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

Before we had gone three miles the perspiration was streaming down the mare’s legs and meandering over her hoofs, so we pulled up to let her breathe. The day was young, it was all before us, and it is or ought to be in the very nature of every gipsy – amateur or professional – to take no note of time, to possess all the apathy of a Dutchman, all the drowsy independence of a garden tortoise.

The children begged for a cake, and Inez wanted to know what made the horse laugh so.

She might well put this question, for Matilda neighed nearly all the way.

“Why, pa,” said Inie, “the horse laughs at everything; he laughs at the trees, he laughs at the flowers, and at the ponds. He laughs at every horse he meets; he laughed at the cows cropping the furze, and at the geese on the common, and now he is laughing at that old horse with its forefeet tied together. What are the old horse’s forefeet tied together for, pa?”

“To keep him from running away, darling.”

“And what does this horse keep on laughing for?”

“Why, he is so proud, you know, of being harnessed to so beautiful a caravan, that he can’t help laughing. He wants to draw the attention of every creature he sees to it. He will be sure to dream about it to-night, and if he wakes up any time before morning he will laugh again.”

“Oh!” said Inie, and went on eating her currant-cake thoughtfully.

In about a quarter of an hour we had started again. Lovat, who had been aft having a view at the back door window, came running forward and said excitedly, —

“Oh! pa, there is a gentleman with a carriage and pair behind us, making signs and shouting and waving his whip.”

I pulled to the side at once, and the party in the waggonette passed, the gentleman who handled the ribbons scowling and looking forked lightning at us. No wonder, the idea of being stopped on the road by itinerant gipsies!

Well, in driving a large caravan, as you cannot look behind nor see behind, it is as well to keep pretty near your own side of the road. This was a lesson I determined to lay to heart. But if seeing behind me was impossible, hearing was quite as much so, unless it had been the firing of a six-pounder. This was owing to the rattling of things inside the van, for, it being but our trial trip, things had not settled shipshape.

It is but fair to the builders of the Wanderer to say that an easier-going craft or trap never left Bristol. The springs are as strong and easy as ever springs were made. There is no disagreeable motion, but there is – no, I mean there was on that first day – a disagreeable rattling noise.

Nothing inside was silent; nothing would hold its tongue. No wonder our mare Matilda laughed. The things inside the sideboard jingled and rang, edged towards each other, hobnobbed by touching sides, then edged off again. The crystal flower-boat on the top made an uneasy noise, the crimson-tinted glass lampshades made music of their own in tremolo, and the guitar fell out of its corner on top of my cremona and cracked a string. So much for the saloon; but in the pantry the concert was at its loudest and its worse – plates and dishes, cups and saucers, tumblers and glasses, all had a word to say, and a song to sing; while as for the tin contents of the Rippingille cooking-range – the kettle and frying-pan, and all the other odds and ends – they constituted a complete band of their own, and a very independent one it was. Arab tom-toms would hardly have been heard alongside that range.

With bits of paper and chips of wood I did what I could to stop the din, and bit my lip and declared war à outrance against so unbearable a row. The war is ended, and I am victor. Nothing rattles much now; nothing jangles; nothing sings or speaks or squeaks. My auxiliaries in restoring peace have been – wedge-lets of wood, pads of indiarubber, and nests of cottonwool and tow; and the best of it is that there is nothing unsightly about any of my arrangements after all.

But to resume our journey. As there came a lull in the wind, and consequently some surcease in the rolling storm of dust, we stopped for about an hour at the entrance to Maidenhead Thicket. The children had cakes, and they had books, and I had proofs to correct – nice easy work on a day’s outing!

Meanwhile great banks of clouds (cumulus) came up from the north-east and obscured the sun and most of the sky, only leaving ever-changing rifts of blue here and there, and the wind went down.

Maidenhead Thicket is a long stretch of wild upland – a well-treed moor, one might call it, and yet a breezy, healthful tableland. The road goes straight through it, with only the greensward, level with the road at each side, then two noble rows of splendid trees, mostly elm and lime, with here and there a maple or oak. But abroad, on the thicket itself, grow clumps of trees of every description, and great masses of yellow blossoming furze and golden-tasselled broom.

To our left the thicket ended afar off in woods, with the round braeland called Bowsy Hill in the distance; to the right, also in woods, but finally in a great sweep of cultivated country, dotted over with many a smiling farm and private mansion.

Maidenhead Thicket in the old coaching days used to be rather dreaded by the four-in-hands that rolled through it. Before entering it men were wont to grasp their bludgeons and look well to their priming, while ladies shrank timorously into corners (as a rule they did). The place is celebrated now chiefly for being a meeting-place for “’Arry’s ’Ounds.”

How have I not pitied the poor panting stag! It would be far more merciful, and give more real “sport,” to import and turn down in the thicket some wild Shetland sheep.

Some few weeks ago the stag of the day ran for safety into our wee village of Twyford; after it came the hounds in full cry, and next came pricking along a troop of gallant knights and ladies fair. Gallant, did I say? Well, the stag took refuge in a coal-cellar, from which he was finally dragged, and I am thankful to believe that, when they saw it bleeding and breathless, those “gallant” carpet-knights were slightly ashamed of themselves. However, there is no accounting for taste.

Sometimes even until this day Maidenhead Thicket is not safe. Not safe to cyclists, for example, on a warm moonlit summer’s night, when tramps lie snoozing under the furze-bushes.

But on this, the day of our trial trip, I never saw the thicket look more lovely; the avenue was a cloudland of tenderest greens, and the music of birds was everywhere around us. You could not have pointed to bush or branch and said, “No bird sings there.” It was the “sweet time o’ the year.”

Where the thicket ends the road begins to descend, and after devious and divers windings, you find yourself in the suburbs of Maidenhead, two long rows of charming villas, with gardens in front that could not look prettier. The pink and white may, the clumps of lilac, the leafy hedgerows, the verandahs bedraped with mauve wistaria, the blazes of wallflower growing as high as the privet, and the beds of tulips of every hue, and beds of blood-red daisies in the midst of green lawns – it was all a sight, I can assure you! It made Matilda laugh again, and the children crow and clap their tiny hands with glee.

We passed through the town itself, which is nice enough, and near the bridge drew to the side and stopped, I walking on and over the bridge to find a place to stand for a few hours, for Matilda was tired and steaming, and we all looked forward to dinner.

The river looks nowhere more lovely and picturesque than it does at Maidenhead in summer. Those who cross it by train know this, but you have to stand on the old bridge itself and look at it before you can realise all its beauty. The Thames here is so broad and peaceful, it seems loth to leave so sweet a place. Then the pretty house-boats and yachts, with awnings spread, and smart boats laden with pleasure-seekers, and the broad green lawns on the banks, with their tents and arbours and bright-coloured flower vases, give this reach of the Thames quite a character of its own. How trim these lawns are to be sure! almost too much so for my ideas of romance; and then the chairs need not be stuck all in a row, nor need the vases be so very gaudy.

I found a place to suit me at last, and the Wanderer was drawn up on an inn causeway. Matilda was led away to the stable, the after-steps were let down, and the children said, “Isn’t it dinner-time, pa?”

Pa thought it was. The cloth was spread on this soft carpet, and round it we all squatted – Hurricane Bob in the immediate rear – and had our first real gipsy feed, washed down with ginger-ale procured from the adjoining inn.

I wondered if the Wanderer really was an object of curiosity to the groups who gathered and walked and talked around us?

Younger ladies, I know, were delighted, and not slow to say so.

But I do not think that any one took us for hawkers or cheap-Jack people.

“If I had that caravan, now, and a thousand a year,” we heard one man observe, “I’d kick about everywhere all over the country, and I wouldn’t call the king my cousin.”

Soon after we had returned from a walk and a look at the shops a couple of caravans with real gipsies crossed the bridge.

“Stop, Bill, stop!” cried one of the tawny women, who had a bundle of mats for a chest protector. “Stop the ’orses, can’t yer? I wouldn’t miss a sight o’ this for a pension o’ ’taters.”

The horses were stopped. Sorry-looking nags they were, with coffin heads, bony rumps, and sadly swollen legs.

“Well I never!”

“Sure there was never sich a wan as that afore on the road!”

“Why, look at her, Sally! Look at her, Jim! Up and down, and roun’ and roun’, and back and fore. Why, Bill! I say, that wan’s as complete as a marriage certificate or a summons for assault.”

We people inside felt the compliment.

But we did not show.

“Hi, missus!” cried one; “are ye in, missus? Surely a wan like that wouldn’t be athout a missus. Will ye buy a basket, missus? Show your cap and your bonny face, missus. Would ye no obleege us with just one blink at ye?”

They went away at last, and soon after we got Matilda in and followed.

With her head towards home, and hard, level road, Matilda trotted now, and laughed louder than ever.

But soon the road began to rise; we had to climb the long, steep Maidenhead hill.

And just then the storm of rain and hail broke right in our teeth. At the middle of the hill it was at its worst, but the mare strode boldly on, and finally we were on fairly level road and drew up under some lime-trees.

The distance from Twyford to Maidenhead is nine miles, so we took it as easy going: as we had done coming.

We had meant to have tea in the thicket, but I found at the last moment I had forgotten the water. There was nothing for it but to “bide a wee.”

We stopped for half-an-hour in the thicket, nevertheless, to admire the scenery. Another storm was coming up, but as yet the sun shone brightly on the woods beyond the upland, and the effect was very beautiful. The tree masses were of every colour – green elms and limes, yellowed-leaved oaks, dark waving Scottish pines, and black and elfin-looking yews, with here and there a copper beech.

But the storm came on apace. The last ray of sunlight struck athwart a lime, making its branches look startlingly green against the dark purple of the thundercloud.

Then a darting, almost blinding flash, and by-and-bye the peal of thunder.

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 tribesDescend. The tempest-loving raven scarceDares wing the dubious dusk. In rueful gazeThe 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 notesWhile in a grove I sat reclinedIn that sweet moor, when pleasant thoughtsBring sad thoughts to the mind.“One moment now may give us moreThan fifty years of reason;Our minds shall drink at every poreThe 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.