[Illustration: IN THE REACH BELOW HAMPTON COURT.]
The park of Hampton Court is small compared with the vast chase, covering thirteen parishes, of which Henry made it the nucleus. It is somewhat flat, but is well timbered, and beautifies the towing-path all the way to Kingston. Of the palace from the river I have already spoken. It is in view for a considerable distance towards Thames Ditton; but the glimpse is not so striking as that obtained by the oarsman who shoots suddenly beneath Hampton Bridge and sees the grand old pile full in front of him. Between Hampton Court and Kingston the river is at its most charming hereabouts. Flowing between deep banks, over which the rushes and osiers bend, in summer it is studded to just beyond Thames Ditton with the cool Bohemian house-boat, a veritable desired haven to the heated oarsman. The coquettish window-curtains, the mass of flowers on the flat roof, the whisk of dainty muslin, all go to form one of the prettiest of Thames pictures. The Middlesex shore is fringed with luxuriant hedgerows, quick with life and bursting with blossom, so wide and tunnelled by the boughs of trees that one of Mr. Stevenson's nursery heroes might lose himself amid the interlacements, while imagining that he was stalking the red man in his native forests. On the Surrey side the meadows come down to the water's edge, fringed with rushes and alders. Soon above the trees peeps out the quaint wooden spire of Thames Ditton Church, topping a squat tower of the type beloved of the olden church builders of the Thames Valley. At the river's brink, and under the shadow of the church, is the famous "Swan," dear to the museful angler who delights not in crowds, and loves to make for a charming and unobtrusive stretch of river. With a kindly care for the welfare of the traveller, and not unmindful of other considerations, some olden landlord of the "Swan" procured the establishment of the ferry at his very doors. The "Swan" was an important hostelry in the days when Thames Ditton was more in fashion than it happily is now; and it still divides the honours of the spot with Boyle Farm on the opposite side of the road. Dark brown of hue, and not unpicturesque of contour, Boyle Farm stands amid effective masses of foliage, its sloping lawn dipping down to the channel formed by a miniature eyot which screens it somewhat from view. The ample cedars on the lawn contrast well with the older portions of the house which face the water. This pretty spot obtained its name from that Miss Boyle who became in her own right Baroness de Ros, and is mentioned in one of Horace Walpole's letters as having "carved three tablets in marble with boys, designed by herself ... for a chimney-piece, and she is painting panels in grotesque for the library." By her marriage with Lord Henry Fitzgerald, Lady De Ros became sister-in-law to that ill-starred pair, Lord Edward Fitzgerald and "Pamela." Time was when Boyle Farm rivalled Strawberry Hill as a centre of gaiety, and its famous "Dandies' Fête," given in 1827 by five young sprigs of nobility at a cost of £2,500, was long a dazzling wonderment to those who are tickled by such things. This was one of the hereditaments which fell into dispute upon the death, without a will, of the first Lord St. Leonards. To the angler it may be that the comfortable old inn is more interesting than Boyle Farm with its Walpolean memories. Many is the wit and the man of letters who, after a day of more or less make-believe angling, has refreshed himself at the "Swan." Theodore Hook delighted in Thames Ditton, and wrote some stanzas in its praise in a punt one day in 1834; it was natural that with so keen a lover of good living the "Swan" should come in for eulogy.