GENERAL VIEW OF MARLOW
Down by the water side the whole aspect of Marlow is bright and open. It must be entirely different from the older Marlow, when the wooden bridge—which crossed the river lower down than the present one—and the old church were still in existence. At present, in the summer all is gay and clean looking. The suspension bridge, which is the best of the modern sort of bridges from an artist's point of view, is rather low over the water; standing on it one can look right down on to the green lawn of the Compleat Angler Hotel, and see the many-coloured muslins, the white flannels, the gay cushions, the awnings, and the sunshades, as if they were all a gigantic flower bed. The red hotel itself is from this point caught against the background of the Quarry Woods. Opposite to it is the very green strip of the churchyard coming right down to the edge of the river, and only separated from it by a low stone parapet: weeping willows fling their green spray out over the water, and behind is the church. It is undeniable that the materials used in the church are distinctly ugly, but the steeple goes some way towards redeeming it, and if it can be seen silhouetted, so that the materials are lost in dimness, and only the outlines are apparent, it becomes at once more than passable. Spires are not common in Thames-side churches, which are far more often capped by rather low battlemented towers.
One of the glories of Marlow is its weir. It runs in a great semicircular sweep below the hotel; and, from a terrace there, one can look right down into the swirling water; or by coming up the backwater below in a boat, one can land at the hotel without facing the lock at all, a great advantage. The weir is in several planes, and the extended flood makes a perpetual wash, rising to a roar in winter, and dwindling to the merest tinkle in summer. Marlow is distinctly a summer place: its openness, its many trees, its wide reach of water, and the splash of the weir are all summer accompaniments; and in winter, when the wind sweeps down from the south, the unprotected side, and the water hisses and bubbles in its struggle to get down to lower levels, it is weird and melancholy.
QUARRY WOODS
The lock channel is fringed by several islets, and there is the usual mill, and a pretty wooden foot-bridge. Several of the most graceful of our trees, the dainty silver birch, stand near the mill. On some of the lower islands osiers grow, and there are one or two neat boat-houses. Wide meadows fringe the river below; and eastward—the bridge lies due north and south—are the famous Quarry Woods, held by many to be superior even to the Clieveden Woods. In some points they are, and not the least of these is that they are traversed by several roads, while those at Clieveden are kept strictly private. The woods are composed almost wholly of beech, the tree that loves the chalk, here so abundant, and only a few patches of larch may be seen in clumps among them. Beginning at the water's edge, rising above the curious white castle with harled walls called Quarry Hill, now to let, the woods continue in a straight line inland, getting further and further from the river as they go. It is difficult to say at what season of the year they are the most beautiful. In early spring, before the buds burst, if looked at in the mass, there is to be seen a kind of purple bloom made by the myriad buds, which is not found in any mixed woods. In spring the buds burst out into that tender indescribable green, like nothing else in the world, and the new-born leaves, suspended from their dark and almost invisible twigs, are for all the world like fronds of giant maidenhair. In the autumn the whole ground is one blaze of rich burnt-sienna, a carpet of leaves laid so industriously that not a speck of the bare brown earth appears; and from this rise the stems smooth and straight, lichen-covered every one, and thus transformed to brilliant emerald. Where the light strikes through the rapidly thinning branches, they have the very glow of the stones themselves. It is an enchanted wood, and at any moment a wizard might peep out from behind one of those magic trunks.
