Highways and Byways in London Part 25

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Rotten Row._]

"The Ring," in Stuart times, was the scene of frequent duels, the most noted of which was that between Lord Mohun and the Duke of Hamilton (made use of in Thackeray's _Esmond_), in 1712, when both combatants were killed. And one of the saddest modern a.s.sociations of this circular drive is connected with Mrs. Carlyle's death here on April 21, 1866. The poor lady, to whom a brougham and an afternoon drive were luxuries of her later and invalid years, died quietly and silently in her carriage from heart failure caused by shock at a trivial accident to her small dog, which she had put out to run at Victoria Gate, near the Marble Arch; the coachman, knowing nothing of the fatality, driving on for some time before discovering the sad truth.

The Tyburnia end of Hyde Park is that most frequented by the populace.

If the smart world monopolises the vicinity of Hyde Park Corner, the green s.p.a.ces fringing the Bayswater Road, and near the Marble Arch, are generally appropriated by tired workmen and idle loafers, who lie about on the gra.s.s, in enviable bliss, on hot days in summer, looking like nothing so much as an army of soldiers mown down by a Maxim gun, and contentedly appreciating the fact that here in London, for once, they have found free and undisputed possession--a place where:

"no price is set on the lavish summer, June may be had by the poorest comer."

In the s.p.a.ce opposite the Marble Arch is the so-called "Reformers'

Tree," where political meetings sometimes take place on Sundays, and where preachers, lecturers, and "cranks" of every possible denomination, hold their respective courts. Visitors to London should make a point of witnessing this curious and well-known phase of London life; the outcome, M. Taine seems to suggest, of the latent seriousness of the British mind; "an intense conviction, which for lack of an outlet, would degenerate into madness, melancholy, or sedition." Mr. Anstey in the pages of _Punch_, has, in his own inimitable way, described these scenes, which are familiar to the readers of "Voces Populi."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Serpentine, Hyde Park._]

The "Serpentine," a large sheet of water mainly artificial, certainly cannot be said to "serpent," for it has but a very slight bend. Originating, however, at a period when all garden walks and ponds were of painful Dutch regularity, it owes its name to this trifling deviation. This prettily devised and wooded piece of water is due mainly to Queen Caroline, wife to George II., an energetic lady with gardening tastes. Very charming is the view to be obtained from the five-arched stone bridge over the Serpentine, "a view," says Mr.

Henry James, "of extraordinary n.o.bleness." Yet the Serpentine, too, has its tragic a.s.sociations. Perhaps it suggests, in its beauty, the haunting lines:

"When Life hangs heavy, Death remains the door To endless rest beside the Stygian sh.o.r.e."

Always a noted spot for suicides, it was the place chosen by Harriet Westbrook, the unfortunate first wife of Sh.e.l.ley, for the ending of the many troubles of her short life; "a rash act," says Professor Dowden with praiseworthy partisanship, which it "seems certain that no act of Sh.e.l.ley's, during the two years which immediately preceded her death, tended to cause." "Sh.e.l.ley," comments Matthew Arnold drily, "had been living with another woman all the time; only that!"

The charm of Kensington Gardens--detached from Hyde Park in later times--is, perhaps, its greater seclusion and air of guarded calm, as befits the gardens surrounding a royal palace. No carriages are allowed to profane its sacred shades; no rude sounds of the outer world penetrate its leafy bowers. In one pleasant spot of greenery a welcome innovation has lately been introduced in the summer months, in the shape of afternoon tea _al fresco_, provided by an enterprising club, and of late much frequented by the fashionable world. Kensington Gardens are always very select in their _coterie_; on their western side stands the old Dutch palace of solid red-brick, built for William and Mary,--sorrowed in by desolate Queen Anne,--birthplace of Queen Victoria, worthiest, n.o.blest, and most lamented of her line. With her, most of all, are the a.s.sociations of Kensington Gardens now bound up. In these pretty walks crowded still by the children and nurses of the wealthy and n.o.ble, the little royal girl used to play, regardless alike of her coming doom--or glory.

Yet, with all the nursery din of Kensington Gardens--an English _Tuileries_--there yet are spots so secluded and so quiet as still to justify Matthew Arnold's lovely lines:

"In this lone, open glade I lie, Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand; And at its end, to stay the eye, Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!

"Birds here make song, each bird has his, Across the girding city's hum.

How green under the boughs it is!

How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!

"Here at my feet what wonders pa.s.s, What endless, active life is here!

What blowing daisies, fragrant gra.s.s!

An air-stirred forest, fresh and clear.

"In the huge world, which roars hard by, Be others happy if they can!

But in my helpless cradle I Was breathed on by the rural Pan.

"Yet here is peace for ever new!

When I who watch them am away, Still all things in this glade go through The changes of their quiet day."

Poor Haydon, the painter, whose fitful genius went out so sadly in lurid gloom, said of Kensington Gardens that "here are some of the most poetical bits of tree and stump, and sunny brown and green glens and tawny earth." Disraeli, also, wrote of it as follows in his most "cla.s.sically-flowery" manner:--

"The inhabitants of London are scarcely sufficiently sensible of the beauty of its environs. On every side the most charming retreats open to them.... In exactly ten minutes it is in the power of every man to free himself from all the tumult of the world; the pangs of love, the throbs of ambition, the wear and tear of play, the recriminating boudoir, the conspiring club, the rattling h.e.l.l, and find himself in a sublime sylvan solitude superior to the cedars of Lebanon, and inferior only in extent to the chestnut forests of Anatolia. It is Kensington Gardens that is almost the only place that has realised his idea of the forests of Spenser and Ariosto."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Tea in Kensington Gardens._]

What havoc, truly, the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Prince Consort's darling scheme, must have wrought in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens!

And what would the bright particular spirits of the present day now think of such irreverent, such high-handed proceedings? Even the Kensington Museum now eschews the too close neighbourhood of ephemeral Exhibitions; they are relegated to the more distant shades of Olympia and of Earl's Court; the immense Crystal Palace--the Exhibition building--now flourishes at Sydenham, and the site of the great show is commemorated in Hyde Park by the Albert Memorial, an edifice about the merits of which much difference of opinion rages. Yet, even its detractors must own the magnificence of the monument, and admire the eastern opulence of its mosaics, its gilding, its bronzes and marbles.

But St. James's Park is really, in some ways, quite the prettiest of the London parks, and though sufficiently aristocratic, it is yet much frequented by the populace. "A genuine piece of country, and of English country," Taine says of it. Round it are situated royal palaces and beautiful mansions, standing amidst their s.p.a.cious gardens. North of St. James's Park stretches the Mall, so named from the ancient game of "Paille Maille," played here by the gay court of Charles II. The game consisted in striking a ball, with a mallet, through an iron ring, down a straight walk powdered with c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.ls. Here, in later Stuart and Hanoverian times, was to be seen the very height of London fashion, the ladies in "full dress,"

and their cavaliers carrying their hats under their arms. Perhaps, of all the varying "modes" flaunted from time to time in the "Mall," the fashions of 1800-1810 would strike us now as being the most peculiar.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A Fountain in St. James's Park._]

East of St. James's Park are the stately Government Offices, and south is Birdcage Walk, overlooked by the pretty hanging gardens and balconies that adorn the mansions of picturesque Queen Anne's Gate.

Where "Spring Gardens" now stand was, in old days, "Milk Fair," where a.s.ses' and cows' milk was sold to the votaries of fashion, to repair the ravages of late hours and "routs." Milk-vendors, boasting their descent from the original holders, have still their cow-stall at the park corner under the elm-trees. In the distance the grey old abbey, with its delicate tracery, appears at intervals above the trees and buildings; and, though so near the city smoke, the Ornithological Society breeds many beautiful aquatic birds on a small island on the Ornamental Water. St. James's Park is a series of pictures; the sketcher, too, will find many convenient seats, as well as charming views.

It is difficult to believe that this lovely park was, in pre-Tudor times, merely a swampy field, pertaining to a hospital "for fourteen maidens that were leprous," and far beyond the precincts of the little London of that day. (The lepers' hospital itself stood where now stands St. James's Palace.) It was Henry VIII. who removed the leper maidens, converting their asylum into a palace, their field into a park; a park used as the private garden to the palace until Charles II.'s time, at which period it was made public and laid out by a French landscape gardener called "Le Notre." There is a story that Queen Caroline, wife to George II., wished to appropriate the Park once more for the sole use of the Palace, and asked "what it would cost to effect this?" "Only three crowns," was the pithy answer of the minister, Sir Robert Walpole.

Beautiful as St. James's Park still is, it must have been yet more charming a century-and-a-half ago, when no houses as yet intervened between it and the grey dignity of the old Abbey of Westminster, and when the vanished _Rosamond's Pond_, with its wild and romantic banks, gave a rural attraction to the scene. _Rosamond's Pond_, mentioned by Pope and other writers, was a favourite trysting-place for lovers, and had also, from its seclusion, a less enviable notoriety for suicides.

Charles II., was especially fond of St. James's Park; he would sit here for hours among his dogs, amusing himself with the tame ducks, that he had himself introduced; the descendants of these ducks, it is said, flourish, like those of the milk-vendors, to this day, and are fed familiarly by constant Londoners. Perhaps it was Charles's fondness for animals that, by a natural sequence of events, caused the park, somewhat later, to become a sort of Zoological Gardens for London. Birds of all kinds still thrive in it, although distant Battersea Park, new and semi-suburban, now claims its share of ornithological fame. The London County Council, among other good works, has adopted towards animals the protecting _role_ of Charles II., and sedulously encourages bird-life in the parks; woe, therefore, to the boy or man, who goes bird-nesting or bird-snaring in one of these sacred enclosures! Wild birds reciprocate the Council's paternal care by taking up their lodging in Battersea of their own free will. A cuckoo's egg was even found in Battersea Park lately, laid, very annoyingly, in a "whitethroat's" nest, which had been made in a bamboo-bush in the "sub-tropical" part of the gardens. Nevertheless, the charitable whitethroats overlooked the liberty, and safely hatched that cuckoo. Battersea Park claims, moreover, robins, t.i.ts, hedge-sparrows, chaffinches, wrens, and greenfinches; to say nothing of herons, and even a white blackbird. Birds take kindly to London; do not even the gulls come up the river by thousands in severe winters, as the Albatross came to the call of the Ancient Mariner? Also, over 200 wood pigeons are said to roost regularly on the Battersea Park islands. But then, wood-pigeons seem to be everywhere at home in London. Do they not haunt the city gardens that lie behind Queen Square, and coo sweetly all through the London spring and summer?

If Battersea Park, with its charmingly laid-out gardens, its wealth of tropical plants, all its feathered population, and its river glories of twilight and sunset, is yet undistinguished, so also is the Regent's Park, which is situated at quite another, (though equally semi-suburban), angle of the metropolis. Regent's Park, like Battersea Park, is the resort of the great middle-cla.s.s. Here you may see, on Bank Holidays, the groups so lovingly described by Ibsen, "father, mother, and troop of children," all drest in their Sunday best, and all dropping orange-peel cheerfully as they go. Here too, on Sundays, is a "Church Parade," quite as crowded as that of Hyde Park, though not, perhaps, so largely noticed in the "society" papers. The demeanour of the young couples is perhaps here a trifle more boisterous, that of their elders perhaps a shade more prim; the attire of the ladies, generally, a thought more crude. The wide middle avenue of Regent's Park, on Sundays, affords capital study to those interested in the vast subject of Man and Manners. And then the great middle cla.s.s is so much more amusing than are the "Well-Connected"!

The flowers in Regent's Park, in spring and early summer, are a yearly marvel and a delight. Not even those of Hyde Park, in all their season's glory, can surpa.s.s them. On each side of the large middle avenue, gay parterres vie with one another in brilliance. Tulips, hyacinths of wonderful shades, all the glory of spring bulbs, make way, later, for summer "bedding-out-plants" in lovely combinations of colour. Crocuses, scillas, and snowdrops, too, are scattered here and there, with a charming air of lavishness, over the gra.s.sy slopes: this has a delightful effect, giving all the look and suggestion of wild flowers.

Regent's Park has, then, an unrivalled charm to the flower-lover. (And what true Londoner, one may ask, is not a flower-lover? The Londoner loves flowers with an intensity undreamed of in the real country.) The slum children, who frequent this park in large numbers, respect, as a rule, the flower-beds. Slum-children are, generally, as I have observed from experience gathered in the Temple Gardens, St. Paul's Churchyard, Leicester Square and elsewhere,--more reverently inclined, as regards flowers, than their more pampered contemporaries; though, of course, nature is nature, and there may be occasional lapses.

Thus, the other day I chanced to notice, in Regent's Park, two small girls "of the people," whose ideas on the subject of "property" seemed just a trifle elementary. They were ragged and hungry-looking too, and to add to the pathos of their rags, one of them flourished a broken green parasol, and the other one's tattered hat flaunted a dirty pink ostrich feather:

"Oh, Lizer," I heard the smallest one say, "I _do_ wish I could git one o' them flowers! jest one geranium, for ter stick in my 'air at Sunday-school ter-morrer! They'd niver miss it"!

"_Certingly_ not! The p'leaceman 'ud be after you, pretty sharp," says the elder child, severely. "You know 'ow Bert caught it, three weeks back, for on'y a-breakin orf of two daffies, and one of 'em nearly dead too! Well, (relenting), "you _may_ git me jest a few, if you kin do it so's the p'leaceman can't see".... Rosie, shet it!" as the younger girl clutched at some flowers: "I see 'im a-comin' towards us, this minnit! No, if you please, we ain't done nothin', sir! My sister an' me, sir, we was on'y jest a-lookin' at the flowers, an' saying as 'ow beautiful they _'ad_ grown, since this Sat'day gone a week....

_Our_ garding ain't got no show to equil them, and we ain't got no cut flowers, for onst, in ma's drorin'-room; and these 'ere is grown that beautiful."

"You was a-goin' to 'elp 'em grow, wasn't you?" said the policeman, good-naturedly enough: "_I_ see you a-stretchin' over them railin's!

_Your_ garding's a alley, that's wot it is! an' your drorin'-room is jest a three-pair-model, _I_ back!... I know your sort! 'Ere, tike yerselves orf, double quick!"

The ignorant in such matters may, perhaps, vaguely wonder, in Regent's Park, why the comfortable chairs provided, apparently, for man's delectation, are all deserted of the mult.i.tude, and why, on the other hand, the iron seats are crammed to repletion? The explanation is a simple one. The chairs cost a penny each to sit on! It is, however, not unusual to see a stray marauder occupy one of these sacred resting-places for a stolen minute of bliss, and, on seeing the approach of the Guardian of the Park furniture (whence such guardians spring up is ever a mystery), rise and absent himself in well-feigned abstraction.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Reformer._]

Regent's Park, like Hyde Park, is a focus of itinerant lecturers and preachers. These have apparently established a kind of "Sunday right"

to the upper part of the long avenue of trees beyond the flower-gardens. Here, as in the larger park, may be seen "cranks" of every kind. Thus, one lecturer will hold up to obloquy an unkind caricature of Mr. Chamberlain, representing the great man with the addition of horns and hoofs; another, proclaiming the gospel of Jingoism, will shout himself hoa.r.s.e in the attempt to drown his adversary. (Political meetings, however, may now possibly be regarded with disfavour by the authorities, the Boer War having lately rendered many of them somewhat picturesque in incident.) Under another big tree, a Revivalist meeting will be held, accompanied by sundry groans and sobs, and varied at intervals by hymns sung to the accompaniment of a harmonium or a small piano-organ. The first beginnings of lectures, as of righteousness, are hard. One poor orator, on the outskirts of the crowd, I saw myself arrive on the scene, and "work up" his lecture to the unsympathetic and goggle-eyed audience of a small c.o.c.kney nursemaid, a perambulator, and two wailing babies. I quite felt for that poor man; nevertheless, he persevered, and in only five minutes auditors had already begun to trickle in. (A considerable percentage of the Park congregations, I may here observe, had no "fixed city," no abiding convictions; they wandered about here and there, from one preacher to another, "just as fate or fancy carried"; or, rather, to whichever of the said preachers happened at the moment to be the most emphatic.) With lectures _al fresco_, as with other things, it would appear to be only the _premier pas qui coute_; and soon the would-be orator had a distinguished and motley following.

What, exactly, he was lecturing about, it is really beyond me to say, for my attention was largely woolgathering about the crowd; but he seemed, like Mr. Chadband, of immortal memory, to repeat himself a good deal, and to be very angry indeed about something or other.

Indeed, I doubt whether the majority of his audience quite understood the orator's drift, but they knew that he was bellowing with all the strength of his lungs, and Englishmen always respect a man who makes sufficient noise. The lecturer's anger seemed, strangely enough, to be directed against poor, unoffending Regent's Park itself:

"For twenty years," he kept reiterating, "for twenty years Regent's Park has been allowed to speak, unhindered, under this very tree. For twenty years it has found its voice, ay, and its pence, too, here....

Is it to continue to find them, or not? That is the question.... Does Regent's Park wish to sit tamely under insult? to lie down to be crushed? to bend its back to the tyrant?" (here the speaker, in his fervour, seemed to get a trifle mixed in his similes.)

"'Ear, 'ear," said a chubby baker's boy, who had stopped for a moment to listen; and one of the forgotten babies in the perambulator wailed.

"Will Regent's Park, I say, tolerate this? It is, let me repeat it, it is for Regent's Park to decide!"

But the "Regent's Park" of the hour, though thus eloquently adjured, was evidently not to be roused to fury; or even to decision. "Kim on 'ome," cries the nurse-girl to the twins, hitching the perambulator round with a sudden jerk: "Go it, old kipper," shouts a facetious larrikin. Alas! even now "Regent's Park," with its pence too, was apathetically melting away towards that all-important function of the day--its "tea."

There is, indeed, much "life" to be found in Regent's Park.

Some of London's pleasantest "by-ways" are the pretty, well-kept, and delightfully planted walks of the Zoological Gardens. One of the big gates of this inst.i.tution opens near upon the "preaching trees"