On the River

ETCHINGS

Joseph Pennell

ON THE RIVER.

It is easier to admit than to explain the charm of the Thames. For me it not one of "the rivers of home," which, Mr. Stevenson says, are "dear in particular to all men." And yet fancy lingers, as I do myself, on its banks rather then on the shores of the broad Delaware, or the Schuylklll, with its pretty Indian name, where more than half my life was spent. In historic dignity alone the reason may not lie; here, the Seine and the Rhine are its rivals, while the Tiber far outstrips in whatever attraction history may give. Nor can daily familiarity be held responsible: for many weeks I lived with the Danube hurrying past beneath my window, but it never stirred admiration into the warmer sentiment aroused by the first journey on a Thames penny steamboat.

It is ten years since that first journey was made, but I remember it in all its details: first impressions are ever the strongest. From Westminster to Greenwich was the distance covered, that the trip to the cockney would have seemed an ordinary half-day outing. But I had been in England not quite a week; the faces and speech of my fellow passengers were still foreign to me; the quiet, unassuming little steamer still astonished by contrast with the big, blustering ferryboats of the Delaware; and before we had pushed from the pier the excursion savoured of an adventure. But once out upon the river, I was in a measure, at home. The big pile of Westminster we were leaving behind, the seat dome we were fast approaching, the Monument, the Tower ~~ these I knew only less well than the State House preserving its old-fashioned calm amidst the bustle of Chestnut Street, then the spire of St. Peter's rising sedately from the red brick and white marble of Pine Street, then the Pennsylvania Hospital, with the statue of penn, that gets down from its pedestal and walks when it hears the clock strike midnight. And when we stopped at other piers the names were pleasantly familiar: Charing Cross and the Temple, Rotherhithe and Wapping. In these was nothing new; they sounded in my ears like the music of a well-known refrain. Memories and associations, some vague, same vivid, clustered about them: memories, not learnedly historical but tenderly intimate, not of kings and Lord Mayors and pomps processional, but of old and tried friends, of Johnson and "the Club," of Pendennis and Warrington, of Lizzie and Roger Hexham. And this, it may be, helps to account for at least a part of the Thames' charm, for one's bye of its waters and its shores even before me sees them. I am not sure, after all, that it is not the "river of home" for all English-speaking people. In a word, it first attracts, as London itself does, by an indefinable homelike quality: that quality, literary in inspiration, which makes the shabby Strand dearer far than more imposing avenue or gayer boulevard, which gives the Mall precedence over the fair glades of St. Cloud or the stately walks of the Borghese. In books one has ever been on terms the most intimate with London and its river.

It comes as the surprise that one expected to find the Thames in every way so worthy a background for these of old and friendly memories. More than any other stream, it has its special sound and colour. There is a distinct character in its very stillness after the roar of London town, so much