Nature's sternest painter, but her best.
Crabbe hated Aldeburgh, or Aldeburgh scenery at any rate; or, if he did not hate them, he took the stern view of them.
Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er,
Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor;
From thence a length of burning sand appears,
Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears;
Rank weeds, that every art and care defy,
Reign o'er the land and rob the blighted rye.
Thus does he describe the vicinity and thus the so-called river and its marge:—
Here samphire banks and saltworth bind the flood,
And stakes and seaweed withering in the mud;
And higher up a ridge of all things base,
Which some strong tide has rolled upon the place.
No, assuredly Crabbe had no liking for Aldeburgh, and to be perfectly candid, I agree with him that, save for golfers, it is a dreary and eye-afflicting place. In this view I confess to have believed myself to be singular and, for expressing it, have incurred scorn more than once. So Crabbe is quoted in confirmation, yet with the hope that those who visit Aldeburgh may agree with the general view and not with that of a minority of two, one of them something better than a minor poet. Be it added, in justice to Aldeburgh, that you can look for amber among the pebbles on the beach. So you can anywhere and find as much as I did.
From Saxmundham we laid a course due north for Yoxford—Peasenhall of murderous fame lies some three miles to the west—and passed by way of Darsham to Blythburgh. Here, in a village named in Domesday, is a really striking fifteenth-century church, in good Perpendicular and with splendid clerestory, plainly visible from the road; and we are not far from Southwold, now known of many as a summer resort, whereas in days not long past it was visited by few persons save those who knew of the existence of St. Edmund's Church with its really majestic tower and rare rood-loft. Here, by the way, is buried Agnes Strickland, the historian. The very slight inward curve of the coastline here is dignified with the name of a bay, and as Sole Bay, which is simply Southwold Bay spoken short, it has a considerable place in history. On 28 May, 1672, "the combined fleets lay at Sole Bay in a very negligent posture." They were the fleets of England, under the command of the Duke of York, with Lord Sandwich under him, and of France; and here De Ruyter, the greatest sea-captain of his age, took his royal adversary quite by surprise. This was due not so much to the dashing merit of De Ruyter as to the crass carelessness of the Duke, for "Sandwich, being an experienced officer, had given the Duke warning of the danger; but received, they said, such an answer as intimated that there was more of caution than of courage in his apprehensions." What hasty words, I wonder, of the rude and haughty admiral were represented by this sonorous periphrasis? De Ruyter came, with ninety-one ships of war and forty-four fireships, sailing "in quest of the English," and Sandwich, after giving the warning in vain, saved the day by a display of gallantry to be ranked as extraordinary even in the annals of the English navy. Sailing out to meet the Dutchman, he engaged him at once and gave time to the Duke and the French admiral. "He killed Van Ghent, a Dutch admiral, and beat off his ship; he sunk another ship, which ventured to lay him aboard; he sunk three fireships, which endeavoured to grapple with him; and, though his vessel was torn to pieces with shot, and of a thousand men she contained near six hundred were laid dead upon the deck, he continued still to thunder with all his artillery in the midst of the enemy. But another fireship, more fortunate than the preceding, having laid hold of his vessel, her destruction was now inevitable. Warned by Sir Edward Haddock, his captain, he refused to make his escape, and bravely embraced death as a shelter from that ignominy which a rash expression of the Duke's, he thought, had thrown upon him." Admiral and flag-captain, in fact, perished when the fire reached the magazine, and this time at any rate the "price of Admiralty" was paid in full.
The English claimed a victory and embalmed it in a ballad, although the truth was that the Duke's fleet was too much shattered for pursuit and the French fleet, under secret orders, perhaps, from Louis XIV, did next to nothing; the Dutch, probably, claimed one also, although the battle ended the hopes with which De Ruyter's expedition started. All that matters nothing now. The moment that heartens a man is that at which he stands on this low-lying shore, as spectators stood all the long day in May, 1672, and remembers the gallant fight and the glorious death of Sandwich. "Sir Isaac Newton is also said to have heard it [the firing] at Cambridge." So writes the accomplished author of Murray's Guide in 1875, and there is nothing incredible in the suggestion. The distance is but seventy miles, roughly; the cannon of old time with their black powder made a terrible sound; acoustics are full of mystery, and the noise of the big guns at Portsmouth is often heard in the heart of the Berkshire Downs. From Euston to the centre of Sole Bay is about half the distance over which sound is said to have reached Newton, and it is on record that Lord Ossory, then a guest of the Duke of Grafton, heard the guns and rode half-way across East Anglia to witness the battle. Surely it was a majestic and awe-inspiring spectacle for those on the shore, and surely it is worth while to reconstruct it now in imagination.
From Blythburgh we went along a road of poor surface, and of no scenic attraction in winter save that the trees were fine, to Beccles, one of the three principal towns of Suffolk, possessed, I was content to believe, of a grand church, and boasting a view over the marshes of the Waveney, once navigable. But we saw little of Beccles, the name of which reminded Edward Fitzgerald of "hooks and eyes"; we were indeed quite glad to leave it after penetrating a quarter suggestive of a new and prosperous Midland town, for election fever was running high, and car and its occupants were cheered or hooted by eager crowds; cheered most, perhaps, for the crowds were mostly "Red," and the Connemara cloak seemed to express a sympathy which, in truth, was not felt. We had all had enough electioneering and to spare and were glad to turn our faces for Lowestoft. As will be seen later, Beccles made a far more pleasant impression on a subsequent visit. At Lowestoft too—it is a short and easy run—election fever was running high, and the political excitement of a seething mob does not make for an individual appreciation of the picturesque. But old Lowestoft is picturesque, hanging, as it were, over the sea, and South Lowestoft has a peculiar origin worth knowing.
Among the pleasant enterprises incident to the writing of this book has been the making of notes from Norfolk and Norwich Notes and Queries, reprinted from the Norfolk Chronicle, to which I have added in my note-book O si sic omnes! Would indeed that all county papers laid themselves out, as this one does, to collect notes from those interested in the antiquities of their county. Here as to Lowestoft are found two notes, one entertaining and suggestive, the other distinctly taking. It appears that in 1558 one Thomas North published a fantastic explanation of the origin of herring curing, in which Lowestoft has always rivalled Yarmouth. Without giving it in detail, it may be stated that in essential spirit, if on a different topic, it exactly anticipates Charles Lamb's divine theory of roast pig; but Thomas North has none of that grace of expression which compels quotation when one encounters Lamb, and one only regrets that Lamb did not think of describing the origin of herring curing as well as of roast pork.
The second Lowestoft note deserves a paragraph to itself, for it is full of moral lessons, and a curious illustration of the way in which the overweening ambition of one community and the churlishness of a second has ended in loss to the first and in the profit of a third community to the prejudice of the second. In the records of St. Peter's Church, at Norwich (St. Peter's, Permountergate, if memory serves accurately, which is St. Peter's, Parmentersgate, or Tailors' Street), is an entry of 27 March, 1814: "Ringing the Bells for Norwich a Port. 10/6." Early in the last century, it appears, Norwich was a very important centre of the wool trade. Now Norwich thrives on mustard and boots, but let that pass; at the time in question wool was the staple trade, and it was exported by way of Yarmouth. In 1812