Hotels on the river have, in the last few years, awakened to the cry of the middle classes for air and light, and yet more air. Some of the hotels are pretty with verandahs and creeper covered walls, but others are old-fashioned—with low rooms. Yet every proprietor who can by hook or crook manage it, now runs a lawn of exquisite turf down to the water's edge, decorates it with flowers far more vivid than can be seen elsewhere, and knocks up a bungalow-like building, terribly desolate in the winter when the green mould creeps insidiously over the wooden posts, and the sail-cloth rots in the damp; but airy and commodious in the summer, when relays of fifty people or more may be seated at a time, and yet there is no satiating smell of cooked food. The boat owners have also seen fit to accommodate their convenience to the demand, and at any large builder's landing-stage, boats may now be hired to be left almost anywhere on the river, to be fetched back by the owner.
Pessimists say that the river is losing its charm, that the advent of motor cars, stirring in people a hitherto dormant love of speed, makes the slow progress of punting a weariness instead of a relaxation. But this is not greatly to be feared. The charm of a motor is one thing, the charm of the river another; and we cannot spare either. Crowds may slightly diminish, but this is no loss, rather a gain to the real river lover.
Thames gardens are peculiar. By the nature of the case they must be far more public than ordinary gardens, for the owner's reason for buying the house was that he wanted to sit on his own green turf and see the river flow endlessly past. Therefore, though he may hedge around the three land sides with high walls and impenetrable thorns, he leaves the fourth side open so that all the world may look. No one has yet been clever enough to invent a screen that shall be transparent on one side and opaque on the other, and until they do, the owners of these beautiful river lawns must sit in the full light that beats upon the river banks, and allow every passing stranger who has raked up a shilling to hire a boat, to enjoy the beauties of a garden he has not paid for. Thames lawns are celebrated, and rightly so. Not even the turf of college quads, grown for hundreds of years, can beat their turf. Thick, smooth, closely woven they are, and above all, of a pure rich green that is a delight to see, and, by way of enhancing this marvellous green, the colour which is most often to be seen with it is its complementary colour, red. Whether the effect is obtained merely by contrast I do not know, but certainly it seems as if nowhere else could be found geraniums of so rich a vermilion, roses of so glorious a crimson. In many of these river gardens, too, especially where a little stream trickles down, a light trellis arch is thrown up and covered with Rambler roses, old rose in colour, and only second to the vermilion as a complement to the green lawn.
Two of these gloriously green lawns I have particularly in mind, one at Shepperton, and one near Thames Ditton, but where they are to be seen so frequently it is invidious to particularise.
These are the private gardens of a grand sort, and no whit less beautiful, though without the same expanse of lawn, are the gardens of the lock-keepers, in which the owners take a particular pride.
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,
Sweet-william with his homely cottage smell,
And stocks in fragrant blow;
Roses, that down the alleys shine afar,