The Thames and his Tributaries
by Charles McKay.
Originally published in Bentley's Miscellany (Richard Bentley) vol.5 (1839).
So taken up were we at the conclusion of the last chapter with the woes of Mary d'Este, recalled to our memory by the ancient church wall of St. Mary's, Lambeth, that we were nigh passing over, with less notice than their importance demands, the historical purlieus of Thorney Island, on the opposite bank of the river.
This spot was originally the most desolate and barren of any in the neighbourhood of London. In the time of the Romans, it was a waste, overgrown with weeds and thorns, bounded on two sides by a dirty stream, afterwards called the Long Ditch. One of the first buildings erected upon it was a minster, undertaken by the converted King Sibert, in the year 610. To this minster the now famous city of Westminster owes all its greatness, and even its name. The seat of a bishop, it soon drew a busy population around it, who built upon and cultivated the waste, and in process of time filled up the ditch. King Rufus was the next to add to its dignity by the erection of his handsome banqueting-hall, where he used to keep his Christmas in great style with his court and retainers. Then the judges began to hold their sittings there, and finally the parliaments, until, in the course of time, all these advantages made Westminster the first city of the empire. A good story is related of James the First and one of the Lords Mayor, in reference to the prosperity of the twin cities, and which, for its happy, quiet laudation of the Thames, it would be unpardonable to omit. James being in want of twenty thousand pounds, applied to the corporation of London for a loan of that sum. The corporation refused, upon which the king in high dudgeon sent for the Lord Mayor and some of the aldermen, and, rating them in severe terms for their disloyalty, insisted upon their raising the money for him. "Please your majesty," said the Lord Mayor, "we cannot lend you what we have not got."—"You must get it," replied the King.—"We cannot," said the Lord Mayor.—"I'll compel you," rejoined the King.—"But you cannot compel us," retorted the Lord Mayor.—"No!" exclaimed the King; "then I'll ruin your city for ever. I'll make a desert of Westminster. I'll remove my courts of law, my parliament, and my court to York or to Oxford, and then what will become of you?"—"Please your rejoined the Lord Mayor meekly," you may remove yourself and your courts wherever you please; but there will always be this consolation for the poor merchants of London,—you cannot take the Thames along with you."
Leaving Westminster and all its reminiscences behind us,—for they are too many for our purpose, and would occupy as much space as we have to bestow upon the Thames itself, we continue our course upward to Vauxhall Bridge, passing the gloomy Penitentiary of Milbank on the right, and the low shores of ancient Lambeth on the left. How squalid and how miserable they look!—and how well do the lines of Pope, written more than a hundred and twenty years ago, describe their present appearance;—
In every town where Thamis rolls his tide
A narrow pass there is, with houses low,
Where ever and anon the stream is dyed,
And many a boat soft sliding to and fro,—
There oft are heard the notes of infant woe,
The short, thick sob, loud scream, and shriller squall—
* * * * *
And on the broken pavement here and there
Doth many a rotten sprat and herring lie;
A brandy and tobacco shop is near,
And hens, and dogs, and hogs are feeding by;
And here a sailor's jacket hangs to dry.
At every door are sun-burnt matrons seen
Mending old nets to catch the scaly fry,
Now singing shrill, and scolding oft between—
Scold answers foul-mouth'd scold: bad neighbourhood, I ween.
Such place hath Deptford, navy-building town,
Woolwich, and Wapping, smelling strong of pitch,
Such Lambeth—
The years that have rolled by since the time of Pope have made little or no difference in the habits or habitations of the poor. The progress of civilisation does nothing for them. Noble mansions may lift themselves on either side, bridges may be built, railways constructed; but the dwellings of the poor experience no improvement. A thousand years can effect nothing more for them than to change the wigwam into the hovel, and at the latter point they stop. It is hard to say whether their change of habits is even so much in their favour. As "noble savages," they had at least the advantages of health and fresh air; as independent labourers, doomed to the gas-work or the factory, they have neither,—besides wanting the contentment which was the lot of their naked progenitors of the woods and wilds. However, this is merely a hint for the political economists, and has nothing to do with Vauxhall, at which point we have now arrived, and caught, for the first time since we left London Bridge, a view of the green fields and the open country. Of Vauxhall itself there is little to say, and that little not worth repeating, except in the pages of a parish history. But its gardens, a glimpse of whose tree-tops we can just obtain from the river, how shall we describe them? Where in all England is there a spot more renowned among pleasure-seekers than
"This beauteous garden, but by vice maintained,"
as Addison, paraphrasing Juvenal, expresses it? Famous is Vauxhall in all the country round for its pleasant walks, its snug alcoves, its comic singers, its innumerable lamps, its big balloons, its midnight fireworks, its thin slices, its dear potations, its greedy waiters, and its ladies fair and kind, and abounding with every charm, except the greatest which can adorn their sex, and the want of which renders their beauty coarse, their kindness selfish, and their very presence an offence to the well-minded, In Addison's time, Spring Gardens, as they were then called, were noted for their nightingales and their sirens; and Sir Roger de Coverley is represented as having wished there were more of the former and fewer of the latter, in which case he would have been a better customer. But in our day there are no nightingales, and the sirens have it all to themselves. But let that pass. If the age will not mend its manners, it is no fault of ours; and we must take Vauxhall, like other things, as we find it. Sterner moralists than we are, or wish to be, have thought it a pleasant place, and the old guide-books invariably designate it "an earthly paradise." Addison called it a Mahometan paradise,—choosing the epithet, no doubt, from the numerous houris before mentioned, and the admixture of sensual and intellectual enjoyments which it afforded: In our day its claim to so high a character cannot be supported: it is the paradise only of fools, or at best of servant girls and apprentices.
On the opposite bank of the river the country is open, and we obtain a fine view of the western suburbs of the great capital. Further up the stream to the left we arrive opposite to the Red House, Battersea Fields, a spot which is noted for amusements of a very different kind. Here men, calling themselves gentlemen, assemble frequently during the summer months and murder pigeons, calling it sport. Here they stand in the court-yard of a public-house, and shoot pigeons by the hundred, let out of a box for the purpose, forgetting that all the enthusiasm, all the excitement, all the health, exercise, and pleasure of true sport disappear, and that the wholesale slaughter is left without any one excuse to be urged in its favour. If these men will shoot, let them hie to the mountains, let them tread the heather, or wade among the shallow waters for the wild fowl, and they will strengthen their limbs, cheer their spirits, and, if they try, improve their minds by the contemplation of nature in her solitudes. They will, at all events, be something better than a poulterer's assistant, which is the very highest rank that can be conferred upon pigeon-shooters.
These fields also are the scene of the marvellous adventure which befell Evans the astrologer, in the year 1663, as related in Lilly's Memoirs of his Life and Times. This Evans resided in the Minories, and being visited one day by Lord Bothwell and Sir Kenelm Digby, was desired by them to raise a ghost. Evans drew the magic circle accordingly, and stepping inside with his visiters, commenced his invocation. "Not having," quoth Lilly, "made any suffumigation, the spirits were vexed," and resolving to punish him for his neglect, whisked him out of the circle in an instant, carried him up the chimney, over the houses, over St. Paul's, over Westminster Abbey, and right over the Thames, until they arrived at Battersea Causeway, where they bumped him down from the height of a few hundred feet, and left him to die or recover, as he thought best. He was found the next morning by a countryman, of whom he inquired where he was, and how far from London? On being informed, he explained that he had been drinking with some friends in Battersea the previous night; that he had got drunk, and did not know what he did with himself afterwards;—an explanation which was perfectly satisfactory to the countryman, and will, no doubt, be so to the modern reader. It was not so, however, with Lilly, who was a great stickler for the truth of the supernatural version of the story.
On the opposite shore of the river stands Chelsea Hospital, the last refuge of the old soldier—
"Seul refuge, après tant de combats."
Englishmen are justly proud of this establishment, though being a sea-faring people, they rank it after Greenwich Hospital, which holds the first and highest place in their affections. Here the veterans bask themselves in the sun, and eat, and drink, and sleep, and gossip, having nothing else in the world to do. Though they never spared gunpowder, whose legitimate food the poet called them, gunpowder has spared them. Having made a full meal of their fellows now sleeping under the sod, he picked off the leg of one, the arm of another, and scooped out the eye of a third, just to show his willingness to devour, and that these were the dainties which were most to his mind. The history of this building is odd enough. The college, founded by a charter of James the First, in the year 1610, was intended as a seminary for polemical divines, who were to be employed in opposing the doctrines of papists and sectaries. Skilful combatants they were in the war of words; but fate had decreed the spot as a dwelling-place for combatants of another description. A king might intend it for a nursery to train up men in the art of opposing his enemies by the arguments of the tongue and the pen; but fate had said it should be the nursery of those who had employed their lives in using the still stronger arguments of the sword and the gun. The original scheme was not productive of much benefit; and the college having become tenantless, it was granted in the year 1669 to the Royal Society. It was again tenantless in the year 1680, and was fixed upon as the site of the present edifice. The foundation-stone was laid by Charles the Second, in 1682, and it was built from the design of Sir Christopher Wren. There is a tradition that it was owing to the influence of the beauteous Eleanor Gwynne that Charles the Second was induced to establish this institution, and the old soldiers to this day speak of her memory with the utmost respect.
Chelsea itself abounds in reminiscences, having been the residence of Sir Thomas More, of Holbein, of Pym, of St. Evremond, of Walpole, of Sir Hans Sloane, and also of Nell Gwynne and the Duchess of Mazarin, the mistresses of Charles, with a hundred other personages, celebrated for their virtue, their genius, their patriotism, their benevolence, or their beauty. There is an air of antiquity and sobriety about that portion of it which is seen from the river that is highly pleasing. The solemn, unassuming church, the sedate houses, and the venerable trees on Cheyné Walk, throw a charm around it quite delightful to the eye, which has dwelt too long upon the flaunting elegance of modern buildings, and the prim precision of new streets, that never by any chance afford room for a tree to grow upon them, and rarely within sight of them. The visiter's eye cannot fail to remark about the middle of the walk a tavern, inscribed with large letters along its front, "Don Saltero's—1695." This is the place celebrated in No. 34 of the Tatler, which was opened in the year above mentioned by one Salter, a barber, made a don by the facetious Admiral Munden, who, having cruised for a long period on the coasts of Spain, had contracted a habit of donning all his acquaintance, and putting a final o to their names. This barber had a taste for natural history, and adorned his coffee-room with stuffed birds, reptiles, and dried beetles; and the singularity of his taste, for a person in his condition of life, drew him many customers. The Tatler describes the room as being covered with "ten thousand gimcracks on the walls and ceiling," and Don Saltero himself as a sage-looking man, of a thin and meagre aspect. Its appearance is somewhat different now. The gimcracks, the old curiosities of the don, have dwindled away to two which still ornament the walls,—an old map of London and its environs; a painting of a ferocious Welshman with a Bardolphian nose riding on a goat, and armed with a leek and a red-herring, instead of sword and gun; and a label here and there about ginger-beer and soda-water. Instead of the meagre-looking sage, a bluff waiter enters at your summons, upon whose character you cannot speculate, so dull is he, and so like the thousands you may daily meet. The old host offered, on the contrary, a very fertile subject for the theorist. "Why," said the Tatler, "should a barber, and Don Saltero among the rest, be for ever a politician, a musician, and a physician?" Ah, why, indeed?—who can tell? To this day the barber is still the same. Go into a barber's anywhere, no matter in what district, and it is ten to one you will hear the sounds either of a fiddle or a guitar, or see the instruments hanging up somewhere. You will also find him a politician; or if not a politician, a great friend and small critic of the drama. Had we space, and it were part of our subject, we could discourse upon this matter lengthily if not learnedly, and also upon another question equally luminous, which has puzzled philosophers for many ages, "Why do all poor old women wear red cloaks?" But we refrain, and continue our reminiscences of Chelsea.
In a house fronting the river, the site of which, to our no little mortification, we could not ascertain, resided Sir Thomas More, about the year 1520. Erasmus, who was his frequent guest, describes it as having been "neither mean nor subject to envy, yet magnificent enough. There he conversed with his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, his three daughters and their husbands, with eleven grandchildren. There was not any man living," continues Erasmus, "who was so affectionate to his children as he; and he loveth his old wife as well as if she were a young maid." Here Holbein shared this great man's hospitality for three years; and here also the royal brute his master, when he was in the mood to do him honour, came in regal state, and sometimes privately, to dine with him. Here also the noble-minded daughter of the philosopher buried the grey head of her unfortunate father, after having at great risk stolen it from the pike on which it was fixed at London Bridge, by the order of the blood-thirsty Henry VIII. If there are occasions in which the insensible sod can become hallowed and consecrated, an incident like this ought in all true hearts to render it holy for evermore,—thither should pilgrims resort, and there should monuments be erected. Never did soil receive a more affecting deposit than when the head of that sage and Christian, with its long white beard, was laid by filial hands in the garden at Chelsea. Pity it is that there is no memorial on the spot to guide the steps of the thousands who would think it a labour of love to visit it. The body was buried at Chelsea, in the south side of the chancel.
Of the bridge connecting Chelsea with Battersea, useful, no doubt, but certainly not very ornamental, it is unnecessary to say more than merely mention the fact of its existence. Battersea, whose simple unpretending church-steeple peeps modestly from amid surrounding houses, requires more notice. ere at one time Pope had a favourite study fronting the Thames, and here was born the celebrated Lord Bolingbroke. Some portraits of the St. Johns, ancestors of this nobleman, adorn the windows of the church. There is also a monument to his memory executed by Roubiliac.
The etymology of the word Battersea has often puzzled commentators. Doctors have differed as to whether St. Patrick or St. Peter, or plain Batter-pudding, or even butter, should have the honour of bestowing a name upon the village. Aubrey derives it from St. Patrick, it having, in William the Conqueror's time, been written Patrice-cey, afterwards Battrichsey, and then Battersea. Lysons battles in favour of St. Peter, and the etymology seems plain enough;—Petersea, Pattersea, Battersea; which is rendered more likely to be the true one, by the manor having once belonged to the abbey of St. Peter's, at Chertsey. This village used to be famous for asparagus, and that the following song was written in praise of some bright-eyed daughter of the spot, real or imaginary.
Of all the broad rivers that flow to the ocean,
There's none to compare, native Thames! unto thee;
And gladly for ever,
Thou smooth-rolling river,
I'd dwell on thy green banks at fair Battersea.
'T was there [ was born, and 't is there I will linger,
And there shall the place of my burial be,
If fortune, caressing,
Will grant but one blessing,
The heart of the maiden of fair Battersea.
I seek not to wander by Tyber or Arno,
Or castle-crown'd rivers in far Germanie;
To me, Oh, far dearer,
And brighter, and clearer,
The Thames as it rimples at fair Battersea.
Contentment and Hope, spreading charms all around them,
Have hallow'd the spot since she smil'd upon me—
O Love! thy joys lend us,
O Fortune, befriend us,
We'll yet make an Eden of fair Battersea.
A little farther on to the left, a small stream discharges itself into the Thames. This is the Wandle, the "blue transparent Vandalis" of Pope, and famous for trout. Pleasant places there are on its banks, between Carshalton and Wandsworth, where the angler may take his station, and be rewarded with something more substantial than mere nibbles. The stream is also renowned for the great number of dye-houses and manufacturing establishments upon its banks. Poetry, too, has striven to celebrate it. Witness the following ditty, made upon some charmer, whose beauty seems to have been the only witchcraft that she used:—
Sweet little witch of the Wandle!
Come in my bosom and fondle,
I love thee sincerely,
1'll cherish thee dearly,
Sweet little witch of the Wandle!
Sweet little witch of the Wandle!
All our life long let us fondle;
Ne'er will I leave thee,
Ne'er will I grieve thee,
Sweet little witch of the Wandle!
Close by Wandsworth is a long lane, the name of which has become famous in all the country, since Foote wrote his admirable burlesque, "The Mayor of Garratt." Garratt Lane runs parallel for a considerable distance with the river Wandle, and used to be the scene in former years, of the election of a mock member of parliament, whenever there was a general election. The Mayor of Garratt was the name given to their president by a club of small tradesmen, who had formed an association about the year 1760, to prevent encroachments upon the neighbouring common. Afterwards, when Foote had given celebrity to the name, a mayor was elected by all the ragamuffins of the vicinity, who assembled in a public-house for that purpose; and later still, a member of parliament was elected instead of the mayor. Upon these occasions, there was generally a goodly array of candidates, who had their proposers and seconders, and made long burlesque speeches in the regular form. Thousands of persons from London used to meet in the lane, to the great profit of the innkeepers, who willingly paid all the expenses of flags, placards, and hustings. But these proceedings, which commenced in good humour, ended very often in broken heads and limbs; and the magistracy, scandalised by the scenes of debauchery, drunkenness, and robbery that were so frequent, determined to put a stop to the exhibition; and it was finally suppressed about the year 1796.
The next place we arrive at is Putney, famous as the head-quarters of Cromwell's army, when the royal forces were stationed at Hampton Court. Putney was also the birth-place of the other and less celebrated Cromwell, Earl of Essex, whose father was a blacksmith in the village. Drayton, in his Legend of Thomas Cromwell, says there was an unusual tide of the river at his birth, which was thought to predict his future greatness:—
Twice flow'd proud Thames, as at my coming woo'd,
Striking the wondering borderers with fear,
And the pale Genius of that aged flood
To my sick mother, labouring, did appear,
And with a countenance much distracted stood
Threatening the fruit her pained womb should bear.
There used to be a ferry at Putney in very early ages. It is mentioned in Domesday Book as yielding an annual toll of twenty shillings to the lord of the manor. When the bridge was built in 1729, the ferry yielded to the proprietor about four hundred pounds per annum, and was sold for eight thousand pounds. The spot has always been famous for its fishery, and, according to Lysons, is mentioned as early as the time of the Conquest. In 1663, the annual rent of the fishery was the three best salmon caught in the months of March, April, and May. When the estates of Sir Theodore Janssen, the noted South Sea Director, and lord of the manor of Putney, were sold, the fishery was let for six pounds per annum. It is still a favourite spot for anglers. The salmon are not reckoned very plentiful now-a-days; but there are great quantities of very fine smelts, as well as shad, roach, dace, barbels, gudgeons, and eels.
It was formerly the custom for persons travelling to the west of England from London to proceed as far as Putney by water, and then take coach. We learn from Stowe, that when Cardinal Wolsey was dismissed from the chancellorship, he sailed from York Place (Whitehall) to Putney, on his way to Hampton Court, to the great disappointment "of the wavering and newfangled multitude," who expected that he would have been committed to the Tower. So great was the crowd when he embarked at Privy Stairs, that, according to Stowe, a man might have walked up and down on the Thames, so covered was it with boats filled with the people of London. The scene that took place on his arrival will always render Putney a memorable spot. As he mounted his mule, and all his gentlemen took horse to proceed to Hampton, he espied a man riding in great haste down the hill into the village. The horseman turned out to be one Master Norris, charged with a message from the king to the cardinal, bidding him be of good cheer, for that his present disgrace was not so much the result of the king's indignation as a measure of policy to satisfy some persons, over whose heads he should yet arise again in new splendour. "When the cardinal," to use the quaint and forcible language of Stowe, "had heard Master Norris report these good and comfortable words of the king, he quickly lighted from his mule all alone, as though he had been the youngest of his men, and incontinently kneeled down in the dirt upon both his knees, holding up his hands for joy of the king's most comfortable message. 'Master Norris,' quoth he, 'when I consider the joyful news that you have brought me, I could do no less than greatly rejoice. Every word pierces so my heart, that the sudden joy surmounted my memory, having no regard or respect to the place; but I thought it my duty, that in the same place where I received this comfort to laud and praise God upon my knees, and most humbly to render unto my sovereign lord my most hearty thanks for the same.' And as he was talking thus upon his knees to Master Norris, he would have pulled off a velvet night-cap, which he wore under his black hat and scarlet cap, but he could not undo the knot under his chin: wherefore with violence he rent his laces off his cap, and pulled his said cap from his head, and kneeled bare-headed. This done, he mounted again on his mule, and so rode forth the high way up into the town."
What a picture this would make!—and, were our voice potential with an artist, we would advise him to try his hand upon it. But we must conclude the story. When they arrived at Putney heath, Master Norris presented the cardinal with a ring, telling him that the king had sent it as a token of his good will. "Oh!" exclaimed the ambitious old man, "if I were lord of all this realm, Master Norris, the one half thereof would be too small a reward to you for your pains and good news." He then presented him with a gold chain which he usually wore round his neck, with a gold cross, in which was inclosed a small fragment of the true cross on which Jesus was crucified, "wear this about your neck continually for my sake," said he, "and remember me to the king when ye shall see opportunity." Upon this, Master Norris took his departure; but the cardinal was still unsatisfied, and before he was out of sight sent one of his gentlemen in all haste after him to bring him back again. "I am very sorry," said he, "that I have no token to send to the
king; but if you will at my request present the king with this poor fool, I trust he will accept him, for he is for a nobleman's pleasure, forsooth, worth one thousand pounds."—*So Master Norris," [we again quote Stowe,] "took the fool, with whom my lord was fain to send six of his tallest yeomen to help him to convey the fool to the court; for the poor fool took on like a tyrant, rather than he would have departed from my lord. But, notwithstanding, they conveyed him, and so brought him to the court, where the king received him very gladly." This fool, from the value set upon him, appears to have been supereminent in his folly. A fool after the fashion of him in Shakspeare, whom Jacques met in the forest,
"A fool—a fool—a motley fool—
A noble fool—a worthy fool."
The cardinal, for aught we know to the contrary, might have concealed a deep meaning under his present. "You will not take wise men into your favour, O king, therefore take this fool." His head, however, we are justified in believing, would not have been of much worth, if his master had perceived the satire. At all events the fool showed that he had some sense by his dislike to enter the service of a king whose propensity to taking off heads was so remarkable.
Among other reminiscences of Putney, we must not omit that it was the birth-place of the great historian Gibbon, and that Pitt died on Putney heath. Here also, in a small house near the bridge, resided the novelist, Richardson, and here he wrote "Sir Charles Grandison."