ST. JAMES’S AND GREEN PARKS
_Near this my Muse, what most delights her, sees
A living Gallery of Aged Trees:
Bold sons of Earth, that thrust their Arms so high,
As if once more they would invade the Sky._
* * * * *
_Here Charles contrives the ord’ring of his States;
Here he resolves his neighb’ring Princes’ Fates;_
* * * * *
_A Prince on whom such diff’rent Lights did smile,
Born the divided World to reconcile.
Whatever Heav’n or high extracted Blood
Could promise or foretel, he’ll make it good,
Reform these Nations, and improve them more
Than this fair Park, from what it was before._
--ST. JAMES’S PARK: “Poetical Essay,” by Waller.
The opening history of St. James’s and Green Parks is similar to that
of Hyde Park. They formed part of the same manor in early days, and
became Crown property in Henry VIII.’s time. St. James’s Park was
chiefly a marsh. The Thames overflowed its banks nearly every year,
and the low-lying parts were a swamp and the haunt of wild fowl, and
the chief use of the Park was for the sport the wild birds afforded.
The Tyburn flowed through it on its way from where it crossed the
modern Oxford Street to where it joined the Thames, a little west of
where Vauxhall Bridge afterwards stood. It passed right across Green
Park, where the depression of its valley can still be traced between
Half Moon Street and Down Street. The name, St. James’s, originated
with the hospital for lepers, dedicated to St. James, on the site of
the present palace. The exact date of its foundation is lost in the
mists of antiquity, but it was established by the citizens of London,
“before the time of any man’s memorie, for 14 Sisters, maydens,
that were leprous, living chastly and honestly in Divine Service.”
Later, there were further gifts of land and money from the citizens,
and “8 brethren to minister Divine Service there” were added to the
foundation. All these gifts were subsequently confirmed by Edward I.,
who granted a fair to be held for seven days, commencing on the eve of
St. James’s Day, in St. James’s Fields, which belonged to the hospital.
The letting out of the land for booths became a source of further
income to the lepers. Stowe shortly tells the subsequent history.
“This Hospital was surrendered to Henry the 8 the 23 of his reigne:
the Sisters being compounded with were allowed Pensions for terme of
their lives, and the King builded there a goodly Mannor, annexing
thereunto a Park, closed about with a wall of brick, now called St.
James’s Parke, serving indifferently to the said Mannor, and to the
Mannor or Palace of Whitehall.” At first sight the summary ejection of
these helpless creatures appears unusually heartless, even for those
days; but leprosy, which during the time of the Crusades had grown to a
formidable extent, was declining in the sixteenth century in England.
It is probable, therefore, that the poor outcast sisters, possessed of
their pensions, would be able to find shelter in one of the other leper
hospitals, of which there were still a number in the country.
The space between Whitehall and Westminster, acquired from the
Abbey, was turned into an orchard. The site of Montagu House was the
bowling-green of the Palace, which stretched to the river. A high
terrace and flight of steps led to the Privy Garden of Whitehall,
so, except for the Palace and the Westminster group, there were no
buildings between the river and the Park. It requires some stretch of
the imagination to efface the well-known edifices which now surround
it, and to see it in its natural state. Flights of wild birds would
pass from the marshy ground to the river, unchecked by the pile of
Government offices. Behind the Leper Hospital lay fields and scattered
houses. The far-off villages of Knightsbridge and Chelsea would
scarcely come into sight, while beyond the village of Charing the
walls and towers of the City would loom in the distance. Henry VIII.
made some alterations, and may have partially drained the ground and
stocked it with deer. Old maps show a pond at the west end, near the
present Wellington Barracks, called Rosamund’s Pond. The origin of the
name is uncertain, but “Rosemonsbore, or Rosamund’s Bower,” occurs
in a lease of land near this spot from the Abbey of Westminster as
early as 1520. Hard by was a “mount,” such as was to be seen in every
sixteenth-century garden, probably with an arbour and seat on the top
to overlook the pond. The first mention of St. James’s as a Park is in
1539, on an occasion described in Hall’s Chronicle, when Henry VIII.
held a review of the city militia. “The King himself,” writes the
chronicler, “would see the people of the Citie muster in sufficient
nombre....” Some 15,000, leaving the City after passing by St. Paul’s
Churchyard, went “directly to Westminster and so through the Sanctuary
and round about the Park of St. James, and so up into the fields and
came home through Holborne.”
It was not until James I.’s time that the Park began to be esteemed
as a resort for those attached to the Court. Prince Henry, the elder
brother of Charles I., made the tilting-ring on the site of the present
Horse Guards’ Parade, and brought the enclosure more into vogue for
games. James I. made use of the Park for his own hobbies, one of which
was the encouragement of growing vines and mulberries in England. He
planted considerable vineyards, and in 1609 he sent a circular letter
to the Lords-Lieutenant of each county, ordering them to announce
that the following spring a thousand mulberry trees would be sent to
each county town, and people were required to buy them at the rate of
three-farthings a plant. To further prosecute his plan, the King set an
example by planting a mulberry orchard at the end of St. James’s Park.
The place afterwards became a fashionable tea garden, and Buckingham
Palace is partly built on the site. The King kept also quite a large
menagerie of beasts and birds presented to him by various crowned
heads, or sent to him by friends and favourites. There are records
of elephants, camels, antelopes, beavers, crocodiles, wild boars,
and sables, besides many kinds of birds. The keepers of the animals
received large salaries, and the cost of the care of these beasts
would frighten the Zoological Society of to-day. No expense was spared
to give the best and most suitable surroundings to the animals. For
instance, as much as £286 was expended in 1618 by Robert Wood, the
keeper of the cormorants, ospreys, and otters, “in building a place to
keep the said cormorants in and making nine fish-ponds on land within
the vine garden at Westminster.” Fish were put in for these creatures,
and a sluice was made to bring water from the Thames to fill the
ponds. These strange beasts and birds and their attendants must have
been a quaint and unusual sight. The keepers were dressed in red cloth
(which cost nine shillings a yard), embroidered with “I.R.” in Venice
gold, and must have added to the picturesque appearance of this early
Zoological Garden.
Gradually the Park became more and more a favourite place in which to
stroll. Others were admitted besides the Court circle, the privilege
being first accorded to the tenants of the houses at Westminster.
Milton, who lived at one time in Petty France, near where Queen Anne’s
Gate now stands, planted a tree in the garden overlooking the Park,
which survived until recent times, would be one of those to enjoy the
advantage. Charles I. passed this way on his last journey to Whitehall
on the fatal 30th of January, and tradition says he paused to notice a
tree planted by his brother Henry. During the Commonwealth, the Park
still was resorted to. In the sprightly letters of Dorothy Osborne to
Sir William Temple are some vivid little touches in reference to it.
She writes from the country in March 1654: “And hark you, can you tell
me whether the gentleman that lost a crystal box the 1st of February
in St. James’s Park or Old Spring Gardens has found it again or not?
I have a strong curiosity to know.” Again, in June of the same year,
she writes from London, where she was paying a visit: “I’ll swear they
will not allow me time for anything; and to show how absolutely I am
governed, I need but tell you that I am every night in the Park and at
New Spring Gardens, where, though I come with a mask, I cannot escape
being known nor my conversation being admired.”
The most brilliant days of its history began, however, in Charles
II.’s reign. He entirely remodelled it, and began the work soon after
his return from exile, imbued with foreign ideas of gardening. It has
always been supposed that Le Nôtre was responsible for the designs, and
it has often been asserted that he himself came to England to see them
carried out. But close investigation has furnished no proof of this,
and it is practically certain that, although invited, and allowed by
Louis XIV. to come to England, he never actually did so. Other “French
gardeners” certainly came, and one of them, La Quintinge, made many
English friends, and kept up a correspondence with them after his
return to France. Perrault probably visited London also, and may have
superintended the “French gardeners” who were employed on St. James’s
Park. They transformed the whole place. Avenues--the Mall and “Birdcage
Walk”--were planted. A straight canal passed down the middle, and at
the end, near the present Foreign Office, was the duck decoy. The
“Birdcage Walk” is no fantastic title, for birds were literally kept
there in cages. These were probably aviaries for large birds, and not
little hanging cages, as has been sometimes suggested. A well-known
passage occurs in Evelyn’s Diary, 1664, where he enumerates some of
the birds and beasts he saw during one of his walks through the Park.
The pelican delighted him, although “a melancholy waterfowl,” and he
watched the skilful way it devoured fish; and it is not surprising
that he recorded the strange fact that one of the two Balearian cranes
had a wooden leg, made by a soldier, with a joint, so that the bird
could “walk and use it as well as if it had been natural”; and he
speaks with interest of a solan goose, a stork, a milk-white raven,
and “a curious sort of poultry,” besides “deer of several countries,”
antelopes, elk, “Guinea goats, Arabian sheep, etc.” The duck decoy
lay at the south-west end of the long canal, which formed part of the
new French design. This “duck island” was rather a series of small
islands, as it was intersected by canals and reed-covered channels
for catching duck. This was a favourite resort of Charles II., who
has often been described feeding his ducks in St. James’s Park. To
be keeper of the ducks, or “Governor of Duck Island,” was granted to
St. Evremond, an excuse for bestowing a yearly salary on a favourite.
The birds continued after the King, who had found in them a special
recreation, had passed away. In William III.’s time the Park is still
described as “full of very fine walkes and rowes of trees, ponds, and
curious birds, Deer, and some fine Cows.” A Dutch traveller who was
in England from 1693–96 notices the famous old white raven. By that
time the ducks were no longer the fashion, and evidently there was an
inclination to despise the former craze for wild fowl. A Frenchman,
named M. de Sorbiere, visited England about this time, and wrote an
account of his impressions. Some of his adverse criticisms of English
people and institutions got him into trouble. A supposed translation
of his book was published in 1698, and until 1709 was held to be a
correct version. In reality it was a clever skit, and not in the least
like the original. In the true version he describes the Park with its
rows of trees and “admirable prospect” of the suburbs, and mentions
that the King had “erected a tall Pile in the Park, the better to make
use of Telescopes, with which Sir Robert Murray shew’d me Saturn and
the Satellites of Jupiter.” Not a word about the ducks. But in the
spurious parody of 1698 there is a humorous description, which shows
how the next generation laughed at the amusements of King Charles II.
“I was at St. James’s Park; there were no Pavillions, nor decoration
of Treilliage and Flowers; but I saw there a vast number of Ducks;
these were a most surprising sight. I could not forbear to say to Mr.
Johnson, who was pleased to accompany me in this Walk, that sure all
the ponds in England had contributed to this profussion of Ducks; which
he took so well, that he ran immediately to an Old Gentleman that
sate in a Chair, and was feeding of ’em. He rose up very obligingly,
embraced me, and saluted me with a Kiss, and invited me to Dinner;
telling me he was infinitely oblig’d to me for flattering the King’s
Ducks.”
Little attention was paid to the wild fowl in the Park after that
date, until the Prince Consort took an interest in them. In 1841 he
became the Patron of the Ornithological Society, and the cottage on
Duck Island was built for the Bird-keeper. For some thirty years the
Society flourished, and kept up the supply and cared for the birds in
the Park. In 1867, however, their numbers were greatly reduced, and
the Society sold their collection of birds to H.M. Office of Works,
which has since then had them under its charge. It is pleasant to know
that the old tradition of the wild fowl in that part of the Park is
maintained. Although the duck pond of King Charles’s time must have
looked somewhat different from that of to-day, the birds can be made as
much at home, and they nest peacefully on the modern Duck Island, its
direct descendant. Moorhens and dabchicks, or little grebes, have for
the last twenty years nested in the Park. They used to leave for the
breeding season, but since 1883, when the first moorhen nested, they
have gradually taken to remaining contentedly all through the year, and
bring up their young there. Birds seem to choose the Park to rest in,
and many migratory ones have been noticed. Kingfishers have recently
been let out near the site of the ancient bird cages, in the hope that
they may carry on the historic association.
[Illustration: CROCUSES IN EARLY SPRING, ST. JAMES’S PARK]
The cows, which were a part of ancient history, as were the birds,
have not been so fortunate. Although a newspaper clamour in defence
of the cows was raised, the few remaining were finally banished in
1905, when the alterations in the Mall were made. These survivals
standing by the dusty stalls could scarcely be called picturesque;
and although interest undoubtedly was attached to them as venerable
survivals of an old custom, they hardly suggested the rural simplicity
of the days when cows were really pastured in the Park. For over two
centuries grazing was let to the milk-women who sold milk at the end
of the Park, near Whitehall. They paid half-a-crown a week, and after
1772 three shillings a week, for the right to feed cattle in the Park.
A Frenchman, describing St. James’s at that time, is astonished at
its rural aspect. “In that part nearest Westminster nature appears
in all its rustic simplicity; it is a meadow, regularly intersected
and watered by canals, and with willows and poplars, without any
regard to order. On this side, as well as on that towards St.
James’s Palace, the grass plots are covered with cows and deer, where
they graze or chew the cud, some standing, some lying down upon the
grass.... Agreeably to this rural simplicity, most of these cows are
driven, about noon and evening, to the gate which leads from the Park
to the quarter of Whitehall. Tied to posts at the extremity of the
grass plots, they swill passengers with their milk, which, being drawn
from their udders on the spot, is served, with all cleanliness peculiar
to the English, in little mugs at the rate of a penny a mug.” The
combination of the gay crowd in hooped petticoats, brilliant coats, and
powdered wigs, with the peaceful, green meadows and the browsing deer
and cows, forms an attractive picture.
All this had changed long before the final departure of the cattle,
when the last old woman was pensioned off, and the sheds carted away.
A use was found for the fragments of the concrete foundations of the
last milkmaid’s stall. They were made into a sort of rockery, on which
Alpine plants grow well, to support the bank at the entrance to the new
frame-grounds at Hyde Park.
But to return to Charles II.’s time, when the cows were undisturbed.
The great feature of what Pepys calls the “brave alterations” was the
canal. He mentions more than one visit when the works were in progress.
In October 1660 he went “to walk in St. James’s Park, where we observed
the several engines at work to draw up water, with which sight I was
very much pleased.” The canal, when finished, was 2800 feet long and
100 broad, and ran through the centre of the Park, beginning near
the north end of. Rosamund’s Pond. An avenue of trees was planted on
either side, passing down between the canal and the duck decoy to a
semicircular double avenue near the tilting-ground. Deer wandered under
fine old oaks between the canal and the avenues of “the Mall.” These
old trees have gradually disappeared, as much through gales as from the
wanton destruction of the would-be improver. At the hour of Cromwell’s
death, when the storm was so fierce the Royalists said it was due to
fiends coming to claim their own, much havoc was wrought; and from
time to time similar destructions have taken place, one of the most
serious being in November 1703, when part of the wall and over 100 elms
were blown down. Another notable gale was on March 15, 1752, when many
people lost their lives. “In St. James’s Park and the villages about
the metropolis great numbers of trees were demolished.”
The broad pathway, between avenues on the opposite side of the Park
to the Birdcage Walk, now called the Mall, derives this name from the
game of “paille-maille,” which is known to have been played in France
as early as the thirteenth century, and which was popular in England
in the seventeenth. The locality, however, where it was first played
in James I.’s time was on the northern side of the street, which is
still called from it, Pall Mall. In those days fields stretched away
beyond where now St. James’s Square lies, and a single row of houses
lay between the playground and the Park. As the game became more the
fashion, the coaches and dust were found too disturbing for enjoyment,
and a new ground was laid out, running parallel to the old one, but
within the Park. The game is considered by some to be a forerunner of
croquet, as it was played with a ball (= _pila_) and mallet, the name
being derived from these two words. One or more hoops had to be passed
through, and a peg at the further end touched. The winner was the
player who passed the hoops and reached the peg in the fewest number of
strokes. The whole course measured over 600 yards, and was kept brushed
and smooth, and the ground prepared by coating the earth with crushed
shells, which, however, remarked Pepys, “in dry weather turns to dust
and deads the ball.” Both Charles II. and James II. were much addicted
to the game, and the flattering poet Waller eulogises King Charles’s
“matchless” skill:--
“No sooner has he touched the flying ball,
But ’tis already more than half the Mall.”
The Park was by his time a much-frequented spot, and crowds delighted
to watch the King and his courtiers displaying their dexterity.
Charles II. is more intimately connected with St. James’s Park than
any other great personage. He sauntered about, fed his ducks, played
his games, and made love to fair ladies, all with indulgent, friendly
crowds watching. He stood in the “Green Walk,” beneath the trees, to
talk with Nell Gwynn, in her garden “on a terrace on the top of the
wall” overlooking the Park; and shocked John Evelyn, who records, in
his journal, that he heard and saw “a very familiar discourse between
the King and Mrs. Nelly.” Charles’s well-known reply to his brother,
that no one would ever kill him to put James on the throne, was said
in answer to James’s protest that he should not venture to roam about
so much without attendants in the Park. His dogs often accompanied
him, and perhaps, like most of their descendants, these pets had a
sporting instinct, and ran off to chase the deer. Anyhow, they managed
frequently to escape their master’s vigilance, and fell a prey to the
unscrupulous thief, and descriptions of the missing dogs were published
in the Gazette. One, answering to the name Towser, was “liver colour’d
and white spotted”; and a “dogg of His Majestie’s, full of blew spots,
with a white cross on his forehead about the bigness of a tumbler,” was
lost on another occasion.
Charles with his dogs, his ducks, his wit, his engaging manners, his
doubtful morals, is the central figure of many a picture in St. James’s
Park, but it does not often form a background to his Queen. One scene
described by Pepys has much charm. The party, returning from Hyde Park
on horseback with a great crowd of gallants, pass down the Mall; the
Queen, riding hand in hand with the King, looking “mighty pretty” in
her white laced coat and crimson petticoat. Again, on another occasion,
the Queen forms an attractive vision, as she walks with her ladies from
Whitehall to St. James’s dressed from head to foot in silver lace, each
holding an immense green fan to shade themselves from the fierce rays
of the June sun, while a delighted crowd throng round them.
The popularity of the Mall as the rendezvous of all classes lasted for
over a century. Through the reigns of Queen Anne and George I. and II.
all the fashionable world of London congregated there twice daily.
In the morning the promenade took them there from twelve to two, and
after dinner in full dress they thronged thither again, not to play
the game of paille-maille, which was then out of fashion, but simply
to walk about under the trees and be amused with races, wrestlings,
or an impromptu dance. Every well-known person--courtiers, wits,
beaux, writers, poets, artists, soldiers--and all the beautiful and
fascinating women, great ladies as well as more humble charmers, and
bold adventuresses, were to be seen there daily.
The crowds seem to have been very free in their admiration of some
of the distinguished ladies. When the three lovely Misses Gunning
captivated everybody with their wit and beauty, they had only to appear
in the Mall to be surrounded by admirers. On one occasion they were so
pressed by the curious mob that one of these matchless young charmers
fainted and had to be “carried home in a sedan.”
On looking at an old print of the ladies in their thin dresses walking
in the Mall, it is customary to bemoan the change of climate, to wonder
if our great-great-grand-mothers were supernaturally strong and not
sensitive to cold, or to conclude that they only paraded there in fine
weather. Apparently this last is not the correct solution, for in 1765
they astonished Monsieur Grosley by their disregard of the elements.
He is horrified at the fog. “The smoke,” he writes, “forms a cloud
which envelopes London like a mantle; a cloud which the sun pervades
but rarely; a cloud which, recoiling back upon itself, suffers the sun
to break out only now and then, which casual appearance procures the
Londoners a few of what they call _glorious days_. The great love of
the English for walking defies the badness of other days. On the 26th
April, St. James’s Park, incessantly covered with fogs, smoke, and
rain, that scarce left a possibility of distinguishing objects at a
distance of four steps, was filled with walkers, who were an object of
musing and admiration to me during the whole day.” Few ladies nowadays
fear a little fog or rain, but to walk in it they must be attired in
short skirts, thick boots, and warm or mackintosh coats. It must
have been much more distressing in the days of powdered hair, picture
hats, and flimsy garments. No wonder M. Grosley was astounded at the
persistence of the poor draggled ladies.
All foreign visitors to London naturally went to see the Mall. Here is
the account of a German baron, describing the man of the world: “He
rises late, dresses himself in a frock (close-fitting garment, without
pockets, and with narrow sleeves), leaves his sword at home, takes
his cane, and goes where he likes. Generally he takes his promenade
in the Park, for that is the exchange for the men of quality. ’Tis
such another place as the Garden of the Tuileries in Paris, only the
Park has a certain beauty of simplicity which cannot be described. The
grand walk is called the Mall. It is full of people at all hours of the
day, but especially in the morning and evening, when their Majesties
often walk there, with the royal family, who are attended only by
half-a-dozen Yeomen of the Guard, and permit all persons to walk at the
same time with them.”
A writer in 1727, waxing eloquent on the charms of the Park, gives
up the task of describing it, as “the beauty of the Mall in summer
is almost past description.” “What can be more glorious than to view
the body of the nobility of our three kingdoms in so short a compass,
especially when freed from mixed crowds of saucy fops and city gentry?”
But more often the company was very mixed, and manners peculiar. This
brilliant and motley assembly indulged in all kinds of amusements. Even
the grandest frequenters afforded diversion sometimes to the “saucy
fops.” Wrestling matches between various courtiers attracted crowds,
or a race such as one between the Duke of Grafton and Dr. Garth, of
200 yards, was the excitement of the day. There were odd and original
races got up, and wagers freely staked. Some inhuman parents backed
their baby of eighteen months old to walk the whole length of the Mall
(half a mile) in thirty minutes, and the poor little mite performed the
feat in twenty-three minutes. What comments would modern philanthropic
societies have made on such a performance!
A race between a fat cook and a lean footman caused great merriment,
but as the footman was handicapped by carrying 110 lbs., the fat cook
won. Another time it was a hopping-race which engrossed attention--a
man undertook to hop one hundred yards in fifty hops, and succeeded
in doing it in forty-six--and endless variety of similar follies. The
crowds who assembled indulged in every sort of gaiety; “in short, no
freedoms that can be taken here are reckoned indecent; all passes for
raillery and harmless gallantry.”
Although open to all the world for walking, only royal personages or
a few specially favoured people were allowed to drive through. It was
one of the grievances of the Duchess of Marlborough when the Duke was
in disgrace that the privilege of driving her coach and six through
the Park was denied her. The remaining restrictions with regard to
carriages have only passed away in very recent years. The notice board
stating that Members of Parliament during the session might drive
through the Park from Great George Street to Marlborough House was
only removed when the road was opened to all traffic in 1887, and
Constitution Hill only became a public highway in 1889. The use of the
road passing under the Horse Guards’ Archway is still restricted to
those who receive special permission from the sovereign.
The Park had never been drained, and had always shown signs of its
marshy origin, and “Duck Island” was really a natural swamp. An
unusually high tide flooded the low-lying end where the Horse Guards’
Parade and the houses of Downing Street with their little gardens now
stand. What state secrets they could divulge had they the power of
speech! The tilting-ground was often in a condition quite unfit for the
exercise of troops, so with a view to preventing this, it was paved
with stone early in the eighteenth century. It has always been used
for military displays, and the trooping of the colours on the King’s
birthday takes place on the same ground which witnessed the brilliant
scene when the colours, thirty-eight in number, captured at the battle
of Blenheim were conveyed to Westminster Abbey. On the parade-ground
now stands the gun cast at Seville, used by Soult at Cadiz, and taken
after the battle of Salamanca. Here many an impressive ceremony of
distributing medals, and countless parades, have taken place through
many generations. Here, with the brutality of old days, corporal
punishment was administered, and offending soldiers were flogged in
full view of the merry-making crowds assembled in the Park. Round the
Park lay other marshy lands, also frequently flooded by the Thames, and
it was not surprising that on one occasion an otter found its way from
the river and settled down on Duck Island and there grew fat on the
King’s carp. Sir Robert Walpole sent to Houghton for his otter-hounds,
and an exciting hunt ensued, in which the Duke of Cumberland took part,
and the offending otter was captured.
Rosamund’s Pond had, in the course of time, become stagnant and
unpleasant, and there were frequent complaints of its unsavoury
condition. About 1736 a machine for pumping out water was invented
by a Welshman, and used successfully to empty the pond, and it was
thoroughly cleansed. Thirty years later the same evil began again to be
a nuisance, and it was decided to drain and fill up the pond entirely,
which was accomplished about 1772. The trees on the island were felled,
and those near the bank died from the lack of water, so at first the
absence of the slimy pond must have been disfiguring. The shady walk
near it, known as the Close Walk or the Jacobites’ Walk, must have
disappeared when the trees died. About the same time the swampy moat
round Duck Island was filled up and the canal cleaned out. When these
improvements were completed in 1775 some birds were put on the canal.
One of them was a swan called Jack, belonging to Queen Charlotte, which
was reared in the garden of Buckingham House. This bird ruled the roost
for many a day, and was a popular favourite. It lived until 1840, when
some new arrivals, in the shape of Polish geese, pecked and ill-treated
the poor old bird so seriously that he died.
About 1786 fashion began to desert the Mall for the Green Park, and the
crowds which collected there were no longer intermingled with the Court
circle. In a letter to her daughter Madame Roland describes the company
in the Mall as very different from what it was a few years earlier,
for though it was “very brilliant on a Sunday evening, and full of
well-to-do people and well-dressed women, in general they are all
tradespeople and citizens.” A generation later the Mall seems to have
become quite deserted. Sir Richard Phillips, in his morning’s walk
from London to Kew in 1817, bemoans the absence of the gay throng:--
“My spirits sank, and a tear started into my eyes, as I brought to mind
those crowds of beauty, rank, and fashion which, until within these few
years, used to be displayed in the centre Mall of this Park on Sunday
evenings during spring and summer. How often in my youth had I been
the delighted spectator of the enchanted and enchanting assemblage.
Here used to promenade, for one or two hours after dinner, the whole
British world of gaiety, beauty, and splendour. Here could be seen in
one moving mass, extending the whole length of the Mall, 5000 of the
most lovely women in this country of female beauty, all splendidly
attired, and accompanied by as many well-dressed men. What a change,
I exclaimed, has a few years wrought in these once happy and cheerful
personages! How many of those who on this very spot then delighted my
eyes are now mouldering in the silent grave!”
About 1730 Queen Caroline, who was then busy with the alterations in
Hyde Park, turned her attention to what is now known as the Green Park
also. It had all formed part of St. James’s Park, and was known as the
Upper Park or Little St. James’s Park. It was enclosed by a brick wall
in 1667 by Charles II., who stocked it with deer. In the centre of
the Park an ice-house was made, at that time a great novelty in this
country, although well known in France and Italy. In his poem on St.
James’s Park Waller alludes to it:--
“Yonder the harvest of cold months laid up
Gives a fresh coolness to the royal cup;
There ice like crystal firm and never lost
Tempers hot July with December’s frost.”
No further alterations were made, except that, in 1681, Charles
effected an exchange of land with the Earl of Arlington, on which,
a few years later, Arlington Street was built. The path which runs
parallel with the backs of these houses was Queen Caroline’s idea,
and she used it frequently herself, and it became known as the
“Queen’s Walk.” The houses overlooking the Park went up in value as
the occupants could enjoy the sight of the Queen and the Princesses
taking their daily walk. The line of this path is no longer the same,
as a piece was cut off the Park in 1795 and leased to the Duke of
Bridgewater to add to the garden of his house. The Queen also built
a pavilion known as the Queen’s Library in the Park, where she spent
some time after her morning promenades. Although Queen Caroline took
to the Upper Park, the world of fashion did not follow at once, and it
was not until about 1786 that the Green Park for some reason suddenly
became the rage. The only incident of historic interest between this
date and the making of the road was the celebration of the end of the
War of Succession in the spring following the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle.
A great pavilion like a Doric temple, 410 feet long and 114 feet high,
was erected near the wall separating the Green Park from St. James’s,
and on the 27th of April a grand display of fireworks was arranged.
A fire, however, broke out just as the performance was beginning,
when a grand overture composed by Handel had been performed, and the
King and dense crowds were watching the illuminations. The flames
were got under, but not before much of the temporary building had
been destroyed, and the greater part of the fireworks perished in the
flames, and several fatal and serious accidents further marred the
entertainment.
Near the top of the Park was a reservoir or “fine piece of water”
belonging to the Chelsea Waterworks, and the path round it was included
in the fashionable promenade by those who paraded in the Queen’s Walk
after dinner. Lower down, where there is still a depression, was a
little pond, originally part of the Tyburn stream. The “green stagnant
pool” was abused by a writer in 1731, who regretted that trees had just
been planted near it, which probably meant that the offensive pool
would “not soon be removed.” The prophecy was correct, for it was more
than a hundred years later before this was filled up. The Park wall
ran along Piccadilly, and here and there, as was often the case in the
eighteenth century, there were gaps with iron rails, through which
glimpses of the Park could be obtained. Some persons had private keys
to the gates leading into the Park from Piccadilly. Daring robberies
were by no means uncommon, and thieves, having done mischief in the
streets near Piccadilly on more than one occasion, were found to be
provided with keys to the gates, through which they could make their
escape into the Park and elude their pursuers. The Ranger’s Lodge stood
on the northern side, and was rebuilt and done up in 1773. It was made
so attractive that there was great competition, when it was completed,
to be Deputy-ranger and live there. The two stags which now stand
on Albert Gate, Hyde Park, once adorned the gates of this Ranger’s
Lodge. It is described in 1792 as “a very neat lodge surrounded by
a shrubbery, which renders it enchantingly rural.” When George III.
bought Buckingham House, then an old red-brick mansion, he took away
the wall which separated the Green Park from St. James’s, and put a
railing instead. In this wall was another lodge, and a few trees near
it, known as the Wilderness.
The aspect of the Mall has greatly changed since the days when its
fashion was at its height. Then the gardens of St. James’s Palace ran
the whole length of the north side from the Palace towards Whitehall.
Stephen Switzer, writing in 1715, extols the beauty of the garden,
which by his time was cut up and partly built on. “The Royal Garden in
St. James’s Park, part of which is now in the possession of the Right
Honourable Lord Carlton, and the upper part belonging to Marlborough
House, was of that King’s [Charles II.] planting, which were in the
remembrance of most people the finest Lines of Dwarfs perhaps in the
Universe. Mr. London” ... presumed “before Monsieur de la Quintinye,
the famous French gardener, ... to challenge all France with the like,
and if France, why not the whole World?”
Carlton House, a red-brick building, with the stone portico now in
front of the National Gallery, was built in 1709 on part of this
garden. Some twenty years later, before it was purchased by Frederick,
Prince of Wales, the grounds belonging to the house were laid out by
Kent. Until Carlton House was pulled down in 1827, therefore, the Mall
was bounded on the north by choice gardens. Between the Mall and the
walls of these gardens ran the “Green Walk,” or “Duke Humphrey’s Walk,”
as it was also often called. The origin of the latter name is to be
traced to old St. Paul’s. The monument to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester,
in the centre aisle of old St. Paul’s Cathedral was where “poore
idlers” and “careless mal-contents” congregated--
“Poets of Paules, those of Duke Humfrye’s messe
That feed on nought but graves and emptinesse.”
When Duke Humphrey’s Walk in St. Paul’s was burnt the name became
attached to the walk in St. James’s Park, where idlers also sauntered.
Some writers attribute the transference of the name to the fact that
the arched walk under the trees was like the cathedral aisle. Anyhow
the name clung to this walk in the Park from 1666 and during the
eighteenth century.
When Carlton House became the centre of attraction the Park itself was
in a very neglected state. The canal was turbid, the grass long, and
the seats unpainted. How long it would have remained in this condition
is uncertain had not a new impulse of gardening possessed the whole
nation, and once more it was resolved to alter the entire Park.
The rage for landscape gardening was at its height. Capability Brown
had done his work of destruction, and set the fashion of “copying
nature,” and his successors were following on his lines, but going
much further even than Brown. The sight of a straight canal had become
intolerable. The Serpentine was designed when the idea that it might be
possible to make the banks of artificial sheets of water in anything
but a perfectly straight line was just dawning, but the canal in St.
James’s Park was transformed when half the stiff ponds and canals in
the kingdom had been twisted and turned into lakes or meres. Brown had
had a hand in the alterations at the time Rosamund’s Pond was removed,
but it was Eyton who planned and executed the work fifty years later.
It was begun in 1827, and a contemporary writer praises the result as
“the best obliteration of avenues” that has been effected. Although he
owns it involved “a tremendous destruction of fine elms,” he is lost
in admiration of the “astounding ingenuity” which “converted a Dutch
canal into a fine flowing river, with incurvated banks, terminated
at one end by a planted island and at the other by a peninsula.” A
permanent bridge was first made across the water about this time.
Previously a temporary one had been made when the Allied Sovereigns
visited London in 1814--a kind of Chinese design by Nash, surmounted
by a pagoda of seven storeys. It was this flimsy edifice which made
Canova say the thing that struck him most in England was that Waterloo
Bridge was the work of a private company, while this bridge was put up
by the Government. It was on the canal in St. James’s Park that skates
of a modern type first appeared in London. Bone ones were in use much
earlier on Moorfields. Both Evelyn and Pepys saw the new pattern first
in the Park in 1662. Two years later Pepys notes going to the canal
with the Duke of York, “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.” Just before the alterations began, and the complete
change of the canal was taken in hand, the Park was lighted with gas
lamps, an innovation which caused much excitement. At the same time
orders were issued to shut the gates by ten every evening. A wit on
this occasion wrote the following lines, which were found stuck up on a
tree:--
“The trees in the Park
Are illumined with gas,
But after it’s dark
No creatures can pass.
“Ye sensible wights
Who govern our fates,
Extinguish your lights
Or open your gates.”
The same lamps inspired another poet, who wrote, just before the
destruction of the avenues took place:--
“Hail, Royal Park! what various charms are thine;
Thy patent lamps pale Cynthia’s rays outshine,
Thy limes and elms with grace majestic grow
All in a row.”
Yet once more has St. James’s Park been subjected to renovation. The
work, which is a memorial to our late beloved Queen Victoria, is not
yet completed, so its description must be imperfect. The design aims at
drawing together the several quarters of the Park towards Buckingham
Palace and a central group of statuary. The Mall is now the scene of
ceaseless traffic, and the sauntering pedestrian is a thing of the
past. A wide road runs at right angles across the Green Park, and so
once again more closely associates the Upper with the Lower St. James’s
Park. Probably the greatest praise of the alterations would be to say
that Le Nôtre would have approved them. They seem to complete the
design in a fitting manner, but they banish once and for all time, the
semi-rural character which for so many centuries clung to the Park.
The design includes a series of formal parterres which are filled with
bedding-out plants raised in Hyde Park. In the summer of 1906 they were
planted with scarlet geraniums with an edging of grasses and foliage
and a few golden privets, and on hot July days there were many people
ready to pronounce the arrangement as extremely bad taste. It seemed
a reversion to the days when a startling mass of colour was the only
effect aimed at. As they appeared all through the mild October days,
when a soft foggy light enveloped the world, and the trees looked
dark and dreary, with their leaves, devoid of autumn tints, still
struggling to hold on, the vivid colouring of the beds gave a very
different impression. The charm of the warm red tone against the cold
blue mists must have given a sensation of pleasure to any one sensitive
to such contrasts.
[Illustration: A CORNER OF THE QUEEN VICTORIA MEMORIAL GARDENS, IN
FRONT OF BUCKINGHAM PALACE]
The Park in spring has nothing of the stiff, early Victorian gardening
left. Under the trees crocuses raise their dainty heads, as cheerily as
from out of Alpine snows, and the slopes of grass spangled with a “host
of golden daffodils” are a delight to all beholders.
The palmy days of St. James’s Park may have passed away--no longer
is the fate of nations and the happiness of lives decided under its
ancient elms--but those days have left their mark. Every path, every
tree, every green-sward, could tell its story. The Park is now more
beautiful than it ever was, even though fashion has deserted it. The
last changes are but one more link in the long historic chain. It
brings the Park of the Stuarts, the Mall of the Queen Anne’s age of
letters, down to our own great Queen and the days of Expansion and
Empire. A stroll under its shady trees and by its sparkling water must
be replete with suggestions to the moralist, with thoughts to the poet,
and with an inexpressible charm to the ordinary appreciative Londoner.