This aura of healing also attracted doctors, or “quacks,” to the river. In the mid-nineteenth century there was an establishment between Richmond and Kingston, Sudbrook Park, that specialised in what became a famous “water cure.” In the 1770s a doctor named James Graham set up a Temple of Health by the river at the newly built Adelphi; the walls of this establishment were decorated with walking sticks, crutches and orthopaedic equipment discarded by thankful patients. Just upriver at Hammersmith the artist and occasional healer, Philippe de Loutherbourg, set up a practice for curing a range of ailments and complaints. He employed a form of animal magnetism, and pretended to heal all diseases by the simple expedient of laying his hands upon the body accompanied by prayer. It is perhaps not strange that in the early eighteenth century a resident of Teddington, Dr. Stephen Hales, made much progress on the circulation of the blood.
But there were other types of “cunning men,” as the experimental philosophers were once known, who made their home by the Thames. It is a curious fact, or singular coincidence, that by the river in Lambeth there dwelled over various periods John Tradescant, Francis Moore, Simon Forman, Elias Ashmole and an astrologer known as Captain Bubb. Simon Forman was the Elizabethan astrologer and doctor of physic, whose diaries have revealed the extent of sixteenth-century superstitious beliefs; he noted in one of his many recondite volumes, “this I made the devil write with his own hands in Lambeth Fields, 1569, in June or July as I now remember.” Lambeth Fields was then adjacent to the Thames. Forman is buried in Lambeth Churchyard, by the river. His contemporary, Captain Bubb, dwelled in Lambeth Marsh where he “resolved horary questions astrologically.” Moore was an astrologer and author of the famous compendium of prophecies, Old Moore’s Almanack, that was first published in 1697 and has continued ever since; he lived at the north-east corner of Calcott Alley. John Tradescant and Elias Ashmole were experimental philosophers and accumulators of natural curiosities; among their collections were the feathers of a phoenix, salamanders and dragons 2 inches (25 mm) long.
Further upriver, at Mortlake, dwelled the celebrated John Dee. Dr. Dee was both conjuror and mathematician, alchemist and geographer. He, too, seemed to relish frequent communion with the river or with its spirits; he dwelled in a house by the waterside, just west of the church. It was here that by his own account the angel Uriel appeared at the window of his study and presented him with a translucent stone; with this stone, or magic crystal, he proceeded to summon other angels and to converse with them. At Mortlake he built his own laboratory and amassed the largest private library in the country. He was the magus of the Thames. Mortlake itself, like Lambeth, became associated with magic and even with the practice of the black arts. Here also dwelled Francis Partridge, the magician and astrologer who in the early eighteenth century circulated his predictions in the public prints. Partridge was buried in Mortlake churchyard, while Dee lies somewhere beneath the chancel of the church.
There was a curious event in Battersea Fields, adjacent to the river and just upstream from Lambeth itself. It was here that “the spirits” carried a cunning man known to posterity only as Evans the astrologer; he was taken in the air along the Thames, and then left to his own devices at Battersea Causeway. The reason for this extraordinary conduct seems to be that he had vexed the same spirits by not offering enough “suffumigation” or incense, but their choice of Battersea is still perplexing.
In the vicinity of Walton, on the Surrey bank of the river, dwelled the astrologer William Lilly, known as a “cunning man” whose greatest triumph, in the eyes of posterity, was to predict the Great Fire of London:
That deals in Destiny’s dark counsels,
And sage opinions of the moon sells…
He was born in 1602 and, having gained both fortune and reputation in London, removed to the parish of Walton. He lived there for forty-five years, before moving to the neighbouring hamlet of Hersham. He was an habitué of the river. Even when he had dwelled in London as a young man, his main employment was to “fetch water in large buckets from the Thames: I have helped to carry eighteen tubs of water in one morning.” In his riverine retreat, however, he was visited by many people, intent upon securing news of the future, and was even consulted by the House of Commons. In the spring of 1644 he published an almanac in the name of “Merlinus Anglicus Junior.” Did he know that Merlin was popularly supposed to have lived by the Thames? He cast his own spells in the immediate neighbourhood. He reported that he told a friend of the magic charm, “O Micol! O tu Micol! Ergina pigmeorum veni.” When the friend repeated it, in the little wood behind Lilly’s house in Walton, there appeared the queen of the fairies whose effulgence was so bright that he was obliged to ask her to leave. She was, perhaps, one of the fabled nymphs of the Thames in another guise. In the church of Walton-on-Thames, St. Mary, there is a monument in Lilly’s memory.
It is perhaps significant that the sixteenth-century essayist and natural philosopher, Francis Bacon, wished to purchase a house by the Thames in Twickenham Park for his own researches. He stated that he “experimentally found the situation of that place much convenient for the trial of his philosophical conclusions.” So the immediate presence of the river was considered to be an advantage. He had notable predecessors. In a set of chambers by the river, at St. Katharine’s Hospital, the alchemist and hermeticist Raymond Lulli was in the early fourteenth century intent upon making gold out of brass and iron. A little further downriver, in apartments within the Tower of London, Raymond of Tarragona was engaged in the same alchemical exercise. The “silver Themmes” was well named.
But the most famous natural philosopher, dwelling by the Thames, is undoubtedly Roger Bacon. Friar Bacon’s Study, the thirteenth-century tower in which he is reputed to have undertaken his experiments, was sited at one end of Grandpont, also known as South Bridge and a previous incarnation of Folly Bridge, above the river at Oxford. It was here that the friar was believed to have held conversations with the devil, and to have constructed the famous brazen head that could prophesy. It is reputed to have uttered some phrases by the agency of the devil—“Time is,” “Time was” and “Time is passed”—but it is more than likely that Bacon was able to create sound-effects by applying the principles of natural philosophy. His tower stood until 1779. There was a legend that the building would fall if a wiser man than Bacon passed beneath it. Since it survived intact for five hundred years after his death, it was considered to be a standing reproach to the abilities of the students of Oxford. But there was a warning given to undergraduates on their arrival at university, “Do not walk too near to the Friar’s Tower.”
The friar is variously stated to have invented gunpowder and the magnifying glass, but his claim to these achievements is open to question. In The Famous Historie of Fryer Bacon, published in 1627, he is reported to have prophesied that “chariots will move with an unspeakable force, without any living creature to stirre them” and that “an instrument may be made to fly withal.” He also noted that “by art an instrument may be made, wherewith men may walk in the bottom of the sea or rivers.” He also looked upward. One of Bacon’s principal occupations, in his study by the river, was to climb onto the leads and examine the affects of the night sky. There is in fact a curious prevalence of observatories by the Thames. We could note here an early paradigm: the ritual sites of the prehistoric peoples by the river might in part have been constructed and designed in response to the movements of the fixed stars and wandering comets. Certainly all the “cunning men” who lived by the Thames, from Old Moore to Lulli, consulted the patterns of the firmament.
There is some continuing association between astronomy and the river, perhaps best exemplified by the presence of the Greenwich Observatory on a hill by the south bank of the Thames. It was established in 1675 and, under the administration of the first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, it became the centre of stellar and planetary observation. Flamsteed’s principal work, the Historia coelestis Britannica (1725), was published six years af
ter his death and provided the most accurate star maps of the period. Greenwich is also known as the site of the meridian, that zero point from which all measurements of longitude are taken. From the period when the first causewayed enclosures and cursus monuments were erected by the river, the Thames has been associated with the measurement of time and space.
The author of Oriental Despotism (1957), Karl A. Wittfogel, has traced the role of priests and seers of the riverine civilisations of the East; they are associated with the rivers because they serve what he calls “hydraulic regimes” of Mesopotamia or the Nile Valley dependent upon the uses of water. So
the operations of time keeping and scientific measuring and counting were performed by official dignitaries or by priestly (or secular) specialists attached to the hydraulic regime. Wrapped in a cloak of magic and astrology and hedged with profound secrecy, these mathematical and astronomical operations became the means both for improving hydraulic production and bulwarking the superior power of the hydraulic leaders.
Everything depended, therefore, on the perceived “power” of the river. It is the best context for assessing the significance of the Neolithic monuments as well as the location of the observatory and meridian in Greenwich.
The Thames had other observatories along its banks. The observatory of Roger Bacon, where the friar took “the altitude of the stars,” has already been described. There was also an astronomical observatory beside the Royal Mint, on the north bank of the river above the Tower of London. There is still an observatory at Kew, on the south side of the river in Old Deer Park; it was also known as the King’s Observatory, and was built in time for George III’s observation of the transit of Venus in June 1769. There is some echo here of pharaonic star-worship by the banks of the Nile. The observatory was in fact erected on the site of an old monastery, thus preserving the ritual connection with the river. In its grounds are three obelisks, one of them on the tow-path leading to Brentford, which were employed as meridian marks for the astronomical instruments in use. Here, too, the “time” for London was once set. The observatory then fell into decay until it was revived for “the maintenance of magnetic observations at Kew,” and it is now used for the study of the weather.
There was another observatory beside what is still known as the “Dutch House” at Kew. It was employed by James Bradley, the Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford University, and the site of the building where he undertook his star-gazing by the Thames is now marked by a sundial. Here Bradley made two important discoveries: of the aberration of light and of the mutation of the earth’s axis.
But perhaps the most unexpected, and certainly the least-known, connection of the river and astronomy is to be found at Slough. It was here that Sir William Herschel and his sister, Caroline Herschel, set up their own observatory. They had previously scanned the firmament from a small house in Datchet, also by the river, so they must have found some reassurance or assistance in the immediate neighbourhood of the Thames. Brother would call out the data gathered from the telescope, and sister would note down the precise time of the observations. It was here that William Herschel discovered the planet of Uranus, and observed “the island universe” of the Milky Way; at Datchet, too, Caroline Herschel first noted the presence of three nebulae and discovered eight comets. In some respects they found the weather of the Thames uncomfortable. William Herschel noted that “not only my breath freezes upon the side of the tube of the telescope, but I more than once have found my feet frozen to the ground.” Yet some strange affinity survived.
CHAPTER 36
The Light of the Thames
What are the colours of the Thames? There are the green banks of the upper river, broken not monotonous; there are always successive tints and shades in the colours within the river, fluctuations as subtle as the movement of quiet waters from the brightest to the palest green. The colours ripple and unfold, break apart and yield one to another. The green of the bankside, for example, is striated with golden moss and the yellow stars of the hawkweed, by wild geraniums and by wild strawberries; there is the sulphur of the toadflax, and the purple blue of the skullcap. The predominant colours of the river flowers are yellow and blue, to be seen, for example, in the fleabane and the dewberry that haunt the banks.
In the spring and autumn the riverside is sprinkled with yellow, with a gentle strain of white flowing through the mixture; in the spring, too, the trees are groaning with the weight of their blossom. The fields beside the Thames are white and yellow, with the river flowing between bank upon bank of blossom. In the summer months the purplish pink of the willow-herb and the loosestrife tends to predominate. This may subliminally change the mood of the river from one of optimism to one of meditation, but the general effect is that of natural congruity. There are no inharmonious colours in nature. The dark blue of the dewberry, together with the yellow head of the fleabane, are more deeply satisfying than the blue and gold of any painter.
The Thames has other colours. There is the silvery sheen to be observed at dawn or dusk in the estuary, an emanation of the light breaking through cloud onto the flat landscape. And there are the varied colours of the water itself. It can be the deepest green and the palest silver. In the colder months it can become wonderfully clear, and in its deeper reaches acquires the bluish green tint of spring water. It can be turbid, and muddy brown. In the shadow of a bridge it will sometimes seem to have become blue. Then, from a distance, its reaches seem like a thread of white. Its colour can sometimes be perceived by contrast; there are localities where a tributary, entering the river, is of a much darker hue than the Thames itself.
There are also local variations. At Oxford the water is deep green tinged with brown; downstream, at Radley, it has become dark blue. From Putney onwards samples from the river have a cloudy colour. In the reaches of London it can seem black, or sometimes a dark copper colour. It can become ash grey. And of course it is a mirror to the colours of the world. It reflects the life upon its surface, with the blue of a sail or the rusty vermilion of a barge. When storm clouds pass across it, it turns to the deepest grey and charcoal. The colours change perpetually in implicit communion with the wind and with the sky, with the sunlight and the scudding clouds. It can be silky green in summer, and blue in spring. But there are also times when the sky is brilliant enough and the river itself seems to be in shadow.
Any river can become black. But the Thames is not so much black as dark. It has always been called the “dark Thames,” but darkness is not a colour or even the absence of colour. Perhaps the river has no colour. Which is as much as to say that, if it partakes of all colours, then perhaps it is colourless. There are times along the upper Thames when the absolute clearness of the water is its most surprising quality—“as sweet as milke, as clear as glasse,” as the water-poet John Taylor put it in 1640. When the water settles it is generally clear at the top, sandy-brown in the middle, and a dirty olive colour at the bottom. And what colour do you call it when the plash of water beneath your boat seems to be amber—but then becomes dark green by the bank? What are the colours between the two? It is not amber or green, or black or grey, or even opal. It is a colour that no one can name. Some have called it the colour of death, all-enveloping. It is, perhaps, the colour or no-colour of oblivion. Just as white light is the emanation of all colours, so the transparency of water is the quintessence of everything. It is the natural presence of the world. It is unique but it has no identity. It becomes what it beholds.
The light of the river is something that will never be seen on sea or land. It can transform the landscape. At twilight the light of the river is a soft grey, a lacustrine light, sometimes touched by the saffron tints of the setting sun. Deep water emanates a light different from shallow water. The river can appear a broad sheet of light, in some places and at some times, while at others it is murky and confused. Sometimes the water within the estuary of the Thames seems to be covered by a skin of phosphorescence, and the brilliant surface of the water breaks into
a thousand points of light when it is disturbed.
The artists of the river are considered in the next chapter, but it is worth remarking here that they have always been interested in these kinetic qualities of Thames light. Stanley Spencer’s The Resurrection in Cookham Churchyard, just beside the Thames, is a hymn to light; the light on the wall of the church seemed to Spencer to be the light that he saw when swimming underwater. In other paintings, Swan Upping and Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta, the light on the Thames is granted a mystical significance. It is the holy presence or the substance of the river. Spencer once suggested that the excitement of the holiday-makers in Swan Upping was that “for them the climax in heaven lay in the sunlit continuation of the marsh meadows beyond the bend in the river.”
In Sunset on the River, and other paintings of the Thames, Turner registers an impression of the overwhelming effect of the light lingering in the sky; it is a continuation of the river or, rather, the Thames itself is a continuation of that effulgent and radiant light that inhabits creation. There is no river in Turner without sky, the two sources of light reflecting one another in a thousand fugitive and evanescent ways. For Turner the river was an experiment, or a study, in light. That is why he was so deeply drawn towards it. That is why it is the central subject of his art. Light was at the core of the river. It was part of his purpose to elicit it and thus to celebrate it.
Yet how to paint water? It was a subject about which he thought hard and deeply. It is no less than moving light, and therefore cannot be rendered as fixed and immobile upon a canvas. Water looks “like” movement. When it is painted, it becomes some other thing. It is a question that Turner only resolved when he scattered the world into a prism, into a mist of colour whose wreaths continually change tone and hue. When light becomes the transcendent fact of his painting, then the river acquires its natural power. The light of the Thames can be considered “pure” in implicit analogy with its waters. When Dorothy Wordsworth stood upon Westminster Bridge she noticed, in her journal for July 1802, that “the sun shone so brightly with such a pure light” that it entranced her. It was the river, even here, that made it pure.
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