CHAPTER V
THE PORT OF LYNN
This was the beginning of the famous year. I say famous because, to meand to certain others, it was certainly a year eventful, while to thepeople of the town and the county round it was the year of the spawhich began, ran a brief course, and terminated, all in one summer.
Let me therefore speak for a little about the place where these thingshappened. It is not a mushroom or upstart town of yesterday but on theother hand a town of venerable antiquity with many traditions whichmay be read in books by the curious. It is important on account of itstrade though it is said that in former days its importance was muchgreater.
I have sailed over many seas: I have put in at many ports: I havetaken in cargoes of many countries--the ways of sailors I have foundmuch the same everywhere. And as for the food and the drink and thebuildings I say that Lynn is behind none. Certainly the port of Londonwhether at Wapping or at Limehouse or Shadwell cannot show anything sofine as the market place of Lynn or St. Margaret's church or ourcustomhouse. Nor have I found anywhere, people more civil of speechand more obliging and well disposed, than in my own town; in which,apart from the sailors and their quarters, the merchants andshipowners are substantial: trade is always brisk: the port is alwayslively: continually there is a coming and a going: sometimes, weekafter week, one ship arrives and another ship puts out: the yards arealways busy: the hammer and the anvil resound all day long:carpenters, rope makers, boat builders, block makers, sail makers, allthe people wanted to fit out a ship--they say that a ship is like awoman, in always wanting something--are at work without intermissionall the year round from five in the morning till eight in the evening.They stand at good wages: they live well: they dress warm: they drinkof the best. It is a city of great plenty. Wine there is of the mostgenerous, to be had at reasonable price--have I not myself broughthome cargoes from Lisbon of Spanish and Portuguese--strong andheady--rich and sweet; and from Bordeaux of right claret? All thethings that come from abroad are here in abundance, brought hither byour ships and distributed by our barges up the river and itstributaries through eight countries at least, serving the towns ofPeterborough, Ely, Stamford, Bedford, St. Ives, Huntingdon, St. Neots,Northampton, Cambridge, Bury St. Edmund's, and Thetford. We send themnot only wine but also coals (which come to us, sea-borne, fromNewcastle), deal and timber from Norway and the Baltic, iron andimplements; sugar, lemons, spices, tea (but there is little of thatinfusion taken in the county), turpentine, and I know not what: and wereceive for export wheat, barley, oats and grain of all kinds.
In other places you may hear lamentations that certain importedluxuries have given out: the lemons will fail so that the punch isspoiled: or the nutmegs give out--which is a misfortune for thepudding: or the foreign wine has been all consumed. Our cellars andour warehouses, however, are always full, there is always wine ofevery kind: there are always stores of everything that the cook canwant for his most splendid banquet.
Nor are we less fortunate in our food. There is excellent muttonfattened in the Marshland: the bacon of Norfolk is famous: there areno geese like the geese of the fens--they are kept in farmhouses, eachin its own hutch, and all driven out to feed in the fens and theditches of the fens. Every day you may see the boy they call thegozzard driving them out in the morning and bringing them home in theevening. Then, since all the country on the west side is lowlandreclaimed from the sea, it is, like all such land, full of ponds andhaunted by starlings and ducks, widgeon, teal and other wild birdsinnumerable, which are shot, decoyed, and caught in great numbers. Addto this that the reclaimed land is most fertile and yields abundantlyof wheat and barley, fruit and vegetables: and that fish are found inplenty in the Wash and outside and you will own that the town is akind of promised land, where everything that the heart of man candesire is plentiful and cheap and where the better sort are rich andcomfortable and the baser sort are in good case and contented.
Another circumstance, which certain scholars consider fortunate forLynn, is that the modern town abounds with ancient buildings, walls,towers, arches, churches, gateways, fragments which proclaim itsantiquity and speak of its former importance. You think, perhaps, thata plain and simple sea captain has no business to know anything aboutmatters which concern scholars. That is a reasonable objection. TheLord forbid that I should speak as if I knew anything of my ownreading. I am but a plain sailor: I have spent most of my lifenavigating a merchantman. This is an honourable condition. Had I tochoose another life upon the world I would desire of Providence nohigher station and no happier lot. A sea captain is king: his vesselis an island over which he rules: he is a servant yet not in a stateof servitude: he is a dependent yet is independent: he has no caresabout money for he is well paid: he keeps what hours he pleases:dresses as he likes: eats and drinks as he likes: if he carriespassengers he has society. No. Let me not even seem to be pretendingto the learning of a scholar. I do but repeat the things which myfather was wont to repeat in my hearing. He was for forty years masterof the Grammar school; a master of arts of Christ's college,Cambridge: a learned scholar in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Chaldee: and,like many of his calling, an antiquary and one who was most happy whenhe was poring over old manuscripts in the Archives of the Guildhall,and amassing materials which he did not live to put together for thehistory of Lynn Regis, sometime Lynn Episcopi. The collections made byhim still lie among the chests where the corporation keep theirpapers. They will doubtless be found there at some future time andwill serve for some other hand engaged upon the same work.
It is not to be expected that among a trading and a shipping communitythere should be much curiosity on such matters as the past history oftheir borough: the charter which it obtained from kings; the creationof a mayor: the destruction of the monasteries when the gloriousReformation restored the sunlight of the gospel and of freedom to thishappy land. For the most part my father worked without encouragementsave from the vicar of St. Margaret's, the Reverend Mark Gentle,S.T.P., to whose scholarly mind the antiquities and charters andleases of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were of smallaccount indeed compared with a newly found coin of an obscure Romanusurper, or an inscription on a Roman milestone, or the discovery of aRoman urn. Yet my father would willingly discourse upon the subjectand, indeed, I think that little by little he communicated to me thewhole of his knowledge, so that I became that rare creature, a sailorversed in antiquity and history: one to whom the streets and oldbuildings of Lynn spoke in a language unknown by the people, evenunheard by them.
It pleases me to recall the tall form of my father: his bentshoulders: his wig for the most part awry: his round spectacles; histhin face. In school he was a figure of fear, always terrible,wielding the rod of office with justice Rhadamanthine, and demanding,with that unrelenting alternative, things impossible in grammar. Inschool hours he was a very Jupiter, a thundering Jupiter: our schoolwas an ancient hall with an open timber roof in which his voice rolledand echoed backwards and forwards. Nor did he spare his only son. Inconsequence of some natural inability to cope with the niceties ofsyntax I was often compelled to become a warning and an admonition tothe rest. I have sometimes, since those days, in considering thingsduring the night-watch, asked myself why men of tender hearts forcetheir children to undergo this fierce discipline of grammar--a thinginstantly forgotten when a boy goes to sea: and I have thought thatperhaps it was invented and encouraged by divines in order that boysmight learn something of the terrors of the law divine. Out of school,however, no child ever had a parent more indulgent or moreaffectionate. The post of schoolmaster is honourable and one thatshould be desired, yet I have sometimes wished, when the disagreeablemoments of swishing were upon me, that the hand of the executioner hadbelonged to some other boy's father--say, the father of Sam Semple.
I will tell you how he used to talk. I remember one day--it might beyesterday--he was standing on the Lady's Mount and looking down uponthe gardens and fields which now lie between the ancient walls and themodern town. "Look, boy," h
e said, "you see fields and gardens: onthose fields stood formerly monasteries and convents: these gardenswere once enclosed--you may still discern some of the stone wallswhich surrounded them, for monk and friar. All the friars were here,so great was the wealth of the town. On that green field behind thechurch of St. Nicholas was the house of the Austin Friars: somefragments of these buildings have I discovered built into the houseson the west side of the field: I should like to pull down the modernhouses in order to display those fragments: almost at our feet lay thehouse of the Black Friars, yonder to the south, between the road tothe gate and the river Var, was the friary of the White Friars orCarmelites: there is the tower of the Grey Friars, who wereFranciscans. On the south side of St. Margaret's there are walls andwindows, with carved mullions and arches--they belong to a college ofpriests or perhaps a Benedictine House--there must have beenBenedictines in the town; or perhaps they belonged to a nunnery: manynunneries stood beside parish churches.
"This is part of the wall of the town. 'Tis a pity that it should fallinto decay, but when walls are no longer wanted for defence they areneglected. First the weather loosens the stones of the battlements; orperhaps they fall into the moat: or the people take them away forbuilding. I wonder how much of the wall of Lynn is built into thechurches and the houses and the garden walls; then the whole face ofthe wall disappears; then if it is a Roman wall there is left a coreof concrete as in London wall which I have seen here and there wherethe houses are not built against it. And here is a point which Icannot get over. The wall of Lynn is two miles long: that of London isthree miles long, as I am credibly informed by Stow and others. Wasthen, the town of Lynn at any time able to raise and to defend a walltwo miles in length? It seems incredible. Yet why build a wall longerthan could be defended? Were these fields and gardens once streetsbetween the religious houses? Certain it is that Lynn Episcopi, as itwas then called, was formerly a very busy place yet, I apprehend, morebusy than at present in proportion only to the increased wealth andpopulation of the country."
So he would talk to me, I suppose, because he could never find anybodyelse who would listen to him. Those who read this page will verylikely resemble the company to whom my father ventured upon suchdiscourse of ancient things. They would incline their heads; theywould take a drink: they would sigh: they would say, "Why, sir, sinceyou say so, doubtless it is so. No one is likely to dispute the point,but if you think upon it the time is long ago and ... I think,neighbours, the wind has shifted a point to the nor'east."
The town preserves, in spite of neglect and oblivion, more of theappearance of the age than most towns. The Guildhall, where they showthe sword and the silver cup of King John, is an ancient andnoteworthy building: there are the old churches: there are almshouseand hospitals: there is a customhouse which the Hollanders enviouslydeclare must have been brought over from their country and set uphere, so much does it resemble their own buildings. Our streets arefull of remains: here a carving in marble: here a window of ancientshape, cut in stone: here a piece of carved work from some ancientchantry chapel: here a deserted and mouldering court: here a houseoverhanging, gabled, with carved front: here a courtyard with anancient house built round it; and with the narrow streets such as onefinds only in the most ancient parts of our ancient cities. We havestill our winding lanes with their irregularities: houses plantedsideways as well as fronting the street: an irregular alignment:gables instead of a flat coping: casement windows not yet transformedby the modern sash: our old taverns; our old walls; our old marketplaces; and the ancient bridges which span the four streams runningthrough the midst of our town. By the riverside you may find thesailors and the craftsmen who belong to a seaport: at the customhouseyou may meet the merchants and the shippers: in the market places youmay find the countrymen and countrywomen--they talk an uncouthlanguage and their manners are rough, but they are honest: and if yougo to the church of St. Margaret's or St. Nicholas any day for morningprayers but especially on Sunday you may find among the congregationmaidens and matrons in rich attire, the former as beautiful as in anytown or country may be met; the latter stately and dignified andgracious withal.