HENLEY, FROM THE TOWING-PATH.
Oxford road—the special pride of Henley—has no rest from the stream of passing vehicles, and its trees are powdered with their dust; the streets, the meadows, the bridge, every “coign of vantage,” are crowded; the usual itinerant accompaniments of an outdoor festivity are there in abundance, and the whole place is noisy with passing vehicles, shouting throngs, vendors of “c’rect cards,” and other wares. The course is rather less than a mile and a half in length, from an “ait” below Fawley Court, which bears the name of Regatta Island, to the bridge. So the town itself becomes the theatre in which the interest of the aquatic drama is concentrated. The banks may be said to blossom with artificial colours, for as it is summer-time the “bright day brings forth,” not the serpent, but the daughters of Eve in their smartest dresses and their most brilliant of parasols. Beauty and fashion are there, for a day or two at Henley make a pleasant change in the London season, when its gaieties begin to pall a little, and the streets of the metropolis are at a July temperature. Here may be seen subtler harmonies and the delicate blendings of tints that indicate the handiwork of some mistress of the art of dress; there the more glaring colours and gaudier contrasts that mark the efforts of the shorter purse and inferior taste; but even to these distance lends enchantment, and all unite to form a variegated border to the river and make a flower-bed of the meadows. The men, too, don brighter colours than is their wont, for boating uniforms are in the ascendant. The river is alive with craft of all kinds—skiffs and dingies, tubs and boats of every degree—and the officials find it no easy task to clear the course for each race. The interest is not, as at Putney, concentrated on a single contest; the “events” are many, the chief, perhaps, being the Ladies’ Plate, the Grand Challenge Cup, and the Diamond Sculls. These also are not settled in a single race; usually there are two or three heats, in order to reduce the number of competitors, before the final struggle. The interest of the Henley contests also affects a wider circle than the inter-University race. The colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, which have taken the lead on the Isis or the Cam in the annual races, send their representative “eights” or “fours,” the best oarsmen of the London clubs put in an appearance, and one or two of our public schools now commonly send a boat, and not seldom carry off a trophy from Henley. Thus these races have a special interest for fathers and mothers, for “sisters, cousins, and aunts;” and a visit to Henley is not without its attraction for those by whom the good things of this life are held in esteem, for luncheons and various comforts for the inner man—and woman—are by no means forgotten.
REGATTA ISLAND.
We may recall to mind in passing that the course at Henley was the scene of the first aquatic contest between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It took place at the beginning of the long vacation, on the 10th of June, 1829, late in the afternoon. Contrary to expectation Oxford was victorious. The race of course was rowed in the old-fashioned heavy boats, without outriggers, which were then termed “very handsome, and wrought in a superior style of workmanship.... The Oxford crew appeared in their blue-check dress, the Cambridge in white with pink waistbands. Some members of the crews on both sides afterwards became men of mark; four of them have risen to high positions in the Church. In the Oxford boat rowed W. R. Fremantle, now Dean of Ripon, and Christopher Wordsworth, the venerable Bishop of St. Andrews. In the Cambridge boat rowed Merivale, the historian of Rome, who is now Dean of Ely, and George Augustus Selwyn, the first missionary bishop of New Zealand, who after years of arduous labour in that distant field of Christian enterprise was transferred to the bishopric of Lichfield. There he laboured earnestly at work not less in amount, and more exhausting in nature, than that of the colonial mission-field, till he was called away to his rest.” On the Berkshire side of the bridge at Henley a road climbs the steep slope, which may well be followed by any who desire to obtain a wider view of the neighbourhood—stately trees, grassy slopes, now and again a villa with its garden, brighten the nearer distance; below lie the valley and the town. In one place the bank by the road-side is steep and broken, the red soil contrasting pleasantly with the rich green of the foliage. There is a walk also at the base of the hill, which should not be forgotten, where the path leads along a level strip of meadow, dappled in the spring season with innumerable flowers, to the little church of Remenham, with its remnants of Norman work, its exceptionally pretty lych-gate, and its carved porch. Its situation, with the river on one side and the wooded slopes on the other, is not the least picturesque in the Valley of the Thames.
On the meadows below Henley, and on the left bank of the Thames, is Fawley Court, a mansion built by Sir Christopher Wren, but subsequently enlarged. The grounds extend from road to river, and their fine aged trees enhance greatly the beauty of this reach of the Thames. The present house occupies the site of an old manor-house, which was plundered by the Royalist troops at the outbreak of the Civil War. The owner, Bulstrode Whitelock, has left on record a pitiful account of the wanton ravages committed by the troopers. They consumed, or wasted, a great store of corn and hay; they tore up or burnt his books and papers, many of them of great value; they broke up his trunks and chests, stole whatever they could transport of his household goods, and destroyed the rest; they carried off his horses and his hounds, killed or let loose his deer, and broke down his park palings—“in a word, they did all the mischief and spoil that malice and enmity could provoke barbarian mercenaries to commit.” We have heard often of the devastation wrought by the Roundheads; it is well to remember that the Cavaliers were by no means guiltless. Remenham village, with its little church, already mentioned, nestles below the slope opposite to Fawley Court, and lower down, on the Buckinghamshire side (for we have now crossed the county boundary), comes Greenland House, opposite to where the Thames makes its sharpest bend. This fared even worse in those unquiet times. About two years later than the incident just related it stood a siege of six months, when it was held by the Royalists against their opponents, and did not capitulate till it was almost knocked to pieces. Some traces of the works raised during the siege still remain, and when the house was enlarged, about a quarter of a century since, quite a crop of cannon-balls was dug up.