Green Park

“ The white morning mists were slowly melting from the worn grass in the Green Park; and weary creatures, who had had no better shelter than the quiet sky, were creeping away to find such wretched resting-places as they might, in that free city, in which, to sit for an unreasonable time upon a doorstep, or to ask a rich citizen for the price of a loaf, is to commit an indictable offence. ”

“ That of Hyde is worth walking in at five on a fine week-day, if it be only to see how the footmen and the horses enjoy themselves; and still more so at four on a fine Sunday, to see how the citizens do the same. The Green Park, in virtue of the youths and maidens who meander about it in all directions on the latter day, looks, at a distance, like a meadow strewn all over with moving wild-flowers. And the great alley in Kensington Gardens, when the fashionables please to patronise it, is as pretty to look down upon, from the Pavilion at top, as one of Watteau’s pictures. ”

“ There is no one in the parks save the rough characters who are lying on their faces in the sheep-polluted grass. These people are always tolerably numerous in the Green Park, through which I frequently pass, and I never fail to drop a wondering glance upon them. But your wonder will go far if it begins to bestir itself on behalf of the recumbent British tramp. ”

“ He cast a longing eye upon the Green Park,{286} which seemed to give room for a great design. The reservoir now existing was to be transformed into an ornamental basin, flanked by appropriate fountains, and surrounded by terraces with balustrades, vases, and statues. Fine broad flights of steps were to lead down to the Park, and thence by a long walk ornamented with sculpture to Hyde Park Corner. The object was to combine in one grand design what is now a somewhat wasted and ineffective space. But here again economy stepped in to forbid its execution; and the design exists on paper only. ”

“ It will respond to any of your moods and will give you an atmosphere of any sort you desire. On one side, as you walk along, are houses, more or less lately ducal, but all of a greatly worth-while air. Citified, indeed, with a wealthy width of stone pavement, and a noble height of stone frontage.
On the other side is Green Park, with its shining, softly-waving trees, its birds, and its grass.
But, passing the Hotel Ritz, both sides suddenly give way to shops and restaurants which rank among the most pretentious in all the world. ”

“ Oh, the noise of Piccadilly—its rumble and its roar!
A tide of life's broad ocean surging toward the shore.
Who once has listened, ever can hear its long refrain
With haunting echo drowning or dirge or flaunting strain.
Who heeds it, in his vision may see a world-throng pass—
And over there the Green Park with laughing lad and lass;
While weary men and women and careless youth go by,
Where windows glow and glitter, and in the evening sky
A crescent moon is watching the laughing lass and lad. ”

“ Between our viewpoint and the last-named mountain lies South Park, like a paradise of green immured by guardian walls of rock and snow, and far to the east, beyond the billowing ranges, white, gray, and green, stretch the limitless plains, vanishing in the hazy distance. In such surroundings one's breast throbs and swells with the thought of Nature's omnipotence. ”

“ I think the taste for displays of this nature is lessening in England; though, within the limits set by usage, I perceive no falling off in the equipages, but rather an improvement in form and lightness.
The road around Regent’s Park appears open to every thing; but into St. James’s, none but the privileged can enter except on foot. The Green Park is exclusively for pedestrians, being little more than a pretty and extensive play-ground for children. Kensington Gardens can be entered by all properly dressed pedestrians. ”

“ On a balmy morning there is nothing more agreeable than a walk in the Green Park, and the happy mortals, or immortals, who own the houses that look into it—Salisburys, Ellesmeres, Spencers, e tutti quanti—may be envied as you walk. ”

“ THE TURNPIKE AT HYDE PARK CORNER, 1706.
[Pg 29]
CHAPTER II. ST. JAMES’S STREET AND PALL MALL.
“O bear me to the paths of fair Pall Mall,
Safe are thy pavements, grateful is thy smell.”
—Gay’s “Trivia.”
Can we do better, after the surfeit of bricks and mortar which we have just undergone, than relax our jaded senses and relieve our wearied eyes by loitering for a few moments in the Green Park? See! it is just across the way, and a convenient entrance helps to tempt our steps. ”

“ My window, which was a large French affair in three parts, looked out upon Piccadilly. It opened on a small stone-railed balcony, and as I looked out three pigeons looked in. They were of the fat and pompous kind and they strutted along the railing, with a frankly sociable air, cocking their heads pertly in an endeavor to draw my attention to the glistening iridescence of their neck-feathers.
I liked the pigeons, and I told them so, but even better I liked the sight across the street.
Green Park at dawn is as solemnly impressive as the interior of Westminster Abbey. ”

“ For he would say it in so many words, when he came into the room. Because it is a thousand pities never to say what one feels, he thought, crossing the Green Park* and observing with pleasure how in the shade of the trees whole families, poor families, were sprawling; ”

“ James’s Place, overlooking the Green Park. You can scarcely open the memoirs of any man of letters of his time, but you may read some [Pg 340] account of a breakfast or a dinner at Rogers’s. “What a delightful house it is!” says Macaulay. “It looks out on the Green Park just at the most pleasant point. The furniture has been selected with a delicacy of taste quite unique.... In the drawing-room the chimney-pieces are carved by Flaxman into the most beautiful Grecian forms. The bookcase is painted by Stothard, in his very best manner, with groups from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Boccaccio. ”

“ A part of the park itself lay between the mansion and the road, which were at the distance of about three quarters of a mile from each other, the ground sloping with a thousand fanciful undulations, and covered with short turf of a rich bright green in all the dells and hollows, though becoming slightly brown upon the tops of the knolls, where the fierce summer sun, like the withering glare of the great world, had already taken off the freshness of the vegetation. ”

“ Stephen's Green Park and look at the ducks and the flower-beds and the eels, but when she reached the quays she blushed deeply, and turning towards the right went rapidly in the direction of the Phœnix Park. She told herself that she was not going in there, but would merely take a walk by the river, cross at Island Bridge, and go back on the opposite side of the Liffey to the Green. But when she sa [Pg 86] w the broad sunlit road gleaming through the big gates she thought she would go for a little way up there to look at the flowers behind the railings. ”

“ A company was formed to buy up this estate, which failing to effect the purchase, the corporation, assisted by private subscriptions of £7,000, came to the aid of the enterprise, and secured the valuable property for the use of the people. The park contains forty-two acres, affording sufficient space for recreation, while it is so situated as to appear only the central point of view to a park of a dozen miles in extent, picturesquely wooded and dashed with gleams of water pleasantly interspersed with the green and gold of the variegated landscape. ”

“ If any one climbed the wall from the park and looked across at the plain of corn-fields in early spring, everywhere there would be seen brown dots in the air—above the first slender green blades; above the freshly turned dark furrows; above the distant plough, the share of which, polished like a silver mirror by friction with the clods, reflects the sunshine, flashing a heliograph message of plenty from the earth; everywhere brown dots, and each a breathing creature—larks ceaselessly singing, and all unable to set forth their joy. ”

“ Paying their entrance, and passing through the turnstile in the pretty pavilion gate, they stood in the Congress Spring Park. The band was playing in the kiosk; the dew still lay on the flowers and the green turf; the miniature lake sparkled in the sun. It is one of the most pleasing artificial scenes in the world; to be sure, nature set the great pine-trees on the hills, and made the graceful little valley, but art and exquisite taste have increased the apparent size of the small plot of ground, and filled it with beauty. ”

“ Nothing can be more imposing than the magnificence of English park scenery. Vast lawns that extend like sheets of vivid green, with here and there clumps of gigantic trees, heaping up rich piles of foliage. The solemn pomp of groves and woodland glades, with the deer trooping in silent herds across them; the hare, bounding away to the covert ”

“ Unless a special and intelligent effort is made to secure individuality in the improvement of each of the public squares, parks and boulevards of a city, they are liable to repeat each other too much. The West Side parks of Chicago resemble each other to a regrettable degree. Each has its little, crooked lake, its green house and flower beds, its little lawns, its curving level drives and walks, its bridges and statues, its plantations mainly of the same selection of trees crowded and slim and only partially screening out surrounding houses. ”

“ There are 1040 acres here of as fine a park as there is anywhere under the sun, and when we consider that 25 years ago this was all a barren tract of drifting sand hills, that everything you see growing has been planted and is kept alive and green and blooming by a regular and almost constant application of water, when you remember this, then you will feel and think that this park is a little different from any other that you have seen. ”

“ Natural simplicity and even confusion are, on the contrary, the characteristic of the park and gardens. Instead of that arrangement of gravel paths, of geometrical flower-beds, and of yews disciplined with grotesque exactness which the character of the house would seem to suggest, there spreads a rich and varied landscape. Green lawns and shining water, banks of laurel and fern, groves of oak and cedar, fountains and islands, are conjoined in artful disarray to offer on every side a promise of rest and shade. ”

“ In the matter of parks the city has made a most promising start. There are now in the city twenty-eight parks, counting large and small and not including any street parkways. Of this number Bever Park, Ellis Park, Daniels Park, May's Island Park, Riverside Park, and Whittam Park are considerable tracts, while George Greene Square, opposite the union station, with its beautiful display of flowers and rich green lawn, is one of the show spots of the city. ”

“ In the very core of this old-time Greenwich section and at the very place where the streets are so tangled, so irregular, so crooked, so often no thoroughfare, so winding that they seem to be seeking out the old farmhouses which they led to in early days, there is a pretty little playground for children. This Hudson Park is an open spot with green lawns and marble walks and a tall iron fence surrounding it ”

“ Northern Park, on the bluffs to the north of the city, is noted for its fine trees, and contains 180 acres. Forest Park is the great park of the city. It lies four miles west of the Court House, and contains 1350 acres. The Des Pares runs through it, and the native forest trees are still standing. With great natural advantages, it requires only time and art to number it among the handsomest parks in the country. Tower Grove Park, in the southwest part of the city, contains 227 acres, offers delightful drives among green lawns and charmingly arranged shrubbery. ”

“ The designer of a park should assign proper places for sundry things for a variety of purposes and must meet many limitations and practical requirements always with the beauty of the whole as well as of the parts in mind as the prime consideration.
For instance, if a meadow is to be provided as a prominent landscape feature because of its usefulness for strolling and for field sports, it must constantly be borne in mind that the beauty of a meadow consists in its breadth and simplicity, in its smooth, continuous green sward and in its naturalness. ”

“ But if the good people be correct, Congress ought to take immediate steps to enable the people more fully to utilize the mighty Hygea located within the bounds of this park.
Surrounded by bare and bleak mountains and hot and arid plains, here at this elevation rains are abundant, and dews are sufficient; trees clothe mountain top and slope; grass is green and fattening, and flowers deck the open downs and shade the forest land. And yet the air is dry and beneficial to all except those whose lungs require an atmosphere less light. ”

“ That some actually are so and yet command the admiration of people of taste is an indication of their essential qualities and fundamental differences from parks proper. Few cities have anywhere near as many ornamental squares as they should. It ls particularly desirable that a city should have several of its principal public buildings facing upon a large public square, as the new custom house in New York faces upon the Bowling Green, not occupying it as the postoffice and municipal buildings occupy the City Hall Park. ”