I

HISTORY AND LEGEND

3

loveliness where winding rivers and placid lagoons are its most conspicuous and pervading features.

I could never find it in me, however, to decry East Anglian scenery because of its tameness; rather, I could pity the man who is unable to discover in its quaint old-world hamlets, leafy lanes and byways, breezy heaths, flower-spangled meads, thatched farmsteads, and ancient shrines many elements of the picturesque. As for the historical interest of the district, it both gains and loses something in that many of the events in which it originated occurred so long ago that they have become inseparably associated with romantic legends and untrustworthy traditions. For instance, no battles of any importance have been fought in East Anglia since the days of the Norman kings; but long before those days the district was the scene of strenuously contested encounters between the Danes and Angles, the grave-heaps of whose slain may still be seen on the Thetford warrens; while centuries before Edmund the Martyr met his death at the hands of Inguar and Ubba, the brave queen of the Iceni led her half-savage warriors against the trained legions of Rome. Of the details of these grim fights, which were fought before the days of those monkish chroniclers who were always ready to record any unusual fact or wonderful myth, we know little or nothing; we can only point to the grass grown barrows and let them speak for themselves. And if we are at a loss when asked to tell of these encounters, what can we say about the prehistoric strife which brought the swarthy, skin-cloaked Eskurians to the Brandon flint pits, those primitive arsenals where they fashioned their axes and arrows of stone? "Grimes Graves," as these pits are called, remain to us to-day, and near them dwell "knappers" who even now work flints in much the same manner as did the men of the Stone Age; but how little do they tell us of the vanished race who dug them! Even if we remove the wind-heaped warren sand, and grope with spade and pickaxe, we unearth only a few flint flakes and primitive

4

FACT AND MYTH

CHAP.

weapons, and the conclusions we draw from these relics are more remarkable for vagueness than value. And as it is with the early battles, so it is with the early warriors of East Anglia, such as Redwald, Edmund, and, later, Hereward. We know they existed and believe they did wonderful deeds; but we are told that we must read of those deeds, as they are handed down to us by the old chroniclers, in much the same spirit as we read of the fabulous exploits of the ancient gods.

So I do not ask any one to believe all I shall tell of the castles and abbeys, towns and hamlets of East Anglia. If I have any aim or method in my narrations, it is to follow the lead of the monkish chroniclers and relate both fact and myth, generally leaving it to others to judge where the line should be drawn between them. Wherever I go I am an incurably sentimental traveller; I love to muse over a grey old priory as much on account of its incredible legends as for its actual and credible history. Walsingham Abbey loses nothing of its charm for me because Erasmus made caustic comment on the silly stories he heard from the monks there; the assurance of a learned bookworm that Dunwich in the height of its prosperity did not rival the London of its day, does not rob me of a moment's pleasure while I stand on the cliffs from which the old city sank into the sea. As I am a seeker of the picturesque in scenery, so am I a searcher for the romantic in story; and while I have eyes for the one and instinct for finding the other, no isolated hamlet can be utterly dull to me, or legend and ballad without its interest or charm.

Just one hundred and seventy-eight years ago, in the month of April, and almost on the same day of that month as this on which I am setting out on a tour through East Anglia, the author of Robinson Crusoe started on a journey through the Eastern counties, with a view to writing a "particular and diverting account of whatever is curious and worth observ

I

DEFOE AT IPSWICH

5

ation" in those counties. After loitering among the Essex marshes, where he was much impressed by meeting with men who had had from five or six to fourteen or fifteen wives, and describing at length the siege of Colchester during the Civil War of 1648, Defoe came to Ipswich, where he found much that was curious and diverting. The town especially commended itself to him on account of its "very agreeable and improving company almost of every kind"; but with the ardour of an enthusiastic pamphleteer he promptly set about

confuting the "wild observations" of certain earlier writers, whose aims, in all probability, had been not unlike his own. These "wild observations" do not now move us to either amazement or indignation: they apply to such subjects as the building of two-hundred-tons ships (Defoe maintained that the Ipswich shipwrights were capable of building ships of upwards of four-hundred tons), and their launching at John's Ness. Nor, for my own part, am I tempted, even by the prospect of enjoying agreeable and improving company, to linger in the town; for this is one of the first warm mornings of spring, and I

6

MR. PICKWICK'S EXPERIENCES

CHAP.

am longing to get away from the busy streets and into the midst of Rushmere Heath, where I know the larks are soaring and singing, and the gorse is bursting into a blaze of bloom. Ipswich, I am quite ready to admit, is a charming town; its Ancient House is worth a long journey to see; but unlike a very distinguished traveller, who, according to his biographer, started from the Bull Inn, Whitechapel, in the morning and arrived at Ipswich at nightfall, I have no intention of spending a night at the Great White Horse Inn. The character of that

famous hostelry is, no doubt, unimpeachable; but I cannot forget Mr. Pickwick's experiences there when, after receiving the confidences of Mr. Peter Magnus, he retired to the wrong bedroom and had such a disconcerting encounter with the middle-aged lady in yellow curl papers. So I take to the Woodbridge Road-the old London to Yarmouth coach roadtelling myself that if nothing unforeseen befall me I will stand under the walls of Framlingham Castle before their outlines are indefinable in the dusk.

If it were necessary, I might well rely on Dickens to guide

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THE GREAT WHITE HORSE INN

7

me over many miles of my journey through south-eastern East Anglia. Pickwick is quite as definite as Murray when it comes to dealing with the Great White Horse. "In the main street of Ipswich, on the left-hand side of the way, a short distance after you have passed through the open space fronting the Town Hall, stands an inn known far and wide by the appellation of the Great White Horse, rendered the more conspicuous by a stone statue of some rampacious animal with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an insane.

cart-horse, which is elevated above the principal door. The Great White Horse is famous in the neighbourhood, in the same degree as a prize ox, or county paper-chronicled turnip, or unwieldy pig-for its enormous size." And when Pickwick failed me, David Copperfield would come to my aid, and I must be without the slightest development of the bump of locality if, with the assistance of that delightful autobiography, I could not find my way to Lowestoft, where David stayed on his way to London; Blundeston, where he spent his boyhood; and Yarmouth, where he explored with Peggotty the