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HYDE PARK
Its History and Romance
[Illustration: Publisher’s mark]
[Illustration:
_Art Repro. Co._
_The Four-in-Hand Club in Hyde Park._
_From and old print in the Grace Collection, British Museum._]
HYDE PARK
Its History and Romance
by
MRS. ALEC TWEEDIE
(_Née_ HARLEY)
With Illustrations and Maps
New York
James Pott & Co.
London: Eveleigh Nash
1908
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. A ROYAL HUNTING-GROUND 19
III. VAGARIES OF MONARCHS 47
IV. UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH 79
V. FASHION AND FRIVOLITY 94
VI. MASKS AND PATCHES 119
VII. IN GEORGIAN DAYS 141
VIII. EARLY CHRONICLES OF TYBURN 172
IX. BENEATH THE TRIPLE TREE 200
X. NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRAGMENTS 236
XI. DUELS IN THE PARK 265
XII. THE PEOPLE’S PARK 288
XIII. NATURE IN THE PARK 311
XIV. THE EVOLUTION OF THE CARRIAGE 325
APPENDIX
LIST OF TREES, SHRUBS, AND PLANTS IN HYDE PARK 367
INDEX 377
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE FOUR-IN-HAND CLUB IN HYDE PARK _Frontispiece_
EXECUTION OF EARL FERRARS _Facing p._ 1
MAP OF WESTMINSTER, ILLUSTRATING CHARTER OF
KING EDGAR, GRANTED TO DUNSTAN „ 20
BATHING WELL IN HYDE PARK „ 32
HENRY VIII. „ 42
THE CHEESECAKE HOUSE, TO WHICH THE DUKE OF
HAMILTON WAS CARRIED MORTALLY WOUNDED „ 66
QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA’S PENANCE AT TYBURN „ 70
PROSTITUTE DRUMMED OUT OF HYDE PARK „ 111
TYBURN TICKET, PRESERVED IN GUILDHALL „ 128
DRINKING WELL IN HYDE PARK „ 136
ENTRANCE TO HYDE PARK ON A SUNDAY „ 142
MAP, 1725 „ 144
MOLLY LEPELL, AFTERWARDS LADY HERVEY „ 148
MAP, 1746 „ 152
THE ORIGINAL “TATTERSALL’S,” AND ST. GEORGE’S
HOSPITAL „ 156
MARIA COUNTESS OF COVENTRY, NÉE GUNNING „ 162
WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM „ 167
MARBLE ARCH AT THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING „ 172
LONDON BRIDGE „ 192
JACK SHEPPARD „ 214
JONATHAN WILD PELTED BY THE MOB ON HIS WAY
TO TYBURN „ 224
THE EXECUTION OF CATHERINE HAYES AT TYBURN „ 232
CAMP IN HYDE PARK DURING GORDON RIOTS, 1780 „ 238
WINTER AMUSEMENTS „ 244
JUBILEE FAIR IN HYDE PARK, 1814, TO CELEBRATE
THE FALL OF NAPOLEON „ 248
LADY BLESSINGTON „ 254
FESTIVITIES ON THE ICE, 1857. BY JOHN LEECH „ 258
CUMBERLAND GATE „ 260
A CAMP KITCHEN „ 280
AN AIRING IN HYDE PARK, 1793 „ 312
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following books have been consulted in the compilation of this
volume:—
Stow’s “Annals.”
Hollinshed’s “Chronicles.”
Baker’s “Chronicle.”
Whitelock’s “Memorials of English Affairs.”
Northuek.
Macaulay’s “History of England.”
Hume’s “History of England.”
Lingard’s “History of England.”
Craik and Macfarlane’s “Pictorial History of England.”
Domesday Book. Translated by Sir Henry James.
“The Chronicle of the Greyfriars.” (Camden Society.)
Lyttelton’s “History of Henry II.”
Gilbert Burnett’s “History of my Own Times.”
State Papers. Public Record Office.
MSS. from Muniment Room. Westminster Abbey.
Strickland’s “Queens of England.”
Riley’s “Memorials of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Centuries.”
“Archæologia.”
Stow’s “Survey of London.” (Strype.)
Dean Stanley’s “History and Memorials of Westminster Abbey.”
Knight’s “London.”
Walford’s “London Old and New.”
Wheatley’s “London Past and Present.”
Timbs’ “Curiosities of London.”
Larwood’s “The London Parks.”
Ashton’s “Hyde Park from Domesday to Date.”
Jesse’s “London: its Celebrated Characters and Remarkable Places.”
Malcolm’s “Anecdotes of the Manners and Customs of London.”
Besant’s “London in the Eighteenth Century.”
Fuller’s “Worthies of England.”
Drake’s “Shakespeare and His Times.”
Osborne’s “Historical Memories on Reigns of Elizabeth and James I.”
Ellis’s “Original Letters.”
“Diary of John Evelyn.” Edited by Wheatley.
“Diary of Samuel Pepys.” Edited by Wheatley.
“Memoirs of the Comte de Gramont.” Trans. by M. Boyer.
“Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield” (2nd).
Colley Cibber’s “Apology for the Life of C. C.”
Defoe’s “Narrative of Jack Sheppard.”
“Thomas Brown’s Amusements, Serious and Comical.”
Strutt’s “Sports and Pastimes of the People of England.”
“Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.”
Mrs. Eliz. Montagu’s “Lady of the Last Century.”
“Letters of Horace Walpole.” Edited by Mrs. Paget Toynbee.
“Letters of Lord Hervey.”
“Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield (4th) to Dayrolles.”
“George Selwyn and his Contemporaries.”
“Some Account of the Military, Political, and Social Life of the
Rt. Hon. John Manners, Marquis of Granby.” By W. Granby.
Stephen’s “Literary and Social Life of the 18th Century.”
“Autobiography of Madame Piozzi.” Hayward.
Wraxall’s “Historical Memoirs of My Own Times.”
Thackeray’s “Four Georges.”
Fitzgerald Molloy’s “London under the Georges.”
“Diary of the Hon. William Windham.” Edited by Mrs. Baring.
“The Two Duchesses of Devonshire.” Vere Foster.
“Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox.” By the Countess of Ilchester.
Rosebery’s “Life of Pitt.”
“William Wilberforce and His Friends.”
Ashton’s “When William IV. was King.”
Paston’s “Sidelights on the Georgian Period.”
“Journal of Charles C. F. Greville.”
Cook’s “Tyburn Chronicle.”
Dr. Millinger’s “History of Duelling.”
Mrs. Stone’s “Chronicle of Fashion.”
“Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle.” Thomas Carlyle.
Kingston’s “Romance of a Hundred Years.”
“Report of Historical Commission on MSS.”
D’Avenant.
Wilson’s “Memoirs of Wonderful Characters.”
Richard Davey’s “The Pageant of London.”
“The Letters of Queen Victoria.” Edited by A. C. Benson.
“Treason and Plot.” By Major Martin Hume.
“Calendar of Spanish State Papers.” By Major Martin Hume.
[Illustration:
Execution of Earl Ferrers. _From Print in “Old and New London.”_
_The populace flocked to hangings at Tyburn, and filled the grand
stand._]
HYDE PARK:
ITS HISTORY AND ROMANCE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
HYDE PARK. What a world of memories is suggested by the name.
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.
Gay as it is now in the season with its well-dressed saunterers, its
beautiful equipages, its noble trees, and its wide expanse of water, it
conjures up dark and evil memories, for the Park has been the scene of
stirring events in our national history. Nor is its romantic mystery
entirely of the past, even now.
Surrounded by the palaces of the rich, the resort of the favoured ones
of the earth, for whose wealth and ostentation it provides a fitting
background; it forms also the refuge of the vicious and the destitute,
and, alas, its green sward serves as the dormitory of filthy vagrants,
whose very existence in this city of boundless wealth is an eyesore and
a reproach. There, vice and virtue still jostle each other, poverty and
riches, greed and simplicity: there, every creed is expounded, every
grievance aired, every nostrum advocated with violent vociferation hard
by the spot where, upon the fatal Triple Tree of Tyburn, scores of
miserable martyrs went to their doom for daring to put into words the
thoughts that were their own.
The Park now extends from Park Lane to Kensington Gardens, and from
the Bayswater Road to Knightsbridge; but the creation of Kensington
Gardens in the reign of George II.—sheltering the Royal Palace where
Queen Victoria was born in 1819—robbed Hyde Park of 300 acres of land.
Queen Caroline devoted much time and thought to the formation of the
Serpentine and the beautifying of the surroundings of her Palace.
Roughly speaking, Hyde Park is about 3¼ miles round, or covers an
extent of 360 acres. This is by no means enormous, not as large as the
Bois de Boulogne in Paris, nor as wild as _Thier gaarten_ in Berlin,
but there are trees in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens which far
surpass in bulk and beauty the trees of either of these Continental
rivals. We have in Hyde Park none of the “ancestral statues” such as
Berlin has to represent the noble army of the Kaiser’s forebears. Our
Park is not quite like the Castellana in Madrid, where fashion drives
from the Prado during the dusk, shut up in truly Spanish fashion in
closed carriages, or the Prater in Vienna, where so many beautiful
women may be seen; nor is it nearly as large as the Fairmount Park in
Philadelphia, which, however, is more of wild common than cultivated
land.
Hyde Park differs from all these; and Hyde Park stands within a huge
city, and not a mile or two outside. It is not newly planted or freshly
made, and some of the trees within its railings, dating back through
many centuries, would be hard to rival in any land. So interesting,
indeed, are the trees and shrubs and plants, the birds and beasts, that
a list will be found in an appendix.
At an early period in the history of Great Britain, this district must
have been part of the vast forest that lay inland from the little
British settlement, founded on the banks of the Thames before the
Romans landed. These early inhabitants of London lived in rude huts,
probably stretching from where the Tower now stands to Dowgate, their
simple tenements forming the beginning of the present great throbbing
heart of the Empire.
It is probably true that at the time of the Saxons, parts of the
Park of to-day were cultivated in the primitive fashion of the race;
while the forests afforded good feeding-ground for the hogs which
later formed such an important item in the farming operations of our
ancestors.
It must be remembered that a forest in ancient times meant not only a
thickly wooded area, but also wide open glades and spaces, in which
simple homesteads nestled and cattle grazed. In these the Saxons,
according to the sparse records of the period, turned their attention
to their “wyrt-tun” (plant-enclosure) or “wyrt-geard” (plant-yard),
from which probably originated the modern kitchen garden. The leek
seems to have been the favourite object of culture as a vegetable,
the name _leac_ being a pure Anglo-Saxon word, and in the old MSS.
the terms “leac-tun” and “leac-ward” are equivalent to the modern
designations “kitchen garden” and “gardener.” The rose and the lily are
mentioned; but whether cultivated or not is a matter of uncertainty,
for probably the only plants cherished and propagated were those which
provided material for food, or had medicinal qualities of value.
Later, as will be seen, an orchard stood in Hyde Park, and in due
course many other queer institutions and customs within that field will
be disclosed, for Hyde Park has, indeed, had a curious history; so
curious that it reads more like fiction than fact.
As Hyde Park, however, its importance really began under Henry VIII.,
who seized it from the Church. Then it became _Hyde Park_ for the
first time; before that it was merely grazing land and ditches of no
particular interest, known as “The Manor of Hyde.”
Crown hunting lands were called Forests, Chases, and Parks.
Forests were portions of land consisting both of woodland and
pasture circumscribed by certain bounds, within which the right of
hunting was reserved exclusively for the King, and subject to a code
of special laws, often of great severity, and a special staff of
officers—Verderers, Regarders, Agistors, Foresters, and Woodwards.
A Chase was, like a Forest, unenclosed, but it had no special code of
laws, offenders being subject to the Civil Law, and its custodians were
only _keepers_ and _woodwards_.
A Park was like a Chase, as to laws and custodians, but was always
enclosed by a wall or paling. Later, Parks and Chases could be held by
private individuals, but a Forest could only belong to a King.
Situated as Hyde Park now is, right in the heart of the great city,
with its seven million inhabitants, it seems well-nigh impossible to
picture the same place even half a century ago, standing as it then did
on the border of market gardens. Yet such was the case. The _Memoirs_
of a modern artist like William Frith, R.A., painter of the once famous
“Derby Day,” and only published at the end of the nineteenth century,
speak of the writer’s youthful rambles through the market gardens on
which now stands Cromwell Road, adjacent to the Park.
A perfect storehouse of such recollection is Frederic Harrison,
historian, essayist, Positivist, and man of letters. In 1907, referring
to Hyde Park, he wrote me the following:
“I am more of a boy at seventy-five than I was at fifteen”; and then
he goes on to say how well he remembers the neighbourhood where Tyburn
formerly stood.
“When I came to London in 1840, Connaught Place was nearly the farthest
western extension of regular houses along the Bayswater Road. From
Albion Street, westwards and northwards, there were open market
gardens. Hyde Park Gardens and Square, Oxford and Cambridge Squares,
Gloucester and Sussex Squares were just beginning to emerge, and I have
played cricket on the site of Westbourne Terrace. At that time a long
brick wall ran along the north side of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens
beside the Bayswater Road, and very dismal and dirty it was. There was
no Marble Arch then, and the burial-ground was used daily. Notting Hill
Gate, of course, was a “pike.” Working people, servants in livery, and
dogs were not allowed in Kensington Gardens. On the occasion of a storm
the rule was relaxed, and footmen for once were allowed to bring in the
umbrellas!
“My father, who was born in the eighteenth century, as a boy lived in
No. 9 Berkeley Street, opposite to the garden of Devonshire House,
in the house which my aunt ultimately sold to Prince Louis Napoleon.
About the year 1810, the boys would often spend a holiday in Hyde Park,
which was then a deer-park, as rural and solitary as Windsor Forest
now. Of course, there was neither bridge over the Serpentine nor Powder
Magazine. The corner of the Park between Kensington Gardens and the
Serpentine was a solitude, where the boys would bring their baskets and
picnic.
“Sixty years ago I can remember magnificent forest trees, chestnuts,
oaks, and elms, in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, as fine as any in
this island. They are nearly all gone. I have seen about a thousand
swept away.
“The rows of carriages, often two deep, continued in Hyde Park down
to about 1860, as thick as shown in Doyle’s sketches for Pip’s Diary
in _Punch_. Ten or twenty thousand ‘bucks’ or ‘dandies’ hung over the
rails on the footpath to look on. And the carriages were so closely
packed in line that they could only just walk. On one occasion, about
1856, the throng of carriages to see the muster of the Four-in-Hand
Club Drags was so great that the carriages could not be extricated from
the line. Many had to remain into the night, and the fine ladies were
obliged to descend and walk home in the dusk.
“The famous tearing down of the railings of the Park in 1866 was an
accident, and almost a joke. A good-humoured crowd had gathered to
see what Mr. Edmond Beales and the Reform League would do when the
police stopped them from entering the Park. Mr. Beales turned back
and went home, and never knew what happened, as he told me himself,
till he reached his home at night. The crowd, seeing no fun, began to
amuse themselves with singing and climbing up on the railing, which
was hardly strong enough, or high enough, to stop a flock of sheep.
Suddenly, with shouts of laughter, the rail fell inwards, and the crowd
naturally followed, but without a thought of any concerted action. The
people got hot and angry on the following days. But the famous Hyde
Park Riot of 1866 was a mere street scramble owing to the rotten state
of the old railing.”
These are the words of a living writer, and yet how much is changed.
Cricket on the site of Westbourne Terrace seems almost as remote as
the hundreds, aye, thousands, of hangings that took place near where
the Marble Arch now stands. There stood Tyburn, probably the most
gruesome, gory spot in the whole of the British Isles.
The brick wall has long since disappeared, and even the inner railings
between the side-walks and the road have almost all gone.
Wisely Tyburn has been swept away by its later rulers. Not a vestige of
the name survives to remind the passers-by that it once existed, except
on the iron tablet which marks the site of the old turnpike gate, and
bears the following inscription:
[Illustration:
HERE STOOD
TYBURN
GATE
1829]
This iron plate is about 4 feet high, and is a little to the west of
the clock-house at the Marble Arch, just opposite Edgware Road. So it
was well within the last hundred years that Tyburn Gate disappeared.
Hyde Park, as a place for intrigue, strongly appealed to the dramatist
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and has been immortalised
by many poets. Ben Jonson speaks of it in the Prologue of _The Staple
News_, and in _The World in the Moon_ (1620). An old ballad in the
Roxburgh Collection sings:
“Of all parts of England, Hyde Park hath the name
For coaches and horses and persons of Fame.”
Shirley, too, named one of his plays _Hyde Park_, and laid his plot
within its boundaries. Pepys went to see the performance of the play,
and formed a poor opinion of it. Other authors have written of the Park
in this sense, as a background for dramatic tales of intrigue; such as
Etherage in _The Man of Mode_ (1676), Howard in _The English Monsieur_
(1674), Southerne in _The Maid’s Last Prayer_ (1693), Farquhar in _The
Constant Couple_ (1700), and Congreve in _The Way of the World_ (1760).
From those far distant days to the present Hyde Park has never lost its
prestige as a meeting-place for all classes of English Society; and
the present volume is an attempt to depict its story in a more or less
connected form.
Nor must the grim records of Tyburn, so closely associated with the
Park, be forgotten. From the date of the first public hanging on the
outskirts of the Park in 1196, right down to late in the eighteenth
century, a constant succession of unhappy beings were done to death
here, sometimes for crimes which in our more merciful days would be
hardly punished by a forty-shilling fine; and in the dread days of the
religious persecution in the times of the Tudors, this place of heroic
martyrdom saw some of the sublimest deaths in the history of our land.
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; first from the rise behind Connaught Terrace, and later
from the open space at the corner of the Edgware Road.
Sporting ground, shambles, dwelling-place, scene of intrigue, theatre
of Royal magnificence and military display, the Park through the
centuries may be said almost to epitomise the history of England, and
to the present day it has never ceased to be interesting.
The enormous crowds that frequent the place even now is seen by the
fact that it contains about 35,000 chairs, and even that number is
often insufficient in the height of the season. Hundreds of long wooden
benches, too, are scattered all over the Park, where “Love’s young
dream” continues from morn till eve, year in year out. 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. The fashionable drive used to be from Hyde Park Corner to
Knightsbridge Barracks, but every few years fashions change, and during
the last two seasons far more carriages were to be found between Hyde
Park Corner and the Marble Arch.
Every afternoon when she is in town, the Queen drives round the
Park between six and seven. There is no pomp or show. A mounted
policeman goes in front to clear the way, and at a distance of fifty
yards follows the royal carriage, just an ordinary, high C-spring
barouche with red wheels, and a couple of men-servants in black
livery with black cockades. Behind the coachman sits the Queen of
England. She often has guests with her, but if not, drives alone with
a Lady-in-Waiting, generally the Hon. Charlotte Knollys, one of that
faithful family attached to the Court, and a Gentleman-in-Waiting
opposite.
The carriage passes along at an ordinary trot, and every one bows, the
gentlemen raising their hats, in fact keeping them off until the Queen
has passed. No woman in Europe knows how to bow more graciously than
Queen Alexandra. She is blessed with a long swan-like neck, exquisitely
set upon her shoulders, and whether in her carriage or in a décolletée
gown at Buckingham Palace, the gracious inclination of her head is a
form of queenly bow to be admired.
Her Majesty is always very quietly dressed, never wearing anything
_outré_ in fashion. When huge sleeves are worn, hers are of medium
size. She is probably the best-gowned woman in Europe, and is certainly
one of the most simply dressed. Since the death of her eldest son, in
1892, she has never worn bright colours,—black, white, grey, dark blue,
purple, or heliotrope being her favourites.
When the King or Queen is in town, the centre gate of the Marble Arch
is thrown open for them to pass through, and the ground is neatly
sanded. This rule is also observed at the entrance to Constitution Hill.
Probably the Park is at its fullest in this year of grace 1908 on
Sunday between twelve and two; there are practically no carriages;
it is the hour of the _Prayer-Book Brigade_. Everybody has been to
Church, and those who have not are said to carry small books in their
hands, so that their friends may imagine they have freshly returned
from a service. On hot days in May, June, and July, it is delightfully
cool beneath the trees from the Achilles Statue to Stanhope Gate, and
literally thousands of people sit and chat to their friends at that
time. Some walk up and down while looking for acquaintances or waiting
for a chair; others go early and pay for their seat, determined to
occupy it until it is time to go home to luncheon. Some of the most
beautiful women in Europe may be seen in the Park on Sunday.
Of course the place is public, and the crowd is therefore mixed. It is
not as aristocratic, for instance, as the Royal Enclosure at Ascot,
or the lawn for the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown; but then it is not one
day in the year, but any and every Sunday during the warmer months,
that these people may be found congregated together. 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.
It is curious how the classes divide themselves. Between the Achilles
Monument and the Serpentine is a bandstand, round which a certain
proportion of the seats are railed off. In the summer evenings
excellent music is given, but very few of the upper-ten avail
themselves of the privilege which the middle classes so eagerly enjoy.
It is a great occasion for shop people and servants, who seem to
thoroughly revel in those Sunday Concerts, which each year prove more
and more successful.
The year passes in Hyde Park like the figures in a kaleidoscope.
In January, when it is dark in the mornings and cold in the evenings,
the riders come out about ten, and the drivers, dwindled in numbers,
mostly vacate their vehicles and take a quiet walk before luncheon. All
is cold and damp and drear.
Then come the early spring flowers. Yellow, white, or purple crocuses
raise their heads in the Park. They are not planted in beds or in stiff
rows; but come up in patches of colour in the grass. Here a mass of
yellow, there a mass of heliotrope, filling the air with the early cry
of spring. These crocuses, in themselves a joy, are quickly followed
by daffodils, narcissi, and groups of gorse and broom. Then the leaves
unfold upon the trees, laburnum fights pinky-brown copper beech,
horse-chestnuts raise their blooms, hawthorn scents the air, and lilac
abounds. Then it is that the hyacinth beds become a dream along the
precincts of Park Lane, giving forth sweet scents and glorious masses
of colour. Flower beds were first instituted in Hyde Park in 1860.
Rhododendrons burst into flower, quickly followed by those gorgeous
beds of yellow azalea that we, who love the Park, know so well.
The bedding plants for Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, and St. James’s
Park are largely supplied from the nursery gardens near the Ranger’s
Lodge in the centre of the Park itself, and not from Kew, as is
ordinarily supposed.
In the autumn these plants are given away to the poor of the parishes
who care to apply for them.
People have returned to town. The hunting is over; the Riviera has
ceased to attract. Egypt is too hot. The Academy and Opera are open,
and the London Season has begun.
Certain hours are given up to certain things, and the first occupants
of the Park in the early morning are the members of the _Liver
Brigade_. As a child at the age of seven, and for ten years after that,
I rode with my father every morning at half-past seven in Rotten Row,
returning to breakfast, to change my habit, and go to school; and for
nearly ten years more I did the same with my husband, going—instead
of to school, on my return—to the kitchen to order the dinner. My
acquaintance with Hyde Park is, therefore, not imaginary, but real—very
real.
The Liver Brigade in the Park is a regular London institution.
Judges, barristers, surgeons, physicians, actors, writers, African
millionaires, and German Jews all ride in the morning between
half-past seven and ten o’clock. Many of them are known to each other,
consequently friendly greetings and pleasant chats are exchanged while
the Liver Brigade take exercise, knowing well that on their return home
to bath and breakfast they will have to settle down to the Law Courts,
Chambers, or the Consulting-room for the rest of the day. That hour’s
ride in the morning has been the salvation of many a brain-weary man
and woman.
In the eighties and nineties the people dressed most smartly. I well
remember my tight-fitting habit and tall silk hat, my white stock in
winter, or high collar and white tie in summer. The menfolk wore silk
hats and black hunting coats, smart breeches and high patent boots. All
this is changed; a go-as-you-please air has overtaken the riders. The
women wear loose coats with sack backs, cotton shirts, sailor hats,
billycocks—anything and everything that brings comfort, even if it
deprives them of grace. The men don caps and tweeds, brown boots and
putties, in fact, any rough-and-tumble country kit.
No sooner has the Liver Brigade departed than the Park is given over to
the babies and nurses. In the summer these women are entirely dressed
in white piqué, and in winter in grey cloth or flannel. There are
literally hundreds—one might say thousands—of nurses and aristocratic
babies disporting themselves every day in Hyde Park. The infants go
home fairly early to their midday sleep, at which hour the governesses
and bigger children, having accomplished their morning’s work, come out
to the Park, which by twelve o’clock is given over to older childhood.
These are the regular habitués, but there are others who are constant
visitors to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. There are men and women
who, year in year out, come daily with their little bags of crumbs to
feed the birds,—people who are followed by whole flocks of sparrows and
pigeons, or, nearer the Serpentine, by ducks and swans.
Except in the height of the season, men and women no longer dress
smartly in the Park. The magnificent horses, high-steppers with
well-arched necks and splendid paces, are rapidly being superseded
by the motor-car. Instead of beautifully dressed ladies and smartly
groomed men in silk hats and frock coats, sitting in carriages, women
smothered in veils and hideous goggles, and men looking more like
cut-throat villains than gentlemen, are seen dashing through the Park
in motors. No more unbecoming attire was ever invented for men and
women than the modern motor get-up.
Ten weeks complete the great social event known as the London season.
No sooner has July dawned than palms and canes, semi-tropical flowers
and plants, appear upon the scene. Their pots are so cleverly planted
that the date palm, the sugarcane, and the sweet corn of the Indies
really look as if they were growing out of the grass itself, and
convert Hyde Park into a semi-tropical botanical garden for a couple of
months. Then station-omnibuses laden with babies and bundles begin to
ply our streets, and day by day the crowd grows thinner in the Park.
By August only foreigners with Baedekers are to be found where Society
fluttered but a short time before. Then come autumn tints, winter fogs,
and utter desolation.
And thus from generation to generation Hyde Park has been the
playground of London’s rich and poor, the wide theatre upon which their
tragedies and comedies have been enacted, the forum in which many
public liberties have been demanded, the scene where national triumphs
have been celebrated.
To write fully the history of a space so crowded with pregnant
memories would be too great a task for any one pen, nor could a
single book hope to hold one tithe of the interesting memories which
throng these precincts; but I trust that the rapid survey given in
the following pages, of some of the famous happenings and curious
traditions connected with the place, may not be unwelcome to those who
now adorn Hyde Park.