Hyde Park

“ Truly Hyde Park has an unparalleled record. For four hundred years the makers of history, politicians, beauty, nobility, bravery—and knavery, alas!—have all tendered homage to the charm of its acres, its noble trees, its grassy sward. Generation after generation has proclaimed love for it; and now, indeed, what would the babies and the beauties do without the famous stretch from Marble Arch to Piccadilly? ”

“ As you gazed from an eminence, no rows of monotonous houses reminded you of the vicinity of a large city, and the atmosphere of Hyde Park was then much more like what God has made it, than the hazy, gray, coal-darkened half twilight of the London of to-day. The company, which then congregated daily about five, was composed of dandies and women in the best society, the men mounted on such horses as England alone then could produce. ”

“ Indeed, if one allows one’s imagination to run riot, there are even now spots in Hyde Park which lend themselves for the “setting” of such meetings. Strolling on a November afternoon near the site of the Ring, my thoughts wandering back through the centuries, I came to a grassy slope facing a group of silver birch trees. Their beautiful forms stood in bold relief against a background of dark shrubs. The setting sun—a red ball of fire—gave the haze, that adds so much to the picturesqueness of London, a hue that might have been the glow of a ruddy sunrise. ”

“ London in the morning—I mean the poor man’s morning, daylight—is to me matter for the most speculative and intense melancholy. Hyde park in the sunshine of a bright afternoon, glittering with equipages, and gay with the Aladdin splendors of rank and wealth, is a scene which sends the mercurial qualities of the blood trippingly through the veins. But Hyde park at daylight seen from Piccadilly through fog and rain, is perhaps, of all contrasts, to one who has frequented it in its bright hours, the most dispiriting and dreary. ”

“ And thus from generation to generation Hyde Park has been the playground of London’s rich and poor, the wide theatre upon which their tragedies and comedies have been enacted, the forum in which many public liberties have been demanded, the scene where national triumphs have been celebrated. ”

“ Earlier in the year, when the trees are throwing out their fresh green leaves, the almond blossom glows, the grass looks fresh, and the daffodils and narcissi give hope of coming achievement. Possibly Hyde Park possesses no trees so ancestral as the old elm which stands on the edge of the lake in the neighbourhood of St. James’s Park, beneath which the monks at Westminster are said to have fished for a Friday’s meal. It still bears leaves, and though its roots are plastered up, seems likely to thrive for many years. ”

“ There was no fashionable chronicler of the day to tell us exactly which were the favourite resorts of Society, but it would not be surprising if the rough roads cut in the spacious parks which extended so far from Whitehall were first put to use for carriage exercise by Elizabeth’s courtiers. Hyde Park has been the fashionable drive for centuries. One likes to think of those bumpy old contrivances, of colossal weight and build, with the stoutness of a farmer’s cart, as setting the fashion of driving in the park which has come down unbroken to the present year of grace. ”

“ Thousands who had taken up their standing places at Hyde Park Corner, poured through the gate; whilst many who had assumed positions at a greater distance from the Parks, passed through the squares and through Grosvenor Gate. Every avenue was soon filled, every booth was soon crammed full of persons desirous of procuring refreshment and rest after the fatigue of standing so long in the crowd to view the procession. ”

“ Hyde Park is a truly national property, and it is amusing and perhaps edifying to note the various uses to which it is often put. In the morning it is the rendezvous of nurses and children; in the afternoon of a fashionable throng; on Sunday evenings it is the resort of hard-working men and women, who have to content themselves with getting a breath of fresh air once a week. ”

“ She herself, loving exercise, and taking an inexhaustible delight in the life and movement of the streets, spent more time than ever out of doors. Her walks almost invariably ended in Hyde Park, where she would sit and rest for half an hour under the grateful shade of the elms and limes; and then, coming out into the Bayswater Road, she would stand irresolute, or walk on for a little distance into Oxford Street, with downcast eyes and with slower and slower steps. ”

“ From this time there has been no great military display in Hyde Park: it is unsuitable for it, and the grass is quite enough spoilt by the mobs of fanatic, idle, mischievous, or seditious persons who there assemble at oft-recurring intervals, and destroy the peace and comfort of those, who are the vast majority, who wish to enjoy the verdant pleasures of the Park. ”

“ A ROYAL HUNTING-GROUND Hyde Park in its present guise is essentially modern. It preserves nothing of that old-world air which makes the lawn of Hampton Court and the formal gardens of Windsor Castle so delightful.
Rotten Row as a tan ride has been laid out in the memory of people still living. The Marble Arch on its present site is Victorian. Burton’s Arch, and the screen at Hyde Park Corner, are but a little earlier. Queen Caroline, consort of George II., formed the Serpentine. Queen Anne planted avenues of stately elms. ”

“ The very colour of green is vanishd, the whole surface of Hyde Park is dry crumbling sand (Arabia Arenosa) , not a vestige or hint of grass ever having grown there, booths and drinking places go all round it for a mile and half I am confident—I might say two miles in circuit—the stench of liquors, bad tobacco, dirty people and provisions, conquers the air and we are stifled and suffocated in Hyde Park. ”

“ So Hyde Park by successive bargainings, in which no doubt the monarch, and not the monks, had much the best of the deal, became a personal possession of the King, and in a measure has remained so ever since, though the public have the free enjoyment of its glorious spaces. It was far otherwise at the outset. Once in possession of his new domain, now extended by successive additions from Whitehall to the modern Kensington Gardens, Henry VIII. took effective steps to secure its privacy. A wooden paling was raised to keep in the deer and keep out intruders, thereby making it a park. ”

“ Their way lay through Hyde Park. The October leaves shimmered like golden scales in the afternoon sun, shedding a glory around him. The few passers-by seemed non-existent. The great stretch of lawn rolled on either side towards the just visible white house-tops. In front, the chequered path of the burnished avenue. From time to time his companion raised her delicate face to him. A slanting beam caught the light of her eyes and the gold tints of her hair under her dainty toque. A strange, unknown feeling stole upon his heart.
A great silence and splendour had fallen over life. ”

“ A great demonstration, with its twenty or fifty298 thousand people, is an occasional event. When agitators are busy there may be two or three such in a year. But never a week passes without the free air of Hyde Park being disturbed by the strident cries of somebody or other, airing the grievances of himself or his class, while there is a set of publicists—well-known figures—to whom the opportunities to hear their own voices, afforded by the Park, seem to be their meat and drink and vegetables. ”

“ In 1712, Anne issued further orders “for the better keeping of Hyde Park.” Gatekeepers were always to be on duty, and not to sell intoxicating liquors. No one was to leap or ride over ditches and fences, or to break the latter, and this also applied to the banks of ponds. No person was to ride over the grass on the south side of the gravelled coach road except Henry Wise, who was permitted to cross the part of the Park leading to the door in the Park wall next his plantation. ”

“ The force of habit, I presume, led me to Hyde Park once more. All the world was abroad. Beauty, rank and fashion were collected in one splendid, aristocratic mass. Carriages and four, with servants in gorgeous liveries; every variety of vehicle, from the dashing tandem to the humbler carriage and pair, tilburies, buggy-wagons, and cabs thronged and thundered around the ring. Horsemen dashed along the carriage-ways, and pedestrians crowded the footpaths. ”

“ Driving and walking became daily more fashionable at the Piccadilly end of Hyde Park. The gay and frivolous George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, was wont to trip along in all his frills and frippery, or sitting stately in his coach drawn by six horses, joking with King Charles, and urging the monarch to some fresh imprudence. ”

“ Long before the shades of evening began to fall, the immense area of Hyde Park set apart for the public was crowded with a dense mass of individuals, the majority of whom, without, perhaps, either knowing or caring much about the occasion which had called them together, were resolved to be in time to secure good places to see the fireworks. ”

“ Hyde Park is the largest of them all, with its small rivulet, its wide greensward, its sheep, its shady walks, resembling a pleasure park suddenly transported to the centre of a capital. About two o’clock the principal alley is a riding-ground; there are ten times more gentlemen and twenty times more ladies on horseback than in the Bois de Boulogne on its most frequented days; little girls and boys of eight ride on ponies by the side of their father ”

“ One forgets that one is in the heart of the capital of the world. Is it the Lüneburger Heide? Is it the land of Tristan, dark Cornwall? And will not the melancholy song of the shepherd be suddenly heard?
“Hyde Park, in a way, symbolises the English character. Just as it is not the Englishman’s way of charming at first sight, or to confide in a stranger, Hyde Park does not appeal to the foreigner when he visits it for the first time. But as one grows to love the English after a longer acquaintance, so does one grow to love Hyde Park, so different from anything else. ”

“ James’s Park and Pall Mall, more keepers, more lodges, and more accommodation were required in Hyde Park. Mention is made in the State Papers that on 20th November 1635, £800 was paid for building a new lodge in Hyde Park; and three years later there was a payment of £1123, 5s. 5d. for further work done at the new lodge, according to the estimate of the famous architect, Inigo Jones.
The area of the Park in which the fashion and beauty of Stuart London mostly foregathered was that which in after years became famous as “The Ring,” the precursor of modern racing. ”

“ Lady Mary Carden sat near the open window of her blue and white boudoir looking out intently, fixedly across Park Lane at the shimmer of the trees in Hyde Park. It was June. It was sunny. The false gaiety of the season was all around her; flickering swiftly past her in the crush of carriages below her window; dawdling past her in the walking and riding crowds in the park. ”

“ It is hard for the Londoner of 1908 to realise that two hundred years ago neither children, nor the “man in the street,” nor the loafer, nor the orator, were permitted to enter Hyde Park. In fact, the only part the poor labouring folk ever knew of it was its high brick wall.
When the Jacobite risings were fermenting, a military camp was formed in Hyde Park. The newspapers contain grand accounts of the rejoicings among the troops, and the feast given to the men by the Duke of Montague, who was in command, in honour of the Prince of Wales’s birthday. ”

“ Two o’clock being the ordinary luncheon hour, there is a general exodus a little before that time, and it was amusing in 1906 to notice the people all endeavouring to engage the smart public motor landaulettes and hansoms which plied for hire at Hyde Park Corner for the first time. They were a new invasion—one that quickly found favour in the eyes of the public, followed a year later by taximeter cabs.
After tea on Sundays in the summer the Park fills again. People stroll in to have chats with their friends or rest in the cool shade; and again those thousands of chairs are occupied. ”

“ So the scene in Hyde Park constantly changes, ever holding the mirror up to history and romance.
311
CHAPTER XIII
NATURE IN THE PARK Not long ago I came across, in the Vienna Neue Freie Presse, some passages in which an Austrian gentleman described the fascinations of Hyde Park as it appears to a foreigner. He sees it in an aspect that is perhaps rarely revealed to ourselves, as the “most original park in Europe.”
“Hyde Park,” he says, “is flat and poor—an English heath with only something approaching to a garden it its gates. ”

“ Other amusements of the great consist in riding through Hyde Park: the ladies in their coaches, and the gentlemen on horseback in an adjoining road. He that would judge of the population of London should attend in the Park on any Sunday at three o’clock, from February till May; he must be astonished at the sight. The coaches, the horses, the populace of every rank who toil against the bleak East winds, are wonderfully numerous. ”

“ Society, however, pursued its way, and the daily drive and lounge survived during all the religious120 and political turmoil. Hyde Park remained the great rendezvous, though James was rarely seen there, and under the trees were discussed, as of old, the affairs of the Court, the plots of the Roman Catholics, precedence of great ladies, rivalries and jealousie, dress and equipage. A new excitement was added to the fashionable walk by a custom which began among the beaux and grandes dames of wearing masks in the Park, and by their means many intrigues were set afoot. ”