It was
while floating in his boat under the Bisham beeches that Shelley, who was
then living at Marlow (you can see his house now, in West street),
composed THE REVOLT OF ISLAM.
By Hurley Weir, a little higher up, I have often thought that I could
stay a month without having sufficient time to drink in all the beauty of
the scene. The village of Hurley, five minutes' walk from the lock, is
as old a little spot as there is on the river, dating, as it does, to
quote the quaint phraseology of those dim days, "from the times of King
Sebert and King Offa." Just past the weir (going up) is Danes' Field,
where the invading Danes once encamped, during their march to
Gloucestershire; and a little further still, nestling by a sweet corner
of the stream, is what is left of Medmenham Abbey.
The famous Medmenham monks, or "Hell Fire Club," as they were commonly
called, and of whom the notorious Wilkes was a member, were a fraternity
whose motto was "Do as you please," and that invitation still stands over
the ruined doorway of the abbey. Many years before this bogus abbey,
with its congregation of irreverent jesters, was founded, there stood
upon this same spot a monastery of a sterner kind, whose monks were of a
somewhat different type to the revellers that were to follow them, five
hundred years afterwards.
The Cistercian monks, whose abbey stood there in the thirteenth century,
wore no clothes but rough tunics and cowls, and ate no flesh, nor fish,
nor eggs. They lay upon straw, and they rose at midnight to mass. They
spent the day in labour, reading, and prayer; and over all their lives
there fell a silence as of death, for no one spoke.
A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God had
made so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them - the soft
singing of the waters, the whisperings of the river grass, the music of
the rushing wind - should not have taught them a truer meaning of life
than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence,
waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn
night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not.
From Medmenham to sweet Hambledon Lock the river is full of peaceful
beauty, but, after it passes Greenlands, the rather uninteresting looking
river residence of my newsagent - a quiet unassuming old gentleman, who
may often be met with about these regions, during the summer months,
sculling himself along in easy vigorous style, or chatting genially to
some old lock-keeper, as he passes through - until well the other side of
Henley, it is somewhat bare and dull.
We got up tolerably early on the Monday morning at Marlow, and went for a
bathe before breakfast; and, coming back, Montmorency made an awful ass
of himself. The only subject on which Montmorency and I have any serious
difference of opinion is cats. I like cats; Montmorency does not.
When I meet a cat, I say, "Poor Pussy!" and stop down and tickle the side
of its head; and the cat sticks up its tail in a rigid, cast-iron manner,
arches its back, and wipes its nose up against my trousers; and all is
gentleness and peace. When Montmorency meets a cat, the whole street
knows about it; and there is enough bad language wasted in ten seconds to
last an ordinarily respectable man all his life, with care.
I do not blame the dog (contenting myself, as a rule, with merely
clouting his head or throwing stones at him), because I take it that it
is his nature. Fox-terriers are born with about four times as much
original sin in them as other dogs are, and it will take years and years
of patient effort on the part of us Christians to bring about any
appreciable reformation in the rowdiness of the fox-terrier nature.
I remember being in the lobby of the Haymarket Stores one day, and all
round about me were dogs, waiting for the return of their owners, who
were shopping inside. There were a mastiff, and one or two collies, and
a St. Bernard, a few retrievers and Newfoundlands, a boar-hound, a French
poodle, with plenty of hair round its head, but mangy about the middle; a
bull-dog, a few Lowther Arcade sort of animals, about the size of rats,
and a couple of Yorkshire tykes.
There they sat, patient, good, and thoughtful. A solemn peacefulness
seemed to reign in that lobby. An air of calmness and resignation - of
gentle sadness pervaded the room.
Then a sweet young lady entered, leading a meek-looking little fox-
terrier, and left him, chained up there, between the bull-dog and the
poodle. He sat and looked about him for a minute. Then he cast up his
eyes to the ceiling, and seemed, judging from his expression, to be
thinking of his mother. Then he yawned. Then he looked round at the
other dogs, all silent, grave, and dignified.
He looked at the bull-dog, sleeping dreamlessly on his right. He looked
at the poodle, erect and haughty, on his left. Then, without a word of
warning, without the shadow of a provocation, he bit that poodle's near
fore-leg, and a yelp of agony rang through the quiet shades of that
lobby.
The result of his first experiment seemed highly satisfactory to him, and
he determined to go on and make things lively all round. He sprang over
the poodle and vigorously attacked a collie, and the collie woke up, and
immediately commenced a fierce and noisy contest with the poodle. Then
Foxey came back to his own place, and caught the bull-dog by the ear, and
tried to throw him away; and the bull-dog, a curiously impartial animal,
went for everything he could reach, including the hall-porter, which gave
that dear little terrier the opportunity to enjoy an uninterrupted fight
of his own with an equally willing Yorkshire tyke.
Anyone who knows canine nature need hardly, be told that, by this time,
all the other dogs in the place were fighting as if their hearths and
homes depended on the fray. The big dogs fought each other
indiscriminately; and the little dogs fought among themselves, and filled
up their spare time by biting the legs of the big dogs.
The whole lobby was a perfect pandemonium, and the din was terrific. A
crowd assembled outside in the Haymarket, and asked if it was a vestry
meeting; or, if not, who was being murdered, and why? Men came with
poles and ropes, and tried to separate the dogs, and the police were sent
for.
And in the midst of the riot that sweet young lady returned, and snatched
up that sweet little dog of hers (he had laid the tyke up for a month,
and had on the expression, now, of a new-born lamb) into her arms, and
kissed him, and asked him if he was killed, and what those great nasty
brutes of dogs had been doing to him; and he nestled up against her, and
gazed up into her face with a look that seemed to say: "Oh, I'm so glad
you've come to take me away from this disgraceful scene!"
She said that the people at the Stores had no right to allow great savage
things like those other dogs to be put with respectable people's dogs,
and that she had a great mind to summon somebody.
Such is the nature of fox-terriers; and, therefore, I do not blame
Montmorency for his tendency to row with cats; but he wished he had not
given way to it that morning.
We were, as I have said, returning from a dip, and half-way up the High
Street a cat darted out from one of the houses in front of us, and began
to trot across the road. Montmorency gave a cry of joy - the cry of a
stern warrior who sees his enemy given over to his hands - the sort of
cry Cromwell might have uttered when the Scots came down the hill - and
flew after his prey.
His victim was a large black Tom. I never saw a larger cat, nor a more
disreputable-looking cat. It had lost half its tail, one of its ears,
and a fairly appreciable proportion of its nose. It was a long, sinewy-
looking animal. It had a calm, contented air about it.
Montmorency went for that poor cat at the rate of twenty miles an hour;
but the cat did not hurry up - did not seem to have grasped the idea that
its life was in danger. It trotted quietly on until its would-be
assassin was within a yard of it, and then it turned round and sat down
in the middle of the road, and looked at Montmorency with a gentle,
inquiring expression, that said:
"Yes! You want me?"
Montmorency does not lack pluck; but there was something about the look
of that cat that might have chilled the heart of the boldest dog. He
stopped abruptly, and looked back at Tom.
Neither spoke; but the conversation that one could imagine was clearly as
follows:-
THE CAT: "Can I do anything for you?"
MONTMORENCY: "No - no, thanks."
THE CAT: "Don't you mind speaking, if you really want anything, you
know."
MONTMORENCY (BACKING DOWN THE HIGH STREET): "Oh, no - not at all -
certainly - don't you trouble. I - I am afraid I've made a mistake. I
thought I knew you. Sorry I disturbed you."
THE CAT: "Not at all - quite a pleasure. Sure you don't want anything,
now?"
MONTMORENCY (STILL BACKING): "Not at all, thanks - not at all - very kind
of you. Good morning."
THE CAT: "Good-morning."
Then the cat rose, and continued his trot; and Montmorency, fitting what
he calls his tail carefully into its groove, came back to us, and took up
an unimportant position in the rear.
To this day, if you say the word "Cats!" to Montmorency, he will visibly
shrink and look up piteously at you, as if to say:
"Please don't."
We did our marketing after breakfast, and revictualled the boat for three
days. George said we ought to take vegetables - that it was unhealthy
not to eat vegetables. He said they were easy enough to cook, and that
he would see to that; so we got ten pounds of potatoes, a bushel of peas,
and a few cabbages. We got a beefsteak pie, a couple of gooseberry
tarts, and a leg of mutton from the hotel; and fruit, and cakes, and
bread and butter, and jam, and bacon and eggs, and other things we
foraged round about the town for.
Our departure from Marlow I regard as one of our greatest successes. It
was dignified and impressive, without being ostentatious. We had
insisted at all the shops we had been to that the things should be sent
with us then and there. None of your "Yes, sir, I will send them off at
once: the boy will be down there before you are, sir!" and then fooling
about on the landing-stage, and going back to the shop twice to have a
row about them, for us. We waited while the basket was packed, and took
the boy with us.
We went to a good many shops, adopting this principle at each one; and
the consequence was that, by the time we had finished, we had as fine a
collection of boys with baskets following us around as heart could
desire; and our final march down the middle of the High Street, to the
river, must have been as imposing a spectacle as Marlow had seen for many
a long day.
The order of the procession was as follows:-
Montmorency, carrying a stick.
Two disreputable-looking curs, friends of Montmorency's.
George, carrying coats and rugs, and smoking a short pipe.
Harris, trying to walk with easy grace,
while carrying a bulged-out Gladstone bag in one hand
and a bottle of lime-juice in the other.
Greengrocer's boy and baker's boy,
with baskets.
Boots from the hotel, carrying hamper.
Confectioner's boy, with basket.
Grocer's boy, with basket.
Long-haired dog.
Cheesemonger's boy, with basket.
Odd man carrying a bag.
Bosom companion of odd man, with his hands in his pockets,
smoking a short clay.
Fruiterer's boy, with basket.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
while floating in his boat under the Bisham beeches that Shelley, who was
then living at Marlow (you can see his house now, in West street),
composed THE REVOLT OF ISLAM.
By Hurley Weir, a little higher up, I have often thought that I could
stay a month without having sufficient time to drink in all the beauty of
the scene. The village of Hurley, five minutes' walk from the lock, is
as old a little spot as there is on the river, dating, as it does, to
quote the quaint phraseology of those dim days, "from the times of King
Sebert and King Offa." Just past the weir (going up) is Danes' Field,
where the invading Danes once encamped, during their march to
Gloucestershire; and a little further still, nestling by a sweet corner
of the stream, is what is left of Medmenham Abbey.
The famous Medmenham monks, or "Hell Fire Club," as they were commonly
called, and of whom the notorious Wilkes was a member, were a fraternity
whose motto was "Do as you please," and that invitation still stands over
the ruined doorway of the abbey. Many years before this bogus abbey,
with its congregation of irreverent jesters, was founded, there stood
upon this same spot a monastery of a sterner kind, whose monks were of a
somewhat different type to the revellers that were to follow them, five
hundred years afterwards.
The Cistercian monks, whose abbey stood there in the thirteenth century,
wore no clothes but rough tunics and cowls, and ate no flesh, nor fish,
nor eggs. They lay upon straw, and they rose at midnight to mass. They
spent the day in labour, reading, and prayer; and over all their lives
there fell a silence as of death, for no one spoke.
A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God had
made so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them - the soft
singing of the waters, the whisperings of the river grass, the music of
the rushing wind - should not have taught them a truer meaning of life
than this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence,
waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemn
night it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not.
From Medmenham to sweet Hambledon Lock the river is full of peaceful
beauty, but, after it passes Greenlands, the rather uninteresting looking
river residence of my newsagent - a quiet unassuming old gentleman, who
may often be met with about these regions, during the summer months,
sculling himself along in easy vigorous style, or chatting genially to
some old lock-keeper, as he passes through - until well the other side of
Henley, it is somewhat bare and dull.
We got up tolerably early on the Monday morning at Marlow, and went for a
bathe before breakfast; and, coming back, Montmorency made an awful ass
of himself. The only subject on which Montmorency and I have any serious
difference of opinion is cats. I like cats; Montmorency does not.
When I meet a cat, I say, "Poor Pussy!" and stop down and tickle the side
of its head; and the cat sticks up its tail in a rigid, cast-iron manner,
arches its back, and wipes its nose up against my trousers; and all is
gentleness and peace. When Montmorency meets a cat, the whole street
knows about it; and there is enough bad language wasted in ten seconds to
last an ordinarily respectable man all his life, with care.
I do not blame the dog (contenting myself, as a rule, with merely
clouting his head or throwing stones at him), because I take it that it
is his nature. Fox-terriers are born with about four times as much
original sin in them as other dogs are, and it will take years and years
of patient effort on the part of us Christians to bring about any
appreciable reformation in the rowdiness of the fox-terrier nature.
I remember being in the lobby of the Haymarket Stores one day, and all
round about me were dogs, waiting for the return of their owners, who
were shopping inside. There were a mastiff, and one or two collies, and
a St. Bernard, a few retrievers and Newfoundlands, a boar-hound, a French
poodle, with plenty of hair round its head, but mangy about the middle; a
bull-dog, a few Lowther Arcade sort of animals, about the size of rats,
and a couple of Yorkshire tykes.
There they sat, patient, good, and thoughtful. A solemn peacefulness
seemed to reign in that lobby. An air of calmness and resignation - of
gentle sadness pervaded the room.
Then a sweet young lady entered, leading a meek-looking little fox-
terrier, and left him, chained up there, between the bull-dog and the
poodle. He sat and looked about him for a minute. Then he cast up his
eyes to the ceiling, and seemed, judging from his expression, to be
thinking of his mother. Then he yawned. Then he looked round at the
other dogs, all silent, grave, and dignified.
He looked at the bull-dog, sleeping dreamlessly on his right. He looked
at the poodle, erect and haughty, on his left. Then, without a word of
warning, without the shadow of a provocation, he bit that poodle's near
fore-leg, and a yelp of agony rang through the quiet shades of that
lobby.
The result of his first experiment seemed highly satisfactory to him, and
he determined to go on and make things lively all round. He sprang over
the poodle and vigorously attacked a collie, and the collie woke up, and
immediately commenced a fierce and noisy contest with the poodle. Then
Foxey came back to his own place, and caught the bull-dog by the ear, and
tried to throw him away; and the bull-dog, a curiously impartial animal,
went for everything he could reach, including the hall-porter, which gave
that dear little terrier the opportunity to enjoy an uninterrupted fight
of his own with an equally willing Yorkshire tyke.
Anyone who knows canine nature need hardly, be told that, by this time,
all the other dogs in the place were fighting as if their hearths and
homes depended on the fray. The big dogs fought each other
indiscriminately; and the little dogs fought among themselves, and filled
up their spare time by biting the legs of the big dogs.
The whole lobby was a perfect pandemonium, and the din was terrific. A
crowd assembled outside in the Haymarket, and asked if it was a vestry
meeting; or, if not, who was being murdered, and why? Men came with
poles and ropes, and tried to separate the dogs, and the police were sent
for.
And in the midst of the riot that sweet young lady returned, and snatched
up that sweet little dog of hers (he had laid the tyke up for a month,
and had on the expression, now, of a new-born lamb) into her arms, and
kissed him, and asked him if he was killed, and what those great nasty
brutes of dogs had been doing to him; and he nestled up against her, and
gazed up into her face with a look that seemed to say: "Oh, I'm so glad
you've come to take me away from this disgraceful scene!"
She said that the people at the Stores had no right to allow great savage
things like those other dogs to be put with respectable people's dogs,
and that she had a great mind to summon somebody.
Such is the nature of fox-terriers; and, therefore, I do not blame
Montmorency for his tendency to row with cats; but he wished he had not
given way to it that morning.
We were, as I have said, returning from a dip, and half-way up the High
Street a cat darted out from one of the houses in front of us, and began
to trot across the road. Montmorency gave a cry of joy - the cry of a
stern warrior who sees his enemy given over to his hands - the sort of
cry Cromwell might have uttered when the Scots came down the hill - and
flew after his prey.
His victim was a large black Tom. I never saw a larger cat, nor a more
disreputable-looking cat. It had lost half its tail, one of its ears,
and a fairly appreciable proportion of its nose. It was a long, sinewy-
looking animal. It had a calm, contented air about it.
Montmorency went for that poor cat at the rate of twenty miles an hour;
but the cat did not hurry up - did not seem to have grasped the idea that
its life was in danger. It trotted quietly on until its would-be
assassin was within a yard of it, and then it turned round and sat down
in the middle of the road, and looked at Montmorency with a gentle,
inquiring expression, that said:
"Yes! You want me?"
Montmorency does not lack pluck; but there was something about the look
of that cat that might have chilled the heart of the boldest dog. He
stopped abruptly, and looked back at Tom.
Neither spoke; but the conversation that one could imagine was clearly as
follows:-
THE CAT: "Can I do anything for you?"
MONTMORENCY: "No - no, thanks."
THE CAT: "Don't you mind speaking, if you really want anything, you
know."
MONTMORENCY (BACKING DOWN THE HIGH STREET): "Oh, no - not at all -
certainly - don't you trouble. I - I am afraid I've made a mistake. I
thought I knew you. Sorry I disturbed you."
THE CAT: "Not at all - quite a pleasure. Sure you don't want anything,
now?"
MONTMORENCY (STILL BACKING): "Not at all, thanks - not at all - very kind
of you. Good morning."
THE CAT: "Good-morning."
Then the cat rose, and continued his trot; and Montmorency, fitting what
he calls his tail carefully into its groove, came back to us, and took up
an unimportant position in the rear.
To this day, if you say the word "Cats!" to Montmorency, he will visibly
shrink and look up piteously at you, as if to say:
"Please don't."
We did our marketing after breakfast, and revictualled the boat for three
days. George said we ought to take vegetables - that it was unhealthy
not to eat vegetables. He said they were easy enough to cook, and that
he would see to that; so we got ten pounds of potatoes, a bushel of peas,
and a few cabbages. We got a beefsteak pie, a couple of gooseberry
tarts, and a leg of mutton from the hotel; and fruit, and cakes, and
bread and butter, and jam, and bacon and eggs, and other things we
foraged round about the town for.
Our departure from Marlow I regard as one of our greatest successes. It
was dignified and impressive, without being ostentatious. We had
insisted at all the shops we had been to that the things should be sent
with us then and there. None of your "Yes, sir, I will send them off at
once: the boy will be down there before you are, sir!" and then fooling
about on the landing-stage, and going back to the shop twice to have a
row about them, for us. We waited while the basket was packed, and took
the boy with us.
We went to a good many shops, adopting this principle at each one; and
the consequence was that, by the time we had finished, we had as fine a
collection of boys with baskets following us around as heart could
desire; and our final march down the middle of the High Street, to the
river, must have been as imposing a spectacle as Marlow had seen for many
a long day.
The order of the procession was as follows:-
Montmorency, carrying a stick.
Two disreputable-looking curs, friends of Montmorency's.
George, carrying coats and rugs, and smoking a short pipe.
Harris, trying to walk with easy grace,
while carrying a bulged-out Gladstone bag in one hand
and a bottle of lime-juice in the other.
Greengrocer's boy and baker's boy,
with baskets.
Boots from the hotel, carrying hamper.
Confectioner's boy, with basket.
Grocer's boy, with basket.
Long-haired dog.
Cheesemonger's boy, with basket.
Odd man carrying a bag.
Bosom companion of odd man, with his hands in his pockets,
smoking a short clay.
Fruiterer's boy, with basket.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32