moment now may give us moreThan fifty years of reason;
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.”
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.
Twyford the Great is not a large place, its population is barely a thousand; there is a new town and an old. The new town is like all mushroom villages within a hundred miles of the city – a mere tasteless conglomeration of bricks and mortar, with only two pretty houses in it.
But old Twyford is quaint and pretty from end to end – from the lofty poplars that bound my orchard out Ruscombe way, to the drowsy and romantic old mill on the Loddon. This last is worth a visit; only, if you lean over the bridge and look at this old mill for any length of time, you are bound to fall asleep, and I am bound to tell you so.
Twyford in summer, as well as the neighbourhood all round, may be seen at their best. The inhabitants of Twyford are at their best any day. I have strong reasons for believing the village must have been founded by some philosophical old Dutchman, or Rip van Winkle himself. And the peace of Penn seems to rest for ever around it.
The amusements in my wee village are few, rural, and primitive. Amateur cricket in summer, amateur concerts in winter, sum up the enjoyments of “Twyford at home.”
But the most delightful time of all in our Twyford is the season from March to June. Concerts are over, cricket has not commenced, and therefore dulness and apathy might now be reasonably supposed to prevail among us. Perhaps; but the lover of nature is now quite as happy as the birds and the early flowers and budding trees.
So many lightning-tipped pens have written about spring and its enjoyments, that I shall not here attempt to sing its praises. I may be excused for saying, however, that while the inhabitants of towns and cities like, as a rule, to have their spring all ready-made when they pay a visit to rural districts, the orchards all in full bloom, the may all out, and the nightingales turned down, we simple-minded “country bodies” delight in watching and witnessing the gradual transformation from leafless tree to glittering leaf; from bare brown fields, o’erswept by stormy winds, to daisy-covered leas, cowslip meads, and primrose banks.
To me – and, no doubt, to many – there is far more of beauty in a half-blown floweret of the field, say the mountain-daisy, Burns’s “Wee modest crimson-tippèd flower,” than there is in a garden favourite full outspread – take the staring midday tulip as a familiar example.
Down here in bird-haunted Berkshire spring begins in February even, whatever it may do in Yorkshire. Now noisy rooks begin to build; the mavis or thrush, perched high on some swaying tree, sings loud and sweet of joys in store; on sunny days I’ve known an invalid-looking hedgehog or dormouse wriggle out from his hibernal grave, look hungrily around, sun himself, shiver, and wriggle back again. But the sly snake and the sage old toad stick close to bank until the days are longer. Even thus early an occasional butterfly may be seen afloat, looking in vain for flowers. He cannot be happy; like the poet, he is born before his time.
But soon after big humble bees appear about gardens and woodland paths, flying drowsily and heavily. They are prospecting; they get into all kinds of holes, and I may say all kinds of scrapes, often tumbling helplessly on their backs, and getting very angry when you go to their assistance with a straw.
Did it ever strike the reader that those same great velvety bees are republicans in their way of thinking? It is true. One humble bee is just as good as another. And very polite they are to each other too, and never unsheath their stings to fight without good occasion. Just one example: Last summer, in my woodland study, I noticed one large bee enter a crimson foxglove bell. Presently round came another – not of the same clan, for he wore a white-striped tartan, the first being a Gordon, and wearing the yellow band. The newcomer was just about to enter the bell where bee Number 1 was. Bee Number 1 simply lifted his forearm and waved the intruder back. “I really beg pardon,” said bee Number 2. “I didn’t know there was any one inside.” And away he flew.
In February, down with us, the hazel-trees are tasselled over with catkins. Every one notices those, but few observe the tiny flower that grows on the twig near those drooping catkins. Only a tuft of green with a crimson tip, but inexpressibly beautiful. At the same time you will find the wild willow-bushes all covered with little flossy white cocoons.
There will be also a blaze of furze blossom here and there in the copse, but hardly a bud yet upon the hedgerows, while the great forest trees are still soundly wrapped in their winter sleep.
But high up on yonder swaying bough the thrush keeps on singing. Spring and joy are coming soon.
“It is the cuckoo that tells us spring is coming,” some one may say. The man who first promulgated that notion ought to have been tried by court-martial. The cuckoo never comes till leaves are out and flowers in bloom. Nor the noisy wryneck nor melodious nightingale. These are merely actors and musicians, and they never put in an appearance till the carpet has been spread on the stage, and the scenery is perfect.
A cherry orchard is lovely indeed when its trees are snowed over with the blossoms that cluster around the twigs like swarms of bees, their dazzling whiteness relieved by just the faintest tinge of green. An apple orchard is also beautiful in the sunshine of a spring morning when the bloom is expanded. I grant that, but to me it is far more to be admired when the flowers are just opening and the carmine tint is on them.
Probably the pink or white
