HAMPTON COURT TO RICHMOND.
Hampton Court--Thames Ditton: The "Swan"--The
Church--Surbiton--Kingston: The Coronation
Stone--Teddington--Twickenham--Eel Pie Island--Petersham--Richmond
Park--Approach to Richmond.
Hampton Court is not the stateliest pile upon the banks of Thames. It
is less splendid than Windsor, less historic than the Tower; yet it
possesses a meed of human interest unique in English palaces. Windsor
has its memories of the births and deaths of kings; of proud embassies
from Popes and Kaisers while yet the censer was swinging through all
England; of sweet brides wedded to the misery which is always lurking
behind a throne. 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. The explanation of this which fashions itself when one
is in romantic mood, is that the popular imagination is touched by
the sidereal rise, the brief glory, and the sudden fall of Cardinal
Wolsey--a fall which even the gift of the stately palace itself could
not avert. But the footprints of Wolsey at Hampton Court are hard to
trace; and it is probable that to the Bank Holiday masses, and to the
crowds which stream through its galleries every fine Saturday and
Sunday in summer, the most abounding charm of the place is that which
Nature, with some assistance from Art, has provided. The terraces, the
gardens, the maze, the trim vistas cut through long lines of trees, the
Dutch primness and precision of the grounds, and above all the thousand
acres of Bushey Park, with its renowned avenue bursting with the tinted
blossom which in summer perfumes the air like "an odour sweet of cedar
log and sandal wood," are the true delights of Hampton Court.
The old Tudor palace is a significant landmark of the river-side,
for it indicates the spot where suburban London may be said to
begin. London has a long arm, and the voyager on the silent highway
from its source on towards the sea finds, as he nears Hampton
Court, unmistakable signs that he is reaching the fringe of a giant
population. There is a greater frequency of white villas, glistening
in the sunlight, shaded and cooled by the ample foliage which is
rarely so green and prolific as on the banks of the southern Thames,
the water gently lapping the edges of the shaven lawns. The river
is dotted with boats, where before the dinghy and the outrigger had
been but occasional; the towing-path is more populated; and--it is a
melancholy story to tell--the water begins perceptibly to lose its
limpidity. 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.
Hampton Court has been frequently described as the English Versailles,
and there is much reason in the comparison. Alike in history and in
human interest, however, Hampton Court is far more attractive than the
splendidly frigid palace of Louis Quatorze. It is true that it has
few pretensions to magnificence; but it is a compound of history, and
the history of people rather than of events. The shades of Wolsey and
Charles I. eternally haunt the portals through which so many historic
figures have passed. But the ghost of the magnificent cardinal finds
everything unfamiliar. Even the Great Hall, so often ascribed to him,
was not built until after his death; Sir Christopher Wren's new west
front is all strange to him; only in a little wing here and there can
he recognise the handicraft of his own architect. Maybe the capacious
cellar, with its wine-casks stuffed with broad pieces of gold, which,
if we are to believe tradition the cardinal used for a treasury, is
still untouched; but where are the five "fair courts" round which the
palace was grouped by its builder? Had Hampton Court remained to our
day precisely as it left the hands of the Tudor artificers, it would
have been a priceless relic of the architecture and the methods of
life affected by an English prince of the Church in the early years of
the sixteenth century. But Wren has done his incongruous and Nash his
clumsy work upon what Henry allowed to remain of the cardinal's design,
and Hampton Court, as we know it, has, architecturally speaking, a
blind side and a smiling side. There is no doubt a certain stateliness
about the East Front and the Fountain Court; but it is a heavy and
monumental stateliness which ill accords with the really picturesque
portions of the old palace. Classical symmetry and Palladian regularity
are sadly misplaced when joined to Tudor red brick. The style which
Wren chose for his additions requires greater space for its effective
display than he had at disposal; consequently, the buildings round
the Fountain Court suffer from the contracted area of the quadrangle.
English brickwork was never better than in the early part of the
sixteenth century, and in the buildings erected by Wolsey and Henry
VIII. at Hampton Court we have this Tudor brickwork at its best. The
cardinal's buildings have upon the outer walls the geometrical patterns
which were not uncommon at the time, formed by the insertion of those
stout blue bricks which are so potent to resist damp. Of the strictly
modern additions and re-buildings, the work of the last hundred and
fifty years, it were better to say nothing more than that they,
lamentably, still exist.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE PORCH.]
It is difficult to obtain a comprehensive view of the palace save from
the river. Thence, however, the glimpses of the pile are very varied,
the view of the western front being especially charming. The multitude
of towers and mullions diversifies the _façade_, very greatly to the
disadvantage of Wren's monotonous eastern front; while the interlaced
and arabesqued chimneys, the graceful clock-tower, and the high-pitched
roof of the Great Hall break the sky-line with a cunning which,
although apparently undesigned, is as effective as it well could be.
There is something peculiarly appropriate in approaching Hampton Court
from the Thames, for in the day of its pride, when the cardinal and
his thousand retainers abode there, when Henry retired to it with one
or other of his wives, or when his dour daughter Mary passed there
her honeymoon with the darkling Philip, snatching a brief leisure
from his "Acts of Faith" in Spain and the Netherlands, the river was
the silent highway upon which all the world travelled, whether from
the Tower or from Westminster. But the approach from Bushey Park,
although its historical savour is small, is more attractive almost
than that from the water. I never traverse the Chestnut Avenue without
regretting that the venerable towers and turrets of the palace do not
close in the vista. Such an avenue ought, for the sake of picturesque
completeness, to have for objective an ancient country house, gabled,
ruddy, and peopled with historic shades. The Diana water is very pretty
in its way; but it is not the most effective climax. There are some
beautiful avenues in the little park of Hampton Court itself; but
there is a Dutch flavour about them which causes them to look less
natural and spontaneous than the Chestnut Avenue, which is really
only the central of a series of nine, four on each side. Bushey Park,
like all other parks, is pretty, but flat; it happily still contains
a good head of fallow deer. For nearly fifty years--since the palace
was thrown open to the public--Bushey has been a spot of inexhaustible
delight to myriads of Londoners, the great majority of whom choose the
route through the park to Hampton Court. The novice in woodcraft might
imagine that many of the trees had attained a good old age; but so far
as those in the nine avenues are concerned, all were planted by William
III., the tutelary genius of latter-day Hampton Court, and outside the
avenues the timber is neither luxuriant nor remarkable.
By far the most interesting portion of either the new or the old palace
is the Great Hall, which, save that it has a new floor and that the
painted glass in the windows is modern, is little altered since Henry
VIII. built it. This magnificent apartment ranks with Westminster
Hall and the Hall of Christ Church, Oxford, as one of the finest
open-timbered interiors in Europe. What relation it bears to Wolsey's
Hall, the site of which it is believed to occupy, we cannot tell, since
no picture of the cardinal's banqueting-chamber has been preserved.
But "The Lord Thomas Wulsey, Cardinal, Legat de Latere, Archbishop of
Yorke, and Chancellor of Englande," had a nice taste in architecture;
and it is tolerably safe to suppose that, beautiful though Henry's
hall be, the cardinal's was better. Why the king saw fit to destroy
what Wolsey had built there is no evidence to show; probably he was
desirous that his own name rather than that of his upstart chancellor
should be permanently associated with the place, and the lavishness
with which his cypher, together with the rose and portcullis and other
heraldic devices of the Tudors, are scattered about the palace, favours
the idea. It is a little remarkable that the hall, with the adjoining
withdrawing-room, should be disconnected from the other buildings, and
that it should not be possible to reach it without passing into the
open air. The best view of the hall is obtained, not from the sombre
entrance beneath the Minstrel's Gallery, but from the daïs at the upper
end, where the high table for noble and princely guests was wont to
stand. Its proportions are majestic--106 feet by 40, with a height of
60 feet. The open-timbered roof is elaborately carved and arcaded, and
springs, as though naturally, from massive corbels between the windows.
At the extremities, where the corbels join the roof timberings, are the
graceful pendants characteristic of the Tudor time. The windows blaze
with painted glass, all a mass of heraldry and kingly pedigree, while
beneath the eye finds rest in the more subdued tones of King Hal's
tapestries of incidents in the life of Abraham. Who designed this arras
and where it was woven are questions which have never been settled; but
there is abundant internal evidence that it is either early Flemish or
German work. In the gloomy vestibule beneath the gallery is a series
of allegorical tapestries, the most curious of them representing the
seven deadly sins in such guise as would suggest that the artist took
the idea from the procession to the "Sinful House of Pride" in the
"Faërie Queen." Spenser makes Gluttony ride upon "a filthy swine";
in this tapestry it bestrides a goat. All this arras is in beautiful
preservation, particularly that which deals with the life of Abraham,
in which the high lights are worked in gold.
[Illustration: THE FIRST QUADRANGLE. / FOUNTAIN COURT.]
The painted windows of the Great Hall deserve something more than a
passing mention. Six alternate windows are filled with the arms and
descents of the wives of Henry VIII.; and it is worth noting, as some
indication of the commonness of a Plantagenet ancestry, that each
of these ladies was descended from Edward I. The probabilities are,
indeed, that even now a large proportion of the English people, above
the lower middle class, have in their veins the blood of Longshanks.
The seven intermediate windows are emblazoned with the badges of
Henry VIII.--the lion, the portcullis, the fleur-de-lis, the rose,
the red dragon of York, and the white greyhound of Lancaster. Upon
each are his cyphers and the mottoes "Dieu et mon Droit," and "Dne.
Salvum Fac Reg." The great eastern and western windows are likewise
full of badges, quarterings, and impalements. At the upper end of
the south side of the hall is yet another window more beautiful
from its pendant fan-tracery than any of the others, and emblazoned
with the arms and cyphers of Henry and Jane Seymour, and the arms
and cardinal's hat of Wolsey. The daïs characteristic of old time,
when distinctions of rank were very palpable, still remains; but the
beautiful old flooring of these painted tiles so much used by Tudor
builders has gone, although there is reason to suppose that it still
existed eighty years ago. A finer apartment for a regal banquet or a
stately pageant could hardly be conceived. One would like to believe
the legend of Shakespeare representing, in this very hall, before
Elizabeth and her somewhat flighty court, the story of the fall of
Wolsey; but there is not a tittle of real evidence in its favour. The
Withdrawing Room, or Presence Chamber, as it is sometimes called,
entered from the Great Hall, is a large, oblong apartment which has
apparently been little touched since Tudor times. It has a fine painted
oriel, a moulded plaster ceiling, and an ancient oak chimney-piece,
into which is let a portrait of the unlucky presiding genius of the
place. This chimney-piece is a modern importation from an old house at
Hampton Wick. The roughly-plastered walls are covered with tapestries
of a wildly allegorical character, considerably older than those in
the Great Hall, and less carefully preserved. Above them are Carlo
Cignani's cartoons for the frescoes in the Ducal Palace at Parma.
Beyond the Great Hall, the apartments which are shown to the public
have little architectural or personal interest. The rooms in which
Henry, Elizabeth, and Charles I. lived are all in the Tudor portion of
the palace; the series which has been converted into one great picture
gallery is in Wren's building, and runs round the Fountain Court and
along the eastern front. What this front lacks architecturally it
gains to some extent scenically, since it overlooks the geometrical
flower-beds, the straight avenues, the long and narrow Dutch canals,
beloved of the Stadtholder, the like of which one may still see in the
gardens of old world _casteelen_ in Holland. Some of the avenues, seen
from these upper windows, are very charming and effective, notably
that which is closed in by the red mass of Kingston Church. This is
not the place to discuss the pictures with which the palace abounds.
I shall not perhaps be committing treason if I suggest that they are
remarkable more for their quantity than for their quality. There is a
sprinkling of pictures of which any gallery might be proud, and some
of the portraits, of no artistic importance, are valuable by reason of
their personality. Kneller's "Hampton Court Beauties" have acquired
a factitious fame, for whatever may have been the charms of the
originals, they are assuredly not very obvious here. Poor, indiscreet
Queen Mary got herself well hated by the other ladies of the Court
whom she considered insufficiently attractive to be numbered among
the elect. Perhaps the most famous of all the pictures at Hampton
Court is Vandyke's equestrian portrait of Charles I., of which there
is a replica at Windsor. Many of the paintings are true memorials of
the old palace, and formerly hung in the ancient state apartments.
They have the savour of old associations which the rooms in which
they are hung lack--memories of times when life was more fitful, more
spectacular, and, as it seems to us in this distant age, more romantic
than it had become when Dutch William sowed _Je maintiendrai_ about
the old place, as Henry had scattered his roses and greyhounds and
fleurs-de-lis, and all the other heraldic bravery of a century when
heraldry was a fine art. Hampton Court is rich in personal history,
and many a romantic shade must haunt its Great Hall, there to recall
the vanished banquet, when the wine-cup gleamed so red, and bright
eyes danced more intoxicatingly than any vintage of Spain or France.
Many, too, there be that must still weep out their historic sorrows,
and the visionary axe must flash before many a ghostly eye. Here lived
Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, as well as Bluebeard's more fortunate
wives. Edward VI. was born, and Jane Seymour died here. Elizabeth kept
her Christmases merrily indeed at Hampton Court; tradition says that
she was here dining off a goose when the news came of the defeat of the
Armada. It was a favourite residence of Charles I., who passed here
some of his happiest and most miserable moments, and hence he fled to
Carisbrooke. Both Cromwell and Charles II., who once played a renowned
game of hide-and-seek, were fond of the water-side palace; William III.
had a passion for it, and in its park met with his fatal accident. The
first two Georges stayed here occasionally, but since 1760 it has not
been a royal residence. William IV. and his unimportant Queen liked
the neighbourhood, and spent much time in the heavy but doubtless
comfortable red-brick house at the Teddington entrance to Bushey
Park. So long as it endures, Hampton Court will be one of the most
interesting of English houses. Attractive in every aspect, in some it
is unique, and if it had no other claim to distinction it would always
be remarkable as perhaps the very first country house built in England
without a moat and drawbridge.
[Illustration: IN THE REACH BELOW HAMPTON COURT.]
The park of Hampton Court is small compared with the vast chase,
covering thirteen parishes, of which Henry made it the nucleus. It is
somewhat flat, but is well timbered, and beautifies the towing-path
all the way to Kingston. Of the palace from the river I have already
spoken. It is in view for a considerable distance towards Thames
Ditton; but the glimpse is not so striking as that obtained by the
oarsman who shoots suddenly beneath Hampton Bridge and sees the grand
old pile full in front of him. Between Hampton Court and Kingston the
river is at its most charming hereabouts. Flowing between deep banks,
over which the rushes and osiers bend, in summer it is studded to just
beyond Thames Ditton with the cool Bohemian house-boat, a veritable
desired haven to the heated oarsman. The coquettish window-curtains,
the mass of flowers on the flat roof, the whisk of dainty muslin, all
go to form one of the prettiest of Thames pictures. The Middlesex
shore is fringed with luxuriant hedgerows, quick with life and
bursting with blossom, so wide and tunnelled by the boughs of trees
that one of Mr. Stevenson's nursery heroes might lose himself amid the
interlacements, while imagining that he was stalking the red man in
his native forests. On the Surrey side the meadows come down to the
water's edge, fringed with rushes and alders. Soon above the trees
peeps out the quaint wooden spire of Thames Ditton Church, topping
a squat tower of the type beloved of the olden church builders of
the Thames Valley. At the river's brink, and under the shadow of the
church, is the famous "Swan," dear to the museful angler who delights
not in crowds, and loves to make for a charming and unobtrusive stretch
of river. With a kindly care for the welfare of the traveller, and not
unmindful of other considerations, some olden landlord of the "Swan"
procured the establishment of the ferry at his very doors. The "Swan"
was an important hostelry in the days when Thames Ditton was more in
fashion than it happily is now; and it still divides the honours of the
spot with Boyle Farm on the opposite side of the road. Dark brown of
hue, and not unpicturesque of contour, Boyle Farm stands amid effective
masses of foliage, its sloping lawn dipping down to the channel formed
by a miniature eyot which screens it somewhat from view. The ample
cedars on the lawn contrast well with the older portions of the house
which face the water. This pretty spot obtained its name from that Miss
Boyle who became in her own right Baroness de Ros, and is mentioned
in one of Horace Walpole's letters as having "carved three tablets in
marble with boys, designed by herself ... for a chimney-piece, and
she is painting panels in grotesque for the library." By her marriage
with Lord Henry Fitzgerald, Lady De Ros became sister-in-law to that
ill-starred pair, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and "Pamela." Time was when
Boyle Farm rivalled Strawberry Hill as a centre of gaiety, and its
famous "Dandies' Fête," given in 1827 by five young sprigs of nobility
at a cost of £2,500, was long a dazzling wonderment to those who are
tickled by such things. This was one of the hereditaments which fell
into dispute upon the death, without a will, of the first Lord St.
Leonards. To the angler it may be that the comfortable old inn is
more interesting than Boyle Farm with its Walpolean memories. Many
is the wit and the man of letters who, after a day of more or less
make-believe angling, has refreshed himself at the "Swan." Theodore
Hook delighted in Thames Ditton, and wrote some stanzas in its praise
in a punt one day in 1834; it was natural that with so keen a lover of
good living the "Swan" should come in for eulogy.
[Illustration: THE "SWAN," THAMES DITTON.]
In the churchyard of Thames Ditton rests "Pamela" beneath a stone
which records her original interment in the cemetery of Montmartre,
and her re-burial here. Into the stone is let a portion of the marble
slab, shattered by a German shell during the siege, which marked her
resting-place in Paris. Close by is the grave of the first Lord St.
Leonards. The tiny church possesses little architectural interest; but
it contains a number of small but curious brasses, which have been
removed from their original positions in the floor, and fixed upon the
walls, a proceeding which, although it has divorced the memorials from
the dust they commemorate, has no doubt tended to the preservation
of interesting inscriptions, such as have, in too many cases, been
destroyed. A brass which possesses a curious interest is that of
Erasmus Ford, "sone and heyre of Walter fforde, some tyme tresorer to
Kynge Edward IV., and Julyan, the wife." This worthy couple had a full
quiver in all conscience, for the brass bears representations of six
sons and twelve daughters. Erasmus died in 1533, and his wife six years
later. An even more portentous family was given to William Notte, who
died in 1576, and Elizabeth his wife--nineteen, all told. It is hard to
imagine such a posterity dying out; yet Notte is assuredly an uncommon
name. Few facts in human history are more astonishing than the rapidity
with which names become extinct. Century after century the same names
occur upon tombstones and in parish registers, and then there comes a
blank which time, instead of filling up as before, only accentuates.
[Illustration: THAMES DITTON CHURCH.]
Coming from London, Thames Ditton is the first point at which, in
summer, the house-boat, elsewhere ubiquitous, is met with. The charm
of the lagoon-like life which the house-boat affords has not lacked
eulogists; but who shall justly describe the calm delights of dusk
upon the river? It is as undefinable as happiness. The red gleam of
sunset is splendidly spectacular; the gloom of dusk upon the water is
weird, and a world of mystery seems to reside beyond. The plash of oars
continues until the last speck of light has been folded into night; the
boats shoot out from the encompassing darkness, ripple past, and enter
the farther shadows. Strange fancies enter the imaginative mind, and
these gliding boats seem like phantom craft shooting from shadow-land
to shadow-land. Sometimes there comes a hissing launch, its lights
flashing meteorically across the stream, and throwing their beams in
among the rushes and osiers like sudden electric jets, or the fitful
gleam of a will-o'-the-wisp. The awakening on the river has something
of the idyllic, especially on a Sunday morning, and if the moorings
be cast within earshot of church bells. Ditton is a prime point for
the disportment of small craft from Kingston and Surbiton, and on
fine Saturdays and Sundays the river hereabouts is crowded. All this
movement is of course unfavourable for the punt-angler, unless he be
astir early or on a day when the water is more or less deserted. In
winter, however, when boating possesses charms only for the hardiest
of enthusiasts, a good creel can be made within a stone's throw of the
"Swan."
[Illustration: HAMPTON COURT TO RICHMOND.]
Between Thames Ditton and Surbiton the river banks possess nothing of
especial interest. The broad reach is, however, exceedingly pretty. On
the Middlesex shore is a more than usually picturesque towing-path,
broad and grassy, backed by the full hedgerow which bounds the park of
Hampton Court. On the Surrey side the reeds and alders are profuse,
and edge the water almost without break. The river front of Surbiton
wears a decidedly foreign air, with its tall white houses, and winding
walks and shrubberies along the bank. This esplanade, starting from
the water-works, extends for some distance towards Kingston, and
is an excellent hint to the local authorities of other water-side
suburbs. Surbiton is an interesting spot to rowing men, for it is the
head-quarters both of the well-known Kingston Rowing Club and of the
Thames Sailing Club. Other interest it does not possess, and everything
in and about it is painfully modern. But it is a pretty spot, and being
within easy access of London is full of attraction to those who toil
and spin daily within sound of the boom of Great Paul. Anything that
Surbiton lacks in antiquity its ancient and dignified parent, Kingston,
can supply. Kingston Bridge lies pretty well a mile farther down
stream, almost at the opposite extremity of the town. The view from
the facing bank still has something of the foreign air of Surbiton;
but the aspect is Netherlandish rather than French, which the other
is. The square red tower of the church, the congeries of tiled roofs,
and the quaint little summer arbours in the sloping garden of the
river-side hotel, contribute greatly to this effect. The not unhandsome
stone bridge, the twin-brother of that at Richmond, which connects
Hampton Wick with Kingston, is a modern successor of a long ancestry
of bridges, the earliest of which dated from Saxon times. Civil war,
rather than time, seems to have made an end of all the previous
bridges save that which immediately gave place to the present. For
centuries London Bridge was the only other permanent means of crossing
the Thames; consequently, when there occurred one of the frequent
commotions in which our ancestors delighted, there was a good deal of
competition between the two sides to get Kingston Bridge destroyed
first, and so prevent communication between Middlesex and Surrey. In
the strifes of the Roses it fared ill, and during Sir Thomas Wyatt's
rebellion it was broken down to prevent the passage of the insurgents.
Since then, nearly three centuries and a half ago, the bridge has been
more tenderly treated.
[Illustration: KINGSTON, FROM THE RIVER.]
[Illustration: THE MARKET-PLACE, KINGSTON.]
Kingston is a very interesting old town, and was an important place,
and the scene of the coronation of Saxon kings a thousand years ago. It
is remarkable as being the last municipal borough on the river, with
the exception of the City of London itself. All the other places have
to put up with local boards or vestries, or other undignified mushroomy
governing bodies. Kingston possesses the real antique thing--mayor,
aldermen, town councillors, mace, and all the other symbols of
municipal importance, and is duly and rightly proud thereof. Few
English towns can boast of such antiquity, and of fewer still can it
be said that they have been boroughs since the days of John Lackland.
It seems always to have been a loyal town--the result, perhaps, of
its ancient regal associations--and much money appears to have been
spent by the olden burghers for bell-ringing and other diversions
when confusion had overtaken the king's enemies. When the Earl of
Northumberland was taken, for instance, the Kingston ringers benefited
to the extent of twenty pence--a clear exemplification of the saying
that one half of the world lives upon the misfortunes of the other
half. When Prince Charles returned from his Spanish expedition in 1624,
the joy of the townsmen was so demonstrative that they must needs spend
three and fourpence upon the clangour of joy-bells. Doubtless the young
prince, who was much at Hampton Court, was well known in the town, and
when, after his accession, his troubles pressed thick upon him, the
townsmen were loyal to the core. The actual hostilities of the great
rebellion began and ended at Kingston, singularly enough. There the
first, armed force assembled; there, near Surbiton Common, Buckingham
and Holland made the last stand for the crown, in which fight Lord
Francis Villiers, who is buried in Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster,
was slain.
[Illustration: THE CORONATION STONE AT KINGSTON.]
Charles I. and Cromwell, however, are mere personages of yesterday in
the history of Kingston. Ten hundred and fifty years ago it was the
seat of Egbert's brilliant Witenagemot, a couple of generations before
ever a king was crowned here. These coronation memories, however, are
Kingston's great pride, and almost the only passages in her history
of which any material memorial still remains. This memorial is, of
course, the famous coronation stone, an irregular mass worn smooth
and shiny by a thousand years of rain and friction. It stands finally
now in the market-place, railed off in the reverent fashion common to
chairs of state by a massive _grille_ which tends greatly, no doubt,
to its conservation. How many of our kings before the Conquest were
crowned at Kingston, and that their consecration really took place
upon this particular stone, tradition affords the only evidence. The
genuineness of the stone is well enough authenticated for the ordinary
believer who does not care to make himself miserable by a course of
universal scepticism; but I believe there have been antiquaries (of
course they were not born at Kingston) who have ventured to suggest
that the evidence is insufficient. Tradition says that seven Saxon
kings were certainly crowned here, and that probably others were.
Here are the names of the seven, with the dates of their coronation,
copied from the pedestal of the stone, with faithful adherence to the
spelling affected by Mr. Freeman:--Eadweard, 901; Adelstan, 924;
Eadmund, 943; Eadred, 946; Eadwig, 955; Eadward, 975; Ædelred, 978.
Kingston is a bright, cheerful little town, and the inhabitants seem
to bear up well beneath the infliction of their terrible Town Hall, of
which the sole tolerable points are some very good oaken carvings and
some quaint armorial glass, all removed from the old Town Hall when
it was demolished. Before the iconoclasts of Cromwellian days wreaked
their evil will upon it, the parish church of Kingston must have been
internally very interesting. There is reason to suppose that it was
rich in brasses; but all that now remains of them are the blanks in
the floor left by their removal. There are a few fine monuments, and
one ancient brass of considerable interest is to be seen still. It
commemorates Joan, the wife of Robert Skern, and her husband. The lady
was a daughter of Edward III. and the frail Alice Perrers. After the
coronation stone and the church, the only other "sight" of Kingston is
the Norman chapel of St. Helen, for many years only a ruin, which is
believed to be the successor of a still older building in which "Saint"
Dunstan is reported to have crowned King Ethelred. The crooked streets
of this old town, which disputes with Winchester the glory of having
been the ancient capital of England, are made picturesque by many fine
old red-brick houses of Jacobean and Georgian date. A generation ago
there were standing a number of even older houses irregularly gabled,
half-timbered, and barge-boarded; but they have either been demolished
or re-fronted. Some of the shops, with painfully modern fronts, have
low panelled interiors and carved staircases.
[Illustration: THE ROYAL BARGE.]
[Illustration: "THE ANGLERS," TEDDINGTON.]
At Kingston the towing-path changes to the Surrey shore, and the river
takes a bold sweep towards Teddington. Between Kingston Bridge and
Teddington Lock the path is by no means picturesque; but the wooded
beauty of the opposite bank diverts attention from the more homely
shore. Right away to Teddington, and indeed beyond, is an almost
uninterrupted succession of lawns and shrubberies and cool-timbered
pleasure-grounds, surrounding pretty riparian villas. Life in summer
in these cool veranda-girt pleasure-houses is idyllic. There you may
enjoy tennis and boating, fishing and sailing, and drink your fill of
admiration of the gaily-cushioned craft as they skim past with their
lightsome burden of coquettish muslins and gossamers. Nor is this
river-strand to be despised when the winds of "chill October" have
stripped the trees and left but bare branches, which look mournful and
desolate to those who know only the Thames of sunshine and boating
flannels. The stream runs brown, brimming, and turbid, as it swirls
along laden with a burden of russet leaves. The angler, happily, can
follow his museful sport in all seasons, and to him, as to other
contemplative men, the river has attractions in autumn not smaller than
those of summer, though different. The best English weather is a fine
autumn, good alike for work and play, and the second half of autumn is
a by no means inauspicious time for the Thames angler, for the river has
ceased to be crowded with small craft, and the lumpy water suits better
the fish then in season than if it were clear and limpid. 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.
[Illustration: STRAWBERRY HILL.]
Teddington is but a couple of miles, as the river flows, from Kingston,
and for the last half mile of the distance the murmur, one might almost
say sometimes the roar, of the weir is audible. This same weir is the
prime delight of the angler upon the more Cockneyfied portion of the
river, and many is the patient piscator who perches himself thereon
betimes, and sits at the receipt of finny custom until the gathering
dusk renders the enterprise no longer profitable. The old-fashioned
carp, that mysterious, long-lived fish which was once, like the
peacock, an old English delicacy with which monastic fishponds swarmed,
runs to a great size about Teddington Weir, while dace are almost as
plentiful as minnows in a brook. Adjoining the weir is the lock, the
first in the ascent and the last in the descent of the river. The lock
and weir mark, to all intents and purposes, the spot, between sixty or
seventy miles from the sea, at which the Thames ceases to be tidal.
Henceforth the pilgrim, following the river on its way to the ocean,
will see at low water, particularly between here and Kew Bridge, more
mud-banks than he cares to count. At such times, too, the sense of
smell will, at all events in hot weather, be found to have taken so
keen a development that even chloride of lime would be accounted an
odour sweeter than that given forth by the nude expanse of festering
mud. At Teddington as yet there is happily little annoyance of this
kind. To see the little of interest the village affords it is necessary
to land at the ferry opposite the "Anglers," an old-fashioned inn which
has long been popular with fishermen. At Teddington, be it remembered,
is kept jealously locked up, in the custody of Mr. J. A. Messenger,
the Royal Bargemaster, the State barge which has descended to her
Majesty from early Jacobean times. In form it is graceful and elegant,
and in the centre is a covered pavilion for shelter from the sun and
rain. It is profusely gilded, and lavishly carved with mermaids and
dolphins, while near the figure-head are emblazoned the coronet and
plumes of the Princes of Wales, and the badge of the Garter. When he
was at Hampton Court Charles I. delighted to spend an hour or two on
summer evenings in this barge feeding the swans upon the river. It
has not been used since 1849, when her Majesty rowed in state to open
the Coal Exchange; but the public had an opportunity of seeing it in
1883, when it was shown at the Fisheries Exhibition. The village of
Teddington lies away from the river, and stretches on westward to
the gates of Bushey Park. At the head of the main street stands the
parish church, a not unpicturesque amalgam of the new and the old.
Its architectural interest is small, and the interior is whitewashed,
but it contains the tombs of two or three notable people. Of these,
"Peg" Woffington, the actress, is perhaps the best remembered. There
is a marble monument to her memory which records that, "Near this
monument lies the body of Margaret Woffington, spinster, born October
18th, 1720, who departed this life March 28th, 1760, aged thirty-nine
years." She was buried in the grave of her infant nephew, Master
Horace Cholmondeley, who had died seven years previously. At the end
of her wayward career poor Peg could not have found a more peaceful
resting-place. The oldest monument in the church is to Sir Orlando
Bridgeman, who died in 1674. This descendant and ancestor of a long
line of Orlandos was lord of the manor and a legal luminary. He was
Charles I.'s Commissioner for the treaty of Uxbridge; and under Charles
II. was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and Lord Keeper of the Great
Seal. When the church was being overhauled in 1833 the Bridgeman
vault was opened, and Sir Orlando's body was found lying in a lidless
coffin. So skilfully had the embalmer done his work that the remains
were perfect, even the pointed Jacobean beard being untouched. An
express was sent off to fetch the then Earl of Bradford, Sir Orlando's
descendant, who thus had the strange privilege of looking upon the
features of a progenitor who had been dead 159 years. There are two old
and uninteresting brasses, and a tablet to the memory of John Walter,
the founder of the _Times_, who died at Teddington. The churchyard
is beautifully kept, full of trees and shrubs and climbing plants,
which latter have grown luxuriantly over some of the older tombs. Here
lie buried Paul Whitehead, the poet, minus his heart, deposited in the
Despencer mausoleum at High Wycombe, whence it was most reprehensibly
stolen; Richard Bentley, who shares with Walpole the guilt of designing
Strawberry Hill; and "Plain Parson Hale," the friend of Pope, who was
for more than fifty years the incumbent of the parish.
[Illustration: POPE'S VILLA, TWICKENHAM.]
From Teddington Lock until close to Richmond the stream is undeniably
less picturesque than in the reaches described earlier in this chapter.
The river is less full of water, and when the tide is out the unsightly
and unsavoury mud-banks are always in view. The towing-path becomes
stony and arid; the hedgerows filled with poppies cease, and a very
matter-of-fact embankment on the Surrey shore has to be reckoned
with. Yet the reach between the lock and Eel Pie Island has always
been popular, and often in the summer one may see here all sorts
and conditions of notabilities disporting themselves at a little
water-party. The spot is comparatively near to London, and your amateur
boatman, with true wisdom, prefers not to get between two locks. We
are coming now to classic ground, where wit and letters, fashion and
frivolity, long have reigned. There is not another village in England
with literary associations so numerous and august as Twickenham. Pope
and Walpole are the presiding genii--neither of them, perhaps, the
most genial of genii; but the fairy-like element is supplied by the
hosts of feminine friends with whom the two bachelors were wont to
philander. Whether as a letter-writer or as an architect, Walpole
was vastly diverting; and it is a pity that so little of his brown
stucco abode can be seen from the river. Strawberry Hill is the kind
of place a mad architect might build in a delirium. We have a side
not unlike the west front of Westminster Hall might have been had
it been built of lath and plaster; then comes the keep of a Norman
castle, flanked by a Renaissance _tourelle_ from Chambord; the whole
crowned with crow-stepped Flemish gables from Antwerp, and the twisted
and fluted chimneys of a Tudor farmhouse. Then there are wings which
aim at imitating these imitations; these, it is fair to say, are
due to Walpole's successors. But howsoever astounding the exterior
of Strawberry Hill, the interior is far more remarkable. Within, as
without, the place bears every mark of having been built by a man who
learned his architecture as he proceeded. Walpole leaped gaily over
an anachronism, and saw nothing unorthodox in copying a mediæval tomb
and fashioning it into a chimney-piece, nor in taking the choir stalls
of Old St. Paul's as the model for the bookcases in his library. The
internal arrangements of Strawberry Hill are as wonderful as the
events recounted in that very Gothic story the "Castle of Otranto."
It is a mighty maze without a plan. A long, narrow corridor, leading
apparently to nothing, debouches upon a door which, when opened,
discloses a large and splendid apartment. It is, indeed, a house of
after-thoughts; but, whatever be its crudeness, it is not devoid of
value as an early forerunner of the real Gothic revival. Pseudo-Gothic
of this pattern was almost as popular towards the end of the eighteenth
century as houses built in the guise of Greek temples. Happily, most
of the examples have fallen down, but a few, such as that terrible
"restoration" of Windsor Castle, still remain. In literary and personal
memories Strawberry Hill is far richer than many houses of greater
antiquity and of real historical interest. Horace Walpole gathered
all "the town" around him in these "enamelled meadows with filigree
hedges;" and few are the great names of the last century and a quarter
which have not some connection with "the castle," as its builder loved
to call it. All the world's familiarity with this _chic_ abode of
Walpoles, Damers, and Waldegraves excuses me from dwelling lengthily
upon its peculiar but undoubted charm. Frances, Countess Waldegrave,
made it almost as fashionable as it had been in Walpolean times; and
although the bulk of the contents of the house were sold after her
death, it is pleasant to know that Baron de Stern, who became the
proprietor in 1883, purchased much of the furniture, and that, to some
extent at least, the historic continuity of olden associations has not
been broken.
[Illustration: TWICKENHAM FERRY.]
A little nearer to Richmond, and so happily placed that it commands
the river from below Richmond Hill to Teddington Lock, is the modern
and very _bizarre_ successor of Pope's Villa. Only a specialist in
architectural mania, or a member of the Société des Incoherents, could
attempt a description of this astonishing building. It is said to have
been erected by a tea merchant, and it certainly looks very much like
a cross between a Chinese pagoda and a house of cards. Its lawns and
shrubberies are very pretty, and after all there is something to be
said for having all the river-side monstrosities gathered into one
parish. The house does not occupy the exact site of the original Pope's
Villa which, thanks to a too common lack of sentiment, was demolished
long ago. The famous Grotto, one of the works of embellishment of
the "little crooked thing that asks questions," still remains, but
in a damp and mouldy condition, and despoiled of all that rendered
it interesting. Pope had no great love for gimcrackeries, and we can
in some measure imagine the tenor of the lines in which he would
have immortalised the tea merchant could he have foreseen the change
a century would bring about. The associations of Pope's Villa and
gardens are primarily literary, even as those of Strawberry Hill, at
a later day, were fashionable, frivolous, and dilettante. In Pope's
time Twickenham was the centre of literary interest in England, and
if the Jove who dwelt in this Olympus was querulous and stinging,
his genius went a long way towards making lustrous an age in which
taste and manners slept. Taste, at least, was still slumbering when
Lady Howe considered herself justified in demolishing one of the
most famous abodes that have ever been connected with our literary
history. It is in the neighbourhood of Pope's Villa that the injury
which has been done to the Thames by the mass of sewage sludge that
has been so recklessly poured into it of late years first becomes
noticeable. Although the effects of the tide are not much felt above
Richmond Bridge, the condition of the river hereabouts at low water is
lamentable. A broad edging of slimy ooze stretches for some distance
from the bank on either side, and when the weather is really hot, and
there is a drought of any considerable duration, as happened in the
summer of 1884, the odour is hardly that of frankincense. The Thames
Conservancy embankment between Twickenham and Richmond will no doubt
improve matters somewhat; but it is, to say the least, melancholy that
it should have become necessary to so disfigure the Surrey shore. Nor
does the presence of unwieldy dredges in these reaches enhance the
picturesqueness of the stream, while the new towing-path made with
dried mud from the river-bed is an agency of martyrdom.
Behind Eel Pie Island--famous in the annals of angling and sweet in
the memory of generations of picnickers--is seen the red tower of
Twickenham parish church, architecturally much more interesting than
the majority of Thames Valley churches. The ancient building fell
down in 1713, and the fact that Sir Godfrey Kneller, who was at that
time one of the churchwardens, had a hand in its rebuilding, albeit
he was not the actual architect, may account for the excellence of
the workmanship. The brickwork is almost as good as some of the best
Tudor achievements in that line. Some famous and many interesting
people lie buried here and in the churchyard. Pope's own tomb is
hidden beneath the seats; but the marble monument which he erected to
the memory of his father and mother, and in anticipatory commemoration
of himself, is still to be seen on the east wall. In that part of the
inscription which refers to himself Pope left blanks for his age and
the date of his death; but such is the carelessness which prevails in
such matters that these _lacunæ_ have never been filled up. Kneller,
the courtly painter of so many beauteous coquettes, is also buried
in the church. Here, too, sleeps Admiral Byron, the author of the
once popular "Narrative of the Loss of the _Wager_," irreverently
described by his grandson as "My Granddad's Narrative." Kitty Clive,
the charming actress who lived at Little Strawberry Hill, and for
whom Walpole had a platonic attachment, is buried in the chancel.
Naturally, in a classic village where many tremendous personages have
dwelt, Twickenham is full of fine and interesting old houses, mainly
of that square red-brick order of architecture which, if not precisely
picturesque, is suggestive of comfort and homeliness. The old houses
at Twickenham are of the sort in which Thackeray's people lived--still
redolent of the charming but indescribable odour of the days of good,
harmless Queen Anne. Perhaps the most interesting of them all is York
House, immediately opposite Eel Pie Island, in which Anne herself
and her sister Mary were born. Lord Chancellor Clarendon, Anne's
somewhat plebeian grandsire, lived there, and it is one of the five
or six houses in which he is said to have written that monstrous dull
book, the "History of the Rebellion." For several years after their
clandestine marriage the Duke of York--he who when king made so pitiful
an ending of it--lived with Anne Hyde in this house, although it was
undoubtedly called York long before then. In the second half of last
century, Prince Stahremberg, Viennese Envoy Extraordinary, lived here,
and achieved such fame as can therefrom result by a long succession of
private theatricals in which a bevy of lovely and high-born dames took
part. Orleans House likewise has royal associations, but of a somewhat
melancholy kind, as memories of exile usually must be.
[Illustration: RICHMOND: THE MEADOWS AND THE PARK.]
Twickenham might pleasantly detain us for a whole chapter; but the
wooded slopes of Richmond rise beyond, and tempt us on to "Ham's
umbrageous Walks," and the green meadows of Petersham. The river
between Eel Pie Island and Richmond Bridge has a charm all its own,
which owes much to the associations of the shores between which it
flows. The meadows on the Surrey shore are sweet to look upon from
the water; but until Ham is approached there is greater interest and
variety upon the Middlesex bank. Ham, with its famous "Walks," lies
low, and little of it can be seen from a boat. From the towing-path,
however, there is to be had a very pleasant glimpse of Ham House,
shaded, and, indeed, almost hidden, by splendid elms, some of which,
against the pale which divides the grounds from the public path, throw
in summer a cool and welcome shadow across the glaring footway. There
is something solemnly picturesque about Ham House, as, indeed, there
nearly always is about an old red-brick house closely surrounded by
graceful, darkling elms. Ham is, in fact, so hemmed in by foliage
that it but narrowly escapes being gloomy. Horace Walpole, who was
nothing if not cheerful, declaimed terribly against its dreariness; and
to Queen Charlotte it appeared "truly melancholy." It is shut in and
almost surrounded by high walls; but a good view of the front may be
obtained from the towing-path through the handsome iron gates in the
centre of a dwarf wall. These gates are said not to have been opened
for many years, and the house itself has the appearance of being rarely
lived in. Ham is a good example of very early Jacobean architecture. It
has a longish front with a slightly projecting wing at each extremity,
and is approached by avenues on almost every side. Few country houses
in the neighbourhood of London are more interesting either historically
or architecturally. Neither within nor without has any restoration been
attempted, and there has been only such renovation as was imperatively
necessary to prevent decay. It was built, it is said, for Henry
Prince of Wales, elder brother of Charles I., who died a mere youth.
The actual builder of the house was Sir Thomas Vavasour, King James's
Marshal of the Household, and the belief that it was extended for the
Prince of Wales is strengthened by the _Vivat Rex_, which, together
with the date, 1610, is carved over the principal entrance. Since 1651
it has belonged to the Earls of Dysart. The first Earl of Dysart was,
in Hibernian phrase, a Countess, Elizabeth, daughter of William Murray,
one of the owners of Ham, and the wife of Sir Lionel Tollemache. After
Sir Lionel's death, the Countess married John, Earl of Lauderdale, who,
within three years of his marriage, was created Baron Petersham, Earl
of Guildford, Marquis of March, and Duke of Lauderdale. John Maitland,
the "L" of the Cabal Ministry, and his Duchess, were two of the most
infamous creatures of the Restoration. The Duchess was bad because it
was her nature to be so; her second husband, whose relations with her
before marriage and in the lifetime of their respective first partners
had been at the least compromising, was too weak and too easily swayed
to withstand his wife's imperious ways. She openly sold the places in
the Duke's gift, and it was the opinion of Burnet that she "would have
stuck at nothing by which she might compass her ends." The "Cabal"
constantly held their councils at Ham House, the Duchess of Lauderdale
often being present to sharpen their flagging wits, exhausted by
the concoction of shameful schemes for replenishing their own and
their master's exchequers. The house was magnificently decorated and
furnished out of the spoils of politics, and internally it remains very
much as the Duchess left it--full of pictures, portraits, tapestries,
rich cabinets of ivory and cedar. In one of these cabinets is preserved
a crystal locket containing a lock of hair from the ill-fated head of
Elizabeth's Earl of Essex. It had been proposed to assign Ham House
as the residence of James II. after his enforced abdication; but that
courageous person found it expedient to take himself off, and to weep
on a kindlier shore.
[Illustration: RICHMOND: THE TERRACE FROM THE RIVER.]
It is not alone in summer, when the trees are thick with foliage, and
the sun shines cheerily in at the windows, chasing away the memory
of Lauderdale, Arlington, Ashley, and their fellows, that Ham House
presents a striking appearance. It is the very type of house to make a
winter picture, and there is nothing more characteristic of an English
winter scene than this historic pile, looked upon from the river-side.
The gaunt, bare elms, black against the dull sky, save where the snow
has left some traces on less sheltered boughs, the frosted turf, the
great iron gates and their tall piers, topped with an edging of snow
which has gathered in the corners of the ironwork, a white drift banked
up against the rusty hinges and the rarely-drawn bolt, glistening
fleecy masses lodged above the door and on every projecting frame and
cornice, a long roof hidden in snow, particles of which adhere even to
the chimney-stacks--all this makes a picture which should be painted.
The village of Ham, with its classic "Walks," is haunted by the
towering shades of Pope and Swift, and the gentle ghosts of Thomson and
Gay, an appropriate connecting-link between Twickenham and Richmond.
Of Petersham, which adjoins Ham Common, little or nothing can be
seen from the river. It has a church which, although architecturally
uninteresting, is crowded with old monuments, and with famous and
notorious dust. The Duchess of Lauderdale herself was both married
and buried here; but she has no monument. George Vancouver, the
circumnavigator and the godfather of Vancouver Island, lies here; so
do the Misses Agnes and Mary Berry--Walpole's "favourite Berrys." Not
the least distinguished of men who have been buried at Petersham within
recent years is Mortimer Collins, who is still missed from among the
ranks of lighter English writers.
Past Ham the gleaming river winds through the Petersham meadows,
with their wooded background of Richmond Park, and the broken, furzy
ground near the "Star and Garter." Here the Thames becomes as lovely
as it is between Hampton Court and Kingston. The banks are profusely
timbered, and a bushy little eyot in the centre of the stream adds to
the charm of the view. Where the towing-path for a time ends, near Kew
Foot Lane, there begins on each shore an irregular line of water-side
villas buried in lilac and laburnum, surrounded by smooth lawns with
edgings of geometrical flower-beds, those on the Middlesex side still
in Twickenham, which extends quite up to Richmond Bridge. On the
Richmond, or rather the Petersham shore, tower high up on the verdant
bluff the towers and pinnacles of the "Star and Garter," looking in
the distance not unlike a French villa on the heights of St. Cloud.
Beyond is Richmond Hill, with its leafy Terrace, adding much to the
foreign impress of the scene. The boldness with which "thy hill,
delightful Sheen," rises up almost sheer from the water, recalls some
more glorified Namur. There is a brightness and a vivacity about this
little suburb of St. James's which are rare to find in this stolid
island. It is a hard climb up the lovely lane from the river-side to
the portals of the "Star and Garter," and the gates of Richmond Park.
It is a sweet and toothsome spot this site of the "Star and Garter,"
which recalls cycles of flirtations and memories of iced champagne.
"A little dinner at Richmond" is a heading very familiar to the
persevering novel reader, and the scene of these pleasant symposia is
of course always this aristocratic hotel at the top of the hill. The
delights of Richmond Park, on the opposite side of the road, are of
another order. Here we have a vast pleasure-ground, the nearest of its
kind to London save Epping Forest. If anything, it is lovelier than
Epping, since it has been better cared for, and there has been none of
that reckless destruction which has so much marred the forest glades
of Essex. Close by the Richmond gate is one of the sweetest bits in
this thickly-wooded domain--the old Deer Park. A steep slope, green and
timbered, divides this from the higher and more public portions of the
park. In this undulating preserve, dotted with stately oaks, is kept a
large herd of fallow-deer, tame almost to temerity. The old Deer Park
has some retired nooks and lonely glades in which one may surprise the
dreamy deer sheltering themselves upon a glaring day beneath the wide
branches of the ancient oaks, up to the barrel in fern and bracken and
bramble. Scattered here and there are plantations new and old, full of
larch and fir as of more stately forest trees, in which abound game of
all sorts, but more especially the hopping rabbit and the skimming hare.
The gates of the park open upon the very extremity of the Hill, close
to Mansfield House, now an hotel, but formerly a residence of the Lord
Chancellor of that name, who once had a redoubtable encounter with
the mob, and to Wick House, where sometime lived Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Immediately beyond is the Terrace, an umbrageous promenade, dear in
morning hours to nurses and their lively charges, and later in the day
somewhat of a Rotten Row or a ladies' furlong. From his seat beneath
the trees the gazer looks down away to the west upon one of the most
lovely sights that earth affords. Between edgings of quivering green,
of lighter and of deeper hues, winds a glistening silver ribbon, in and
out among villas and townlets, always narrowing, and when the limit of
vision is reached, it seems to the straining eye as though meadow and
woodland met and stayed all further passage. From this eminence the
country lies mapped out as though seen from a balloon; and far away
beyond all trace of the river there closes in a dark and swaying mass
of foliage, like to one dense land of trees. A thin line of brilliant
blossom marks in early summer the Chestnut Avenue in Bushey Park; and
were it not that here and there the sun catches a high church tower, a
gilded vane, or mayhap a turret of feudal Windsor, it would seem from
here above that this wide and lovely stretch of country was still a
vast untrodden forest. So great is the height that even immediately
below the long, comfortable pleasure-boats loom tiny as toys, while
the steamers, happily rarer in these waters than they are lower down,
become almost picturesque in the distance. All this gleaming valley,
stretching across to the west, is the way we have come; these are the
woodlands past which we have rowed, and beneath whose shadow we have
rested; those the bends and reaches where we have done some honest,
straightforward pulling; those the shaded lawns where we have longed
for tennis, the rather for the sakes of the muslin goddesses we
furtively watched than for pure love of that Olympian game. That which
remains of our course shoots us past the skirts of Richmond town, the
river bank coloured and diversified with houses old and brown, and
houses new and white, with here and there yet other lawns. One more
embowered eyot comes round which the waters, parting, gently swirl.
Here lie anchored a lazy barge or two, and as we plash past them
into mid-stream again we are full in face of Richmond Bridge, grey,
many-arched, and slightly bowed. Beyond the bridge there rises a chain
of swelling uplands, all massy with foliage, and dotted with the red
and white of lotus-eating villas.
/J. Penderel-Brodhurst/.
[Illustration: RICHMOND BRIDGE.]