CHAPTER X
ISLEWORTH—BRENTFORD AND CÆSAR’S CROSSING OF THE THAMES
Isleworth, an ancient and almost forgotten village overlooking the Thames, is not by any manner of means to be confounded with the station of that name, or with the better-known outlying portion of the parish known as Old Isleworth. The reason of this popular ignorance of Isleworth is easily to be found in the pronounced bend of the river by which it stands, the great roads in the neighbourhood going approximately direct, and leaving Isleworth in a very rarely travelled nook, not often penetrated, except by those who have some especial reason for calling at Isleworth itself. It is thus a singularly old-world place, and, strangely enough, it is more often seen from afar, from the towing-path on the Surrey side, than at hand.
The village, however little known it may be to-day, was sufficiently well known to the compilers of Domesday Book, in whose pages it appears in the grotesque spelling, “Ghistelworde.” Afterwards it is found written Yhistleworth, Istelworth, Ysselsworth, and at last, before the present formula was found for it, “Thistleworth.” A vast deal of contention has raged around the meaning of the place-name, and with such an orthographic choice you could give it almost any meaning you chose; but there can be little question but that it comes from two words, the Celtic uisc for water, and the Saxon worth for village. It is, indeed, distinctly a water-village, for not only does the Thames flow by it, but here the Crane, rising near Northolt, and coming down through Cranford, falls into the Thames, near by a little nameless brook that rises on Norwood Green. It is indeed the confluence of the Crane and the Thames that contributes so largely to the picturesqueness, the somewhat squalid waterside picturesqueness, of Isleworth; for the outlet of the smaller into the larger river is closed by little dock-gates, and the space thus shut in is presided over by the huge, and in themselves unbeautiful, flour mills of Messrs. Samuel Kidd & Sons. There is, however, always a something attractive about flour-mills, let the builders of them build never so prosaically; and here, where the little stream comes sliding out beneath the massive buildings, and where the road passes over the little dock, the sight of the barges coming up, each laden with their thousand or so quarters of wheat for the mills, is found generally interesting, especially to boys sent about some urgent business; the more immediate and pressing the errand, the more attractive the mills; which have their historical interest to the well-read in local story, for they are the successors, on this same spot, of the ancient water-mills of the Abbey of Sion.
ISLEWORTH.
Most of the houses at Isleworth are old brick structures, with heavily sashed windows, and the humbler houses and cottages are very much out of repair. There is a look of the passive mood and of the past tense about the place, and you expect (and probably would find if you inquired) holes in the stockings of every other inhabitant, patches on their posteriors, and mere apologies for soles on their footgear; while shocking bad hats are the only wear. The artist who knows what’s what will already have perceived that Isleworth is a place likely to have pictorial qualities, and in his supposition he will be quite correct. It would certainly have captivated Whistler. Imagine the parish church on the river-bank, at the end of this rather feckless street of houses; imagine a very large old inn, the London Apprentice, almost dabbling in the water, and then conceive two large islands, or eyots, or aits, as they may with equal correctitude be called, off-shore, dividing the stream of Thames in two. They are extremely interesting eyots, for they grow to this day abundance of osiers, whose periodical harvesting, for the making of baskets, is a by no means negligible local industry. Lately I walked through Isleworth on the day before Christmas, and there, stepping down between two rows of little tenements forming Tolson’s Almhouses, and looking down upon the river from the railed wall at the farther end, could be seen lying six or eight great barges that had come, not from foreign climes, but from the creeks and ports of the Essex and the Kentish coasts, from the Swale, the Medway, the Blackwater, or the Crouch. Each and all of them had at their mastheads a bundle of holly fastened to a spar, in honour of the coming Day. Beyond them rose the ivy-clad tower of the church, and an occasional pallid gleam of sunshine broke upon the river. It was a pretty and a touching scene.