Below Reading the Thames becomes "the playground of London." All the
summer long its bosom is dotted with boats, and the lawns upon its
banks are filled with people who have fled from "town" to rest their
eyes on green fields and the shining stretches of cool running water,
so delightful after the heat and glare of London.
Many holiday-makers actually live on the river in a house-boat, a
broad, flat-bottomed craft upon which a kind of wooden house is built,
and moored in the stream. Others traverse the river in a rowing-boat,
carrying tents and camping at night in a meadow beside the stream.
Going down-river from Reading, we come to Henley, where the noted
regatta is held every year in the first week of July. It is the
greatest of all river regattas, and the most famous boat clubs of the
world send crews to Henley.
On a fine day of the Henley week the course presents a most striking
and brilliant scene. The river is packed from side to side with boats
of every size and kind--skiffs, punts, canoes--filled with ladies in
pretty summer dresses and men in cool white flannels. The sides of the
river are lined with house-boats, each bearing a gaily-dressed crowd
and decked with beautiful flowers. Pennons and flags and streamers
flutter in the sunshine, and the wonderful mingling of bright colours
in the moving crowds on land and water presents one of the gayest and
prettiest scenes in the world.
Suddenly a bell rings. Clear the course! A race is about to begin.
Now the boats are pulled hastily to the side of the river, where the
course is marked off by piles and booms. It seems impossible for the
river full of craft to pack itself away along the sides, but in some
fashion or other it is managed--skiffs, canoes, and punts all wedged
together like sardines in a tin.
Then a shout rings along the banks--"They're off! they're off!" and all
crane their necks to catch the first glimpse of the racing boats. Soon
the long slender boats come dashing past, the eight men in each craft
pulling with tremendous power, and the little cox crouching in the
stern, tiller ropes in hand. Then rises a great outburst of cheers as
the friends of the winners hail the victory.
Among the beautiful houses which stand upon the bank of the stream
below Henley, there is one ancient and noble hall which forms a
striking picture from the river. This is Bisham Abbey, where Queen
Elizabeth was once a prisoner during her sister's reign, a house of
many stories and legends. One of these stories tells 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 later
alterations, and one of these was deluged in every line with blots. We
all know that great severity was exercised by parents with their
children at that time; and the story, if not the ghost, may safely be
accepted."
On we go, past the lovely wooded cliffs of Clieveden, through the
well-known Boulter's Lock, and away downstream, till we see a mighty
tower rise high above the river, and know that we are looking on the
noble Round Tower which crowns Windsor Castle, the home of English
kings. Near the river the castle looks very fine, its irregular pile
of buildings rising in a series of rough levels, adorned by turrets,
towers, and pinnacles, until the whole is topped and dominated by the
mighty Round Tower built by Edward III., the hero of the French wars.
Since the days of the first Norman, Windsor Castle has been a favourite
abode of English royalty. Other palaces have been built, to fall into
neglect and decay, but Windsor has stood on its hill beside the Thames
for more than 800 years, and it has been a royal castle all the time.
Opposite Windsor, most famous of all English palaces, stands Eton, most
famous of all English schools. From the well-known North Terrace of
Windsor Castle--open to the public from sunrise to sunset--it is
possible to obtain a fine view of the great school. "We can look down
on the whole of Eton--the church, with its tall spire; the buttresses
and pinnacles of the chapel standing up white against an indigo
background; the red and blue roofs piled this way and that; and the
green playing-fields, girdled by the swift river."
The Thames is a great playground of the Eton boys. They row on it, and
bathe in it. At the great Eton festival, on June 4, there is a
procession of boats on the river, when the boys, dressed in quaint
costumes, row to a small islet and return to the meadows beside the
stream. There are two bathing-places--one, a small backwater, called
Cuckoo Weir, where the lower boys bathe. Here is held the swimming
trial which a boy must pass before he can go out boating. The other
bathing-place, known by the fine title of Athens, is in the main river,
and is used by the bigger boys.
A short distance downstream is the historic mead whose name is familiar
on every lip. It is a quiet, smooth meadow beside the river, and it is
Runnymede, or Runney Mead, where King John signed Magna Charta, and so
made a beginning of English freedom. There is now an island in the
Thames at that spot called Magna Charta Island, but it is not thought
that the Charter was signed there. It is believed that John and the
barons met on the mainland, the King riding down from Windsor to meet
his offended subjects.
Below Windsor the Thames flows past many well-known riverside towns,
and at last meets the tide. The sea is still nearly seventy miles
away, but salt water now mingles with the fresh of the brooks and rills
which have made up the great river, and a change takes place--the
stream of pleasure becomes more and more a stream of busy trade.
"Though pleasure-boats are to be seen in quantities any summer evening
about Putney; though market-gardens still border the banks at Fulham,
yet the river is for the greater part lined with wharves and piers and
embankments. It is no wild thing running loose, but a strong worker
full of earnest purpose. It is the great river without which there
would have been no London, the river which bears the largest trade the
world has ever known."