BEDINGHAM, DITCHINGHAM & THE FARMS 29 



to return sober from a dinner-party. On these festive occasions 

 each man's wife, indeed, was expected to support and see him home. 



When in 1793 Chateaubriand, whom, so says local tradition, 

 his pupils used to call Monsieur ' Shatterbrain,' came to England 

 as a refugee in the days of the Terror, he drifted down to Bungay, 

 how or why I do not know, where he supported himself by giving 

 French lessons in the neighbourhood. Amongst his pupils was 

 Charlotte Ives, the daughter and only child of the hard-drinking 

 parson, a very pretty and charming young lady with large dark 

 eyes which are still remembered in this neighbourhood. The 

 exiled Frenchman was tender, and Charlotte, it seems, was im- 

 pressionable ; at any rate, she welcomed his advances, and being a 

 young woman of determined mind, persuaded her well-to-do parents 

 to overlook the emigre's lack of means and position and to put 

 no obstacle in his amorous path. Time went on, but although the 

 attentions continued, as nothing tangible came of them, Mrs. Ives, 

 the mother, thinking that he did not speak because of a natural 

 delicacy that sprang from his lack of fortune, took Chateaubriand 

 aside in the old red house in Bridge Street, and explained to him 

 frankly that as they were mutually attached, and as their daughter 

 would be well provided for, his misfortunes need be no obstacle 

 to their union. The gallant Frenchman looked up and sighed, 

 then he looked down and murmured : ' Helas ! Madame, je suis 

 desole ; mats je suis marie ! ' For all the time this poetic soul 

 could boast a wife in France ! 



In the end the young lady, getting over her disappointment, 

 married a sailor who became Admiral Sutton, and lived for many 

 years as a wife and widow at the Lodge. When in after days 

 Chateaubriand returned to England as the Ambassador of France, 

 a meeting took place between him and his old love, Mrs. Sutton. 

 At first it was arranged that they should see each other here at 

 Ditchingham, but in the end she went to London, and what passed 

 at the interview I do not know. 



About this Mrs. Sutton is told another rather interesting story. 

 When she was a widow at the Lodge she engaged for her sons a 



