EVERY Londoner of taste should make himself familiar with his river, ever placidly winding on and offering a spectacle of grace that never palls. It supplies a constant suggestion of rural beauty, even if we go no further in search of it than to Battersea, where there is a quaint Dutch tone. At Chelsea its many fitful changings begin. But even here, within a few years, what violent alterations, and how much has been lost! Here, for instance, is a sketch which I made not very many years ago, which is scarcely recognizable now.

“Beyond Battersea Bridge the tiled houses begin at once; the footways along the banks are sternly blocked, and we begin to see those charming slopes and swards, and snatches of old houses playing hide and seek with us between the trees. Here, we might, as it were, suddenly awaken one who has travelled much, and ask him, as he rubs his eyes, to name the river abroad on which he is sailing; to say whether it was the Dutch or German portion of the Rhine, the Meuse, or any other important river. To the eye not too much familiarized, it has a curiously foreign air. But as we glide on and draw in to shore we observe a shaded walk, sheltered by two rows of tall trees. On a long, irregular pier, not of the correct hewn stone, modern pattern, but of earth and wood, or piles, and through the trees and that delightful shade which dapples all the walk in patterns, though outside it the sun is blazing fiercely, we see figures promenading, and beyond them as background—a cosy row of red brick houses—an old-fashioned terrace, of the brick of Queen Anne’s special hue, with twisted iron railings and gates in front. At the edge of the road in front of the trees is an irregular wooden railing, against which loungers rest. Below them are boats drawn up. As we glide on we come to the centre, where the trees open, and a little suspension pier juts out to let the steamers land passengers; and behind the pier the terrace breaks into a crescent. Here we land, and find ourselves on ‘Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.’ The whole has the air of one of those Dutch views we see in picture shops. There is a deal of grass-green paint; Dutch-built barges of a varnished yellow lying low in the water; and as we walk along in the shade the strong Dutch smell ‘grows,’ as from the canals, and makes the delusion stronger. One would like to live in this Cheyne Walk, as many great people did a long time ago, and as Maclise did only yesterday. There is his house, with a little garden in front, as they all have, and a gate of elegant iron tracery, with initials and flowers worked in. Inside they are all panels and stucco, with noble chimney-pieces, and gardens behind, stretching far back with shady trees, and some a fountain.

“Everything is in keeping, even to the old rickety timber bridge, which crosses the Thames, ascending steeply, and resting on what seems a series of birdcages, but which is now disappearing piecemeal. Beyond the bridge there is a charming bit of the river; and on some summer’s evening after a sultry day, when the water has a glassy, lazy, brimming look, and a faint haze is over the low-lying banks on the other side, and the houses and the church slope up in pyramid shape, it has all the air of a continental scene. Here the Chelsea watermen cluster and lounge, leaning over the wooden paling, and as they talk looking down into the glassy water, which is as languid as they are. Some old Manor House behind us, revealed by its French Mansard windows in the roof, by its projecting eaves, and its two great wings, has now been plainly cut up into four houses; and the centre one, overgrown with ivy and creepers, has all the windows open, its balconies filled with the family reading or chatting, the maids sitting working on the top balcony; while through its door we see the cool, shady hall and the green trees of the garden beyond.

“The ‘watermen’ flourish here, gradually driven from the other ‘stairs.’ So do their boats, which are in vast numbers; and indeed here is rowed the annual watermen’s race for the coat and badge left by the Irish actor, Dogget, with money added by some of the London Companies. In the windows was the bill of the Royal Chelsea Theatre, where, on this special night, Mr. Welkinghorn takes his benefit in the Moor of Venice; with, for a second piece, the appropriate Tom Tug; and on which occasion ‘the Chelsea watermen have kindly consented to attend in their coats and badges.’ All this was primitive enough and welcome, and scarcely to be expected in a London suburb. Here was once Saltero’s coffee-house, familiar to readers of Coleridge and Lamb, a river inn very popular once—indeed popular up to a late date. Salter was body servant to the great Sir Hans, and came with him from Ireland, and then formed one of those queer, good-for-nothing ‘museums,’ which captains of vessels often get together and bequeath to some country town, where they are shown with pride.”

This little picture is—if I may say it—a very faithful one of Chelsea as it used to be.

The headlong rapidity with which everything that is pretty or interesting in London is being swept off is truly extraordinary. It seems but yesterday—it is little over ten years ago—when London had its two charming al fresco gardens, the Surrey and Cremorne. The latter was a most original place, lying as it did by the tranquil river. So pretty a garden did not exist near London, and there was a quaint air of old fashion somehow preserved, suggesting Ranelagh and Vauxhall. Of a summer’s evening it was pleasant to glide down by steamer, touch at the crazy pier, now passed away, walk by the river’s edge to where the old trees rose high, thick, and stately—you expected to hear and see the rooks—through which came the muffled sounds of music and glittering, flitting lights. Even the gate was old and stately, and its ironwork good. Within, there was the blaze of light at the dancing platform; the old-fashioned hotel—nobody surely ever boarded or lodged there, or could—with bowed wings all ablaze with lamps; the “boxes” running round for suppers; the not unpicturesque bars; the capital theatres, for there were several dispersed about here and there and everywhere; and the sort of procession headed by an illuminated placard announcing the name of the next show. Then would the band strike up a stirring march, the drums clattering, the brass braying, and in military array lead the way, attended by all the rout and crowd, who fell in behind and tramped on cheerfully to renewed enjoyments. The dancing was always an amusing spectacle, from the rude honesty with which it was carried out; not the least amusing portion the dignity of the M.C.’s. The people sitting under the good old trees—the glaring booths—even the fortune-teller in his dark retirement, as in a deep grove, all this made up a curious entertainment never likely to be revived. We cannot go back to these things. The Surrey Gardens went before, as these have gone, long since. Now these elements are gathered up into aquariums, great halls, perhaps “hugely to the detriment” of the public. So peace be with the manes of Cremorne!

Turning out of Cheyne Walk, we find ourselves in Cheyne Row, which seems still and old-fashioned as some by-street in a cathedral close. Here are small, sound, old red-brick houses of the Queen Anne period, or so-called Queen Anne period. And here, at No. 24, lived Thomas Carlyle, in whom neighbours and neighbourhood might well take pride. A compact dwelling, next to the one with a verandah and substantial porch. Its neighbour on the other side boasts the good old eaves which it has lost—but en revanche it has its “jalousies.” Within, there is a strange air of old fashion, and the furniture as antique. The inhabitants, or vestry perhaps, have honoured him. For close by is a rather imposing square—yclept Carlyle Square—a nice and unusual shape of compliment. They point out his house, and at the photographers’ and print shops, during his life, you could buy photographs of house and owner.

Once, and not long before his death, the writer found himself sitting with the philosopher, who in his kindly fashion had allowed himself to be modelled by very inexperienced hands. This “bust”—if it is entitled to the dignity—is beside me now, in the old, broad, felt hat, the grizzled beard below, and the heavy coat up about his ears, for he seemed to feel the cold. That was a pleasant hour, for he talked in his pleasantest vein. There have been occasions when I have smoked a “churchwarden” with him, but these were on rare festivals. Now the old house seems fast going to decay, and is unlet, strange to say, though a tenant is sought. There is over it that curious sense of blight which seemed to settle on the sage himself in his later days, when even the visitor was struck by the chill, forlorn look of the rooms and furniture.

The lower end of the “walk” is closed by the Church. There is nothing more picturesque in London than old Chelsea Church, with its grimed old red-brick or brown-brick tower, and its tablets and tombstones fixed outside, high on the walls of the church, up and down, like framed pictures—an unusual adornment; the effect, as may be conceived, is the quaintest. So, too, with the little appendix, or round house, attached to it, with the odd figures, and the Hans Sloane altar-tomb under a sort of shed or canopy. The tower, however, is the attraction, suggesting something Dutch, and rising sad, solemn, and grizzled. Indeed, the view here is quaint and pretty, and recalls a bit of the Scheldt; especially in the time of the old wooden bridge, kept together with clamps and bits of framing, with the high hunchback look we see on the bridges over the Rhine.

We now pass from the genuine antique to its imitations, and reach the curious cluster of modern-old houses to which the new Embankment has furnished ground. Some are bold and effective, and the whole group, which has gradually extended down the Embankment for a long distance, is worth a special visit. They bear quaint names, such as the Old Swan House, the White House, Carlyle House, Shelley House, River View, and the like. Farnely House and its neighbours are good imposing monuments of brick. Shelley House, with its attached theatre, is in an adjoining street. This place of “amusement” brought its owner endless annoyance and expense—a lawsuit finished it, and now it stands unused. The house with the curious white bow windows, set in something that looks like the stern of an old man-of-war, will attract attention; we should note the “Clock House” with its handsome dial projecting; likewise the house at the corner, with its elaborate grilles over most of the windows. But turning down Tite Street—Mr. Tite was an eminent architect of a few years back, now of course almost forgotten—we come to the White House, a curious, quaint structure, stiff as an American’s dress-coat about the shoulders, which is, or was, the dwelling of a well-known American artist, celebrated for his “nocturnes in green” and “symphonies in blue,” which caused jesters such merriment, to say nothing of his Peacock Chamber, one of those two, or nine days’ wonders which furnish society with something to talk of.

In the little square or tongue of ground near Cheyne Row will be noticed an elaborate lamp, supported by contorted boys. This was one of the rejected patterns for the series that was to decorate the Embankment. The one chosen consists of contorted dolphins, and is not very effective.

At Vauxhall Bridge we come to a curious conceit, that would have “arrided”—Lamb’s word—the heart of Dickens. Here is a large yard devoted to the sale of ship timber, for which old vessels of course are bought and broken up. But there remain always the old figure-heads—strange, curious, gigantic efforts, that make one wonder what manner of man the designer was. Nor are they without merit or spirit. They rise towering with a strange stark air, and look over the wall with much of the dazed astonishment the animals showed in Charles Lamb’s copy of Stackhouse’s Bible. Here are Dukes of York with a fatuous expression, the Janet Simpson, or Lady Smith, and Iron Dukes—all, it must be said, wrought rather vigorously, and looking with eternal solemnity over the wall, each some six or eight feet high, to the surprise of the stranger. The natives are familiar with them.

Turning up from the Embankment, we pass a very antique row of houses, Paradise Walk, with its heavy-browed eaves, grimed, tiled roofs and little gardens in front, a general decay over all. This curious range of buildings, which is in Wren’s style, is worth a few moments’ inspection, especially the one with the effective bit of old iron gateway; as well as the strange institution which forms the last house, entitled “The School of Discipline,” which, it seems, has been flourishing—for it would not have endured over sixty years otherwise—since 1825. It was founded by the worthy Elizabeth Fry for the training of servant girls. What the “discipline” is, what the school, are things not generally known. It was hard by here that a few years ago a ghastly bit of sensation engaged the attention of the penny papers and their special reporters, who invaded these sleepy precincts. Two young men arriving from the country, flush of money, took up their abode in some disreputable house, where they revelled for a week till their resources were exhausted, when both attempted suicide, one succeeding. It proved that they had embezzled the moneys of their employer, and then fled to London, burying themselves in this obscure region, where they escaped detection. Further on we reach the green in front of the Hospital. This must have had a fine effect when the Hospital could only be seen from the bottom of this great expanse; but now the high road has been ruthlessly cut across it, with no effect but that of convenience. The old overhanging public-house, the “Duke of York,” is curious, and gives the locale a sort of rural air. But this, indeed, is shared by the King’s Road, which has a sort of special country-town air, as distinct as what merry Islington offers. This is the scene of Wilkie’s famous picture of the Chelsea veterans receiving the news of the Waterloo victory. There is an air of retired and retiring simplicity in the shops and little by-streets.

The quaint “physick” gardens belonging to the Apothecaries—a benefaction of Sir Hans Sloane—will next attract the eye, if only by the magnificent old yew which rises grim and sepulchral in the centre. Whether the apothecaries walk in this piece of ground and peep over the rails at the passing boats on the river is uncertain—they surely do not “cull simples,” for they can buy them cheaper than grow them. But it is a pleasing inclosure—a surprise, considering its position—suited to calm tranquillity and meditation.