One of the greatest calumnies I ever heard expressed was the remark, "What, writing a book about the river! Why, the river is all alike, isn't it?" It is true that many reaches of the river are so exceedingly attractive that there is a danger of applying the adjectives "pretty" and "beautiful" and "charming" to many of them, but the sameness is not in the reaches, it is in the poverty of one's own language. What can be more different, Great Marlow itself is a fairly important place for a riverside village. It is like a little country town, and though many new red-brick villas are springing up, it could not be called "residential" in the way that the word could be applied to Richmond, for instance. The ground plan is very simple. One wide street runs straight down to the bridge, and another street crosses it at the top. In the latter is to be found Marlow's chief literary association, for here still stands the cottage where Shelley lived. It is marked by a tablet, and is a low, long building, creeper-covered, and is now divided into several cottages. Here he wrote GENERAL VIEW OF MARLOW Down by the water side the whole aspect of Marlow is bright and open. It must be entirely different from the older Marlow, when the wooden bridge—which crossed the river lower down than the present one—and the old church were still in existence. At present, in the summer all is gay and clean looking. The suspension bridge, which is the best of the modern sort of bridges from an artist's point of view, is rather low over the water; standing on it one can look right down on to the green lawn of the Compleat Angler Hotel, and see the many-coloured muslins, the white flannels, the gay cushions, the awnings, and the sunshades, as if they were all a gigantic flower bed. The red hotel itself is from this point caught against the background of the Quarry Woods. Opposite to it is the very green strip of the churchyard coming right down to the edge of the river, and only separated from it by a low stone parapet: weeping willows fling their green spray out over the water, and behind is the church. It is undeniable that the materials used in the church are distinctly ugly, but the steeple goes some way towards redeeming it, One of the glories of Marlow is its weir. It runs in a great semicircular sweep below the hotel; and, from a terrace there, one can look right down into the swirling water; or by coming up the backwater below in a boat, one can land at the hotel without facing the lock at all, a great advantage. The weir is in several planes, and the extended flood makes a perpetual wash, rising to a roar in winter, and dwindling to the merest tinkle in summer. Marlow is distinctly a summer place: its openness, its many trees, its wide reach of water, and the splash of the weir are all summer accompaniments; and in winter, when the wind sweeps down from the south, the unprotected side, and the water hisses and bubbles in its struggle to get down to lower levels, it is weird and melancholy. QUARRY WOODS The lock channel is fringed by several islets, and there is the usual mill, and a pretty wooden foot-bridge. Several of the most graceful of BISHAM CHURCH The woods alone would be sufficient to give Marlow a high rank among river places. But all this is below the bridge, and above there is much to see. Not far off, on the right bank of the river, is Bisham, a tiny village with its church and abbey, now a dwelling house. The whole of Bisham is well worth lingering over. The cottages stand along the road in straggling fashion, old and new, and some of the gardens are bright with homely, sweet-scented flowers, among which, stocks and sweet-williams seem to be the favourites in the summer. One tumble-down row, rather off the road, is a mass of honeysuckle, and "Give me, O God, a husband like unto Thomas, Or else restore me to my husband Thomas!" Eight years later she married again, so that she had presumably found a husband "like unto Thomas." The Hoby window in this chapel, with its coat of arms, is especially interesting, and when the morning sun streams through in tones of purple and gold upon the worn stones, the effect is striking. There are one or two good brasses in the church, and a small monument to two children who are traditionally said to have owned Queen Elizabeth as mother! HURLEY BACKWATER From the reign of Edward VI. to 1780 the Hoby family held the abbey, and then it was bought by the ancestors of the present owner. It is a splendid group of masonry, and stands very effectively near the river. The tall tower, the oriel windows, and the red tints against the fine mass of greenery, make a very unusual picture. Bisham at one time belonged to the Knights Templars, who founded here a preceptory. But their Order was dissolved in the reign of Edward II. In 1338 the Earl of Salisbury established here a priory for Augustinian monks. This was twice surrendered, having been re-established after the first time. It is rather curious that the last prior, being permitted by the tenets of the Reformed During Queen Mary's reign Princess Elizabeth was a prisoner at Bisham under the charge of Sir Thomas Hoby. No doubt she "took water" frequently, and glided gently down with the stream; for people were accustomed to use their river when there were no roads to speak of. She must often have gazed upon the Quarry Woods in all their BISHAM ABBEY It is inevitable that such a historic house should have a tradition or two attached to it; and traditions are not lacking. It is said that the ghost of someone drowned in the river rises at times in the form of a mist, and spreads all across the channel, and woe be to anyone who attempts to penetrate it. Another tale is that the house is haunted by a certain Lady Hoby, who beat her little boy to death because he could not write without blots. She goes about wringing her hands and trying to cleanse them from indelible inkstains. The story has probably some foundation, for a number of copybooks of the age of Elizabeth were discovered behind one of the shutters during some Another tradition tells of an elopement. One of the Earls of Salisbury, about to set out for the Holy Land, sent for his daughter, who was a nun at the convent of Little Marlow, to bid him farewell. She came to him at Bisham, and while there was persuaded by one of the squires to elope with him. The pair crossed the water, but were almost immediately captured. The girl was presumably returned to her nunnery, where her escapade would give her something to think of during all the monotonous days that followed, and the man was imprisoned at Bisham. In attempting to make his escape he fell from a high window and was badly injured. It is said that he afterwards took the vows and became a monk. Temple Mill and House and Lock, which come next to Bisham up the river, recall the possession of the Knights Templars. This and Hurley Lock Interesting as Bisham is, it is rivalled by Hurley, with its remains of the fine old mansion Lady Place. In order to reach the lock one passes under a high wooden foot-bridge, "the marrow" to one further up. On the lock island is a large red-brick mill-house, near which stand one or two evergreens; while on an apple tree in the lock-keeper's garden is a fine growth of mistletoe, of which he is justly proud. Mistletoe grows a good deal in the valley of the Thames. It is not as a rule easily seen, owing to the foliage of the trees on which it grows; but in the winter, across the frozen meadows, against the cold white sky, it may be seen in great tufts that look like giant nests. It is supposed that the seeds of the mistletoe in order to become fruitful must pass through the body of the missel thrush, which is extremely partial to them, and seems to be almost the only bird that will touch them, hence its name; and if, as is conjectured, the seeds cannot germinate without this process, we have the phenomenon Beyond the lock there is a sheltered channel with the quaintest old-world flavour about it, a flavour which grows yearly more and more difficult to find as it melts away before the onward sweep of the advertising age. A strip of green turf is lined by an old brick wall with lichen and moss growing on its coping, so that when the sun catches it, it is like a ribbon of gold. Tall gate piers, crowned by stone balls, frame a bit of the excellently kept velvet lawns of Lady Place. There are many of these old piers and balls, and nearly all are overgrown with roses. Look to the blowing rose about us—'Lo, Laughing,' she says, 'into the world I blow, At once the silken tassel of my purse Tear, and its treasures on the garden throw.' —Fitzgerald's Omar Khayyam. The splendid cedars, themselves a guarantee of age that no modern Midas can summon to deck the grounds of his new mansion; the tinkle of a cowbell from the meadow near; and the Decorated windows of Lady Place peering over the wall; all add to the impression made by the whole. The abbey was founded in 1086 for Benedictine monks. It is interesting to note what a very great attraction Glide gently, thus for ever glide, O Thames! that other bards may see As lovely visions by thy side As now, fair river! come to me. O glide, fair stream, for ever so, Thy quiet soul on all bestowing, Till all our minds for ever flow As thy deep waters now are flowing. How calm! how still! the only sound, The dripping of the oar suspended! The evening darkness gathers round By virtue's holiest powers attended. —Wordsworth. Of this abbey not much remains. The crypt is isolated, standing away from the remainder of the buildings, and anyone may penetrate into it. The old moat is excellently well preserved, and its circuit shows that the abbey premises must have extended over at least five acres of ground. The Sir Richard Lovelace, created Baron Lovelace by Charles I., built Lady Place on the site of the In Macaulay's history there is an account of Lady Place, given graphically as he well knew how. He is speaking of a descendant of the founder, and he says: "His mansion, built by his ancestors out of the spoils of the Spanish galleons from the Indies, rose on the ruins of a house of Our Lady in that beautiful valley, through which the Thames, not yet defiled by the precincts of a great capital, nor rising and falling with the flow and ebb of the sea, rolls under woods of beech round the gentle hills of Berkshire. Beneath the stately saloon, adorned by Italian pencils, was a subterraneous vault in which the bones of ancient monks had sometimes been found." The third Lord Lovelace plotted for the coming of William of Orange, and in the crypt many a secret meeting was held to arrange the details. It is said that the actual invitation which brought the Dutchman over was signed in this low, dark vault. Lady Place later belonged to a brother of Admiral Kempenfelt, who went down with the Royal George. Certain places are frequently associated with certain seasons of the year, and to my mind at Hurley it is always summer. The smell of the new mown hay on the long island between the lock channel and part of the main stream, the faint, delicate scent of dog-roses, and all the other scents that load the summer air, seem to linger for ever in this sheltered place. The backwater running up on the other side of this island to the weir is a very enticing one. Thirsty plants dip their pretty heads to drink of the water that comes swirling from the weir like frosted glass, and trees of all sorts—ash, elm, horse-chestnut, and the ubiquitous willows and poplars—lean over the water in crooked elbows, giving a sweet shade and a delicious coolness. The weir is a long one, broken by islands into three parts. Another long island is parallel to the first one. Indeed, Hurley is a complicated place, and one that is ever new. The swans certainly appreciate it. Drayton says "Our flood's queen, Thames, with ships and swans is crowned." I don't know about the ships; nothing very large can get above Molesey Lock; but as for the swans they abound, and especially about here. The swans on the river belong to the Crown, A swan exercises on me something of the same fascination that a camel does; though far be it from me to compare the two in grace. They are both full of character, and both preserve a strictly critical attitude toward the human race. In the case of the swan, nature has perhaps dealt unfairly with him, for the curious little black cap, at the junction of bill and head, technically known as the "berry," gives him a fixed expression which he has no power to alter, even if he felt beaming with good humour. As it is, he is condemned to go through life as if he momentarily expected an attack upon his dignity and was prepared to repel it. When the sun is shining and the swan dips his long neck in the water and flings it upon his shoulders, the large, glistening drops, running The irises and bur-reeds line the low banks above the weir, and a line of short black poplars give some shade. And on by many a level mead, And shadowing bluffs that made the banks, We glided, winding under ranks Of iris and the golden reed. —Tennyson. I have said that Hurley is a summer place, and so it is; but there is one spring beauty which those who know it only in summer must for ever miss. On the slopes where the heights on the northern side fold into one another there is a little pillared temple, and about and around it some lavish and generous person has planted crocuses in big battalions, and they lie there in the sun, royal in purple and gold, and quite as rich in tint as those lights shining through the stained glass window at Bisham we saw a while ago. Above the next stretch of the river stands the great modern palace of Danesfield, which is built of chalk, one would imagine a singularly unlasting material. Though hidden by trees from directly beneath, from a distance it is very noticeable, and There is a ferry over the river at Medmenham, and, not far off, the old Abbey Hotel, in which numbers of artists stay. Up the green lane is a |