Rivers of Great Britain. The Thames, from Source to Sea. / Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial

by Various

Sleeps with the things that cease to be;

Their longest life, a morning gleam;

A bubble bursting on the stream,

Then swept to Time’s unfathomed sea.”—KENYON.

But let us awaken from our reveries to dwell more particularly upon the memories called up by the Thames below Richmond Bridge.

Once on a time the pride of Richmond and the glory of this part of the river was its royal palace—a favourite residence of several of the kings of England. There is some uncertainty as to when the manor of Sheen—for that was its earlier name—came into the hands of the Crown; but the first royal owner of the entire estate appears to have been Edward III. He also is said to have been the builder of the palace, although there must have been a residence on its site in the days of both his father and grandfather. Here, in fact, his long reign came to its melancholy end. Within the walls of Sheen he lay, robbed and deserted by courtiers and favourites, tended only by a “poor priest in the house,” who found the dying monarch absolutely alone, and spoke words of exhortation and hope to soothe the parting struggle. His body was conveyed from Sheen by his four sons and other lords, and solemnly interred within Westminster Abbey. His grandson and successor lived here for a time, but on the death of his queen, Anne of Bohemia, within its walls, took such a hatred to the palace “that he, besides cursing the place where she died, did also for anger throwe down the buildings, unto where former kings being wearie of the citie, were wont for pleasure to resort.” Henry V. rebuilt the palace, erecting a “delightful mansion of curious and costly workmanship.” It was a favourite residence of Edward IV., and was held in equal regard by Henry VII. In his days, however, it suffered twice from fires, the first one destroying a considerable portion of the older buildings. Henry rebuilt the injured part, and altered the name from Sheen to Richmond. It is also interesting to learn that architects made mistakes or builders scamped their work even in the courts of Tudor kings, and at peril, as one would have thought, of their ears, if not of their necks; for shortly after the second fire a new gallery, on which the king and his son Prince Arthur had been walking a short time previously, fell down, fortunately without injuring any one. Richmond Palace was the scene of many of the principal festivities in this king’s reign; much also of his accumulated treasure was hoarded within its walls. His successor, the much-married monarch, came frequently here in the earlier days of his reign, but the palace fell out of favour in the later, and was the country residence of his divorced wife, Anne of Cleves. Elizabeth, however, greatly liked it, and her last days were spent under its roof. She came from Chelsea to Richmond, in the month of January, sickening of the disease that caused her end, and overcome with melancholy for the death of Essex. She refused to take food or medicine or rest; she would not go to bed, but sat on cushions piled on the floor; a melancholy picture of distress, but with the old spirit left, as when she flashed out upon Cecil for having inadvertently used the words “she must go to bed.”

BETWEEN RICHMOND AND KEW.

The palace was an occasional abode of James, her successor, and his queen, and the residence of their eldest son, the accomplished Prince Henry, “England’s darling.” Here he died, amid universal lamentation, and his brother succeeded to the expectation of a crown, and the ultimate doom of the headsman’s axe. Prince Henry would hardly have pulled down “Bishops and Bells,” but his brother secured their downfall and his own by trying unduly to exalt them. Prince Charles, after an interval of some three years, took up his abode at the palace, and Richmond once more awoke, for the new Prince of Wales scattered his money—or rather the nation’s money—royally while he played the fool with “Steenie,” Duke of Buckingham. After he assumed the crown his visits here became less frequent, and after his execution it was ordered by Act of Parliament that the valuable contents of the palace should be sold. Though inhabited from time to time after the Restoration, it never returned to its former greatness. Much of the building was destroyed before the end of the seventeenth century, and now only a few fragments remain. Old pictures and documents enable us to form a good idea of its ancient splendour, and a right noble and picturesque structure it must have been. On the north side it looked on to Richmond Green, where now may be seen the remnant of its ancient gatehouse; on the south-west it came down to the margin of the Thames. A narrow lane, leading from the Green to the riverside, and emerging opposite to the noble old elm which forms so marked a feature in the view from the river, passes across the site of the court of the ancient palace, and, doubtless, over the foundations of its principal buildings. Roughly speaking, the site of the river façade is now occupied by the three mansions already mentioned, which themselves, as we shall show, are not without a history. The principal of these lies far back from the river; a lovely garden, shaded with trees, intervenes. Judging from the drawings, the buildings of the palace approached near to the waterside, and the space between had rather a barren and desolate look, as though it were left in the rough as a mere foreshore. Now the gardens make the passer-by long to trespass. The owners, however, beneficently (or is it to secure a good view of the river?) keep their boundary fences low. Building on the site of the old palace seems to have begun quite early in the last century. The heavy, but stately red-brick house, with a stone portico, which we have already mentioned, was erected by a Mr. Richard Hill, brother of Mrs. Masham, the well-known favourite of Queen Anne. It bears the name of the Trumpeters’ House, from two statues of figures blowing trumpets, which once adorned the façade. The more modern mansion, nearer to both the bridge and the river, stands on the site of the villa occupied by a noted character in the last century, the Duke of Queensbury—commonly known as old Q.—one of the least virtuous and respectable members of the aristocracy in a not too virtuous age. There is a characteristic story quoted by an historian of Richmond which carries its own moral. Wilberforce, when a young man, was invited to dine at the Richmond mansion. “The dinner was sumptuous, the views from the villa quite enchanting, and the Thames in all its glory; but the Duke looked on with indifference. ‘What is there,’ he said, ‘to make so much of in the Thames? I am quite weary of it: there it goes, flow, flow, flow, always the same.’” In his old age he deserted Richmond, having taken offence, it is said, at the inhabitants. There is an open space between the towing-path and the railings of the ducal villa that the Duke enclosed and converted to his own use, trusting that fear of his rank, desire to retain his custom, and gratitude for his benefactions—for he was no niggard—would combine to secure the acquiescence of the inhabitants. But these motives proved insufficient; the town commenced an action, which was, of course, successful, and the Duke, deeming its inhabitants ingrates, withdrew to London. There he found occupation in such pleasures as money and rank could purchase—and these could bring more a century since than now. When he became too infirm to move about, he sat on his balcony under a parasol, to ogle the pretty women as they passed by, and died with his bed-quilt strewn with billets-doux, which his enfeebled hands could not open—vanitas vanitatum. No spot on the Thames, save Hampton Court, is so rich in historic memories as this delightful bit of the river below Richmond Bridge. In the still evening air, as the glow is fading from the west, as the riverside becomes deserted, and the toilers and pleasurers have alike gone home, the ghosts of old times come back, and the actualities of the nineteenth century fade away into the shadows of the past. Tender and pleasant memories would be most in harmony with the scene, and these are by no means absent; the sounds of music and dance are not wanting from the stately walls which our fancy conjures up, nor from the gilded boats which seem to float along the stream. Yet still the more prominent are sad, lurid evenings, presaging coming storm—Edward dying in solitude and dishonour, to leave his kingdom to a feeble fool; Elizabeth, in her overshadowed youth, quitting the palace tanquam ovis—to quote her own words; and again, when the brightness of life had passed, dying slowly there, her last hours darkened by many sorrows, not the least being the thought of the unworthy pedant who would take up her sceptre; the parting agony of his eldest son, making way for one whose very virtues were his bane, and whose memory was only redeemed by the mistaken necessity of his execution. These are thoughts tragic enough to darken the recollections of the palace of Richmond, and cast some shadow on a scene which is one of the fairest in the neighbourhood of the metropolis.