UP AND DOWN THE AVON
[Illustration: _Evesham._]
Stratford-upon-Avon, August 22, 1889.--The river life of Stratford is
one of the chief delights of this delightful town. The Avon, according
to law, is navigable from its mouth, at Tewkesbury, where it empties
into the Severn, as far upward as Warwick; but according to fact it is
passable only to the resolute navigator who can surmount obstacles.
From Tewkesbury up to Evesham there is plain sailing. Above Evesham
there are occasional barriers. At Stratford there is an abrupt pause
at Lucy's mill, and your boat must be taken ashore, dragged a little
way over the meadow, and launched again. Lucy's mill is just south of
the Shakespeare church, and from this point up to Clopton's bridge the
river is broad. Here the boat-races are rowed, almost every year. Here
the stream ripples against the pleasure-ground called the Bancroft,
skirts the gardens of the Shakespeare Memorial, glides past the lovely
lawns of Avonbank,--once the home of that noble public benefactor and
fine Shakespearean scholar, Charles Edward Flower,--and breaks upon
the retaining wall of the churchyard, crowned with the high and
thick-leaved elms that nod and whisper over Shakespeare's dust. The
town lies on the left or west bank of the Avon, as you ascend the river
looking northward. On the right or east bank there is a wide stretch of
meadow. To float along here in the gloaming, when the bats are winging
their "cloistered flight," when great flocks of starlings are flying
rapidly over, when "the crow makes wing to the rooky wood," when the
water is as smooth as a mirror of burnished steel, and equally the
grasses and flowers upon the banks and the stately trees and the gray,
solemn, and beautiful church are reflected deep in the lucid stream, is
an experience of thoughtful pleasure that sinks deep into the heart
and will never be forgotten. You do not know Stratford till you know
the Avon.
[Illustration: _Clopton Bridge._]
From Clopton's bridge upward the river winds capriciously between
banks that are sometimes fringed with willows and sometimes bordered
with grassy meadows or patches of woodland or cultivated lawns,
enclosing villas that seem the chosen homes of all this world can
give of loveliness and peace. The course is now entirely clear for
several miles. Not till you pass the foot of Alveston village does any
obstacle present itself; but there, as well as a little further on,
by Hatton Rock, the stream runs shallow and the current becomes very
swift, dashing over sandy banks and great masses of tangled grass and
weeds. These are "the rapids," and through these the mariner must make
his way by adroit steering and a vigorous and expert use of oars and
boat-hooks. The Avon now is bowered by tall trees, and upon the height
that it skirts you see the house of Ryon Hill,--celebrated in the novel
of _Asphodel_, by Miss Braddon. This part of the river, closed in from
the world and presenting in each direction twinkling vistas of sun and
shadow, is especially lovely. Here, in a quiet hour, the creatures that
live along these shores will freely show themselves and their busy
ways. The water-rat comes out of his hole and nibbles at the reeds or
swims sturdily across the stream. The moor-hen flutters out of her
nest, among the long, green rushes, and skims from bank to bank. The
nimble little wagtail flashes through the foliage. The squirrel leaps
among the boughs, and the rabbit scampers into the thicket. Sometimes
a kingfisher, with his shining azure shield, pauses for a moment
among the gnarled roots upon the brink. Sometimes a heron, disturbed in
her nest, rises suddenly upon her great wings and soars grandly away.
Once, rowing down this river at nearly midnight, I surprised an otter
and heard the splash of his precipitate retreat. The ghost of an old
gypsy, who died by suicide upon this wooded shore, is said to haunt the
neighbouring crag; but this, like all other ghosts that ever I came
near, eluded equally my vision and my desire. But it is a weird spot at
night.
[Illustration: _Charlecote, from the Terrace._]
Near Alveston mill you must drag your boat over a narrow strip of land
and launch her again for Charlecote. Now once more this delicious
water-way is broad and fine. As it sweeps past a stately, secluded
home, once that of the ancient family of Peers, toward the Wellesbourne
Road, a great bed of cultivated white water-lilies [hitherto they have
all been yellow] adorns it, and soon there are glimpses of the deer
that browse or prance or slumber beneath the magnificent oaks and elms
and limes and chestnuts of Charlecote Park. No view of Charlecote can
compare with the view of it that is obtained from the river; and if its
proprietor values its reputation for beauty he ought to be glad that
lovers of the beautiful sometimes have an opportunity to see it from
this point. The older wing, with its oriel window and quaint belfry, is
of a peculiar, mellow red, relieved against bright green ivy, to which
only the brush of a painter could do justice. Nothing more delicious,
in its way, is to be found; at least, the only piece of architecture
in this region that excels it in beauty of colour is the ancient
house of Compton-Wynyate; but that is a marvel of loveliness, the gem
of Warwickshire, and, in romantic quaintness, it surpasses all its
fellows. The towers of the main building of Charlecote are octagon, and
a happy alternation of thin and slender with thick, truncated turrets
much enhances the effect of quaintness in this grave and opulent
edifice. A walled terrace, margined with urns and blazing with flowers
of gold and crimson, extends from the river front to the waterside, and
terminates in a broad flight of stone steps, at the foot of which are
moored the barges of the house of Lucy. No spectacle could suggest more
of aristocratic state and austere magnificence than this sequestered
edifice does, standing there, silent, antique, venerable, gorgeous,
surrounded by its vast, thick-wooded park, and musing, as it has done
for hundreds of years, on the silver Avon that murmurs at its base.
Close by there is a lovely waterfall, over which some little tributary
of the river descends in a fivefold wave of shimmering crystal, wafting
a music that is heard in every chamber of the house and in all the
fields and woodlands round about. It needs the sun to bring out the
rich colours of Charlecote, but once when I saw it from the river a
storm was coming on, and vast masses of black and smoke-coloured cloud
were driving over it, in shapeless blocks and jagged streamers, while
countless frightened birds were whirling above it; and presently, when
the fierce lightning flashed across the heavens and a deluge of rain
descended and beat upon it, a more romantic sight was never seen.
[Illustration: _The Abbey Mills, Tewkesbury._]
Above Charlecote the Avon grows narrow for a space, and after you pass
under Hampton Lucy bridge your boat is much entangled in river grass
and much impeded by whirls and eddies of the shallowing stream. There
is another mill at Hampton Lucy, and a little way beyond the village
your further progress upward is stopped by a waterfall,--beyond which,
however, and accessible by the usual expedient of dragging the boat
over the land, a noble reach of the river is disclosed, stretching
away toward Warwick, where the wonderful Castle, and sweet St. Mary's
tower, and Leicester's hospital, and the cosy Warwick Arms await your
coming,--with mouldering Kenilworth and majestic Stoneleigh Abbey
reserved to lure you still further afield. But the scene around Hampton
Lucy is not one to be quickly left. There the meadows are rich and
green and fragrant. There the large trees give grateful shade and make
sweet music in the summer wind. There, from the ruddy village, thin
spires of blue smoke curl upward through the leaves and seem to tell
of comfort and content beneath. At a little distance the gray tower of
the noble church,--an edifice of peculiar and distinctive majesty, and
one well worthy of the exceptional beauty enshrined within it,--rears
itself among the elms. Close by the sleek and indolent cattle are
couched upon the cool sod, looking at you with large, soft, lustrous,
indifferent eyes. The waterfall sings on, with its low melancholy
plaint, while sometimes the silver foam of it is caught up and whirled
away by the breeze. The waves sparkle on the running stream, and the
wildflowers, in gay myriads, glance and glimmer on the velvet shore.
And so, as the sun is setting and the rooks begin to fly homeward, you
breathe the fragrant air from Scarbank and look upon a veritable place
that Shakespeare may have had in mind when he wrote his line of endless
melody--
"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows."[41]