Cookham

I shall concern myself here with the great event merely as it appeared to myself, a government servant of the second grade, and in its relations to my own wife, my home, and my children.

On the morning of twenty-first August, in the memorable year of the calamity, I happened to be at Cookham, a pleasant and pretty village which then occupied the western bank of the Thames just below the spot where the lookout tower of the Earthquake and Eruption Department now dominates the whole wide plain of the glassy rock desert.

In place of the black lake of basalt, which young people see nowadays winding its solid bays in and out among the grassy downs, most men still living can well remember a gracious and smiling valley threaded in the midst of a beautiful river.

I had cycled down from London the evening before, thus forestalling my holiday, and had spent the night at a tolerable inn in the village.

Thousands of fathers and mothers were anxious that morning about similar trifles, whose pettiness was brought home to them with an appalling shock in the all-embracing horror of that day's calamity.

About ten o'clock I inflated my tires and got under way.

I meant to ride toward Oxford by a leisurely and circuitous route, along the windings of the river, past Marlow and Henley, and so I began by crossing Cookham Bridge, a wooden or iron structure, I scarcely remember which.

It spanned the Thames close by the village.

I shall concern myself here with the great event merely as it appeared to myself, a government servant of the second grade, and in its relations to my own wife, my home, and my children.

On the morning of 21st August, in the memorable year of the calamity, I happened to be at Cookham, a pleasant and pretty village which then occupied the western bank of the Thames just below the spot where the lookout tower of the earthquake and eruption department now dominates the whole wide plain of the glassy rock desert.

In place of the black plate of basalt which young people see nowadays winding its solid bays in and out among the grassy downs, most men still living can well remember a gracious and smiling valley threaded in the midst of a beautiful river.

I had cycled down from London the evening before, thus forestalling my holiday, and had spent the night at a tolerable inn in the village.

Thousands of fathers and mothers were anxious that morning about similar trifles, whose pettiness was brought home to them with an appalling shock in the all-embracing horror of that day's calamity.

About ten o'clock I inflated my tires and got under way.

I meant to ride toward Oxford by a leisurely and circuitous route, along the windings of the river, past Marlow and Henley, and so I began by crossing Cookham Bridge, a wooden or iron structure, I scarcely remember which.

It spanned the Thames close by the village.

We have time for one more first play.

Hi, I'm Juliet Brown and I'm a singer-songwriter based in Cookham in Berkshire.

I've been writing songs for as long as I can remember, which is largely due to my mum, who's a professional pianist, and she filled my childhood with music.

I've always loved playing around with different genres and instruments, from picking up the ukulele to steel pan drums.

Shops and windows run into rows all but touching one another, or what interval there might have been betwixt is, by the care of architects, in some manner harassed and beset.

Add to this the black garments of the crowd, which make every man conspicuous in the light, and the abrupt and minute patches of white exceedingly pure white of sharp shapes and angles scattered throughout the drifting and intercrossing multitude the white of a footman's shirt the white of the collars of innumerable men the white letters of advertisements the white of the label at the back of cabs and hansoms and many and many other little square triangle and line of white are visible to the utmost distances they have an emphasis that is never softened nothing except snow could be whiter and nothing perhaps makes so salient a part of the enormous fragmentariness of the street view there might be as much detail in some other scenes but that they have not these shreds of patches of black and white of all landscapes for instance that of the small culture of italy and of parts of the east is perhaps the most minute a little rill of vine is crossed by a short patch of corn and among all the sprinkled foliage of fruit trees the olive with the smallest leaf of all is the most constant there is no liberty and your sight is taken in a net of green crops it is trapped on the ground by tendrils of cucumber and cannot rise because of maize and beans nor can it fly for branches no tract of grass is wide enough to make a space of quiet green and the eyes are kept busy by delicate things in perpetual interchange it is not the multitude of a wide clover-field where one stroke of the breeze turns a million little faces of flowers eastwards for there is hardly any repetition but an unending obstruction nor can you see anything that is quite simple unless pushing aside a branch of fig-tree with this hand and a bough of peach with that you lift your eyes to the indescribable simplicity of the distance of mountains Or there is infinite detail in a Thames-side bank of woods between Maidenhead and Cookham, when all the leaves are out, and all still young.

The characteristic local green of beech, alder, poplar, and ash, all still unlike each other and undarkened, every separately faced with color and light, and backed by mystery and shadow.

But yet neither this, nor anything else in nature, shows the innumerable minuteness of London in the sun.