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.