CHAPTER
XIII.
MARLOW. - BISHAM ABBEY. - THE
MEDMENHAM MONKS. - MONTMORENCY THINKS HE
WILL MURDER AN OLD TOM CAT. - BUT
EVENTUALLY DECIDES THAT HE WILL LET IT
LIVE. - SHAMEFUL CONDUCT OF A FOX
TERRIER AT THE CIVIL SERVICE STORES. -
OUR DEPARTURE FROM MARLOW. - AN
IMPOSING PROCESSION. - THE STEAM LAUNCH,
USEFUL RECEIPTS FOR ANNOYING AND
HINDERING IT. - WE DECLINE TO DRINK THE
RIVER. - A PEACEFUL DOG. - STRANGE
DISAPPEARANCE OF HARRIS AND A PIE.
MARLOW is one of the pleasantest river
centres I know of. It is a
bustling, lively little town; not very
picturesque on the whole, it is
true, but there are many quaint nooks and
corners to be found in it,
nevertheless - standing arches in the
shattered bridge of Time, over
which our fancy travels back to the days
when Marlow Manor owned Saxon
Algar for its lord, ere conquering
William seized it to give to Queen
Matilda, ere it passed to the Earls of
Warwick or to worldly-wise Lord
Paget, the councillor of four successive
sovereigns.
There is lovely country round about it,
too, if, after boating, you are
fond of a walk, while the river itself is
at its best here. Down to
Cookham, past the Quarry Woods and the
meadows, is a lovely reach. Dear
old Quarry Woods! with your narrow,
climbing paths, and little winding
glades, how scented to this hour you seem
with memories of sunny summer
days! How haunted are your shadowy vistas
with the ghosts of laughing
faces! how from your whispering leaves
there softly fall the voices of
long ago!
From Marlow up to Sonning is even fairer
yet. Grand old Bisham Abbey,
whose stone walls have rung to the shouts
of the Knights Templars, and
which, at one time, was the home of Anne
of Cleves and at another of
Queen Elizabeth, is passed on the right
bank just half a mile above
Marlow Bridge. Bisham Abbey is rich in
melodramatic properties. It
contains a tapestry bed-chamber, and a
secret room hid high up in the
thick walls. The ghost of the Lady Holy,
who beat her little boy to
death, still walks there at night, trying
to wash its ghostly hands clean
in a ghostly basin.
Warwick, the king-maker, rests there,
careless now about such trivial
things as earthly kings and earthly
kingdoms; and Salisbury, who did good
service at Poitiers. Just before you come
to the abbey, and right on the
river's bank, is Bisham Church, and,
perhaps, if any tombs are worth
inspecting, they are the tombs and
monuments in Bisham Church. It was
while floating in his boat under the
Bisham beeches that Shelley, who was
then living at Marlow (you can see his
house now, in West street),
composed THE REVOLT OF ISLAM.
By Hurley Weir, a little higher up, I
have often thought that I could
stay a month without having sufficient
time to drink in all the beauty of
the scene. The village of Hurley, five
minutes' walk from the lock, is
as old a little spot as there is on the
river, dating, as it does, to
quote the quaint phraseology of those dim
days, "from the times of King
Sebert and King Offa." Just past the
weir (going up) is Danes' Field,
where the invading Danes once encamped,
during their march to
Gloucestershire; and a little further
still, nestling by a sweet corner
of the stream, is what is left of
Medmenham Abbey.
The famous Medmenham monks, or "Hell
Fire Club," as they were commonly
called, and of whom the notorious Wilkes
was a member, were a fraternity
whose motto was "Do as you
please," and that invitation still stands over
the ruined doorway of the abbey. Many
years before this bogus abbey,
with its congregation of irreverent
jesters, was founded, there stood
upon this same spot a monastery of a
sterner kind, whose monks were of a
somewhat different type to the revellers
that were to follow them, five
hundred years afterwards.
The Cistercian monks, whose abbey stood
there in the thirteenth century,
wore no clothes but rough tunics and
cowls, and ate no flesh, nor fish,
nor eggs. They lay upon straw, and they
rose at midnight to mass. They
spent the day in labour, reading, and
prayer; and over all their lives
there fell a silence as of death, for no
one spoke.
A grim fraternity, passing grim lives in
that sweet spot, that God had
made so bright! Strange that Nature's
voices all around them - the soft
singing of the waters, the whisperings of
the river grass, the music of
the rushing wind - should not have taught
them a truer meaning of life
than this. They listened there, through
the long days, in silence,
waiting for a voice from heaven; and all
day long and through the solemn
night it spoke to them in myriad tones,
and they heard it not.
From Medmenham to sweet Hambledon Lock
the river is full of peaceful
beauty, but, after it passes Greenlands,
the rather uninteresting looking
river residence of my newsagent - a quiet
unassuming old gentleman, who
may often be met with about these
regions, during the summer months,
sculling himself along in easy vigorous
style, or chatting genially to
some old lock-keeper, as he passes
through - until well the other side of
Henley, it is somewhat bare and dull.
We got up tolerably early on the Monday
morning at Marlow, and went for a
bathe before breakfast; and, coming back,
Montmorency made an awful ass
of himself. The only subject on which
Montmorency and I have any serious
difference of opinion is cats. I like
cats; Montmorency does not.
When I meet a cat, I say, "Poor
Pussy!" and stop down and tickle the side
of its head; and the cat sticks up its
tail in a rigid, cast-iron manner,
arches its back, and wipes its nose up
against my trousers; and all is
gentleness and peace. When Montmorency
meets a cat, the whole street
knows about it; and there is enough bad
language wasted in ten seconds to
last an ordinarily respectable man all
his life, with care.
I do not blame the dog (contenting
myself, as a rule, with merely
clouting his head or throwing stones at
him), because I take it that it
is his nature. Fox-terriers are born with
about four times as much
original sin in them as other dogs are,
and it will take years and years
of patient effort on the part of us
Christians to bring about any
appreciable reformation in the rowdiness
of the fox-terrier nature.
I remember being in the lobby of the
Haymarket Stores one day, and all
round about me were dogs, waiting for the
return of their owners, who
were shopping inside. There were a
mastiff, and one or two collies, and
a St. Bernard, a few retrievers and
Newfoundlands, a boar-hound, a French
poodle, with plenty of hair round its
head, but mangy about the middle; a
bull-dog, a few Lowther Arcade sort of
animals, about the size of rats,
and a couple of Yorkshire tykes.
There they sat, patient, good, and
thoughtful. A solemn peacefulness
seemed to reign in that lobby. An air of
calmness and resignation - of
gentle sadness pervaded the room.
Then a sweet young lady entered, leading
a meek-looking little fox-
terrier, and left him, chained up there,
between the bull-dog and the
poodle. He sat and looked about him for a
minute. Then he cast up his
eyes to the ceiling, and seemed, judging
from his expression, to be
thinking of his mother. Then he yawned.
Then he looked round at the
other dogs, all silent, grave, and
dignified.
He looked at the bull-dog, sleeping
dreamlessly on his right. He looked
at the poodle, erect and haughty, on his
left. Then, without a word of
warning, without the shadow of a
provocation, he bit that poodle's near
fore-leg, and a yelp of agony rang
through the quiet shades of that
lobby.
The result of his first experiment seemed
highly satisfactory to him, and
he determined to go on and make things
lively all round. He sprang over
the poodle and vigorously attacked a
collie, and the collie woke up, and
immediately commenced a fierce and noisy
contest with the poodle. Then
Foxey came back to his own place, and
caught the bull-dog by the ear, and
tried to throw him away; and the
bull-dog, a curiously impartial animal,
went for everything he could reach,
including the hall-porter, which gave
that dear little terrier the opportunity
to enjoy an uninterrupted fight
of his own with an equally willing
Yorkshire tyke.
Anyone who knows canine nature need
hardly, be told that, by this time,
all the other dogs in the place were
fighting as if their hearths and
homes depended on the fray. The big dogs
fought each other
indiscriminately; and the little dogs
fought among themselves, and filled
up their spare time by biting the legs of
the big dogs.
The whole lobby was a perfect
pandemonium, and the din was terrific. A
crowd assembled outside in the Haymarket,
and asked if it was a vestry
meeting; or, if not, who was being
murdered, and why? Men came with
poles and ropes, and tried to separate
the dogs, and the police were sent
for.
And in the midst of the riot that sweet
young lady returned, and snatched
up that sweet little dog of hers (he had
laid the tyke up for a month,
and had on the expression, now, of a
new-born lamb) into her arms, and
kissed him, and asked him if he was
killed, and what those great nasty
brutes of dogs had been doing to him; and
he nestled up against her, and
gazed up into her face with a look that
seemed to say: "Oh, I'm so glad
you've come to take me away from this
disgraceful scene!"
She said that the people at the Stores
had no right to allow great savage
things like those other dogs to be put
with respectable people's dogs,
and that she had a great mind to summon
somebody.
Such is the nature of fox-terriers; and,
therefore, I do not blame
Montmorency for his tendency to row with
cats; but he wished he had not
given way to it that morning.
We were, as I have said, returning from a
dip, and half-way up the High
Street a cat darted out from one of the
houses in front of us, and began
to trot across the road. Montmorency gave
a cry of joy - the cry of a
stern warrior who sees his enemy given
over to his hands - the sort of
cry Cromwell might have uttered when the
Scots came down the hill - and
flew after his prey.
His victim was a large black Tom. I never
saw a larger cat, nor a more
disreputable-looking cat. It had lost
half its tail, one of its ears,
and a fairly appreciable proportion of
its nose. It was a long, sinewy-
looking animal. It had a calm, contented
air about it.
Montmorency went for that poor cat at the
rate of twenty miles an hour;
but the cat did not hurry up - did not
seem to have grasped the idea that
its life was in danger. It trotted
quietly on until its would-be
assassin was within a yard of it, and
then it turned round and sat down
in the middle of the road, and looked at
Montmorency with a gentle,
inquiring expression, that said:
"Yes! You want me?"
Montmorency does not lack pluck; but
there was something about the look
of that cat that might have chilled the
heart of the boldest dog. He
stopped abruptly, and looked back at Tom.
Neither spoke; but the conversation that
one could imagine was clearly as
follows:-
THE CAT: "Can I do anything for
you?"
MONTMORENCY: "No - no, thanks."
THE CAT: "Don't you mind speaking,
if you really want anything, you
know."
MONTMORENCY (BACKING DOWN THE HIGH
STREET): "Oh, no - not at all -
certainly - don't you trouble. I - I am
afraid I've made a mistake. I
thought I knew you. Sorry I disturbed
you."
THE CAT: "Not at all - quite a
pleasure. Sure you don't want anything,
now?"
MONTMORENCY (STILL BACKING): "Not at
all, thanks - not at all - very kind
of you. Good morning."
THE CAT: "Good-morning."
Then the cat rose, and continued his
trot; and Montmorency, fitting what
he calls his tail carefully into its
groove, came back to us, and took up
an unimportant position in the rear.
To this day, if you say the word
"Cats!" to Montmorency, he will visibly
shrink and look up piteously at you, as
if to say:
"Please don't."
We did our marketing after breakfast, and
revictualled the boat for three
days. George said we ought to take
vegetables - that it was unhealthy
not to eat vegetables. He said they were
easy enough to cook, and that
he would see to that; so we got ten
pounds of potatoes, a bushel of peas,
and a few cabbages. We got a beefsteak
pie, a couple of gooseberry
tarts, and a leg of mutton from the
hotel; and fruit, and cakes, and
bread and butter, and jam, and bacon and
eggs, and other things we
foraged round about the town for.
Our departure from Marlow I regard as one
of our greatest successes. It
was dignified and impressive, without
being ostentatious. We had
insisted at all the shops we had been to
that the things should be sent
with us then and there. None of your
"Yes, sir, I will send them off at
once: the boy will be down there before
you are, sir!" and then fooling
about on the landing-stage, and going
back to the shop twice to have a
row about them, for us. We waited while
the basket was packed, and took
the boy with us.
We went to a good many shops, adopting
this principle at each one; and
the consequence was that, by the time we
had finished, we had as fine a
collection of boys with baskets following
us around as heart could
desire; and our final march down the
middle of the High Street, to the
river, must have been as imposing a
spectacle as Marlow had seen for many
a long day.
The order of the procession was as
follows:-
Montmorency, carrying a stick.
Two disreputable-looking curs, friends of
Montmorency's.
George, carrying coats and rugs, and
smoking a short pipe.
Harris, trying to walk with easy grace,
while carrying a bulged-out Gladstone bag
in one hand
and a bottle of lime-juice in the other.
Greengrocer's boy and baker's boy,
with baskets.
Boots from the hotel, carrying hamper.
Confectioner's boy, with basket.
Grocer's boy, with basket.
Long-haired dog.
Cheesemonger's boy, with basket.
Odd man carrying a bag.
Bosom companion of odd man, with his
hands in his pockets,
smoking a short clay.
Fruiterer's boy, with basket.
Myself, carrying three hats and a pair of
boots,
and trying to look as if I didn't know
it.
Six small boys, and four stray dogs.
When we got down to the landing-stage,
the boatman said:
"Let me see, sir; was yours a
steam-launch or a house-boat?"
On our informing him it was a
double-sculling skiff, he seemed surprised.
We had a good deal of trouble with steam
launches that morning. It was
just before the Henley week, and they
were going up in large numbers;
some by themselves, some towing
houseboats. I do hate steam launches: I
suppose every rowing man does. I never
see a steam launch but I feel I
should like to lure it to a lonely part
of the river, and there, in the
silence and the solitude, strangle it.
There is a blatant bumptiousness about a
steam launch that has the knack
of rousing every evil instinct in my
nature, and I yearn for the good old
days, when you could go about and tell
people what you thought of them
with a hatchet and a bow and arrows. The
expression on the face of the
man who, with his hands in his pockets,
stands by the stern, smoking a
cigar, is sufficient to excuse a breach
of the peace by itself; and the
lordly whistle for you to get out of the
way would, I am confident,
ensure a verdict of "justifiable
homicide" from any jury of river men.
They used to HAVE to whistle for us to
get out of their way. If I may do
so, without appearing boastful, I think I
can honestly say that our one
small boat, during that week, caused more
annoyance and delay and
aggravation to the steam launches that we
came across than all the other
craft on the river put together.
"Steam launch, coming!" one of
us would cry out, on sighting the enemy in
the distance; and, in an instant,
everything was got ready to receive
her. I would take the lines, and Harris
and George would sit down beside
me, all of us with our backs to the
launch, and the boat would drift out
quietly into mid-stream.
On would come the launch, whistling, and
on we would go, drifting. At
about a hundred yards off, she would
start whistling like mad, and the
people would come and lean over the side,
and roar at us; but we never
heard them! Harris would be telling us an
anecdote about his mother, and
George and I would not have missed a word
of it for worlds.
Then that launch would give one final
shriek of a whistle that would
nearly burst the boiler, and she would
reverse her engines, and blow off
steam, and swing round and get aground;
everyone on board of it would
rush to the bow and yell at us, and the
people on the bank would stand
and shout to us, and all the other
passing boats would stop and join in,
till the whole river for miles up and
down was in a state of frantic
commotion. And then Harris would break
off in the most interesting part
of his narrative, and look up with mild
surprise, and say to George:
"Why, George, bless me, if here
isn't a steam launch!"
And George would answer:
"Well, do you know, I THOUGHT I
heard something!"
Upon which we would get nervous and
confused, and not know how to get the
boat out of the way, and the people in
the launch would crowd round and
instruct us:
"Pull your right - you, you idiot!
back with your left. No, not YOU -
the other one - leave the lines alone,
can't you - now, both together.
NOT THAT way. Oh, you - !"
Then they would lower a boat and come to
our assistance; and, after
quarter of an hour's effort, would get us
clean out of their way, so that
they could go on; and we would thank them
so much, and ask them to give
us a tow. But they never would.
Another good way we discovered of
irritating the aristocratic type of
steam launch, was to mistake them for a
beanfeast, and ask them if they
were Messrs. Cubit's lot or the
Bermondsey Good Templars, and could they
lend us a saucepan.
Old ladies, not accustomed to the river,
are always intensely nervous of
steam launches. I remember going up once
from Staines to Windsor - a
stretch of water peculiarly rich in these
mechanical monstrosities - with
a party containing three ladies of this
description. It was very
exciting. At the first glimpse of every
steam launch that came in view,
they insisted on landing and sitting down
on the bank until it was out of
sight again. They said they were very
sorry, but that they owed it to
their families not to be fool-hardy.
We found ourselves short of water at
Hambledon Lock; so we took our jar
and went up to the lock-keeper's house to
beg for some.
George was our spokesman. He put on a
winning smile, and said:
"Oh, please could you spare us a
little water?"
"Certainly," replied the old
gentleman; "take as much as you want, and
leave the rest."
"Thank you so much," murmured
George, looking about him. "Where - where
do you keep it?"
"It's always in the same place my
boy," was the stolid reply: "just
behind you."
"I don't see it," said George,
turning round.
"Why, bless us, where's your
eyes?" was the man's comment, as he twisted
George round and pointed up and down the
stream. "There's enough of it
to see, ain't there?"
"Oh!" exclaimed George,
grasping the idea; "but we can't drink the river,
you know!"
"No; but you can drink SOME of
it," replied the old fellow. "It's what
I've drunk for the last fifteen
years."
George told him that his appearance,
after the course, did not seem a
sufficiently good advertisement for the
brand; and that he would prefer
it out of a pump.
We got some from a cottage a little
higher up. I daresay THAT was only
river water, if we had known. But we did
not know, so it was all right.
What the eye does not see, the stomach
does not get upset over.
We tried river water once, later on in
the season, but it was not a
success. We were coming down stream, and
had pulled up to have tea in a
backwater near Windsor. Our jar was
empty, and it was a case of going
without our tea or taking water from the
river. Harris was for chancing
it. He said it must be all right if we
boiled the water. He said that
the various germs of poison present in
the water would be killed by the
boiling. So we filled our kettle with
Thames backwater, and boiled it;
and very careful we were to see that it
did boil.
We had made the tea, and were just
settling down comfortably to drink it,
when George, with his cup half-way to his
lips, paused and exclaimed:
"What's that?"
"What's what?" asked Harris and
I.
"Why that!" said George,
looking westward.
Harris and I followed his gaze, and saw,
coming down towards us on the
sluggish current, a dog. It was one of
the quietest and peacefullest
dogs I have ever seen. I never met a dog
who seemed more contented -
more easy in its mind. It was floating
dreamily on its back, with its
four legs stuck up straight into the air.
It was what I should call a
full-bodied dog, with a well-developed
chest. On he came, serene,
dignified, and calm, until he was abreast
of our boat, and there, among
the rushes, he eased up, and settled down
cosily for the evening.
George said he didn't want any tea, and
emptied his cup into the water.
Harris did not feel thirsty, either, and
followed suit. I had drunk half
mine, but I wished I had not.
I asked George if he thought I was likely
to have typhoid.
He said: "Oh, no;" he thought I
had a very good chance indeed of escaping
it. Anyhow, I should know in about a
fortnight, whether I had or had
not.
We went up the backwater to Wargrave. It
is a short cut, leading out of
the right-hand bank about half a mile
above Marsh Lock, and is well worth
taking, being a pretty, shady little
piece of stream, besides saving
nearly half a mile of distance.
Of course, its entrance is studded with
posts and chains, and surrounded
with notice boards, menacing all kinds of
torture, imprisonment, and
death to everyone who dares set scull
upon its waters - I wonder some of
these riparian boors don't claim the air
of the river and threaten
everyone with forty shillings fine who
breathes it - but the posts and
chains a little skill will easily avoid;
and as for the boards, you
might, if you have five minutes to spare,
and there is nobody about, take
one or two of them down and throw them
into the river.
Half-way up the backwater, we got out and
lunched; and it was during this
lunch that George and I received rather a
trying shock.
Harris received a shock, too; but I do
not think Harris's shock could
have been anything like so bad as the
shock that George and I had over
the business.
You see, it was in this way: we were
sitting in a meadow, about ten yards
from the water's edge, and we had just
settled down comfortably to feed.
Harris had the beefsteak pie between his
knees, and was carving it, and
George and I were waiting with our plates
ready.
"Have you got a spoon there?"
says Harris; "I want a spoon to help the
gravy with."
The hamper was close behind us, and
George and I both turned round to
reach one out. We were not five seconds
getting it. When we looked
round again, Harris and the pie were
gone!
It was a wide, open field. There was not
a tree or a bit of hedge for
hundreds of yards. He could not have
tumbled into the river, because we
were on the water side of him, and he
would have had to climb over us to
do it.
George and I gazed all about. Then we
gazed at each other.
"Has he been snatched up to
heaven?" I queried.
"They'd hardly have taken the pie
too," said George.
There seemed weight in this objection,
and we discarded the heavenly
theory.
"I suppose the truth of the matter
is," suggested George, descending to
the commonplace and practicable,
"that there has been an earthquake."
And then he added, with a touch of
sadness in his voice: "I wish he
hadn't been carving that pie."
With a sigh, we turned our eyes once more
towards the spot where Harris
and the pie had last been seen on earth;
and there, as our blood froze in
our veins and our hair stood up on end,
we saw Harris's head - and
nothing but his head - sticking bolt
upright among the tall grass, the
face very red, and bearing upon it an
expression of great indignation!
George was the first to recover.
"Speak!" he cried, "and
tell us whether you are alive or dead - and where
is the rest of you?"
"Oh, don't be a stupid ass!"
said Harris's head. "I believe you did it
on purpose."
"Did what?" exclaimed George
and I.
" Why, put me to sit here - darn
silly trick! Here, catch hold of the
pie."
And out of the middle of the earth, as it
seemed to us, rose the pie -
very much mixed up and damaged; and,
after it, scrambled Harris -
tumbled, grubby, and wet.
He had been sitting, without knowing it,
on the very verge of a small
gully, the long grass hiding it from
view; and in leaning a little back
he had shot over, pie and all.
He said he had never felt so surprised in
all his life, as when he first
felt himself going, without being able to
conjecture in the slightest
what had happened. He thought at first
that the end of the world had
come.
Harris believes to this day that George
and I planned it all beforehand.
Thus does unjust suspicion follow even
the most blameless for, as the
poet says, "Who shall escape
calumny?"
Who, indeed!
