The river at Thames Ditton in 1827 saw a festival which was doubtless considered one of the most prodigious affairs of the season. Five young bloods, of whom two were the Lords Castlereagh and Chesterfield of the day, subscribed £500 each to organise an enormous water party, to which, presumably, everybody was invited who was worth inviting. It was a superb occasion, with illuminations, quadrilles on the lawn, singers from the opera, covers for five hundred people, and all adornments proper to such gaiety. Afterwards it came to be known as the Dandies' Fête, and Tom Moore wrote a set of verses about it, which, perhaps, reflect fairly accurately the wit of the company. Here are nine lines out of many:—
"Accordingly, with gay Sultanas,
Rebeccas, Sapphos, Roxalanas—
Circassian slaves, whom Love would pay
Half his maternal realms to ransom;—
Young nuns, whose chief religion lay
In looking most profanely handsome!
Muses in muslin—pastoral maids,
With hats from the Arcade-ian shades;
And fortune-tellers—rich, 'tis plain,
As fortune-hunters, form'd their train."
Moore sent the verses to Mrs. Norton; she, perhaps, was a Circassian or a nun.
But Thames Ditton has had its own poet. He has been dignified by the criticism of Charles Lamb, and his accomplishment was the composing of epitaphs. "What is the reason," Lamb writes to Wordsworth in 1810, "we have no good epitaphs after all?"
A very striking instance might be found in the churchyard of Ditton-upon-Thames, if you know such a place. Ditton-upon-Thames has been blessed by the residence of a poet, who for love or money, I do not well know which, has dignified every gravestone, for the last few years, with brand-new verses, all different, and all ingenious, with the author's name at the bottom of each. This sweet Swan of Thames has so artfully diversified his strains and his rhymes, that the same thought never occurs twice; more justly, perhaps, as no thought ever occurs at all, there was a physical impossibility that the same thought should recur. It is long since I saw and read these inscriptions, but I remember the impression was of a smug usher at his desk in the intervals of instruction, levelling his pen. Of death, as it consists of dust and worms, and mourners and uncertainty, he had never thought; but the word 'death' he had often seen separate and conjunct with other words, till he had learned to speak of all its attributes as glibly as Unitarian Belsham will discuss you the attributes of the word 'God' in a pulpit; and will talk of infinity with a tongue that dangles from a skull that never reached in thought and thorough imagination two inches, or further than from his hand to his mouth, or from the vestry to the sounding-board of the pulpit.
But the epitaphs were trim, and sprag, and potent, and pleased the survivors of Thames-Ditton above the old Mumpsimus of 'Afflictions Sore'....
The church itself, or at all events the squat and tiny tower, has not altered much since Lamb saw it. But the epitaphs have gone. Search among the ivies and yews of the shady little churchyard will discover a number of flat, weatherworn slabs of stone, but the verses and the signatures have vanished. Fire and the wastepaper man are the common lot of poets, but this "Swan of Thames" has come to his end by rain and hobnails. The only Swan that remains is the inn, whose sign sits comfortably above the front door, white and bright. Few Thames-side inns have a prettier outlook, or look prettier from the river. Sunlight on shining brown boats and quivering willows is a frequent memory of Thames waters, but the Swan lies also opposite a ferry, and a ferry has a hundred fascinations. Old fashioned rowing, running water, hailings and signallings, quiet motion, thriving business, new arrivals; it is all the cheerfullest of riverside traffic. None of the pleasanter services of travel can be more directly rendered and directly paid for than being ferried across a river.
Of Surrey village greens, the Thames Ditton Ground at Giggs Hill has had much to do with Surrey cricket. Giggs Hill cricket has not always been of the most scientific kind, but who shall say it was less enjoyed for that? An old Giggs Hill cricketer tells us how the pitch used to be prepared for a match. "I remember," he says, "seeing the late Harry Stowell with an old beer barrel fixed on a trolley and filled with water, wheeling it across the wicket. He would well douse the pitch, and after running a small garden roller he had borrowed up and down a few times the wicket was ready." This proceeding took place the day before the match, so that batting must occasionally have been a venturesome business. In those days a match meant what it still means in some villages, an adjournment in the evening to the neighbouring inn, a supper, beer, and songs. How many old inns still keep the name "The Jolly Cricketers," and how many for little reason! In later days, Thames Ditton cricket has become scientific enough. The Giggs Hill ground has sent to the Oval cricketers like H.H. Stephenson, who was making centuries for the county in the sixties; in modern times the great Maurice Read, whom Mr. John Shuter has described as having "started a new order among cricket professionals," learned his cricket at Thames Ditton. But the greatest of all Thames Ditton cricketers is, of course, Tom Richardson. He was actually born at Byfleet, but played as a boy at Giggs Hill.
Thames Ditton's sister, Long Ditton, is probably known by sight by thousands of people who do not know its name. You are looking at the best of Long Ditton when you see Barr's nursery gardens from the train window. There is hardly a month in the year, except in the deep of midwinter, when the Ditton Hill gardens are not full of blossom. They are never more glorious than in May and early June, when the long parterres glow with the tall, late-flowering tulips. Of all flowers which have been added to English gardens in the last twenty years, the great thirty inch tulips seem to me the finest. A giant daffodil can be superb, but it always looks like a giant. But these tulips have the grace of slightness and the majesty of height; their open chalices burn with the heat of jewels and the depth of the heart of wine; and here are ten thousand of them. Perhaps the daffodils, earlier in the year, light the gardens with a fresher lustre; but the tulips have the colour and the glow. Railways have the good luck to run by many nursery gardens; the tulips at Ditton Hill would help the South Western to challenge any line.
On the other side of Thames Ditton ferry lies Hampton Court Park, a noble stretch of ordered green. From the ferry to Hampton Court Bridge is a mile by river, and nearly twice as much by road, which runs through East Molesey. There is little of interest in either of the Moleseys, East or West, but it is worth walking a dull mile or two to look down stream from the Bridge over Henry VIII's palace, with its yews and elms, dark and stately, in the garden beyond the imposing walls. There is a far more comprehensive view of Hampton Court to be had from the railway or the river, but it is still a fine pile of brick seen down stream from the Bridge. Up stream, Hampton Church stands a mile away at the bend of the river, grey in the sunshine; between the church and the bridge is the lock, bright with boats in summer, and the weir, tumbling down a roar of green water to make roach-swims and barbel-swims for patient fishermen. In the road to the left you may catch sight or sound of one of the London coaches, with its white-hatted driver and painted panels, well named the Vivid. Molesey's roads carry away many of the motor cars that run to Hampton Court; but the old Vivid still jangles hopefully after them.