MARLOW. - BISHAM ABBEY. - THE MEDMENHAM MONKS. - MONTMORENCY THINKS HEWILL MURDER AN OLD TOM CAT. - BUT EVENTUALLY DECIDES THAT HE WILL LET ITLIVE. - SHAMEFUL CONDUCT OF A FOX TERRIER AT THE CIVIL SERVICE STORES. -OUR DEPARTURE FROM MARLOW. - AN IMPOSING PROCESSION. - THE STEAM LAUNCH,USEFUL RECEIPTS FOR ANNOYING AND HINDERING IT. - WE DECLINE TO DRINK THERIVER. - A PEACEFUL DOG. - STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE OF HARRIS AND A PIE.
MARLOW is one of the pleasantest river centres I know of. It is abustling, lively little town; not very picturesque on the whole, it istrue, but there are many quaint nooks and corners to be found in it,nevertheless - standing arches in the shattered bridge of Time, overwhich our fancy travels back to the days when Marlow Manor owned SaxonAlgar for its lord, ere conquering William seized it to give to QueenMatilda, ere it passed to the Earls of Warwick or to worldly-wise LordPaget, the councillor of four successive sovereigns.
There is lovely country round about it, too, if, after boating, you arefond of a walk, while the river itself is at its best here. Down toCookham, past the Quarry Woods and the meadows, is a lovely reach. Dearold Quarry Woods! with your narrow, climbing paths, and little windingglades, how scented to this hour you seem with memories of sunny summerdays! How haunted are your shadowy vistas with the ghosts of laughingfaces! how from your whispering leaves there softly fall the voices oflong ago!
From Marlow up to Sonning is even fairer yet. Grand old Bisham Abbey,whose stone walls have rung to the shouts of the Knights Templars, andwhich, at one time, was the home of Anne of Cleves and at another ofQueen Elizabeth, is passed on the right bank just half a mile aboveMarlow Bridge. Bisham Abbey is rich in melodramatic properties. Itcontains a tapestry bed-chamber, and a secret room hid high up in thethick walls. The ghost of the Lady Holy, who beat her little boy todeath, still walks there at night, trying to wash its ghostly hands cleanin a ghostly basin.
Warwick, the king-maker, rests there, careless now about such trivialthings as earthly kings and earthly kingdoms; and Salisbury, who did goodservice at Poitiers. Just before you come to the abbey, and right on theriver's bank, is Bisham Church, and, perhaps, if any tombs are worthinspecting, they are the tombs and monuments in Bisham Church. It waswhile floating in his boat under the Bisham beeches that Shelley, who wasthen 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 couldstay a month without having sufficient time to drink in all the beauty ofthe scene. The village of Hurley, five minutes' walk from the lock, isas old a little spot as there is on the river, dating, as it does, toquote the quaint phraseology of those dim days, "from the times of KingSebert and King Offa." Just past the weir (going up) is Danes' Field,where the invading Danes once encamped, during their march toGloucestershire; and a little further still, nestling by a sweet cornerof the stream, is what is left of Medmenham Abbey.
The famous Medmenham monks, or "Hell Fire Club," as they were commonlycalled, and of whom the notorious Wilkes was a member, were a fraternitywhose motto was "Do as you please," and that invitation still stands overthe ruined doorway of the abbey. Many years before this bogus abbey,with its congregation of irreverent jesters, was founded, there stoodupon this same spot a monastery of a sterner kind, whose monks were of asomewhat different type to the revellers that were to follow them, fivehundred 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. Theyspent the day in labour, reading, and prayer; and over all their livesthere fell a silence as of death, for no one spoke.
A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in that sweet spot, that God hadmade so bright! Strange that Nature's voices all around them - the softsinging of the waters, the whisperings of the river grass, the music ofthe rushing wind - should not have taught them a truer meaning of lifethan this. They listened there, through the long days, in silence,waiting for a voice from heaven; and all day long and through the solemnnight it spoke to them in myriad tones, and they heard it not.
From Medmenham to sweet Hambledon Lock the river is full of peacefulbeauty, but, after it passes Greenlands, the rather uninteresting lookingriver residence of my newsagent - a quiet unassuming old gentleman, whomay often be met with about these regions, during the summer months,sculling himself along in easy vigorous style, or chatting genially tosome old lock-keeper, as he passes through - until well the other side ofHenley, it is somewhat bare and dull.
We got up tolerably early on the Monday morning at Marlow, and went for abathe before breakfast; and, coming back, Montmorency made an awful assof himself. The only subject on which Montmorency and I have any seriousdifference 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 sideof 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 isgentleness and peace. When Montmorency meets a cat, the whole streetknows about it; and there is enough bad language wasted in ten seconds tolast an ordinarily respectable man all his life, with care.
I do not blame the dog (contenting myself, as a rule, with merelyclouting his head or throwing stones at him), because I take it that itis his nature. Fox-terriers are born with about four times as muchoriginal sin in them as other dogs are, and it will take years and yearsof patient effort on the part of us Christians to bring about anyappreciable reformation in the rowdiness of the fox-terrier nature.
I remember being in the lobby of the Haymarket Stores one day, and allround about me were dogs, waiting for the return of their owners, whowere shopping inside. There were a mastiff, and one or two collies, anda St. Bernard, a few retrievers and Newfoundlands, a boar-hound, a Frenchpoodle, with plenty of hair round its head, but mangy about the middle; abull-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 peacefulnessseemed to reign in that lobby. An air of calmness and resignation - ofgentle 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 thepoodle. He sat and looked about him for a minute. Then he cast up hiseyes to the ceiling, and seemed, judging from his expression, to bethinking of his mother. Then he yawned. Then he looked round at theother dogs, all silent, grave, and dignified.
He looked at the bull-dog, sleeping dreamlessly on his right. He lookedat the poodle, erect and haughty, on his left. Then, without a word ofwarning, without the shadow of a provocation, he bit that poodle's nearfore-leg, and a yelp of agony rang through the quiet shades of thatlobby.
The result of his first experiment seemed highly satisfactory to him, andhe determined to go on and make things lively all round. He sprang overthe poodle and vigorously attacked a collie, and the collie woke up, andimmediately commenced a fierce and noisy contest with the poodle. ThenFoxey came back to his own place, and caught the bull-dog by the ear, andtried to throw him away; and the bull-dog, a curiously impartial animal,went for everything he could reach, including the hall-porter, which gavethat dear little terrier the opportunity to enjoy an uninterrupted fightof 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 andhomes depended on the fray. The big dogs fought each otherindiscriminately; and the little dogs fought among themselves, and filledup their spare time by biting the legs of the big dogs.
The whole lobby was a perfect pandemonium, and the din was terrific. Acrowd assembled outside in the Haymarket, and asked if it was a vestrymeeting; or, if not, who was being murdered, and why? Men came withpoles and ropes, and tried to separate the dogs, and the police were sentfor.
And in the midst of the riot that sweet young lady returned, and snatchedup 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, andkissed him, and asked him if he was killed, and what those great nastybrutes of dogs had been doing to him; and he nestled up against her, andgazed up into her face with a look that seemed to say: "Oh, I'm so gladyou've come to take me away from this disgraceful scene!"She said that the people at the Stores had no right to allow great savagethings 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 blameMontmorency for his tendency to row with cats; but he wished he had notgiven way to it that morning.
We were, as I have said, returning from a dip, and half-way up the HighStreet a cat darted out from one of the houses in front of us, and beganto trot across the road. Montmorency gave a cry of joy - the cry of astern warrior who sees his enemy given over to his hands - the sort ofcry Cromwell might have uttered when the Scots came down the hill - andflew after his prey.
His victim was a large black Tom. I never saw a larger cat, nor a moredisreputable-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 thatits life was in danger. It trotted quietly on until its would-beassassin was within a yard of it, and then it turned round and sat downin 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 lookof that cat that might have chilled the heart of the boldest dog. Hestopped abruptly, and looked back at Tom.
Neither spoke; but the conversation that one could imagine was clearly asfollows:-THE CAT: "Can I do anything for you?"MONTMORENCY: "No - no, thanks."THE CAT: "Don't you mind speaking, if you really want anything, youknow."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. Ithought 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 kindof you. Good morning."THE CAT: "Good-morning."Then the cat rose, and continued his trot; and Montmorency, fitting whathe calls his tail carefully into its groove, came back to us, and took upan unimportant position in the rear.
To this day, if you say the word "Cats!" to Montmorency, he will visiblyshrink and look up piteously at you, as if to say:
"Please don't."We did our marketing after breakfast, and revictualled the boat for threedays. George said we ought to take vegetables - that it was unhealthynot to eat vegetables. He said they were easy enough to cook, and thathe 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 gooseberrytarts, and a leg of mutton from the hotel; and fruit, and cakes, andbread and butter, and jam, and bacon and eggs, and other things weforaged round about the town for.
Our departure from Marlow I regard as one of our greatest successes. Itwas dignified and impressive, without being ostentatious. We hadinsisted at all the shops we had been to that the things should be sentwith us then and there. None of your "Yes, sir, I will send them off atonce: the boy will be down there before you are, sir!" and then foolingabout on the landing-stage, and going back to the shop twice to have arow about them, for us. We waited while the basket was packed, and tookthe boy with us.
We went ............