Downstream

bath wasn’t quite over and in
1899 the Leeds Mercury
referred to ‘a new club’ for
Londoners, anchored
‘somewhere off the
embankment’, with a
promenade deck ‘whereon on
sultry days in summer
members can listen to sweet
music and gaze romantically
into the swift flowing, muddy
Thames’. The river was
‘dirty’ but ‘odourless’,
although there was an ‘evil