Hyde Park, Its History and Romance. Mrs. Alec-Tweedie
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