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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..75a77af --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #64801 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64801) diff --git a/old/64801-0.txt b/old/64801-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 7a8a714..0000000 --- a/old/64801-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2511 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Warwickshire Avon, by Arthur Thomas -Quiller-Couch - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: The Warwickshire Avon - -Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch - -Illustrator: Alfred Parsons - -Release Date: March 12, 2021 [eBook #64801] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at - http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - available at The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WARWICKSHIRE AVON *** - - [Illustration: NASEBY CHURCH] - - - - - [Illustration: - - _The - Warwickshire - Avon_ - - _Notes by - A. T. Quiller-Couch_ - - _Illustrations by - Alfred Parsons_ - - _New York - Harper & Brothers - 1892_] - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1891, BY HARPER & BROTHERS. - - _All rights reserved._ - -[Illustration: _To all the Friends with whom I have spent happy hours on - the Avon the drawings in this book are dedicated A.P._] - - - - - [Illustration: THE WARWICKSHIRE AVON] - - -Our journey opens in Northamptonshire, and in that season when the year -grows ancient, - - “Not yet on summer’s death, nor on the birth - Of trembling winter.” - -In the stubble the crack! crack! of a stray gun speaks, now and again, -of partridge-time. Over the pastures, undulating with ridge and furrow, -where the black oxen feed, patches of gloom and gleam are scurrying as -the wind--westerly, with a touch of north--chases the light showers -under a vivid sun. Along the drab road darts a bullfinch, his family -after him; pauses a moment among the dogrose berries; is off again, and -lost in the dazzle ahead. - -A high grassy ridge stands up from the plain; and upon it, white and -salient against a dark cloud, the spire of a village church. From its -belfry, says the sexton, you may spy forty parishes: but more important -are the few cottages immediately below. They seem conspicuously -inglorious: yet their name is written large in the histories. It speaks -of a bright June day when along this ridge--then unenclosed and -scattered with broom and heath flowers--the rattle of musketry and -outcries of battle rolled from morning to late afternoon, by which time -was lost a king with his kingdom. For the village is Naseby. Here, by -the market green, the Parliamentarians ranged their baggage. Yonder, on -Mill Hill and Broad Moor, with just a hollow between, the two armies -faced each other; the royalists with bean-stalks in their hats, their -enemies with badges of white linen. To the left, Sulby hedges were lined -with Ireton’s dragoons. And the rest is an old story: Rupert, tardily -returning from a headlong charge, finds no “cause” left to befriend, no -foe to fight. While his men were pillaging, Cromwell has snatched the -day. His Majesty is flying through Market-Harborough towards Leicester, -and thither along the dusty roads his beaten regiments trail after him, -with the Ironsides at their heels, hewing hip and thigh. - -[Illustration: NASEBY MONUMENT] - -An obelisk, set about with thorn-bushes and shaded by oak and birch, -marks the battle-field. It rests on a base of rough moss-grown stones, -and holds out “a useful lesson to British kings never to exceed the -bounds of their just prerogative, and to British subjects never to -swerve from the allegiance due to their legitimate monarch.” And the -advice is well meant, no doubt; but, as the Watch asked of Dogberry, -“How if they will not?” - -[Illustration: _The Avon from Noseby field to Wolston_] - -Naseby, however, has another boast. Here, beside the monument, we are -standing on the water-shed of England. In the fields below rise many -little springs, whereof those to the south and east unite to form the -Ise brook, which runs into the Nen, and so find their goal in the North -Sea; those to the west form the Avon, and seek the British Channel. And -it is westward that we turn our faces--we, whom you shall briefly know -as P. and Q.; for the business that brings us to Naseby is to find here -the source of Shakespeare’s Avon, and so follow its windings downward to -the Severn. - -[Illustration: SULBY ABBEY] - -The source is modest enough, being but a well amid the “good cabbage” of -the inn garden. To-day, a basin of mere brick encloses it; but in 1823, -the date of the obelisk, some person of refinement would adorn also Avon -Well; and procured from Mr. Groggan of London a Swan of Avon in plaster; -and Mr. Groggan contrived that the water should gush elegantly from her -bill, but not for long. For the small boy came with stones, after his -kind; and now, sans wing, sans head, sans everything, she crouches among -the cabbages, “a rare bird upon earth.” - -From Avon Well the spring flows to the northwest, and we follow it -through “wide-skirted meads” dotted with rubbing-posts and divided by -stiff ox fences (the bullfinches of the fox-hunter--for we are in the -famous Pytchley country), past a broad reservoir fringed with reed and -poplars, and so through more pastures to Sulby Abbey. And always, as we -look back, Naseby spire marks our starting-point. About three miles -down, the runnel has grown to a respectable brook, quite large enough to -have kept supplied the abbey fish-ponds. - -[Illustration: WELFORD CANAL HOUSE] - -On the site of this abbey--founded circa 1155 by William de Wydeville in -honor of the Blessed Virgin--now stands a red-brick farm-house, passably -old, and coated with ivy. Of the vanished building it conserves but two -relics--a stone coffin and the floriated cover of another. The course of -the stream beside it, and for some way below, is traced by the -thorn-bushes under which it winds (in springtime how pleasantly!) until -Welford is reached--a small brick village. Here, after rioting awhile in -a maze of spendthrift channels, it recombines its waters to run under -its first bridge, and begin a sober life by supplying a branch of the -Grand Junction Canal. A round-house at the canal’s head forms, with the -bridge, what Mr. Samuel Ireland, in his Beauties of the Warwickshire -Avon (1795), calls “an agreeable landscape, giving that sort of view -which, being simple in itself, seldom fails to constitute elegance.” -Rather, to our thinking, the landscape’s beauty lies in its suggestion, -in that here we touch the true heart of the country life; of quiet -nights dividing slow, familiar days, during which man and man’s work -grow steeped in the soil’s complexion, secure of all but - -[Illustration: SWING-BRIDGE NEAR WELFORD] - - “the penalty of Adam, - The season’s difference.” - -It is enough that we are grateful for it as we pass on down the valley -where the canal and stream run side by side--the canal demurely between -straight banks, the stream below trying always how many curves it can -make in each field, until quieted for a while by the dam of a little -red-brick mill, set down all alone in the brilliant green. The -thorn-bushes are giving place to willows--not such as fringe the Thames, -but gray trees of a smaller leaf, and, by your leave, more beautiful. -Our walk as we follow the towpath of the canal, having the river on our -left, is full of peaceful incidents and subtle revelations of color--a -lock, a quaint swing-bridge, a swallow taking the sunlight on his breast -as he skims between us and the inky clouds, a white horse emphasizing -the meadow’s verdure. The next field holds a group of sable--a flock of -rooks, a pair of black horses, a dozen velvet-black oxen, beside whom -the thirteenth ox seems consciously indecorous in a half-mourning suit -of iron-gray. Next, from a hawthorn “total gules” with autumn berries, -we start six magpies; and so, like Christian, “give three skips and go -on singing” beneath the spires and towers of this and that small village -(Welford and North and South Kilworth) that look down from the edging -hills. - -[Illustration: STANFORD HALL] - -Below South Kilworth, where a windmill crowns the upland, the valley -turns southward, and we leave the canal to track the Avon again, that -here is choked with rushes. For a mile or two we pursue it, now jumping, -now crossing by a timely pole or hurdle, from Northamptonshire into -Leicestershire and back (for the stream divides these counties), until -it enters the grounds of Stanford Hall, and under the yellowing -chestnuts of the park grows suddenly a dignified sheet of water, with -real swans. - -Stanford Hall (the seat of Lord Bray) is, according to Ireland, -“spacious, but wants those pictorial decorations that would render it an -object of attention to the traveller of taste.” But to us, who saw it in -the waning daylight, the comfortable square house seemed full of quiet -charm, as did the squat perpendicular church, untouched by the restorer, -and backed by a grassy mound that rises to the eastern window, and the -two bridges (the older one disused) under which the Avon leaves the -park. A twisted wych-elm divides them, its roots set among broad burdock -leaves. - -[Illustration: ROMAN CAMP, LILBURNE] - -Below Stanford the stream contracts again, and again meanders among -black cattle and green fields to Lilburne. Here it winds past a -congeries of grassy mounds, dotted now with black-faced sheep, that was -once a Roman encampment, the Tripontium mentioned by the emperor -Antoninus in his journey from London to Lincoln. Climbing to the -eminence of the prætorium and gazing westward, we see on the high ground -two beech-crowned tumuli side by side, clearly an outpost or speculum -overlooking Watling Street, the Roman road that passes just beyond the -ridge “from Dover into Chestre.” This same high ground is the eastern -hem of Dunsmore Heath, once so dismally ravaged by the Dun Cow of -legend, till Guy of Warwick rode out and slew her in single combat. The -heath, a long ridge of lias bordering our river to the south for many -miles to come, is now enclosed and tilled; but its straggling cottages, -duck ponds, and furze clumps still suggest the time when all was common -land. - -At our feet, close under the encampment, an antique bridge crosses Avon. -Beside it is hollowed a sheep-washing pool, and across the road stands a -little church. Tempted by its elaborate window mouldings, we poke our -heads in at the door, but at once withdraw them to cough and sneeze. The -place is given over to dense smoke and a small decent man, who says that -a service will be held in ten minutes, and what to do with the stove he -doesn’t know. So we leave him, and pass on, trudging towards Catthorpe, -a mile below. - -A wooden paling, once green, but subdued by years to all delicate tints, -fronts the village street. Behind, in a garden of cypress and lilacs, -lies the old vicarage, with deep bow-windows sunk level with the turf, a -noteworthy house. For John Dyer, author of “Grongar Hill”--“Bard of the -Fleece,” as Wordsworth hails him--held Catthorpe living for a few years -in the last century; and here, while his friends - - “in the town, in the busy, gay town, - Forgot such a man as John Dyer,” - -looked out on this gray garden wall, over which the fig-tree clambers, -and “relished versing.” The church stands close by, a ragged cedar -beside it, an elm drooping before its plain tower. We take a long look -before descending again to the river, like Dyer - - “resolved, this charming day, - Into the open fields to stray, - And have no roof above our head - But that whereon the gods do tread.” - -Just below Catthorpe, by a long line of arches called Dow - -[Illustration: STANFORD CHURCH] - -(or Dove) Bridge, Watling Street pushes across the river with Roman -directness. This bridge marks the meeting-point of three counties, for -beyond it we step into Warwickshire. It is indifferently modern, yet -“the scene, though simple, aided by a group of cattle then passing, had -sufficient attraction in the meridian of a summer sun to induce” the -egregious Ireland “to attempt a sketch of it as a picturesque view,” and -supply us with a sentence to be quoted a thousand times during our -voyage, and always with ribald appreciation. - -[Illustration: CATTHORPE CHURCH] - -The valley narrows as we draw near Rugby. Clifton on Dunsmore, eminent -by situation only, stands boldly up on the left, and under it, by -Clifton mill, the stream runs down to Brownsover. Brownsover too has its -mill, with a pool and cluster of wych-elms below. And hard by we find -(as we think) Tom Brown’s willow, the tree which wouldn’t “throw out -straight hickory shoots twelve feet long, with no leaves, worse luck!” -where Tom sat aloft, and “Velveteens,” the keeper, below, through that -soft, hazy day in the Mayfly season, till the sun came slanting through -the branches, and told of locking-up near at hand. We are hushed as we -stand before it, and taste the reward of such as “identify.” - -[Illustration: DOW BRIDGE ON WATLING STREET] - -And now, just ahead, on the same line of hill as Clifton, stands the -town of Rugby. No good view of it can be found from the river-side, for -the middle distance is always a straight line of railway sheds or -embankments. Perhaps the best is to be had from the towpath of the -Oxford Canal, marked high above our right by a line of larch and poplar, -where a tall aqueduct carries it over the river Swift. - -This is the stream which, coming from Lutterworth, bore down in 1427 the -ashes of John Wiclif to the Avon. Forty years after his peaceful -interment the Council of Constance gave orders to exhume and burn his -body, to see if it could be discerned from those of the faithful. “In -obedience thereto,” says Fuller, “Richard Fleming, bishop of Lincoln, -diocesan of Lutterworth, sent his officers (vultures with a quick sight -sent at a dead carcass!) to ungrave him accordingly. To Lutterworth they -come--sumner, commissary, official, chancellor, proctors, doctors, and -the servants (so that the remnant of the body would not hold out a bone -amongst so many hands), take what is left out of the grave, and burn -them to ashes, and cast them into Swift, a brook running hard by. Thus -the brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn -into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of -Wiclif are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the -world over.” - -For aught we know, the upper part of this stream may justify its name. - -[Illustration: RUGBY FROM BROWNSOVER MILL] - -The two streams unite in that green vale over which Dr. Arnold used to -gaze in humorous despair. “It is no wonder,” he said, “we do not like -looking that way, when one considers that there is nothing fine between -us and the Ural Mountains;” and, in a letter to Archbishop Whately,” -... we have no hills, no plains, not a single wood, and but one single -copse; no heath, no down, no rock, no river, no clear stream, scarcely -any flowers--for the lias is particularly poor in them--nothing but one -endless monotony of enclosed fields and hedge-row trees;” lastly, “I -care nothing for Warwickshire, and am in it like a plant sunk in the -ground in a pot; my roots never strike beyond the pot, and I could be -transplanted at any moment without tearing or severing my fibres.” And -we consent, in part, for the fibres of great men lie in their work, not -in this or that soil. But what fibres--not his own--were cracked when -Rugby lost its great schoolmaster we feel presently as, haunted by his -son’s noble elegy, we stand before the altar of the school chapel, where -he rests. - -[Illustration: AVON INN, RUGBY] - -At Rugby our narrative, hitherto smilingly pastoral, quickens to epic. -So far we had followed Avon afoot, but here we meant to launch a -Canadian canoe on its waters, creating a legend. She lay beside a small -river-side tavern, her bright basswood sides gleaming in the sunshine. A -small crowd had gathered, and was being addressed with volubility by a -high complexioned man of urbane demeanor. He was bareheaded and -coatless; he was shod in blue carpet slippers, on each of which a yellow -anchor (emblem of Hope) was entwined with sprays of the pink -convolvulus, typifying (according to P., who is a botanist), “I -recognize your worth, and will sustain it by judicious and tender -affection.” As we launched our canoe and placed our sacks on board, he -turned his discourse on us. It breathed the spirit of calm confidence. -There were long shallows just below (he said), and an uprooted willow -blocking the stream, and three waterfalls, and fences of barbed wire. He -enumerated the perils; he was sanguine about each; and ours was the -first canoe he ever set eyes on. - -We pushed off and waved good-bye. The sun shone in our faces; behind, -the voice of confidence shouted us over the first shallow. Our canoe -swung round a bend beside a small willow coppice, and we sighed as the -kindly crowd was hidden from us. - -We turned at the sound of stertorous breathing. A pair of blue slippers -came twinkling after us over the meadow. Our friend had fetched a -circuit round the coppice, and soon both craft and crew were as babes in -his hands. Was it a shallow?--he hounded us over. Was it a willow fallen -“ascaunt the brook?”--he drove us under, clambering himself along the -trunk, as once Ophelia, and exhorting always. At the foot of the first -waterfall he took leave of us, and turned back singing across the -fields. He was a good man, but would be obeyed. We learned from him, -first, that the art of canoeing has no limits; second, that the -“impenetrability of matter” is a discredited phrase; and, after the -manner of Bunyan, we called him Mr. Win-by-Will. - -By many dense beds of rushes, through which a flock of ducks scattered -before us, we dropped down to Newbold on Avon, a pretty village on the -hill-side, with green orchards sloping to the stream. By climbing -through them and looking due south, you may see the spire of Bilton, -where Addison lived for many years. Below Newbold the river tumbles over -two waterfalls, runs thence by a line of rush beds to a railway bridge, -and so beneath Caldecott’s famous spinney, where Tom Brown, East, and -the “Madman” sought the kestrel’s nest. Many Scotch firs mingle with the -beeches of the spinney, and just below them the stream divides, -enclosing a small island, and recombines to hold a southward course past -Holbrook Court. - -[Illustration: NEWBOLD UPON AVON] - -[Illustration: HOLBROOK COURT] - -Holbrook Court is a gloomy building that looks down its park slope upon -a weir, a red-brick mill, and a gloomier farm-house of stone. This -farm-house has a history, being all that is left of Lawford Hall, the -scene of the once notorious “Laurel-Water Tragedy.” - -[Illustration: LAWFORD MILL] - -The tale is briefly this: In 1780 Sir Theodosius Boughton, a vicious and -sickly boy, was squiring it at Lawford Hall, and fast drinking out his -puny constitution. “To him enter” an evil spirit in the shape of a -brother-in-law, an Irish adventurer, one Captain Donellan. This graduate -in vice took the raw scholar in hand, and with the better will as being -next heir to his estates. But it seems that drink and debauchery worked -too slowly for the impatient captain, for one evening the wretched boy -went to bed, called for his sleeping-draught, and drank the wrong liquid -out of the right bottle. And as for Captain Donellan, he bungled matters -somehow, and was hanged at Warwick in the following spring--an elegant, -well-mannered man in black, who displayed much ceremonious punctilio at -ascending the scaffold ahead of the sheriff. Ten years later Lawford -Hall was pulled down as an accursed thing, and the building before us is -all that survives of it. To-day the Gloire de Dijon rose, the jasmine, -and the ivy sprawl up its sad-colored walls and over the porch, which -still wears the date 1604. - -Either at Lawford Hall, or just above, at the old Holbrook Grange, -lived, in Elizabeth’s time, One-handed Boughton, who won an entirely -posthumous fame by driving a ghostly coach and six about the -country-side. His spirit was at length caught in a phial by certain of -the local clergy, corked down, sealed, thrown into a neighboring -marl-pit, and so laid forever. Therefore his only successes of late have -been in frightening maid-servants out of their situations at the farm. - -Leaving Lawford, we paddle through a land pastorally desolate, seeing, -often for miles together, neither man’s face nor woman’s. The canoe -darts in and out of rush beds; avoids now a shallow, now a snag, a clump -of reeds, a conglomerate of logs and pendent shrivelled flags, flotsam -of many floods; and again is gliding easily between meadows that hold, -in Touchstone’s language, “no assembly but horn beasts.” Our canoe wakes -strange emotions in these cattle. They lift their heads, snort, fling up -their heels, and, with rigid tails, come capering after us like so many -bacchanals. At length a fence stops them, and they obligingly watch us -out of sight. The next herd repeats the performance. And always the -river is vocal beside us, - - “Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge - He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;” - -while ahead the water-rat dives, or the moor-hen splashes from one green -brim to another; and around the land is slowly changing from the -monotonous to the “up-and-down-hilly;” and we, passing through it all, -are thankful. - -A small cottage appears beside some lime-pits on the right bank. Over -its garden gate a blackboard proclaims that here are the “Newnham Regis -Baths.” A certain Walter Bailey, M.D., writing in 1587 A Brief Discourse -of Certain Baths, etc., sings loud praise of these waters, but warns -drinkers to “consist in a mediocrity, and never to adventure to drink -above six, or at the utmost eight, pints in one day.” Also, he “will not -rashly counsel any to use them in the leap-years.” We disregarded this -latter warning, but observed the former; yet the plain man who gave us -our glassful asserted that a friend of his, “all hot and sweaty,” drank -two quarts of the water one summer day, and took no harm. As a fact, the -springs which here rise from the limestone were known and esteemed by -the Romans; the remains of their baths were found, and the present -one--a pump within a square paling--built on the same spot. But their -fame has not travelled of late. - -[Illustration: CHURCH LAWFORD] - -We embarked again, and were soon floating down to Church Lawford. What -shall be said of this spot? As we saw it happily, one slope of -green--vivid, yet in shadow--swelled up to darker elms and a tall church -tower, set high against an amber sunset. Beyond, the sky and the river’s -dim reaches melted together, through all delicate yellows, mauves, and -grays, into twilight. A swan, scurrying down stream before us, broke -the water into pools of gold. And so a bend swept Church Lawford out of -our sight and into our kindliest memories. - -Nearly opposite lies Newnham Regis, about a mile from its baths. In -Saxon times, they say, a king’s palace stood here; and three large -fish-ponds, with some mounds, remain for a sign of it. Here, beside a -pleasant mill, the foot-path crosses to Church Lawford. Just below, the -stream is blocked by an osier bed; and we struggled there for the half -of one mortal hour, and mused on the carpet slippers, and Hope, and such -things; and “late and at last” were out and paddling through the -uncertain light under the pointed arches of Bretford Bridge. - -[Illustration: RUINS OF NEWNHAM REGIS CHURCH] - -Here crosses the second great Roman road, the Fosseway, - - “that tilleth from Toteneys - From the one end of Cornewaile anon to Cateneys, - From the South-west to North-est, into Englonde’s ende. - _Fosse_ men callith thilke way, that by mony town doth wende.” - -[Illustration: _From Wolston to Wasperton_] - -Thenceforward for a mile we move in darkness over glimmering waters, -until a railway bridge looms ahead, and we spy, half a mile away, the -lights of a little station. This must be Brandon, we decide; and running -in beside the bank, begin a quick contention with the echo. - -Voices answer us, male and female, and soon many villagers are about us, -peering at the canoe. - -“Are we in time for the last train to Coventry?” - -Chorus answers “Yes;” only one melancholy stripling insists that it -isn’t likely. - -[Illustration: BRETFORD] - -And he is right. We hear a rumble; a red eye flames out; the last train, -with a hot trail of smoke, comes roaring over the bridge and shoots into -Brandon station. We are too late. - -“Beds?” - -The melancholy one echoes: “Beds! In Brandon?” - -“The inn?” - -“Well, you might try the inn.” - -We march up to try the inn. There are forty-four men in the bar, as we -have leisure to count, and all are drinking beer. Clearly we are not -wanted. The landlady has eyes like beads, black and twinkling, but they -will not rest on us. The outlook begins to be sombre, when P., who, -beneath a rugged exterior, hides much aptitude for human affairs, -announces that he has a way with landladies, and tries it. He says: - -“Can we have a horse and trap to take us to Coventry to-night? No? -That’s bad. Nor a bed? Dear me! Then please draw us half a pint of -beer.” - -The beer is brought. P. tastes it, looks up with a happy smile, and -begins again: - -“Can we have a horse and trap?” etc., etc. - -It is astounding, but at the tenth repetition of this formula the -landlady becomes as water, and henceforth we have our way with that inn. - -Moreover, we have the landlord’s company at supper--a deliberate, heavy -man, who tells us that he brews his own beer, and has twenty-three -children. He adds that the former distinction has given him many -friends, the latter many relatives. A niece of his is to be married at -Coventry to-morrow. - -Q., who ran into Coventry by an early train next morning to fetch some -letters that awaited us, was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the -bride as she stepped into her carriage. He reported her to be pretty, -and we wished her all happiness. P. meanwhile had strolled up the river -to Wolston Mill, which we had passed in the darkness, and he too had -praises to chant of that, and of a grand old Elizabethan farm-house that -he had found outside the village. - -We embarked again by Brandon Castle, the abode once of a Roman garrison, -and later of an exclusive Norman - -[Illustration: SITE OF BRANDON CASTLE] - -family that kept its own private gallows at Bretford, just above. Where -the castle stood now thrive the brier, the elder, the dogrose, the -blackthorn twined with clematis; the outer moat is become a morass, -choked with ragwort and the flowering rush; the inner moat is dry, and a -secular ash sprawls down its side. We left it to glide beneath a -graceful Georgian bridge; past a lawn dotted with sleek cattle, a small -red mill, a row of melancholy anglers, a mile of giant alders, and so -down to Ryton-on-Dunsmore, the western outpost of the great heath. As -the heath ended, the country’s character began to change, and all grew -open. On either hand broad pastures divided us from the arable slopes -where a month ago the gleaners were moving amid - - “Summer’s green, all girded up in sheaves;” - -and therefore by Ryton’s two mills and Ryton’s many alders we moved -slowly, inviting our souls, careless of Fate, that lay in her ambush, -soon to harry us. A broad road crossed above us, and, alighting, we -loitered by the bridge, and discovered a mile-stone that marks -eighty-seven miles from London and three from Coventry. We could descry -the three lovely spires of Lady Godiva’s town, mere needle-points above -the trees to northward. - -[Illustration: RYTON-ON-DUNSMORE] - -[Illustration: WOLSTON PRIORY] - -It was but shortly after that we came on an agreeable old gentleman, who -stood a-fishing with a little red float, and lied in his teeth, smiling -on us and asserting that Bubbenhall (where we had a mind to lunch) was -but a mile below. A mile!--for a crow, perhaps, but not for proper old -gentlemen, and most surely not for Avon. The freakish stream went round -and round, all meanders - -[Illustration: GLEANERS] - -with never a forthright, narrowing, shallowing, casting up here a snag -and there a thicket of reeds. And round and round for miles our canoe -followed it, as a puppy chases his own tail; yet Bubbenhall was not, nor -any glimpse of Bubbenhall. - -Herodotus, if we remember, tells of a village called Is beside the -Tigris, far above Babylon, at which all voyagers down the river must put -up on three successive nights, so curiously is the channel looped about -it. Nor, after twice renewing our acquaintance with one particular -guelder-rose bush, did we see our way to doubt the tale when we recalled -it that day. - -These windings above Bubbenhall have their compensations, keeping both -hand and eye amusedly alert as our canoe tacks to and fro, shooting down -the V of two shallows, or running along quick water beneath the bank, -brushing the forget-me-nots (the flower that Henry of Bolingbroke wore -into exile from the famous lists of Coventry, hard by), or parting -curtain after curtain of reeds to issue on small vistas that are always -new. And Bubbenhall is worth the pains to find--a tiny village of brick -and timber set amid elms on a quiet slope, where for ages “bells have -knolled to church” from the old brick-buttressed tower above. Below -sleeps a quaint mill, also of brick and timber, and from its weir the -river wanders northeast, then southeast, and runs to Stoneleigh Deer -Park. - -A line of swinging deer fences hangs under the bridge, the river -trailing between their bars. We push cautiously under them, and look to -right and left in amazement. A moment has translated us from a sluggish -brook, twisting between water plants and willows, to a pleasant river, -stealing by wide lawns, by slopes of bracken, by gigantic trees--oaks, -Spanish oaks, and wych-elms, stately firs, sweet chestnuts, and filmy -larch coppices. We are in Arden, the land - -[Illustration: IN STONELEIGH DEER PARK] - -of Rosalind and Touchstone, of Jaques and Amiens. Their names may be -French, English, what you will, but here they inhabit, and almost we -look to spy the suit of motley and listen for its bells, or expect a -glimpse of Corin’s crook moving above the ferns, Orlando’s ballads -Muttering on a chestnut, or the sad-colored cloak of Jaques beneath an -oak--such an oak as this monster, thirty-nine feet around--whose -“antique root” writhes over the red-sandstone rock down to the water’s -brim. The very bed of Avon has altered. He runs now over smooth slabs of -rock, and now he brawls by a shallow, and now, - - “where his fair course is not hindered, - He makes sweet music with the enamell’d stones.” - -Down to the shallow ahead of us--their accustomed ford--a herd of deer -comes daintily and splashes across, first the bucks, then the does in a -body. If they are here, why not their masters, the men and women whom we -know? We disembark, and letting the canoe drift brightly down stream, - -[Illustration: BUBBENHALL] - -stroll along the bank beside it, and “fleet the time carelessly,” as -they did in that golden world. - -Too soon we reach the beautiful sandstone bridge, tinted by time and -curtained with creepers, that divides the deer park from the home park; -and soon, beside an old oak, the size of Avon is almost doubled by -junction with the Sowe, a stream that comes winding past Stoneleigh -village on our right, and brings for tribute the impurities of Coventry. -The banks beside us are open no longer; but for recompense we have the -birds--the whir-r-r of wood-pigeons in the nigh willow copse, the heron -sailing high, the kingfisher sparkling before us, the green woodpecker -condensing a whole day’s brilliance on his one small breast, the -wild-duck, the splashing moor-hen, and water-fowl of rarer kinds--that -tell us we are nearing Stoneleigh Abbey. - -The abbey was founded in 1154 by Henry II. for a body of Cistercian -monks, and endowed with privileges “very many and very great, to wit, -free warren, infangthef, outfangthef, wayfs, strays, goods of felons and -fugitives, tumbrel, pillory, sok, sak, tole, team, amercements, murders, -assize of bread and beer; with a market and fair in the town of -Stoneleigh”--a comprehensive list, as it seems. There were, says -Dugdale, in the manor of Stoneleigh, at this time, “sixty-eight villains -and two priests; as also four bondmen or servants, whereof each held one -messuage, and one quatrone of land, by the services of making the -gallows and hanging of thieves; every one of which bondmen was to wear a -red clout betwixt his shoulders, upon his upper garment.” The original -building was burnt in 1245, and what little old work now remains belongs -to a later building. The abbey went the way of its fellows under Henry -VIII.; was granted to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; changed hands -once or twice; and was finally bought by Sir Thomas Leigh, alderman of -London, in Queen Elizabeth’s reign. The present Ionic mansion, now the -home of Lord Leigh, his descendant, was built towards the close of the -last century. The river spreads into a lake before it, and then, after -passing a weir, speeds briskly below a wooded bank, with tiny rapids, -down which our canoe dances gayly. As twilight overtakes us we reach -Ashow. - -[Illustration: STONELEIGH ABBEY, OCT. 15, 1884] - -A little weather-stained church stands by Ashow shore--a church, a -yew-tree, and a narrow graveyard. Close under it steals the gray river, -whispers by cottage steps where a crazy punt lies rotting, by dim willow -aits and eel bucks, and so passes down to silence and the mists. Seeing -all - -[Illustration: ASHOW] - -this, we yearn to live here and pass our days in gratuitous melancholy. - -We revisited Ashow next morning, and were less exacting. And the reason -was, that it rained. Indeed, we were soaked to the skin before paddling -a mile; and as for the canoe, - - “Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia, - And therefore I forbid my tears.” - -[Illustration: CHESFORD BRIDGE] - -We passed, like Mrs. Haller’s infant, “not dead, but very wet,” under -old Chesford Bridge, whereby the road runs to Kenilworth, that lies two -miles back from the river, and shall therefore, for once in its history, -escape description; and from Chesford Bridge reached Blakedown Mill and -another old bridge beside the miller’s house. This “simply elegant form -of landscape” led Samuel Ireland to ask “why man should with such eager -and restless ambition busy himself so often in the smoke and bustle of -populous cities, and lose his independence and too often his peace in -the pursuit of a phantom which almost eludes his grasp, little thinking -that with the accumulation of wealth he must create imaginary wants, -under which, perhaps, that wealth melts away as certainly as under the -more ready inlet of inordinate passion happiness is sacrificed.” We -infer that Mr. Samuel Ireland was never rained upon hereabouts. - -[Illustration: BLAKEDOWN MILL] - -Just below, on the north bank, rises Blacklow Hill, whither, on the 19th -of June, 1312, Piers Gaveston, the favorite of King Edward II., was -marched out from Warwick Castle by the barons to meet his doom. His head -was struck off, and, rolling down into a thicket, was picked up by a -“friar preacher” and carried off in his hood. On the rock beside the -scene of that grim revenge this inscription was rudely cut: “P. -GAVESTON, EARL OF CORNWALL, BEHEADED HERE + 1312;” and to-day a simple -cross also marks the spot. - -Hence, by the only rocks of which Avon can boast--and these are of -softest sandstone, their asperities worn all away by the weather--we -wind beneath Milverton village, with its odd church tower of wood, to -the weir and mill of Guy’s Cliffe. - -The beauties of this spot have been bepraised for centuries. Leland -speaks of them; Drayton sings them. - -[Illustration: GUY’S CLIFFE MILL] - -“There,” says Camden, “have yee a shady little wood, cleere and cristal -springs, mossie bottoms and caves, medowes alwaies fresh and greene, the -river rumbling heere and there among the stones with his streame making -a milde noise and gentle whispering, and, besides all this, solitary and -still quietness, things most grateful to the Muses.” Fuller, who knew it -well, calls it “a most delicious place, so that a man in many miles’ -riding cannot meet so much variety as there one furlong doth afford.” -The water-mill is mentioned in Domesday-book, and has been sketched -constantly ever since--a low, quaint pile, fronted by a recessed open -gallery, under which the water is forever sparkling and frothing, fresh -from its spin over the mill-wheels, or tumble down the ledges of the -weir. - -[Illustration: GUY’S CLIFFE] - -And below this mill rises the famous cliff, hollowed with many caves, in -one of which lived Guy of Warwick, slayer of the Dun Cow, of lions, -dragons, giants, paynims, and all such cattle; who married the fair -Phyllis of Warwick Castle; who afterwards repented of his much -bloodshed, and trudged on foot to Palestine by way of expiation; who -anon returned again on foot to Warwick, where was his home and his dear -Phyllis. And coming to his own house door, where his wife was used to -feed every day thirteen poor men with her own hand, he stood with the -rest, and received bread from her for three days, and she knew him not. -So he learned that God’s wrath was not sated, and betook him to a fair -rocky place beside the river, a mile and more from his town; where, as -his words go in the old ballad, - - “with my hands I hewed a house - Out of a craggy rock of stone; - And livèd like a Palmer poore - Within that Cave myself alone; - - “And daily came to beg my bread - Of Phyllis at my Castle gate; - Not known unto my loving wife, - Who daily mournèd for her mate. - - “Till at the last I fell sore sicke, - Yea, sicke so sore that I must die; - I sent to her a ring of golde, - By which she knew me presentlye. - - “So she, repairing to the Cave, - Before that I gave up the Ghost, - Herself closed up my dying Eyes-- - My Phyllis fair whom I loved most.” - -His statue stands in the little shrine above the cliff; his arms lie in -Warwick Castle; and in the cave over our head is carved a Saxon -inscription, which the learned interpret into this: “Cast out, thou -Christ, from thy servant this burden.” - -We pass on by Rock Mill, haunted of many kingfishers; by Emscote Bridge, -where the Avon is joined by the Leam, and where Warwick and Leamington -have reached out their arms to each other till they now join hands; by -little gardens, each with its punt or home-made boat beside the river -steps; by a flat meadow, where the citizens and redcoats from Warwick -garrison sit all day and wait for the fish that never bites; and -suddenly, by the famous one-span bridge, see Warwick Castle full ahead, -its massy foundations growing, as it seems, from the living rock, and -Cæsar’s glorious tower soaring above the elms where Mill Street ends at -the water’s brink. Here once crossed a Gothic bridge, carrying the -traffic from Banbury. Its central arches are down now; but the bastions -yet stand, and form islets for the brier and ivy, and between them the -stream swirls fast for the weir and the ancient mill, by which it rushes -down into the park. We turn our canoe, and with many a backward look -paddle back to the boat-house at Emscote. - -[Illustration: OLD BRIDGE, WARWICK] - -Evening has drawn in, and still we are pacing Warwick streets. We have -seen the castle; have gazed from the armory windows upon the racing -waters, steep terraces, and gentle park below; have climbed Guy’s Tower -and seen far beneath us, on the one side, broad cedars and green lawns -where the peacocks strut; on the other, the spires, - -[Illustration: CÆSAR’S TOWER, WARWICK CASTLE] - -towers, sagged roofs, and clustering chimneys of the town; have -sauntered down Mill Street; have marvelled in the Beauchamp Chapel as we -conned its gorgeous tombs and canopies and traceries; have loitered by -Lord Leycester’s Hospital and under the archway of St. James’s Chapel. -Clearly we are but two grains of sand in the hour-glass of - -[Illustration: The Hospital of Robert Earl of Leycester Warwick] - -this slow mediæval town. Our feet, that will to-morrow be hurrying on, -tread with curious impertinence these everlasting flints that have rung -with the tramp of the Kingmaker’s armies, of Royalist and -Parliamentarian, horse and foot, drum and standard, the stir of royal -and episcopal visits, of mail-coach, market, and assize. But meanwhile -our joints are full of pleasant aches and stiffness, our souls of lofty -imaginings. As our tobacco smoke floats out on the moonlight we can -dwell, we find, with a quite kingly serenity on the transience of man’s -generations; nay, as we sit down to dinner at our inn we touch the high -contemplative, yet careless, mood of the gods themselves. - -[Illustration: BARFORD BRIDGE] - -It was a golden morning as we left Warwick, and with slow feet followed -Avon down through the park towards Barford Bridge, where our canoe lay -ready for us. The light, too generously spread to dazzle, bathed the -castle towers, lay on the terraces, where the peacocks sunned -themselves, and on the living rock below them, where the river washes. -Only on the weir it fell in splashes, scattered through the elms’ thick -foliage. At the water’s brim, below Mill Street, stood a man with a -pitcher--a stranger to us--who took our farewells with equable -astonishment. The stream slackened its hurry, and, keeping pace with our -regrets, loitered by the garden slopes, by the great cedars that the -Crusaders brought from Lebanon, among reeds and alder-bushes and under -tall trees, to the lake, where a small tributary comes tumbling from -Chesterton. - -The land, as we went on, was full of morning sounds--the ring of a -wood-feller’s axe, the groaning of a timber-wagon through leafy roads, -the rustle of partridges, the note of a stray blackbird in the hedge, -and in valleys unseen the tune of hounds cub-hunting-- - - “matched in mouth like bells, - Each unto each.” - -[Illustration: WARWICK CASTLE, FROM THE PARK] - -At Barford we met the pack returning, and the sight of them and the -huntsman’s red coat in the village street was pleasant as a remembered -song. - -Barford village has produced a well-known man of our time, Mr. Joseph -Arch, who here began his efforts to better the condition of the -agricultural laborer. If without honor, he is not without influence in -his own country, to judge by the neat cottages and trim gardens beside -the road. Roses love the rich clay, and roses of all kinds thrive here, -from the Austrian brier to the Gloire de Dijon. It was late in the -season when we passed, but many clusters lingered under the cottager’s -thatch, and field and hedge also spoke of past plenty. - -By Barford Bridge, where a dumpy, water-logged punt just lifted her -stern and her pathetic name (the Dolly Dobs) above the surface, we -launched our canoe again. The stream here is shallow and the current -fast, with a knack of swinging you round a gravelly corner and tilting -you at the high scooped-out bank on the other side. So many and abrupt -are these bends that the slim spire of Sherborne across the meadows -appeared now to right, now to left; now dodged behind us, now stood up -straight ahead. Out of the water-plants at one corner rose a brace of -wild-duck, and sailed away with the sun gleaming on their iridescent -necks. We followed them with our eyes, and grew aware that the country -was altered. Sometimes, near Warwick, we had longed to exchange tall -hedge-rows and heavy elms for “an acre of barren ground, ling, heath, -brown furze, anything,” as Gonzalo says. Now we had full air and a -horizon. We had the flowers, too--the forget-me-not, the willow-herb, -and meadowsweet (though long past their prime), the bright yellow tansy, -and the loosestrife, with a stalk growing blood-red as its purple bloom -dropped away. Just above Wasperton we came on a young woman in a boat. -She had been gathering these flowers by the armful, and, having piled -the bows with them, made a taking sight; and, being ourselves not -without a certain savage beauty, we did not hesitate to believe our -pleasure reciprocated. - -[Illustration: SHERBORNE] - -A steep grassy bank runs beside the stream at Wasperton, concealing the -village. Many nut-trees grow upon it, and upon it also were ranged six -anglers, who caught no fish as we passed. No high-road goes through the -village above; but, climbing the bank, we found a few old timbered -cottages, and alone, in the middle of a field, a curious dove-cote, that -must be seen to be believed. It was empty, for the pigeons were all down -by the river among the gray willows on the farther shore, and our canoe -stole by too softly to disturb their cooing. - -A short way below, Hampton Wood rises on a bold eminence to the right, -where once Fulbroke Castle stood. The “steep uphill” is now dotted with -elders, and tenanted only by “earth-delving conies;” for the castle was -destroyed and its land disparked in Henry VIII.’s time, the materials -being carried up to build Compton-Winyates, that beautiful and quiet -mansion in a hollow of the Edge Hills where Charles I. slept on the -night before Kineton (Edgehill) battle. The park passed in time to a -Lucy of Charlcote, and the name reminds us that we are in Shakespeare’s -country. In fact, we have reached the very place where Shakespeare did -_not_ steal the deer. - -[Illustration: AT WASPERTON] - -To shed a tear in passing this hallowed spot was but a natural impulse; -nor, on reading the emotions which Mr. Samuel Ireland squandered here, -did we grudge the tribute. “If,” he writes, “the story of this youthful -frolic is founded on truth, as well as that Sir Thomas Lucy’s rigorous -conduct subsequent to this supposed outrage really proved the cause of -our Shakespeare’s quitting this his native retirement to visit the -capital, it will afford us the means of contemplating, at least in one -instance, with some degree of complacency even the imperious dominion of -our feudal superiors, the tyranny of magistracy, and the harshest -enforcement of the remnant of our forest laws; since in their -consequences they unquestionably called into action the energies of that -sublime genius, and of those rare and matchless endowments which had -otherwise perhaps been lost in the shade of retirement, and have ‘wasted -their sweetness on the desert air.’” - -[Illustration: DOVE-COTE, WASPERTON] - -The river spread out as it swept round the base of Hampton Wood, and -took us to Hampton Lucy. Here is a beautiful modern church, in the worst -sense of the words, and beside it a village green, where, as we passed, -the villagers were keeping harvest-home. Lo! many countrymen in -wheelbarrows, and others, with loins girded, trundling them madly -towards a goal, where a couple of brand-new spades - -[Illustration: From Hampton Lucy to Harrington] - -were to reward the first-comers. Lo! also, Chloe, Lalage, and Amaryllis, -emulous for their swains, lifted exhorting voices; and the oldest -inhabitants “a-sunning sat” in the pick of the seats, and discussed the -competitors on their merits. It was with regret that we tore ourselves -away from these Arcadian games. The sounds of merrymaking followed us -through the trees as we dropped down to Charlcote, just below, - - “Where Avon’s Stream, with many a sportive Turn, - Exhilarates the Meads, and to his Bed - Hele’s gentle current wooes, by Lucy’s hand - In every graceful Ornament attired, - And worthier, such, to share his liquid Realms.” - -So writes the Rev. Richard Jago, M.A., a local poet of the last century, -in “Edgehill; or, The Rural Prospect Delineated and Moralized. A Poem in -Four Books, printed for J. Dodsley in Pall Mall, 1767;” and though the -bard’s language is more flowery than Avon’s banks, it shall stand. We -had amused ourselves on the voyage by choosing and rechoosing the spot -whither we should some day return and pass our declining years. P. (who -has high thoughts now and then) had been all for Warwick Castle, Q. for -Ashow, and the merits of each had been hotly wrangled over. But we shook -hands over Charlcote. - -[Illustration: HAMPTON LUCY, FROM THE MEADOWS] - -Less stately than Stoneleigh, less picturesque than Guy’s Cliffe, less -imposing than Warwick Castle, Charlcote is lovelier and more human than -any. The red-brick Elizabethan house stands on the river’s brink. From -the geranium beds on its terrace a flight of steps leads down to the -water, and over its graceful balustrade, beside the little leaden -statuettes, you may lean and feed the swans just below. Across the -stream, over the fern-beds and swelling green turf, are dotted the -antlers of the Charlcote deer, red and fallow; yonder “Hele’s gentle -current” winds down from the Edge Hills; to your right, the trees part -and give a glimpse only of Hampton Lucy church; behind you rise the -peaked gables, turrets, and tall chimneys of the house, projecting and -receding, so that from whatever quarter the sun may strike there is -always a bold play of light and shade on the soft-colored bricks. - -The house was built by Sir Thomas Lucy in the first year of Queen -Elizabeth’s reign; and in compliment to his queen, who paid Charlcote a -visit not long after, the knight built on the side which turns from the -river an entrance porch which, abutting between two wings, gives the -form of an E. This porch leads to the queer gate-house, whence, between -an avenue of limes, you reach Charlcote church--a sober little pile -beside the high-road, and just outside the rough-split oak palings of -the park. It holds the monuments of Sir Thomas Lucy and his wife, and in -praise of the latter an epitaph worth remembering for the tender -simplicity of its close: - - “Set down by him that best did know - What hath been written to be true.--Thomas Lucy.” - -In the graveyard outside is a plain stone to a lesser pair--John Gibbs, -aged 81, and his wife, aged 55--who are made to say, somewhat -cynically: - -[Illustration: CHARLCOTE] - - “Farewell, proud, vain, false, treacherous world, - we have seen enough of thee; - We value not what thou canst say of we.” - -One marvels how in this sheltered corner John Gibbs found the world’s -breath so rude. - -[Illustration: MEADOWSWEET] - -On the other hand, upon Sir Thomas Lucy the world has been hard indeed, -identifying him with Justice Shallow. His portrait hangs in the hall -where Shakespeare was not tried for deer-stealing. Isaac Oliver painted -it; and though men have forgotten Isaac Oliver, yet will we never, for -he was a master. The knight’s embroidered robe is right Holbein; but the -knight’s subtle, beautiful face is more. It teaches with convincing -sincerity what manner of being a gentleman was in “the spacious days of -great Elizabeth;” and the lesson is the more humiliating because men -have during three centuries accepted the coarse mask of Justice Shallow -for the truth. - -The house holds many fine paintings; notably a Titian, “Samson and the -Lion,” that rests against the yellow silk hangings of the drawing-room, -and is worth a far pilgrimage to see; and a Velasquez, set (immoderately -high) above the library book-shelves. So that too soon we were out in -the sunlight again and paddling down to Alveston. - -We floated by flat meadows, islands of sedge, long lines of willows; by -“the high bank called Old Town, where, perhaps, men and women, with -their joys and sorrows, once abided;” but now the rabbits only colonize -it, under the quiet alders; by Alveston, where we found boats, and a -boat-house covered with “snowball” berries; by the mill and its -weeping-willows; and below, by devious loops, to Hatton Rock, that the -picnickers from Stratford know--a steep bank of marl covered with -hawthorn, hazel, elder, and trailing knots of brambles. In June this is -a very flowery spot. The slope is clothed with creamy elder blossoms, -and on the river’s bank opposite are wild rose-bushes dropping their -petals, pink and white, on forget-me-nots, wild blue geranium, and -meadow-rue. Over its stony bed the current, in omne volubilis ævum, -keeps for our dull ears the music that it made for Shakespeare, if we -could but hear. For somewhere along these banks the Stratford boy spied -the Muse’s naked feet moving. - - “O mistress mine, where are you roaming? - O stay and hear; your true love’s coming, - That can sing both high and low.” - -And somewhere he came on her, and coaxed the secret of - -[Illustration: UNDER THE WILLOWS] - -her woodland music. But when that meeting was, and how that secret was -given, like a true lover, he will never tell. - - “Others abide our questions; thou art free: - We ask and ask; thou smilest and art still.” - -As we paddled down past Tiddington the willows grew closer. Between -their stems we could see, far away on our left, the blue Edge Hills; and -to the right, above the Warwick road, a hill surmounted by an obelisk. -This is Welcome, and behind it lies Clopton House, a former owner of -which, Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor of London, built in the reign of -Henry VII. the long stone bridge of fourteen Gothic arches just above -Stratford. In a minute or two we had passed under this bridge and were -floating down beside the Memorial Theatre, the new Gardens, and the -brink of Shakespeare’s town. - -[Illustration: THE CLOPTON BRIDGE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON] - -A man may take pen and ink and write of a place as he will, and the -page will, likely enough, be a pretty honest index to his own -temperament. But never will it do for another man’s reliance. So let it -be confessed that for a day we searched Stratford streets, and found -nothing of the Shakespeare that we sought. Neither in the famous -birthplace in Henley Street--restored “out of all whooping,” crammed -with worthless mementos, and pencilled over with inconsiderable names; -nor in the fussy, inept Memorial Theatre; nor in the New Place, where -certain holes, protected with wire gratings, mark what may have been the -foundations of Shakespeare’s house: in none of these could we find him. -His name echoed in the market-place, on the lips of guide and sightseer, -and shone on monuments, shops, inns, and banking-houses. His effigies -were everywhere--in photographs, in statuettes; now doing duty as a -tobacco-box (with the bald scalp removable), now as a trade-mark for -beer. And even while we despised these things the fault was ours. All -the while the colossus stood high above, while we “walked under his huge -legs and peep’d about,” too near to see. - -Nor until we strolled over the meadows to Ann Hathaway’s cottage at -Shottery did understanding come with the quiet falling of the day. -Rarely enough, and never, perhaps, but in the while between sunset and -twilight, may a man hear the sky and earth breathing together, and, -drawing his own small breath ambitiously in tune with them, “feel that -he is greater than he knows.” But here and at this hour it happened to -us that, our hearts being uplifted, we could measure Shakespeare for a -moment; could know him for the puissant intelligence that held communion -with all earth and sky, and all mortal aspirations that rise between -them; and knew him also for the Stratford youth treading this very -foot-path beside this sweet-smelling hedge towards those elms a mile -away, where the red light lingers, - -[Illustration: STRATFORD CHURCH] - -and the cottage below them, where already in the window Ann Hathaway -trims her lamp. You are to believe that our feet trod airily across -those meadows. And at the cottage, old Mrs. Baker, last living -descendant of the Hathaways, was pleased with our reverent behavior, and -picked for each of us at parting a sprig of rosemary from her garden for -remembrance. May her memory be as green and as fragrant! - -[Illustration: ANN HATHAWAY’S COTTAGE] - -It was easy now to forgive all that before had seemed unworthy in -Stratford--easy next morning, standing before Shakespeare’s monument, -while the sunshine, colored by the eastern window, fell on one -particular slab within the chancel rails, to live back for a moment to -that April morning when a Shakespeare had passed from the earth, and -earth “must mourn therefor;” to follow his coffin on its short journey -from the New Place, between the blossoming limes of the Church Walk, out -of the sunlight into the lasting shadow, up the dim nave to this spot; -and easy to divine, in the rugged epitaph so often quoted, the man’s -passionate dread lest his bones might be flung in time to the common -charnel-house, the passionate longing to lie here always in this dusky -corner, close to his friends and kin and the familiar voices that meant -home--the talk of birds in the near elms, the chant of Holy Trinity -choir, and, night and day, but a stone’s-throw from his resting-place, -the whisper of Avon running perpetually. - -[Illustration: THE MOUTH OF THE STOUR] - -For even the wayfarer finds Stratford a hard place to part from. And -looking back as we left her, so kindly, so full of memories, giving her -haunted streets, her elms, and river-side to the sunshine, but guarding -always as a mother the shrine of her great son, I know she will pardon -my light words. - -The river runs beneath the elms of the church-yard to Lucy’s Mill and -the first locks. On the mill wall are marked the heights of various -great floods. The highest is dated at the beginning of this century: -just below is the high-water mark of October 25, 1882. Take the level of -this with your eye, and you will wonder that any of Stratford - -[Illustration: THE LOCK AND CHURCH] - -is left standing; and lower down the river the floods are very serious -matters to all who live within their reach. If you disbelieve me, read -“John Halifax.” “We don’t mind them,” an old lady told us at Barton, -“till the water turns red. Then we know the Stour water is coming down, -and begin to shift our furniture.” The Arrow, too, that joins the Avon -below Bidford, is a great helper of the floods, but rushes down its -valley more rapidly than the Stour, and so its flooding is sooner over. - -[Illustration: WEIR BRAKE] - -The lock at Stratford is now choked with grass and weed, and the town no -longer (to quote the Rev. Richard Jago) - - “Hails the freighted Barge from Western Shores, - Rich with the Tribute of a thousand Climes.” - -The Avon, from Tewkesbury to Stratford, was made navigable in 1637 by -Mr. William Sandys, of Fladbury, “at his own proper cost.” But the -railways have ruined the waterways for a time, and Mr. Sandys’s -handiwork lies in sore decay. Till Evesham be passed we shall meet with -no barges, but with shallows, dismantled locks, broken-down weirs to be -shot, and sound ones to be pulled over that will give us excitement -enough, and toil too. - -Below the lock we drifted under a hanging copse, the Weir Brake, where a -pretty foot-path runs for Stratford lovers. Below it, by a cluster of -willows, the Stour comes down; and a little farther yet stands -Luddington, where Shakespeare is said to have been married; but the -church and its records have been destroyed by fire. From Luddington you -spy Weston-upon-Avon, in Gloucestershire, across the river, the tower of -its sturdy perpendicular church peering above the elms that hide it from -the river-side throughout the summer. - -[Illustration: WESTON-UPON-AVON] - -By Weston our remembrance keeps a picture--a broken lock and weir, an -islet or two heavy with purple loosestrife, a swan bathing in the -channel between. These were of the foreground. Beyond them, a line of -willows hid the flat fields on our right; but on the left rose a steep -green slope, topped with poplars and dotted with red cattle; and ahead -the red roof of Binton church showed out prettily from the hill-side. As -we saw the picture we broke into it, shooting the weir, scaring the -swan, and driving her before us to Binton Bridges. By Binton Bridges -stands an inn, the Four Alls. On its sign-board, in gay colors, are -depicted four figures--the King, the Priest, the Soldier, and the -Yeoman; and around them runs this chiming legend: - - “Rule all, - Pray all, - Fight all, - Pay all.” - -We could not remember a place so utterly God-forsaken as this inn beside -the bridge, nor a woman so weary of face as its once handsome landlady. -She spoke of the inn and its custom in a low, musical voice that caused -Q. to rush out into the yard to hide his pity; and there he found a gig, -and, sitting down before it, wondered. - -Change and decay fill our literature; but we have not explained either. -For instance, here was a gig--a soundly built, gayly painted gig. A -glance told that it had not been driven a dozen times, that nothing was -broken, and that it had been backed into this heap of nettles years ago -to rot. It had been rotting ever since. The paint on its sides had -blistered, the nettles climbed above its wheels and flourished over its -back seat. Still it was a good gig, and the most inexplicable sight that -met us on our voyage. Only less desolate than Binton Bridges is Black -Cliff, below--a bank covered with crab-trees and thorns and hummocks of -sombre grass. It was here that one Palmer, a wife-murderer, drowned his -good woman in Avon at the beginning of the century; and the oldest man -in Bidford, not far below, remembers seeing a gibbet on the hill-side, -with chains and a few bones and rags dangling--all that was left of him. -A gate post at the top of the hill on the Evesham road is made of this -gibbet, and still groans at night, to the horror of the passing native. - -Soon we reach Welford, the second and more beautiful Welford on the -river. It stands behind a stiff slope, where now the chestnuts are -turning yellow, and the village street is worth following. It winds by -queer old cottages set down in plum and apple orchards; by a modern -Maypole; by a little church of stained buff sandstone, with oaken -lych-gate and church-yard wall scarcely containing the dead, who already -are piled level with its coping; by more queer crazy cottages--and then -suddenly melts, ends, disappears in grass. It is as if the end of the -world were reached. Of course we wanted to settle down and spend our -lives here, but were growing used to the desire by this time, and -dragged each other away without serious resistance down to the old mill, -where our canoe lay waiting. - -[Illustration: WELFORD WEIR AND CHURCH] - -Passing the weir and mill, the river runs under a grassy hill-side, -where the trimmed elms give a French look to the landscape. Within -sight, in winter, lie the roofs and dove-cotes of Hillborough--“haunted -Hillbro’,” as Shakespeare called it, but nothing definite is known of -the ghost. The local tale says that the poet and some boon companions -walked over once to a Whitsun ale at the Falcon Inn, Bidford (just below -us), to try their prowess in drinking against the Bidford men. They -drank so deeply that night that - -[Illustration: ELMS BY BIDFORD GRANGE] - -sleep overtook them before they had staggered a mile on their homeward -way, and, lying down under a crab-tree beside the road, they slept till -morning, when they were awakened by some laborers trudging to their -work. His companions were for returning and renewing the carouse, but -Shakespeare declined. - -[Illustration: HILLBOROUGH] - -“No,” said he; “I have had enough; I have drinked with - - “Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston, - Haunted Hillbro’, hungry Grafton, - Dudging Exhall, papist Wixford, - Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford.” - -“Of the truth of this story,” says Mr. Samuel Ireland, “I have little -doubt.” - -“Of its entire falsehood,” says Mr. James Thorne, “I have less. A more -absurd tale to father upon Shakespeare was never invented, even by Mr. -Ireland or his son.” - -The reader may decide. - -Close by is Bidford Grange, once an important manorhouse; and on the -left bank of Avon--you may know it by the gray stone dove-cotes--stands -Barton, where once dwelt another famous drinker, “Christophero Sly, old -Sly’s son of Burton heath: by birth a peddler, by education a cardmaker, -by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker. -Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not: if -she say I am not fourteen-pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up -for the lyingest knave in Christendom.” And from Barton hamlet a -foot-path leads across the meadows over the old bridge into Bidford. - -[Illustration: BIDFORD BRIDGE] - -You are to notice this bridge, not only because the monks of Alcester -built it in 1482, to supersede the ford on the old Roman road which -crosses the river here, but for a certain stone in its parapet, near the -inn window. This stone is worn hollow by thousands of pocket knives that -generations of Bidford men have sharpened upon it. For four centuries it -has supplied in these parts the small excuse that men - -[Illustration: OLD THORNS, MARCLEEVE HILL] - -need to club and lounge together; and of an evening you may see a score, -perhaps, hanging by this end of the bridge and waiting their turn, while -the clink, clink of the sharpening knife fills the pauses of talk. When -at last the stone shall wear all away there will be restlessness and -possibly social convulsions in Bidford, unless its place be quickly -supplied. - -[Illustration: CLEEVE MILL--AN AUTUMN FLOOD] - -We lingered only to look at the building that in Shakespeare’s time was -the old Falcon Inn, and soon were paddling due south from Bidford -Bridge. The Avon now runs straight through big flat meadows towards a -steep hill-side, with the hamlet of Marcleeve (or Marlcliff) at its -foot. This line of hill borders the river on the south for some miles, -and is the edge of a plateau which begins the ascent towards the -Cotswold Hills. Seen from the river below, this escarpment is full of -varying beauty, here showing a bare scar of green and red marl, here -covered with long - -[Illustration: THE YEW HEDGE--CLEEVE PRIOR MANOR-HOUSE] - -gray grass and dotted with old thorn and crab trees, here clothed with -hanging woods of maple, ash, and other trees, straggled over and -smothered with ivy, wild rose, and clematis. By Cleeve Mill, where -clouds of sweet-smelling flour issued from the doorway, we disembarked -and climbed up between the thorn-trees until upon the ridge we could -look back upon the green vale of Evesham, and southward across ploughed -fields, and cottages among orchards and elms, to the gray line of the -Cotswolds, over which a patch of silver hung, as the day fought hard to -regain its morning sunshine. The narrow footway took us on to Cleeve -Priors and through its street--a village all sober, gray, and beautiful. -The garden walls, coated with lichen and topped with yellow quinces or a -flaming branch of barberry; the tall church tower; the - -[Illustration: MEADOWS BY THE AVON] - -quaintly elaborate grave-stones below it, their scrolls and cherubim -overgrown with moss; the clipped yew-trees that abounded in all -fantastic shapes; the pigeons wheeling round their dove-cote, and the -tall poplar by the manor farm--all these were good; but best of all was -the manor farm itself, and the arched yew hedge leading to its Jacobean -porch, a marvel to behold. We hung long about the entrance and stared at -it. But no living man or woman approached us. The village was given up -to peace or sleep or death. - -Returning, we paused on the brow of the slope above Avon for a longer -look. At our feet was spread the vale of Evesham; the river, bordered -with meadows as green and flat as billiard-tables; the stream of Arrow -to northward, which rises in the Lickey Hills, and comes down through -Alcester to join the Avon here; the villages of Salford Priors and -Salford Abbots; farther to the west, among its apple-trees, the roofs -and gables of Salford Nunnery, the village of Harvington. And all down -the stream, and round the meadows, and in and out of these - - “low farms, - Poor pelting villages, sheepcotes, and mills,” - -are willows innumerable--some polled last year, and looking like green -mops, others with long curved branches ready to be lopped and turned -into fence poles next winter, until they are lost in the hills round -Evesham, where the dim towers stand up and the bold outline of Bredon -Hill shuts out the view of the Severn Valley. - -The mound on which we are standing is surmounted by the stone socket of -an old cross, and beneath the cross are said to lie many of those who -fell on Evesham battle-field; for the vale below was on August 4th, -1265, the scene of one of the bloodiest and most decisive conflicts in -English history. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, victor of Lewes, -and champion of the people’s rights, was hastening back by forced -marches from Wales, having King Henry III. in his train, a virtual -hostage. He was hurrying to meet his son, the young Simon, with -reinforcements from the southeast; but young Simon’s troops had been -surprised by Prince Edward at Kenilworth in the early morning and -massacred in their beds, their leader himself escaping with difficulty, -almost naked, in a boat across the lake of Kenilworth Castle. -Unconscious of their fate, the old earl reached Evesham on Monday, -August 3d, and, crossing the bridge into the town, sealed his own doom. -For Evesham is a trap. The Avon forms a loop around it, shutting off -escape on three sides, while the fourth is blocked by an eminence called -the Green Hill. And while yet Simon and his king were feasting and -making merry in Evesham Abbey, Edward’s troops were crossing the river -here at Cleeve Ford in the darkness, and moving on their sure prey. - -[Illustration: HARVINGTON WEIR] - -A strange and horrible darkness lay over the land on that fatal Tuesday -morning, shrouding the sun, and hiding their books from the monks of -Evesham as they sang in the choir. The soldiers at their breakfast could -scarcely - -[Illustration: WILLOW POLLARDING] - -see the meats on the board before them. They were ready to start again; -but before the march began, banners and lances and moving troops were -spied on the crest of the Green Hill, coming towards the town. - -“It is my son,” cried Simon; “fear not. But nevertheless look out, lest -we be deceived.” - -Nicholas, the earl’s barber, being expert in the cognizance of arms, -ascended the bell-tower of the abbey, and soon detected among the -friendly banners, that were, in fact, but trophies of the raid at -Kenilworth, the “three lions” of Prince Edward and the royalists. The -alarm was given, but it was quickly seen that Simon’s army would be -utterly outnumbered. - -[Illustration: NEAR OFFENHAM] - -“By the arm of St. James,” cried the old warrior, “they come on well! -But it was from me,” he added, with a touch of soldierly pride--“it was -from me they learned it.” A glance showed the hopelessness of resisting -this array with a handful of horse and a mob of wild Welshmen. “Let us -commend our souls to God,” he said to his followers, “for our bodies are -the foe’s.” - -And so he went forth; and while the Welsh fled like sheep at the first -onset, cut down in standing corn and flowery garden, the old warrior of -sixty-five hewed his way “like an impregnable tower” to the top of the -Green Hill, until one by one his friends had dropped beside him; then at -the summit his horse fell too, and disdaining surrender, hemmed in by -twelve knights, he was struck down by a lance wound. “It is God’s will,” -he said, and died. And whilst the butchery went on, and the Welshmen -fled homeward through Pershore to Tewkesbury, where the citizens cut -them down in the streets, and whilst the darkness broke in drenching -rain and blinding lightning, Simon’s head was lopped off, and carried on -a pole in triumph to Wigmore. - -“Such was the murder of Evesham, for battle none it was,” sings Robert -of Gloucester. And as the sun breaks through and turns the gray day to -silver, we pass on either hand memorials of that massacre. By Harvington -mill and weir, where the sand-pipers flit before us, and by the spot -where now stand the Fish and Anchor Inn and a row of anglers, Edward’s -soldiery marched down through the night. - -[Illustration: EVESHAM, FROM THE RIVER] - -At Offenham, where now is a Bridge Inn, and where tradition says a -bridge once stood, they crossed the river again. On the opposite bank -the slaughter was heaviest, and Dead Man Eyot, a small willowy island -here, won its - -[Illustration: From Offenham to Tewkesbury] - -name on that day. The sheep are feeding now in that “odd angle of the -isle” that then was piled high with corpses. And so we come to a high -railway embankment, and thence to a bridge, and the beautiful bell-tower -leaps into view, soaring above the mills and roofs of Evesham. - -[Illustration: THE AVON FROM EVESHAM TO TEWKESBURY] - -To remember Evesham is to call up a broad and smiling vale; a river -looped about a green hill and returning almost on itself, on the lower -slope of the hill, beside the river, a little town; and above its mills -and roofs, two spires and one pre-eminent tower, all set in the same -church-yard. - -The vale itself, as we dropped down towards Evesham, was insensibly -changing. Unawares we left the pastures behind, and drifted into a land -of orchards and marketgardens--no Devonshire orchards, with carpets of -vivid grass, but stiff regiments of plum-trees, and between their files -asparagus growing, and sage and winter lettuce under hand-glasses, and -cabbages splashed with mauve and crimson. We had crossed, in fact, the -frontier of a fruit-growing country that in England has no rival but -Kent. The beginnings of this prosperous gardening are sometimes ascribed -to one Signor Bernardi, a Genoese gentleman who settled at Evesham in -the middle of the seventeenth century. But more probably these orchards -grow for the same reason that the meadows above are fat and a bell-tower -stands in Evesham. There is a legend to that effect which is worth -telling. - -[Illustration: A MARKET-GARDEN NEAR EVESHAM] - -Egwin, Bishop of Worcester in the year 700 or thereabouts, was a saint -of shining piety, but unpopular in his diocese, which had not long been -converted from paganism, and retained many “ethnic and uncomely -customs.” Against these the bishop thundered, till the people seized and -haled him before Ethelred, then King of Mercia, charging him with -tyranny and many bitter things. The matter was referred to the Holy -Father at Rome, who commanded Egwin to appear before him and answer the -charges. So to Rome he went; but before starting, to show how lowly he -accounted himself, he ordered a pair of iron horse-fetters, and having -put his feet into them, caused them to be locked and the key tossed into -the Avon. Thus shackled, he went forward to Dover, took ship, and came -to the Holy City; when, lo, a miracle! His attendants had gone down to -the Tiber to catch a fish for supper. Scarcely was the line cast when a -fine salmon took it and leaped ashore, without a struggle to escape. -They hurried home with their prize, opened him, and found inside the key -of the bishop’s fetters. - -It is needless to say that the pope, after this, made short work of the -charges against Egwin. The accused was loaded with honors, and sent home -with particular recommendations to King Ethelred, who lost no time in -restoring the bishop to his see and appointing him tutor to his own -sons. Among other marks of friendship the king gave Egwin a large tract -of land. It was savage, inhospitable, horrid with thickets and forest -trees. Yet Egwin liked it; for he kept pigs, which found abundance of -food there. So, dividing the wilderness into four quarters, he appointed -a swine-herd over each, whose names were Eoves and Ympa, two brothers; -and Trottuc and Carnuc, brothers also. Eoves (with whom alone we are -concerned) had charge over the eastern portion, and it happened to him -one day that a favorite sow strayed off into the thickest of the woods. -Eoves spent weeks in searching after her, and at length wandered so far -that he too lost his way. He shouted for succor, but none came. Growing -appalled, he began to run headlong through the undergrowth, when -suddenly he stumbled on the lost sow, having three young ones with her. -She came gladly to his call, grunting and muzzling at his legs; then -turned, and began to hurry into the deeper forest, the young pigs -trotting beside her. Eoves followed, and soon, to his wonder, reached a -glade, open and somewhat steep, where was a virgin standing, lovelier -than the noonday, and two others beside her, celestially robed, having -psalteries in their hands and singing holy songs. The swine-herd -understood nothing of the vision; but hurrying back, was lucky enough to -find an egress from the woods, and returned to his home. - -[Illustration: REED-CUTTERS] - -This matter was reported to Egwin; and he, being eager to see the place -with his own eyes, was led thither by Eoves. There it was vouchsafed to -him to see the same vision, and, as it faded, to hear a voice from the -chief virgin saying, “This place have I chosen.” Whereupon he understood -that he, like Æneas, had been guided by a sow to the spot where he must -build; and soon the Abbey of Evesham, or Eovesham, began to rise where -the virgins had stood. This was in 703, and the building was finished in -six years. - -Such is the legend. A town sprang up around the monastery; the thickets -were cleared and became pasture-lands and orchards; the country smiled, -and the abbey waxed rich. It housed sixty-seven monks, five matrons, -three poor brothers, three clerks, and sixty-five servants to work in -brew-house, bake-house, kitchen, cellar, infirmary; to make clothes and -boots; to open the great gate; to till the gardens, vineyards, and -orchards; and to fish for eels in the Avon below. When William de -Beauchamp, whose castle stood at Bengeworth, on the opposite bank, broke -into the abbey church and plundered it, about 1150 A.D., the abbot -excommunicated him and his retainers, razed his castle, and made a -burial-ground of the site. In 1530, under the rule of Clement Lichfield, -the abbey possessed fifteen manors in the county of Worcester alone, in -Gloucestershire six, in Warwickshire three, in Northamptonshire two, -with lands, rents, and advowsons far and wide. Out of Oxford and -Cambridge there was no such assemblage of religious buildings in -England. Then Clement Lichfield reared “a right sumptuous and high -square tower of stone;” and almost at once King Henry VIII. made his -swoop on the monasteries. - -[Illustration: EVESHAM BELL-TOWER AND OLD ABBEY GATEWAY] - -The country still smiles; but to-day of all the conventual buildings -there survive but a few stones--a sculptured arch leading to a -kitchen-garden, and this “high square tower” of Lichfield’s building. -This last was designed to be at once the abbey’s gateway, horologe, and -belfry; but before the day of its completion all these uses were -nullified. Its service since has been monumental merely--to stand over -the razed foundations and obliterated fish-ponds of Egwin’s house, and -speak to the vale of famous men and the hands that made it fertile. - -[Illustration: HAMPTON FERRY] - -There are many old houses in Evesham, and especially in Bridge Street; -but the bridge at the foot of this street is modern, and ascribed “to -the public spirit and perseverance of Henry Workman, Esq.” To him also -are due the “Workman Gardens,” a strip of pleasure-ground on the river’s -left bank, facing the abbey grounds; but local sapience has imposed the -usual restrictions on their use, and nine times out of ten you will find -them deserted. - -The day was almost spent as we took to the canoe once more, and paddled -around the long bend that girdles the town. We thought to have left the -bell-tower far behind, when, a little past Hampton Ferry, its pinnacles -reappeared, and the twin spires of St. Lawrence and All-Saints, peering -above a plum orchard almost ahead of us. On our left the sun sank in a -broad yellow haze; the hill where Simon fell, and where stands the Abbey -Manor-house, was soaked in it; and soon, as the channel brought our -faces westward again, and we drew near Chadbury mill and Chadbury lock -and weir, the vale was filled with this yellow light, pale and -pervasive. - -[Illustration: CHADBURY MILL] - - “Great Evesham’s fertile glebe what tongue hath not extolled? - As though to her alone belonged the garb of gold,” - -sings Drayton; and certainly she wore the garb that evening. As she -donned it, the chorus of the birds ceased, and with the sudden hush we -became aware that their voices had been following in our ears all the -day through. Above and below Evesham every furlong of the river-bank is -populous, with larks especially, whose song you may hear shivering from -every point of the sky. In early winter the number of nests that the -falling leaves disclose is astonishing. Some, no doubt, have lasted, and -will last, for years, such as the mud-plastered houses of the blackbird -and thrush, and the fagot pile which the magpie constructs in the top of -a tree. But the flimsy nests of the warblers and - -[Illustration: CHADBURY WEIR] - -other late-breeding birds, built of a few dried grasses and bound -together with cobwebs and horse-hair, date from last spring, and will -disappear before the next. They were not made until the leaves were out, -and upon the leaves their builders relied for concealment, so that in -winter they hang betrayed. Yet even in winter the banks teem with life -and color and interest. P., who rowed down here one bright December -morning when the scarlet hips were out, and dark-red haws, and the -silver-gray seed of “old man’s beard,” tells of a big meadow from which -the flood had just subsided, and of birds innumerable feeding -there--rooks, starlings, pewits in flocks, little white-rumped -sandpipers darting to and fro and uttering their sharp note, a dozen -herons solemnly but suspiciously observant of the passing boat, and -watching for its effect on a cluster of wild-duck out on the ruffled -stream. You cannot, indeed, pass down Avon without receiving the -wide-eyed attention of its fauna; and politeness calls on you to return -it. - -Chadbury is twenty miles below Stratford, and here we meet the first -lock that is kept in repair; so that for twenty miles Mr. William -Sandys’s work of making Avon navigable has gone for nothing. He lived at -Fladbury, just below, and the money he threw away on his hobby “cannot -be reckoned at less than twenty thousand pounds.” “As soon,” writes Dr. -Nash, in his “Worcestershire,” “as he had finished his work to Stratford -(and, as I have heard, spent all his fortune), he immediately delivered -up all to Parliament, to do what they thought fit therein.” And this was -precisely nothing. - -Consequently there is to-day but little human stir beside the Avon. The -“freighted barge from distant shores” travels this way no longer, or but -rarely. Unless by the towns--Emscote, Stratford, Evesham, and -Tewkesbury--a pleasure-boat is hardly to be met, and all the villages -seem - -[Illustration: FLADBURY MILL] - -to turn their backs on the stream. At the mills we see a few men, -whitened with flour; in summer the mowers and haymakers appear for a few -days upon the meadows, and are soon gone; in winter a few may return to -poll the willows, tying their twigs into fagots, and leaving the stems -standing, with white scarred heads; occasionally a man and a boy will -come in one of the native high-prowed punts to cut and bind the dark -rushes that, when dried, are used for matting, chair seats, and calking -beer barrels; or the tops of a withy bed will sway erratically as we -pass, and tell of somebody at work there; or in autumn flood-time a -professional fisherman, with his eel nets, is busy at the weirs. These -represent the industries of Avon. Other human forms there are, which -angle with rod and line--strange, infinitely patient men, fishing for -eels and other succulent fish, catching (it may be) one dace between -sunrise and sundown. Their ancestors must have had better sport, for -Dugdale - -[Illustration: THE GIG SEAT] - -constantly speaks of valuable fishing rights on the river, and many a -farmer paid his rent to the Church in eels. To this day every cottage -has its punt, and sometimes a seat rigged up in some likely spot over -the stream. One such we marked with particular interest. It was, in -fact, the body of an old gig; and therein sat an angler, and a glutton -of his kind, for he had no less than seven lines baited, and the rods -radiated from him like the spokes of a wheel. Perhaps it was his one -holiday for the week, and he had hit on this device for cramming the -seven days’ sport into one. - -Much might be written of Chadbury mill and weir as we saw them in - - “the twilight of such day - As after sunset fadeth in the west.” - -But, again, it is hard to improve upon Ireland, who calls it “so rich a -landscape that nature seems not to require the assistance of art, in the -language of modern refinement, either to correct her coarse expression -by removing a hill or docking a tree, or to supply her careless and -tasteless omissions for the purpose of rendering her more completely -picturesque.” - -In gathering darkness we dropped down beneath a hill-side partly wooded, -partly set out in young plum orchards, partly turfed, and dotted with -old thorns. Here is Cracombe House, and beyond it lie two -villages--Fladbury on the right and Cropthorne on the left, each with -its own mill. A ford used to join them, but this was superseded by a -bridge to commemorate the Queen’s Jubilee. We did not come to it that -night, for at Fladbury there stands a parsonage, with a lawn sloping -between trees to the river, and on this lawn we heard the voices and -laughter of friends in the dusk. Turning our canoe shore-ward, we hailed -them. - -If Kenilworth Castle and Evesham Abbey, structures so - -[Illustration: CROPTHORNE MILL] - -massive, take but a century or so to fall into complete ruin, how soon -will mere man revert to savagery? Our host at Fladbury parsonage was a -painter, one in whom Americans take a just pride, and the talk at his -table that evening was brisk enough, had we but possessed ears for it. -Instead, we who had journeyed for ten days from inn to inn, reading no -newspapers, receiving no letters, conversing with few fellows, regarding -only the quiet panorama of meadow, wood, and stream, sat in a mental -haze. We were stupefied with long draughts of open air. The dazzle of -the river, the rhythmical stroke of the paddle, had set our wits to -sleep. Once or twice we strove to rally them, and listen to the talkers; -but always the ripple of Avon rose and ran in our ears, confusing the -words, and we sank back into agreeable hebetude. The same held us, too, -next morning, as we ported our canoe over Fladbury weir, and started for -Tewkesbury in the teeth of a west wind that blew “through the sharp -hawthorn” and curled the water. The year had aged noticeably in the past -night, and the country-side wore a forlorn look. None the less, the -reaches below Cropthorne struck us as singularly beautiful. From a -fringe of fantastic pollard willows, out of whose decayed trunks grew -the wild rose and bramble, - -[Illustration: WILLOWS BY CROPTHORNE] - -orchards and pastures swelled up to a line of cottages and a -square-towered church standing against the sky. Cropthorne church is to -be visited as well for its beauty as for the monuments it contains of -the Dingley family, to which the manor formerly belonged. There is one -to the memory of Francis Dingley, Esq., who happily matched with -Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Brigge, Esq., and Mary Hoby, his wife, had -issue eleven sons and eight daughters, and died in peace, anno 1624. The -last of the Dingleys, a girl, married Edward Goodyeare, of Burghope, and -bore him two sons, whose history is tragic. The elder, Sir John, was a -childless man; and his brother, Samuel, who followed the sea, and had -become captain of the Ruby man-of-war, expected in time to have the -estates. But the two men hated each other, and at last a threat of -disinheritance so angered the captain that he took the desperate -resolution of murdering the baronet, and carried it out on the 17th of -January, 1741. Dr. Nash tells the story: “A friend at Bristol, who knew -their mortal antipathy, had invited them both to dinner, in hopes of -reconciling them, and they parted in seeming friendship. But the captain -placed some of his crew in the street near College Green, with orders to -seize his brother, and assisted in hurrying him by violence to his -ship, under pretence that he was disordered in his senses, where, when -they arrived, he caused him to be strangled in the cabin by White and -Mahony, two ruffians of his crew, himself standing sentinel at the door -while the horrid deed was perpetrating.” The captain, with his two -accomplices, was soon taken and hanged. He was a brave sailor, and had -distinguished himself at St. Sebastian, Ferrol, and San Antonio, at -which last place he burned three men-of-war, the magazine, and stores. - -[Illustration: AT WYRE] - -Four miles below Fladbury lies Wyre lock, with Wyre village on the right -bank, its cottage gardens planted with cabbages and winter lettuce, or -hung with nets drying in the wind. Across the river, a few fields back, -Wick straggles, a long street of timbered cottages, with a little -church, and - -[Illustration: OLD PEAR-TREES AT PERSHORE] - -before the church a cross. And ahead of us, over its acres of plum and -pear orchards, the fine tower of Pershore rises. - -[Illustration: NETS DRYING AT WYRE] - -[Illustration: WYRE LOCK] - -Of all the abbeys that once graced the Avon, Tewkesbury alone retains -some of its former splendor. Sulby is a farm-house; of Stoneleigh but a -gateway is left; of Evesham an arch and a tower; while Pershore keeps -only its tower and choir. Oswald, nephew of our old friend Ethelred, -King of Mercia, founded a house of secular canons here A.D. 689, who by -a charter of King Edgar, two centuries later, were superseded by -Benedictine monks. Being built of wood, both church and convent were -thrice destroyed by fire, first about the year 1000, then in 1223, and -again in 1288; on this last occasion by the sin of a brother, who went -a-courting with a lantern within the sacred walls (“muliebri consilio -infatuatus, in loco illo sacrato ignem obtulit alienum”). This fire -consumed not only the abbey, but the greater part of the town, and the -wicked cause of it led to a suspension of all religious services until -1299, when the Bishop of Llandaff came and “reconciled” the Church. All -that remains to-day is used as the parish church of the Holy Cross, and -is a beautiful piece of Early-English work. Pershore itself bears all -the markings of a quietly prosperous market town. Its wide street is -lined with respectable red-brick houses, faced with stone, having -pediments over their front doors, and square windows, some of them -blocked ever since the days of the window-tax. Its plums are known -throughout England; its pears yield excellent perry; and on pears and -plums together it relies for a blameless competence. - -[Illustration: THE SUMMER-HOUSE ON BREDON HILL] - -[Illustration: PERSHORE BRIDGE] - -[Illustration: GREAT COMBERTON] - -We passed Pershore bridge, which the Royalists broke down in their -retreat from Worcester field; and Pershore water-gate. There was a -water-gate at Fladbury also, one post of which we were assured was the -same that Mr. Sandys planted in 1637. For long the chine of Bredon Hill -had lain ahead of us, closing the view. We had first spied yesterday, -from the hill-side below Cleeve, and ever since it had been with us; but -below Pershore the river so winds that whether you row down stream or -up, Bredon Hill will be found the dominant feature in the landscape. But -whether a passing cloud paints it purple, or the sun shines on it, -lighting the grassy slopes, and showing every bush and quarry on the -sides, it is always a beautiful background for the villages that cluster -round its foot--Great and Little Comberton, Bricklehampton, Elmley -Castle, and Norton-by-Bredon. As we passed them the day relented for a -while, and in the pale sunshine their gray church towers stood out, -bright spots against the hill-side. - -[Illustration: NAFFORD MILL] - -[Illustration: ECKINGTON BRIDGE] - -We floated under the steep bank that separates Comberton and its poplars -from the stream, along to the dusty mill beside Nafford Lock, and drew -close under this hill-side until the old beacon at its top (called the -Summer-house) stood right above our heads. At Nafford Lock there is a -drop of six or eight feet before the river runs on by yet more -villages--Eckington, Birlingham, and Defford. Here in the sombre west -ahead of us the Malverns come into view; and here, between Eckington and -Defford, a bridge crosses, over - -[Illustration: PERSHORE WATER-GATE] - -which we leaned for a quiet half-hour before going on our way. - -[Illustration: BREDON] - -It was a time, I think, that will pleasantly come back to us in days -when we shall fear to trust our decrepit limbs in a canoe. The bridge, -six-arched, with deep buttresses, seemed as old as Avon itself. It is -built of the red sandstone so common in the neighborhood; but time has -long since mellowed and subdued its color to reflect the landscape’s -mood, which just now was sober and even mournful. Rain hung over the -Malverns; down on the flat plain, where the river crept into the -evening, the poplars were swaying gently; a pair of jays hustled by with -a warning squawk. Throughout this, the last day of our voyage, we had -travelled dully, scarce exchanging a word, possessed with the stupor -before alluded to. A small discovery awoke us. As we rested our elbows -on the parapet, we noticed that many deep grooves or notches ran across -it. They were marks worn in the stone by the tow-ropes of departed -barges. - -Those notches spoke to us, as nothing had spoken yet, of the true secret -of Avon. Kings and their armies have trampled its banks from Naseby to -Tewkesbury, performing great feats of war; castles and monasteries have -risen over its waters; yet none of them has left a record so durable as -are these grooves where the bargemen shifted their - -[Illustration: TITHE BARN, BREDON] - -ropes in passing the bridge. The fighting reddened the river for a day; -the building was reflected there for a century or two; but the slow toil -of man has outlasted them both. And, looking westward over the homely -landscape, we realized the truth that Nature, too, is most in earnest -when least dramatic; that her most terrible power is seen neither in the -whirlwind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the catkins -budding on the hazel--the still, small voice that proves she is not -dead, but sleeping lightly, and already dreaming of the spring. - - “Sed neque Medorum silvæ, ditissima terra--” - -the note of Virgil’s praise of Italy was ours for a while, and - -[Illustration: NEAR ECKINGTON] - -his pride to inherit a land of immemorial towns--a land made fertile by -tillage and watered by “rivers stealing under hoary walls.” - -[Illustration: STRENSHAM CHURCH] - -A little below the bridge Avon is joined by the Defford (or, as it was -once called, Depeford) Brook, its last considerable tributary, which -rises on the west of the Lickey Hills; and a little farther on we turn a -sharp bend where, above the old willows on our right, a field of rank -grass rises steeply to Strensham church and vicarage. Behind the stumpy -tower lies Strensham village, not to be seen from the river. Here, in -1612, Samuel Butler was born, the author of “Hudibras,” and a monument -stands to his memory within the church, beside other fine ones belonging -to the Russell family. He was born in obscurity, and died a pauper--a -poet (to use the words which Dennis wrote for his other monument in -Westminster Abbey) who “was a whole species of poets in one; admirable -in a manner in which no one else has been tolerable--a manner in which -he knew no guide, and has found no follower.” Very few can read that -epitaph without recalling the more famous epigram upon it: - - “The poet’s fate is here in emblem shown; - He asked for bread, and he received a stone.” - -[Illustration: STRENSHAM MILL] - -Below Strensham we pass a lock--the last before reaching Tewkesbury--and -two mills, the first and larger and more modern one deserted. Mr. -Sandys’s task was here not difficult, for the Avon Valley is so level -that only two locks are required in the fifteen miles from Pershore. We -have scarcely left the lock when the sharp steeple of Bredon, - -[Illustration: ARROW-HEADS, NEAR TEWKESBURY] - -at the western extremity of Bredon Hill, points out the direction of the -river. To this village, during the civil war, Bishop Prideaux, of -Worcester, retired on a stipend of four shillings and sixpence a week. -“This reverse of fortune,” says Ireland, “he bore with much -cheerfulness, although obliged to sell his books and furniture to -procure subsistence. One day, being asked by a neighbor, as he passed -through the village with something under his gown, what had he got -there?--he replied he was become an ostrich, and forced to live upon -iron--showing some old iron which he was going to sell at the -blacksmith’s to enable him to purchase a dinner.” The living of Bredon -was, in more peaceful times, one of the fattest in the bishop’s diocese, -as is hinted by a huge tithe-barn on the slope above us, with a chamber -over its doorway, doubtless for the accountant. - -From Bredon we came to Twining Ferry, three miles below Strensham, and -the flat meadows beyond it, over which the tower of Tewkesbury Abbey and -the tall chimneys of its mills now began to loom through a rainy sky -upon which night was fast closing. It is just before the town is reached -that the Avon parts to join the Severn in four streams--one over a weir, -another through a lock, the remaining two after working mills. Being by -this both wet and hungry, we disembarked at the boat-yard beside Mythe -Bridge, and walked up to our inn beneath the dark, irregular gables of -High Street, resolved to explore the town next day. - -Tewkesbury lies along the southern bank of Mill Avon, the longest branch -of our divided river, which, flowing under Mythe Bridge, washes on its -left the slums and back gardens of the town before it passes down to -work the Abbey Mill. One of these gardens--that of the Bell and -Bowling-Green Inn--will be recognized by all readers of “John Halifax, -Gentleman,” and the view from the yew-hedged bowling-green itself shall -be painted in Mrs. Craik’s own words: - -[Illustration: MYTHE BRIDGE, TEWKESBURY] - -“At the end of the arbor the wall which enclosed us on the riverward -side was cut down--my father had done it at my asking--so as to make a -seat, something after the fashion of Queen Mary’s seat at Stirling, of -which I had read. Thence one could see a goodly sweep of country. First, -close below, flowed the Avon--Shakespeare’s Avon--here a narrow, -sluggish stream, but capable, as we sometimes knew to our cost, of being -roused into fierceness and foam. Now it slipped on quietly enough, -contenting itself with turning a flour-mill hard by, the lazy whir of -which made a sleepy, incessant monotone which I was fond of hearing. -From the opposite bank stretched a wide green level called the Ham, -dotted with pasturing cattle of all sorts. Beyond it - -[Illustration: TWINING FERRY] - -was a second river, forming an arc of a circle round the verdant flat. -But the stream itself lay so low as to be invisible from where we sat; -you could only trace the line of its course by the small white sails -that glided in and out, oddly enough, from behind clumps of trees and -across meadow-lands.” - -[Illustration: THE BOWLING-GREEN, TEWKESBURY] - -This second stream is, of course, the Severn, sweeping broadly by the -base of Mythe Hill. An advertisement that we saw posted in Tewkesbury -streets gave us the size of the intervening meadow; it announced that -the after or latter math of the Severn Ham was to be sold by order of -the trustees--172 acres, 2 roods, 28 perches of grass in all. The Ham is -let by auction, and the money divided among the inhabitants of certain -streets. - -We lingered to observe the yew hedge, “fifteen feet high and as many -thick,” and talk to a waiter who now appeared at the back door of the -inn. He seemed to feel his black suit and white shirt-front incongruous -with their surroundings, and explained the cause of their presence. The -Tewkesbury Bowling Club had held its annual dinner there the night -before. He showed us the empty bottles. - -“Evidently a very large club,” we said. - -“No, sirs; thirsty.” - -The Abbey Mill, which droned so pleasantly in Phineas Fletcher’s ears, -stands close by, under the shadow of the Abbey Church, its hours of work -and rest marked by the clock and peal of eight sweet-toned bells in the -Abbey Tower. - -[Illustration: TEWKESBURY, FROM THE SEVERN] - -It is well that this tower should stand where it does. If to one who -follows the windings of Avon the recurrent suggestion of its scenery be -that of permanence, here fitly, at his journey’s end, he finds that -permanence embodied monumentally in stone. No building that I -know in England--not Westminster Abbey, with all its sleeping -generations--conveys the impression of durability in the same degree as -does this Norman tower, which, for eight centuries, has stood foursquare -to the storms of heaven and the frenzy of men. Though it rises one -hundred and thirty-two feet from the ground to the coping of its -battlements, and though its upper stages contain much exquisite carving, -there is no - -[Illustration: MILL STREET, TEWKESBURY] - -lightness on its scarred, indomitable face, but only strength. The same -strength is repeated within the church by the fourteen huge cylindrical -columns from which the arches spring to bear the heavy roof of the nave. -In spite of the groining and elaborate traceries above, the rich eastern -windows, the luxuriant decoration of the chantry chapels and their -monuments, these fourteen columns give the note of the edifice. To them -we return, and, standing beside them, are able to ignore the mutilations -of years, and see the old church as it was on a certain spring day in -1471, when its painted windows colored the white faces, and its ceilings -echoed the cries, of the beaten Lancastrians that clung to its altar for -sanctuary. - -[Illustration: OLD HOUSE, TEWKESBURY] - -For “in the field by Tewkesbury,” a little to the south, beside the -highway that runs to Gloucester and Cheltenham, the crown of England has -been won and lost. There, on the 4th of May, 1471, the troops of Queen -Margaret and the young Prince Edward, led by the Duke of Somerset from -Exeter to join another army that the Earl of Pembroke was raising in -Wales, were overtaken by Edward IV., who had hurried out from Windsor to -intercept them. Footsore and bedraggled, they had reached Tewkesbury on -the 3d, and “pight their field in a close euen hard at the towne’s end, -hauing the towne and abbeie at their backes; and directlie before them, -and upon each side of them, they were defended with cumbersome lanes, -deepe ditches, and manie hedges, besides hils and dales, so as the place -seemed as noisome as might be to approach unto.” From this secure -position they were drawn by a ruse of the Crookback’s, and slaughtered -like sheep. Many, we know, fled to the abbey, were seized there and -executed by dozens at Tewkesbury Cross, where High Street and Burton -Street divide. Others were chased into the river by the Abbey Mill and -drowned. A house in Church Street is pointed out as the place where -Edward, Prince of Wales, was slain, and some stains in the floor boards -of one of the upper rooms are still held to be his blood-marks. -Tradition has marked his burial-place in the Abbey Church, and written -above it, “Eheu, hominum furor: matris tu sola lux es, et gregis ultima -spes.” The dust of his enemy Clarence--“false, fleeting, perjured -Clarence”--lies but a little way off, behind the altar-screen. - -There is a narrow field, one of the last that Avon washes, down the -centre of which runs a narrow, withy-bordered watercourse. It is called -the “Bloody Meadow,” after the carnage of that day, when, as the story -goes, blood enough lay at its foot to float a boat; and just beyond our -river is gathered to the greater Severn. - - - - -INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS - - -Ann Hathaway’s Cottage, 73. -Arrow-heads, near Tewkesbury, 131. -Ashow, 41. -Avon from Nasebyfield to Wolston, The, facing 10. -Avon Inn, Rugby, 22. - -Barford Bridge, 54. -Bidford Bridge, 84. -Blakedown Mill, 44. -Bowling-green, Tewkesbury, The, 137. -Bredon, 125. -Bretford, 29. -Bubbenhall, 37. - -Cæsar’s Tower, Warwick Castle, 50. -Catthorpe Church, 19. -Chadbury Mill, 104. -Chadbury Weir, 105. -Charlcote, 63. -Chesford Bridge, 43. -Church Lawford, 27. -Cleeve Mill--An Autumn Flood, 87. -Clopton Bridge, Stratford-upon-Avon, 69. -Cropthorne Mill, 112. - -Dove-cote, Wasperton, 60. -Dow Bridge on Watling Street, 20. - -Eckington Bridge, 122. -Eckington, Near, 127. -Elms by Bidford Grange, 81. -Evesham Bell-tower and Old Abbey Gateway, 102. -Evesham, from the River, 96. - -Fladbury Mill, 108. - -Gig Seat, The, 109. -Gleaners, 33. -Great Comberton, 121. -Guy’s Cliffe, 47. -Guy’s Cliffe Mill, 45. - -Hampton Ferry, 103. -Hampton Lucy, from the Meadows, 61. -Hampton Lucy to Harvington, From, facing 60. -Harvington Weir, 92. -Hillborough, 83. -Holbrook Court, 24. -Hospital of Robert Earl of Leycester in Warwick, 51. - -Lawford Mill, 25. -Lock and Church, The, 75. - -Market-garden near Evesham, A, 99. -Meadows by the Avon, 89. -Meadowsweet, 65. -Mill Street, Tewkesbury, 139. -Mouth of the Stour, The, 74. -Mythe Bridge, Tewkesbury, 134. - -Nafford Mill, 122. -Naseby Monument, 10. -Nets Drying at Wyre, 117. -Newbold-upon-Avon, 24. - -Offenham, Near, 95. -Offenham to Tewkesbury, From, facing 96. -Old Bridge, Warwick, 49. -Old House, Tewkesbury, 141. -Old Pear-Trees at Pershore, 115. -Old Thorns, Marcleeve Hill, 85. - -Pershore Bridge, 119. -Pershore Water-gate, 123. - -Reed-cutters, 101. -Roman Camp, Lilburne, 15. -Rugby, from Brownsover Mill, 21. -Ruins of Newnham Regis Church, 28. -Ryton-on-Dunsmore, 32. - -Sherborne, 58. -Site of Brandon Castle, 31. -Standford Church, 17. -Standford Hall, 14. -Stoneleigh Abbey, Oct. 15, 1884, 40. -Stoneleigh Deer Park, In, 36. -Stratford Church, 71. -Strensham Church, 129. -Strensham Mill, 130. -Sulby Abbey, 11. -Summer-house on Bredon Hill, The, 118. -Swing-Bridge near Welford, 13. - -Tewkesbury, from the Severn, 138. -Tithe Barn, Bredon, 126. -Twining Ferry, 135. - -Under the Willows, 67. - -Warwick Castle, from the Park, 55. -Wasperton, At, 59. -Weir Brake, 77. -Welford Canal House, 12. -Welford Weir and Church, 80. -Weston-upon-Avon, 78. -Willows by Cropthorne, 113. -Willow Pollarding, 93. -Wolston Priory, 32. -Wolston to Wasperton, From, facing 28. -Wyre, At, 114. -Wyre Lock, 117. - -Yew Hedge, The--Cleeve Prior Manor-house, 83. - - THE END - - * * * * * - - HANDSOME BOOKS - - ILLUSTRATED BY - - EDWIN A. 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You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Warwickshire Avon</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Illustrator: Alfred Parsons</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March 12, 2021 [eBook #64801]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive)</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WARWICKSHIRE AVON ***</div> -<hr class="full" /> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/cover.jpg"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" -height="550" alt="[Image of -the book's cover unavailable.]" /></a> -</p> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" -style="border: 2px black solid;margin:auto auto;max-width:50%; -padding:1%;"> -<tr><td> - -<p class="c"><a href="#INDEX_TO_ILLUSTRATIONS">Index to Illustrations</a><br /> <span class="nonvis">(In certain versions of this etext [in certain browsers] -clicking on the image will bring up a larger version.)</span></p> -<p class="c">(etext transcriber's note)</p></td></tr> -</table> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_4" id="page_4">{4}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_001.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_001.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>NASEBY CHURCH</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_5" id="page_5">{5}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/title.jpg"> -<img src="images/title.jpg" -height="550" -alt="" -/></a> -</div> - -<h1> -<i>The<br /> -Warwickshire<br /> -Avon</i></h1> - -<p class="c"><i>Notes by -A. T. Quiller-Couch</i><br /> -<i>Illustrations by<br /> -Alfred Parsons</i><br /><br /> -<i>New York<br /> -Harper & Brothers<br /> -1892</i></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_6" id="page_6">{6}</a></span></p> - -<p class="c"><small> -<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Brothers.</span><br /> -<br /> -<i>All rights reserved.</i><br /></small></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_7" id="page_7">{7}</a></span> </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_8" id="page_8">{8}</a></span> </p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_003.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_003.jpg" -width="450" -alt="To all the Friends with whom I have spent happy hours on -the Avon the drawings in this book are dedicated A.P." -/></a></div> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_004.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_004.jpg" width="428" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE WARWICKSHIRE AVON</p></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">O</span>UR journey opens in Northamptonshire, and in that season when the year -grows ancient,</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Not yet on summer’s death, nor on the birth<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Of trembling winter.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">In the stubble the crack! crack! of a stray gun speaks, now and again, -of partridge-time. Over the pastures, undulating with ridge and furrow, -where the black oxen feed, patches of gloom and gleam are scurrying as -the wind—westerly, with a touch of north—chases the light showers -under a vivid sun. Along the drab road darts a bullfinch, his family -after him; pauses a moment among the dogrose berries; is off again, and -lost in the dazzle ahead.</p> - -<p>A high grassy ridge stands up from the plain; and upon it, white and -salient against a dark cloud, the spire of a village church. From its -belfry, says the sexton, you may spy forty parishes: but more important -are the few cottages immediately below. They seem conspicuously -inglorious: yet their name is written large in the histories. It speaks -of a bright June day when along this ridge—then unenclosed and -scattered with broom and heath flowers—the rattle of musketry and -outcries of battle rolled from morning to late afternoon, by which time -was lost a king with his kingdom. For the village is Naseby. Here, by -the market green, the Parliamentarians ranged their baggage. Yonder, on -Mill Hill and Broad Moor, with just a hollow between, the two armies -faced each other; the royalists with bean-stalks in their hats, their -enemies with badges of white linen. To the left, Sulby hedges were lined -with Ireton’s dragoons. And the rest is an old story: Rupert, tardily -returning from a headlong charge, finds no “cause” left to befriend, no -foe to fight. While his men were pillaging, Cromwell has snatched the -day. His Majesty is flying through Market-Harborough towards Leicester, -and thither along the dusty roads his beaten regiments trail after him, -with the Ironsides at their heels, hewing hip and thigh.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_005.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_005.jpg" width="377" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>NASEBY MONUMENT</p></div> -</div> - -<p>An obelisk, set about with thorn-bushes and shaded by oak and birch, -marks the battle-field. It rests on a base of rough moss-grown stones, -and holds out “a useful lesson to British kings never to exceed the -bounds of their just prerogative, and to British subjects never to -swerve from the allegiance due to their legitimate monarch.” And the -advice is well meant, no doubt; but, as the Watch asked of Dogberry, -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_9" id="page_9">{9}</a></span>“How if they will not?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_10" id="page_10">{10}</a></span></p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_11" id="page_11">{11}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_006.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_006.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p><i>The Avon from Noseby field to Wolston</i></p></div> -</div> - -<p>Naseby, however, has another boast. Here, beside the monument, we are -standing on the water-shed of England. In the fields below rise many -little springs, whereof those to the south and east unite to form the -Ise brook, which runs into the Nen, and so find their goal in the North -Sea; those to the west form the Avon, and seek the British Channel. And -it is westward that we turn our faces—we, whom you shall briefly know -as P. and Q.; for the business that brings us to Naseby is to find here -the source of Shakespeare’s Avon, and so follow its windings downward to -the Severn.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_007.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_007.jpg" width="382" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>SULBY ABBEY</p></div> -</div> - -<p>The source is modest enough, being but a well amid the “good cabbage” of -the inn garden. To-day, a basin of mere brick encloses it; but in 1823, -the date of the obelisk, some person of refinement would adorn also Avon -Well; and procured from Mr. Groggan of London a Swan of Avon in plaster; -and Mr. Groggan contrived that the water should gush elegantly from her -bill, but not for long. For the small boy came with stones, after his -kind; and now, sans wing, sans head, sans everything, she crouches among -the cabbages, “a rare bird upon earth.”</p> - -<p>From Avon Well the spring flows to the northwest, and we follow it -through “wide-skirted meads” dotted with rub<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_12" id="page_12">{12}</a></span>bing-posts and divided by -stiff ox fences (the bullfinches of the fox-hunter—for we are in the -famous Pytchley country), past a broad reservoir fringed with reed and -poplars, and so through more pastures to Sulby Abbey. And always, as we -look back, Naseby spire marks our starting-point. About three miles -down, the runnel has grown to a respectable brook, quite large enough to -have kept supplied the abbey fish-ponds.</p> - -<div class="figleft" style="width: 437px;"> -<a href="images/ill_008.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_008.jpg" width="218" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>WELFORD CANAL HOUSE</p></div> -</div> - -<p>On the site of this abbey—founded circa 1155 by William de Wydeville in -honor of the Blessed Virgin—now stands a red-brick farm-house, passably -old, and coated with ivy. Of the vanished building it conserves but two -relics—a stone coffin and the floriated cover of another. The course of -the stream beside it, and for some way below, is traced by the -thorn-bushes under which it winds (in springtime how pleasantly!) until -Welford is reached—a small brick village. Here, after rioting awhile in -a maze of spendthrift channels, it recombines its waters to run under -its first bridge, and begin a sober life by supplying a branch of the -Grand Junction Canal. A round-house at the canal’s head forms, with the -bridge, what Mr. Samuel Ireland, in his Beauties of the Warwickshire -Avon (1795), calls “an agreeable landscape, giving that sort of view -which, being simple in itself, seldom fails to constitute elegance.” -Rather, to our thinking, the landscape’s beauty lies in its suggestion, -in that here we touch the true heart of the country life; of quiet -nights dividing slow, familiar days, during which man and man’s work -grow steeped in the soil’s complexion, secure of all but<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_13" id="page_13">{13}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_009.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_009.jpg" width="454" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>SWING-BRIDGE NEAR WELFORD</p></div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">“the penalty of Adam,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">The season’s difference.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>It is enough that we are grateful for it as we pass on down the valley -where the canal and stream run side by side—the canal demurely between -straight banks, the stream below trying always how many curves it can -make in each field, until quieted for a while by the dam of a little -red-brick mill, set down all alone in the brilliant green. The -thorn-bushes are giving place to willows—not such as fringe the Thames, -but gray trees of a smaller leaf, and, by your leave, more beautiful. -Our walk as we follow the towpath of the canal, having the river on our -left, is full of peaceful incidents and subtle revelations of color—a -lock, a quaint swing-bridge, a swallow taking the sunlight on his breast -as he skims between us and the inky clouds, a white horse emphasizing -the meadow’s verdure. The next field holds a group of sable—a flock of -rooks,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_14" id="page_14">{14}</a></span> a pair of black horses, a dozen velvet-black oxen, beside whom -the thirteenth ox seems consciously indecorous in a half-mourning suit -of iron-gray. Next, from a hawthorn “total gules” with autumn berries, -we start six magpies; and so, like Christian, “give three skips and go -on singing” beneath the spires and towers of this and that small village -(Welford and North and South Kilworth) that look down from the edging -hills.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_010.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_010.jpg" width="391" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>STANFORD HALL</p></div> -</div> - -<p>Below South Kilworth, where a windmill crowns the upland, the valley -turns southward, and we leave the canal to track the Avon again, that -here is choked with rushes. For a mile or two we pursue it, now jumping, -now crossing by a timely pole or hurdle, from Northamptonshire into -Leicestershire and back (for the stream divides these counties), until -it enters the grounds of Stanford Hall, and under the yellowing -chestnuts of the park grows suddenly a dignified sheet of water, with -real swans.</p> - -<p>Stanford Hall (the seat of Lord Bray) is, according to Ireland, -“spacious, but wants those pictorial decorations that would render it an -object of attention to the traveller of taste.” But to us, who saw it in -the waning daylight, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_15" id="page_15">{15}</a></span> comfortable square house seemed full of quiet -charm, as did the squat perpendicular church, untouched by the restorer, -and backed by a grassy mound that rises to the eastern window, and the -two bridges (the older one disused) under which the Avon leaves the -park. A twisted wych-elm divides them, its roots set among broad burdock -leaves.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_011.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_011.jpg" width="388" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>ROMAN CAMP, LILBURNE</p></div> -</div> - -<p>Below Stanford the stream contracts again, and again meanders among -black cattle and green fields to Lilburne. Here it winds past a -congeries of grassy mounds, dotted now with black-faced sheep, that was -once a Roman encampment, the Tripontium mentioned by the emperor -Antoninus in his journey from London to Lincoln. Climbing to the -eminence of the prætorium and gazing westward, we see on the high ground -two beech-crowned tumuli side by side, clearly an outpost or speculum -overlooking Watling Street, the Roman road that passes just beyond the -ridge “from Dover into Chestre.” This same high ground is the eastern -hem of Dunsmore Heath, once so dismally ravaged by the Dun Cow of -legend, till Guy of Warwick rode out and slew her in single combat. The -heath, a long ridge of lias bordering our river to the south for many -miles to come, is now enclosed and tilled; but its straggling cottages, -duck<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_16" id="page_16">{16}</a></span> ponds, and furze clumps still suggest the time when all was common -land.</p> - -<p>At our feet, close under the encampment, an antique bridge crosses Avon. -Beside it is hollowed a sheep-washing pool, and across the road stands a -little church. Tempted by its elaborate window mouldings, we poke our -heads in at the door, but at once withdraw them to cough and sneeze. The -place is given over to dense smoke and a small decent man, who says that -a service will be held in ten minutes, and what to do with the stove he -doesn’t know. So we leave him, and pass on, trudging towards Catthorpe, -a mile below.</p> - -<p>A wooden paling, once green, but subdued by years to all delicate tints, -fronts the village street. Behind, in a garden of cypress and lilacs, -lies the old vicarage, with deep bow-windows sunk level with the turf, a -noteworthy house. For John Dyer, author of “Grongar Hill”—“Bard of the -Fleece,” as Wordsworth hails him—held Catthorpe living for a few years -in the last century; and here, while his friends</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">“in the town, in the busy, gay town,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Forgot such a man as John Dyer,”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">looked out on this gray garden wall, over which the fig-tree clambers, -and “relished versing.” The church stands close by, a ragged cedar -beside it, an elm drooping before its plain tower. We take a long look -before descending again to the river, like Dyer</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">“resolved, this charming day,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Into the open fields to stray,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">And have no roof above our head<br /></span> -<span class="i0">But that whereon the gods do tread.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>Just below Catthorpe, by a long line of arches called Dow<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_17" id="page_17">{17}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_012.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_012.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>STANFORD CHURCH</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_19" id="page_19">{19}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_18" id="page_18">{18}</a></span></p> - -<p>(or Dove) Bridge, Watling Street pushes across the river with Roman -directness. This bridge marks the meeting-point of three counties, for -beyond it we step into Warwickshire. It is indifferently modern, yet -“the scene, though simple, aided by a group of cattle then passing, had -sufficient attraction in the meridian of a summer sun to induce” the -egregious Ireland “to attempt a sketch of it as a picturesque view,” and -supply us with a sentence to be quoted a thousand times during our -voyage, and always with ribald appreciation.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_013.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_013.jpg" width="402" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>CATTHORPE CHURCH</p></div> -</div> - -<p>The valley narrows as we draw near Rugby. Clifton on Dunsmore, eminent -by situation only, stands boldly up on the left, and under it, by -Clifton mill, the stream runs down to Brownsover. Brownsover too has its -mill, with a pool and cluster of wych-elms below. And hard by we find -(as we think) Tom Brown’s willow, the tree which wouldn’t “throw out -straight hickory shoots twelve feet long, with no<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_20" id="page_20">{20}</a></span> leaves, worse luck!” -where Tom sat aloft, and “Velveteens,” the keeper, below, through that -soft, hazy day in the Mayfly season, till the sun came slanting through -the branches, and told of locking-up near at hand. We are hushed as we -stand before it, and taste the reward of such as “identify.”</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_014.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_014.jpg" width="473" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>DOW BRIDGE ON WATLING STREET</p></div> -</div> - -<p>And now, just ahead, on the same line of hill as Clifton, stands the -town of Rugby. No good view of it can be found from the river-side, for -the middle distance is always a straight line of railway sheds or -embankments. Perhaps the best is to be had from the towpath of the -Oxford Canal, marked high above our right by a line of larch and poplar, -where a tall aqueduct carries it over the river Swift.</p> - -<p>This is the stream which, coming from Lutterworth, bore down in 1427 the -ashes of John Wiclif to the Avon. Forty years after his peaceful -interment the Council of Constance gave orders to exhume and burn his -body, to see if it could be discerned from those of the faithful. “In -obedience thereto,” says Fuller, “Richard Fleming, bishop of Lincoln, -diocesan of Lutterworth, sent his officers (vultures with a<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_21" id="page_21">{21}</a></span> quick sight -sent at a dead carcass!) to ungrave him accordingly. To Lutterworth they -come—sumner, commissary, official, chancellor, proctors, doctors, and -the servants (so that the remnant of the body would not hold out a bone -amongst so many hands), take what is left out of the grave, and burn -them to ashes, and cast them into Swift, a brook running hard by. Thus -the brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn -into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of -Wiclif are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the -world over.”</p> - -<p>For aught we know, the upper part of this stream may justify its name.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_015.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_015.jpg" width="486" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>RUGBY FROM BROWNSOVER MILL</p></div> -</div> - -<p>The two streams unite in that green vale over which Dr. Arnold used to -gaze in humorous despair. “It is no wonder,” he said, “we do not like -looking that way, when one considers that there is nothing fine between -us and the Ural Mountains;” and, in a letter to Archbishop Whately,” -... we have no hills, no plains, not a single wood, and but one single -copse; no heath, no down, no rock, no river,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_22" id="page_22">{22}</a></span> no clear stream, scarcely -any flowers—for the lias is particularly poor in them—nothing but one -endless monotony of enclosed fields and hedge-row trees;” lastly, “I -care nothing for Warwickshire, and am in it like a plant sunk in the -ground in a pot; my roots never strike beyond the pot, and I could be -transplanted at any moment without tearing or severing my fibres.” And -we consent, in part, for the fibres of great men lie in their work, not -in this or that soil. But what fibres—not his own—were cracked when -Rugby lost its great schoolmaster we feel presently as, haunted by his -son’s noble elegy, we stand before the altar of the school chapel, where -he rests.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_016.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_016.jpg" width="470" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>AVON INN, RUGBY</p></div> -</div> - -<p>At Rugby our narrative, hitherto smilingly pastoral, quickens to epic. -So far we had followed Avon afoot, but here we meant to launch a -Canadian canoe on its waters, creating a legend. She lay beside a small -river-side tavern, her bright basswood sides gleaming in the sunshine. A -small crowd had gathered, and was being addressed with volubility by a -high complexioned man of urbane demeanor.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_23" id="page_23">{23}</a></span> He was bareheaded and -coatless; he was shod in blue carpet slippers, on each of which a yellow -anchor (emblem of Hope) was entwined with sprays of the pink -convolvulus, typifying (according to P., who is a botanist), “I -recognize your worth, and will sustain it by judicious and tender -affection.” As we launched our canoe and placed our sacks on board, he -turned his discourse on us. It breathed the spirit of calm confidence. -There were long shallows just below (he said), and an uprooted willow -blocking the stream, and three waterfalls, and fences of barbed wire. He -enumerated the perils; he was sanguine about each; and ours was the -first canoe he ever set eyes on.</p> - -<p>We pushed off and waved good-bye. The sun shone in our faces; behind, -the voice of confidence shouted us over the first shallow. Our canoe -swung round a bend beside a small willow coppice, and we sighed as the -kindly crowd was hidden from us.</p> - -<p>We turned at the sound of stertorous breathing. A pair of blue slippers -came twinkling after us over the meadow. Our friend had fetched a -circuit round the coppice, and soon both craft and crew were as babes in -his hands. Was it a shallow?—he hounded us over. Was it a willow fallen -“ascaunt the brook?”—he drove us under, clambering himself along the -trunk, as once Ophelia, and exhorting always. At the foot of the first -waterfall he took leave of us, and turned back singing across the -fields. He was a good man, but would be obeyed. We learned from him, -first, that the art of canoeing has no limits; second, that the -“impenetrability of matter” is a discredited phrase; and, after the -manner of Bunyan, we called him Mr. Win-by-Will.</p> - -<p>By many dense beds of rushes, through which a flock of ducks scattered -before us, we dropped down to Newbold on Avon, a pretty village on the -hill-side, with green orchards sloping to the stream. By climbing -through them and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_24" id="page_24">{24}</a></span> looking due south, you may see the spire of Bilton, -where Addison lived for many years. Below Newbold the river tumbles over -two waterfalls, runs thence by a line of rush beds to a railway bridge, -and so beneath Caldecott’s famous spinney, where Tom Brown, East, and -the “Madman” sought the kestrel’s nest. Many Scotch firs mingle with the -beeches of the spinney, and just below them the stream divides, -enclosing a small island, and recombines to hold a southward course past -Holbrook Court.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_017-a.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_017-a.jpg" height="376" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>NEWBOLD UPON AVON</p></div> -</div> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_017-b.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_017-b.jpg" width="465" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>HOLBROOK COURT</p></div> -</div> - -<p>Holbrook Court is a gloomy building that looks down its<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_25" id="page_25">{25}</a></span> park slope upon -a weir, a red-brick mill, and a gloomier farm-house of stone. This -farm-house has a history, being all that is left of Lawford Hall, the -scene of the once notorious “Laurel-Water Tragedy.”</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_018.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_018.jpg" width="376" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>LAWFORD MILL</p></div> -</div> - -<p>The tale is briefly this: In 1780 Sir Theodosius Boughton, a vicious and -sickly boy, was squiring it at Lawford Hall, and fast drinking out his -puny constitution. “To him enter” an evil spirit in the shape of a -brother-in-law, an Irish adventurer, one Captain Donellan. This graduate -in vice took the raw scholar in hand, and with the better will as being -next heir to his estates. But it seems that drink and debauchery worked -too slowly for the impatient captain, for one evening the wretched boy -went to bed, called for his sleeping-draught, and drank the wrong liquid -out of the right bottle. And as for Captain Donellan, he bungled matters -somehow, and was hanged at Warwick in the following spring—an elegant, -well-mannered man in black, who displayed much ceremonious punctilio at -ascending the scaffold ahead of the sheriff. Ten years later<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_26" id="page_26">{26}</a></span> Lawford -Hall was pulled down as an accursed thing, and the building before us is -all that survives of it. To-day the Gloire de Dijon rose, the jasmine, -and the ivy sprawl up its sad-colored walls and over the porch, which -still wears the date 1604.</p> - -<p>Either at Lawford Hall, or just above, at the old Holbrook Grange, -lived, in Elizabeth’s time, One-handed Boughton, who won an entirely -posthumous fame by driving a ghostly coach and six about the -country-side. His spirit was at length caught in a phial by certain of -the local clergy, corked down, sealed, thrown into a neighboring -marl-pit, and so laid forever. Therefore his only successes of late have -been in frightening maid-servants out of their situations at the farm.</p> - -<p>Leaving Lawford, we paddle through a land pastorally desolate, seeing, -often for miles together, neither man’s face nor woman’s. The canoe -darts in and out of rush beds; avoids now a shallow, now a snag, a clump -of reeds, a conglomerate of logs and pendent shrivelled flags, flotsam -of many floods; and again is gliding easily between meadows that hold, -in Touchstone’s language, “no assembly but horn beasts.” Our canoe wakes -strange emotions in these cattle. They lift their heads, snort, fling up -their heels, and, with rigid tails, come capering after us like so many -bacchanals. At length a fence stops them, and they obligingly watch us -out of sight. The next herd repeats the performance. And always the -river is vocal beside us,</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge<br /></span> -<span class="i1">He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">while ahead the water-rat dives, or the moor-hen splashes from one green -brim to another; and around the land is slowly changing from the -monotonous to the “up-and-down-hilly;” and we, passing through it all, -are thankful.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_27" id="page_27">{27}</a></span></p> - -<p>A small cottage appears beside some lime-pits on the right bank. Over -its garden gate a blackboard proclaims that here are the “Newnham Regis -Baths.” A certain Walter Bailey, M.D., writing in 1587 A Brief Discourse -of Certain Baths, etc., sings loud praise of these waters, but warns -drinkers to “consist in a mediocrity, and never to adventure to drink -above six, or at the utmost eight, pints in one day.” Also, he “will not -rashly counsel any to use them in the leap-years.” We disregarded this -latter warning, but observed the former; yet the plain man who gave us -our glassful asserted that a friend of his, “all hot and sweaty,” drank -two quarts of the water one summer day, and took no harm. As a fact, the -springs which here rise from the limestone were known and esteemed by -the Romans; the remains of their baths were found, and the present -one—a pump within a square paling—built on the same spot. But their -fame has not travelled of late.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_019.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_019.jpg" width="490" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>CHURCH LAWFORD</p></div> -</div> - -<p>We embarked again, and were soon floating down to Church Lawford. What -shall be said of this spot? As we saw it happily, one slope of -green—vivid, yet in shadow—swelled up to darker elms and a tall church -tower, set high against an amber sunset. Beyond, the sky and the river’s -dim reaches melted together, through all delicate yellows, mauves, and -grays, into twilight. A swan, scurrying down<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_28" id="page_28">{28}</a></span> stream before us, broke -the water into pools of gold. And so a bend swept Church Lawford out of -our sight and into our kindliest memories.</p> - -<p>Nearly opposite lies Newnham Regis, about a mile from its baths. In -Saxon times, they say, a king’s palace stood here; and three large -fish-ponds, with some mounds, remain for a sign of it. Here, beside a -pleasant mill, the foot-path crosses to Church Lawford. Just below, the -stream is blocked by an osier bed; and we struggled there for the half -of one mortal hour, and mused on the carpet slippers, and Hope, and such -things; and “late and at last” were out and paddling through the -uncertain light under the pointed arches of Bretford Bridge.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_020.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_020.jpg" width="422" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>RUINS OF NEWNHAM REGIS CHURCH</p></div> -</div> - -<p>Here crosses the second great Roman road, the Fosseway,</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i8">“that tilleth from Toteneys<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From the one end of Cornewaile anon to Cateneys,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">From the South-west to North-est, into Englonde’s ende.<br /></span> -<span class="i0"><i>Fosse</i> men callith thilke way, that by mony town doth wende.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_021.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_021.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p><i>From Wolston to Wasperton</i></p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_29" id="page_29">{29}</a></span></p> - -<p>Thenceforward for a mile we move in darkness over glimmering waters, -until a railway bridge looms ahead, and we spy, half a mile away, the -lights of a little station. This must be Brandon, we decide; and running -in beside the bank, begin a quick contention with the echo.</p> - -<p>Voices answer us, male and female, and soon many villagers are about us, -peering at the canoe.</p> - -<p>“Are we in time for the last train to Coventry?”</p> - -<p>Chorus answers “Yes;” only one melancholy stripling insists that it -isn’t likely.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_022.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_022.jpg" width="363" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>BRETFORD</p></div> -</div> - -<p>And he is right. We hear a rumble; a red eye flames out; the last train, -with a hot trail of smoke, comes roaring over the bridge and shoots into -Brandon station. We are too late.</p> - -<p>“Beds?”</p> - -<p>The melancholy one echoes: “Beds! In Brandon?”</p> - -<p>“The inn?<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_30" id="page_30">{30}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>“Well, you might try the inn.”</p> - -<p>We march up to try the inn. There are forty-four men in the bar, as we -have leisure to count, and all are drinking beer. Clearly we are not -wanted. The landlady has eyes like beads, black and twinkling, but they -will not rest on us. The outlook begins to be sombre, when P., who, -beneath a rugged exterior, hides much aptitude for human affairs, -announces that he has a way with landladies, and tries it. He says:</p> - -<p>“Can we have a horse and trap to take us to Coventry to-night? No? -That’s bad. Nor a bed? Dear me! Then please draw us half a pint of -beer.”</p> - -<p>The beer is brought. P. tastes it, looks up with a happy smile, and -begins again:</p> - -<p>“Can we have a horse and trap?” etc., etc.</p> - -<p>It is astounding, but at the tenth repetition of this formula the -landlady becomes as water, and henceforth we have our way with that inn.</p> - -<p>Moreover, we have the landlord’s company at supper—a deliberate, heavy -man, who tells us that he brews his own beer, and has twenty-three -children. He adds that the former distinction has given him many -friends, the latter many relatives. A niece of his is to be married at -Coventry to-morrow.</p> - -<p>Q., who ran into Coventry by an early train next morning to fetch some -letters that awaited us, was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the -bride as she stepped into her carriage. He reported her to be pretty, -and we wished her all happiness. P. meanwhile had strolled up the river -to Wolston Mill, which we had passed in the darkness, and he too had -praises to chant of that, and of a grand old Elizabethan farm-house that -he had found outside the village.</p> - -<p>We embarked again by Brandon Castle, the abode once of a Roman garrison, -and later of an exclusive Norman<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_31" id="page_31">{31}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_023.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_023.jpg" width="379" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>SITE OF BRANDON CASTLE</p></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">family that kept its own private gallows at Bretford, just above. Where -the castle stood now thrive the brier, the elder, the dogrose, the -blackthorn twined with clematis; the outer moat is become a morass, -choked with ragwort and the flowering rush; the inner moat is dry, and a -secular ash sprawls down its side. We left it to glide beneath a -graceful Georgian bridge; past a lawn dotted with sleek cattle, a small -red mill, a row of melancholy anglers, a mile of giant alders, and so -down to Ryton-on-Dunsmore, the western outpost of the great heath. As -the heath ended, the country’s character began to change, and all grew -open. On either hand broad pastures divided us from the arable slopes -where a month ago the gleaners were moving amid</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Summer’s green, all girded up in sheaves;”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">and therefore by Ryton’s two mills and Ryton’s many alders we moved -slowly, inviting our souls, careless of Fate, that lay in her ambush, -soon to harry us. A broad road crossed above us, and, alighting, we -loitered by the bridge, and discovered a mile-stone that marks -eighty-seven miles from London and three from Coventry. We could descry -the three<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_32" id="page_32">{32}</a></span> lovely spires of Lady Godiva’s town, mere needle-points above -the trees to northward.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_024-a.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_024-a.jpg" width="393" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>RYTON-ON-DUNSMORE</p></div> -</div> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_024-b.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_024-b.jpg" width="302" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>WOLSTON PRIORY</p></div> -</div> - -<p>It was but shortly after that we came on an agreeable old gentleman, who -stood a-fishing with a little red float, and lied in his teeth, smiling -on us and asserting that Bubbenhall (where we had a mind to lunch) was -but a mile below. A mile!—for a crow, perhaps, but not for proper old -gentlemen, and most surely not for Avon. The freakish stream went round -and round, all meanders<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_33" id="page_33">{33}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_025.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_025.jpg" width="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>GLEANERS</p><p>GLEANERS</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_35" id="page_35">{35}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_34" id="page_34">{34}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">with never a forthright, narrowing, shallowing, casting up here a snag -and there a thicket of reeds. And round and round for miles our canoe -followed it, as a puppy chases his own tail; yet Bubbenhall was not, nor -any glimpse of Bubbenhall.</p> - -<p>Herodotus, if we remember, tells of a village called Is beside the -Tigris, far above Babylon, at which all voyagers down the river must put -up on three successive nights, so curiously is the channel looped about -it. Nor, after twice renewing our acquaintance with one particular -guelder-rose bush, did we see our way to doubt the tale when we recalled -it that day.</p> - -<p>These windings above Bubbenhall have their compensations, keeping both -hand and eye amusedly alert as our canoe tacks to and fro, shooting down -the V of two shallows, or running along quick water beneath the bank, -brushing the forget-me-nots (the flower that Henry of Bolingbroke wore -into exile from the famous lists of Coventry, hard by), or parting -curtain after curtain of reeds to issue on small vistas that are always -new. And Bubbenhall is worth the pains to find—a tiny village of brick -and timber set amid elms on a quiet slope, where for ages “bells have -knolled to church” from the old brick-buttressed tower above. Below -sleeps a quaint mill, also of brick and timber, and from its weir the -river wanders northeast, then southeast, and runs to Stoneleigh Deer -Park.</p> - -<p>A line of swinging deer fences hangs under the bridge, the river -trailing between their bars. We push cautiously under them, and look to -right and left in amazement. A moment has translated us from a sluggish -brook, twisting between water plants and willows, to a pleasant river, -stealing by wide lawns, by slopes of bracken, by gigantic trees—oaks, -Spanish oaks, and wych-elms, stately firs, sweet chestnuts, and filmy -larch coppices. We are in Arden, the land<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_36" id="page_36">{36}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_026.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_026.jpg" width="501" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>IN STONELEIGH DEER PARK</p></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">of Rosalind and Touchstone, of Jaques and Amiens. Their names may be -French, English, what you will, but here they inhabit, and almost we -look to spy the suit of motley and listen for its bells, or expect a -glimpse of Corin’s crook moving above the ferns, Orlando’s ballads -Muttering on a chestnut, or the sad-colored cloak of Jaques beneath an -oak—such an oak as this monster, thirty-nine feet around—whose -“antique root” writhes over the red-sandstone rock down to the water’s -brim. The very bed of Avon has altered. He runs now over smooth slabs of -rock, and now he brawls by a shallow, and now,</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i6">“where his fair course is not hindered,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">He makes sweet music with the enamell’d stones.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">Down to the shallow ahead of us—their accustomed ford—a herd of deer -comes daintily and splashes across, first the bucks, then the does in a -body. If they are here, why not their masters, the men and women whom we -know? We disembark, and letting the canoe drift brightly down stream,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_37" id="page_37">{37}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_027.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_027.jpg" width="588" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>BUBBENHALL</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_39" id="page_39">{39}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_38" id="page_38">{38}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">stroll along the bank beside it, and “fleet the time carelessly,” as -they did in that golden world.</p> - -<p>Too soon we reach the beautiful sandstone bridge, tinted by time and -curtained with creepers, that divides the deer park from the home park; -and soon, beside an old oak, the size of Avon is almost doubled by -junction with the Sowe, a stream that comes winding past Stoneleigh -village on our right, and brings for tribute the impurities of Coventry. -The banks beside us are open no longer; but for recompense we have the -birds—the whir-r-r of wood-pigeons in the nigh willow copse, the heron -sailing high, the kingfisher sparkling before us, the green woodpecker -condensing a whole day’s brilliance on his one small breast, the -wild-duck, the splashing moor-hen, and water-fowl of rarer kinds—that -tell us we are nearing Stoneleigh Abbey.</p> - -<p>The abbey was founded in 1154 by Henry II. for a body of Cistercian -monks, and endowed with privileges “very many and very great, to wit, -free warren, infangthef, outfangthef, wayfs, strays, goods of felons and -fugitives, tumbrel, pillory, sok, sak, tole, team, amercements, murders, -assize of bread and beer; with a market and fair in the town of -Stoneleigh”—a comprehensive list, as it seems. There were, says -Dugdale, in the manor of Stoneleigh, at this time, “sixty-eight villains -and two priests; as also four bondmen or servants, whereof each held one -messuage, and one quatrone of land, by the services of making the -gallows and hanging of thieves; every one of which bondmen was to wear a -red clout betwixt his shoulders, upon his upper garment.” The original -building was burnt in 1245, and what little old work now remains belongs -to a later building. The abbey went the way of its fellows under Henry -VIII.; was granted to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; changed hands -once or twice; and was finally bought by Sir Thomas Leigh, alderman of -London, in Queen Eliza<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_40" id="page_40">{40}</a></span>beth’s reign. The present Ionic mansion, now the -home of Lord Leigh, his descendant, was built towards the close of the -last century. The river spreads into a lake before it, and then, after -passing a weir, speeds briskly below a wooded bank, with tiny rapids, -down which our canoe dances gayly. As twilight overtakes us we reach -Ashow.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_028.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_028.jpg" height="414" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>STONELEIGH ABBEY, OCT. 15, 1884</p></div> -</div> - -<p>A little weather-stained church stands by Ashow shore—a church, a -yew-tree, and a narrow graveyard. Close under it steals the gray river, -whispers by cottage steps where a crazy punt lies rotting, by dim willow -aits and eel bucks, and so passes down to silence and the mists. Seeing -all<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_41" id="page_41">{41}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_029.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_029.jpg" width="522" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>ASHOW</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_43" id="page_43">{43}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_42" id="page_42">{42}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">this, we yearn to live here and pass our days in gratuitous melancholy.</p> - -<p>We revisited Ashow next morning, and were less exacting. And the reason -was, that it rained. Indeed, we were soaked to the skin before paddling -a mile; and as for the canoe,</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">And therefore I forbid my tears.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_030.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_030.jpg" width="381" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>CHESFORD BRIDGE</p></div> -</div> - -<p>We passed, like Mrs. Haller’s infant, “not dead, but very wet,” under -old Chesford Bridge, whereby the road runs to Kenilworth, that lies two -miles back from the river, and shall therefore, for once in its history, -escape description; and from Chesford Bridge reached Blakedown Mill and -another old bridge beside the miller’s house. This “simply elegant form -of landscape” led Samuel Ireland to ask “why man should with such eager -and restless ambition busy himself so often in the smoke and bustle of -populous cities, and lose his independence and too often his peace in -the pursuit of a phantom which almost eludes his grasp, little thinking -that with the accumulation of wealth he must<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_44" id="page_44">{44}</a></span> create imaginary wants, -under which, perhaps, that wealth melts away as certainly as under the -more ready inlet of inordinate passion happiness is sacrificed.” We -infer that Mr. Samuel Ireland was never rained upon hereabouts.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_031.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_031.jpg" width="374" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>BLAKEDOWN MILL</p></div> -</div> - -<p>Just below, on the north bank, rises Blacklow Hill, whither, on the 19th -of June, 1312, Piers Gaveston, the favorite of King Edward II., was -marched out from Warwick Castle by the barons to meet his doom. His head -was struck off, and, rolling down into a thicket, was picked up by a -“friar preacher” and carried off in his hood. On the rock beside the -scene of that grim revenge this inscription was rudely cut: “<span class="smcap">P. -Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall, beheaded here</span> + 1312;” and to-day a simple -cross also marks the spot.</p> - -<p>Hence, by the only rocks of which Avon can boast—and these are of -softest sandstone, their asperities worn all away by the weather—we -wind beneath Milverton village, with its odd church tower of wood, to -the weir and mill of Guy’s Cliffe.</p> - -<p>The beauties of this spot have been bepraised for centuries. Leland -speaks of them; Drayton sings them.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_45" id="page_45">{45}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_032.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_032.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>GUY’S CLIFFE MILL</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_47" id="page_47">{47}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_46" id="page_46">{46}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">“There,” says Camden, “have yee a shady little wood, cleere and cristal -springs, mossie bottoms and caves, medowes alwaies fresh and greene, the -river rumbling heere and there among the stones with his streame making -a milde noise and gentle whispering, and, besides all this, solitary and -still quietness, things most grateful to the Muses.” Fuller, who knew it -well, calls it “a most delicious place, so that a man in many miles’ -riding cannot meet so much variety as there one furlong doth afford.” -The water-mill is mentioned in Domesday-book, and has been sketched -constantly ever since—a low, quaint pile, fronted by a recessed open -gallery, under which the water is forever sparkling and frothing, fresh -from its spin over the mill-wheels, or tumble down the ledges of the -weir.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_033.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_033.jpg" width="451" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>GUY’S CLIFFE</p></div> -</div> - -<p>And below this mill rises the famous cliff, hollowed with many caves, in -one of which lived Guy of Warwick, slayer of the Dun Cow, of lions, -dragons, giants, paynims, and all such cattle; who married the fair -Phyllis of Warwick Castle; who afterwards repented of his much -bloodshed, and trudged<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_48" id="page_48">{48}</a></span> on foot to Palestine by way of expiation; who -anon returned again on foot to Warwick, where was his home and his dear -Phyllis. And coming to his own house door, where his wife was used to -feed every day thirteen poor men with her own hand, he stood with the -rest, and received bread from her for three days, and she knew him not. -So he learned that God’s wrath was not sated, and betook him to a fair -rocky place beside the river, a mile and more from his town; where, as -his words go in the old ballad,</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i5">“with my hands I hewed a house<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Out of a craggy rock of stone;<br /></span> -<span class="i1">And livèd like a Palmer poore<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Within that Cave myself alone;<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“And daily came to beg my bread<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Of Phyllis at my Castle gate;<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Not known unto my loving wife,<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Who daily mournèd for her mate.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Till at the last I fell sore sicke,<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Yea, sicke so sore that I must die;<br /></span> -<span class="i1">I sent to her a ring of golde,<br /></span> -<span class="i3">By which she knew me presentlye.<br /></span> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“So she, repairing to the Cave,<br /></span> -<span class="i3">Before that I gave up the Ghost,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Herself closed up my dying Eyes—<br /></span> -<span class="i3">My Phyllis fair whom I loved most.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>His statue stands in the little shrine above the cliff; his arms lie in -Warwick Castle; and in the cave over our head is carved a Saxon -inscription, which the learned interpret into this: “Cast out, thou -Christ, from thy servant this burden.”</p> - -<p>We pass on by Rock Mill, haunted of many kingfishers; by Emscote Bridge, -where the Avon is joined by the Leam, and where Warwick and Leamington -have reached out their<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_49" id="page_49">{49}</a></span> arms to each other till they now join hands; by -little gardens, each with its punt or home-made boat beside the river -steps; by a flat meadow, where the citizens and redcoats from Warwick -garrison sit all day and wait for the fish that never bites; and -suddenly, by the famous one-span bridge, see Warwick Castle full ahead, -its massy foundations growing, as it seems, from the living rock, and -Cæsar’s glorious tower soaring above the elms where Mill Street ends at -the water’s brink. Here once crossed a Gothic bridge, carrying the -traffic from Banbury. Its central arches are down now; but the bastions -yet stand, and form islets for the brier and ivy, and between them the -stream swirls fast for the weir and the ancient mill, by which it rushes -down into the park. We turn our canoe, and with many a backward look -paddle back to the boat-house at Emscote.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_034.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_034.jpg" width="376" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>OLD BRIDGE, WARWICK</p></div> -</div> - -<p>Evening has drawn in, and still we are pacing Warwick streets. We have -seen the castle; have gazed from the armory windows upon the racing -waters, steep terraces, and gentle park below; have climbed Guy’s Tower -and seen far beneath us, on the one side, broad cedars and green lawns -where the peacocks strut; on the other, the spires,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_50" id="page_50">{50}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_035.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_035.jpg" height="517" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>CÆSAR’S TOWER, WARWICK CASTLE</p></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">towers, sagged roofs, and clustering chimneys of the town; have -sauntered down Mill Street; have marvelled in the Beauchamp Chapel as we -conned its gorgeous tombs and canopies and traceries; have loitered by -Lord Leycester’s Hospital and under the archway of St. James’s Chapel. -Clearly we are but two grains of sand in the hour-glass of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_51" id="page_51">{51}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_036.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_036.jpg" width="605" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>The Hospital of Robert Earl of Leycester Warwick</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_53" id="page_53">{53}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_52" id="page_52">{52}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">this slow mediæval town. Our feet, that will to-morrow be hurrying on, -tread with curious impertinence these everlasting flints that have rung -with the tramp of the Kingmaker’s armies, of Royalist and -Parliamentarian, horse and foot, drum and standard, the stir of royal -and episcopal visits, of mail-coach, market, and assize. But meanwhile -our joints are full of pleasant aches and stiffness, our souls of lofty -imaginings. As our tobacco smoke floats out on the moonlight we can -dwell, we find, with a quite kingly serenity on the transience of man’s -generations; nay, as we sit down to dinner at our inn we touch the high -contemplative, yet careless, mood of the gods themselves.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_54" id="page_54">{54}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_037.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_037.jpg" width="431" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>BARFORD BRIDGE</p></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">I</span>T was a golden morning as we left Warwick, and with slow feet followed -Avon down through the park towards Barford Bridge, where our canoe lay -ready for us. The light, too generously spread to dazzle, bathed the -castle towers, lay on the terraces, where the peacocks sunned -themselves, and on the living rock below them, where the river washes. -Only on the weir it fell in splashes, scattered through the elms’ thick -foliage. At the water’s brim, below Mill Street, stood a man with a -pitcher—a stranger to us—who took our farewells with equable -astonishment. The stream slackened its hurry, and, keeping pace with our -regrets, loitered by the garden slopes, by the great cedars that the -Crusaders brought from Lebanon, among reeds and alder-bushes and under -tall trees, to the lake, where a small tributary comes tumbling from -Chesterton.</p> - -<p>The land, as we went on, was full of morning sounds—the ring of a -wood-feller’s axe, the groaning of a timber-wagon through leafy roads, -the rustle of partridges, the note of a stray blackbird in the hedge, -and in valleys unseen the tune of hounds cub-hunting—</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">“matched in mouth like bells,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Each unto each.”<br /></span> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_55" id="page_55">{55}</a></span></div></div> -</div> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_038.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_038.jpg" height="555" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>WARWICK CASTLE, FROM THE PARK</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_57" id="page_57">{57}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_56" id="page_56">{56}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">At Barford we met the pack returning, and the sight of them and the -huntsman’s red coat in the village street was pleasant as a remembered -song.</p> - -<p>Barford village has produced a well-known man of our time, Mr. Joseph -Arch, who here began his efforts to better the condition of the -agricultural laborer. If without honor, he is not without influence in -his own country, to judge by the neat cottages and trim gardens beside -the road. Roses love the rich clay, and roses of all kinds thrive here, -from the Austrian brier to the Gloire de Dijon. It was late in the -season when we passed, but many clusters lingered under the cottager’s -thatch, and field and hedge also spoke of past plenty.</p> - -<p>By Barford Bridge, where a dumpy, water-logged punt just lifted her -stern and her pathetic name (the Dolly Dobs) above the surface, we -launched our canoe again. The stream here is shallow and the current -fast, with a knack of swinging you round a gravelly corner and tilting -you at the high scooped-out bank on the other side. So many and abrupt -are these bends that the slim spire of Sherborne across the meadows -appeared now to right, now to left; now dodged behind us, now stood up -straight ahead. Out of the water-plants at one corner rose a brace of -wild-duck, and sailed away with the sun gleaming on their iridescent -necks. We followed them with our eyes, and grew aware that the country -was altered. Sometimes, near Warwick, we had longed to exchange tall -hedge-rows and heavy elms for “an acre of barren ground, ling, heath, -brown furze, anything,” as Gonzalo says. Now we had full air and a -horizon. We had the flowers, too—the forget-me-not, the willow-herb, -and meadowsweet (though long past their prime), the bright yellow tansy, -and the loosestrife, with a stalk growing blood-red as its purple bloom -dropped away. Just above Wasperton we came on a young woman in a boat. -She had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_58" id="page_58">{58}</a></span> gathering these flowers by the armful, and, having piled -the bows with them, made a taking sight; and, being ourselves not -without a certain savage beauty, we did not hesitate to believe our -pleasure reciprocated.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_039.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_039.jpg" width="454" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>SHERBORNE</p></div> -</div> - -<p>A steep grassy bank runs beside the stream at Wasperton, concealing the -village. Many nut-trees grow upon it, and upon it also were ranged six -anglers, who caught no fish as we passed. No high-road goes through the -village above; but, climbing the bank, we found a few old timbered -cottages, and alone, in the middle of a field, a curious dove-cote, that -must be seen to be believed. It was empty, for the pigeons were all down -by the river among the gray willows on the farther shore, and our canoe -stole by too softly to disturb their cooing.</p> - -<p>A short way below, Hampton Wood rises on a bold eminence to the right, -where once Fulbroke Castle stood. The “steep uphill” is now dotted with -elders, and tenanted only by “earth-delving conies;” for the castle was -destroyed and its land disparked in Henry VIII.’s time, the materials<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_59" id="page_59">{59}</a></span> -being carried up to build Compton-Winyates, that beautiful and quiet -mansion in a hollow of the Edge Hills where Charles I. slept on the -night before Kineton (Edgehill) battle. The park passed in time to a -Lucy of Charlcote, and the name reminds us that we are in Shakespeare’s -country. In fact, we have reached the very place where Shakespeare did -<i>not</i> steal the deer.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_040.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_040.jpg" width="466" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>AT WASPERTON</p></div> -</div> - -<p>To shed a tear in passing this hallowed spot was but a natural impulse; -nor, on reading the emotions which Mr. Samuel Ireland squandered here, -did we grudge the tribute. “If,” he writes, “the story of this youthful -frolic is<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_60" id="page_60">{60}</a></span> founded on truth, as well as that Sir Thomas Lucy’s rigorous -conduct subsequent to this supposed outrage really proved the cause of -our Shakespeare’s quitting this his native retirement to visit the -capital, it will afford us the means of contemplating, at least in one -instance, with some degree of complacency even the imperious dominion of -our feudal superiors, the tyranny of magistracy, and the harshest -enforcement of the remnant of our forest laws; since in their -consequences they unquestionably called into action the energies of that -sublime genius, and of those rare and matchless endowments which had -otherwise perhaps been lost in the shade of retirement, and have ‘wasted -their sweetness on the desert air.’<span class="lftspc">”</span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_041.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_041.jpg" width="401" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>DOVE-COTE, WASPERTON</p></div> -</div> - -<p>The river spread out as it swept round the base of Hampton Wood, and -took us to Hampton Lucy. Here is a beautiful modern church, in the worst -sense of the words, and beside it a village green, where, as we passed, -the villagers were keeping harvest-home. Lo! many countrymen in -wheelbarrows, and others, with loins girded, trundling them madly -towards a goal, where a couple of brand-new spades</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_042.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_042.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>From Hampton Lucy to Harrington</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_61" id="page_61">{61}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">were to reward the first-comers. Lo! also, Chloe, Lalage, and Amaryllis, -emulous for their swains, lifted exhorting voices; and the oldest -inhabitants “a-sunning sat” in the pick of the seats, and discussed the -competitors on their merits. It was with regret that we tore ourselves -away from these Arcadian games. The sounds of merrymaking followed us -through the trees as we dropped down to Charlcote, just below,</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Where Avon’s Stream, with many a sportive Turn,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Exhilarates the Meads, and to his Bed<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Hele’s gentle current wooes, by Lucy’s hand<br /></span> -<span class="i1">In every graceful Ornament attired,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">And worthier, such, to share his liquid Realms.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>So writes the Rev. Richard Jago, M.A., a local poet of the last century, -in “Edgehill; or, The Rural Prospect Delineated and Moralized. A Poem in -Four Books, printed for J. Dodsley in Pall Mall, 1767;” and though the -bard’s language is more flowery than Avon’s banks, it shall stand. We -had amused ourselves on the voyage by choosing and rechoosing the spot -whither we should some day return and pass our declining years. P. (who -has high thoughts now and then) had been all for Warwick Castle, Q. for -Ashow, and the merits of each had been hotly wrangled over. But we shook -hands over Charlcote.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_043.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_043.jpg" width="461" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>HAMPTON LUCY, FROM THE MEADOWS</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_62" id="page_62">{62}</a></span></p> - -<p>Less stately than Stoneleigh, less picturesque than Guy’s Cliffe, less -imposing than Warwick Castle, Charlcote is lovelier and more human than -any. The red-brick Elizabethan house stands on the river’s brink. From -the geranium beds on its terrace a flight of steps leads down to the -water, and over its graceful balustrade, beside the little leaden -statuettes, you may lean and feed the swans just below. Across the -stream, over the fern-beds and swelling green turf, are dotted the -antlers of the Charlcote deer, red and fallow; yonder “Hele’s gentle -current” winds down from the Edge Hills; to your right, the trees part -and give a glimpse only of Hampton Lucy church; behind you rise the -peaked gables, turrets, and tall chimneys of the house, projecting and -receding, so that from whatever quarter the sun may strike there is -always a bold play of light and shade on the soft-colored bricks.</p> - -<p>The house was built by Sir Thomas Lucy in the first year of Queen -Elizabeth’s reign; and in compliment to his queen, who paid Charlcote a -visit not long after, the knight built on the side which turns from the -river an entrance porch which, abutting between two wings, gives the -form of an E. This porch leads to the queer gate-house, whence, between -an avenue of limes, you reach Charlcote church—a sober little pile -beside the high-road, and just outside the rough-split oak palings of -the park. It holds the monuments of Sir Thomas Lucy and his wife, and in -praise of the latter an epitaph worth remembering for the tender -simplicity of its close:</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Set down by him that best did know<br /></span> -<span class="i1">What hath been written to be true.—Thomas Lucy.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>In the graveyard outside is a plain stone to a lesser pair—John Gibbs, -aged 81, and his wife, aged 55—who are made to say, somewhat -cynically:<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_63" id="page_63">{63}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_044.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_044.jpg" width="592" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>CHARLCOTE</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_65" id="page_65">{65}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_64" id="page_64">{64}</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Farewell, proud, vain, false, treacherous world, we have seen enough of thee;<br /></span> -<span class="i1">We value not what thou canst say of we.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>One marvels how in this sheltered corner John Gibbs found the world’s -breath so rude.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_045.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_045.jpg" width="452" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>MEADOWSWEET</p></div> -</div> - -<p>On the other hand, upon Sir Thomas Lucy the world has been hard indeed, -identifying him with Justice Shallow. His portrait hangs in the hall -where Shakespeare was not tried for deer-stealing. Isaac Oliver painted -it; and though men have forgotten Isaac Oliver, yet will we never, for -he was a master. The knight’s embroidered robe is right Holbein; but the -knight’s subtle, beautiful face is more.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_66" id="page_66">{66}</a></span> It teaches with convincing -sincerity what manner of being a gentleman was in “the spacious days of -great Elizabeth;” and the lesson is the more humiliating because men -have during three centuries accepted the coarse mask of Justice Shallow -for the truth.</p> - -<p>The house holds many fine paintings; notably a Titian, “Samson and the -Lion,” that rests against the yellow silk hangings of the drawing-room, -and is worth a far pilgrimage to see; and a Velasquez, set (immoderately -high) above the library book-shelves. So that too soon we were out in -the sunlight again and paddling down to Alveston.</p> - -<p>We floated by flat meadows, islands of sedge, long lines of willows; by -“the high bank called Old Town, where, perhaps, men and women, with -their joys and sorrows, once abided;” but now the rabbits only colonize -it, under the quiet alders; by Alveston, where we found boats, and a -boat-house covered with “snowball” berries; by the mill and its -weeping-willows; and below, by devious loops, to Hatton Rock, that the -picnickers from Stratford know—a steep bank of marl covered with -hawthorn, hazel, elder, and trailing knots of brambles. In June this is -a very flowery spot. The slope is clothed with creamy elder blossoms, -and on the river’s bank opposite are wild rose-bushes dropping their -petals, pink and white, on forget-me-nots, wild blue geranium, and -meadow-rue. Over its stony bed the current, in omne volubilis ævum, -keeps for our dull ears the music that it made for Shakespeare, if we -could but hear. For somewhere along these banks the Stratford boy spied -the Muse’s naked feet moving.</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“O mistress mine, where are you roaming?<br /></span> -<span class="i1">O stay and hear; your true love’s coming,<br /></span> -<span class="i3">That can sing both high and low.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">And somewhere he came on her, and coaxed the secret of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_67" id="page_67">{67}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_046.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_046.jpg" width="600" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>UNDER THE WILLOWS</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_69" id="page_69">{69}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_68" id="page_68">{68}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">her woodland music. But when that meeting was, and how that secret was -given, like a true lover, he will never tell.</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Others abide our questions; thou art free:<br /></span> -<span class="i1">We ask and ask; thou smilest and art still.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>As we paddled down past Tiddington the willows grew closer. Between -their stems we could see, far away on our left, the blue Edge Hills; and -to the right, above the Warwick road, a hill surmounted by an obelisk. -This is Welcome, and behind it lies Clopton House, a former owner of -which, Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor of London, built in the reign of -Henry VII. the long stone bridge of fourteen Gothic arches just above -Stratford. In a minute or two we had passed under this bridge and were -floating down beside the Memorial Theatre, the new Gardens, and the -brink of Shakespeare’s town.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_047.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_047.jpg" width="513" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE CLOPTON BRIDGE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON</p></div> -</div> - -<p>A man may take pen and ink and write of a place as he<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_70" id="page_70">{70}</a></span> will, and the -page will, likely enough, be a pretty honest index to his own -temperament. But never will it do for another man’s reliance. So let it -be confessed that for a day we searched Stratford streets, and found -nothing of the Shakespeare that we sought. Neither in the famous -birthplace in Henley Street—restored “out of all whooping,” crammed -with worthless mementos, and pencilled over with inconsiderable names; -nor in the fussy, inept Memorial Theatre; nor in the New Place, where -certain holes, protected with wire gratings, mark what may have been the -foundations of Shakespeare’s house: in none of these could we find him. -His name echoed in the market-place, on the lips of guide and sightseer, -and shone on monuments, shops, inns, and banking-houses. His effigies -were everywhere—in photographs, in statuettes; now doing duty as a -tobacco-box (with the bald scalp removable), now as a trade-mark for -beer. And even while we despised these things the fault was ours. All -the while the colossus stood high above, while we “walked under his huge -legs and peep’d about,” too near to see.</p> - -<p>Nor until we strolled over the meadows to Ann Hathaway’s cottage at -Shottery did understanding come with the quiet falling of the day. -Rarely enough, and never, perhaps, but in the while between sunset and -twilight, may a man hear the sky and earth breathing together, and, -drawing his own small breath ambitiously in tune with them, “feel that -he is greater than he knows.” But here and at this hour it happened to -us that, our hearts being uplifted, we could measure Shakespeare for a -moment; could know him for the puissant intelligence that held communion -with all earth and sky, and all mortal aspirations that rise between -them; and knew him also for the Stratford youth treading this very -foot-path beside this sweet-smelling hedge towards those elms a mile -away, where the red light lingers,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_71" id="page_71">{71}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_048.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_048.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>STRATFORD CHURCH</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_73" id="page_73">{73}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_72" id="page_72">{72}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">and the cottage below them, where already in the window Ann Hathaway -trims her lamp. You are to believe that our feet trod airily across -those meadows. And at the cottage, old Mrs. Baker, last living -descendant of the Hathaways, was pleased with our reverent behavior, and -picked for each of us at parting a sprig of rosemary from her garden for -remembrance. May her memory be as green and as fragrant!</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_049.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_049.jpg" width="404" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>ANN HATHAWAY’S COTTAGE</p></div> -</div> - -<p>It was easy now to forgive all that before had seemed unworthy in -Stratford—easy next morning, standing before Shakespeare’s monument, -while the sunshine, colored by the eastern window, fell on one -particular slab within the chancel rails, to live back for a moment to -that April morning when a Shakespeare had passed from the earth, and -earth “must mourn therefor;” to follow his coffin on its short journey<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_74" id="page_74">{74}</a></span> -from the New Place, between the blossoming limes of the Church Walk, out -of the sunlight into the lasting shadow, up the dim nave to this spot; -and easy to divine, in the rugged epitaph so often quoted, the man’s -passionate dread lest his bones might be flung in time to the common -charnel-house, the passionate longing to lie here always in this dusky -corner, close to his friends and kin and the familiar voices that meant -home—the talk of birds in the near elms, the chant of Holy Trinity -choir, and, night and day, but a stone’s-throw from his resting-place, -the whisper of Avon running perpetually.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_050.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_050.jpg" width="380" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE MOUTH OF THE STOUR</p></div> -</div> - -<p>For even the wayfarer finds Stratford a hard place to part from. And -looking back as we left her, so kindly, so full of memories, giving her -haunted streets, her elms, and river-side to the sunshine, but guarding -always as a mother the shrine of her great son, I know she will pardon -my light words.</p> - -<p>The river runs beneath the elms of the church-yard to Lucy’s Mill and -the first locks. On the mill wall are marked the heights of various -great floods. The highest is dated at the beginning of this century: -just below is the high-water mark of October 25, 1882. Take the level of -this with your eye, and you will wonder that any of Stratford<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_75" id="page_75">{75}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_051.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_051.jpg" width="596" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE LOCK AND CHURCH</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_77" id="page_77">{77}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_76" id="page_76">{76}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">is left standing; and lower down the river the floods are very serious -matters to all who live within their reach. If you disbelieve me, read -“John Halifax.” “We don’t mind them,” an old lady told us at Barton, -“till the water turns red. Then we know the Stour water is coming down, -and begin to shift our furniture.” The Arrow, too, that joins the Avon -below Bidford, is a great helper of the floods, but rushes down its -valley more rapidly than the Stour, and so its flooding is sooner over.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_052.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_052.jpg" width="429" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>WEIR BRAKE</p></div> -</div> - -<p>The lock at Stratford is now choked with grass and weed, and the town no -longer (to quote the Rev. Richard Jago)</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Hails the freighted Barge from Western Shores,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Rich with the Tribute of a thousand Climes.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>The Avon, from Tewkesbury to Stratford, was made navigable in 1637 by -Mr. William Sandys, of Fladbury, “at his own proper cost.” But the -railways have ruined the waterways for a time, and Mr. Sandys’s -handiwork lies in sore decay. Till Evesham be passed we shall meet with -no barges, but with shallows, dismantled locks, broken-down<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_78" id="page_78">{78}</a></span> weirs to be -shot, and sound ones to be pulled over that will give us excitement -enough, and toil too.</p> - -<p>Below the lock we drifted under a hanging copse, the Weir Brake, where a -pretty foot-path runs for Stratford lovers. Below it, by a cluster of -willows, the Stour comes down; and a little farther yet stands -Luddington, where Shakespeare is said to have been married; but the -church and its records have been destroyed by fire. From Luddington you -spy Weston-upon-Avon, in Gloucestershire, across the river, the tower of -its sturdy perpendicular church peering above the elms that hide it from -the river-side throughout the summer.</p> - -<div class="figleft" style="width: 569px;"> -<a href="images/ill_053.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_053.jpg" width="284" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>WESTON-UPON-AVON</p></div> -</div> - -<p>By Weston our remembrance keeps a picture—a broken lock and weir, an -islet or two heavy with purple loosestrife, a swan bathing in the -channel between. These were of the foreground. Beyond them, a line of -willows hid the flat fields on our right; but on the left rose a steep -green slope, topped with poplars and dotted with red cattle; and ahead -the red roof of Binton church showed out prettily from the hill-side. As -we saw the picture we broke into it, shooting the weir, scaring the -swan, and driving her before us to Binton Bridges. By Binton Bridges -stands an inn, the Four Alls. On its sign-board, in gay colors, are -depicted four figures—the King, the Priest, the Soldier, and the -Yeoman; and around them runs this chiming legend:<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_79" id="page_79">{79}</a></span></p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Rule all,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Pray all,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Fight all,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Pay all.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>We could not remember a place so utterly God-forsaken as this inn beside -the bridge, nor a woman so weary of face as its once handsome landlady. -She spoke of the inn and its custom in a low, musical voice that caused -Q. to rush out into the yard to hide his pity; and there he found a gig, -and, sitting down before it, wondered.</p> - -<p>Change and decay fill our literature; but we have not explained either. -For instance, here was a gig—a soundly built, gayly painted gig. A -glance told that it had not been driven a dozen times, that nothing was -broken, and that it had been backed into this heap of nettles years ago -to rot. It had been rotting ever since. The paint on its sides had -blistered, the nettles climbed above its wheels and flourished over its -back seat. Still it was a good gig, and the most inexplicable sight that -met us on our voyage. Only less desolate than Binton Bridges is Black -Cliff, below—a bank covered with crab-trees and thorns and hummocks of -sombre grass. It was here that one Palmer, a wife-murderer, drowned his -good woman in Avon at the beginning of the century; and the oldest man -in Bidford, not far below, remembers seeing a gibbet on the hill-side, -with chains and a few bones and rags dangling—all that was left of him. -A gate post at the top of the hill on the Evesham road is made of this -gibbet, and still groans at night, to the horror of the passing native.</p> - -<p>Soon we reach Welford, the second and more beautiful Welford on the -river. It stands behind a stiff slope, where now the chestnuts are -turning yellow, and the village street is worth following. It winds by -queer old cottages set down in plum and apple orchards; by a modern -May<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_80" id="page_80">{80}</a></span>pole; by a little church of stained buff sandstone, with oaken -lych-gate and church-yard wall scarcely containing the dead, who already -are piled level with its coping; by more queer crazy cottages—and then -suddenly melts, ends, disappears in grass. It is as if the end of the -world were reached. Of course we wanted to settle down and spend our -lives here, but were growing used to the desire by this time, and -dragged each other away without serious resistance down to the old mill, -where our canoe lay waiting.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_054.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_054.jpg" width="378" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>WELFORD WEIR AND CHURCH</p></div> -</div> - -<p>Passing the weir and mill, the river runs under a grassy hill-side, -where the trimmed elms give a French look to the landscape. Within -sight, in winter, lie the roofs and dove-cotes of Hillborough—“haunted -Hillbro’,” as Shakespeare called it, but nothing definite is known of -the ghost. The local tale says that the poet and some boon companions -walked over once to a Whitsun ale at the Falcon Inn, Bidford (just below -us), to try their prowess in drinking against the Bidford men. They -drank so deeply that night that<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_81" id="page_81">{81}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_055.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_055.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>ELMS BY BIDFORD GRANGE</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_83" id="page_83">{83}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_82" id="page_82">{82}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">sleep overtook them before they had staggered a mile on their homeward -way, and, lying down under a crab-tree beside the road, they slept till -morning, when they were awakened by some laborers trudging to their -work. His companions were for returning and renewing the carouse, but -Shakespeare declined.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_056.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_056.jpg" width="469" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>HILLBOROUGH</p></div> -</div> - -<p>“No,” said he; “I have had enough; I have drinked with</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Piping Pebworth, dancing Marston,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Haunted Hillbro’, hungry Grafton,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Dudging Exhall, papist Wixford,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Beggarly Broom, and drunken Bidford.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p>“Of the truth of this story,” says Mr. Samuel Ireland, “I have little -doubt.”</p> - -<p>“Of its entire falsehood,” says Mr. James Thorne, “I have less. A more -absurd tale to father upon Shakespeare was never invented, even by Mr. -Ireland or his son.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_84" id="page_84">{84}</a></span>”</p> - -<p>The reader may decide.</p> - -<p>Close by is Bidford Grange, once an important manorhouse; and on the -left bank of Avon—you may know it by the gray stone dove-cotes—stands -Barton, where once dwelt another famous drinker, “Christophero Sly, old -Sly’s son of Burton heath: by birth a peddler, by education a cardmaker, -by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker. -Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not: if -she say I am not fourteen-pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up -for the lyingest knave in Christendom.” And from Barton hamlet a -foot-path leads across the meadows over the old bridge into Bidford.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_057.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_057.jpg" width="457" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>BIDFORD BRIDGE</p></div> -</div> - -<p>You are to notice this bridge, not only because the monks of Alcester -built it in 1482, to supersede the ford on the old Roman road which -crosses the river here, but for a certain stone in its parapet, near the -inn window. This stone is worn hollow by thousands of pocket knives that -generations of Bidford men have sharpened upon it. For four centuries it -has supplied in these parts the small excuse that men<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_85" id="page_85">{85}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_058.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_058.jpg" width="595" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>OLD THORNS, MARCLEEVE HILL</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_87" id="page_87">{87}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_86" id="page_86">{86}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">need to club and lounge together; and of an evening you may see a score, -perhaps, hanging by this end of the bridge and waiting their turn, while -the clink, clink of the sharpening knife fills the pauses of talk. When -at last the stone shall wear all away there will be restlessness and -possibly social convulsions in Bidford, unless its place be quickly -supplied.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_059.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_059.jpg" width="419" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>CLEEVE MILL—AN AUTUMN FLOOD</p></div> -</div> - -<p>We lingered only to look at the building that in Shakespeare’s time was -the old Falcon Inn, and soon were paddling due south from Bidford -Bridge. The Avon now runs straight through big flat meadows towards a -steep hill-side, with the hamlet of Marcleeve (or Marlcliff) at its -foot. This line of hill borders the river on the south for some miles, -and is the edge of a plateau which begins the ascent towards the -Cotswold Hills. Seen from the river below, this escarpment is full of -varying beauty, here showing a bare scar of green and red marl, here -covered with long<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_88" id="page_88">{88}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_060.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_060.jpg" width="426" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE YEW HEDGE—CLEEVE PRIOR MANOR-HOUSE</p></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">gray grass and dotted with old thorn and crab trees, here clothed with -hanging woods of maple, ash, and other trees, straggled over and -smothered with ivy, wild rose, and clematis. By Cleeve Mill, where -clouds of sweet-smelling flour issued from the doorway, we disembarked -and climbed up between the thorn-trees until upon the ridge we could -look back upon the green vale of Evesham, and southward across ploughed -fields, and cottages among orchards and elms, to the gray line of the -Cotswolds, over which a patch of silver hung, as the day fought hard to -regain its morning sunshine. The narrow footway took us on to Cleeve -Priors and through its street—a village all sober, gray, and beautiful. -The garden walls, coated with lichen and topped with yellow quinces or a -flaming branch of barberry; the tall church tower; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_89" id="page_89">{89}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_061.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_061.jpg" width="539" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>MEADOWS BY THE AVON</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_91" id="page_91">{91}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_90" id="page_90">{90}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">quaintly elaborate grave-stones below it, their scrolls and cherubim -overgrown with moss; the clipped yew-trees that abounded in all -fantastic shapes; the pigeons wheeling round their dove-cote, and the -tall poplar by the manor farm—all these were good; but best of all was -the manor farm itself, and the arched yew hedge leading to its Jacobean -porch, a marvel to behold. We hung long about the entrance and stared at -it. But no living man or woman approached us. The village was given up -to peace or sleep or death.</p> - -<p>Returning, we paused on the brow of the slope above Avon for a longer -look. At our feet was spread the vale of Evesham; the river, bordered -with meadows as green and flat as billiard-tables; the stream of Arrow -to northward, which rises in the Lickey Hills, and comes down through -Alcester to join the Avon here; the villages of Salford Priors and -Salford Abbots; farther to the west, among its apple-trees, the roofs -and gables of Salford Nunnery, the village of Harvington. And all down -the stream, and round the meadows, and in and out of these</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i10">“low farms,<br /></span> -<span class="i0">Poor pelting villages, sheepcotes, and mills,”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">are willows innumerable—some polled last year, and looking like green -mops, others with long curved branches ready to be lopped and turned -into fence poles next winter, until they are lost in the hills round -Evesham, where the dim towers stand up and the bold outline of Bredon -Hill shuts out the view of the Severn Valley.</p> - -<p>The mound on which we are standing is surmounted by the stone socket of -an old cross, and beneath the cross are said to lie many of those who -fell on Evesham battle-field; for the vale below was on August 4th, -1265, the scene of one of the bloodiest and most decisive conflicts in -English history. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, victor of<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_92" id="page_92">{92}</a></span> Lewes, -and champion of the people’s rights, was hastening back by forced -marches from Wales, having King Henry III. in his train, a virtual -hostage. He was hurrying to meet his son, the young Simon, with -reinforcements from the southeast; but young Simon’s troops had been -surprised by Prince Edward at Kenilworth in the early morning and -massacred in their beds, their leader himself escaping with difficulty, -almost naked, in a boat across the lake of Kenilworth Castle. -Unconscious of their fate, the old earl reached Evesham on Monday, -August 3d, and, crossing the bridge into the town, sealed his own doom. -For Evesham is a trap. The Avon forms a loop around it, shutting off -escape on three sides, while the fourth is blocked by an eminence called -the Green Hill. And while yet Simon and his king were feasting and -making merry in Evesham Abbey, Edward’s troops were crossing the river -here at Cleeve Ford in the darkness, and moving on their sure prey.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_062.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_062.jpg" width="409" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>HARVINGTON WEIR</p></div> -</div> - -<p>A strange and horrible darkness lay over the land on that fatal Tuesday -morning, shrouding the sun, and hiding their books from the monks of -Evesham as they sang in the choir. The soldiers at their breakfast could -scarcely<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_93" id="page_93">{93}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_063.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_063.jpg" width="587" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>WILLOW POLLARDING</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_95" id="page_95">{95}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_94" id="page_94">{94}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">see the meats on the board before them. They were ready to start again; -but before the march began, banners and lances and moving troops were -spied on the crest of the Green Hill, coming towards the town.</p> - -<p>“It is my son,” cried Simon; “fear not. But nevertheless look out, lest -we be deceived.”</p> - -<p>Nicholas, the earl’s barber, being expert in the cognizance of arms, -ascended the bell-tower of the abbey, and soon detected among the -friendly banners, that were, in fact, but trophies of the raid at -Kenilworth, the “three lions” of Prince Edward and the royalists. The -alarm was given, but it was quickly seen that Simon’s army would be -utterly outnumbered.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_064.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_064.jpg" width="403" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>NEAR OFFENHAM</p></div> -</div> - -<p>“By the arm of St. James,” cried the old warrior, “they come on well! -But it was from me,” he added, with a touch of soldierly pride—“it was -from me they learned it.” A glance showed the hopelessness of resisting -this array with a handful of horse and a mob of wild Welshmen. “Let us -commend our souls to God,” he said to his followers, “for our bodies are -the foe’s.”</p> - -<p>And so he went forth; and while the Welsh fled like sheep at the first -onset, cut down in standing corn and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_96" id="page_96">{96}</a></span> flowery garden, the old warrior of -sixty-five hewed his way “like an impregnable tower” to the top of the -Green Hill, until one by one his friends had dropped beside him; then at -the summit his horse fell too, and disdaining surrender, hemmed in by -twelve knights, he was struck down by a lance wound. “It is God’s will,” -he said, and died. And whilst the butchery went on, and the Welshmen -fled homeward through Pershore to Tewkesbury, where the citizens cut -them down in the streets, and whilst the darkness broke in drenching -rain and blinding lightning, Simon’s head was lopped off, and carried on -a pole in triumph to Wigmore.</p> - -<p>“Such was the murder of Evesham, for battle none it was,” sings Robert -of Gloucester. And as the sun breaks through and turns the gray day to -silver, we pass on either hand memorials of that massacre. By Harvington -mill and weir, where the sand-pipers flit before us, and by the spot -where now stand the Fish and Anchor Inn and a row of anglers, Edward’s -soldiery marched down through the night.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_065.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_065.jpg" width="458" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>EVESHAM, FROM THE RIVER</p></div> -</div> - -<p>At Offenham, where now is a Bridge Inn, and where tradition says a -bridge once stood, they crossed the river again. On the opposite bank -the slaughter was heaviest, and Dead Man Eyot, a small willowy island -here, won its<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_97" id="page_97">{97}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_066.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_066.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>From Offenham to Tewkesbury</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_99" id="page_99">{99}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_98" id="page_98">{98}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">name on that day. The sheep are feeding now in that “odd angle of the -isle” that then was piled high with corpses. And so we come to a high -railway embankment, and thence to a bridge, and the beautiful bell-tower -leaps into view, soaring above the mills and roofs of Evesham.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_100" id="page_100">{100}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_067.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_067.jpg" width="527" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE AVON FROM EVESHAM TO TEWKESBURY</p></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind"><span class="letra">T</span>O remember Evesham is to call up a broad and smiling vale; a river -looped about a green hill and returning almost on itself, on the lower -slope of the hill, beside the river, a little town; and above its mills -and roofs, two spires and one pre-eminent tower, all set in the same -church-yard.</p> - -<p>The vale itself, as we dropped down towards Evesham, was insensibly -changing. Unawares we left the pastures behind, and drifted into a land -of orchards and marketgardens—no Devonshire orchards, with carpets of -vivid grass, but stiff regiments of plum-trees, and between their<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_101" id="page_101">{101}</a></span> files -asparagus growing, and sage and winter lettuce under hand-glasses, and -cabbages splashed with mauve and crimson. We had crossed, in fact, the -frontier of a fruit-growing country that in England has no rival but -Kent. The beginnings of this prosperous gardening are sometimes ascribed -to one Signor Bernardi, a Genoese gentleman who settled at Evesham in -the middle of the seventeenth century. But more probably these orchards -grow for the same reason that the meadows above are fat and a bell-tower -stands in Evesham. There is a legend to that effect which is worth -telling.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_068.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_068.jpg" width="404" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>A MARKET-GARDEN NEAR EVESHAM</p></div> -</div> - -<p>Egwin, Bishop of Worcester in the year 700 or thereabouts, was a saint -of shining piety, but unpopular in his diocese, which had not long been -converted from paganism, and retained many “ethnic and uncomely -customs.” Against these the bishop thundered, till the people seized and -haled him before Ethelred, then King of Mercia, charging him with -tyranny and many bitter things. The matter was re<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_102" id="page_102">{102}</a></span>ferred to the Holy -Father at Rome, who commanded Egwin to appear before him and answer the -charges. So to Rome he went; but before starting, to show how lowly he -accounted himself, he ordered a pair of iron horse-fetters, and having -put his feet into them, caused them to be locked and the key tossed into -the Avon. Thus shackled, he went forward to Dover, took ship, and came -to the Holy City; when, lo, a miracle! His attendants had gone down to -the Tiber to catch a fish for supper. Scarcely was the line cast when a -fine salmon took it and leaped ashore, without a struggle to escape. -They hurried home with their prize, opened him, and found inside the key -of the bishop’s fetters.</p> - -<p>It is needless to say that the pope, after this, made short work of the -charges against Egwin. The accused was loaded with honors, and sent home -with particular recommendations to King Ethelred, who lost no time in -restoring the bishop to his see and appointing him tutor to his own -sons. Among other marks of friendship the king gave Egwin a large tract -of land. It was savage, inhospitable, horrid with thickets and forest -trees. Yet Egwin liked it; for he kept pigs, which found abundance of -food there. So, dividing the wilderness into four quarters, he appointed -a swine-herd over each, whose names were Eoves and Ympa, two brothers; -and Trottuc and Carnuc, brothers also. Eoves (with whom alone we are -concerned) had charge over the eastern portion, and it happened to him -one day that a favorite sow strayed off into the thickest of the woods. -Eoves spent weeks in searching after her, and at length wandered so far -that he too lost his way. He shouted for succor, but none came. Growing -appalled, he began to run headlong through the undergrowth, when -suddenly he stumbled on the lost sow, having three young ones with her. -She came gladly to his call, grunting and muzzling at his legs; then -turned, and began to hurry into the deeper forest, the young pigs<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_103" id="page_103">{103}</a></span> -trotting beside her. Eoves followed, and soon, to his wonder, reached a -glade, open and somewhat steep, where was a virgin standing, lovelier -than the noonday, and two others beside her, celestially robed, having -psalteries in their hands and singing holy songs. The swine-herd -understood nothing of the vision; but hurrying back, was lucky enough to -find an egress from the woods, and returned to his home.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_069.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_069.jpg" width="420" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>REED-CUTTERS</p></div> -</div> - -<p>This matter was reported to Egwin; and he, being eager to see the place -with his own eyes, was led thither by Eoves. There it was vouchsafed to -him to see the same vision, and, as it faded, to hear a voice from the -chief virgin saying, “This place have I chosen.” Whereupon he understood -that he, like Æneas, had been guided by a sow to the spot where he must -build; and soon the Abbey of Evesham, or Eovesham, began to rise where -the virgins had stood. This was in 703, and the building was finished in -six years.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_104" id="page_104">{104}</a></span></p> - -<p>Such is the legend. A town sprang up around the monastery; the thickets -were cleared and became pasture-lands and orchards; the country smiled, -and the abbey waxed rich. It housed sixty-seven monks, five matrons, -three poor brothers, three clerks, and sixty-five servants to work in -brew-house, bake-house, kitchen, cellar, infirmary; to make clothes and -boots; to open the great gate; to till the gardens, vineyards, and -orchards; and to fish for eels in the Avon below. When William de -Beauchamp, whose castle stood at Bengeworth, on the opposite bank, broke -into the abbey church and plundered it, about 1150 <small>A.D.</small>, the abbot -excommunicated him and his retainers, razed his castle, and made a -burial-ground of the site. In 1530, under the rule of Clement Lichfield, -the abbey possessed fifteen manors in the county of Worcester alone, in -Gloucestershire six, in Warwickshire three, in Northamptonshire two, -with lands, rents, and advowsons far and wide. Out of Oxford and -Cambridge there was no such assemblage of religious buildings in -England. Then Clement Lichfield reared “a right sumptuous and high -square tower of stone;” and almost at once King Henry VIII. made his -swoop on the monasteries.</p> - -<div class="figleft" style="width: 431px;"> -<a href="images/ill_070.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_070.jpg" height="274" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>EVESHAM BELL-TOWER AND OLD ABBEY GATEWAY</p></div> -</div> - -<p>The country still smiles; but to-day of all the conventual buildings -there survive but a few stones—a sculptured arch leading to a -kitchen-garden, and this “high square tower” of Lichfield’s building. -This last was designed to be at<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_105" id="page_105">{105}</a></span> once the abbey’s gateway, horologe, and -belfry; but before the day of its completion all these uses were -nullified. Its service since has been monumental merely—to stand over -the razed foundations and obliterated fish-ponds of Egwin’s house, and -speak to the vale of famous men and the hands that made it fertile.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_071.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_071.jpg" width="380" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>HAMPTON FERRY</p></div> -</div> - -<p>There are many old houses in Evesham, and especially in Bridge Street; -but the bridge at the foot of this street is modern, and ascribed “to -the public spirit and perseverance of Henry Workman, Esq.” To him also -are due the “Workman Gardens,” a strip of pleasure-ground on the river’s -left bank, facing the abbey grounds; but local sapience has imposed the -usual restrictions on their use, and nine times out of ten you will find -them deserted.</p> - -<p>The day was almost spent as we took to the canoe once more, and paddled -around the long bend that girdles the town. We thought to have left the -bell-tower far behind, when, a little past Hampton Ferry, its pinnacles -reappeared, and the twin spires of St. Lawrence and All-Saints, peering<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_106" id="page_106">{106}</a></span> -above a plum orchard almost ahead of us. On our left the sun sank in a -broad yellow haze; the hill where Simon fell, and where stands the Abbey -Manor-house, was soaked in it; and soon, as the channel brought our -faces westward again, and we drew near Chadbury mill and Chadbury lock -and weir, the vale was filled with this yellow light, pale and -pervasive.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_072.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_072.jpg" width="511" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>CHADBURY MILL</p></div> -</div> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Great Evesham’s fertile glebe what tongue hath not extolled?<br /></span> -<span class="i1">As though to her alone belonged the garb of gold,”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">sings Drayton; and certainly she wore the garb that evening. As she -donned it, the chorus of the birds ceased, and with the sudden hush we -became aware that their voices had been following in our ears all the -day through. Above and below Evesham every furlong of the river-bank is -populous, with larks especially, whose song you may hear shivering from -every point of the sky. In early winter the number of nests that the -falling leaves disclose is astonishing. Some, no doubt, have lasted, and -will last, for years, such as the mud-plastered houses of the blackbird -and thrush, and the fagot pile which the magpie constructs in the top of -a tree. But the flimsy nests of the warblers and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_107" id="page_107">{107}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_073.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_073.jpg" width="605" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>CHADBURY WEIR</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_109" id="page_109">{109}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_108" id="page_108">{108}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">other late-breeding birds, built of a few dried grasses and bound -together with cobwebs and horse-hair, date from last spring, and will -disappear before the next. They were not made until the leaves were out, -and upon the leaves their builders relied for concealment, so that in -winter they hang betrayed. Yet even in winter the banks teem with life -and color and interest. P., who rowed down here one bright December -morning when the scarlet hips were out, and dark-red haws, and the -silver-gray seed of “old man’s beard,” tells of a big meadow from which -the flood had just subsided, and of birds innumerable feeding -there—rooks, starlings, pewits in flocks, little white-rumped -sandpipers darting to and fro and uttering their sharp note, a dozen -herons solemnly but suspiciously observant of the passing boat, and -watching for its effect on a cluster of wild-duck out on the ruffled -stream. You cannot, indeed, pass down Avon without receiving the -wide-eyed attention of its fauna; and politeness calls on you to return -it.</p> - -<p>Chadbury is twenty miles below Stratford, and here we meet the first -lock that is kept in repair; so that for twenty miles Mr. William -Sandys’s work of making Avon navigable has gone for nothing. He lived at -Fladbury, just below, and the money he threw away on his hobby “cannot -be reckoned at less than twenty thousand pounds.” “As soon,” writes Dr. -Nash, in his “Worcestershire,” “as he had finished his work to Stratford -(and, as I have heard, spent all his fortune), he immediately delivered -up all to Parliament, to do what they thought fit therein.” And this was -precisely nothing.</p> - -<p>Consequently there is to-day but little human stir beside the Avon. The -“freighted barge from distant shores” travels this way no longer, or but -rarely. Unless by the towns—Emscote, Stratford, Evesham, and -Tewkesbury—a pleasure-boat is hardly to be met, and all the villages -seem<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_110" id="page_110">{110}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_074.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_074.jpg" width="450" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>FLADBURY MILL</p></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">to turn their backs on the stream. At the mills we see a few men, -whitened with flour; in summer the mowers and haymakers appear for a few -days upon the meadows, and are soon gone; in winter a few may return to -poll the willows, tying their twigs into fagots, and leaving the stems -standing, with white scarred heads; occasionally a man and a boy will -come in one of the native high-prowed punts to cut and bind the dark -rushes that, when dried, are used for matting, chair seats, and calking -beer barrels; or the tops of a withy bed will sway erratically as we -pass, and tell of somebody at work there; or in autumn flood-time a -professional fisherman, with his eel nets, is busy at the weirs. These -represent the industries of Avon. Other human forms there are, which -angle with rod and line—strange, infinitely patient men, fishing for -eels and other succulent fish, catching (it may be) one dace between -sunrise and sundown. Their ancestors must have had better sport, for -Dugdale<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_111" id="page_111">{111}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_075.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_075.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE GIG SEAT</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_113" id="page_113">{113}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_112" id="page_112">{112}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">constantly speaks of valuable fishing rights on the river, and many a -farmer paid his rent to the Church in eels. To this day every cottage -has its punt, and sometimes a seat rigged up in some likely spot over -the stream. One such we marked with particular interest. It was, in -fact, the body of an old gig; and therein sat an angler, and a glutton -of his kind, for he had no less than seven lines baited, and the rods -radiated from him like the spokes of a wheel. Perhaps it was his one -holiday for the week, and he had hit on this device for cramming the -seven days’ sport into one.</p> - -<p>Much might be written of Chadbury mill and weir as we saw them in</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i6">“the twilight of such day<br /></span> -<span class="i0">As after sunset fadeth in the west.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">But, again, it is hard to improve upon Ireland, who calls it “so rich a -landscape that nature seems not to require the assistance of art, in the -language of modern refinement, either to correct her coarse expression -by removing a hill or docking a tree, or to supply her careless and -tasteless omissions for the purpose of rendering her more completely -picturesque.”</p> - -<p>In gathering darkness we dropped down beneath a hill-side partly wooded, -partly set out in young plum orchards, partly turfed, and dotted with -old thorns. Here is Cracombe House, and beyond it lie two -villages—Fladbury on the right and Cropthorne on the left, each with -its own mill. A ford used to join them, but this was superseded by a -bridge to commemorate the Queen’s Jubilee. We did not come to it that -night, for at Fladbury there stands a parsonage, with a lawn sloping -between trees to the river, and on this lawn we heard the voices and -laughter of friends in the dusk. Turning our canoe shore-ward, we hailed -them.</p> - -<p>If Kenilworth Castle and Evesham Abbey, structures so<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_114" id="page_114">{114}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_076.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_076.jpg" width="400" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>CROPTHORNE MILL</p></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">massive, take but a century or so to fall into complete ruin, how soon -will mere man revert to savagery? Our host at Fladbury parsonage was a -painter, one in whom Americans take a just pride, and the talk at his -table that evening was brisk enough, had we but possessed ears for it. -Instead, we who had journeyed for ten days from inn to inn, reading no -newspapers, receiving no letters, conversing with few fellows, regarding -only the quiet panorama of meadow, wood, and stream, sat in a mental -haze. We were stupefied with long draughts of open air. The dazzle of -the river, the rhythmical stroke of the paddle, had set our wits to -sleep. Once or twice we strove to rally them, and listen to the talkers; -but always the ripple of Avon rose and ran in our ears, confusing the -words, and we sank back into agreeable hebetude. The same held us, too, -next morning, as we ported our canoe over Fladbury weir, and started for -Tewkesbury in the teeth of a west wind that blew “through the sharp -hawthorn” and curled the water. The year had aged noticeably in the past -night, and the country-side wore a forlorn look. None the less, the -reaches below Cropthorne struck us as singularly beautiful. From a -fringe of fantastic pollard willows, out of whose decayed trunks grew -the wild rose and bramble,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_115" id="page_115">{115}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_077.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_077.jpg" width="399" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>WILLOWS BY CROPTHORNE</p></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">orchards and pastures swelled up to a line of cottages and a -square-towered church standing against the sky. Cropthorne church is to -be visited as well for its beauty as for the monuments it contains of -the Dingley family, to which the manor formerly belonged. There is one -to the memory of Francis Dingley, Esq., who happily matched with -Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Brigge, Esq., and Mary Hoby, his wife, had -issue eleven sons and eight daughters, and died in peace, anno 1624. The -last of the Dingleys, a girl, married Edward Goodyeare, of Burghope, and -bore him two sons, whose history is tragic. The elder, Sir John, was a -childless man; and his brother, Samuel, who followed the sea, and had -become captain of the Ruby man-of-war, expected in time to have the -estates. But the two men hated each other, and at last a threat of -disinheritance so angered the captain that he took the desperate -resolution of murdering the baronet, and carried it out on the 17th of -January, 1741. Dr. Nash tells the story: “A friend at Bristol, who knew -their mortal antipathy, had invited them both to dinner, in hopes of -reconciling them, and they parted in seeming friendship. But the captain -placed some of his crew in the street near College Green, with orders to -seize his brother,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_116" id="page_116">{116}</a></span> and assisted in hurrying him by violence to his -ship, under pretence that he was disordered in his senses, where, when -they arrived, he caused him to be strangled in the cabin by White and -Mahony, two ruffians of his crew, himself standing sentinel at the door -while the horrid deed was perpetrating.” The captain, with his two -accomplices, was soon taken and hanged. He was a brave sailor, and had -distinguished himself at St. Sebastian, Ferrol, and San Antonio, at -which last place he burned three men-of-war, the magazine, and stores.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_078.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_078.jpg" width="356" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>AT WYRE</p></div> -</div> - -<p>Four miles below Fladbury lies Wyre lock, with Wyre village on the right -bank, its cottage gardens planted with cabbages and winter lettuce, or -hung with nets drying in the wind. Across the river, a few fields back, -Wick straggles, a long street of timbered cottages, with a little -church, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_117" id="page_117">{117}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_079.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_079.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>OLD PEAR-TREES AT PERSHORE</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_119" id="page_119">{119}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_118" id="page_118">{118}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">before the church a cross. And ahead of us, over its acres of plum and -pear orchards, the fine tower of Pershore rises.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_080-a.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_080-a.jpg" width="469" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>NETS DRYING AT WYRE</p></div> -</div> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_080-b.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_080-b.jpg" width="341" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>WYRE LOCK</p></div> -</div> - -<p>Of all the abbeys that once graced the Avon, Tewkesbury alone retains -some of its former splendor. Sulby is a farm-house; of Stoneleigh but a -gateway is left; of Evesham an arch and a tower; while Pershore keeps -only its tower and choir. Oswald, nephew of our old friend Ethelred, -King of Mercia, founded a house of secular canons here <small>A.D.</small> 689, who by -a charter of King Edgar, two centuries later, were superseded by -Benedictine monks. Being built of wood, both church and convent were -thrice destroyed by fire, first about the year 1000, then in 1223, and -again in 1288; on this last occasion by the sin of a brother, who went -a-courting with a lantern within the sacred walls <span class="pagenum"><a name="page_120" id="page_120">{120}</a></span>(“muliebri consilio -infatuatus, in loco illo sacrato ignem obtulit alienum”). This fire -consumed not only the abbey, but the greater part of the town, and the -wicked cause of it led to a suspension of all religious services until -1299, when the Bishop of Llandaff came and “reconciled” the Church. All -that remains to-day is used as the parish church of the Holy Cross, and -is a beautiful piece of Early-English work. Pershore itself bears all -the markings of a quietly prosperous market town. Its wide street is -lined with respectable red-brick houses, faced with stone, having -pediments over their front doors, and square windows, some of them -blocked ever since the days of the window-tax. Its plums are known -throughout England; its pears yield excellent perry; and on pears and -plums together it relies for a blameless competence.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_081.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_081.jpg" width="435" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE SUMMER-HOUSE ON BREDON HILL</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_121" id="page_121">{121}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_082.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_082.jpg" width="594" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>PERSHORE BRIDGE</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_123" id="page_123">{123}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_122" id="page_122">{122}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_083.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_083.jpg" width="390" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>GREAT COMBERTON</p></div> -</div> - -<p>We passed Pershore bridge, which the Royalists broke down in their -retreat from Worcester field; and Pershore water-gate. There was a -water-gate at Fladbury also, one post of which we were assured was the -same that Mr. Sandys planted in 1637. For long the chine of Bredon Hill -had lain ahead of us, closing the view. We had first spied yesterday, -from the hill-side below Cleeve, and ever since it had been with us; but -below Pershore the river so winds that whether you row down stream or -up, Bredon Hill will be found the dominant feature in the landscape. But -whether a passing cloud paints it purple, or the sun shines on it, -lighting the grassy slopes, and showing every bush and quarry on the -sides, it is always a beautiful background for the villages that cluster -round its foot—Great and Little Comberton, Bricklehampton, Elmley -Castle, and Norton-by-Bredon. As we passed them the day relented for a -while, and in the pale sunshine their gray church towers stood out, -bright spots against the hill-side.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_124" id="page_124">{124}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_084-a.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_084-a.jpg" width="382" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>NAFFORD MILL</p></div> -</div> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_084-b.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_084-b.jpg" width="463" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>ECKINGTON BRIDGE</p></div> -</div> - -<p>We floated under the steep bank that separates Comberton and its poplars -from the stream, along to the dusty mill beside Nafford Lock, and drew -close under this hill-side until the old beacon at its top (called the -Summer-house) stood right above our heads. At Nafford Lock there is a -drop of six or eight feet before the river runs on by yet more -villages—Eckington, Birlingham, and Defford. Here in the sombre west -ahead of us the Malverns come into view; and here, between Eckington and -Defford, a bridge crosses, over<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_125" id="page_125">{125}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_085.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_085.jpg" width="597" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>PERSHORE WATER-GATE</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_127" id="page_127">{127}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_126" id="page_126">{126}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">which we leaned for a quiet half-hour before going on our way.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_086.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_086.jpg" width="392" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>BREDON</p></div> -</div> - -<p>It was a time, I think, that will pleasantly come back to us in days -when we shall fear to trust our decrepit limbs in a canoe. The bridge, -six-arched, with deep buttresses, seemed as old as Avon itself. It is -built of the red sandstone so common in the neighborhood; but time has -long since mellowed and subdued its color to reflect the landscape’s -mood, which just now was sober and even mournful. Rain hung over the -Malverns; down on the flat plain, where the river crept into the -evening, the poplars were swaying gently; a pair of jays hustled by with -a warning squawk. Throughout this, the last day of our voyage, we had -travelled dully, scarce exchanging a word, possessed with the stupor -before alluded to. A small discovery awoke us. As we rested our elbows -on the parapet, we noticed that many deep grooves or notches ran across -it. They were marks worn in the stone by the tow-ropes of departed -barges.</p> - -<p>Those notches spoke to us, as nothing had spoken yet, of the true secret -of Avon. Kings and their armies have trampled its banks from Naseby to -Tewkesbury, performing great feats of war; castles and monasteries have -risen over its waters; yet none of them has left a record so durable as -are these grooves where the bargemen shifted their<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_128" id="page_128">{128}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_087.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_087.jpg" height="365" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>TITHE BARN, BREDON</p></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">ropes in passing the bridge. The fighting reddened the river for a day; -the building was reflected there for a century or two; but the slow toil -of man has outlasted them both. And, looking westward over the homely -landscape, we realized the truth that Nature, too, is most in earnest -when least dramatic; that her most terrible power is seen neither in the -whirlwind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the catkins -budding on the hazel—the still, small voice that proves she is not -dead, but sleeping lightly, and already dreaming of the spring.</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Sed neque Medorum silvæ, ditissima terra—”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<p class="nind">the note of Virgil’s praise of Italy was ours for a while, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_129" id="page_129">{129}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_088.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_088.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>NEAR ECKINGTON</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_131" id="page_131">{131}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_130" id="page_130">{130}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">his pride to inherit a land of immemorial towns—a land made fertile by -tillage and watered by “rivers stealing under hoary walls.”</p> - -<div class="figright" style="width: 599px;"> -<a href="images/ill_089.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_089.jpg" height="515" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>STRENSHAM CHURCH</p></div> -</div> - -<p>A little below the bridge Avon is joined by the Defford (or, as it was -once called, Depeford) Brook, its last considerable tributary, which -rises on the west of the Lickey Hills; and a little farther on we turn a -sharp bend where, above the old willows on our right, a field of rank -grass rises steeply to Strensham church and vicarage. Behind the stumpy -tower lies Strensham village, not to be seen from the river. Here, in -1612, Samuel Butler was born, the author of “Hudibras,” and a monument -stands to his memory within the church, beside other fine ones belonging -to the Russell family. He was born in obscurity, and died a pauper—a -poet (to use the words which Dennis wrote for his other monument in -Westminster Abbey) who “was a whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_132" id="page_132">{132}</a></span> species of poets in one; admirable -in a manner in which no one else has been tolerable—a manner in which -he knew no guide, and has found no follower.” Very few can read that -epitaph without recalling the more famous epigram upon it:</p> - -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“The poet’s fate is here in emblem shown;<br /></span> -<span class="i1">He asked for bread, and he received a stone.”<br /></span> -</div></div> -</div> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_090.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_090.jpg" width="406" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>STRENSHAM MILL</p></div> -</div> - -<p>Below Strensham we pass a lock—the last before reaching Tewkesbury—and -two mills, the first and larger and more modern one deserted. Mr. -Sandys’s task was here not difficult, for the Avon Valley is so level -that only two locks are required in the fifteen miles from Pershore. We -have scarcely left the lock when the sharp steeple of Bredon,<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_133" id="page_133">{133}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_091.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_091.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>ARROW-HEADS, NEAR TEWKESBURY</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_135" id="page_135">{135}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_134" id="page_134">{134}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">at the western extremity of Bredon Hill, points out the direction of the -river. To this village, during the civil war, Bishop Prideaux, of -Worcester, retired on a stipend of four shillings and sixpence a week. -“This reverse of fortune,” says Ireland, “he bore with much -cheerfulness, although obliged to sell his books and furniture to -procure subsistence. One day, being asked by a neighbor, as he passed -through the village with something under his gown, what had he got -there?—he replied he was become an ostrich, and forced to live upon -iron—showing some old iron which he was going to sell at the -blacksmith’s to enable him to purchase a dinner.” The living of Bredon -was, in more peaceful times, one of the fattest in the bishop’s diocese, -as is hinted by a huge tithe-barn on the slope above us, with a chamber -over its doorway, doubtless for the accountant.</p> - -<p>From Bredon we came to Twining Ferry, three miles below Strensham, and -the flat meadows beyond it, over which the tower of Tewkesbury Abbey and -the tall chimneys of its mills now began to loom through a rainy sky -upon which night was fast closing. It is just before the town is reached -that the Avon parts to join the Severn in four streams—one over a weir, -another through a lock, the remaining two after working mills. Being by -this both wet and hungry, we disembarked at the boat-yard beside Mythe -Bridge, and walked up to our inn beneath the dark, irregular gables of -High Street, resolved to explore the town next day.</p> - -<p>Tewkesbury lies along the southern bank of Mill Avon, the longest branch -of our divided river, which, flowing under Mythe Bridge, washes on its -left the slums and back gardens of the town before it passes down to -work the Abbey Mill. One of these gardens—that of the Bell and -Bowling-Green Inn—will be recognized by all readers of “John Halifax, -Gentleman,” and the view from the yew-hedged bowling-green itself shall -be painted in Mrs. Craik’s own words:<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_136" id="page_136">{136}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_093.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_093.jpg" width="490" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>MYTHE BRIDGE, TEWKESBURY</p></div> -</div> - -<p>“At the end of the arbor the wall which enclosed us on the riverward -side was cut down—my father had done it at my asking—so as to make a -seat, something after the fashion of Queen Mary’s seat at Stirling, of -which I had read. Thence one could see a goodly sweep of country. First, -close below, flowed the Avon—Shakespeare’s Avon—here a narrow, -sluggish stream, but capable, as we sometimes knew to our cost, of being -roused into fierceness and foam. Now it slipped on quietly enough, -contenting itself with turning a flour-mill hard by, the lazy whir of -which made a sleepy, incessant monotone which I was fond of hearing. -From the opposite bank stretched a wide green level called the Ham, -dotted with pasturing cattle of all sorts. Beyond it</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_094.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_094.jpg" width="608" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>TWINING FERRY</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_137" id="page_137">{137}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">was a second river, forming an arc of a circle round the verdant flat. -But the stream itself lay so low as to be invisible from where we sat; -you could only trace the line of its course by the small white sails -that glided in and out, oddly enough, from behind clumps of trees and -across meadow-lands.”</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_095.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_095.jpg" width="513" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>THE BOWLING-GREEN, TEWKESBURY</p></div> -</div> - -<p>This second stream is, of course, the Severn, sweeping broadly by the -base of Mythe Hill. An advertisement that we saw posted in Tewkesbury -streets gave us the size of the intervening meadow; it announced that -the after or latter math of the Severn Ham was to be sold by order of -the trustees—172 acres, 2 roods, 28 perches of grass in all. The Ham is -let by auction, and the money divided among the inhabitants of certain -streets.</p> - -<p>We lingered to observe the yew hedge, “fifteen feet high and as many -thick,” and talk to a waiter who now appeared at the back door of the -inn. He seemed to feel his black suit<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_138" id="page_138">{138}</a></span> and white shirt-front incongruous -with their surroundings, and explained the cause of their presence. The -Tewkesbury Bowling Club had held its annual dinner there the night -before. He showed us the empty bottles.</p> - -<p>“Evidently a very large club,” we said.</p> - -<p>“No, sirs; thirsty.”</p> - -<p>The Abbey Mill, which droned so pleasantly in Phineas Fletcher’s ears, -stands close by, under the shadow of the Abbey Church, its hours of work -and rest marked by the clock and peal of eight sweet-toned bells in the -Abbey Tower.</p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_096.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_096.jpg" width="392" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>TEWKESBURY, FROM THE SEVERN</p></div> -</div> - -<p>It is well that this tower should stand where it does. If to one who -follows the windings of Avon the recurrent suggestion of its scenery be -that of permanence, here fitly, at his journey’s end, he finds that -permanence embodied monumentally in stone. No building that I know in -England—not Westminster Abbey, with all its sleeping -generations—conveys the impression of durability in the same degree as -does this Norman tower, which, for eight centuries, has stood foursquare -to the storms of heaven and the frenzy of men. Though it rises one -hundred and thirty-two feet from the ground to the coping of its -battlements, and though its upper stages contain much exquisite carving, -there is no<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_139" id="page_139">{139}</a></span></p> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/ill_097.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_097.jpg" height="550" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>MILL STREET, TEWKESBURY</p></div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_141" id="page_141">{141}</a></span><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_140" id="page_140">{140}</a></span></p> - -<p class="nind">lightness on its scarred, indomitable face, but only strength. The same -strength is repeated within the church by the fourteen huge cylindrical -columns from which the arches spring to bear the heavy roof of the nave. -In spite of the groining and elaborate traceries above, the rich eastern -windows, the luxuriant decoration of the chantry chapels and their -monuments, these fourteen columns give the note of the edifice. To them -we return, and, standing beside them, are able to ignore the mutilations -of years, and see the old church as it was on a certain spring day in -1471, when its painted windows colored the white faces, and its ceilings -echoed the cries, of the beaten Lancastrians that clung to its altar for -sanctuary.</p> - -<div class="figright" style="width: 412px;"> -<a href="images/ill_098.jpg"> -<img src="images/ill_098.jpg" height="497" alt="[Image unavailable.]" /></a> -<div class="caption"><p>OLD HOUSE, TEWKESBURY</p></div> -</div> - -<p>For “in the field by Tewkesbury,” a little to the south, beside the -highway that runs to Gloucester and Cheltenham, the crown of England has -been won and lost. There, on the 4th of May, 1471, the troops of Queen -Margaret and the young Prince Edward, led by the Duke of Somerset from -Exeter to join another army that the Earl of Pembroke<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_142" id="page_142">{142}</a></span> was raising in -Wales, were overtaken by Edward IV., who had hurried out from Windsor to -intercept them. Footsore and bedraggled, they had reached Tewkesbury on -the 3d, and “pight their field in a close euen hard at the towne’s end, -hauing the towne and abbeie at their backes; and directlie before them, -and upon each side of them, they were defended with cumbersome lanes, -deepe ditches, and manie hedges, besides hils and dales, so as the place -seemed as noisome as might be to approach unto.” From this secure -position they were drawn by a ruse of the Crookback’s, and slaughtered -like sheep. Many, we know, fled to the abbey, were seized there and -executed by dozens at Tewkesbury Cross, where High Street and Burton -Street divide. Others were chased into the river by the Abbey Mill and -drowned. A house in Church Street is pointed out as the place where -Edward, Prince of Wales, was slain, and some stains in the floor boards -of one of the upper rooms are still held to be his blood-marks. -Tradition has marked his burial-place in the Abbey Church, and written -above it, “Eheu, hominum furor: matris tu sola lux es, et gregis ultima -spes.” The dust of his enemy Clarence—“false, fleeting, perjured -Clarence”—lies but a little way off, behind the altar-screen.</p> - -<p>There is a narrow field, one of the last that Avon washes, down the -centre of which runs a narrow, withy-bordered watercourse. It is called -the “Bloody Meadow,” after the carnage of that day, when, as the story -goes, blood enough lay at its foot to float a boat; and just beyond our -river is gathered to the greater Severn.<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_143" id="page_143">{143}</a></span></p> - -<h2><a name="INDEX_TO_ILLUSTRATIONS" id="INDEX_TO_ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> - -<p class="c"><a href="#A">A</a>, -<a href="#B">B</a>, -<a href="#C">C</a>, -<a href="#D">D</a>, -<a href="#E">E</a>, -<a href="#F">F</a>, -<a href="#G">G</a>, -<a href="#H">H</a>, -<a href="#L">L</a>, -<a href="#M">M</a>, -<a href="#N">N</a>, -<a href="#O">O</a>, -<a href="#P">P</a>, -<a href="#R">R</a>, -<a href="#S">S</a>, -<a href="#T">T</a>, -<a href="#U">U</a>, -<a href="#W">W</a>, -<a href="#Y">Y</a>. -</p> - -<p class="nind"> -<a name="A" id="A"></a>Ann Hathaway’s Cottage, <a href="#page_73">73</a>.<br /> -Arrow-heads, near Tewkesbury, <a href="#page_131">131</a>.<br /> -Ashow, <a href="#page_41">41</a>.<br /> -Avon from Nasebyfield to Wolston, The, facing <a href="#page_10">10</a>.<br /> -Avon Inn, Rugby, <a href="#page_22">22</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="B"></a>Barford Bridge, <a href="#page_54">54</a>.<br /> -Bidford Bridge, <a href="#page_84">84</a>.<br /> -Blakedown Mill, <a href="#page_44">44</a>.<br /> -Bowling-green, Tewkesbury, The, <a href="#page_137">137</a>.<br /> -Bredon, <a href="#page_125">125</a>.<br /> -Bretford, <a href="#page_29">29</a>.<br /> -Bubbenhall, <a href="#page_37">37</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="C"></a>Cæsar’s Tower, Warwick Castle, <a href="#page_50">50</a>.<br /> -Catthorpe Church, <a href="#page_19">19</a>.<br /> -Chadbury Mill, <a href="#page_104">104</a>.<br /> -Chadbury Weir, <a href="#page_105">105</a>.<br /> -Charlcote, <a href="#page_63">63</a>.<br /> -Chesford Bridge, <a href="#page_43">43</a>.<br /> -Church Lawford, <a href="#page_27">27</a>.<br /> -Cleeve Mill—An Autumn Flood, <a href="#page_87">87</a>.<br /> -Clopton Bridge, Stratford-upon-Avon, <a href="#page_69">69</a>.<br /> -Cropthorne Mill, <a href="#page_112">112</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="D"></a>Dove-cote, Wasperton, <a href="#page_60">60</a>.<br /> -Dow Bridge on Watling Street, <a href="#page_20">20</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="E"></a>Eckington Bridge, <a href="#page_122">122</a>.<br /> -Eckington, Near, <a href="#page_127">127</a>.<br /> -Elms by Bidford Grange, <a href="#page_81">81</a>.<br /> -Evesham Bell-tower and Old Abbey Gateway, <a href="#page_102">102</a>.<br /> -Evesham, from the River, <a href="#page_96">96</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="F"></a>Fladbury Mill, <a href="#page_108">108</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="G"></a>Gig Seat, The, <a href="#page_109">109</a>.<br /> -Gleaners, <a href="#page_33">33</a>.<br /> -Great Comberton, <a href="#page_121">121</a>.<br /> -Guy’s Cliffe, <a href="#page_47">47</a>.<br /> -Guy’s Cliffe Mill, <a href="#page_45">45</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="H"></a>Hampton Ferry, <a href="#page_103">103</a>.<br /> -Hampton Lucy, from the Meadows, <a href="#page_61">61</a>.<br /> -Hampton Lucy to Harvington, From, facing <a href="#page_60">60</a>.<br /> -Harvington Weir, <a href="#page_92">92</a>.<br /> -Hillborough, <a href="#page_83">83</a>.<br /> -Holbrook Court, <a href="#page_24">24</a>.<br /> -Hospital of Robert Earl of Leycester in Warwick, <a href="#page_51">51</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="L"></a>Lawford Mill, <a href="#page_25">25</a>.<br /> -Lock and Church, The, <a href="#page_75">75</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="M"></a>Market-garden near Evesham, A, <a href="#page_99">99</a>.<br /> -Meadows by the Avon, <a href="#page_89">89</a>.<br /> -Meadowsweet, <a href="#page_65">65</a>.<br /> -Mill Street, Tewkesbury, <a href="#page_139">139</a>.<br /> -Mouth of the Stour, The, <a href="#page_74">74</a>.<br /> -Mythe Bridge, Tewkesbury, <a href="#page_134">134</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<span class="pagenum"><a name="page_144" id="page_144">{144}</a></span> -<a name="N" id="N"></a>Nafford Mill, <a href="#page_122">122</a>.<br /> -Naseby Monument, <a href="#page_10">10</a>.<br /> -Nets Drying at Wyre, <a href="#page_117">117</a>.<br /> -Newbold-upon-Avon, <a href="#page_24">24</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="O"></a>Offenham, Near, <a href="#page_95">95</a>.<br /> -Offenham to Tewkesbury, From, facing <a href="#page_96">96</a>.<br /> -Old Bridge, Warwick, <a href="#page_49">49</a>.<br /> -Old House, Tewkesbury, <a href="#page_141">141</a>.<br /> -Old Pear-Trees at Pershore, <a href="#page_115">115</a>.<br /> -Old Thorns, Marcleeve Hill, <a href="#page_85">85</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="P"></a>Pershore Bridge, <a href="#page_119">119</a>.<br /> -Pershore Water-gate, <a href="#page_123">123</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="R"></a>Reed-cutters, <a href="#page_101">101</a>.<br /> -Roman Camp, Lilburne, <a href="#page_15">15</a>.<br /> -Rugby, from Brownsover Mill, <a href="#page_21">21</a>.<br /> -Ruins of Newnham Regis Church, <a href="#page_28">28</a>.<br /> -Ryton-on-Dunsmore, <a href="#page_32">32</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="S"></a>Sherborne, <a href="#page_58">58</a>.<br /> -Site of Brandon Castle, <a href="#page_31">31</a>.<br /> -Standford Church, <a href="#page_17">17</a>.<br /> -Standford Hall, <a href="#page_14">14</a>.<br /> -Stoneleigh Abbey, Oct. <a href="#page_15">15</a>, 1884, <a href="#page_40">40</a>.<br /> -Stoneleigh Deer Park, In, <a href="#page_36">36</a>.<br /> -Stratford Church, <a href="#page_71">71</a>.<br /> -Strensham Church, <a href="#page_129">129</a>.<br /> -Strensham Mill, <a href="#page_130">130</a>.<br /> -Sulby Abbey, <a href="#page_11">11</a>.<br /> -Summer-house on Bredon Hill, The, <a href="#page_118">118</a>.<br /> -Swing-Bridge near Welford, <a href="#page_13">13</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="T"></a>Tewkesbury, from the Severn, <a href="#page_138">138</a>.<br /> -Tithe Barn, Bredon, <a href="#page_126">126</a>.<br /> -Twining Ferry, <a href="#page_135">135</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="U"></a>Under the Willows, <a href="#page_67">67</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="W"></a>Warwick Castle, from the Park, <a href="#page_55">55</a>.<br /> -Wasperton, At, <a href="#page_59">59</a>.<br /> -Weir Brake, <a href="#page_77">77</a>.<br /> -Welford Canal House, <a href="#page_12">12</a>.<br /> -Welford Weir and Church, <a href="#page_80">80</a>.<br /> -Weston-upon-Avon, <a href="#page_78">78</a>.<br /> -Willows by Cropthorne, <a href="#page_113">113</a>.<br /> -Willow Pollarding, <a href="#page_93">93</a>.<br /> -Wolston Priory, <a href="#page_32">32</a>.<br /> -Wolston to Wasperton, From, facing <a href="#page_28">28</a>.<br /> -Wyre, At, <a href="#page_114">114</a>.<br /> -Wyre Lock, <a href="#page_117">117</a>.<br /> -<br /> -<a id="Y"></a>Yew Hedge, The—Cleeve Prior Manor-house, <a href="#page_83">83</a>.<br /> -</p> - -<p class="fint">THE END</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page_145" id="page_145">{145}</a></span></p> - -<div class="bbox"> -<p class="c"><big>HANDSOME BOOKS</big></p> - -<p class="c">ILLUSTRATED BY</p> - -<p class="c">EDWIN A. 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