St. James's Park

“ James’s Park is a genuine piece of country, and of English country; huge old trees, real meadows, a large pond peopled with ducks and water-fowl; cows and sheep, in an enclosed space, fed on the grass, which is always fresh. There are even sheep in the narrow green border that surrounds Westminster Abbey; these people love the country in their hearts. It is sufficient to read their literature from Chaucer to Shakespeare, from Thomson to Wordsworth and Shelley, to find proofs of this. What a contrast to the Tuileries, the Champs-Elysées, the Luxembourg! ”

“ James’s Park one of the most delightful scenes in Nature is the variety of living objects which is met with here; for besides the deer and wild fowl, common to other parks, besides the water, fine walks, and the elegant buildings that surround it, hither the politest part of the British nation of both sexes frequently resort in the spring to take the benefit of the evening air, and enjoy the most agreeable conversation imaginable ”

“ Milk-vendors, boasting their descent from the original holders, have still their cow-stall at the park corner under the elm-trees. In the distance the grey old abbey, with its delicate tracery, appears at intervals above the trees and buildings; and, though so near the city smoke, the Ornithological Society breeds many beautiful aquatic birds on a small island on the Ornamental Water. St. James's Park is a series of pictures; the sketcher, too, will find many convenient seats, as well as charming views. ”

“ Standing right in the heart of London, it is almost the only surviving out-of-door public pleasure resort left in the West-End, wherein fashion may display itself and take exercise, since St. James’s Park has now no social life, and Spring Gardens, Vauxhall, Old Ranelagh, and Cremorne are long since dead. ”

“ And they would walk home across the Park, James' figure, with high shoulders and absorbed and worried face, exercising its tall, lean protectorship, pathetically unregarded, over the robust child-figures of Imogen and little Publius.
But those Gardens and that Park were not sacred to James. Forsytes and tramps, children and lovers, rested and wandered day after day, night after night, seeking one and all some freedom from labour, from the reek and turmoil of the streets. ”

“ When I left Soho Square I went to St. James's Park to see Lady Harrington for whom I bore a letter, as I have mentioned. This lady lived in the precincts of the Court, and received company every Sunday. It was allowable to play in her house, as the park is under the jurisdiction of the Crown. In any other place there is no playing cards or singing on Sundays. ”

“ On our left we should see, first shops and houses, and then big buildings all the way down to the Houses of Parliament. On our right, there would be the Horse Guards and a line of Government Offices with St. James’s Park behind them.”
But on what a different scene Betty looked! The whole of the space stretching between the river (which she could see gleaming on her left) and St. James’s Park in full view on her right, was covered with houses, separated from one another by gardens and lawns, but all belonging to, and part of, the Palace of Whitehall. ”

“ 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. ”

“ James's Park is associated in contemporary minds with nothing but amusing recollections of bands of music, marching soldiers, maid-servants and children, drinkings of "milk from the cow," the hoop-petticoats of the court days of George the Third, and fading images of passages in novels, or of shabby-genteel debtors sitting lounging on the benches. A little further back in point of time we see a novelist himself, Richardson, walking in it, with other invalids, for his health; then Swift crossing it from Suffolk Street in his way 432 to Chelsea, or thinking of the Spectator and Rosamond's Pond ”

“ 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. ”

“ James’s Park will be as famous to our descendants for our deeds as it is now to us for the presence of our ancestors. Is not the Mall yet one of the most favoured resorts of the British aristocracy? Do not the carriages of the nobility and gentry rattle over its broad bosom to dinner parties, to opera, to concerts, and to balls? We have seen their chariot lamps a hundred times—we humble pedestrians and plebeians—gleaming among the tufted trees, wills-o’-the-wisp of Belgravia and Tyburnia. ”

“ James’s Park, where all the world of beauty and wit is to be met walking up and down in the gayest, easiest way, everybody familiar and acquainted, with the exception of a few women in masks, who are never to be spoken to or spoken about. ”

“ He slept, and doubtless he dreamed too; but he woke early, ere the sun had so far climbed the eastern hill as to overtop the wood, and while the slant rays were still pouring in golden splendor through the branches of the trees.
As he paused to look through the open window after having dressed himself, his eye passed over the park to the valley beyond, and, where the open ground stretched out from the banks of the stream up the sides of the hills, he was surprised to see a number of horsemen, in groups of two or three together, cantering lightly hither and thither, as if in sport. ”

“ From this pastoral abundance we moved upon the more composed scene, the park proper—passed through a second lodge-gate, with weather-worn gilding on its twisted bars, to the smooth slopes where the great trees stood singly and the tame deer browsed along the bed of a woodland stream. Here before us rose the gabled grey front of the Tudor-time, developed and terraced and gardened to some later loss, as we were afterwards to know, of type.
“Here you can wander all day,” I said to Searle, “like an exiled prince who has come back on tiptoe and hovers about the dominion of the usurper.” ”

“ Much has been done within the last few years towards adorning the metropolis with health-giving parks and grounds freely open to the public. The gardens of three scientific societies, gradually brought into a very attractive state, are also accessible, though not without payment.
St. James’s Park.—This is so called from St. James’s Palace, which partly bounds it on the north. Originally these grounds were a marshy waste, which was drained and otherwise improved by Henry VIII.; who also took down an ancient hospital dedicated to St. James, and built on its site the palace now called St. ”

“ There are indeed a great many steep banks in Greenwich Park, which tumbles up and down in the most picturesque fashion. It is a charming place, rather shabby and footworn, as befits a strictly popular resort, but with a character all its own. It is filled with magnificent foreign-looking trees, of which I know nothing but that they have a vain appearance of being chestnuts, planted in long, convergent avenues, with trunks of extraordinary girth and limbs that fling a dusky shadow far over the grass; there are plenty of benches, and there are deer as tame as sleepy children ”

“ James’s Park, will apply with tenfold force to the inhabitants of Poplar or Whitechapel, and it will also enable us to estimate the intense pleasure which those summer-trips organised by the friends of our Sunday and Ragged Schools afford to the young poor of our metropolis. A blade of grass to them is a rarity, and, in their eyes, more precious than emeralds to a duchess. ”

“ Pall Mall is a modern spelling of paille maille, the title of a French game at ball, somewhat similar to our croquet, first played in this thoroughfare—then open to St. James’s Park—about the year 1621. Carlton House Terrace stands on the site of Carlton House, the palace of Frederick, Prince of Wales, the father of George III. King Street, St. James’s Street, and St. James’s Square were designated in honour of James I. Bury Street is properly “Berry Street,” after the name of its builder. ”

“ But the mists, when they do not degenerate to downright smoke and fogs, have the merit of singularly softening and aiding the landscape character of its scenes. I have driven into the Regent’s Park, when the fields, casting upward their hues, the rows of houses seen dimly through the haze, the obscure glimpses of the hills beyond, the carriages rolling up, as it were out of vacuum, and the dim magnificence with its air of vastness, have conspired to render it one of the most extraordinary things, in its way, I have ever beheld. ”

“ The best view is certainly from the park, where, looking over the river and the village of Jurançon, scattered amongst beeches and vineyards, the eye runs up a long valley, marked at various distances with clumps of trees and hamlets, and every now and then a tall poplar or two lessening in the perspective, till the first rising rocks appear beyond, seeming to block up the pass, and increasing one above the other, more and more faint and misty, till the abrupt "Pic du Midi" towers above them all, looking like a cloud upon the distant sky. ”

“ I found my mother alone weeping upon my last night's quarrel and so left her, and took my wife to Charing Cross and there left her to see her mother who is not well. So I into St. James's Park, where I saw the Duke of York playing at Pelemele,
[The game was originally played in the road now styled Pall Mall, near St. James's Square, but at the Restoration when sports came in fashion again the street was so much built over, that it became necessary to find another ground. The Mall in St. James's Park was then laid out for the purpose.] the first time that ever I saw the sport. ”

“ Other figures grouped in the park picture included senators talking, or seeming to talk, of state affairs; milk-people crying ‘A can of milk, ladies! a can of red cow’s milk, sir!’ St. James’s Park had also its Close Walk, at the head of Rosamond’s Pond, in the south-west corner of the park. This got the name of the Jacobites’ Walk before there was one in Hyde Park. It was the resort of Tories in the latter years of William’s reign, whereas the Jacobite Walk in Hyde Park was the favourite conversing ground of the friends of the old and young Pretenders. ”

“ This is the reason why the perfection of luxury in England is to own a "park"—an artificial solitude. To get one's self into the middle of a few hundred acres of oak-studded turf and to keep off the crowd by the breadth, at least, of this grassy cincture, is to enjoy a comfort which circumstances make peculiarly precious. But I walked back through the profane pleasure-grounds of London, in the midst of "superfluous herds," and I found that entertainment which I never fail to derive from a great English assemblage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The statue stares across the interval at the castle, and the great avenue—-thanks to it's very perfection—-looks like a much smaller affair than it is. But nothing in Windsor park is small. I drove for some fifteen miles, and everywhere the great trees were scattered over the slopes and lawns; everywhere there was a glimpse of browsing deer; everywhere, at the end of cross-roads, the same wooded horizon. It is the perfection of park scenery, the noblest of all parks. I drove to Virginia Water, and left my carriage to come and meet me at some unknown point, to which my driver directed my steps. ”

“ If in Gramercy Park already, three hours after his arrival, he had felt himself, this victim, up to his neck in what I have called his “subject,” the matter was quite beyond calculation by the time he had tumbled, in such a glorified “four-wheeler,” and with such an odd consciousness of roughness superimposed upon smoothness, far down-town again, and, on the deck of a shining steamer bound for the Jersey shore, was taking all the breeze of the Bay. ”

“ At the end of an hour's drive (they assure you at Blois that even with two horses you will spend double that time) , I passed through a sort of gap in a wall which does duty as the gateway of the domain of a proscribed pretender. I followed a straight avenue through a disfeatured park—the park of Chambord has twenty-one miles of circumference; a very sandy, scrubby, melancholy plantation, in which the timber must have been cut many times over and is to-day a mere tangle of brushwood. Here, as in so many spots in France, the traveller perceives that he is in a land of revolutions. ”

“ If this be honour, the simple may well say, give us, merciful powers, the rigour of indifference! From Hyde Park Corner to the heart of the City and over the water to the solid south the long line of thoroughfares is masked by a forest of timber and smothered in swaggering posters and catchpenny bids, with all of which and with the vociferous air that enfolds them we are to spend these next weeks in such comfort as we may. The splendour will have of course to be great to wash down the vulgarity—and infinitely dazzling no doubt it will be ”