Walter Higgins

“ The seven miles between Marlow and Maidenhead contain the most glorious scenery in the whole valley, for the River here for a considerable distance flows between gently rising hills whose slopes are richly wooded, the trees in many places coming right down to the water’s edge. Alike in spring, when the fresh young green is spreading over the hillsides, and in autumn, when the woods are afire with every tint of gold and brown, the Cliveden Woods and the Quarry Woods of Marlow, with their mirrored reflections in the placid waters below, are indescribably beautiful. ”

“ Windsor Castle, seen from the River at Clewer as we make our way downstream, provides us with one of the most magnificent views in the whole valley. Standing there, high on its solitary chalk hill, with the glowing red roofs of the town beneath and the rich green of the numerous trees clustering all round its base, the whole bathed in summer sunshine, it is a superb illustration of what a castle should be—ever-present, magnificent, defiant. ”

“ To-day, when we stand upon Waterloo Bridge and let our gaze rest upon the Embankment, as it sweeps round in the large arc of a circle from Blackfriars past Charing Cross to Westminster, it is hard indeed to picture the time when these massive buildings—hotels, public buildings, suites of offices, etc.—were not there, when the green grass grew right down to the water’s edge on the left strand or bank of the River, when a walk from the one city to the other was a walk through country lanes and fields. ”

“ To spend a morning on the River with one of them, as he goes his round of inspection of the various vessels berthed out in the stream, is a revelation. To visit first this ship and then the other; to see the amazing variety of the cargoes, the number of different nationalities represented, both in ships and men; to come into close touch with that strange and little-understood section of the community, the lightermen, whose work is the loading of the barges that cluster so thickly round the great hulls—is to move in a world of dreams. ”

“ New College; and so on, college after college, until now, as we wander about the streets of this charming old city, it seems almost as if every other building is a college. And magnificent buildings they are too, with their glorious towers and gateways, their beautiful stained-glass windows, their panelled walls. To wander round the city of Oxford is to step back seemingly into a forgotten age, so worn and ancient-looking are these piles of masonry. Modern clothes seem utterly out of place in such an antique spot.
Magdalen Tower from the Bridge. ”

“ Why was there ever a River Thames at all? To answer it we must go back—far, far back into the dim past. As you know, this world of ours is millions of years old, and like most ancient things it has seen changes—tremendous changes. Its surface has altered from time to time in amazing fashion. Whole mountain ranges have disappeared from sight, and valleys have been raised to make fresh highlands. ”

“ Then one day, just before the War, workmen came upon it quite accidentally as they were cleaning out the old Moat.
Once through the gateway we come straight into the first of the old-world courtyards—the Base Court—and we feel almost as if we had stepped back several hundred years into a bygone age. The deep red brickwork of the battlements and the walls, the quaint chimneys, doorways, windows, and turrets, all belong to the distant past; they make on us an impression which not even the splendour of Wren’s additions can remove. ”

“ How the River founded the City
England at the time when London first came into being was a very different place from the well-cultivated country which we know so well. Where now stretch hundreds of square miles of orderly green meadows and ploughed fields, divided from each other by trim hedges, or pretty little copses, or well-kept roads, there was then a vast dense forest, wherein roamed wolves and other wild animals, and into which man scarcely dared to penetrate. This stretched from sea to sea, covering hill and valley alike. ”

“ As we stand once more on Westminster Bridge and see the two great places, one on each side, where our lawmakers sit—those of the Nation and those of the great City—our glance falls on the dirty water of old Father Thames slipping by; and we think to ourselves that great statesmen may spring to fame and then die and leave England the poorer, governments good and bad may rise and fall, changes of all sorts may happen within these two stately buildings, the very stones may crumble to dust, but still the River flows on—silent, irresistible. ”

“ Fulham Palace, on the Middlesex bank, not far from Putney Bridge, is the “country residence” of the Bishops of London. For nine centuries the Bishops have held the manor of Fulham, and during most of the time have had their domicile in the village. In these days, when Fulham is one of the utterly dreary districts of London, with acres and acres of dull, commonplace streets, it is hard indeed to think of it as a fresh riverside village with fine old mansions and a wide expanse of market-gardens and a moat-surrounded palace hidden among the tall trees. ”

“ When, after a time, things settled down in Britain, a new London began to rise on the site of the old city. Gradually the folk, mainly the East Saxons, settled on the outskirts of the deserted city, and, little by little, they made their way within the old walls; numbers of the old fugitives crept back to join them; merchants came and patched up the broken, grass-grown quays; houses were built; and life began anew. ”

“ Standing on one of the little eminences of the valley we can survey the scene before us: we can watch the River for many miles winding its way seawards, and note in all directions the same fertile, flourishing countryside, with its meadows where the soft-eyed cattle browse on the rich grass ”

“ From time to time there swooped down on the eastern coasts strange ships filled with fierce warriors—tall, fair-haired men, who took what they could lay their hands on, and killed and burned unsparingly. So long as the Roman soldiers were there to protect the land and its people, nothing more happened than these small raids. The strangers kept to the coasts and seldom attempted to penetrate up the river which led to London. ”

“ Now all that remains of it is a gateway by Richmond Green.
Richmond to-day is merely a suburb of London, one of the pleasure grounds of the city’s countless workers, who come hither on Saturdays and Sundays either to find exercise and enjoyment on the River, or to breathe the pure air of the park. This New Park, so called to distinguish it from the Old Deer Park, which lies at the other end of the town, is a very fine [329] place indeed. Surrounded by a wall about eleven miles long, it covers 2,250 acres of splendid park and woodland, with glorious views in all directions. ”

“ Most interesting of all, perhaps, are the great sailing ships—the old “wooden walls of England”—which did so much to establish and maintain our position as a maritime nation—the great three-deckers which stood so high out of the water, and which with their tall masts and gigantic sails looked so formidable and yet so graceful. There in a case is the Great Harry—named after Henry VIII.—a double-decker of fifteen hundred tons burden, with three masts, and carrying seventy-two guns. ”

“ Purfleet, especially from a distance, is by no means unattractive, for quite close to the station a wooded knoll, quaintly named Botany, rises from the general flatness, and its greenery, contrasting strongly with the white of the chalk-pits, lifts the town out of that dreariness, merging into the positively ugly, which is the keynote of this part of the River beside the Long and Fiddler’s Reaches. ”

“ Built for a fortress, it has been through the centuries nothing more than a palace.
Erected by the builder of the Tower, William of Normandy, and probably for the same [286] purpose, it has passed in many ways through a parallel existence, has been just what the Tower has been—an intended stronghold, a prison, and a royal residence. Yet, whereas the Tower [287] has been intimately bound up with the life of England through many centuries, Windsor has, with just one or two brief exceptions, been a thing apart, something living its life in the quiet backwaters of history. ”

“ England in the Middle Ages, and on till a century or more ago, was an agricultural country; its wealth lay very largely in what it grew and what it reared; and the south provided the most suitable countryside for this sort of production. The consequence was that the Thames flowed right down through the centre of wealthy England. All round it were the chalk-ranges on which throve the great herds of long-fleeced sheep that provided the wonderful wool for which England was famous, and which was in many respects the main source of her prosperity. ”

“ As early man grew to be civilized, as he learned to drain the flooded lands by the side of the stream and turn them from desolate fens and marshes to smiling productive fields, and as he learned slowly how to get from the hillsides and the plain the full value of his labour, so he realized more and more the possibilities of the great river valley.
The Thames flows in what may be regarded as an excellent example of a river-basin. ”

“ In that way the citizens learned right from their earliest day that London was not the only place in England, that there were other folk in the land, and great ones too, who were not London merchants and craftsmen.
This constant reminder that they were simply part and parcel of the great realm of England did this for the people of London: it made them keen on politics, always ready to take sides in any national strife. ”

“ London has many treasures to show us, if we take the trouble to look for them, but it has no relic of the past so perfect as its Tower—a place which every Briton, especially every Londoner, ought to see and try to understand. ”

“ It does not flaunt its strength from any impregnable cliff, or even fling defiance from the top of a little hill. Instead, it lies quite low on the river bank. Yet it has had one spell of real life as a fortress, a few days of activity in that inglorious time with which the tributary will ever be associated—the days of “the Dutch in the Medway,” when de Ruyter and van Ghent came with some sixty vessels to the Nore and in about two hours laid level with the ground the magnificent and recently-erected fortifications of Sheerness. ”

“ But the Thames (or Isis as it is invariably called in Oxford) is the place of more serious matters. To the rowing man “the River” means only one thing, and really only a very short space of that: he is accustomed to speak of “the River” and “the Cher,” and with him the latter does not count at all. Everybody in the valley, certainly every boy and girl, knows about the Oxford and Cambridge Boatrace, which is held annually on the Thames at Putney, when two selected crews from the rival universities race each other over a distance. ”

“ Most of our Sovereigns, from the Conqueror’s time right down to the Restoration, used the Tower of London. Kings and Queens who were powerful used it as a prison for their enemies; those who were weak and feared the people used it as a fortress for themselves. This latter use of the Tower was particularly instanced in the reign of Stephen—an illuminating chapter in the story of London. ”

“ From our point of view there remains just one more thing to consider, and that is the Tower’s connection with the River. Probably few of us, as we try to think back through the centuries, realize how important the Thames was even as a highway. We know from our [178] reading that London’s streets were narrow, crooked, and of very little use for a big amount of traffic; yet we do not see in our mind’s eye the great waterway which everybody, rich and poor, used in those days, alike for business and pleasure. ”

“ The mid-channel of the Medway is so deep, the bed so soft, and the reaches of the river are so short, that it is the safest harbour in the kingdom. Our great ships were riding as in a wet dock, and being moored to chains fixed to the bottom of the river, they swung up and down with the tide. But all these ships, as well as many others of lower rates, were almost entirely deserted by their crews, or rather by those few men who had been put in them early in the spring, rather as watchmen than as sailors ”

“ On the following morning—the memorable morning of the 12th of June—a very fresh wind from the north-east blew over Sheerness and the Dutch fleet, and a strong spring-tide set the same way as the wind, raising and pouring the waters upward from the broad estuary in a mighty current. And now de Ruyter roused himself from his inactivity, and gave orders to his second in command, Admiral van Ghent, to ascend the river towards Chatham with fire-ships, and fighting ships of various rates. ”

“ Right here at the mouth the River receives its last and most important tributary—the Medway.
For some miles up the estuary and the lower reaches the character of the River is such that it is difficult to imagine anything less interesting, less impressive, less suggestive of what the river approach to the greatest city in the world should be; for there is nothing but flat land on all sides, so flat that were not the great sea-wall in position the whole countryside [17] would soon revert to its original condition of marsh and fenland. ”