We stopped at Wallingford for our mid-day meal; of course, all signs of squalor and poverty had disappeared from the streets of the ancient town, and many ugly houses had been taken down and many pretty new ones built, but I thought it curious, that the town still looked like the old place I remembered so well; for indeed it looked like that ought to have looked.
At dinner we fell in with an old, but very bright and intelligent man, who seemed in a country way to be another edition of old Hammond. He had an extraordinary detailed3 knowledge of the ancient history of the country-side from the time of Alfred to the days of the Parliamentary Wars, many events of which, as you may know, were enacted4 round about Wallingford. But, what was more interesting to us, he had detailed record of the period of the change to the present state of things, and told us a great deal about it, and especially of that exodus5 of the people from the town to the country, and the gradual recovery by the town-bred people on one side, and the country-bred people on the other, of those arts of life which they had each lost; which loss, as he told us, had at one time gone so far that not only was it impossible to find a carpenter or a smith in a village or small country town, but that people in such places had even forgotten how to bake bread, and that at Wallingford, for instance, the bread came down with the newspapers by an early train from London, worked in some way, the explanation of which I could not understand. He told us also that the townspeople who came into the country used to pick up the agricultural arts by carefully watching the way in which the machines worked, gathering6 an idea of handicraft from machinery7; because at that time almost everything in and about the fields was done by elaborate machines used quite unintelligently by the labourers. On the other hand, the old men amongst the labourers managed to teach the younger ones gradually a little artizanship, such as the use of the saw and the plane, the work of the smithy, and so forth8; for once more, by that time it was as much as — or rather, more than — a man could do to fix an ash pole to a rake by handiwork; so that it would take a machine worth a thousand pounds, a group of workmen, and half a day’s travelling, to do five shillings’ worth of work. He showed us, among other things, an account of a certain village council who were working hard at all this business; and the record of their intense earnestness in getting to the bottom of some matter which in time past would have been thought quite trivial, as, for example, the due proportions of alkali and oil for soap-making for the village wash, or the exact heat of the water into which a leg of mutton should be plunged9 for boiling — all this joined to the utter absence of anything like party feeling, which even in a village assembly would certainly have made its appearance in an earlier epoch10, was very amusing, and at the same time instructive.
This old man, whose name was Henry Morsom, took us, after our meal and a rest, into a biggish hall which contained a large collection of articles of manufacture and art from the last days of the machine period to that day; and he went over them with us, and explained them with great care. They also were very interesting, showing the transition from the makeshift work of the machines (which was at about its worst a little after the Civil War before told of) into the first years of the new handicraft period. Of course, there was much overlapping11 of the periods: and at first the new handwork came in very slowly.
“You must remember,” said the old antiquary, “that the handicraft was not the result of what used to be called material necessity: on the contrary, by that time the machines had been so much improved that almost all necessary work might have been done by them: and indeed many people at that time, and before it, used to think that machinery would entirely12 supersede13 handicraft; which certainly, on the face of it, seemed more than likely. But there was another opinion, far less logical, prevalent amongst the rich people before the days of freedom, which did not die out at once after that epoch had begun. This opinion, which from all I can learn seemed as natural then, as it seems absurd now, was, that while the ordinary daily work of the world would be done entirely by automatic machinery, the energies of the more intelligent part of mankind would be set free to follow the higher forms of the arts, as well as science and the study of history. It was strange, was it not, that they should thus ignore that aspiration14 after complete equality which we now recognise as the bond of all happy human society?”
I did not answer, but thought the more. Dick looked thoughtful, and said:
“Strange, neighbour? Well, I don’t know. I have often heard my old kinsman15 say the one aim of all people before our time was to avoid work, or at least they thought it was; so of course the work which their daily life forced them to do, seemed more like work than that which they seemed to choose for themselves.”
“True enough,” said Morsom. “Anyhow, they soon began to find out their mistake, and that only slaves and slaveholders could live solely16 by setting machines going.”
Clara broke in here, flushing a little as she spoke17: “Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living? — a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate18 and inanimate —‘nature,’ as people used to call it — as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them.”
“Surely,” said Morsom; “and they were puzzled as to what to do, till they found the feeling against a mechanical life, which had begun before the Great Change amongst people who had leisure to think of such things, was spreading insensibly; till at last under the guise19 of pleasure that was not supposed to be work, work that was pleasure began to push out the mechanical toil20, which they had once hoped at the best to reduce to narrow limits indeed, but never to get rid of; and which, moreover, they found they could not limit as they had hoped to do.”
“When did this new revolution gather head?” said I.
“In the half-century that followed the Great Change,” said Morsom, “it began to be noteworthy; machine after machine was quietly dropped under the excuse that the machines could not produce works of art, and that works of art were more and more called for. Look here,” he said, “here are some of the works of that time — rough and unskilful in handiwork, but solid and showing some sense of pleasure in the making.”
“They are very curious,” said I, taking up a piece of pottery21 from amongst the specimens22 which the antiquary was showing us; “not a bit like the work of either savages23 or barbarians24, and yet with what would once have been called a hatred25 of civilisation26 impressed upon them.”
“Yes,” said Morsom, “you must not look for delicacy27 there: in that period you could only have got that from a man who was practically a slave. But now, you see,” said he, leading me on a little, “we have learned the trick of handicraft, and have added the utmost refinement28 of workmanship to the freedom of fancy and imagination.”
I looked, and wondered indeed at the deftness29 and abundance of beauty of the work of men who had at last learned to accept life itself as a pleasure, and the satisfaction of the common needs of mankind and the preparation for them, as work fit for the best of the race. I mused31 silently; but at last I said —
“What is to come after this?”
The old man laughed. “I don’t know,” said he; “we will meet it when it comes.”
“Meanwhile,” quoth Dick, “we have got to meet the rest of our day’s journey; so out into the street and down to the strand32! Will you come a turn with us, neighbour? Our friend is greedy of your stories.”
“I will go as far as Oxford33 with you,” said he; “I want a book or two out of the Bodleian Library. I suppose you will sleep in the old city?”
“No,” said Dick, “we are going higher up; the hay is waiting us there, you know.”
Morsom nodded, and we all went into the street together, and got into the boat a little above the town bridge. But just as Dick was getting the sculls into the rowlocks, the bows of another boat came thrusting through the low arch. Even at first sight it was a gay little craft indeed — bright green, and painted over with elegantly drawn34 flowers. As it cleared the arch, a figure as bright and gay-clad as the boat rose up in it; a slim girl dressed in light blue silk that fluttered in the draughty wind of the bridge. I thought I knew the figure, and sure enough, as she turned her head to us, and showed her beautiful face, I saw with joy that it was none other than the fairy godmother from the abundant garden on Runnymede — Ellen, to wit.
We all stopped to receive her. Dick rose in the boat and cried out a genial35 good morrow; I tried to be as genial as Dick, but failed; Clara waved a delicate hand to her; and Morsom nodded and looked on with interest. As to Ellen, the beautiful brown of her face was deepened by a flush, as she brought the gunwale of her boat alongside ours, and said:
“You see, neighbours, I had some doubt if you would all three come back past Runnymede, or if you did, whether you would stop there; and besides, I am not sure whether we — my father and I— shall not be away in a week or two, for he wants to see a brother of his in the north country, and I should not like him to go without me. So I thought I might never see you again, and that seemed uncomfortable to me, and — and so I came after you.”
“Well,” said Dick, “I am sure we are all very glad of that; although you may be sure that as for Clara and me, we should have made a point of coming to see you, and of coming the second time, if we had found you away the first. But, dear neighbour, there you are alone in the boat, and you have been sculling pretty hard I should think, and might find a little quiet sitting pleasant; so we had better part our company into two.”
“Yes,” said Ellen, “I thought you would do that, so I have brought a rudder for my boat: will you help me to ship it, please?”
And she went aft in her boat and pushed along our side till she had brought the stern close to Dick’s hand. He knelt down in our boat and she in hers, and the usual fumbling36 took place over hanging the rudder on its hooks; for, as you may imagine, no change had taken place in the arrangement of such an unimportant matter as the rudder of a pleasure-boat. As the two beautiful young faces bent37 over the rudder, they seemed to me to be very close together, and though it only lasted a moment, a sort of pang38 shot through me as I looked on. Clara sat in her place and did not look round, but presently she said, with just the least stiffness in her tone:
“How shall we divide? Won’t you go into Ellen’s boat, Dick, since, without offence to our guest, you are the better sculler?”
Dick stood up and laid his hand on her shoulder, and said: “No, no; let Guest try what he can do — he ought to be getting into training now. Besides, we are in no hurry: we are not going far above Oxford; and even if we are benighted39, we shall have the moon, which will give us nothing worse of a night than a greyer day.”
“Besides,” said I, “I may manage to do a little more with my sculling than merely keeping the boat from drifting down stream.”
They all laughed at this, as if it had a been very good joke; and I thought that Ellen’s laugh, even amongst the others, was one of the pleasantest sounds I had ever heard.
To be short, I got into the new-come boat, not a little elated, and taking the sculls, set to work to show off a little. For — must I say it? — I felt as if even that happy world were made the happier for my being so near this strange girl; although I must say that of all the persons I had seen in that world renewed, she was the most unfamiliar41 to me, the most unlike what I could have thought of. Clara, for instance, beautiful and bright as she was, was not unlike a VERY pleasant and unaffected young lady; and the other girls also seemed nothing more than specimens of very much improved types which I had known in other times. But this girl was not only beautiful with a beauty quite different from that of “a young lady,” but was in all ways so strangely interesting; so that I kept wondering what she would say or do next to surprise and please me. Not, indeed, that there was anything startling in what she actually said or did; but it was all done in a new way, and always with that indefinable interest and pleasure of life, which I had noticed more or less in everybody, but which in her was more marked and more charming than in anyone else that I had seen.
We were soon under way and going at a fair pace through the beautiful reaches of the river, between Bensington and Dorchester. It was now about the middle of the afternoon, warm rather than hot, and quite windless; the clouds high up and light, pearly white, and gleaming, softened42 the sun’s burning, but did not hide the pale blue in most places, though they seemed to give it height and consistency43; the sky, in short, looked really like a vault44, as poets have sometimes called it, and not like mere40 limitless air, but a vault so vast and full of light that it did not in any way oppress the spirits. It was the sort of afternoon that Tennyson must have been thinking about, when he said of the Lotos-Eaters’ land that it was a land where it was always afternoon.
Ellen leaned back in the stern and seemed to enjoy herself thoroughly45. I could see that she was really looking at things and let nothing escape her, and as I watched her, an uncomfortable feeling that she had been a little touched by love of the deft30, ready, and handsome Dick, and that she had been constrained46 to follow us because of it, faded out of my mind; since if it had been so, she surely could not have been so excitedly pleased, even with the beautiful scenes we were passing through. For some time she did not say much, but at last, as we had passed under Shillingford Bridge (new built, but somewhat on its old lines), she bade me hold the boat while she had a good look at the landscape through the graceful47 arch. Then she turned about to me and said:
“I do not know whether to be sorry or glad that this is the first time that I have been in these reaches. It is true that it is a great pleasure to see all this for the first time; but if I had had a year or two of memory of it, how sweetly it would all have mingled48 with my life, waking or dreaming! I am so glad Dick has been pulling slowly, so as to linger out the time here. How do you feel about your first visit to these waters?”
I do not suppose she meant a trap for me, but anyhow I fell into it, and said: “My first visit! It is not my first visit by many a time. I know these reaches well; indeed, I may say that I know every yard of the Thames from Hammersmith to Cricklade.”
I saw the complications that might follow, as her eyes fixed49 mine with a curious look in them, that I had seen before at Runnymede, when I had said something which made it difficult for others to understand my present position amongst these people. I reddened, and said, in order to cover my mistake: “I wonder you have never been up so high as this, since you live on the Thames, and moreover row so well that it would be no great labour to you. Let alone,” quoth I, insinuatingly50, “that anybody would be glad to row you.”
She laughed, clearly not at my compliment (as I am sure she need not have done, since it was a very commonplace fact), but at something which was stirring in her mind; and she still looked at me kindly51, but with the above-said keen look in her eyes, and then she said:
“Well, perhaps it is strange, though I have a good deal to do at home, what with looking after my father, and dealing52 with two or three young men who have taken a special liking53 to me, and all of whom I cannot please at once. But you, dear neighbour; it seems to me stranger that you should know the upper river, than that I should not know it; for, as I understand, you have only been in England a few days. But perhaps you mean that you have read about it in books, and seen pictures of it? — though that does not come to much, either.”
“Truly,” said I. “Besides, I have not read any books about the Thames: it was one of the minor54 stupidities of our time that no one thought fit to write a decent book about what may fairly be called our only English river.”
The words were no sooner out of my mouth than I saw that I had made another mistake; and I felt really annoyed with myself, as I did not want to go into a long explanation just then, or begin another series of Odyssean55 lies. Somehow, Ellen seemed to see this, and she took no advantage of my slip; her piercing look changed into one of mere frank kindness, and she said:
“Well, anyhow I am glad that I am travelling these waters with you, since you know our river so well, and I know little of it past Pangbourne, for you can tell me all I want to know about it.” She paused a minute, and then said: “Yet you must understand that the part I do know, I know as thoroughly as you do. I should be sorry for you to think that I am careless of a thing so beautiful and interesting as the Thames.”
She said this quite earnestly, and with an air of affectionate appeal to me which pleased me very much; but I could see that she was only keeping her doubts about me for another time.
Presently we came to Day’s Lock, where Dick and his two sitters had waited for us. He would have me go ashore, as if to show me something which I had never seen before; and nothing loth I followed him, Ellen by my side, to the well-remembered Dykes56, and the long church beyond them, which was still used for various purposes by the good folk of Dorchester: where, by the way, the village guest-house still had the sign of the Fleur-de-luce which it used to bear in the days when hospitality had to be bought and sold. This time, however, I made no sign of all this being familiar to me: though as we sat for a while on the mound57 of the Dykes looking up at Sinodun and its clear-cut trench58, and its sister mamelon of Whittenham, I felt somewhat uncomfortable under Ellen’s serious attentive59 look, which almost drew from me the cry, “How little anything is changed here!”
We stopped again at Abingdon, which, like Wallingford, was in a way both old and new to me, since it had been lifted out of its nineteenth-century degradation60, and otherwise was as little altered as might be.
Sunset was in the sky as we skirted Oxford by Oseney; we stopped a minute or two hard by the ancient castle to put Henry Morsom ashore. It was a matter of course that so far as they could be seen from the river, I missed none of the towers and spires61 of that once don-beridden city; but the meadows all round, which, when I had last passed through them, were getting daily more and more squalid, more and more impressed with the seal of the “stir and intellectual life of the nineteenth century,” were no longer intellectual, but had once again become as beautiful as they should be, and the little hill of Hinksey, with two or three very pretty stone houses new-grown on it (I use the word advisedly; for they seemed to belong to it) looked down happily on the full streams and waving grass, grey now, but for the sunset, with its fast-ripening seeds.
The railway having disappeared, and therewith the various level bridges over the streams of Thames, we were soon through Medley62 Lock and in the wide water that washes Port Meadow, with its numerous population of geese nowise diminished; and I thought with interest how its name and use had survived from the older imperfect communal63 period, through the time of the confused struggle and tyranny of the rights of property, into the present rest and happiness of complete Communism.
I was taken ashore again at Godstow, to see the remains64 of the old nunnery, pretty nearly in the same condition as I had remembered them; and from the high bridge over the cut close by, I could see, even in the twilight65, how beautiful the little village with its grey stone houses had become; for we had now come into the stone-country, in which every house must be either built, walls and roof, of grey stone or be a blot66 on the landscape.
We still rowed on after this, Ellen taking the sculls in my boat; we passed a weir67 a little higher up, and about three miles beyond it came by moonlight again to a little town, where we slept at a house thinly inhabited, as its folk were mostly tented in the hay-fields.
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1
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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enacted
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| 制定（法律），通过（法案）( enact的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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exodus
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| v.大批离去，成群外出 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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overlapping
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| adj./n.交迭（的） | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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supersede
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| v.替代；充任 | |
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aspiration
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| n.志向，志趣抱负；渴望；(语)送气音；吸出 | |
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kinsman
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| n.男亲属 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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animate
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| v.赋于生命，鼓励；adj.有生命的，有生气的 | |
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guise
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| n.外表，伪装的姿态 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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pottery
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| n.陶器，陶器场 | |
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specimens
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| n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人 | |
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savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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barbarians
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| n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 )；外国人；粗野的人；无教养的人 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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deftness
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deft
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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fumbling
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| n. 摸索,漏接 v. 摸索,摸弄,笨拙的处理 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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benighted
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| adj.蒙昧的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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consistency
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| n.一贯性，前后一致，稳定性；(液体的)浓度 | |
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vault
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| n.拱形圆顶，地窖，地下室 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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constrained
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| adj.束缚的,节制的 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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insinuatingly
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51
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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54
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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55
odyssean
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| adj.（荷马史诗）（式）的，（似）奥德修斯的，（似）奥德修斯历程的 | |
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56
dykes
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| abbr.diagonal wire cutters 斜线切割机n.堤( dyke的名词复数 )；坝；堰；沟 | |
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57
mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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58
trench
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| n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕 | |
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59
attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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60
degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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61
spires
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| n.（教堂的） 塔尖，尖顶( spire的名词复数 ) | |
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62
medley
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| n.混合 | |
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63
communal
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| adj.公有的，公共的，公社的，公社制的 | |
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64
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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65
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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66
blot
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| vt.弄脏（用吸墨纸）吸干；n.污点，污渍 | |
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67
weir
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| n.堰堤，拦河坝 | |
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