Henley-on-Thames

“ There are finer and more gorgeous sights in the world than the Henley Regatta, but I doubt if there is any sight more exquisitely pretty, more charming to the mind and the eye! Ostensibly the people collect to see some races on the Thames at Henley, but the thing has grown into a national institution, and the people come more to enjoy a holiday than to see the races. ”

“ Maidenhead follows, for centuries, a sort of parallel course to the development of Henley.
Recently, of course, it has very largely increased in population, and in this it is an example in a minor degree of what Reading and Oxford are in a major degree—that is, of the changes which the railway has made in the Thames Valley. But until the effect of the railway began to be felt Maidenhead was the younger and parallel town to Henley. ”

“ Nor is this difficult to understand, for the River here is extraordinarily beautiful—a place to [280] linger in and dream away the hours. Henley, which commences the stretch, lies just within the borders of Oxfordshire, and here is celebrated what is, next to the Boatrace at Putney, the most famous of all Thames festivals—for Henley Regatta draws rowing men (and women) from all parts, and crews come from both the Old World and the New to compete in the open races. ”

“ Later authorities say that they referred to an inn at Henley-in-Arden. Perhaps an automobilist, even, would find the latter more to his liking. The writer does not know.
To Reading from Henley is perhaps a dozen miles, by a pretty river road which shows all the characteristic loveliness of the Thames valley about which poets have raved. By Shiplake Mill, Sonning, and Caversham Bridge one finally enters Reading. Reading is famous for the remains of an old abbey and for its biscuits, but neither at the time had any attractions for us. ”

“ Not that I am an anchorite; no—God forbid; if the present moment commends itself, I welcome it; I see no wisdom in schooling one's self to bear hardships that may not arise. Yes, I have heard of Henley—the Thames in July—the brilliant company—"
"It is awfully kind of you," said Vincent, rising, and preparing to go. "I am sure you won't regret it; it is the very prettiest thing in England. And to-morrow night I will let you know all the arrangements."
Full of joy was the heart of this young man as he strode away down to Grosvenor Place ”

“ Henley, Wallingford, Abingdon, and the rest are so thoroughly in accordance with the spirit of the river, so charming in themselves, and above all so comparatively limited in extent, they add to rather than detract from the Thames scenery. Reading, in spite of its undoubted features of [Pg 38] interest, in spite of its ancient history, is still a manufacturing town, and as such spreads around an atmosphere which is uncongenial to true Thames lovers, who regard it as a blot. ”

“ To one who has not seen Boulter’s Lock on a bright Sunday, or who has never witnessed a Henley Regatta, that most brilliant of all athletic spectacles, it would be difficult to explain how thoroughly the Englishman enjoys and how constantly he uses the opportunity which Father Thames affords for a short outing. Nor is the Thames the only stream thus available. Small watercourses of the same sort are to be found all over the country, and afford delightful trips for those who are willing to travel in so leisurely a fashion. ”

“ Then the woods might well be the enchanted woods of a child’s fairy tale, so glorious is their aspect. Between Marlow and Henley, as we have seen, most of the ancient historical associations cluster; within that short space are Bisham, Lady Place, Medmenham, and Greenlands, and the reach of the river is quite pretty enough to tempt people without the added glamour.
COOKHAM CHURCH
Medmenham Abbey is now a carefully composed ruin, with a most attractive-looking cloister close to the river. ”

“ The pilgrim who rambles as far as Wootton-Wawen will surely stroll onward to Henley-in-Arden. The whole of that region was originally covered by the Forest of Arden [42] —the woods that Shakespeare had in mind when he was writing As You Like It, a comedy whereof the atmosphere, foliage, flowers, scenery, and spirit are purely those of his native Warwickshire. Henley, if the observer may judge by the numerous inns that fringe its long, straggling, picturesque street, must once have been a favourite halting-place for the coaches that plied between London and Birmingham. ”

“ Henley’s healthy, if sometimes misapplied, confidence in the myriad suggestions of life gives him his charm. He is made to sing along the highways, not to sit down and write. If he took himself more seriously, his work would become trivial. ”

“ As somebody says, truth never goes without a scratched face.
But, like all men hated by the many, Henley inspired devotion in the few who, in his case, were not only devoted themselves but eager to make their friends devoted too. When he got back to London one of his Young Men, whom I do not see why I should not call Charles Whibley, insisted that J. and I must meet Henley first in the right way, that all our future relations with him depended upon it, and that this right way would be for him to ask Henley and ourselves, and nobody else, to dinner in his rooms. ”

“ In London, on his journeys to and fro, they surrounded him as a bodyguard. If on those old Thursday nights, his was the loudest voice, theirs played up to it untiringly. There were no half measures about them. As warriors in the cause of art and literature, they reserved nothing from their devotion to their leader, they exhausted every possibility of that form of flattery usually considered the greatest. They fought Henley's battles with hardly less valour, hardly milder roaring. ”

“ True human beings—what I call
Human—the deuce a cipher more.
Stevenson may even then have learned it from Henley. But however that may have been, "bleat" and "human" were the two words ever recurring like a refrain in the columns of the National Observer, ever the beginning and end [Pg 137] of argument in the heated atmosphere of Buckingham Street.
In my memory, every Thursday night stands for a battle. Henley was then always at his best. ”

“ Death stilled voices that had been loudest. The National Observer passed out of Henley's hands and Henley himself into the Valley of the Shadow. Bob Stevenson said his last good-night to us. Beardsley, Harland, Arthur Tomson, George Steevens, Phil May, Furse, Iwan-Müller—one after another of our old friends, one after another of those old masters of talk set out on the journey into the Great Silence. It is hard to believe they have gone. ”

“ It required a big man like Henley to confess that he was envious, and perhaps there was good reason why he should be, for considering the way their careers began, and Henley’s magnificent intellect and gift of expression, one would not have prophesied in the beginning that Henley would only be appreciated by the critical few, and Stevenson by all the world, gentle and simple. ”

“ Henley seems to me to have abdicated half his power. He is a roi en exil who has thrown away some of the strings of his lute; a poet who has forgotten the fairest part of his kingdom.
However, all work criticizes itself. Here is one of Mr. Henley’s inspired jottings. ”

“ I cannot think of Henley as he was in his prime, to borrow a word that was a favourite with him, without hearing his laugh and seeing his face illuminated by it. Rarely has a man so hampered by his body kept his spirit so gay. ”

“ Cust, to do him justice, agreed with Fleet Street, and, knowing that he was without experience, had the sense to appeal for help to those with it. By good luck he went to Henley, [Pg 154] who was not free to do much for the paper save give it his advice, offer it those of his Young Men whom he could spare, and take under his wing the new Young Men it invented for itself. When new enthusiasts fell into Henley's train, it was never long before they followed him to Buckingham Street on Thursday nights. ”

“ Rarely a week passed that James G. Legge was not with us, then deep in his work at the Home Office but full of joy in everything that was most joyful in the Nineties—its fights, its books, its prints, its posters. And I might name many besides, some forgotten, some dead, some seen no [Pg 160] more by me, life being often more cruel than death in the separations and divisions it makes. But two voices above the others are almost as persistent in my ears as Henley's—the voices of Bob Stevenson and Henry Harland. ”

“ Henley’s troubles and infirmities were growing upon him. He, too, an ambitious, formidable man, who showed alike in his practice and in his theory, in his lack of sympathy for Rossetti and Landor, for instance, that he never understood how small a fragment of our own nature can be brought to perfect expression, nor that even but with great toil, in a much divided civilization; though, doubtless, if our own Phase be right, a fragment may be an image of the whole, the moon’s still scarce crumbled image, as it were, in a glass of wine. ”

“ Nicholson, when painting him, was a good deal preoccupied with the big soft hat and blue shirt and flowing tie, feeling their picturesque value, and turned him into a brigand, a land pirate, to the joy of Henley, whom I always suspected of feeling this value himself and dressing as he did for the sake of picturesqueness. Simon Bussy seemed to see, not Henley, but Stevenson's caricature—the John Silver of Treasure Island, the cripple with the [Pg 128] face as big as a ham. Even Whistler failed and never printed more than one or two proofs of the lithograph for which Henley sat. ”

“ The story he and his friend were fashioning fastened upon him like some strange, determined shadow from the realms of real life, gripped him more and more closely, held him for long spells of time in a new and desolate world. For the book so far was a deepening tragedy, and although, at times, Henley strove to resist the paramount influence which the genius of Trenchard began to exercise over him, he found himself comparatively impotent, unable to shed gleams of popular light upon the darkness of the pages. ”

“ Trenchard, on the other hand, wrote a good deal of very condensed fiction, and generally placed it; contributed brilliant fugitive articles to various papers and magazines, and was generally spoken of by the inner circle of the craft as “a rising man,” and a man to be afraid of. Henley was full of common-sense, only moderately introspective, facile, and vivacious. He might be trusted to tincture a book with the popular element, and yet not to spoil it; for his literary sense was keen, despite his jocular leaning toward the new humour. ”

“ When Henley founded his weekly newspaper, first The Scots, afterwards The National Observer, this young man wrote articles and reviews notorious for savage wit; and years afterwards when The National Observer was dead, Henley dying, and our cavern of outlaws empty, I met him in Paris very sad and I think very poor. “Nobody will employ me now,” he said. “Your master is gone,” I answered, “and you are like the spear in an old Irish story that had to be kept dipped in poppy-juice that it might not go about killing people on its own account.” ”

“ The time was ripe for work in the highways and byways—the sowing of seed in out-of-the-way places, and the preacher was to "take the road" with one or two good singers, a cornet-player, and a cottage-organ, and give people in isolated mountain-nooks a chance to hear the Word and profit thereby for their eternal weal.
He had just seated himself and was mopping his perspiring brow when Henley rose and stood hemming and hawing and clearing his throat. ”

“ He who divines it will have gone far to solving the tedious problem of sex.
Of Henley the talker, at least, one portrait remains. He was the original of Stevenson's Burly—the talker who would roar you down, bury his face in his hands, undergo passions of revolt and agony, letting loose a spring torrent of words. There was always a wild flood and storm of talk wherever Henley might be. He and his Young Men were the most clamorous group of the clamorous Nineties, though curiously their clamour seems faint in the ears of the present authorities on that noisy period. ”

“ Nor did she guess that Al Gepper stood at the darkened window of his room, watching her.
Penny drove as fast as she could to the Henley home in the southern section of Riverview. Lights blazed from the downstairs windows.
Abandoning her car in the driveway, she rang the doorbell. After a long wait, a maid appeared.
[176]
“Is Mr. Henley here?” Penny asked breathlessly. “Or Mrs. Henley? It’s most important that I talk with them at once.”
“Mrs. Henley has been at the seashore for a month,” the maid replied in an agitated voice. “Mr. Henley is somewhere downtown. ”

“ Mr Henley may not have an equal affection for the looking-glass, but he is a very poor and unimaginative reader who does not see him gloating over the god-like proportions of the shadow he sends sprawling over his own page. I make free to say that a more self-conscious person than Mr Henley does not live. ‘The best and most interesting part of Stevenson’s life will never get written—even by me,’ says Mr Henley. ”

“ It was this faculty of entering into the heart, the spirit of life and all things in it that made him the inspiring companion and friend he was, that widened his sympathies until he, whose intolerance was a byword with his contemporaries, showed himself tolerant of everything save sham and incompetence. The men who would tell you in their day, who will tell you now, of the great debt they owe to Henley, are men of the most varied interests, whose style and subject both might have been expected to prove a great gulf to separate them. ”