At Rugby our narrative, hitherto smilingly pastoral, quickens to epic. So far we had followed Avon afoot, but here we meant to launch a Canadian canoe on its waters, creating a legend. She lay beside a small river-side tavern, her bright basswood sides gleaming in the sunshine. A small crowd had gathered, and was being addressed with volubility by a high complexioned man of urbane demeanor. He was bareheaded and coatless; he was shod in blue carpet slippers, on each of which a yellow anchor (emblem of Hope) was entwined with sprays of the pink convolvulus, typifying (according to P., who is a botanist), “I recognize your worth, and will sustain it by judicious and tender affection.” As we launched our canoe and placed our sacks on board, he turned his discourse on us. It breathed the spirit of calm confidence. There were long shallows just below (he said), and an uprooted willow blocking the stream, and three waterfalls, and fences of barbed wire. He enumerated the perils; he was sanguine about each; and ours was the first canoe he ever set eyes on.
We pushed off and waved good-bye. The sun shone in our faces; behind, the voice of confidence shouted us over the first shallow. Our canoe swung round a bend beside a small willow coppice, and we sighed as the kindly crowd was hidden from us.
We turned at the sound of stertorous breathing. A pair of blue slippers came twinkling after us over the meadow. Our friend had fetched a circuit round the coppice, and soon both craft and crew were as babes in his hands. Was it a shallow?—he hounded us over. Was it a willow fallen “ascaunt the brook?”—he drove us under, clambering himself along the trunk, as once Ophelia, and exhorting always. At the foot of the first waterfall he took leave of us, and turned back singing across the fields. He was a good man, but would be obeyed. We learned from him, first, that the art of canoeing has no limits; second, that the “impenetrability of matter” is a discredited phrase; and, after the manner of Bunyan, we called him Mr. Win-by-Will.
By many dense beds of rushes, through which a flock of ducks scattered before us, we dropped down to Newbold on Avon, a pretty village on the hill-side, with green orchards sloping to the stream. By climbing through them and looking due south, you may see the spire of Bilton, where Addison lived for many years. Below Newbold the river tumbles over two waterfalls, runs thence by a line of rush beds to a railway bridge, and so beneath Caldecott’s famous spinney, where Tom Brown, East, and the “Madman” sought the kestrel’s nest. Many Scotch firs mingle with the beeches of the spinney, and just below them the stream divides, enclosing a small island, and recombines to hold a southward course past Holbrook Court.
NEWBOLD UPON AVON
HOLBROOK COURT
Holbrook Court is a gloomy building that looks down its park slope upon a weir, a red-brick mill, and a gloomier farm-house of stone. This farm-house has a history, being all that is left of Lawford Hall, the scene of the once notorious “Laurel-Water Tragedy.”
