Читать книгу The Thames - G. E. Mitton - Страница 5

NEAR THE BRIDGE, SUTTON COURTNEY

Even in late autumn, when the slow, white mist rises from the marshy ground, and most of the birds are gone; when the eddies are full of dead leaves floating away from the wood where all their sheltered lives have been spent; when the sparkle and the gaiety and the light-heartedness are gone, and the water looks indigo and dun, with patches of quicksilver floating on it; when the great webs of the spiders that haunt the banks hang like filmy curtains of lace heavy with the moisture of the air, and the sun sinks wanly behind a bank of cloud—even then the river may be loved.

Assuredly, those who go on the river for the day only, and know it but under one aspect—that of lazy heat—lose much. In the evening time, as one steps from the long French window into the scented dusk, soft white moths flap suddenly across the strip of light, and one's feet fall silently on the velvet turf, cool with the freshness that ever is on a river margin. Down by the edge the black water hurries swiftly past with a continuous soothing gurgle. A sleepy bird moves in a startled way in a bush, and all the small things that awake in the night are stirring. One can reach down and touch the onyx water slipping between one's fingers like dream jewels; and far overhead in the rent and torn caverns of the clouds, the stars, bigger and brighter than ever they look in London, sail swiftly and silently from shelter to shelter. The plaintive cry of an owl sounds softly from the meadow across the water, and there is an indescribable sense of motion and poetry, and a thrill of expectation that would be wholly lacking in a landscape ever so beautiful, without the river.

Then there are the grey days, when sudden sheens of silver drop upon the ruffled water as it eddies round a corner, and in a moment the surface is peopled with dancing fairies, spangled and brilliant, flitting in and out in bewildering movement. Or the same cold, silver light catches the side of a ploughed field, a moment before brown, but now shot with green as all the long delicate blades are revealed. These, and a thousand other delights, cannot be known to the visitor of a day only. Under all its aspects, in all its vagaries, the river may be loved; and in the swift gliding motion there is an irresistible fascination. It gives meaning to idleness, and fills up vacancy. By the banks of the river one never can be dull.

The river is one of the greatest of our national possessions. Other rivers there are in England where one may boat on a small part, where here and there are beauty spots; but the Thames alone gives miles of bewildering choice, and can take hundreds and hundreds at once upon its flood. Now embanked and weired and locked, its waters are ideal for boating, and its fishing, with little exception, is free to all.

Shooting on the banks of the Thames is forbidden, and the birds have quickly learned to know their sanctuary. Lie still for a while in the lee of an osier-covered ait, or beneath the shelter of an overhanging willow, and that cheeky little reed-bunting will hop about so near, that, were you endowed by nature with the quickness of movement granted to a cat, you could seize it in one hand. White-throats, robins, thrushes, blackbirds, all haunt the stream, and reed warblers and sedge warblers have their haunts by the banks. The kingfisher is rapidly increasing, and makes his home quite close to the locks and weirs; the russet brown of his breast, as he sits motionless on a twig waiting his time for a dart, may now be seen by a noiseless and sharp-eyed watcher. The soft coo of the wood pigeons sounds from tall trees, and the cawing of the rooks, softened by distance into a melodious conversation, is wafted from many a rookery. The chatter of an impudent magpie may worry you, or the hoarse squawk of a jay break your rest, but they are only the discords that the great musician, Nature, knows how to introduce into her river symphony.

STREATLEY INN

Hotels on the river have, in the last few years, awakened to the cry of the middle classes for air and light, and yet more air. Some of the hotels are pretty with verandahs and creeper covered walls, but others are old-fashioned—with low rooms. Yet every proprietor who can by hook or crook manage it, now runs a lawn of exquisite turf down to the water's edge, decorates it with flowers far more vivid than can be seen elsewhere, and knocks up a bungalow-like building, terribly desolate in the winter when the green mould creeps insidiously over the wooden posts, and the sail-cloth rots in the damp; but airy and commodious in the summer, when relays of fifty people or more may be seated at a time, and yet there is no satiating smell of cooked food. The boat owners have also seen fit to accommodate their convenience to the demand, and at any large builder's landing-stage, boats may now be hired to be left almost anywhere on the river, to be fetched back by the owner.

Pessimists say that the river is losing its charm, that the advent of motor cars, stirring in people a hitherto dormant love of speed, makes the slow progress of punting a weariness instead of a relaxation. But this is not greatly to be feared. The charm of a motor is one thing, the charm of the river another; and we cannot spare either. Crowds may slightly diminish, but this is no loss, rather a gain to the real river lover.

Thames gardens are peculiar. By the nature of the case they must be far more public than ordinary gardens, for the owner's reason for buying the house was that he wanted to sit on his own green turf and see the river flow endlessly past. Therefore, though he may hedge around the three land sides with high walls and impenetrable thorns, he leaves the fourth side open so that all the world may look. No one has yet been clever enough to invent a screen that shall be transparent on one side and opaque on the other, and until they do, the owners of these beautiful river lawns must sit in the full light that beats upon the river banks, and allow every passing stranger who has raked up a shilling to hire a boat, to enjoy the beauties of a garden he has not paid for. Thames lawns are celebrated, and rightly so. Not even the turf of college quads, grown for hundreds of years, can beat their turf. Thick, smooth, closely woven they are, and above all, of a pure rich green that is a delight to see, and, by way of enhancing this marvellous green, the colour which is most often to be seen with it is its complementary colour, red. Whether the effect is obtained merely by contrast I do not know, but certainly it seems as if nowhere else could be found geraniums of so rich a vermilion, roses of so glorious a crimson. In many of these river gardens, too, especially where a little stream trickles down, a light trellis arch is thrown up and covered with Rambler roses, old rose in colour, and only second to the vermilion as a complement to the green lawn.

Two of these gloriously green lawns I have particularly in mind, one at Shepperton, and one near Thames Ditton, but where they are to be seen so frequently it is invidious to particularise.

These are the private gardens of a grand sort, and no whit less beautiful, though without the same expanse of lawn, are the gardens of the lock-keepers, in which the owners take a particular pride.

Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,

Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,

Sweet-william with his homely cottage smell,

And stocks in fragrant blow;

Roses, that down the alleys shine afar,

And open, jasmine-muffled lattices.

—M. Arnold.

But in taking count of Thames's decorations we are not confined to gardens. Among the flowers growing wild on the river banks we have no lack of choice. It is a pretty conceit of Drayton's, to make his bridal pair, Thame and Isis, travel to meet one another along paths flower-decked by willing nymphs. Old Thame, as the man, was to have only wild flowers, not those "to gardens that belong":

The primrose placing first because that in the spring

It is the first appears, then only flourishing,

The azured harebell next, with them they neatly mix'd,

T'allay whose luscious smell, they woodbind plac'd betwixt.

Amongst those things of scent, there prick they in the lily;

And near to that again her sister daffodilly.

To sort these flowers of show with th' other that were sweet

The cowslip then they couch, and th' oxlip, for her meet,

The columbine amongst they sparingly do set,

The yellow king-cup wrought in many a curious fret,

And now and then among, of eglantine a spray,

By which again a course of lady smocks they lay

The crow flower, and thereby the clover-flower they stick.

The daisie over all those sundry sweets so thick;

The crimson darnel flowers, the blue-bottle and gold

Which, though esteemed but weeds, yet for their dainty hues

And for their scent not ill, they for this purpose choose.

The "luscious smell" cannot refer to the harebell, which has a very faint perfume; besides, it is difficult to think of the harebell in this connection, for it is a full summer flower, while all the rest belong to spring: Drayton must, therefore, mean the wild hyacinth, which is still often called the bluebell by people in England, though in Scotland this name is correctly reserved for the harebell. The "luscious smell" exactly describes the rich, rather cloying scent of the hyacinth. There has been some discussion as to what is meant by the eglantine, which the old poets are so fond of mentioning. In Milton it means the honeysuckle, but in the others probably the sweetbriar; while woodbine is either the twining clematis, the "traveller's joy"—rather a misnomer, by-the-way, as it is an insignificant and disappointing flower—or the honeysuckle.

Isis was gay with garden flowers:

... The brave carnation then,

With th' other of his kind, the speckled and the pale,

Then th' odoriferous pink, that sends forth such a gale

Of sweetness, yet in scents as various as in sorts.

The purple violet then, the pansy there supports

The marygold above t' adorn the arched bar;

The double daisie, thrift, the button bachelor,

Sweet-william, sops-in-wine, the campion, and to these

Some lavender they put with rosemary and bays.

To make a catalogue of the flowers which may be found on the Thames banks at the present day would be out of place here, yet there are one or two plants so frequently seen that they may be mentioned. Among these are the purple loose-strife, with its tapering, richly coloured spikes, standing sometimes as high as four feet, and occasionally mistaken for a foxglove; the pink-flowered willow-herb; the wild mustard or cherlock, with its sulphur yellow blossoms, and creeping-jenny. The bog-bean, or buck-bean, with white lace-like flowers may be seen occasionally in stagnant swamps. The water-violet, which, however, is not in the least like a violet, is also to be found in the tributary ditches, as well as the tall yellow iris; the flowering rush and the bur-reeds often form details in a river picture. In the lock gardens herbaceous borders, full of phlox, sweet-william, stocks, valerian, big white lilies, and, later, red hot pokers, sunflowers, and hollyhocks, are ordinary sights. In the meadows near Oxford fritillaries, otherwise called snakes'-heads, are seen abundantly in spring, but these and other flowers shall be mentioned more particularly in connection with the places where they grow.

It remains but to end with the aspiration of Denham:

O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream

My great example as it is my theme!

Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;

Strong, without rage; without o'erflowing full.