The Lone and Level Sands
'It was Conrad's always offshore view that the estuaries of rivers appeal strongly to an adventurous imagination, yet he knew that 'their appeal is not always a charm'. Mudflats, after all, are austere and grim-looking places, and low sandbanks are not always improved by their 'shabby and scanty vegetation'. And yet Conrad insisted that the 'dispiriting ugliness' of an estuary was sometimes only a 'repulsive mask', and rarely more so than on the Thames, which was less built up, and therefore open to more 'romance' than any other commercial British river.
The estuary shore is littered with relics of the imperial history that Conrad knew, and of a long-running drama of invasion and defence that extended up through the Second World War. But nowadays, this history seems strangely disconnected from the present. Indeed, in our time, the romance of the estuary lies in the experience of coming across your own history and realizing, whether with sadness, bewilderment, or an unexpected sense of relief, that it consists so largely of voids, hulks and ruins.'
Currently reading the excellent 'The River, The Thames in Our Time' by Patrick Wright
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