THE THAMES AT STREATLEY.
[CHAPTER IV.]
STREATLEY TO HENLEY.
Streatley, the Artists’ Mecca—Goring versus Streatley—Goring from the Toll-gate—Streatley Mill—Weirs and Backwaters—Antiquity of Streatley and Goring—Goring Church—Common Wood—Basildon Ferry and Hart’s Wood—A Thames Osier Farm—Whitchurch Lock—Pangbourne—Hardwicke House and Mapledurham—Caversham Bridge—Reading and its Abbey—A Divergence to the Kennet, with calls at Marlborough, Hungerford, and Newbury—The Charms of Sonning—“The Loddon slow, with verdant alders crowned”—St. Patrick’s Stream—Shiplake Weir—Wargrave and Bolney Court—Park Place—Marsh Lock—Remarks on Thames Angling—The Approach to Henley.
“THE village swarms with geniuses and their æsthetically dressed wives,” was the touching lament written in “Our River” by Mr. Leslie, R.A., with regard to the Berkshire village of Streatley. The sentence is, in some senses, both a description of the place as you may see it at almost any time during the summer season, and an indication of the reason of its popularity amongst artists. No doubt it is the fashion in the sketching months for mere idlers at the palette to saunter and pose up and down the village street, in company with the strangely-dressed women-kind who some years ago provoked an outburst from a Royal Academician. But it is also, and has long been, the resort of genuine workers with the brush, who make Streatley their temporary home because, in the long white bridge, shady backwaters, lively weir, busy mills, woods, and hills, they find materials worthy of their ambition and their care. In the Thames Valley this portion of the river may be pronounced the Mecca of landscape painters. Streatley, however, is the fashion, because it is honestly deserving of such a distinction. Unlike many popular stations, it does not owe repute to one distinguishing attraction, but to many advantages which, in combination, raise the village to a high position upon the catalogue of places to be enjoyed, talked about, sketched in water colours, immortalised in oil, and haunted by the inoffensive people referred to in the first line of this chapter.
Streatley receives more assistance from Goring, however, than is generally acknowledged in set phrase. The Oxfordshire village on the left bank is, indeed, as by common consent, ignored in conversation, the word Streatley doing duty for both sides. The two communities are separated, not only by the river, which, after the straight length above, widens out into unusual breadth, but by the toll-bridge, which fixes a coin of the realm as an additional barrier between the few hundreds of persons who constitute the respective populations of Goring and Streatley. The villages possess certain characteristics in common. To each is allotted a mill. That of Goring is the more modern, and probably best furnished with appliances for contributing to the trade and commerce of the country, and its rapid little stream is marked “private” to warn off the ubiquitous angler who may look with longing eye upon the shoals of barbel which congregate in its deep strong current. The mill at Streatley is quite another affair—time-stained, decidedly picturesque in its antique pattern of architecture, and maintaining to this day a simple half door, suggestive of—
“The sleepy pool above the dam,
The pool beneath it never still,