Hyde Parker

“ Utterson began to haunt the door in the by-street of shops. In the morning before office hours, at noon when business was plenty, and time scarce, at night under the face of the fogged city moon, by all lights and at all hours of solitude or concourse, the lawyer was to be found on his chosen post.
"If he be Mr. Hyde," he had thought, "I shall be Mr. Seek."
And at last his patience was rewarded. It was a fine dry night; frost in the air; the streets as clean as a ballroom floor; the lamps, unshaken by any wind, drawing a regular pattern of light and shadow. ”

“ Peter looked up as he entered, and the question in his eyes hardly needed the simple interrogatary—
“Well then?”
“It is ‘No.’ I shall go to Boston early in the morning. I wish to go over the business with Blume and Otis, and to possess myself of all particulars.”
“I have just heard that General Hyde came back this morning. He is now the Right Honourable the Earl of Hyde, and his son is, as you know, Lord George Hyde. Has this made a difference?”
“It has not. Let us count up what is owing to us. After all there is a certain good in gold.” ”

“ At the inn, as I entered, I looked about me with so black a countenance as made the attendants tremble; not a look did they exchange in my presence; but obsequiously took my orders, led me to a private room, and brought me wherewithal to write. Hyde in danger of his life was a creature new to me; shaken with inordinate anger, strung to the pitch of murder, lusting to inflict pain. Yet the creature was astute; mastered his fury with a great effort of the will; composed his two important letters, one to Lanyon and one to Poole ”

“ He knew that it was the next thing to a becoming uniform. He knew that he looked well in it; and he remembered with complaisance that it was old enough to be individual; and new enough to be handsome and striking.
And, after all, when a man is in love, to be reasonable is often to be cowardly. But Hyde was no coward; so then, it was not long ere he put all fears and doubts behind him and set his musings to the assertion: “I said to my heart, last night, that I would meet Cornelia at Richmond Hill this morning. I will not go back on my word. Such fluctuability is only fit for failure.” ”

“ In the bottle the acids were long ago resolved; the imperial dye had softened with time, as the colour grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on hillside vineyards, was ready to be set free and to disperse the fogs of London. Insensibly the lawyer melted. There was no man from whom he kept fewer secrets than Mr. Guest; and he was not always sure that he kept as many as he meant. Guest had often been on business to the doctor’s; he knew Poole; he could scarce have failed to hear of Mr. Hyde’s familiarity about the house ”

“ 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. ”

“ There the Queen’s host met him with a great number of men at arms on horseback besides foot. By one of the clock the Queen’s men and Wyatt’s had a skirmish; there were many slain, but Master Wyatt took the way down by St. James’s with a great company and so to Charing Cross.”
Hyde Park saw brighter scenes under Elizabeth. Splendour and pageantry marked the age. The Parks, like everything else, were used for purposes of ostentatious display, with greater frequency than had been the case under Henry VIII. Hyde Park remained a close Royal preserve, but the general public began to see more of it. ”

“ Men’s ruffs never reached the extravagant size of the ladies’ attire, but they grew to such an extent that Elizabeth considered it necessary to order that any beyond “a nayle of a yard in depth” should be clipped. The edge of the ruff was called a “piccadilly,” as may be seen in several of the earlier dictionaries, hence the name of the fashionable street abutting on Hyde Park to-day. When there were practically no houses there, a ruff shop kept by a man named Higgins existed, and was called a “piccadilly.” ”

“ Seeing that the fight was one-sided, the bartender hastened from his retreat, dragged Petersen's champion to his feet, and flung him back into the arms of the onlookers, after which he stooped to aid the loser. His hands were actually upon Bill before he understood the meaning of that peculiar laughter, and saw in Mr. Hyde's shaking fingers that which caused him to drop the prostrate victim as if he were a rattlesnake. ”

“ Soldiers from the barracks hard by at Knightsbridge make love to pretty nursemaids; young men from the shops in Bayswater or Kensington whisper sweet nothings into the ears of handsome girls, and, according to the practice favoured by them, sit with their arm round one another’s neck or waist.
Various classes are to be found in Hyde Park. For instance, the élite drive on summer afternoons from five to seven, when four or five rows of motors and carriages moving along at crawling pace is quite a common sight. ”

“ Dec. 15th. Up and to my Lord’s, and thence to the Duke, [28] and followed him into the Parke, where, though the ice was broken and dangerous, yet he would go slide upon his scates, which I did not like, but he slides very well.”
This must have been, in all probability, on one of the pools in the park—as it was not till 1730 that Queen Caroline, wife of George II., began to make “the Serpentine,” as the lake in Hyde Park is called. After that was finished, and a good hard frost came, so that it was frozen hard, it was the resort of the few of the upper classes who could skate. ”

“ His criticism of dress was strong to the last, for one of the first entries he makes after the return of “London” to Hyde Park was on 21st April 1666, and runs:
“Thence, with my Lord Brouncke [the first President of the Royal Society] in his coach to Hide Parke, the first time I have been there this year. There the King was; but I was sorry to see my Lady Castlemaine, for the mourning forceing all the ladies to go in black, with their hair plain, and without any spots [patches] I find her to be a much more ordinary woman than ever I durst have thought she was.” ”

“ Anne granted forty shillings a year to her “pourvoioir de noz chariettes.” But such “chariettes” were merely cumbersome waggons to which strong horses were attached. Priests rode at the head of troops and at pageants, and were some of the greatest equestrians of the age; the monks from Westminster enjoyed many a gallop in Hyde Park. ”

“ It is impossible to contemplate such an outrageous scene without a glance at that calm February morning, almost a century later, grey, still and chilly, when from early dawn the population of London—even to the loafer and the noisy hooligan of the street—went with subdued demeanour towards Hyde Park, there to stand, or sit in the trees for hours, until the funeral cortége of Queen Victoria should pass through London. Even Nature herself seemed to hold her breath as the stately procession wound its way across the Park, on that very road taken by the galloping horses eighty years before. ”

“ Mr. Green, it seems, disabled the Captain in his sword arm; but, what is the wonderful part of the story, the Captain Douglas, whom the Rev. Mr. Green disabled, cannot be found, so that it is supposed this parson, as the humourous sexton of a neighbouring parish says, never fights with a man but he buries him.”
“Mar. 17, 1770. A duel was fought in Hyde Park, between George Garrick Esqre and Mr. Baddeley, both of Drury Lane Theatre, when the former, having received the other’s fire, discharged his pistol in the air, which produced a reconciliation.” ”

“ Mr. Hyde was pale and dwarfish, he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation, he had a displeasing smile, he had borne himself to the lawyer with a sort of murderous mixture of timidity and boldness, and he spoke with a husky, whispering and somewhat broken voice; all these were points against him, but not all of these together could explain the hitherto unknown disgust, loathing and fear with which Mr. Utterson regarded him. 'There must be something else,' said the perplexed gentleman. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I had but to drink the cup, to doff at once the body of the noted professor, and to assume, like a thick cloak, that of Edward Hyde. I smiled at the notion; it seemed to me at the time to be humorous; and I made my preparations with the most studious care. I took and furnished that house in Soho, to which Hyde was tracked by the police; and engaged as housekeeper a creature whom I well knew to be silent and unscrupulous. On the other side, I announced to my servants that a Mr. Hyde (whom I described) was to have full liberty and power about my house in the square ”

“ 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. ”

“ Boucicault; to say nothing of Gibson girls, those mysterious folk who only earn a pound a week, and yet ride thoroughbreds and drive motor cars.
The only people who have the right to drive in a carriage down Rotten Row are His Majesty King292 Edward, who, unlike his mother, has never exercised that privilege, and the Duke of St. Albans, as Hereditary Grand Falconer.
An enormously wealthy and well-known financier used to ride every day in Hyde Park. He was never much of a horseman, and as he grew older the little nerve he had possessed gradually went. ”

“ Just now New York is all for lovers. If you interfere between Hyde and Cornelia while it is in this temper, every one will cry out, ‘Oh, the pity of it!’ and you will be bayed into doing some mad thing or other. Do I not know you, dear one?”
“God’s precious!” and he took her in his arms, saying, “the man who learns nothing from his wife will never learn anything from anybody. Come, then, and we will eat our meal. I had forgotten Rem, and as you say, Hyde may have to go to England to-morrow; putting-off has broken up many an ill marriage.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not only hardy, the plane is one of the most attractive of all trees.
There are also some fine copper beeches. A young German who was in London was much impressed by all he saw, and one day at his boarding-house he waxed warm on the beautiful vegetation in Hyde Park, which he rightly designated as “the best in the world.”
“The ladies are lovely,” he said. “I do not know which are the most lovely, the ladies or the bloody beeches.” ”

“ And while Hyde still lay between life and death, Miss Van Heemskirk married him; and as soon as he was able, he carried her off at midnight to England; and there they lived in a fine old house until the war. Then they came back to New York, and Hyde went into the Continental army and did great things, I suppose, for as we all knew, he was made a general. You should have heard Aunt Angelica tell the story. She remembered the whole affair. It was a delightful story to listen to, as we drank our chocolate. And will you please only try to imagine it of Mrs. General Hyde! A woman so lofty! ”

“ Upon hurdles, bound in ignominy, down Snow Hill and along the Oxford Road, just stopping for a last stirrup-cup to speed them upon their way at St. Giles’s Spital, were drawn martyrs and malefactors innumerable.
The doomed Carthusians, the Maid of Kent, heroic Campion, the miserable Dr. Lopez and his Portuguese confederates; priests, protestants, patriots, and rogues, for ages all such took their last look on earth at Hyde Park ”

“ 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. ”