it is my great good fortune to dwell on the green and picturesque banks of a broad and noble river. ‘rivers,’ says an old spanish proverb which izaak walton quotes with a fine smack of approval, ‘rivers were made for wise men to contemplate and for fools to pass by without consideration.’ let us beware lest we fall beneath the spaniard’s lash. for myself, i can at least affirm that i never saunter beside these blue, fast-flowing waters without feeling that the lines have fallen unto me in pleasant places. it is wonderful how, after awhile, the winding river seems to weave itself into the very texture and fabric of one’s life. you stroll by it, bathe in it, row on it, fish in it, until every rock and every bank, every crag and every cliff, every twist and every bay, every deep and every shallow, takes its place among the intimacies and fond familiarities of life. it is one of the wonders of the world that this little island in the southern seas should pour into the pacific so many fine majestic streams. and here, beside the lordliest of them all, i have made 164my home. it is good to stand on these green banks, to survey the great expanse of gleaming waters, and to see the stately ships glide in and out. i often think of that early morning when john forster found carlyle standing beside the thames at chelsea, lost in an evident reverie of admiration. ‘i should as soon have thought of assaulting him as of addressing him,’ says forster. to be sure! we do lots of things in this life of which we have no reason to be ashamed, things that are indeed altogether to our credit, yet in the performance of which we do not care to be discovered. it would be a sad old world, for example, if love-making went out of fashion; but no man cares to be caught in the act, for all that. carlyle was caught making love to the thames, as i have often made love to the derwent, and he keenly resented the intrusion. ‘he abruptly turned away,’ adds the offender, ‘and moved across the roadway toward cheyne row, with that curious slow shuffle habitual with him, and i saw him no more.’
why, my very bible seems a new book as i ponder its pages by the banks of the derwent. what a different story the old testament would have had to tell if jerusalem had stood by the side of a river like this! the jews never forgave the frowning providence that denied to their fair city a river. they heard how babylon stood proudly surveying 165the shining waters of the euphrates, how nineveh was beautified by the lordly tigris, how thebes glittered in stately grandeur on the nile, and how rome sat in state beside the tiber; and they were consumed with envy because no broad river protected them from their foes, and bore to their gates the wealthy merchandise of many lands. i never noticed until i dwelt by these blue waters how all the psalms and prophecies are coloured by this phase of judean life. the prophets were for ever dreaming of the river; the psalmists were for ever singing of the river. nothing delighted the people like a vision, such as visited ezekiel, of a broad river rushing out from jerusalem. no greater or more glowing message ever reached the disconsolate and riverless people than when isaiah proclaimed, ‘the glorious lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams, wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby!’ jehovah, that is to say, shall impart to jerusalem all the advantages of a river without any of its attendant dangers. many a faithless river, by bearing the destroyer on its bosom to the city gates, had proved the undoing of the people after all. but no such fate shall overwhelm jerusalem. and, hearing this, the riverless city was comforted.
it is recorded of the right. hon. john burns 166that, in the days when he was president of the local government board, he found himself strolling on the terrace of the house of commons, surveying, with all the transports of a born londoner, the shining waters of the thames. his reverie was, however, rudely interrupted by a supercilious american who was inclined to regard with scornful contempt the object of mr. burns’ ecstatic admiration. ‘after all,’ the american demanded, ‘what is it but a ditch compared with the missouri or the mississippi?’ this was more than even a cabinet minister could be expected to stand. ‘the missouri and the mississippi!’ mr. burns exclaimed in a fine burst of patriotic indignation. ‘the missouri and the mississippi are water, sir, and nothing but water; but that,’ pointing to the thames, ‘that, sir, is liquid history, liquid history!’ yes, mr. burns is quite right. the thames has a glory of its own among the world’s historic streams, although it is only a matter of degree. all rivers are liquid history. the records of the world’s great rivers constitute themselves, to all intents and purposes, the history of the race. to take a single illustration, it is obvious that the student who has mastered the history and hydrography of the niger, the congo, the zambesi, the orange, and the nile has little more to learn about africa. from the times of which herodotus writes, when cyrus lost his temper 167with the tigris, and turned it out of its channel for drowning one of his sacred white horses, rivers have loomed very largely in the annals of human history. indeed, professor shailer mathews, in the making of to-morrow, says that there never was, until recent times, a nation that did not paddle or sail its way into history. civilization, he says, got its first start on water. ‘in the early days rivers were thoroughfares, and they continued to be thoroughfares until the middle of last century. even the united states was born on water. it was easier to get to new orleans from montreal by way of the mississippi than overland.’ one has only to conjure up the wealthy historical traditions that cluster about the names of the euphrates and the nile, the indus and the volga, the rhine and the danube, the tiber and the thames, in order to convince himself that the records of the world’s great waterways are inextricably interwoven with the annals of the human race.
we cannot, however, disguise from ourselves the fact that the affection that we feel for our rivers is not based solely, or even primarily, on utilitarian considerations. nobody supposes that it is the navigable qualities of the ganges that have led the hindus to believe that to die on its banks, or to drink before death of its waters, is to secure to themselves everlasting felicity. yet, when we attempt to 168account in so many words for the fascination of the river, the task becomes intricate and difficult. macaulay spent his thirty-eighth birthday on the banks of the rhone, and transferred his impressions to his journal. ‘i was delighted,’ he says, ‘by my first sight of the blue, rushing, healthful-looking river. i thought, as i wandered along the quay, of the singular love and veneration which rivers excite in those who live on their banks; of the feeling of the hindus about the ganges, of the hebrews about the jordan, of the egyptians about the nile, of the romans about the tiber, and of the germans about the rhine. is it that rivers have, in a greater degree than almost any other inanimate object, the appearance of animation, and something resembling character? they are sometimes slow and dark-looking; sometimes fierce and impetuous; sometimes bright, dancing, and almost flippant.’ however that may be, the fact itself remains; and it is surprising that our literature does not more adequately reflect this marked peculiarity. macaulay himself felt the lack, and dreamed of writing a great epic poem on the thames. ‘i wonder,’ he said, ‘that no poet has thought of writing such a poem. surely there is no finer subject of the sort than the whole course of the river from oxford downwards.’ but a century has gone by and the poem has not been penned. shakespeare 169dwelt beside the avon; goethe loved to stroll among the willows on the banks of the lahn; coleridge was born, and spent the most impressionable years of his life in the beautiful valley of the otter. and one of the tenderest idylls of our literary history is the picture of wordsworth wandering hand in hand with dorothy among the most delightful river scenery of which even england can boast. yet, beyond a few sonnets and snippets, nothing came of it all. neither the laughing little streams nor the more majestic and historic waterways have ever yet found their laureates.
but there are compensations. if the bards have been strangely and unaccountably irresponsive to the music of the waters, our great prose writers have caught its murmur and its meaning. two particularly, john bunyan and rudyard kipling, have given us the classics of the river. bunyan’s river—the river that all the pilgrims had to cross—is too familiar to need more than the merest mention. and as for mr. kipling, he, like bunyan, is a writer of both poetry and prose. as a poet he has failed to do justice to the river, as all the poets have failed. he has given us a snippet, as all the poets have done. he makes the thames tells its own tale, and a wonderful tale it is.
170i remember the bat-winged lizard birds,
the age of ice and the mammoth herds;
and the giant tigers that stalked them down
through regent’s park into camden town;
and i remember like yesterday
the earliest cockney who came my way,
when he pushed through the forest that lined the strand,
with paint on his face and a club in his hand.
but i forgave kipling for not having repaired the omission of the older poets when i read kim. kim is the greatest story of a river that has ever been written. who can forget the old lama and his long, long search for the river? buddha, he thought, once took a bow and fired an arrow from its string, and, where that arrow fell, there sprang up a river ‘whose nature, by our lord’s beneficence, is that whoso bathes in it washes away all taint and speckle of sin.’ and so, through mr. kipling’s four hundred vivid pages, there wanders the old lama, through city and rice-fields, over hills and across plains, asking, always asking, one everlasting question: ‘the river; the river of the arrow; the river that can cleanse from sin; where is the river? where, oh, where is the river?’ all india, all the world seems to enter into that ceaseless cry. it is the deepest, oldest, latest cry of the universal heart: ‘the river; the river of the arrow; the river 171that can cleanse from sin; where is the river? where, oh, where is the river?’ and it is the church’s unspeakable privilege to take the old lama’s hand and to point his sparkling eyes to the cleansing fountains.
