Through East Anglia in a Motor CarVincent, James Edmund
General
Through East Anglia in a Motor Car
Vincent, James Edmund
Norfolk (England) -- Description and travel; Suffolk (England) -- Description and travel
By the way, why is the "Great White Horse" an hotel sign in East
Anglia?--not that I can endorse the description of it as "a stone statue of
some rampacious animal, with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an
insane cart-horse." It seems to me quite reasonably like to a Suffolk
Punch, except in colour, and one finds Phidias never, although Apelles
sometimes, over inn doors. But why a white horse? One expects such signs in
the parts about Berks, where the classic Vale is named after the gigantic
symbol on the northward side of the Downs, of which a simple explanation
has become impossible, owing to the tiresome growth of knowledge. But why,
despising all commonplace explanations, have we encountered a "White Horse"
in Suffolk? Well, one of the many explanations of the White Horse _par
excellence_ is that it was taken from the horse delineated on Philip's
stater, which was copied a good deal in Britain, and an explanation of the
"White Horse"--I beg its pardon, the "Great White Horse"--of Ipswich may be
that it had its origin in the horse figured on some of the Icenian coins
that have been discovered in East Anglia. Or, again, it may be simply a
survival of the ancient Saxon totem. Some such desultory speculation as
this may serve to soothe the mind of an evening at Ipswich--not that after
motoring all day the mind needs much soothing. But I would counsel all male
motorists to burn their last incense of tobacco, as my friend and I did, in
the warm bar-parlour on the side of the courtyard over against the main
door, for thus shall they see the native of Ipswich in his natural state.
The discovery of "this amazing England," as Mr. Kipling has said well, is
the main joy of motoring; still in the evening one may do much worse things
than pursue the proper study of mankind in easy-going mood, and a
provincial bar-parlour is not a bad place in which to do it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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