CHAPTER
XII.
HENRY VIII. AND ANNE BOLEYN. -
DISADVANTAGES OF LIVING IN SAME HOUSE WITH
PAIR OF LOVERS. - A TRYING TIME FOR
THE ENGLISH NATION. - A NIGHT SEARCH
FOR THE PICTURESQUE. - HOMELESS AND
HOUSELESS. - HARRIS PREPARES TO DIE.
- AN ANGEL COMES ALONG. - EFFECT OF
SUDDEN JOY ON HARRIS. - A LITTLE
SUPPER. - LUNCH. - HIGH PRICE FOR
MUSTARD. - A FEARFUL BATTLE. -
MAIDENHEAD. - SAILING. - THREE
FISHERS. - WE ARE CURSED.
I WAS sitting on the bank, conjuring up
this scene to myself, when George
remarked that when I was quite rested,
perhaps I would not mind helping
to wash up; and, thus recalled from the
days of the glorious past to the
prosaic present, with all its misery and
sin, I slid down into the boat
and cleaned out the frying-pan with a
stick of wood and a tuft of grass,
polishing it up finally with George's wet
shirt.
We went over to Magna Charta Island, and
had a look at the stone which
stands in the cottage there and on which
the great Charter is said to
have been signed; though, as to whether
it really was signed there, or,
as some say, on the other bank at "Runningmede,"
I decline to commit
myself. As far as my own personal opinion
goes, however, I am inclined
to give weight to the popular island
theory. Certainly, had I been one
of the Barons, at the time, I should have
strongly urged upon my comrades
the advisability of our getting such a
slippery customer as King John on
to the island, where there was less
chance of surprises and tricks.
There are the ruins of an old priory in
the grounds of Ankerwyke House,
which is close to Picnic Point, and it
was round about the grounds of
this old priory that Henry VIII. is said
to have waited for and met Anne
Boleyn. He also used to meet her at Hever
Castle in Kent, and also
somewhere near St. Albans. It must have
been difficult for the people of
England in those days to have found a
spot where these thoughtless young
folk were NOT spooning.
Have you ever been in a house where there
are a couple courting? It is
most trying. You think you will go and
sit in the drawing-room, and you
march off there. As you open the door,
you hear a noise as if somebody
had suddenly recollected something, and,
when you get in, Emily is over
by the window, full of interest in the
opposite side of the road, and
your friend, John Edward, is at the other
end of the room with his whole
soul held in thrall by photographs of
other people's relatives.
"Oh!" you say, pausing at the
door, "I didn't know anybody was here."
"Oh! didn't you?" says Emily,
coldly, in a tone which implies that she
does not believe you.
You hang about for a bit, then you say:
"It's very dark. Why don't you light
the gas?"
John Edward says, "Oh!" he
hadn't noticed it; and Emily says that papa
does not like the gas lit in the
afternoon.
You tell them one or two items of news,
and give them your views and
opinions on the Irish question; but this
does not appear to interest
them. All they remark on any subject is,
"Oh!" "Is it?" "Did he?"
"Yes," and "You don't say
so!" And, after ten minutes of such style of
conversation, you edge up to the door,
and slip out, and are surprised to
find that the door immediately closes
behind you, and shuts itself,
without your having touched it.
Half an hour later, you think you will
try a pipe in the conservatory.
The only chair in the place is occupied
by Emily; and John Edward, if the
language of clothes can be relied upon,
has evidently been sitting on the
floor. They do not speak, but they give
you a look that says all that
can be said in a civilised community; and
you back out promptly and shut
the door behind you.
You are afraid to poke your nose into any
room in the house now; so,
after walking up and down the stairs for
a while, you go and sit in your
own bedroom. This becomes uninteresting,
however, after a time, and so
you put on your hat and stroll out into
the garden. You walk down the
path, and as you pass the summer-house
you glance in, and there are those
two young idiots, huddled up into one
corner of it; and they see you, and
are evidently under the idea that, for
some wicked purpose of your own,
you are following them about.
"Why don't they have a special room
for this sort of thing, and make
people keep to it?" you mutter; and
you rush back to the hall and get
your umbrella and go out.
It must have been much like this when
that foolish boy Henry VIII. was
courting his little Anne. People in
Buckinghamshire would have come upon
them unexpectedly when they were mooning
round Windsor and Wraysbury, and
have exclaimed, "Oh! you here!"
and Henry would have blushed and said,
"Yes; he'd just come over to see a
man;" and Anne would have said, "Oh,
I'm so glad to see you! Isn't it funny?
I've just met Mr. Henry VIII.
in the lane, and he's going the same way
I am."
Then those people would have gone away
and said to themselves: "Oh! we'd
better get out of here while this billing
and cooing is on. We'll go
down to Kent."
And they would go to Kent, and the first
thing they would see in Kent,
when they got there, would be Henry and
Anne fooling round Hever Castle.
"Oh, drat this!" they would
have said. "Here, let's go away. I can't
stand any more of it. Let's go to St.
Albans - nice quiet place, St.
Albans."
And when they reached St. Albans, there
would be that wretched couple,
kissing under the Abbey walls. Then these
folks would go and be pirates
until the marriage was over.
From Picnic Point to Old Windsor Lock is
a delightful bit of the river.
A shady road, dotted here and there with
dainty little cottages, runs by
the bank up to the "Bells of Ouseley,"
a picturesque inn, as most up-
river inns are, and a place where a very
good glass of ale may be drunk -
so Harris says; and on a matter of this
kind you can take Harris's word.
Old Windsor is a famous spot in its way.
Edward the Confessor had a
palace here, and here the great Earl
Godwin was proved guilty by the
justice of that age of having encompassed
the death of the King's
brother. Earl Godwin broke a piece of
bread and held it in his hand.
"If I am guilty," said the
Earl, "may this bread choke me when I eat it!"
Then he put the bread into his mouth and
swallowed it, and it choked him,
and he died.
After you pass Old Windsor, the river is
somewhat uninteresting, and does
not become itself again until you are
nearing Boveney. George and I
towed up past the Home Park, which
stretches along the right bank from
Albert to Victoria Bridge; and as we were
passing Datchet, George asked
me if I remembered our first trip up the
river, and when we landed at
Datchet at ten o'clock at night, and
wanted to go to bed.
I answered that I did remember it. It
will be some time before I forget
it.
It was the Saturday before the August
Bank Holiday. We were tired and
hungry, we same three, and when we got to
Datchet we took out the hamper,
the two bags, and the rugs and coats, and
such like things, and started
off to look for diggings. We passed a
very pretty little hotel, with
clematis and creeper over the porch; but
there was no honeysuckle about
it, and, for some reason or other, I had
got my mind fixed on
honeysuckle, and I said:
"Oh, don't let's go in there! Let's
go on a bit further, and see if
there isn't one with honeysuckle over
it."
So we went on till we came to another
hotel. That was a very nice hotel,
too, and it had honey-suckle on it, round
at the side; but Harris did not
like the look of a man who was leaning
against the front door. He said
he didn't look a nice man at all, and he
wore ugly boots: so we went on
further. We went a goodish way without
coming across any more hotels,
and then we met a man, and asked him to
direct us to a few.
He said:
"Why, you are coming away from them.
You must turn right round and go
back, and then you will come to the
Stag."
We said:
"Oh, we had been there, and didn't
like it - no honeysuckle over it."
"Well, then," he said,
"there's the Manor House, just opposite. Have you
tried that?"
Harris replied that we did not want to go
there - didn't like the looks
of a man who was stopping there - Harris
did not like the colour of his
hair, didn't like his boots, either.
"Well, I don't know what you'll do,
I'm sure," said our informant;
"because they are the only two inns
in the place."
"No other inns!" exclaimed
Harris.
"None," replied the man.
"What on earth are we to do?"
cried Harris.
Then George spoke up. He said Harris and
I could get an hotel built for
us, if we liked, and have some people
made to put in. For his part, he
was going back to the Stag.
The greatest minds never realise their
ideals in any matter; and Harris
and I sighed over the hollowness of all
earthly desires, and followed
George.
We took our traps into the Stag, and laid
them down in the hall.
The landlord came up and said:
"Good evening, gentlemen."
"Oh, good evening," said
George; "we want three beds, please."
"Very sorry, sir," said the
landlord; "but I'm afraid we can't manage
it."
"Oh, well, never mind," said
George, "two will do. Two of us can sleep
in one bed, can't we?" he continued,
turning to Harris and me.
Harris said, "Oh, yes;" he
thought George and I could sleep in one bed
very easily.
"Very sorry, sir," again
repeated the landlord: "but we really haven't
got a bed vacant in the whole house. In
fact, we are putting two, and
even three gentlemen in one bed, as it
is."
This staggered us for a bit.
But Harris, who is an old traveller, rose
to the occasion, and, laughing
cheerily, said:
"Oh, well, we can't help it. We must
rough it. You must give us a
shake-down in the billiard-room."
"Very sorry, sir. Three gentlemen
sleeping on the billiard-table
already, and two in the coffee-room.
Can't possibly take you in to-
night."
We picked up our things, and went over to
the Manor House. It was a
pretty little place. I said I thought I
should like it better than the
other house; and Harris said, "Oh,
yes," it would be all right, and we
needn't look at the man with the red
hair; besides, the poor fellow
couldn't help having red hair.
Harris spoke quite kindly and sensibly
about it.
The people at the Manor House did not
wait to hear us talk. The landlady
met us on the doorstep with the greeting
that we were the fourteenth
party she had turned away within the last
hour and a half. As for our
meek suggestions of stables,
billiard-room, or coal-cellars, she laughed
them all to scorn: all these nooks had
been snatched up long ago.
Did she know of any place in the whole
village where we could get shelter
for the night?
"Well, if we didn't mind roughing it
- she did not recommend it, mind -
but there was a little beershop half a
mile down the Eton road - "
We waited to hear no more; we caught up
the hamper and the bags, and the
coats and rugs, and parcels, and ran. The
distance seemed more like a
mile than half a mile, but we reached the
place at last, and rushed,
panting, into the bar.
The people at the beershop were rude.
They merely laughed at us. There
were only three beds in the whole house,
and they had seven single
gentlemen and two married couples
sleeping there already. A kind-hearted
bargeman, however, who happened to be in
the tap-room, thought we might
try the grocer's, next door to the Stag,
and we went back.
The grocer's was full. An old woman we
met in the shop then kindly took
us along with her for a quarter of a
mile, to a lady friend of hers, who
occasionally let rooms to gentlemen.
This old woman walked very slowly, and we
were twenty minutes getting to
her lady friend's. She enlivened the
journey by describing to us, as we
trailed along, the various pains she had
in her back.
Her lady friend's rooms were let. From
there we were recommended to No.
27. No. 27 was full, and sent us to No.
32, and 32 was full.
Then we went back into the high road, and
Harris sat down on the hamper
and said he would go no further. He said
it seemed a quiet spot, and he
would like to die there. He requested
George and me to kiss his mother
for him, and to tell all his relations
that he forgave them and died
happy.
At that moment an angel came by in the
disguise of a small boy (and I
cannot think of any more effective
disguise an angel could have assumed),
with a can of beer in one hand, and in
the other something at the end of
a string, which he let down on to every
flat stone he came across, and
then pulled up again, this producing a
peculiarly unattractive sound,
suggestive of suffering.
We asked this heavenly messenger (as we
discovered him afterwards to be)
if he knew of any lonely house, whose
occupants were few and feeble (old
ladies or paralysed gentlemen preferred),
who could be easily frightened
into giving up their beds for the night
to three desperate men; or, if
not this, could he recommend us to an
empty pigstye, or a disused
limekiln, or anything of that sort. He
did not know of any such place -
at least, not one handy; but he said
that, if we liked to come with him,
his mother had a room to spare, and could
put us up for the night.
We fell upon his neck there in the
moonlight and blessed him, and it
would have made a very beautiful picture
if the boy himself had not been
so over-powered by our emotion as to be
unable to sustain himself under
it, and sunk to the ground, letting us
all down on top of him. Harris
was so overcome with joy that he fainted,
and had to seize the boy's
beer-can and half empty it before he
could recover consciousness, and
then he started off at a run, and left
George and me to bring on the
luggage.
It was a little four-roomed cottage where
the boy lived, and his mother -
good soul! - gave us hot bacon for
supper, and we ate it all - five
pounds - and a jam tart afterwards, and
two pots of tea, and then we went
to bed. There were two beds in the room;
one was a 2ft. 6in. truckle
bed, and George and I slept in that, and
kept in by tying ourselves
together with a sheet; and the other was
the little boy's bed, and Harris
had that all to himself, and we found
him, in the morning, with two feet
of bare leg sticking out at the bottom,
and George and I used it to hang
the towels on while we bathed.
We were not so uppish about what sort of
hotel we would have, next time
we went to Datchet.
To return to our present trip: nothing
exciting happened, and we tugged
steadily on to a little below Monkey
Island, where we drew up and
lunched. We tackled the cold beef for
lunch, and then we found that we
had forgotten to bring any mustard. I
don't think I ever in my life,
before or since, felt I wanted mustard as
badly as I felt I wanted it
then. I don't care for mustard as a rule,
and it is very seldom that I
take it at all, but I would have given
worlds for it then.
I don't know how many worlds there may be
in the universe, but anyone who
had brought me a spoonful of mustard at
that precise moment could have
had them all. I grow reckless like that
when I want a thing and can't
get it.
Harris said he would have given worlds
for mustard too. It would have
been a good thing for anybody who had
come up to that spot with a can of
mustard, then: he would have been set up
in worlds for the rest of his
life.
But there! I daresay both Harris and I
would have tried to back out of
the bargain after we had got the mustard.
One makes these extravagant
offers in moments of excitement, but, of
course, when one comes to think
of it, one sees how absurdly out of
proportion they are with the value of
the required article. I heard a man,
going up a mountain in Switzerland,
once say he would give worlds for a glass
of beer, and, when he came to a
little shanty where they kept it, he
kicked up a most fearful row because
they charged him five francs for a bottle
of Bass. He said it was a
scandalous imposition, and he wrote to
the TIMES about it.
It cast a gloom over the boat, there
being no mustard. We ate our beef
in silence. Existence seemed hollow and
uninteresting. We thought of
the happy days of childhood, and sighed.
We brightened up a bit,
however, over the apple-tart, and, when
George drew out a tin of pine-
apple from the bottom of the hamper, and
rolled it into the middle of the
boat, we felt that life was worth living
after all.
We are very fond of pine-apple, all three
of us. We looked at the
picture on the tin; we thought of the
juice. We smiled at one another,
and Harris got a spoon ready.
Then we looked for the knife to open the
tin with. We turned out
everything in the hamper. We turned out
the bags. We pulled up the
boards at the bottom of the boat. We took
everything out on to the bank
and shook it. There was no tin-opener to
be found.
Then Harris tried to open the tin with a
pocket-knife, and broke the
knife and cut himself badly; and George
tried a pair of scissors, and the
scissors flew up, and nearly put his eye
out. While they were dressing
their wounds, I tried to make a hole in
the thing with the spiky end of
the hitcher, and the hitcher slipped and
jerked me out between the boat
and the bank into two feet of muddy
water, and the tin rolled over,
uninjured, and broke a teacup.
Then we all got mad. We took that tin out
on the bank, and Harris went
up into a field and got a big sharp
stone, and I went back into the boat
and brought out the mast, and George held
the tin and Harris held the
sharp end of his stone against the top of
it, and I took the mast and
poised it high up in the air, and
gathered up all my strength and brought
it down.
It was George's straw hat that saved his
life that day. He keeps that
hat now (what is left of it), and, of a
winter's evening, when the pipes
are lit and the boys are telling
stretchers about the dangers they have
passed through, George brings it down and
shows it round, and the
stirring tale is told anew, with fresh
exaggerations every time.
Harris got off with merely a flesh wound.
After that, I took the tin off myself,
and hammered at it with the mast
till I was worn out and sick at heart,
whereupon Harris took it in hand.
We beat it out flat; we beat it back
square; we battered it into every
form known to geometry - but we could not
make a hole in it. Then George
went at it, and knocked it into a shape,
so strange, so weird, so
unearthly in its wild hideousness, that
he got frightened and threw away
the mast. Then we all three sat round it
on the grass and looked at it.
There was one great dent across the top
that had the appearance of a
mocking grin, and it drove us furious, so
that Harris rushed at the
thing, and caught it up, and flung it far
into the middle of the river,
and as it sank we hurled our curses at
it, and we got into the boat and
rowed away from the spot, and never
paused till we reached Maidenhead.
Maidenhead itself is too snobby to be
pleasant. It is the haunt of the
river swell and his overdressed female
companion. It is the town of
showy hotels, patronised chiefly by dudes
and ballet girls. It is the
witch's kitchen from which go forth those
demons of the river - steam-
launches. The LONDON JOURNAL duke always
has his "little place" at
Maidenhead; and the heroine of the
three-volume novel always dines there
when she goes out on the spree with
somebody else's husband.
We went through Maidenhead quickly, and
then eased up, and took leisurely
that grand reach beyond Boulter's and
Cookham locks. Clieveden Woods
still wore their dainty dress of spring,
and rose up, from the water's
edge, in one long harmony of blended
shades of fairy green. In its
unbroken loveliness this is, perhaps, the
sweetest stretch of all the
river, and lingeringly we slowly drew our
little boat away from its deep
peace.
We pulled up in the backwater, just below
Cookham, and had tea; and, when
we were through the lock, it was evening.
A stiffish breeze had sprung
up - in our favour, for a wonder; for, as
a rule on the river, the wind
is always dead against you whatever way
you go. It is against you in the
morning, when you start for a day's trip,
and you pull a long distance,
thinking how easy it will be to come back
with the sail. Then, after
tea, the wind veers round, and you have
to pull hard in its teeth all the
way home.
When you forget to take the sail at all,
then the wind is consistently in
your favour both ways. But there! this
world is only a probation, and
man was born to trouble as the sparks fly
upward.
This evening, however, they had evidently
made a mistake, and had put the
wind round at our back instead of in our
face. We kept very quiet about
it, and got the sail up quickly before
they found it out, and then we
spread ourselves about the boat in
thoughtful attitudes, and the sail
bellied out, and strained, and grumbled
at the mast, and the boat flew.
I steered.
There is no more thrilling sensation I
know of than sailing. It comes as
near to flying as man has got to yet -
except in dreams. The wings of
the rushing wind seem to be bearing you
onward, you know not where. You
are no longer the slow, plodding, puny
thing of clay, creeping tortuously
upon the ground; you are a part of
Nature! Your heart is throbbing
against hers! Her glorious arms are round
you, raising you up against
her heart! Your spirit is at one with
hers; your limbs grow light! The
voices of the air are singing to you. The
earth seems far away and
little; and the clouds, so close above
your head, are brothers, and you
stretch your arms to them.
We had the river to ourselves, except
that, far in the distance, we could
see a fishing-punt, moored in mid-stream,
on which three fishermen sat;
and we skimmed over the water, and passed
the wooded banks, and no one
spoke.
I was steering.
As we drew nearer, we could see that the
three men fishing seemed old and
solemn-looking men. They sat on three
chairs in the punt, and watched
intently their lines. And the red sunset
threw a mystic light upon the
waters, and tinged with fire the towering
woods, and made a golden glory
of the piled-up clouds. It was an hour of
deep enchantment, of ecstatic
hope and longing. The little sail stood
out against the purple sky, the
gloaming lay around us, wrapping the
world in rainbow shadows; and,
behind us, crept the night.
We seemed like knights of some old
legend, sailing across some mystic
lake into the unknown realm of twilight,
unto the great land of the
sunset.
We did not go into the realm of twilight;
we went slap into that punt,
where those three old men were fishing.
We did not know what had
happened at first, because the sail shut
out the view, but from the
nature of the language that rose up upon
the evening air, we gathered
that we had come into the neighbourhood
of human beings, and that they
were vexed and discontented.
Harris let the sail down, and then we saw
what had happened. We had
knocked those three old gentlemen off
their chairs into a general heap at
the bottom of the boat, and they were now
slowly and painfully sorting
themselves out from each other, and
picking fish off themselves; and as
they worked, they cursed us - not with a
common cursory curse, but with
long, carefully-thought-out,
comprehensive curses, that embraced the
whole of our career, and went away into
the distant future, and included
all our relations, and covered everything
connected with us - good,
substantial curses.
Harris told them they ought to be
grateful for a little excitement,
sitting there fishing all day, and he
also said that he was shocked and
grieved to hear men their age give way to
temper so.
But it did not do any good.
George said he would steer, after that.
He said a mind like mine ought
not to be expected to give itself away in
steering boats - better let a
mere commonplace human being see after
that boat, before we jolly well
all got drowned; and he took the lines,
and brought us up to Marlow.
And at Marlow we left the boat by the
bridge, and went and put up for the
night at the "Crown."
