vividly back half a generation? If so, how joyous yet sad must be
his remembrance of another literary club--‘The Fielding’--and the
pantomime of ‘Harlequin Guy Fawkes,’ acted by the members, at Covent
Garden, in 1855! If the set purpose of that society at its formation
was to found a school of mimes, the success was undoubted. It was
a strange ambition, thought Smelfungus, for professional men and
clerks in public offices to attempt to rival--nay, excel--the clowns,
harlequins, lovers, and pantaloons who were imbued with the traditions
of the times of Grimaldi and Bologna, Barnes and Parsloe. The amateurs
were quite up to the regular business. Who that was there will forget
the marvellous delivery of the patter song which Albert Smith rattled
out as ‘Catesby’? Was ever stage-fight at the old Coburg (where
Messrs. Blanchard and Bradley used to slay and be slain nightly with
broad-swords, that hacked and hewed to orchestral accompaniments) equal
to the terrific combat which was maintained between the awfully savage
Catesby and the resolute assassin Guy Fawkes, who had Mr. Holmes under
his mask? The latter seemed like a boneless unvertebrated acrobat
who could throw his limbs anywhere he pleased out of his own way, or
very much in the way of his adversary. The murderous earnestness of
his fighting was in strong contrast with the hilarious humour of his
burlesque-singing; and Mr. Holmes’s solemn humour was equally well
illustrated in the part he took, with three other amateurs, in the
performance of acrobatic feats in the scene of the Epsom Racecourse.
They executed the easiest of feats with an admirable air of having
achieved the impossible. The laughing spectators were almost deceived
by the mock seriousness of the pseudo-acrobats; and, when the latter
bowed to the applause, with an air of being exhausted by their
seemingly laborious efforts, the applause grew louder, and the laughter
shook the very house.
There were other members of the club who took part in this celebrated
pantomime, and who were quite as effective as their fellows. Spectators
calculated in vain the number of government-office windows Mr. Bidwell,
the inimitable harlequin, must have leapt through, the government
tables he must have vaulted over, and the government chairs he must
have waltzed with for supposititious columbines, before he arrived
at the perfection which he then displayed. One could not but wonder
whether he went down to his office in Whitehall in his spangles
covered by a greatcoat, from which he suddenly emerged to stir the
often-manifested delight of the porter. Did he go to his desk by a hop,
step, and a jump? Did he ever awe a reproving ‘Head of Department’ by
shaking his ruler above him, as on the stage he shook his wand and
paralysed the clown? Then there was Arthur Smith, who slipped about in
Pantaloon as if he had never known boots, and heels to them, since he
was born. Nor let us pass over Joe Robins, that airy medical student,
who, we suppose, made the dissecting-room funny by his skeleton songs,
if he chaunted the scraps of minstrelsy as farcically as he sang ‘Hot
Codlins’ in the character of Clown. Horace Walpole said of some
amateur actors at whose playing he was present, that they played so
well it was a pity they had not sense enough not to play at all. He
would not have been epigrammatic in that style had he witnessed the
burlesquers and pantomimists of the Fielding Club. It was because
of their sense and intelligence that they were so efficient. In
their strength and buoyant spirits and exuberant health, they looked
immortal. Alas! some of them have passed from the stage-manager to the
sexton. One or two, having the alternative put before them, quitted
motley and pantomime for ever, and took permanently to their office
duties. Two or three went in an opposite direction; they stuck to the
stage, and more or less adorn it now, under their proper or under
stage-names. An odd fellow or so ‘got up a tree,’ as if that feat
belonged to the harlequinade of life; but it is believed that their
creditors saw less fun in the reality than in the pantomimic effect. In
short, to quote Hood’s ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Clapham College’--
Alack! They’re gone a thousand ways!
And some are serving in ‘The Greys,’
And some have perish’d young!--
Jack Harris weds his second wife,
Hal Baylis drives the _wane_ of life,
And blithe Carew is hung!
We can only briefly refer to a few other clubs, some still, others
till lately, existing. We may suppose that a member of the ‘Early
Rising Association’ has no affinity with the ‘Owls.’ The ‘One-o’-clock
Club’ would no more understand a cricket-club than the members of the
one could look like the members of the other. ‘The Early Risers’ are
members of one of those cricket-clubs. During the season they pitch
their wickets at four o’clock in the morning, and play till seven, and
then to business--pleasure with them taking the precedence. But work is
their business of the day. Put the ‘Owls’ by their side, the foul birds
would certainly bear no resemblance to a man and a brother. The ‘Owls’
used to meet at ‘The Sheridan Knowles,’ Bridge Street, Covent Garden.
They sat without ever rising. Day and night some blinking member was
to be found there making sacrifice of his faculties. It was not much
to offer up; but, by one saddened victim or another, the sacrifice was
being continually made. The smoke of their sacrifice ascended from
their pipes, and their libations were made in the very hottest of mixed
liquors. We believe that all the ‘Owls’ were utterly consumed--to
the great relief of their friends. Aspiring young imbeciles who call
themselves by that name are probably only the much-shattered wrecks
of the ‘One-o’clock Club,’ an association which was established for
the lofty purpose of late drinking! The ‘One-o’clock’ made ghosts of
a good many of its members. If any of its paralysed survivors could
bear being taken down to the Serpentine at daybreak on one of these
winter mornings, we should like to show them the club of hardy bathers
there who take their plunge, though they break the ice for it, and then
run across the park to breakfast at a pace that would take all the
poor breath out of the poorer body of any survivor of a club like the
‘One-o’clocks.’
We must say for the ‘Owls’ that they did not originally intend to
be permanently drinking. They fell into bad ways. Sheridan Knowles
himself was, probably, never anything more than the honorary patron
of the club. Poor musical Augustine Wade, the composer of ‘Meet me by
Moonlight alone,’ and the disposer of Mrs. Waylett, who gave melodious
utterance to his ballads, was chairman of the club of ‘Owls’ in its
best days. These were when it met upstairs at the ‘Shakespeare’s Head’
in Wych Street--sacred ground, nevertheless, for it was the home of
genius, and, according to some authorities, the cradle of _Punch_.
We will say nothing of ‘The Sublime Society of Beefsteaks,’ for
Brother Arnold has written its history and sung its requiem. What a
host of great people, home and foreign, used to assemble in a French
eating-house in a dirty little street near Leicester Square, where the
Foreigners’ Club was held, and Mallet du Pau, Pozzo di Borgo, and
our Vansittart were among the best talkers! We may wonder if ‘The Y.
Z.’s’ of Liverpool have seen as _wise heads_ among them as once met
at ‘The Foreigners.’ Gone are the ‘Fabs,’ the ‘Fortnightly Associated
Book Society’; ‘The Jelly Bags’ in nightcaps are as extinct as Barham’s
‘Wigs.’ ‘Our Club,’ whose number was once that of the ‘Forty Thieves,’
has never recovered the prestige it had in the days of Douglas Jerrold,
while the ‘Cocked Hats,’ select in number, grow in hilarity as well as
in ‘Archæo-knowledgy.’ The ‘Arts,’ or the _Upst-Arts_, as some wild
wit called that club at its foundation, is, at least, existing. The
‘Civil Service’ has a cheerful home--and a hospitable--at ‘The Thatched
House.’ Then there is a club so mysterious that we cannot learn whether
its name is ‘The Sentry,’ or ‘The Century’; but its purposes are said
to be very ‘advanced,’ in the well-understood political meaning of that
word. By-and-by we shall probably hear a good deal of them. Meanwhile,
we will close this paper with a quotation from Lord Campbell’s Life of
Lord Thurlow. It will serve, at least, to show that modern club-ways
were not the ways of the clubs of former days: ‘A.D. 1769. At that
time, and indeed when I myself first began the study of the law, the
modern club-system was unknown, and (as in the time of Swift and
Addison) men went in the evenings for society to coffee-houses, in
which they expected to encounter a particular set of acquaintance, but
which were open to all who chose to enter and offer to join in the
conversation, at the risk of meeting cold looks and mortifying rebuffs.’
_THROUGH THE PARKS._
It cannot be said that we are a very grateful people to our kings--to
such of them, that is, as have claims on our gratitude. Richard III.,
when he was yet but a young prince, flying his hawks over his manor
at what is now called Notting Hill (an estate which fell to him on
the attainder of its old possessor, De Vere, Earl of Oxford), had a
great love for the drama. He was the first prince of the blood royal
of England that ever formed a company of comedians in his pay, and we
all know in what sort of light this Richard is represented on the stage
of which he was such a noble patron. Again, take Charles I. Before his
time Hyde Park was a royal inclosure. It was a sacred possession of the
crown, into which no man dared venture who cared to continue to wear
his ears. By special permission of sacred majesty an English nobleman
or a foreign ambassador might be allowed to kill a buck there, but if a
commoner man only ventured to look over the wall he ran great risk of
paying for it in Newgate. Charles I., one bright May-day, threw open
Hyde Park to the people. The people cut off his head, and made May-day
a Hyde Park festival on many recurring anniversaries. They who were
present enjoyed the glory of it; all who were absent envied them, and
few had a thought to spend upon the king.
The popular history of Hyde Park really dates from the time when
unlucky Charles made a gift of the place to his people. Previous to
that circumstance the locality belongs to history of another sort.
Druids once sang ‘Derry Down’--a phrase said to be druidical--in its
groves, and nightingales once made its evening foliage melodious.
It would be impossible for the one or for the other to exist there
now. For our own parts, we would rather hear the nightingales than
see the Druids, but it would not be for long. London boys would soon
silence the birds; and the metropolitan police would probably take
the Druids by the beard, and ‘run ’em in.’ Then, does it ever occur
to the equestrians in the Row, or to those who charioteer it around
the drive, or to the modest pedestrian who looks on at both as a part
of the London Summer Exhibition, that through the parks once ran that
ancient British or Roman road which began at Chester and ended at
Dover? We all know till lately where it crossed the Thames, namely,
at Stangate, opposite Horseferry Road. We can only fancy what the
wayfarers looked like. We may be sure that they did not in the least
resemble any of the groups or individuals who now lounge in or hurry
through the park in these later days. The land passed from Briton to
Saxon, from Saxon to Norman. William the ‘Conquistor’ gave much of it,
in which the present parks were included, to the Abbey of Westminster.
The ecclesiastical lords made the most of that part of the gift which
comprised the manor of Eia (thence Hythe and Hyde); they enclosed
it, but did not keep it solely for purposes of venison, although on
questions of game they were excessively jealous. They recognised
the salubrity of the place, and sent not only sick and convalescent
monks, but nobles and rich merchants to recover their digestions, by
drinking the waters of springs which flow now as copiously as ever.
The leper house, on the site of which stands Knightsbridge Chapel,
abutting on Hyde Park, was a sanatorium for patients so dreadfully
afflicted. In other respects, the place was strictly private. There
were no steel traps or spring guns, but intruders were kept off by
equally efficacious means. It was a preserve, to break into which was
almost a capital crime. Ultimately the Reformation dispossessed the
ecclesiastics, and the land passed into the hands of the crown. Henry
VIII. had no scruples. From St. James’s up to Highgate and Hampstead
all (saving a few paths), was made hunting-ground for the king and his
friends, native and foreign. The enclosed places were as sacred as the
king’s private chamber, and no man, without special permission, or in
course of rendering some duty to the king, could pass through the gate
of the park any more than he dared step over the threshold of the royal
sleeping-chamber, without warrant. Gradually, however, the exclusive
sacredness of the place passed away. St. James’s was yet for the most
part a palace garden, when Hyde Park was the convenient stage on which
hot-headed young gallants and love-stricken court pages privately
fought for nothing or their mistresses. People began to murmur at not
being allowed to even look into that for the maintenance of which they
paid pretty dearly. Then permissions were given to persons of quality
to shoot a buck or to take the air. Men of lesser note subsequently
gained admission; and at last, but not altogether without restriction,
Charles I. opened the park, and invited the citizens to enter. From
this point begins, as we have said, the popular history of Hyde Park.
Let us turn here, for a moment, to the other Park of St. James,
including the Green, or Little St. James’s, Park. All this was
enclosed by Henry VIII. Queen Elizabeth loved to walk in it. One of
her appearances there is little known, but it is worth the telling,
as it also illustrates her love for art. In 1561 one Vergetius was
commissioned by the Queen to procure objects of art for her abroad,
which Throckmorton, her envoy in Paris, forwarded to her. In the above
year the envoy sent by the hands of a Mr. Sommers ‘the images of the
twelve emperors.’ These were alleged to be medals of great antiquity.
Throckmorton, however, informed Elizabeth that he had employed expert
Italians to look into this matter, and they suspected the medals ‘to be
counterfeit.’ Such as they were, their price was ‘six hundred crowns
of the sun’--to be delivered in good condition within two months. By
the same messenger Throckmorton informed Cecil that an experienced
person had assured him that the medals were made of common copper and
cunningly gilt.
Sommers, having delivered his despatches to Cecil, exhibited the images
of the Cæsars. Cautious Cecil merely observed that ‘he liked them very
well, but was not skilful of their antiquity;’ he would refer the
question, he said, ‘to some cunning body,’ but ‘would not yet believe
that it was _æs Corinthium_. He had seen such works of ancient art, in
gold, silver, and brass, but not in such metal as this. He thought,
moreover, that 600 crowns would be far too high a price to expect the
Queen to disburse for them.
The loyal Sommers, anxious that Elizabeth should not be suspected of
meanness, suggested that Cecil should invent any excuse for returning
them rather than let Vergetius suppose ‘that the Queen would stick for
600 crowns to have such a thing of price.’
Thereupon Cecil took Sommers to the Park at St. James’s, where he
knew the Queen was walking, and there the messenger, with the box of
‘images’ under his cloak, was presented to Elizabeth, who gave him her
hand to kiss, asked how Lady Throckmorton ‘could away with France?’
glanced at his despatches, said she would read them in her chamber, and
then, perceiving that Sommers had something under his cloak, ended with
a ‘What have ye there?’
Sommers informed her; but when he named the price she protested with a
‘Marry!’ that she had the same set already in silver, but she bade him,
as it was growing late, to bring them for inspection on the morrow.
Accordingly, Sommers attended on her at the palace, and she laughed at
seeing them so daintily handled, all curiously arranged in a gilt box,
‘in the holes made for that purpose,’ and covered over with a piece
of crimson velvet. Then she told over the names as she looked at each
portrait, and scanned as many of the devices as she, with Sommers’ aid,
could decipher. She would come to no terms, however. He must leave them
with Cecil for a while. She would consider of it.
Cecil kept the medallion portraits, waiting in vain for a chymist or
artificer with skill enough to ‘touch’ them and tell him of what metal
they were fashioned. Chaloner looked at them, and did not bring the
matter nearer to a solution by remarking, ‘If I were rich, I would give
a hundred crowns for them myself.’
The queen wrote with her own hand to Throckmorton. She has seen, she
says, ‘the twelve medallions of the emperors, whereof she does not make
such estimation as the price assigned. She returns them, and wills
him to thank Vergetius for the same, telling him that she has caused
certain closets and cabinets of her father to be searched, wherein a
great number of such monuments in gold, silver, and copper have been
found, and amongst them very fair monuments of the said emperors.’ And
so ends this picturesque episode of the imperial ‘images.’ The park
scene might suggest a picture to Frith or Ward, if either should ever
happen to be in want of a subject.
And now, let us return to Hyde Park, and mark its progress to the end
of the seventeenth century. Many a letter has been printed to show how
speedily Hyde Park became the sacred ground of fashion. We will add to
these illustrations one that has never been quoted.
In January, 1639, the fashionable world was looking out with
pleasurable anticipation to the park season; so early in the year
Madame Anne Merrick wrote to fair Mrs. Lyddall (both ladies were in
the country) to entreat her ladyship to come up to town ‘in Hyde Park
time.’ Madame Merrick adds: ‘The fear of a war with the Scots doth
not a little trouble me, lest all the young gallants should go for
soldiers, and the ladies should want servants to accompany them to that
place of pleasure which both of us so zealously affect. I long to see
those French ladies, Mme. Mornay and Mme. Darcy, and the new stars of
the English court, Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Vaughan.’ The lady inquires
whether sleeves are still worn down to the wrist--the mode brought in
by the Duchess de Chevreuse. ‘Do they wear their necks up?’ she asks,
meaning covered, not as Herrick says, with ‘a lawn about the shoulders,
thrown into a sweet distraction.’ Mistress Merrick does not love the
fashion of the gown coming up to the throat, and boldly says, ‘I do not
hold any one worthy of a fair neck, or any other good part, that is
not free to show it.’ How she looked, head upon pillow, and afterwards
saucily erect in the park, may be seen in the modest lady’s request to
fair Mrs. Lyddall to buy for her ‘half a dozen white night coifs which
tie under the chin, and as many white hoods to wear over them a-days.’
Thus the park beauties of Charles’s time clapt their hoods over their
night coifs, and exhibited in the park
The sleepy eye that speaks the melting soul.
Charles I., in opening the parks for free ingress and egress, reserved
the crown rights over them as crown lands. Thirteen years after
Mrs. Merrick wrote so fondly about it, that is to say, in 1652, the
Parliament ordered Hyde Park to be sold for ready money. More than
600 acres fetched a little over 17,000_l._ The Protectorate did not
exclude the people, but everyone who was aristocratic enough to appear
in a carriage or on horseback was compelled to pay, each horseman a
shilling, a coach half-a-crown, for admission. The fee was roughly
levied by fellows armed with sticks, who were the agents of the
purchasers of the land, and therefore were empowered by the state to
levy the toll. One would like to know if Oliver, when he drove his own
coach so awkwardly through the gate, had to pull up, and fumble under
his doublet for a shilling. The higher classes grumbled. They could
formerly take the air _gratis_, while Charles and his queen walked
on the grass, looked on at the races, or affected to taste the milk
offered them by the daintiest of maids. The nightingales and cuckoos
never visited the park after it became ‘common.’ Cromwell and his
friends, however, made a pretty show in the park, and were ‘mobbed,’
as our manner is. Not every man who stood near and shouted loudest
was a Commonwealth man. Assassins watched their opportunity when he
rode, or drove, or witnessed military pageants, or was a spectator of
the horse-racing or of the hurling by Cornish gentlemen. They never
had heart to draw trigger. Even when Cromwell tumbled from his own
coach-box, no pistol was discharged save the one which he carried,
and that went off by accident. The scene was entirely changed when,
after the tap of Monk’s drums was heard coming up the then rural and
sweet-savoured Gray’s Inn Lane, the troops by whom monarchy was to
be restored encamped in Hyde Park, and all the world went thither
to welcome them. Charles II. resumed the possession of the parks,
reserving as before the crown rights. He bought the meadows which
skirted the Reading Room (Piccadilly) and out of them made what is now
called the Green Park. It was added to the land which Henry VIII., when
he lived in Whitehall, honestly acquired. It was marshy land, with a
hospital for female lepers upon it. Henry removed the leprous ladies,
built a palace, and enclosed the park, to which Charles II. added the
Upper St. James’s or Green Park, a portion of which was built over at
a later period. Hyde Park felt the Restoration. It had become a field:
Charles made it a pleasaunce. Fashion went to it rather than to the
Mall. There was enjoyment within it all the year through, with high
festival on May-day. When it became formal, the gayer pedestrians took
possession of St. James’s and the Mall. But formality was not to be
seen in the ride or the drive. Coach as well as horse-racing drew
crowds of delighted spectators; but this was nothing to the joyous
excitement which stirred the hearts and voices of the gazers when saucy
Miss Stewart swept into the Park in that wonderful vehicle belonging
to the king, the newly-invented ‘calash.’ The other royal mistress
had wept and sworn in vain in order to have this triumph. The king’s
wife, Queen Catherine, had mildly expressed a wish that she might be
the first to enter the park in her husband’s novel carriage; but, poor
woman! what was she that she should be heeded when two of the king’s
concubines had expressed the same wish? And the gratification was
accorded to the saucier of the two--if it can be said that the Stewart
_could_ be saucier than the Castlemaine. After Charles’s brother had
taken refuge in France there was a recognised Jacobite walk in Hyde
Park. The police would sometimes fling their net into the stream of
plotters and promenaders with more or less success. The Jacobites were
truculent in their joy as the news spread among them, as they walked,
that Mons had fallen (A.D. 1691). Queen Mary happened to be walking,
not far from them, on that Broad Walk which is now included within
Kensington Gardens. Most of the Tory gentlemen paid her the courtesy
due to a lady and a queen; but Sir John Fenwick assumed an insulting
air, and cocked his hat rudely instead of raising it like a gentleman.
Six years after, King William caught Sir John on the hip. The Jacobite
was convicted of treason, and William had the greatest pleasure in
courteously having him beheaded by act of attainder, as if the man who
had insulted his wife had been a peer of the realm.