Along the northern side now begins the Embankment, with its solid granite walls and fringe of young planes. The green lawns and red buildings of the Temple can be seen only when the river is very high. Further on is Somerset House, followed by a line of hotels, the palaces of modern days. Somerset House is the successor of the palace built by the arrogant Protector Somerset, from the stones of churches and religious buildings; between it and the Temple stood Arundel and Essex Houses. The latter had earlier been called Leicester House, and Spenser lived there for a time as secretary to the Earl of Leicester.
The tide has turned and is coming in. Little steam tugs, gallantly towing six barges, two abreast and each twice as large as themselves, pant up stream; while the bargees, with faces the colour of brickdust, the colour they are so fond of reproducing in their paint and even in their sails, stand by their huge rudders. Some barges are struggling along without mechanical aid. The men in charge bend back horizontally in their manipulation of the huge sweeps. There must be a knack in it. No one could work so hard as they seem to be doing; spine and sinews would give way altogether. Their whole strength results in but a slow progress, and the barge, responding to the push of the water, makes a kind of crab-like movement, sidling up the river broadside on. One, laden with yellow straw till it appears like a huge barn, is stranded right in mid-stream. The long ends of the straw sweep in the water, and there is no moving until the current increases.
Here and there red-brown sails, patched and stained, spring up, and others still furled, stand up along the wharves like crooked warning fingers. Just before Waterloo Bridge there is, neatly tucked away below the Embankment, so that few ever know of its existence, a station of the river police, with trim muslin curtains over the windows.
Between Waterloo and Charing Cross Bridges the same sort of thing continues. An enormous chimney on the Surrey side mocks the dignity of Cleopatra's Needle, now safe in haven after many vicissitudes. The sweep of the river makes these two bridges radiate out like the spokes of a wheel, so that the southern ends are nearer than the northern. The chimneys and wharves and the ubiquitous barges still continue, and as we pass beneath the hideous red iron bridge of Charing Cross, we get a vision of the many towers and pinnacles of Westminster ahead.
THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT
Besides the great houses of old times already mentioned, there were others down this stretch of the river too—the Savoy, home of John of Gaunt, and in its time prison and hospital; Durham, Worcester, and Salisbury Houses. These were all either flush with the water or hemmed in by high walls in which were stairs "to take water at." The only relic of these mansions lies in the watergate of York House, now about a hundred yards from the river, behind a strip of land which has all been reclaimed by the making of the Embankment. But that the Embankment does not always suffice to curb the current was proved not so long ago, for in March, 1906, there was a combination of circumstances which swelled the volume of water abnormally. Sudden floods of rain caused every weir far up the river to be opened, and bounding, exulting to be free, the huge mass of water, swelled by every brook and tributary and swollen to twice its usual size, rushed seaward. But it was met by a high spring tide, and the collision was increased by a strong wind, so that the water rose higher and higher, and the curious spectacle was witnessed of barges floating above the roadway, propelled by sweeps braced against the granite walls. The water burst up through the pavement and the manholes, and ran in a flood under Charing Cross Bridge, but it just did not overtop the Embankment wall by an inch or two, and as the tide subsided the tension relaxed. In the higher reaches, about Barnes and Chiswick, "tide-boards" were used to fill up the crevices below the doors, and by this means alone many a house was saved from being swamped.
The scene is lively enough. Seagulls of all ages—big dingy drab ones and neat ones in liveries of dove-grey and white—float merrily on the ripples, or poise and wheel in the air. Here a County Council steamer ploughs past, churning the river into wavelets, there a lad paddles a boat from shore to shore with a single oar used rudderwise, a feat possible only to a born waterman.