Various

“ When the tide is running out it races through the arches of London Bridge, and swirls round the buttresses, and eddies to right and to left in such manner that the Thames waterman, having remembrance of many disasters brought about by absence of knowledge or want of care, amazes his passenger by his singular method of progression, rowing round a clump of barges, getting under the hull of a steamer, shooting across the river with the current, creeping slowly along by the wharves, and otherwise manœuvring as if he were a general preparing to take a town. ”

“ I think that I never was upon the Thames without seeing some specimen, or specimens, of female loveliness and grace. Pretty girls belong as naturally as the swans do to our Thames. It is a singular fact that natural objects of great charm allure to themselves suitable women. Art does not, as a rule, draw to itself much feminine youth and charm; but the Thames emphatically does so. Look at that boat which we have just passed. What loveliness and love in those two young, graceful girls who are being rowed, while one of them—the one in the boating hat—steers. ”

“ In quiet ponds in Holland this harvest of eels is raised, and the vessels go to this point in all weathers. If they sailed past Gravesend, not one fish of their cargo would survive; so they remain at the bend where the water is salt, and the Thames flows through and through their holds until the last consignment has gone to Billingsgate. Then the quaint vessels warp themselves out of the haven. With their slow, blundering appearance they always seem as if they must come to mischief, yet somehow or other the quiet, phlegmatic Dutchmen make their queer craft do exactly what they wish. ”

“ Fine aged trees add greatly to the beauty of the place. The village lies back from the river at the foot of the bluffs, and is reached by a lane, bordered by some of the old-fashioned free-growing hedges which, though not much favoured by modern farmers, are such a delight to the wayfarer. Of the many sequestered spots in the Valley of the Thames, Medmenham village is by no means the least attractive. A wooded slope rises steeply at its back, the little church is half buried among trees, its cottage gardens are bright with flowers, and more than one of the buildings is ancient and picturesque. ”

“ The yachts that come lazily down, with their huge spinnakers spread like a swan’s wing before cat’s-paws that merely tremble over the surface of the Thames, immediately show signs that the captains are exercising caution when they cross that breezy band. You instinctively expect to see the spinnakers taken in, and to see the swift cutters lie hard over to the mainsail and foresail they sweep round the buoy. Once you have sailed to the eastward, you feel as though your craft were suspended between sea and land. On one side you have Southend, glittering in colour ”

“ A short distance down stream is Wallingford Lock, which is a lock only in name. Here the towing-path deserts the Oxford for the Berkshire shore, and the long and lovely reach which ends at Moulsford Bridge begins. This spot marks the commencement of the stretch of meadow, hills, and woodland, which makes the delight of Goring and Pangbourne. The Oxfordshire bank is not merely studded, but is thickly overhung, with trees and undergrowth, beneath whose shade many a boat is moored for those aquatic flirtations which are among the most enchanting of summer diversions. ”

“ MOUTH OF THE THAMES—LOW WATER.
Amid this unceasing panorama, every separate picture of which tells some fresh and strange story of far-off regions, of grimy labour, of storm and peril, it is easy for men who are content with a day of small things to sit for hours and hours, perhaps only exchanging monosyllabic comments on each new-comer. The most glorious sight of the many that may be seen at the Nore comes when some mighty sailing-ship looms to the northward of the marshes, and swims grandly on in the wake of her puffing, fussy little tug. ”

“ One hears the grating of cranes and the shouts of men; the peculiar “dumb-barges” of the Thames cluster round the hulls of screw-colliers from Newcastle, and receive from them their separate loads of coal; and excitable little steamers are running in and out as if they had lost their way among the crowded shipping. In mid-stream the traffic is almost as busy and confusing as that of a London street. Vessels are coming up with the tide; barges are slowly floating onward, their brown sails spread, tacking to the wind, their decks washed now and again by some arrowy wave from a paddle-steamer. ”

“ Like magic the vanguard of the sea gains the limit, and soon the wide sweep from Southend to Canvey becomes a shallow dimpled lake. The sense of depth is wanting, but if you only look at the surface, then you may take for granted that you are on the border of a very noble bay. As the tide gains, the little yachts rise from their bed of mud and curtsy at their moorings, the fishing-boats glide in, and the curve of the beach is full of animation. We know nothing of the bathing, but we should incline to think that there may possibly be a good deal of suspended matter in the water. ”

“ A day’s angling upon the bosom, or a long stroll by the banks of Thames, has many charms upon a sober October day; and a late autumnal sunset, with its glow fading from across the water and deepening into grey behind the bare poles of the trees, is a thing all of loveliness. Such a sunset, with the soft mist which clouds the banks directly afterwards, is well seen along this reach between Kingston and Teddington, where the thickly-wooded shores shut in the mist, and where the night seems to issue from the weird recesses of the woodland. ”

“ There is an indescribably soothing influence exercised by a river in the soft mood which characterises the Thames throughout. How pleasant it is to be simply moving with the current, which does so much and is heard so little. Loud, even, by comparison with the murmur of the waters, is the sighing of the breezes amongst the shock heads of the willows, and the silver shiver of the poplars. Under the spell of this influence the prosaic features of a reach like that between Hart’s Weir and Radcot [Pg 18] serve as a foil for the more lovely objects. ”

“ The Hobys rest in the parish church. This is beautifully situated close to the riverside. Grand old trees cast their shadows on its graveyard and overhang the walk by the brink of the Thames. The grass-grown plot studded with graves is almost merged with the trim garden of the rectory, the flowers in which brighten the view and pleasantly vary the greens of the foliage and of the grassy meadows. These, too, are bright enough in spring-time, when they are dappled with its golden flowers, before the taller herbage of summer has begun to wave in the soft wind. ”

“ The Thames is here full of interest and of crowding associations. Over the water, behind the great, grim warehouses, slopes downward into Bermondsey that Tooley Street which the three tailors—“we, the people of England”—have made famous throughout the world. From amid grimy roofs and grey-brown walls rises the tower of St. Olave’s Church, half-buried and lost amid a London of which its builders never dreamed. Down here, in narrow street and dim entry, the bewildered stranger begins to feel that, after all, man is too small for the planet on which he lives. ”

“ Gone are the pure peace, the cool calm, the tranquil seclusion which—say twenty years ago—rendered it the most charming haunt of the lover of Nature, of the poet, too much in populous city pent, who sought an alterative of mental repose in most lovely and most quiet scenery. An aged ghost, restlessly revisiting the cari luoghi, must often find a change, great and sad, in the old places in which life was lived in love and joy; and he who knew the tranquil Thames in the old time, long ago, must find, in its brawling loudness of to-day, a change which renders sad the heart. ”

“ Turning aside from the woods of Bisham and sweeping away yet farther into the broad valley plain, the stream of the Thames brings us to the quiet market-town of Great Marlow. A suspension bridge crosses the river, and the gardens and houses on either side afford many scenes of quiet and homelike beauty. Just below it are a weir and a mill, not without a certain picturesqueness; and from a distance the spire of the church, rising from among groups of trees, enhances the attraction of the scene. ”

“ Everything is very still and soft and shadowy. It is such a scene as seems appropriate to happy dreams. In another hour or two the river will be awake, the twitter of birds flitting across the waters will be drowned in the shouting of labourers and the shrieking of cranes; the stream, its brief glory departed, will be churned up by paddle-wheel and screw; the swarthy steam-colliers will come, hard and clear, out of the soft haze, and the Thames will become a workaday river again, wonderful still, but, after such a vision, too grimly prosaic and real. ”

“ From the bridge itself there is a pleasant view up and down the river over what our grandfathers would have called a “fine champaign country,” flat and pastoral on the Oxford shore, but swelling into bold wooded undulations on the opposite bank—such a stretch of varied scenery as most becomingly wears the sober darkling tints of autumn. When the wind swirls the brown sapless leaves into the turbid river, and the bare stubbles echo to the crack of the breechloader, Nature hereabouts has that distinct autumnal charm which is never more delightful than in a sylvan and pastoral landscape. ”

“ The pollution of the great rivers of the world seems to be one of the ultimate aims of civilisation. Is the Scheldt pure—the weird mysterious Scheldt of the “Flying Dutchman”—the storied Rhine, the classic Tiber, the “blue” Danube? Its immense navigation and the multitudes on its banks put the Thames into worse case than them all; but we trust the time is coming when we shall be more mindful of Nature’s lovely heritage, and that if we may never again see salmon taken at London Bridge, neither shall we see banks of festering mud on the very limits of the tide. ”

“ If on some dark and foggy night he makes a mistake, as some great ship gropes her way down the misty reach, it matters little to him; for even if he cuts down the ship, and drowns the whole crew, he can make himself perfectly easy. His money is settled on his wife, and the cleverest lawyer in the world could not wring anything in the way of composition out of him. The watermen still ply in their flitting wherries, but the glory of their trade is departed. Long ago the tilt-boats left for London Bridge with every tide bearing their loads of passengers. ”

“ Overshadowed by trees, whose branches intertwine, is a pretty red-brick boat-house, into which as we pass disappears a gaily-freighted boat, seeming to pass from brilliant sunshine and rippling river into the dark recesses of some dusky cavern. Then the woodland opens out, the scenery becomes park-like, and through the clumps of oak which stud the foreground we get glimpses of Howberry Park, a more than usually handsome Elizabethan house, the successor of a hardly more picturesque Jacobean building destroyed a century ago by the flames which await every country-house, be it soon or be it late. ”

“ The eye wanders with delighted satisfaction from the merry streams to the reedy eyots, to the grand trees of the one side and the osiers and green meadows of the other, while weirs and backwaters play and plash throughout the livelong day. Above the lock, the Thames, after broadening for the express purpose, throws an arm each to Goring and Streatley, and the Goring weir, within the distance of half a mile, is the primary cause of several of those sequestered backwaters which add so many potent and diverse charms to the Thames. ”

“ Above London Bridge, even when the wind is blowing, the waves are small and broken, like those of a mountain lake; in the Pool the water surges and heaves in broad masses, the light seems to deal with it more nobly, and the Thames assumes such majesty as becomes a stream which flows through the grandest city, and bears so great a portion of the commerce, of the world. ”

“ The Albert Dock itself is a long, straight expanse of two miles of water, lined on either side by great ocean steamers lying stem to stern. It is always resounding with the “Yo, heave oh!” of sailors, the shouts of bargemen, the cries of dock labourers, the screaming and panting of steam-cranes, the exclamations of bewildered passengers on the look-out for the vessel which is to bear them over seas. Up the River Thames every year there makes its way a vast fleet of 6,000 steamers and 5,000 sailing vessels, with an aggregate of 6,000,000 tons burden. ”

“ Shepperton Lock and Ferry are both picturesque in themselves, as well as being foregrounds of scenery that is charming to the eye nurtured by art. Truly, landscape-painting has done noble service in fostering the love of nature. Though real beauty must be above the skill of man to imitate, it is a curious truth that no age in which that skill has not been exercised has ever left any written records of a feeling for the grandeur of mountains, or the simple loveliness of woods, fields, and brooks. ”

“ Between the trees a little sloe bush keeps sturdy foothold. You may mark, moreover, a few straggling briars, bits of silver-weed, a root or two of the meadow cranesbill, a clump of poverty-stricken meadow-sweet, some fool’s parsley, wild strawberry plants, and a good deal of bold and always flourishing dandelion. This is the environment of the true source of the great River Thames. We are at Seven Springs.
Hence multitudinous initials are rudely carved upon the old trees and on the stone walls; hence strangers, during summer, drive hither and pay homage. ”

“ The docks are two, joined by a bridge, and a tonnage of more than 1,000,000, “gross register,” passes in and out annually. Ready access to the railways is to be found at Millwall, but many of the vessels unload into dumb-barges, which swarm all over the Millwall waters, one man on board each barge, propelling his craft with a pole, and seeming to take his labour like a light recreation, and as if there were not the slightest need for hurry in all the world. These dumb-barges, sluggish and unwieldy, it is the common habit to denounce as one of the nuisances of the Thames. ”

“ When one recollects the unsightly mud-banks that used to stretch along the shores of the Thames in this part of its course—the grim, dilapidated buildings that approached the water’s edge—the general appearance of ruin—the shiftless, disreputable air of the whole locality, save where some great building, such as Somerset House, broke the dull uniformity of dirt, decay, and neglect—it is impossible to be too grateful for what we now possess. ”

“ The clouds, alternately deep blue and flaky-white, seem to cast their moving reflections upon the crest of the hills, for the gilded sunshine melts with delicate gradations into soft, shimmering shadow. Half a mile or so below Cleeve Lock the stream divides, the cut to the left going to Goring Lock and the main channel to Streatley. From the point of divergence to Streatley and Goring Bridge is but a brief pull, and few pilgrims of the Thames will desire to push on without halting for a while at this pretty village. ”

“ Like a pretty woman, the fair Thames should never have its surface serenity disfigured by passionate turbulence or wrinkled by debasing anger. A rough, cruel wind disturbs the characteristics, and distorts the appearance of the pure silver stream. The gentle, peaceful river should ever be smiling and be calm. There is less objection to the sullen grandeur of a heavy storm, dark with thunder, squally with rain, while a gust of fierce wind sweeps beneath the sombre cloud-heaps, and lashes up the troubled water. Yet the Thames should preserve a chaste and delicate quiet. ”

“ As in most seafaring towns, there is one long, cramped street, in which the houses seem to elbow each other, running, a little back from the river, almost from end to end! Far as it is removed from the sea, there is a fine salt-water savour about Gravesend, and it has also the recommendation of being situated in a pleasant country, for, after ascending its steep streets and threading here and there a leafy lane, there bursts upon the sight a glorious stretch of agricultural land, beautifully uneven, with hills of gentle slope, and occasional patches of woodland and garden and copse. ”

“ The Tower is the most historic building which the world still looks upon—the very kernel of England’s history, even as the Chapter House of Westminster is the birthplace of her liberties; in the darkness and silence of its dungeons was matured that intolerance of despotism, that resolve for freedom which began early to mould the modern England; it is a fortress of unending tragedies. Yet Hampton Court, which is newer than either and less historic than either, enjoys a popularity and exercises a charm far beyond that of the two feudal fortresses. ”

“ On the shining surface of the bright, calm water float lovely lilies, white or yellow, which are connected by long, wavy stems with roots which hold firmly to the ground at the very bottom of the river. We pass the turbulent mill-stream, and the foam-fretted weir; we see picturesque eel-bucks and shady backwaters. We wind and curve with the ever wayward flood, and we find but few stretches which fail of beauty or are wanting in peace. The Thames is the chosen haunt, too, of pleasant painters and of pretty women ”

“ Katharine’s Docks, which lie just below the Tower, hemmed in by what was once fashionable London, now fashionable no more, but famous the world over as the accustomed haunt of the seaman on shore. Before docks were constructed along Thames-side, vessels were unloaded into barges and wherries, and river-robbery was a thriving trade. Numbers of men lived, and grew rich, on what they had contrived to steal from cargoes that were waiting to be discharged at the wharves about London Bridge. ”

“ But on the whole the interior of Bisham Church will not detain the visitor for long; he will care rather to linger in the churchyard and its neighbourhood. It is pleasant to pass up and down by the riverside under the shadow of the trees, to gaze upon the noble sweep of the Thames, and over its fertile valley plain, to seek some quiet spot which commands a view of the grey walls of Bisham Priory and the beautiful trees in its park. ”

“ The ivy-mantled tower of Cookham begins to show in front, as we approach one of the prettiest spots on the Thames. If it be summer-time, there is evidence that this opinion is held by many. There is no lack of boats on the river; here is a house-boat moored by the shore; in yonder meadow some small white tents proclaim that two or three parties are “camping out”—all being direct indications that the neighbourhood of Cookham has many admirers. Tent life may be all very well in fine weather, but its charms on a rainy day must be more than dubious. ”

“ The reach immediately above Pangbourne, which is one of the very lovely stations of the Thames, is straight and uninteresting. The cut on the Whitchurch shore makes an abrupt curve to the lock, and the breadth of the river above the wooden toll-bridge, own cousin to that at Streatley, and the two islands side by side near the lock, produce a vivacious backwater, and a fine weir-pool, twenty-five feet deep, abounding in holes, eddies, and scours intimately known to London anglers, to whom Pangbourne is as much the object of worship as Streatley is the haven of desire to the artists. ”

“ For all practical purposes a Gravesend wherry will see you safely to the mouth of the river, and beyond the Nore; while the average Thames “hooker,” or “bowler” boat, as it is called, will stand up well to any weather that she is likely to encounter.
Take an ordinary wherry, and an hour’s sail from Gravesend brings you into a foreign colony. Clustered thick in the sheltered haven of the river lies a fleet of vessels, strange in build, startling in colour, outlandish in rig. Their bulging bows are like the breasts of some Titanic women. ”