Yes, spring is waning, though hardly yet has summer really come, so backward and cold has the season been.
We have had our last day"s pleasant outing _en famille_. Mamma went, and even baby Ida, who is old enough to ask questions and make queer remarks.
A clear sky and the brightest of sunshine, though not distressingly hot.
We crossed country for Wokingham. The trees very beautiful, though the leaves are already turning more crisp; in spring time, city reader mine, as the wind goes whispering through the trees, it seems as if every leaf were of softest silk; in summer the sound is a soughing or rustling one; but in winter the breeze moans and shrieks among the bare branches, and "blows with boisterous sweep."
We unlimbered in the market square at Wokingham. The English are a novelty-loving people. This was well shown to-day, for streets and pavements were speedily lined to look at us, and even windows raised, while Modesty herself must needs peep from behind the curtains. In the afternoon a regiment of artillery came into the town, and popular attention was henceforth drawn to them, though our visitors were not few.
On our way home we pa.s.sed the lodges of Haines Hill, the residence of the well-known T. Garth, Esq, a country squire of the true English type--a man who, although over sixty, almost lives in the saddle, and in the season follows his own hounds five days a week. The narrowness of the avenues and plenitude of the drooping limes forbade a visit to the manor, of which, however, as we went slowly along the road we caught many a glimpse red-glimmering through the green.
Great banks of pink and crimson rhododendrons gave relief to the eye.
Looking to the right the country was visible for miles, richly-treed as the whole of Berkshire is, and with many a farmhouse peeping up through clouds of foliage.
The cottages by the roadside at this time of the year are always worth looking at. They vie with each other in the tidiness of their gardens, their porches, and verandahs.
They cultivate roses, all kinds and colours; standards and half-standards and climbers, crimson, white, yellow, pink, and purple.
Stocks and wallflowers are also very favourite flowers. Even those cottages that cannot boast of a morsel of garden have the insides of every window all ablaze with flowering geraniums.
The memorable features of this pleasant day"s gipsying were flowers, foliage, and the exceeding brightness of the sunshine.
At Malta and in Africa I have seen stronger lights and deeper shadows, but never in England before. The sky was cerulean, Italian, call it what you like, but it was very blue. The sunshine gave beauty and gladness to everything and every creature around us. Birds, b.u.t.terflies, and shimmering four-winged metallic-tinted dragon-flies flew, floated, and revelled in it. It lay in patches on the trees, it lent a lighter crimson to the fields of clover, a brighter yellow to the golden b.u.t.tercups; it changed the ox-eye daisies to glittering stars, and gave beauty-tints innumerable to seedling gra.s.ses and bronzy flowering docks.
Under the trees it was almost dark by contrast. So marked, indeed, was this contrast that when a beautiful young girl, in a dress of white and pink, came suddenly out of the shadow and stood in the sunshine, it appeared to us as if she had sprung from the earth itself, for till now she had been invisible.
Before we reached home a blue evening haze had fallen on all the wooded landscape, making distant trees mere shapes, but hardly marring the beauty of the wild flowers that grew on each side of our path and carpeted the woodlands and copses.
This was our last spring outing, and a happy one too. From this date I am to be a solitary gipsy.
Solitary, and yet not altogether so. My coachman is, I believe, a quiet and faithful fellow, and eke my valet too. Then have I not the companionship of Hurricane Bob, one of the grandest of a grand race of jetty-black Newfoundlands, whose coats have never been marred by a single curly hair?
Nay, more, have I not also my West Australian c.o.c.katoo to talk to me, to sing with me, and dance when I play? Come, I am not so badly off.
Hurrah! then, for the road and a gipsy"s life in earnest.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
A START FOR THE FAR NORTH--FROM READING TO WARWICK.
"O spires of Oxford! domes and towers, Gardens and groves; I slight my own beloved Cam to range Where silver Isis leads my wandering feet."
Wordsworth.
"A curious Gothic building, many gabled, By flowering creepers hidden and entangled."
There is to my way of thinking a delicious uncertainty in starting on a long caravan tour, without being aware in the least what you are going to do or see, or even what route you are going to take.
As regards a route, though, I did throw up a pebble with a black tick on it before the horses pulled out at the gate, and twice running the spot pointed to the north-west.
So we steered for Reading, and on without stopping as far as the Roebuck Hotel at Tilehurst. Nine years ago this hotel was a very small one indeed, but all gables, thickest thatch, and climbing roses and honeysuckle. The thatch has given place to red tiles, and an addendum of modern dimensions has been built. The old most ever give place to the new. But what lovely peeps there are from this hotel, from the balcony and from the bedrooms. It is a river house now in every sense of the word, though not old as a hotel of the kind, and all day long, and far into the night, the bar and pa.s.sages and the coffee-rooms are crowded in summer with men in snowy flannels, and with some in sailor garb and with artificial sailor swagger.
The road leads onwards through a cool elm avenue towards Pangbourne.
The copses here are in earlier spring carpeted with wild hyacinths. On the hilltop the scenery opens out again, the tree-clad valley of the Thames, fields of green grain, with poppies here and there, or wild mustard, and fields crimson with blossoming trefoil. Surely milk and b.u.t.ter must be good when cows are fed on flowers.
"Lay till the day" in the great inn yard of the George. Rather too close to the railway embankment, for the trains went roaring past all night long. This did not make sleeping impossible, for a gipsy, even an amateur one, can sleep anywhere; but the earth shook and the lamps rattled every time a train rolled by. Some villas are built right beneath the embankment, which is far higher than their roofs. _Facilis descensus Averni_. What a strange and terrible accident it would be were one of those trains to leave the line and run through a roof! An old lady of the nervous persuasion, who lives here, told me that she oftentimes trembled in her bed when she thought of this dread possibility.
Pangbourne is a well-known haunt for those who love boating and fishing.
It is quiet, and so well shaded as to be cool on the warmest summer day. But Pangbourne is not a hackneyed place, and never, I believe, will be so.
Left about nine o"clock on June 19th. It had been raining just enough to lay the dust and give a brighter colouring to the foliage.
Ivy leaves, when young, are, as my country readers know, of a very bright green. There are on a well-kept lawn by the riverside, and just outside Pangbourne, a coach-house and a boathouse. Both are well-built and prettily shaped. They are thatched, and the walls are completely covered in close-cropped ivy, giving them the look of houses built of green leaves.
Two miles from Pangbourne a nice view of the Thames valley is obtained, round wooded hills on the right bank, with farms here and there, and fields now covered with waving wheat, some of them flooded over with the rich red of the blossoming sainfoin.
We reach the village of Lower Basildon. Spring seems to linger long in this sweet vale. Here is a lofty spruce, each twiglet pointed with a light green bud; here a crimson flowered chestnut; yonder a row of pink mays and several laburnums, whose drooping blooms show no symptoms yet of fading or falling.
At the grotto we pa.s.s through a splendid avenue of beeches.
Just at the top of a steep hilltop we meet a girl and a boy on the same tricycle. How happy they look! We warn them of the steepness of the descent. They smilingly thank us, put on their brake, and go floating away and finally disappear among the beeches.
Every one has rushed through Goring and Streatley by train, and some may have thought the villages pretty. So they are indeed, but you must go by road to find this out. Look at them from Grotto Hill, for instance, just after you emerge from the lane.
Here is a pretty bit of road. On the left is a high bank covered with young beech-trees, a hedge on the right, then a green field sweeping down the hill to the river"s edge. The Thames is here bordered with willow-trees and flowering elders. That hedgerow is low and very wild.
It may be blackthorn at heart, but it is quite encanopied by a wealth of trailing weeds and flowers, and by roses and honeysuckle all in bloom, while the roadsides are laid out by nature"s hand in beds of yellow trefoil and blue speedwell. The pink marsh-mallow, too, is growing in every gra.s.sy nook by the hedge-foot.
I wonder how far on my journey north will hedgerows accompany me. I shall feel sorry when they give place to unsightly wooden fences or walls of rugged stone.
High up yonder is a green gra.s.sy tableland or moor, through which goes the ancient ridge-way or cattle-road to Wales. Unused now, of course, but the scene of many a strange story in bygone times.
A little very old man gets out from under a tree and stands as straight as he can to gaze at us. Surely the oldest inhabitant of these regions.
His dress is peculiar--a cow-gown worn beneath and protruding like a kilt from under a long blue coat, and a tall black hat. He bobs his wrinkled face, grins, and talks to himself as we pa.s.s. A queer old man indeed.
We stopped on Moulsford Hill to water horses. A fine open country, and breezy to-day. Rather too breezy, in fact, for hardly had we started again before the wind got in under the great awning which covers the roof from stem to stern. It ripped the cloth from the hooks that held it, but I caught it in time, else it would have blown over the horses"
heads, and might have given rise to a very serious accident.
It was market-day at Wallingford, and busy and bustling it was in the little town. The place is close to the Thames. It boasts of a bridge with nineteen arches, a very ancient history, and the remains of an old castle, which, it is said, was at one time considered impregnable. It was besieged by King Stephen, and defied him.
It held out against Cromwell too, I am told, and was one of the last places to surrender. The remains of its ancient walls are visible enough in the shape of mounds, turf-clad, and green as a grave.
Did Wallingford not hold out against the Danes also? I believe it did.
I have already had so much of Oliver Cromwell and the Danes dinned into my ear, that I am heartily tired of both. If I can credit current traditions, the Danes must have been very badly handled indeed, and must have bitterly repented ever setting a foot on English sh.o.r.es.
The country after leaving Wallingford is exceedingly picturesque; one is inclined to deem every peep of scenery prettier than that which preceded it, and to pity from the heart people who travel by train.
Shillingford, in our route, is a little village which, as far as I could see, consists mostly of public-houses. Near here are the Whittingham Clumps, which do not look of much account, merely two round green hills with a tuft of trees on the top of each. Yet they can be seen for many miles--almost, indeed, from every part of Berkshire.
Dorchester, some miles farther on, is quiet and pretty, and evidently an old village--its cottages look old, its inns look old, and eke the church itself. Just the spot for an artist to while away a month in summer, while an author might do worse than lay the scene of a tale in a place like this.
We stopped in front of the mansion house of Burcot, and made coffee under the chestnuts. The house lies off the road, but there is no fence around the park; we could rest in the shade therefore. Here are some splendid pine-trees (Scotch) and elms. What a n.o.ble tree an elm is, if its branches are spared by the billhook of pruner or axe of woodman!