Part 3
Christ was the Word who spake it, He took the bread and brake it; And what that Word did make it That I believe, and take it.
This church boasts the tomb of Lilly the astrologer, and monuments by Chantrey and Roubiliac; then near it is to be seen the house of the regicide Bradshaw, now split up into cottages. In the churchyard is buried "bright, broken Maginn," Thackeray's "Captain Shandon," who set so many tables in a roar.
But the literary and historic memories of such places may not much concern those who have come out for a day on the river. Each of these Thames-side towns is a haven for escaped Londoners, often familiar with little more of them than the boat-houses on their banks, and the inns, some of which seem too eager to make their hay while the sun shines. Each has its fleet of boats, moored thickly together in whole rafts, its clubs, and its annual gala day of the local regatta. On a fine Sunday or Saturday afternoon every lock is packed with youth and beauty, set off by gay colours and airy costumes. Every reach within railway ride of London may be found lively with a jumble of craft of all sorts, from Canadian canoes to Venetian gondolas, tiny yachts, skiffs, tubs, outriggers, punts, ferry-boats, eights, fours, "dongolas," "randans," pairs, rowed, poled, tugged, towed, or idly moored, like the big house-boats whose cramped luxury gives a lazy refuge from cares and taxes. Among all these the barges of business move like surly and clumsy tyrants; and water-scorching machines sweep through the fluttered crowd as wolves in a sheepfold. Steamers and motor-launches have replaced the State barges in which Lord Mayors and such-like used to progress in the days when to be a "jolly young waterman" was more of a trade than a pleasure.
Those flights upon the banks of Thames, That so did take Eliza and our James--
were winged by mercenary arms. It seems well that the golden or gilded youth of our generation are more active, taking their amusement _moult tristement_, as might be judged by an unsympathetic foreigner. An English writer has found fault with Thames boats as "built for woman and not for man, for lovely woman to recline, parasol in one hand and tiller ropes in the other, while man--inferior man--pulled and pulled and pulled as an ox yoked to the plough." But that is hardly fair now that girls boyishly take their turn at the oar, even exhibiting the spectacle of whole galleys deftly womanned by crews of water-Amazons. The only right left to man here is the panting and perspiring toil of the tow-path, to which he bends devotedly like "the captives depicted on Egyptian monuments with cords about their necks." Such slavery may well be preferred to the aid of those exorbitant and foul-mouthed hirelings who infest the river banks in search of a job, which to Edwin makes a labour of love, so Angelina be drawn along cool, at ease, grateful, and admiring. With his dynamic energy, contrast the contemplative, perhaps misanthropic, and apparently celibate joys of the angler, throned upon his punt or posted on the bank, as he has been ever since Pope's day--
The patient fisher takes his silent stand, Intent, his angle trembling in his hand: With looks unmoved, he hopes the scaly breed, And eyes the dancing cork, and bending reed.
Below Walton, the Thames winds quietly on between banks that again suggest a quotation from Denham--
No stupendous precipice denies Access, no horror turns away our eyes.
The panorama is one of green meadows, garden grounds, shady islands, cuts and creeks, Sunbury Lock, boat-houses, inns, water-works, racecourse enclosures, and hints of villages lying back from the river; but Hampton Church stands out on the bank; then a string of islets brings us on to the mouth of the Mole opposite Hampton Court. This palace of popular resort, with its galleries, courts, gardens, and park avenues, its barracks, its many houses of entertainment, and its terminus of London tramways, is in Middlesex; but its station is across the bridge in Surrey; and if one wanted matter to fill a few pages, one might fairly include a description of its treasures. But so much has to be said of the Surrey side, that we had better pass on with one look at this monument of old England, touched with graces of continental taste.
The tow-path, that has been in Surrey since we left Weybridge, again crosses to pass with princely breadth under the wall of Hampton Park. But on the Surrey side also, we are not kept far from the river, for, after a diversion through Molesey, the road comes to the bank by the old church of Thames Ditton; then, through the outskirts of Long Ditton, it joins the much-wheeled Ripley road, which in front of Surbiton becomes a waterside esplanade beseeming that most respectable London colony that has the name of being affected by west-end tradesmen and the like "warm" citizens. Such, at least, is the reproach brought against it by satirical scribblers, who perhaps live at Peckham or Camden Town, envious at heart of Surbiton's social amenities as described in the instructive life of "Mr. Bailey Martin." Another novelist suggests how Surbiton wants nothing but a pier to look like a seaside resort, with its parade, bandstand, and so forth, along which, by two miles of houses, we come into the ancient borough of Kingston, that makes a core for so much villadom.
As an independent town, this, with its excrescences, Surbiton, Norbiton, Malden, is second for size in Surrey, overgrown only by Croydon; and Kingston has also a Middlesex Lambeth in its transpontine quarter, Hampton Wick. It is so far the county seat that the Hall of the County Council has been built here; while it no longer shares with Guildford and Croydon the dignity of assize town. There was a time when it might boast of higher rank, for in the tenth century the Saxon kings were crowned at this Rheims or Scone of South England. It seems always to have been a place of importance through its ford, then through a bridge which was long the next one above London Bridge. When a hostile attack on London failed from the Southwark side, the enemy had nothing for it but to march all the way round by Kingston, as Sir Thomas Wyat did to little purpose. In the Civil War a
[Illustration: FROM RICHMOND HILL]
bridge of boats came to be thrown across the river at Putney. The first movement of this war was about Kingston, a place worth seizing as key of the road to Portsmouth, so in turn held by Royalists and Roundheads; and almost the last sharp encounter between the two parties was a running fight that ended in the outskirts of the town. London citizens of that day must have had stirring news, when more than once they heard of hostile forces so near their gates as at Hampton and Hounslow. The wayfarer on Wimbledon Common is still apt to be startled by the sight of train-bands slinking in knots from copse to hollow; but these are only our Boy Scouts practising the devices of modern war; and presently, we know, they will go home in peace to their tea. It was otherwise when Captain Hew-Agag-in-pieces, or the doughty Sir Hudibras, could not take his family on a trip up the river without the risk of falling into the hands of malignant Philistines, its banks a paradise lost to Milton, while perhaps Denham or Herrick might have safely ventured--
With soft-smooth virgins for our chaste disport To Richmond, Kingston, or to Hampton Court.
Near the end of Kingston Bridge, now crossed by a tramway, stands the restored Church, which has the distinction of being one of the largest in Surrey, and contains old monuments, besides a show of modern memorial windows. The chapel where the Saxon kings were crowned has been destroyed; but the rough stone on which they traditionally sat is reverently enclosed in the market-place for all to see but not to touch. Could it speak for itself, this might tell strange tales of forgotten superstition, like that other boulder in Westminster Abbey, uneasy seat of Scottish kings, that must have travelled so far by land and sea since it made Jacob's pillow. By a recently "restored" statue of Queen Anne before the Town Hall, Kingston also shows special devotion to the memory of that truly dead sovereign. Such are "the memorials and the things of fame that do renown this city"--as it might claim to style itself; and the market-place whereabout they stand makes often a lively and picturesque scene, on which the quasi-cockney mingles with the true rustic.
Kingston is a headquarter of Thames boating, and its population must to a considerable extent be made up of such "Jacks" as are the camp-followers of this exercise. It is also fortunate in lying close to three royal parks that have all become practically public pleasure-grounds. The pleasantest way down the river is by the high edge of Richmond Park; but below also one may take the tow-path, now on the Surrey bank; while a middle way is the road passing over Ham Common. The Middlesex bank is almost entirely taken up by private grounds; though at Hampton Wick there is a tea-garden resort reached by a path from the road behind. In the secluded back-water opening here there used to be a capital bathing station, the nearest to London; but this has now been closed by the excessive modesty of suburban senators; and not till the shades of dusk may the youth of Teddington sally forth to make a noisy Arcadia of the tow-path. Teddington lies in Middlesex, between Hampton Wick and Twickenham, where the spread of villadom has not yet wholly overwhelmed market-gardens, like that cultivated lovingly but at a loss by the author of _Lorna Doone_.
At Teddington (Tide-end-town?) is the last rushing weir, and the Thames current is for the last time bridled by a lock, not counting that half-lock at Richmond. Henceforth, without ceasing to be a pleasure-stream, it attends more strictly to business, and its voyagers have to reckon with the tide. Above Teddington, the river is frequented rather by more or less practised oarsmen; but on the Richmond reach we may find a larger proportion of land-lubbers splashing manfully as best they can; and on public holidays, it might be safer not to mingle in the throng of lasses and lads who are trying their prentice hands at aquatic pursuits, prices being then raised as the standard of experience is lowered.
All the building is still on the Middlesex side, where Twickenham has pleasant homes to show, as also celebrated ones like Pope's Villa; but the main part of the town lies hidden away behind Eel Pie Island. The Surrey tow-path is bare, but for Ham House, whose famous avenue, beyond Twickenham Ferry, opens on to the bank, here a broad bowery sward, with room for all the engaged couples of Petersham and Richmond to keep aloof from each other. Eyes less preoccupied will be attracted to the trees and lawns of Orleans House and Marble Hill across the river, then arrested by the noble brow of Richmond Hill that seems to bar our way on.
Richmond, of old known as West Sheen, was once a royal residence, and its Green shows a fragment of the palace in which Elizabeth and other sovereigns died. Most of Richmond's antiquity has disappeared, down to the renowned Cobweb Cellar, swept away two or three years ago, beneath a rebuilt tavern; but much of the place still wears a dignified look of Georgian old fashion, borne out by the narrow, bent main thoroughfare that on a Saturday night will be more crowded than the Strand. The newer streets above are quiet and genteel enough; but all the quarter between the station and the front of busy boat-houses lays itself out for strangers brought by four railway lines from London; and the streets here are thickly set with houses of entertainment of every rank, including confectioners to provide the "maids of honour" cheese-cakes that are at Richmond what whitebait is or was at Greenwich. These two places long made rival goals of London junketings up and down the river; but automobiles now ply farther afield, carrying their best customers past the Richmond hotels, so that the renowned "Star and Garter" had to close its doors, to be reconstructed as a hospital for disabled soldiers.
The great sight here, of course, is Richmond Hill, to which a gradual ascent leads from the bridge, or from the bank above the boat-houses a steeper one up the slope laid out as a beautiful public garden, its highest part a shady terrace, commanding that rich landscape over which gazed Jeanie Deans, in her heart perhaps preferring the view from Arthur's Seat. "A huge sea of verdure, with crossing and intersecting promontories of massive and tufted groves, was tenanted by numberless flocks and herds, which seemed to wander unrestrained and unbounded through the rich pastures. The Thames, here turreted with villas and there garlanded with forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch of the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but accessories." Flocks and herds, indeed, are not so visible in our day; but the hundred barks and skiffs seen by Scott, may appear multiplied by tenfold on the reach of the river extending at our feet.
Passing on before the transformed "Star and Garter," and through the gate of the Park, from this corner of it one has the same outlook--
... Here let us sweep The boundless landscape: now the raptured eye Exulting swift to huge Augusta send, Now to the Sister Hills that skirt her plain, To lofty Harrow now, and now to where Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow.... Heavens! what a goodly prospect spreads around, Of hills and dales, and woods and lawns and spires, And glittering towns, and gilded streams, till all The stretching landscape into smoke decays.
Richmond Park is nearly nine miles in circuit, at its Robin Hood Gate almost adjoining the wilder expanse of Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common. It is a royal demesne, but by degrees, one of them a "village Hampden" lawsuit, it has come to be treated as a public pleasure-ground. Quite recently King Edward crowned former concessions by giving up game-preserving in the many thickets that shade its swards, stocked with herds of not too shy deer. In a central hollow are ponds that serve for skating. Every part is now open except the enclosures of several residences within the park, which are tenanted by royal favour. The White Lodge on the farther side was the youthful home of the Princess of Wales. Pembroke Lodge, near the Richmond Gate, was granted as retreat to the veteran statesman Earl Russell, having originally been built for that Countess of Pembroke young George III. loved in vain. On a mound here Henry VIII. is said to have watched for the rocket from Anne Boleyn's scaffold on Tower Hill, as signal of his being a not disconsolate widower.
On the riverside below Richmond Green, for public recreation is also given up the old Deer Park, over which the Chinese pagoda beacons us towards Kew Gardens. The Observatory here has now, through disturbance caused by the vicinity of electric lines, lost its function of testing delicate instruments. Along the road by the Lion Gate of the Gardens, Richmond and Kew almost run into each other. As usual, it is twice as far by the pleasanter path on the bank, which passes outside the Park and Gardens, with views across the river upon St. Margaret's, then on Isleworth, on the grounds of Sion House, the home of an English Duke, but at Lisbon its keys are or long were kept by the sisterhood banished hence at the Reformation; then on the wharves and slums of Brentford, county town of Middlesex, where the Brent makes shamefaced confluence as a canal. Thus we come to the new Kew Bridge and Kew Green, which still keeps a look of the dignity it wore as a favourite residence of George III.; even in our own day it has housed a branch of the royal family at Cambridge Cottage. The place is a great resort of his present Majesty's subjects, for whose refreshment appear many tea-houses and taverns. The grounds of Kew Palace are now thrown into the gardens, that,
[Illustration: RICHMOND.]
open at all reasonable hours, make such a famous sight. Every Londoner knows the Palm-Houses, the Botanical Houses, the show of aquatic plants, and the gallery of Miss North's paintings from all over the world. But what many a visitor may pass unnoticed is what Richard Jefferies judged the best show of all, the enclosure called the Herbaceous Ground, "a living dictionary of English wildflowers," to which "the meadow and the cornfield, the river, the mountain and the woodland, the sea shore, the very waste place by the roadside, each has sent its peculiar representatives," so as here to present an essence of wild nature, and an epitome of the hills, woodland banks, and hedgerows of Surrey.
Thomson poetically speaks of Richmond as the place where "silver Thames first rural grows"; but in prosaic fact the Surrey bank below Kew may often be found a bushy solitude, sometimes a sloppy one, when overflowed by high tides; and on the other side, the villas of Gunnersbury once passed, the advance of Chiswick is masked by trees and market-gardens as yet occupying a tongue of flat land, round which the river makes a southward bend. The tow-path takes us on beside Mortlake, reached at its "White Hart" haven of London omnibuses, and beneath the railway bridge, so crowded when this is the goal of the University boat-race. Did one care to explore Mortlake, in the Roman Catholic cemetery, behind the station, would be found an extraordinary modern tomb, a huge stone tent decorated with crescents and stars more conspicuous than crosses, beneath which Sir Richard Burton rests after his many travels. In the church is buried Dr. Dee, that "last of the magicians," who was indeed one of the first of our mathematicians. Farther back Richmond Park is gained through the amenities of Sheen, now dwindling before the builder; but there is still a pretty patch of Sheen Common.
The river front of Mortlake almost touches that of Barnes. Here it is the turn of Surrey to throw out a flat promontory of market-gardens, across the neck of which one can make a short-cut to Putney or to Barnes Common. Keeping the bank, one has rather a dull walk round by the ferry to Chiswick Church, then opposite Chiswick Mall and the old-fashioned riverside front of Hammersmith, where the bridge would bring one fairly into London. The London County Council's scheme to run regular steamers so far did not command the success it deserved; but in the fine season ply occasional excursion Argoes, holding on up to Kew or still farther.
The river now becomes imprisoned in water-works, wharves, and piers; and at low tide it reveals unlovely stretches of mud below the scrubby withs that bind this shorn Samson's writhings. Yet still, besides craft of business, it may be found alive with boats, including police-cruisers commissioned against boys surreptitiously bathing from a bit of rubbish-strewn wilderness on the Middlesex bank, that in a few years will be overflowed by the tide of houses creeping up behind. Meanwhile, why not leave those unshamed urchins alone, whose aquatic gambols till lately made a cooling sight from the opposite tow-path? One or two of them were drowned every year, it is said; but the sum of life saved by our grandmotherly councillors must fall far below the amount of health, cleanliness, and cheerfulness stolen on such waste spots; and it might well be considered what will become of this country a generation after its youth has been schooled and policed out of exulting to risk life, limb, and skin.
I forget what last-century autobiographer mentions a party of schoolfellows landing to bathe a little higher up in the grounds of Brandenburgh House, then occupied by the Margravine of Anspach, and being surprised by her unserene Highness in person, who, armed with a riding whip, took the young Adams at sore disadvantage. This vivacious Amazon had been widow of Lord Craven, who built another house, called Craven Cottage, just below the osier-fronted waste at present awaiting reclamation. The Craven Cottage grounds have been fortified and garrisoned by a club that carries on the business of drawing enormous crowds to bet and roar over the performances of professional athletes, their din suggesting another hint as to the welfare of the next generation. But we may take hope to see how manfully the striplings of Putney and Hammersmith ply oar and sculls in what else might be their hours of ease; as everywhere within reach of the capital, that sympathetic visitor, Mr. John Burroughs, could admire "young athletic London, male and female, rushing forth as hungry for the open air and the water as young mountain herds for salt."
Ramblers on the Surrey side get a tantalising glimpse of expensive pastimes, for the tow-path leads them beside the grounds of Barn Elms, home of more than one notability in the last three centuries, now arena of the Ranelagh Club's sports. At the end of this enclosure is bridged what looks like a muddy back-water, but is the mouth of the Beverley Brook, so idyllic as it flows by Wimbledon Common to Roehampton; then beyond we come to the boat clubs and taverns of Putney, facing the grounds of Fulham Palace, now turned into a public park along the river wall.
Putney is a suburb of much respectability, rising on to heights of gentility at the back, and merging with the super-gentility of Roehampton's palatial villas. In future this birthplace of Gibbon may also be known as abode of the poet Swinburne. At present it has an annual hour of clamorous fame as starting-place of the University boat-race. In the past it made an appearance in history as headquarters of Cromwell's army during the autumn of 1647, while negotiations went on with the Parliament at Westminster on one hand, and with the King at Hampton Court on the other. The church, then used as a council hall, has one fine old feature in the chantry of Bishop West; and the way in which it faces the corresponding tower of Fulham has provoked a legend of their having been built by two giant sisters, who, as in the case of St. Catherine's and St. Martha's Chapel near Guildford, are credited with using one hammer between them, which they flung backwards and forwards across the river.