The Cruise of the Land-Yacht «Wanderer»: or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan

The storm came nearer and nearer, so that soon the thunder-claps followed the flashes almost instantly.

Not until the rain and hail came on did the blackbirds cease to flute or the swallows to skim high overhead. How does this accord with the poet Thomson’s description of the behaviour of animals during a summer thunderstorm, or rather the boding silence that precedes it? —

“Prone to the lowest vale the aerial tribes
Descend. The tempest-loving raven scarce
Dares wing the dubious dusk. In rueful gaze
The cattle stand,” etc.

Our birds and beasts in Berkshire are not nearly so frightened at thunder as those in Thomson’s time must have been, but then there were no railway trains in Thomson’s time!

The poet speaks of unusual darkness brooding in the sky before the thunder raises his tremendous voice. This is so; I have known it so dark, or dusk rather, that the birds flew to roost and bats came out. But it is not always that “a calm” or “boding silence reigns.” Sometimes the wind sweeps here and there in uncertain gusts before the storm, the leaf-laden branches bending hither and thither before them.

We came to a part of the road at last where the gable end of a pretty porter’s lodge peeped over the trees, and here pulled up. The thunder was very loud, and lightning incessant, only it did not rain then. Nothing deterred, Lovat, kettle in hand, lowered himself from the coupé and disappeared to beg for water. As there was no other house near at hand it was natural for the good woman of the lodge, seeing a little boy with a fisherman’s red cap on, standing at her porch begging for water, to ask, – “Wherever do you come from?” Lovat pointed upwards in the direction of the caravan, which was hidden from view by the trees, and said, —

“From up there.”

“Do ye mean to tell me,” she said, “that you dropped out of the clouds in a thunderstorm with a tin-kettle in your hand?”

But he got the water, the good lady had her joke, and we had tea.

The storm grew worse after this. Inez grew frightened, and asked me to play.

“Do play the fiddle, pa!” she beseeched. So, while the “Lightning gleamed across the rift,” and the thunder crashed overhead, “pa” fiddled, even as Nero fiddled when Rome was burning.

Chapter Four.

Twyford and the Regions around it

“I heard a thousand blended notes
While in a grove I sat reclined
In that sweet moor, when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
“One moment now may give us more
Than fifty years of reason;
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.”

    Wordsworth.
Not to say a word about Twyford – the village that has given me birth and bield for ten long years – would be more than unkind, it would be positively ungrateful.

I must hasten to explain, however, that the Twyford referred to is THE Twyford – Twyford, Berks. About a dozen other Twyfords find their names recorded in the Postal Guide, from each and all of which we hold ourselves proudly aloof. Has Twyford the Great then, it may reasonably enough be asked, anything in particular to boast of? Well, methinks to belong to so charming a county as that of Berks is in itself something to be proud of. Have we not —

“Our forests and our green retreats,
At once the monarch’s and the muse’s seats,
Our hills and dales, and woods and lawns and spires,
And glittering towns and silver streams?”

Yes, and go where you will anywhere round Twyford, every mile is sacred to the blood of warriors spilt in the brave days of old. Not far from here Pope the poet lived and sang. The author of “Sandford and Merton” was thrown from his horse and killed at our neighbouring village of Wargrave, the very name of which is suggestive of stirring times. Well, up yonder on the hillhead lived the good old Quaker Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. Yet, strange to say, no Americans are ever known to visit the spot. There is at Ruscombe (Penn’s parish) a pretty and rustic-looking church, and not far off is the cosy vicarage of redbrick, almost hidden in foliage. On a knoll behind it, and in the copse at one side, is quite a forest of waving pines and larches and oaks. Hidden in the centre of this forest is a rude kind of clearing; in reality it has been a quarry or gravel-pit, but it is now charmingly embanked with greensward, with here and there great patches of gorse and bramble.

This place all the livelong summer I made my everyday retreat, my woodland study. But it is not of myself I would speak. At one side of this clearing stands a great oak-tree. It rises from a flat grassy eminence, and affords an excellent shelter from showers or sun. At the foot of this tree sometimes, on moonlight midnights, a tall and aged figure, in a broad-brimmed hat, may be seen seated in meditation. It, or he, ever vanishes before any one is bold enough to approach. Can this be the ghost of Penn? Mind, I, myself, have never seen it or him, and the apparition may be all fancy, or moonshine and flickering shadow, but I give the story as I got it.

Twyford the Great is not a large place, its population is barely a thousand; there is a new town and an old. The new town is like all mushroom villages within a hundred miles of the city – a mere tasteless conglomeration of bricks and mortar, with only two pretty houses in it.

But old Twyford is quaint and pretty from end to end – from the lofty poplars that bound my orchard out Ruscombe way, to the drowsy and romantic old mill on the Loddon. This last is worth a visit; only, if you lean over the bridge and look at this old mill for any length of time, you are bound to fall asleep, and I am bound to tell you so.

Twyford in summer, as well as the neighbourhood all round, may be seen at their best. The inhabitants of Twyford are at their best any day. I have strong reasons for believing the village must have been founded by some philosophical old Dutchman, or Rip van Winkle himself. And the peace of Penn seems to rest for ever around it.

The amusements in my wee village are few, rural, and primitive. Amateur cricket in summer, amateur concerts in winter, sum up the enjoyments of “Twyford at home.”

But the most delightful time of all in our Twyford is the season from March to June. Concerts are over, cricket has not commenced, and therefore dulness and apathy might now be reasonably supposed to prevail among us. Perhaps; but the lover of nature is now quite as happy as the birds and the early flowers and budding trees.

So many lightning-tipped pens have written about spring and its enjoyments, that I shall not here attempt to sing its praises. I may be excused for saying, however, that while the inhabitants of towns and cities like, as a rule, to have their spring all ready-made when they pay a visit to rural districts, the orchards all in full bloom, the may all out, and the nightingales turned down, we simple-minded “country bodies” delight in watching and witnessing the gradual transformation from leafless tree to glittering leaf; from bare brown fields, o’erswept by stormy winds, to daisy-covered leas, cowslip meads, and primrose banks.

To me – and, no doubt, to many – there is far more of beauty in a half-blown floweret of the field, say the mountain-daisy, Burns’s “Wee modest crimson-tippèd flower,” than there is in a garden favourite full outspread – take the staring midday tulip as a familiar example.

Down here in bird-haunted Berkshire spring begins in February even, whatever it may do in Yorkshire. Now noisy rooks begin to build; the mavis or thrush, perched high on some swaying tree, sings loud and sweet of joys in store; on sunny days I’ve known an invalid-looking hedgehog or dormouse wriggle out from his hibernal grave, look hungrily around, sun himself, shiver, and wriggle back again. But the sly snake and the sage old toad stick close to bank until the days are longer. Even thus early an occasional butterfly may be seen afloat, looking in vain for flowers. He cannot be happy; like the poet, he is born before his time.

But soon after big humble bees appear about gardens and woodland paths, flying drowsily and heavily. They are prospecting; they get into all kinds of holes, and I may say all kinds of scrapes, often tumbling helplessly on their backs, and getting very angry when you go to their assistance with a straw.

Did it ever strike the reader that those same great velvety bees are republicans in their way of thinking? It is true. One humble bee is just as good as another. And very polite they are to each other too, and never unsheath their stings to fight without good occasion. Just one example: Last summer, in my woodland study, I noticed one large bee enter a crimson foxglove bell. Presently round came another – not of the same clan, for he wore a white-striped tartan, the first being a Gordon, and wearing the yellow band. The newcomer was just about to enter the bell where bee Number 1 was. Bee Number 1 simply lifted his forearm and waved the intruder back. “I really beg pardon,” said bee Number 2. “I didn’t know there was any one inside.” And away he flew.

In February, down with us, the hazel-trees are tasselled over with catkins. Every one notices those, but few observe the tiny flower that grows on the twig near those drooping catkins. Only a tuft of green with a crimson tip, but inexpressibly beautiful. At the same time you will find the wild willow-bushes all covered with little flossy white cocoons.

There will be also a blaze of furze blossom here and there in the copse, but hardly a bud yet upon the hedgerows, while the great forest trees are still soundly wrapped in their winter sleep.

But high up on yonder swaying bough the thrush keeps on singing. Spring and joy are coming soon.

“It is the cuckoo that tells us spring is coming,” some one may say. The man who first promulgated that notion ought to have been tried by court-martial. The cuckoo never comes till leaves are out and flowers in bloom. Nor the noisy wryneck nor melodious nightingale. These are merely actors and musicians, and they never put in an appearance till the carpet has been spread on the stage, and the scenery is perfect.

A cherry orchard is lovely indeed when its trees are snowed over with the blossoms that cluster around the twigs like swarms of bees, their dazzling whiteness relieved by just the faintest tinge of green. An apple orchard is also beautiful in the sunshine of a spring morning when the bloom is expanded. I grant that, but to me it is far more to be admired when the flowers are just opening and the carmine tint is on them.

Probably the pink or white may looks best when in full unfolded bloom; but have you ever noticed either of these just before they open, when the flowerets look like little balls of red or white wax prettily set in their background of green leafage? The white variety at this stage presents an appearance not unlike that of lily-of-the-valley bloom, and is just as pretty.

The ordinary laurel too is quite a sight when its flowers are half unfolded. The Portuguese laurel blooms later on; the tree then looks pretty at a distance, but its perfume prevents one from courting a too close acquaintance with it.

But there is the common holly that gives us our Christmas decorations. Has my city reader noticed it in bloom in May? It is interesting if not beautiful. All round the ends of the twiglets, clustering beneath last year’s leaves, is first seen an excrescence, not unlike that on the beak of a carrier pigeon. This opens at last into a white-green bunch of blossom, and often the crimson winter berries still cling to the same twiglet. This looks curious at least – May wedded to bleak December, Christmas to Midsummer.

The oak and the ash are among the last trees to hear the voice of spring and awaken from their winter’s sleep. Grand, sturdy trees both, but how exceedingly modest in their florescence! So too is the plane or maple-tree.

The first young leaves of the latter are of different shades of brown and bronze, while those of the stunted oaks that grow in hedgerows are tinted with carmine, making these hedges gay in May and June even before the honeysuckle or wild roses come out.

The oak-trees when first coming into leaf are of a golden-green colour, and quite a feature of the woodlands. The tall swaying poplars are yellow in leaf at first, but soon change to darkest green.

But in this sweet time of the year every tree is a poem, and the birds that hide among their foliage do but set those poems to music.

It is interesting to note the different kinds of showers that fall from the trees. Here in Twyford I live in a miniature wilderness, partly garden, partly orchard, partly forest. Very early in the year the yew-tree yonder sheds its little round blossoms, as thick as hail; soon after come showers of leaf scales or chaff from the splendid lime-trees; and all kinds of showers from the chestnuts. Anon there is a perfect snowstorm of apple-blossom, which continues for more than a week; and early in June, when the wind blows from the east, we are treated to a continued fall of the large flat seeds of the elms. They flutter downwards gently enough, but they litter the ground, cover the lawns and flower-beds, and lie inches deep on the top of the verandah.

A drive from Twyford to Henley-on-Thames is very enjoyable on a summer’s day; a journey thither in a great caravan like the Wanderer is still more so. The first two miles of the road might be termed uninteresting, because flat and monotonous, but it is uninteresting only to those who have no eye for the beauty of the wild flowers that line the banks, no ear for the melody of birds.