THE ROMANCE OF THE THAMES
I stood last Sunday afternoon in the warm October sunlight with a beautiful girl beside me on Battersea Bridge. The high tide was just ebbing out, and as we looked down into the filthy brown water the refuse became so embarrassing that I had to suggest we walked on into Battersea. In the silence which followed the contemplation of the sliding train of filthy intimate objects we had seen, I realised that the Thames water in London is incurably disgusting. Presumably the filth floats up through London from drains in the neighbourhood of Barking Creek on the incoming tide. It reaches Teddington and by that time is ready to slide down to Barking on the outward tide. So it goes backwards and forwards through the middle of London until time and tide dissolve it. We walked round to Battersea Church and the arid little park beyond it, where some plane trees and ill-kept grass border the Thames. The water here was more stagnant and floating sticks in it stirred up clouds of brown revolving dirt. Although it was a fine Sunday afternoon, we could understand why this little park was empty. The stench was overwhelming. On whom does the responsibility for the purification of this tidal water fall? On the Thames Conservancy? On the Port of London Authority? On the London County Council?
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