OXFORD. - MONTMORENCY'S IDEA OF HEAVEN. - THE HIRED UP-RIVER BOAT, ITSBEAUTIES AND ADVANTAGES. - THE "PRIDE OF THE THAMES." - THE WEATHERCHANGES. - THE RIVER UNDER DIFFERENT ASPECTS. - NOT A CHEERFUL EVENING. -YEARNINGS FOR THE UNATTAINABLE. - THE CHEERY CHAT GOES ROUND. - GEORGEPERFORMS UPON THE BANJO. - A MOURNFUL MELODY. - ANOTHER WET DAY. -FLIGHT. - A LITTLE SUPPER AND A TOAST.
WE spent two very pleasant days at Oxford. There are plenty of dogs inthe town of Oxford. Montmorency had eleven fights on the first day, andfourteen on the second, and evidently thought he had got to heaven.
Among folk too constitutionally weak, or too constitutionally lazy,whichever it may be, to relish up-stream work, it is a common practice toget a boat at Oxford, and row down. For the energetic, however, the up-stream journey is certainly to be preferred. It does not seem good to bealways going with the current. There is more satisfaction in squaringone's back, and fighting against it, and winning one's way forward inspite of it - at least, so I feel, when Harris and George are scullingand I am steering.
To those who do contemplate making Oxford their starting-place, I wouldsay, take your own boat - unless, of course, you can take someone else'swithout any possible danger of being found out. The boats that, as arule, are let for hire on the Thames above Marlow, are very good boats.
They are fairly water-tight; and so long as they are handled with care,they rarely come to pieces, or sink. There are places in them to sitdown on, and they are complete with all the necessary arrangements - ornearly all - to enable you to row them and steer them.
But they are not ornamental. The boat you hire up the river above Marlowis not the sort of boat in which you can flash about and give yourselfairs. The hired up-river boat very soon puts a stop to any nonsense ofthat sort on the part of its occupants. That is its chief - one may say,its only recommendation.
The man in the hired up-river boat is modest and retiring. He likes tokeep on the shady side, underneath the trees, and to do most of histravelling early in the morning or late at night, when there are not manypeople about on the river to look at him.
When the man in the hired up-river boat sees anyone he knows, he gets outon to the bank, and hides behind a tree.
I was one of a party who hired an up-river boat one summer, for a fewdays' trip. We had none of us ever seen the hired up-river boat before;and we did not know what it was when we did see it.
We had written for a boat - a double sculling skiff; and when we wentdown with our bags to the yard, and gave our names, the man said:
"Oh, yes; you're the party that wrote for a double sculling skiff. It'sall right. Jim, fetch round THE PRIDE OF THE THAMES."The boy went, and re-appeared five minutes afterwards, struggling with anantediluvian chunk of wood, that looked as though it had been recentlydug out of somewhere, and dug out carelessly, so as to have beenunnecessarily damaged in the process.
My own idea, on first catching sight of the object, was that it was aRoman relic of some sort, - relic of WHAT I do not know, possibly of acoffin.
The neighbourhood of the upper Thames is rich in Roman relics, and mysurmise seemed to me a very probable one; but our serious young man, whois a bit of a geologist, pooh-poohed my Roman relic theory, and said itwas clear to the meanest intellect (in which category he seemed to begrieved that he could not conscientiously include mine) that the thingthe boy had found was the fossil of a whale; and he pointed out to usvarious evidences proving that it must have belonged to the preglacialperiod.
To settle the dispute, we appealed to the boy. We told him not to beafraid, but to speak the plain truth: Was it the fossil of a pre-Adamitewhale, or was it an early Roman coffin?
The boy said it was THE PRIDE OF THE THAMES.
We thought this a very humorous answer on the part of the boy at first,and somebody gave him twopence as a reward for his ready wit; but when hepersisted in keeping up the joke, as we thought, too long, we got vexedwith him.
"Come, come, my lad!" said our captain sharply, "don't let us have anynonsense. You take your mother's washing-tub home again, and bring us aboat."The boat-builder himself came up then, and assured us, on his word, as apractical man, that the thing really was a boat - was, in fact, THE boat,the "double sculling skiff" selected to take us on our trip down theriver.
We grumbled a good deal. We thought he might, at least, have had itwhitewashed or tarred - had SOMETHING done to it to distinguish it from abit of a wreck; but he could not see any fault in it.
He even seemed offended at our remarks. He said he had picked us out thebest boat in all his stock, and he thought we might have been moregrateful.
He said it, THE PRIDE OF THE THAMES, had been in use, just as it nowstood (or rather as it now hung together), for the last forty years, tohis knowledge, and nobody had complained of it before, and he did not seewhy we should be the first to begin.
We argued no more.
We fastened the so-called boat together with some pieces of string, got abit of wall-paper and pasted over the shabbier places, said our prayers,and stepped on board.
They charged us thirty-five shillings for the loan of the remnant for sixdays; and we could have bought the thing out-and-out for four-and-sixpence at any sale of drift-wood round the coast.
The weather changed on the third day, - Oh! I am talking about ourpresent trip now, - and we started from Oxford upon our homeward journeyin the midst of a steady drizzle.
The river - with the sunlight flashing from its dancing wavelets, gildinggold the grey-green beech- trunks, glinting through the dark, cool woodpaths, chasing shadows o'er the shallows, flinging diamonds from themill-wheels, throwing kisses to the lilies, wantoning with the weirs'
white waters, silvering moss-grown walls and bridges, brightening everytiny townlet, making sweet each lane and meadow, lying tangled in therushes, peeping, laughing, from each inlet, gleaming gay on many a farsail, making soft the air with glory - is a golden fairy stream.
But the river - chill and weary, with the ceaseless rain-drops falling onits brown and sluggish waters, with a sound as of a woman, weeping low insome dark chamber; while the woods, all dark and silent, shrouded intheir mists of vapour, stand like ghosts upon the margin; silent ghostswith eyes reproachful, like the ghosts of evil actions, like the ghostsof friends neglected - is a spirit-haunted water through the land of vainregrets.
Sunlight is the life-blood of Nature. Mother Earth looks at us with suchdull, soulless eyes, when the sunlight has died away from out of her. Itmakes us sad to be with her then; she does not seem to know us or to carefor us. She is as a widow who has lost the husband she loved, and herchildren touch her hand, and look up into her eyes, but gain no smilefrom her.
We rowed on all that day through the rain, and very melancholy work itwas. We pretended, at first, that we enjoyed it. We said it was achange, and that we liked to see the river under all its differentaspects. We said we could not expect to have it all sunshine, nor shouldwe wish it. We told each other that Nature was beautiful, even in hertears.
Indeed, Harris and I were quite enthusiastic about the business, for thefirst few hours. And we sang a song about a gipsy's life, and howdelightful a gipsy's existence was! - free to storm and sunshine, and toevery wind that blew! - and how he enjoyed the rain, and what a lot ofgood it did him; and how he laughed at people who didn't like it.
George took the fun more soberly, and stuck to the umbrella.
We hoisted the cover before we had lunch, and kept it up all theafternoon, just leaving a little space in the bow, from which one of uscould paddle and keep a look-out. In this way we made nine miles, andpulled up for the night a little below Day's Lock.
I cannot honestly say that we had a merry evening. The rain poured downwith quiet persistency. Everything in the boat was damp and clammy.
Supper was not a success. Cold veal pie, when you don't feel hungry, isapt to cloy. I felt I wanted whitebait and a cutlet; Harris babbled ofsoles and white-sauce, and passed the remains of his pie to Montmorency,who declined it, and, apparently insulted by the offer, went and sat overat the other end of the boat by himself.
George requested that we would not talk about these things, at all eventsuntil he had finished his cold boiled beef without mustard.
We played penny nap after supper. We played for about an hour and ahalf, by the end of which time George had won fourpence - George alwaysis lucky at cards - and Harris and I had lost exactly twopence each.
We thought we would give up gambling then. As Harris said, it breeds anunhealthy excitement when carried too far. George offered to go on andgive us our revenge; but Harris and I decided not to battle any furtheragainst Fate.
After that, we mixed ourselves some toddy, and sat round and talked.
George told us about a man he had known, who had come up the river twoyears ago and who had slept out in a dam............