CHAPTER XI
UP AND DOWN THE AVON
Evesham.
Stratford-upon-Avon, August 22, 1889.—The river life of Stratford is one of the chief delights of this delightful town. The Avon, according to law, is navigable from its mouth, at Tewkesbury, where it empties into the Severn, as far upward as Warwick; but according to fact it is passable only to the resolute navigator who can surmount obstacles. From Tewkesbury up to Evesham there is plain sailing. Above Evesham there are occasional barriers. At Stratford there is an abrupt pause at Lucy's mill, and your boat must be taken ashore, dragged a little way over the meadow, and launched again. Lucy's mill is just south of the Shakespeare church, and from this point up to Clopton's bridge the river is broad. Here the boat-races are rowed, almost every year. Here the stream ripples against the pleasure-ground called the Bancroft, skirts the gardens of the Shakespeare Memorial, glides past the lovely lawns of Avonbank,—once the home of that noble public benefactor and fine Shakespearean scholar, Charles Edward Flower,—and breaks upon the retaining wall of the churchyard, crowned[173] with the high and thick-leaved elms that nod and whisper over Shakespeare's dust. The town lies on the left or west bank of the Avon, as you ascend the river looking northward. On the right or east bank there is a wide stretch of meadow. To float along here in the gloaming, when the bats are winging their "cloistered flight," when great flocks of starlings are flying rapidly over, when "the crow makes wing to the rooky wood," when the water is as smooth as a mirror of burnished steel, and equally the grasses and flowers upon the banks and the stately trees and the gray, solemn, and beautiful church are reflected deep in the lucid stream, is an experience of thoughtful pleasure that sinks deep into the heart and will never be forgotten. You do not know Stratford till you know the Avon.
