Jesse Cliffe

Jesse Cliffe, by Mary Russell
Mitford

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Title: Jesse Cliffe
Author: Mary Russell Mitford
Release Date: October 2, 2007 [EBook #22839]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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CLIFFE ***

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JESSE CLIFFE
By Mary Russell Mitford
Living as we do in the midst of rivers, water in all its forms, except

indeed that of the trackless and mighty ocean, is familiar to our little
inland county. The slow majestic Thames, the swift and wandering
Kennett, the clear and brimming Loddon, all lend life and verdure to
our rich and fertile valleys. Of the great river of England--whose course
from its earliest source, near Cirencester, to where it rolls calm, equable,
and full, through the magnificent bridges of our splendid metropolis,
giving and reflecting beauty,* presents so grand an image of power in
repose--it is not now my purpose to speak; nor am I about to expatiate
on that still nearer and dearer stream, the pellucid Loddon,--although to
be rowed by one dear and near friend up those transparent and
meandering waters, from where they sweep at their extremest breadth
under the lime-crowned terraces of the Old Park at Aberleigh, to the
pastoral meadows of Sandford, through which the narrowed current
wanders so brightly--now impeded by beds of white water-lilies, or
feathery-blossomed bulrushes, or golden flags--now overhung by
thickets of the rich wayfaring tree, with its wealth of glorious berries,
redder and more transparent than rubies--now spanned from side to side
by the fantastic branches of some aged oak;--although to be rowed
along that clear stream, has long been amongst the choicest of my
summer pleasures, so exquisite is the scenery, so perfect and so
unbroken the solitude. Even the shy and foreign-looking kingfisher,
most gorgeous of English birds, who, like the wild Indian retiring
before the foot of man, has nearly deserted our populous and cultivated
country, knows and loves the lovely valley of the Loddon.
* There is nothing finer in London than the view from Waterloo-bridge
on a July evening, whether coloured by the gorgeous hues of the setting
sun reflected on the water in tenfold glory, or illuminated by a thousand
twinkling lights from lamps, and boats, and houses, mingling with the
mild beams of the rising moon. The calm and glassy river, gay with
unnumbered vessels; the magnificent buildings which line its shores;
the combination of all that is loveliest in art or in nature, with all that is
most animating in motion and in life, produce a picture gratifying alike
to the eye and to the heart--and the more exhilarating, or rather perhaps
the more soothing, because, for London, so singularly peaceful and
quiet. It is like some gorgeous town in fairyland, astir with busy and
happy creatures, the hum of whose voices comes floating from the craft

upon the river, or the quays by the water side. Life is there, and sound
and motion; but blessedly free from the jostling of the streets, the
rattling of the pavement, the crowd, the confusion, the tumult, and the
din of the work-a-day world. There is nothing in the great city like the
scene from Waterloo bridge at sunset. I see it in my mind's eye at this
instant.
It is not, however, of the Loddon that I am now to speak. The scene of
my little story belongs to a spot quite as solitary, but far less beautiful,
on the banks of the Kennett, which, a few miles before its junction with
the Thames, passes through a tract of wild, marshy
country--water-meadows at once drained and fertilised by artificial
irrigation, and totally unmixed with arable land; so that the fields being
for the most part too wet to admit the feeding of cattle, divided by deep
ditches, undotted by timber, unchequered by cottages, and untraversed
by roads, convey in their monotonous expanse (except perhaps at the
gay season of haymaking) a feeling of dreariness and desolation,
singularly contrasted with the picturesque and varied scenery, rich,
glowing, sunny, bland, of the equally solitary Loddon meadows.
A large portion of these English prairies, comprising a farm called the
Moors, was, at the time of which I write, in the occupation of a wealthy
yeoman named John Cobbam, who, the absentee tenant of an absentee
landlord, resided upon a small property of his own about two miles
distant, leaving the large deserted house, and dilapidated outbuildings,
to sink into gradual decay. Barns half