact, is a thoroughly good hotel of the old-fashioned type, which it is a rare pleasure to enter and to praise. More than that, and to complete the well-earned panegyric, one leaves the "Angel" in a satisfied mood. It is plain truth that we dined there, slept, had tea in our bedrooms, breakfasted well, and paid for the car's lodging in a coach-house, and that the bill for three of us was precisely one shilling less than was paid one day later for the same accommodation less dinner, and less the storage of the car for the night. That is why praise is gladly given and those who have suffered from heavy charges elsewhere will be the first to protest that it ought to be given out of a grateful heart.
In the morning there was more delay. The same wheel which had given trouble by the mysterious dyke on the preceding afternoon was found to be standing on a flat tire again. Messages to the station brought back no substantial answer in the form of a cover. A local garage had none that fitted in stock, and had to send a special messenger to fetch one from a distance of ten or twelve miles on a motor-cycle. As a matter of fact, we found later, the tire-cover had been at the station all the time, but it had been addressed to the mechanic, and our messenger had made inquiries for one addressed to his master. The delay was really welcome. Who could desire a better fate than to spend a perfect spring morning in sauntering through a town which was historic not only in fact but also in appearance? My own case was the more happy in that, during the interval, I had not only refreshed my memory of Bury and of its associations, but had also learned a good many things in connection with it which were new to me. Of course, we entered the Abbey Gateway, to find the Botanical Garden, noted by Carlyle, less conspicuous than we had feared it might be. In fact, there was no demonstration of labels, helpful to the student but distressing to the idle eye, and it may be that the garden is no longer botanical, except in the sense in which every garden is such. It is a garden in any case, a garden with such broad stretches of close green turf as England alone can show; and on this turf little boys were playing games in the morning. A notice at the gate implied that the ground was not absolutely open to the public for games; if it were the turf would soon perish; but the price of play seemed to be very moderate; and perhaps the ground within those ancient walls serves as useful a purpose by encouraging the young men and maidens of Bury to take healthy exercise in the open air as it did when it permitted the student to realize that cheiranthus is another way of saying "wallflower," or that the weed best beloved of canaries may be called Jacobea. Of the Shakesperian associations of the Abbey we spoke last time we were at Bury; they came to mind none the less pleasantly for the fact that sturdy little boys were kicking a football about on the ground often trodden by kings and abbots. Of course, too, we went to see the Norman Tower, to the southward of the Abbey Gate and close to it, and St. Mary's Church. Most pleasant of all, however, was it to linger in the sun about the spacious square, having the "Angel" on one side and the Abbey Gate on the other, to rejoice in the abundance of old-world houses, to reflect that the square, and most of the houses, if not all, looked much the same as they did when "in order to avoid the public gaze, and also to recuperate, Defoe repaired in August, 1704, to Bury St. Edmunds, where he took up his abode in a handsome residence called Cupola House." Defoe was then fresh from eighteen months in "that horrid place," as Moll Flanders called it, Newgate Prison. He had stood in the pillory more than once, but, as his biographer of 1894, Mr. Thomas Wright, observes, we must not pity him too much. He suffered, after all, as others did in a brutal age. Moreover, Newgate was not all misery. He was allowed to exercise his pen freely while in prison, and he published one of the products of his incarceration, "An Elegy on the Author of the True-born Englishman," while he was living at Bury. That he did not come out penniless will be very plain to every pilgrim who is at the pains to look at Cupola House, which is still standing and, from the outside at any rate, very inviting.
Such are some of the memories of Bury, "the Montpelier of Suffolk, and perhaps of England," as Defoe called it, and we were not in any hurry to leave it or them. Still the sun shone, the roads were in good order, and when the car was ready about midday, we also were ready for the pleasures of the road. Our road, good and fairly flat, through what may best be described as comfortable and rich country, lay by Farnham St. Mary, Ixworth, where Euston Park was five miles to the north along the Ipswich and Thetford Road, Stanton, Wattisfield, and Richinghall to Wortham. That is only seven miles in all, and we bowled along merrily, in no mood to stop if we could avoid it, observing the spacious area of many village greens, thwarting to the best of our ability the efforts of the geese (which accounted for the close shorn turf of those greens) to immolate themselves under our wheels. A fussy turkey-hen, too, courted the same fate, but so far as our chariot was concerned, the geese and their offspring may have been eaten with apple-sauce at Michaelmas, and the turkey-hen's poults may have been hatched and reared, and fattened in the fashion best understood in East Anglia for the London market.
At Wortham came more trouble. Once more there was the ominous shriek. The rear off-side inner tube had been blown into a rent in the inner canvas of the outer cover; it was clean gone, and so, unfortunately, was the mechanic. Cheerfully philosophical as ever, Mr. Johnson, with such help as the bystanders and I could give him, addressed himself to the task of fitting the wheel for the road again and, apart from the trouble and inconvenience to him, of which he made light for our sake, the experience was even positively pleasant in its incidents. Bystanders were many. Our little disaster had come to us half-way on the road passing through a village green, very spacious, fringed on the left with stray cottages, of which one turned out to be the post office. Village children thronged round the disabled car in great numbers, light-haired and rosy-faced children, all of them wearing the yellow favours of the Liberal candidate. Were we not in the middle of the Eye constituency, the bye-election in which, coming shortly after the General Election, was regarded with exceptional interest by the public? Was not this the election of elections in which, to judge from the public press, the issue lay not between two mere men, but between Lady Mary Hamilton and another lady. And the result was due that day. The district was at least warmly interested as the general public—it is not always so—and the children were in a fever of childish excitement. They were "yellow" down to the very babies in arms; they hooted in shrill and childish derision whenever a carriage passed with blue favours, as some did, the occupants themselves looking blue in another sense. The most hardened Tory found it as impossible to be annoyed at their enthusiasm as to regard their opinions seriously. They were too eager, too delightful, too healthy. Nobody could have been angry with them. Further than that, they struck us all as being exceptionally bright and intelligent, and the keen interest with which they listened to a boy in his shirt-sleeves, not much older than some of them, but emancipated from school and now a wage-earning creature, who had attended some village meeting, was entirely charming. A man or two came up and proffered help, which was accepted. A Suffolk constable arrived on a bicycle and, seeming to have plenty of time to spare, remained to talk and to help me in expelling the air from the discarded tube, and in packing it into its bag for future treatment; and the children were round us all the time. Suddenly there was a shout, "The talleygram's come!" and a stampede across the green to the post office. In a minute or two they were all back, yelling in glee, "Pearson's in!" and at least one stubborn Tory was not half so sorry as he ought to have been. The Tory cause in the then Parliament was past praying for in any event; a Liberal vote more or less really seemed hardly to matter; the disappointment of those children at the failure of the Liberal candidate, if it had been announced, would have been far more distressing to me then than was the defeat of him for whom I should have voted if a vote in the Eye division had been mine.
On at last we went, merrily enough at first, and in 3-1/4 miles crossed the Waveney and the boundary of Norfolk and Suffolk simultaneously at Scole; Scole of the true Roman road, Scole of the ancient hostelry, of both of which full notice has been taken in an earlier chapter. Four miles more we carried on gaily, 4-1/4 miles perhaps, for we were almost free from the long townlet of Harleston when more trouble came. It was precisely the same trouble in the same tire and cover that had been met with at Wortham. This time there was a garage, where the rent in the canvas was effectually repaired, while we took a hearty luncheon at the "Magpie"; and that was the end of tire-trouble for this expedition. We had certainly had at least enough of it. And here, since the road immediately in front of us positively teems with wayside subjects, let a pause be made and a short chapter ended.