The river now becomes imprisoned in water-works, wharves, and piers; and at low tide it reveals unlovely stretches of mud below the scrubby withs that bind this shorn Samson's writhings. Yet still, besides craft of business, it may be found alive with boats, including police-cruisers commissioned against boys surreptitiously bathing from a bit of rubbish-strewn wilderness on the Middlesex bank, that in a few years will be overflowed by the tide of houses creeping up behind. Meanwhile, why not leave those unshamed urchins alone, whose aquatic gambols till lately made a cooling sight from the opposite tow-path? One or two of them were drowned every year, it is said; but the sum of life saved by our grandmotherly councillors must fall far below the amount of health, cleanliness, and cheerfulness stolen on such waste spots; and it might well be considered what will become of this country a generation after its youth has been schooled and policed out of exulting to risk life, limb, and skin.
I forget what last-century autobiographer mentions a party of schoolfellows landing to bathe a little higher up in the grounds of Brandenburgh House, then occupied by the Margravine of Anspach, and being surprised by her unserene Highness in person, who, armed with a riding whip, took the young Adams at sore disadvantage. This vivacious Amazon had been widow of Lord Craven, who built another house, called Craven Cottage, just below the osier-fronted waste at present awaiting reclamation. The Craven Cottage grounds have been fortified and garrisoned by a club that carries on the business of drawing enormous crowds to bet and roar over the performances of professional athletes, their din suggesting another hint as to the welfare of the next generation. But we may take hope to see how manfully the striplings of Putney and Hammersmith ply oar and sculls in what else might be their hours of ease; as everywhere within reach of the capital, that sympathetic visitor, Mr. John Burroughs, could admire "young athletic London, male and female, rushing forth as hungry for the open air and the water as young mountain herds for salt."
Ramblers on the Surrey side get a tantalising glimpse of expensive pastimes, for the tow-path leads them beside the grounds of Barn Elms, home of more than one notability in the last three centuries, now arena of the Ranelagh Club's sports. At the end of this enclosure is bridged what looks like a muddy back-water, but is the mouth of the Beverley Brook, so idyllic as it flows by Wimbledon Common to Roehampton; then beyond we come to the boat clubs and taverns of Putney, facing the grounds of Fulham Palace, now turned into a public park along the river wall.