[Gutenberg 40020] • The Thames 1

THE BEAUTY OF THE RIVER

Close your eyes and conjure up a vision of the river Thames; what is the picture that you see? If you are a prosaic and commercial person, whose business lies by the river side, the vision will be one of wharves and docks, of busy cranes loading and unloading; a row of bonded warehouses rising from the water's edge; lighters filled with tea lying in their shadow, tarpaulined and padlocked; ships of all sizes and shapes, worn by water and weather. And up and down, in and out, among it all you see river police on their launch, inquisitive and determined, watching everything, hearing everything, and turning up when least expected. The glories of the high Tower Bridge, and the smoky gold of the setting sun will not affect you, for your thoughts are fixed on prosaic detail. As for green fields and quiet backwaters, such things do not enter into the vision at all.

Yet for one who sees the Thames thus prosaically, a hundred see it in a gayer aspect. To many a man it is always summer there, for the river knows him not when the chill grey days draw in. He sees gay houseboats in new coats of paint, decorated with scarlet geraniums and other gaudy plants. He associates the river with "a jolly good time" with a carefully chosen house-party, with amateur tea-making and an absence of care. Nowhere else is one so free to "laze" without the rebuke even of one's own occasionally too zealous conscience.

To another the Thames simply means the Boat Race, nothing more and nothing less. Year by year he journeys up to London from his tiny vicarage in the heart of the country for that event. If the high tide necessitates it, he stands shivering on the brink in the chill whiteness of early morning. He sits on the edge of a hard wooden cart for an immense time, and, by way of keeping up his strength, eats an indigestible penny bun, a thing that it would never enter his head to do at any other time. He sees here and there one or the other of those school-fellows or university chums who have dropped out of his life for all the rest of the year. Then, after a moment's shouting, a moment's tense anxiety or bitter disappointment, according to the position of the boats, the flutter of a flag, and a thrill of something of the old enthusiasm that the unsparing poverty of his life has slowly ground out of him, he retires to his vicarage again for another year, elated or depressed according to the result of the race.

CONTENTS

The Beauty of the River

The Oxford Meadows

The Old Town of Abingdon

Dorchester and Sinodun Hill

Castle and Stronghold

Twin Villages

A Mitred Abbot

Sonning and its Roses

Wargrave and Neighbourhood

Henley

The Romance of Bisham and Hurley

Boulter's Lock and Maidenhead

Windsor and Eton

Magna Charta

Penton Hook

Weybridge and Chertsey

The Londoner's Zone

The River at London

Our National Possession

ILLUSTRATIONS

Punting

Thames Ditton

Sutton Courtney, Culham Bridge

Pangbourne

Dorchester Abbey

Day's Lock

Near the Bridge, Sutton Courtney

Streatley Inn

Sandford Lock

Iffley

Radley College Boat-house

Almshouses of Abingdon

Abingdon

The Mill at Abingdon

Sutton Courtney Backwater

Clifden Hampden from the Bridge

Clifden Hampden

Hurley

Cottages, Dorchester

White Hart Hotel, Dorchester

Dorchester Backwater

Danesfield

Wallingford

Streatley Mill

Goring Bridge

Streatley

Goring Church

Goring

Pangbourne, from the Swan Hotel

Whitchurch Lock

Mapledurham Mill

Evening

Caversham

Paddling

The Rose Garden