THE THAMES

DESCRIBED BY G. E. MITTON
PICTURED BY E. W. HASLEHUST

BLACKIE & SON LIMITED
LONDON AND GLASGOW

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

WINDSOR

When the American wondered what all the fuss was about, and “guessed” that any one of his home rivers could swallow the Thames and never know it, the Englishman replied, he “guessed” it depended at which end the process began; if at the mouth, the American river would probably get no farther than the “greatest city the world has ever known” before succumbing to indigestion!

With rivers as with men, size is not an element in greatness, and for no other reason than that it carries London on its banks the Thames would be the most famous river in the world. It has other claims too, claims which are here set forth with pen and pencil; for at present we are not dealing with London at all, but with that river of pleasure of which Spenser wrote:—

Along the shores of silver-streaming Themmes;
Whose rutty bank, the which his river hemmes,
Was paynted all with variable flowers,
And all the meades adorned with dainty gemmes,
Fit to deck mayden bowres and crowne their paramoures,
Against the brydale day which is not long,
Sweet Thames! runne softly till I end my song.

Oddly enough, this is one of the comparatively few allusions to the Thames in literature, and there is no single striking ode in its honour. It is perhaps too much to expect the present Poet Laureate to fill the gap, but certainly the poet of the Thames has yet to arise.

Besides Spenser, Drayton makes allusion to the Thames in his Polyolbion, using as an allegory the wedding of Thame and Isis, from which union is born the Thames; and in this he is correct, for where Thame and Isis unite at Dorchester there begins the Thames, and all that is usually counted Thames, up to Oxford and beyond, is, as Oxford men correctly say, the Isis. Yet by custom now the river which flows past Oxford is treated as the Thames, and when we speak of our national river we count its source as being in the Cotswold