The name of Mortlake appears in English records at a very early date, as it was an important manor belonging to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. The manor itself appears to have included much more than the present parish, but the house was in the village. It was a not unfrequent residence of the archbishops down to the time of Cranmer, by whom the lands were alienated in exchange to the king. Only the tower of the church is old, and this is not particularly interesting; the remainder is Hanoverian, and suitable to its period. Here are entombed Dee and Partridge, the astrologers; Philip Francis, the supposed author of "Junius"; and John Bernard, Sir Robert Walpole's "only incorruptible Member of Parliament"; while in the neighbourhood lived Colston, the philanthropist; Jesse, the naturalist, and Henry Taylor, author of "Philip van Artevelde"--a fair share of celebrities for a quiet little suburban town.
Just beyond Mortlake is the village of Barnes, with the bridge of the South-Western Railway spanning the Thames. The houses and gardens by the riverside give a bright and homelike aspect to the scene. The church incorporates fragments of an ancient building, and the rectory has been occupied by more than one clergyman of mark. Inland, stretching back across the peninsula, and thus offering a short cut from Putney, well known to the frequenters of boat-races, lies Barnes Common--a breezy spot, bright in summer with blossoming furze, which happily is still sacred from the builder, and untouched by the landscape gardener.
[Illustration: HOGARTH'S TOMB AT CHISWICK.]
From Kew Bridge down to Putney Bridge Father Thames follows a course even more serpentine than usual. Its double loop forms an almost regular S, the axis of each fold lying nearly north and south. The general direction of its flow also has changed, from a northerly to an easterly course; thus, at Mortlake, we are again brought by the river into the vicinity, comparatively speaking, of Richmond Park, on its northern side; while, on the left bank, Chiswick may almost be said to make two appearances on the riverside. The older part, however, of this place lies below Mortlake. It still retains traces of its ancient picturesqueness, when Chiswick House was a favourite residence of the Dukes of Devonshire, and its fêtes among the chief events of a London season. Chiswick is, however, greatly changed since then--still more from the days when it was the home of Hogarth, whose tomb is in the churchyard. New houses have sprung up, the iron-roofed sheds of a ship-building establishment--devoted especially to the construction of torpedoes--uglify, if the word be permitted, the margin of the Thames, and the incessant clang of hammers disturbs the peace of the stream. Henceforth, we find ourselves within the grasp of the metropolis. Once or twice, it is true, the river seems to slip away again into the freedom of the fields, but it is only for a brief space; it is soon prisoned again between the walls of the workshop, or doomed to remain in sight of the unsightly performances of the nineteenth-century builder.