The Thames Part 2

Farther up we have a repet.i.tion of twin villages, linked by a bridge, veritable Siamese twins, a fact which is interesting and curious.

Pangbourne and Whitchurch dwell in the same sort of amicable rivalry as do Streatley and Goring. They may be at war between themselves but they hold together against the world.

Streatley certainly cannot fail to yield the palm to Goring for beauty.

For Goring is considered by many critics to be the very prettiest village on the river, a claim which its quaint main street, falling down the hillside to the river at right angles, does much to establish. But the surroundings of Streatley, the splendid sweep of heights, which back it up, cannot be rivalled by Goring. The road running through both crosses the river, and it is ancient in very truth. It was used by the Romans and formed part of the famous Icknield Way, but was made long before their time. For generations before history begins bands of furtive men, ready for surprise, and as suspicious as wild animals, must have padded on bare feet down one line of hills, across the river ford, and mounted the heights again, keenly scanning the country for possible enemies. No neat creeper-covered red brick cottages then, no church even, though Goring church is very old, dating back to Norman times, and having been the church of an Augustinian priory. No mills even, not the most primitive, and though neither village can be accused of ruining its beauty in a frantic search after modernism--the mill at Goring, in spite of its mossy roof, gleaming green and russet, frequented by the flocks of white pigeons, has adopted an electric generating station! From the electric-power methods to the Ancient Britons is indeed a far cry!

Pangbourne and Whitchurch, taken as a couple, cannot vie with Goring and Streatley; though Pangbourne is pretty enough, and the river near it is island-broken, and particularly attractive. The reach succeeding Goring and Streatley is dull right up to Wallingford. In some points Wallingford and Abingdon may claim brotherhood, they are of the same size and about them hangs the same atmosphere, but the river at Abingdon is incomparably more interesting. Of Wallingford something more must be said in the historical reminiscences, and for the time we may leave it, and, skipping Dorchester, already mentioned, and Sutton-Courtney, another beauty spot, with an incomparable "pool", go on to Abingdon.

Of the bridge we have already spoken--there it stands, Burford Bridge, old and irregular, with straggling arches, some round, some pointed. The bridge is long and rests partly on an island on which is built the Nag's Head Inn, whose garden occupies the island. The abbey buildings, still partly standing, founded by Cissa in 675, is one of the most interesting features of the town. The long range of wall, and the mighty exterior chimney, probably built about the fourteenth century, show up in season amid ma.s.ses of horse-chestnut blossom, for which the town is famous. Henry I, the learned Beauclerc, was here educated from his twelfth year.

Christ's Hospital, as it is called, with a hall dating from 1400, is one of the sights of Abingdon, and the day to see it is that on which eighty loaves of bread are distributed to the poor people of the town. This occurs once a week.

With Abingdon we get within range of Oxford, and what remains is distinctly in the Oxford zone, just as all the river below Hampton is London in character. The famous Oxford meadows, with their range of wild flowers, rival the Swiss meadows.

The profusion of flowers in the riverside gardens has already been noted, but these differ little, except in richness of growth, from those usually found in cottage gardens. More interesting to those studying the Thames as a theme are the flowers growing wild along the banks, which are native to the river. Among these may be reckoned the purple loosestrife, with its tapering gaily coloured spikes standing often four feet high, and at times mistaken for a foxglove; also the pink-flowering willow-herb, the wild mustard with its raw tone of yellow, the buckbean growing in low-lying stagnant places, and the tall yellow iris, clear-cut and soldierly, with its broad-bladed leaves rustling along the margin of the banks. Not less beautiful are the burr-reeds and flowering rushes, the marsh-mallows and the cuckoo-flowers, found in many parts of the river; but the growth of wild flowers, including these and others, is richest of all in the meadows below Oxford. Here the fritillaries are especially noted:--

I know what white, what purple fritillaries, The gra.s.sy harvest of the river fields Above by Ensham, down by Sandford yields.

--_Matthew Arnold._

Also the yellow iris, the cuckoo flower, the water villarsia, the purple orchis, the willow-weed, and many another are here seen in full perfection. The Nuneham woods rank with the Oxford meadows as an attraction, and the inn at Sandford still holds its own, though overshadowed by a paper mill.

There is one glorious gem by the river which is in a category by itself, and is unapproached by rivals; this is the small church of Iffley. Its architecture is not pure, but its claim to date from Norman times is undisputed. No one pa.s.sing along the meadows should fail to stop at Iffley and see some genuine Norman mouldings and ma.s.sive architecture.

After this we come to Oxford and may stand on Folly Bridge, and as we watch the water flowing swiftly beneath our feet may run with it in imagination past all the beauties and all the places of interest already described, on by cool meadows and overshadowing trees until it meets the flooding uptide below Richmond and mingling with it in the ebb is lost in the "town" water of Brentford and Hammersmith, and so plunges into the thick grey flood by London, and on by wharves and docks until--

Stately prows are rising and bowing, Shouts of mariners winnow the air, And level banks for sands endowing The tiny green ribbon that showed so fair.

--_Jean Ingelow._

No river in the world can show so wonderful a gallery of great names, or so noted a collection of world's men, in connection with it. Perhaps the two names which arise at once to everyone's mind are those of Pope and Walpole, who lived so near one another at Twickenham. Pope was at Twickenham from 1719-44, and produced here his most famous works, including the last books of the _Odyssey_, the _Dunciad_, and the _Essay on Man_, but he is not by these remembered on the river, his claim to notice is that he made a curious underground grotto, of which he wrote:--

From the River Thames you see through my arch up a walk of the wilderness to a kind of open temple, wholly composed of sh.e.l.ls in the rustic manner, and from that distance under the temple, you look down through a sloping arcade of trees, and see the sails on the river, pa.s.sing suddenly and vanishing as through a perspective gla.s.s. When you shut the doors of this grotto it becomes on the instant from a luminous room a camera obscura, on the walls of which all objects of the river, hills, woods, and boats, are forming a moving picture in their visible radiation.

Pope had known the river from his birth. His parents lived at Binfield, about nine miles from Windsor. Part of Windsor Forest is still called Pope's Wood, and his poem on Windsor Forest must contain some of his earliest impressions. He was two years at Chiswick, after leaving Binfield, and then bought the house at Twickenham with which his name is chiefly a.s.sociated. Long before this, however, he had been a popular visitor at Mapledurham, where the glorious old Elizabethan mansion near the church still shelters Blounts as it did in his day and long before.

Two pretty daughters of the house, described by Gay as--

The fair-hair'd Martha and Teresa brown,

competed for the honour of Pope's attentions, even though he was "a little miserable object, so weak that he could not hold himself upright without stays, so sickly that his whole life was a continued illness"; his genius, early recognized, concealed by its blaze such trifles. His poems in many places keep alive the sisters' names, and in the Mapledurham MS Collection much of his correspondence is preserved. There does not seem to have been any question of his marriage with either of the girls, and it is doubtful if his connection with them was altogether for their good; but at any rate it has added l.u.s.tre to the family records. Teresa once a.s.sured him, he tells us, "that but for some whims of that kind (propriety) she would go a-raking with me in man's clothes".

[Ill.u.s.tration: PANGBOURNE]

One detail of Pope's garden is so peculiarly a.s.sociated with the river that it must be mentioned. It is said that the weeping willow grown by him was the parent of all the weeping willows in England, and if so many a Thames vista owes an added touch of beauty to him.

Pope's grotto has taken so much hold on the popular imagination that it ranks only second to his hideous and grotesque villa by the riverside, which was recently occupied by Henry Labouchere, M.P. The real interest of the place lies in the literary coteries which met in the house, including such men as Swift and Gay, who helped by suggestions and designs during the building of the famous Marble Hill for the Countess of Suffolk, friend of George II. Gay in particular was a _persona grata_ with the countess, and occupied a special suite of rooms set aside for him at Marble Hill.

It was three years after Pope's death that Walpole came to the neighbourhood; he had the mania for fantastic building effects even more strongly than the poet. Pope had made his villa peculiar enough in all conscience, but Walpole's so-called Gothic in the rebuilding of Strawberry Hill was a medley of every sort of architectural effect which could conceivably be cla.s.sed under that heading. "Not to mention minute discordances, there are several parts of Strawberry Hill which belong to the religious, and others to the castellated, form of Gothic architecture." Walpole solemnly boasted that his "house will give a lesson in taste to all who visit it". It might have done so, but not exactly in the way he intended. He made the place a perfect museum, and it became the fashion to visit Strawberry Hill. The Earl of Bath was so enchanted with it that he wrote a ballad, which, in its own kind, might well take rank with the architectural effort which inspired it. Every verse ended:

But Strawberry Hill, but Strawberry Hill Must bear away the palm.

Walpole wrote of the place, soon after he had acquired it: "Two delightful roads, which you would call dusty, supply me continually with coaches and chaises, barges as solemn as barons of the exchequer move under my window.

Richmond Hill and Ham walks round my prospect; but, thank G.o.d! the Thames is between me and the d.u.c.h.ess of Queensberry!"

He used to term the mansion his "paper house" because, the walls being very slight, and the roof not very secure, in the heavy rains it was apt to leak, "but," adds an enthusiastic writer of his own time, "in viewing the apartments, particularly the magnificent gallery, all such ideas vanished in admiration".

After his first visit to Paris, Walpole never wore a hat, and used to go out walking over his soaking lawns in thin slippers. He sat much in the breakfast-room, which gave a view toward the Thames, and his constant companion was an inordinately fat little dog. He wrote the _Castle of Otranto_ in eight days, or rather eight nights, for he says his "general hours of composition are from ten o'clock at night till two in the morning".

The squirrels at Strawberry Hill were a great feature; regularly after breakfast Walpole used to mix a large basin of bread-and-milk and throw it out to them. He was very fond of animals, he even used to cut up bread and spread it on the dining-room mantelpiece, thus drawing a number of expectant mice from their holes!

It troubled him greatly when he became Earl of Orford, at the advanced age of seventy-four, on the death of his nephew. He could not see why, sitting at home in his own room, he should be called by a new name!

The most notable fact connected with Strawberry Hill was the printing-press Walpole there established, from which he issued many of his own, and some of his friend, the poet Gray's, works.

Henry Fielding came to Twickenham, having first married, as his second choice, his late wife's maid. He was only here about a year. Sir G.o.dfrey Kneller, too, was a resident; and Turner, having built here a summer resort, and called it Sandycombe Lodge, used it from 1814-26. So that, all things considered, Twickenham may boast a considerable galaxy of stars.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOLLY BRIDGE, OXFORD]

Though the names of Pope and Walpole are best known from their long a.s.sociation with the river, by far the n.o.blest name that Thames can boast is that of Milton. It was as a young man, fresh from the University, that he came to live for five years with his parents at Horton, near Wraysbury.

Horton is not exactly on the river, but it is very near, and the influence of the scenery must have been strong on the delicate youth nicknamed "the lady", whose genius was already blossoming. He walked far and wide over the rich, well-watered land, down to the river's banks with its overhanging trees. In many of his stately poems little word pictures, reminiscences of these quiet days, are found:

By the rushy-fringed bank Where grows the willow and the osier dank.

--_Comus._

Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use Of shades and wanton winds and gushing brooks.

--_Lycidas._

The house in which Milton lived has vanished, in fact the only one of his many residences remaining is that at Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks. But the pretty little church at Horton, close by which the house was situated, still stands. The poet's only sister was married, his younger brother an occasional visitor, and, as his father was well on in years, the life must have been singularly quiet. Milton was only in his twenty-fourth year when he left the University, but already his poems had shown the bent of his mind. He was at Horton from 1632-38, and he himself says he spent there "a complete holiday in turning over the Greek and Latin writers". Hardly the kind of holiday that would commend itself to the Etonians not so many miles off. Yet this "holiday" was productive of _L'Allegro_, _Il Penseroso_, _Arcades_, and _Comus_, all ranking among the greatest cla.s.sics in the English language.

It is in single lines the effect of the landscape he knew best is seen.

By hedgerow elms on hillocks green.

Meadows trim with daisies pied,

are redolent of the Thames country. Milton's mother died in 1637, and was buried in Horton Church: soon after the poet went abroad.

Another poet of the first rank who may be claimed by the Thames is Sh.e.l.ley, who was at Great Marlow when he wrote _The Revolt of Islam_ and _Alastor_. The cottage is now divided into four and is easy to see, as there is a long inscription, giving details about the poet's occupation, upon the front of it. _The Revolt of Islam_ was written partly as he sat in the Quarry Woods and partly in a boat; so it belongs peculiarly to the river.

Matthew Arnold has already been mentioned, and many of his poems show strong impressions of the river scenery. He was born and is buried at Laleham, where his father, the afterwards famous Dr. Arnold of Rugby, had settled down to take pupils for the Universities.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STREATLEY HILLS]

Another name the Thames can claim is that of Cowley. The house in which he lived for two years before his death in 1665 is still standing, at Chertsey.

It is easy to see, therefore, that the river can boast more poets of high rank than any other celebrated men. This makes it the more peculiar that there is no great poem on the subject.

Above Molesey Lock, at Hampton, stands the house bought by the great actor Garrick in 1754. The place is known better by the little Shakespeare Temple near the water than by the galaxy of great names drawn thither by Garrick himself. We have in Fitzgerald's _Life of Garrick_ a living picture of the daily comings and goings; we see Mrs. Garrick discussing laurel cuttings with the Vicar, or eating figs in the garden with her husband, who was dressed in dark-blue coat with gold-bound b.u.t.tonholes. At all sorts of odd hours Dr. Johnson burst into the family circle, and when consulted as to how best the ridiculous little "Temple" could be reached from the house, from which it was divided by a road, broke out in all earnestness in favour of a tunnel, as against a bridge, in the words: "David, David, what can't be over-done may be under-done!" One terrible night, when the sensitive actor read aloud from Shakespeare, his guest, Lord March, fell asleep. The sting was the deeper as "Davie" dearly loved a lord! The river fetes Garrick gave were renowned, and the fame of them remains to this day; alas, the knack of river pageantry has long been lost!

Carlyle, in later days a frequent visitor to the villa, once drove a golf ball through the centre of a leafy archway clean into the river.

History is notoriously dull, except to those who have a taste for it, but yet there are scenes in history which may stand out as brightly as any pictures. Of such is the signing of Magna Charta, the greatest act recorded in the whole of our English annals. Well might it be thought that London, by means of the Tower or Westminster, would have claimed to be the theatre of so epoch-making a scene; not at all; as the youngest child knows, it was no building which witnessed the deed, but a Thames-side meadow, which may be seen to-day all unchanged, and happily as yet unbuilt on. The island, which goes by the name of Magna Charta Island, is now generally supposed to have usurped a claim properly belonging to the meadow by Thames side, and we confess to a certain pleasure that this discovery has been made; for the island is altogether too trim, too neat, and the house thereon too modern, to a.s.sort with thoughts of a mighty past. No, we who love the river believe rather, and in our belief we are backed by the latest research, that the flat land, encircled by the heights of Cooper's Hill, as by the rising tiers of seats, was the amphitheatre whereon the great scene was enacted. We can imagine it crowded by mailed men who trampled under foot the mushy gra.s.s, mushy even in the season of summer, an English June. The exact date, never to be forgotten, is June 15, 1215.