Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

There was another club in the last century whose purpose was one which deserves for it everlasting respect and admiration. The excellent object it had in view was the suppression of wearisome preachers, or the putting down of silly and interminable sermons. Whether the means taken to arrive at the ends aimed at could be equally respected and admired, is a matter on which a certain difference of opinion may be justly allowed. It was the fashion of the time for ladies to carry fans, and for gentlemen to be inseparable from their canes. These weapons were turned to church uses by the ladies and gentlemen who were members of the Rattling Club. They were vagrant Christians, who attended such churches as possessed congregations who sat in need of relief from a great oppression--that of being bored by a preacher who (as Voltaire says of them all) stood five feet above contradiction. The Rattlers were perfectly unobtrusive during service, and indeed they were perfectly decorous during sermon, unless they were provoked by absurdity or tediousness. As soon as any provocation of that sort was felt, a Lady-Rattler began to agitate her fan, or a Gentleman-Rattler tapped his cane against the floor or the panelling of his pew. The signal was followed by the other members, and the interruption was continued, gradually increasing till there was such a fluttering of fans and a rattling of canes as to produce conviction on the mind of the preacher that the sooner he pronounced the word ‘finally’ the sooner there would be peace in the church. It would not be very unreasonable to call such conduct unseemly--even vulgar. The Rattling Club, however, had very august precedent for their proceedings. In as far as the eccentric young Queen Christina of Sweden set the example, she may be fairly looked upon as the founder of the Rattlers. In her own royal chapel, as well as in any ordinary church where she happened to be present before she passed over to the Church of Rome, Christina used to give decent attention to the sermon till she thought she had taken as much as would do her good. At that point she would slightly rap with her fan on the top of the back of the chair which always stood before her own in the Chapel Royal, or on any hard substance which happened to be near her, when she was being sermon-vexed in other places. If the preacher neglected to attend to this signal, her Majesty declared open warfare against him, and rattled away with her fan with increasing intensity till she had silenced the pulpit, or (if the preacher continued to pour forth his volleys) till she raised the siege and retreated in vexation. Let us mention here, by the way, that in the early intolerant age of the Reformation which followed the intolerable era of Popery in England, people were compelled (under serious penalties) to go to church whether they were Reformers or Romanists. Many of the latter attended the Protestant service rather than pay the fine, and yet preserved their consistency; and you may fancy the mirth in some old country-house, when the solemn knight and his lady, and the laughing daughters with their haughty brothers, as soon as they heard the church-bells ring, proceeded to stuff wool into their ears, and then went to a sermon with a joyous conviction of being unable to hear a word of it.

Let us now fancy ourselves standing in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, in the year 1711. We are in front of the Land Bank, which had lately come to grief, and the street was not of the high estate it had been when lords smoked their pipes at its windows, and could smell the haycocks that were in St. Pancras Fields. Let us describe what took place. There was a going in and out, and a standing on the steps, and a gathering of increased numbers, and an universal cheerful gossiping, save on the part of Mr. Ferrers, who was dumb. Passengers stopped to look at these men, and were not slow to recognise the most eminent among the wellnigh five dozen standing or moving about the door, or going in and out. People from Drury Lane knew their neighbour Mr. Vertue, who was talking apart to a little knot of listeners--engravers like himself. There was Michael Dahl, talking a good deal about his Swedish patroness Queen Christina, and still more about his claims to be director of an Academy of Painting. At these claims his hearers may be taken to have smiled, especially if their eye happened to fall on a well-dressed, courteous gentleman, who passed into the house bowing to all who greeted him. There was not a child in Queen Street who could not recognise in him the great Sir Godfrey Kneller. Sir Godfrey was probably greeted most warmly by Laguerre, who had glorified the knight’s house at Whitton with more simple taste than usually distinguished Laguerre. Thornhill stood near the latter, and looked on him with no more perceptible air of triumph than a modest artist could help, who had been substituted for the other in the task of painting the Life of St. Paul within the dome of the metropolitan church. Richardson too was there, and his colleagues respected him as an artist who, if Kneller and Dahl were but away, would be at the head of portraiture in England. A laughing group stood round Richardson; he was narrating to them his own great story, which has been so often retold with other heroes of the tale: ‘_The gentleman was singularly annoyed that his friend should declare that his Rubens was only a copy. He said to me: “I will knock any man’s brains out who will call it a copy! My dear Mr. Richardson, come down to my house, and give me your candid opinion!”_’ We may fancy that merry and wise Richardson tripping up the steps laughingly, stopping, perhaps, in the hall to talk with two gentlemen, brothers, one of whom exhibits to him, and to smiling Laptist Monnoyer, some paintings on fans which excite his generous unreserved admiration. It is Mr. Godfrey, behind whose marvellously-decorated fans--on which figured landscapes created to make love in--the beauties of the time of Anne and the first two Georges used to feign to blush and hide confusion which they did not feel.

When these and others were assembled in the old bank, they numbered sixty-two. Every man came with his guinea ready for the treasurer. It was to be the annual subscription. Each member had also with him a list of twelve names, whom he voted for as directors for one year. Michael Dahl insinuated his right to be governor, but, saving Dahl’s vote, Kneller was unanimously elected; and with his quietly moving into the chair of that club, was the first Academy of Painting established in England.

The jealousy of Dahl, and a few individual affectations, marred some of the good that the Academy might have accomplished. In the second year, the Swedish favourite of Queen Anne and her husband, Prince George of Denmark, withdrew, because Kneller was still preferred to him as governor or president. The Academy Club elected new members, with or without their consent. At that time there was a French painter in London, named Berchet. He had painted panels and ceilings in England from the time of the latter years of Charles II.; and when De la Fosse was over here, he must have been proud, if he was not jealous, of his pupil. If there be an old painted panel yet in the house that was the Duke of Schomberg’s, in Pall Mall, it is possibly a portion of the decoration of the house, and is, in such case, Berchet’s work. The belles and gallants of the day flocked to Ranelagh, to gaze at the summer-house so daintily tricked out by Berchet’s delicate pencil. _Now_, he was painting small mythological pieces, in oils; and the ‘Academicians,’ deeming him worthy of being a member, elected him. Berchet (by letter) ‘excused himself, being not well and tysicky, and could not bear the smoke of the lamp.’ His infirmity did not leave him, neither did his industry. He had just put his name at the foot of ‘A Bacchanalian,’ his last work, when the pencil dropped for ever from his hand, and Berchet’s occupation was gone.

We pass from Art to Fashionable Eccentricity. When squires were _squires_ in England, and came up to London to see a little life, a club was founded for them in St. James’s Street, which was (and is) called Boodle’s, but which was long familiarly known as ‘The Topboot and Worsted Stocking Club.’ To rival Boodle’s dinners, or Almack’s, was not a difficult matter, since they seem to have consisted of uncouth legs of mutton, roasted geese, and buttered apple-pies. Something better than mere squirearchy must have been among the members, for Gibbon was one, and a hundred years ago the great historian wrote his letters there. It was the poor cookery of Boodle’s that probably gave rise to the ‘Sçavoir Vivre Club,’ the palates of whose members could not bear, nor their stomachs digest, the mutton, geese, and apple-pies of the club, which still exists. The ‘Sçavoir Vivre’ showed that they knew how to live, by composing or importing new dishes, and they showed that they knew how to dress, by creating the most eccentric of costumes. Among their imported dishes was macaroni. It become such a favourite dish at the club, and was so invariably brought to table, that the clubbists themselves became celebrated as ‘Macaronies.’ In dress they wore a toy cocked hat, gold-laced, buttoned and tasseled over hair fashioned into a foretop above the head, side-curls, and a clubbed tail. Tight striped silk breeches, and an equally tight coat and waistcoat, kept them together. Their tasseled canes were as long as those still carried by state footmen when they ride behind a carriage going to court on a drawing-room day. Like Tiddy Bob, they had a watch in each fob, with cable-chains, and a pound of seals at the end of them. Their white neck-cloths displayed a front bow as large as a cauliflower; and they daintily walked about in white silk stockings and diamond-buckled shoes, in all weathers. In any sense, for a Macaroni to wear a greatcoat was to confess his unworthiness of being a member of the august brotherhood. As equestrians, they figured in the park on little ponies, and looked as if they lacked strength to get on anything higher. The female Macaronies carried heads top-heavy with hair of their own and other peoples--hat, feathers, and a world of knicknackery. Their dress clung almost as closely to the body as the gentlemen’s to theirs. But they dragged after them a long, long gold-embroidered train, the very thought of which reminds us of the poet’s line:--

Hæc nunc auratâ cyclade verret humum.

The Macaronies and the Macaroniesses, as they were called, turned days, nights, hours, and seasons, topsy-turvy; and the former, to show that they were men, ran foot-races on Sundays in Kensington Gardens, very lightly clad, and putting in peril their little lives, by exhaustion of the little breath they carried in their little bodies. Having established macaroni as a dish to be thenceforward known in every household of taste, they died out, and men knew them no more.

The Eccentrics entered into the present century. The Keep-the-Line Club was one of the brilliant, fashionable, and shortlived clubs of the first quarter of the present century. Its members consisted of wits, artists, actors, authors, gentlemen, and peers. It had two purposes--enjoyment and preservation of temper, by putting it to the hardest trials. One of the rules was, that whenever a member was insulted by another, however grossly, the insulted person should rise and offer his best thanks to the offender. A witty fellow might here find good opportunity for his wit, if he only knew how to avail himself of opportunity. Another rule imposed a fine of a dozen of claret to the club, on the member who published any literary composition of his own. Samuel Rogers, Topham, Miles Peter Andrews, Merry, Morton, Reynolds, Fitzgerald, Horace Smith, Boaden, Kenney, and others, paid the fine willingly whenever it was fairly due. The penalty was once demanded of Wilson (the surgeon), and of John Tufton. The first had issued an advertisement announcing a course of lectures; Tufton had addressed an electioneering handbill to his constituents. Both publications were pronounced to be literary. The authors had not only to pay the penalty in claret, but to profess their unfeigned delight at its being imposed on them.

While the Keep-the-Line loved fun, others loved athletics. The Mary-le-bone Cricket Club of the olden days did not at all resemble what it afterwards became when known as Lord’s. In its early age, there was as much difficulty in passing a ballot successfully, as in the most exclusive clubs of the present day. The members included players from every degree in the peerage, members of the House of Commons, and gentlemen of large landed property. The costume of the club was _skyblue_! and their chief object--even before cricketing--was the performance of practical jokes. One of the latter was played by the bacchanalian Duke of Richmond on Fred Reynolds the dramatist. The Duke put Reynolds on horseback, and rode with him to a match on Moulsey Hurst. The steed ridden by Reynolds was from Astley’s, and the Duke led the way to where a body of soldiers were exercising with gun, drum, and trumpet. The circus war-horse immediately became dramatic, going through a course of unparalleled performances, which he concluded by flinging his sky-blue rider. But there were, besides the practical jokers, serious and accomplished cricketers. For bowling, David Harris; for batting, Tom Walker; and for wicket-keeping, sharp-eyed Hammond, had no equal except in Lord Frederick Beauclerc, who excelled, each in his speciality, and could beat everybody at all three.

In those days, the Mary-le-bone Club had no particular ground. From May to September they moved from place to place, encamping here and bivouacking there by day, and taking their ease in their inn by night. Hospitality varied this course very pleasantly. Sir Horace Mann, the King of Cricket, kept open house for the club at his seat near Maidstone, or at his marine residence at Margate. This hospitality did not cause him to be respected by the practical jokers. Some of the jokes lacked decency; and we do not see much fun in the emptying a man’s box of its snuff and filling it with hellebore, to make him sneeze a hundred times for one! It was a rule that no offence was to be taken at the roughest of these jokes, but it was not always in the power of a man to seem delighted at them. We quite sympathise with Miles Peter Andrews, who, being asked why he looked serious when everybody was laughing loudly at a jest perpetrated by the most convivial of the members, answered--‘My dear sir, I can see no fun in a man who owes me three guineas!’

The hospitality of Mann to the club was, if possible, exceeded by that of Richard Leigh, whose welcomes to the members at Wilmington were feudal in their sumptuousness. His good taste and liberality were manifested in many ways. His musical gatherings were exquisite treats. His love for athletic sports was shown in his zeal at getting up cricket matches. The eccentric Duchess of Gordon, who had married two dukes and a marquis to her three daughters, once said aloud to Richard Leigh: ‘I am the _first_, but you are the second, match-maker in England, Mr. Leigh.’

One of the droller incidents of the club-matches was long remembered. Reynolds, who was but an amateur, was one day called upon to go in for a member who was too ill to play. He went to the wicket with a feeling of fright, as if he stood in front of a loaded pistol levelled at him, when he saw that the formidable Harris was about to bowl. In his own words, he says: ‘My terrors were so much increased, by the mock pity and sympathy of Hammond, Beldam, and others round the wicket, that when this mighty bowler--the _Jupiter Tonans_--hurled his bolt at me, I shut my eyes in the intensity of my panic, and mechanically gave a random desperate blow, which, to my utter astonishment, was followed by a loud cry all over the ring of “Run! run!” I did run, and with all my force; and getting three notches, the Duke of Richmond, John Tufton, Leigh, Anguish, and other arch-wags, advanced and formally presented to me twenty-five sixpences in a hat, collected from the bystanders as “the reward of merit.” Even Lord Winchilsea and Sir Horace Mann contributed to this, and then all playfully commenced promoting a new subscription, which only stopped because I could not stop the next ball. To my great joy, up went my stumps and out I walked--certainly with some little _éclat_, being the first member of the club who had been considered a _regular player_--_i.e._, _paid_ for his services.’

We have now to say a few words of some other clubs and their purposes. In the last century, Benjamin Franklin was in the chair at a private club which used to meet weekly at ‘The Prince of Wales’ in Conduit Street. A proposal was made to do something for starving authors. The members murmured over their pipes, stared at the punch-bowl, and thought authors were vulgar people, who were not worth being thought about. The matter, however, was not allowed to drop. Year after year some kind soul or another brought it hot upon the anvil, hammered at it till he was weary, and then passed the hammer to another and another, and he to another, till at last the _something_ was beaten into shape, and shape into substance, till there was fashioned that excellent and praiseworthy institution, the Literary Fund. In its first year only a few shillings could be spared for one hungry author, but _now_ it sends forth welcome relief by hundreds of pounds.

This Literary Fund brings to our mind a literary club which we must not pass over--namely, ‘The Syncretics.’ The worthy gentleman who invented the name has never been discovered; but, dignified as the title looked, it sorely troubled some of the members, particularly those who had looked into a dictionary for the interpretation, yet who, on being asked for the meaning of ‘Syncretic,’ had forgotten the dictionary definition. The object of this united body was the encouragement of the dramatic element among the members. They were to write plays, which managers were to put on the stage for them; and as each play was acted, the Syncretics were bound, or were supposed to be bound, to support the drama of their brother-member by enthusiastic demonstrations of applause. Their motto seemed to be: ‘_Hors nous et nos amis nul n’aura de l’esprit_.’

When the amiable society had furnished nearly as many new dramas as there were members, the difficulty arose as to which play should have the precedence. It was a delicate matter. Each writer saw peculiar claims and merits in his own play, and those members whose pieces were as yet only on the stocks thought that the club should not be in too great a hurry, lest, by failing in their first venture, they should discourage the possible or probable new Shakespeares who as yet lacked time to bring about their dramatic _dénouements_. At length a decision was arrived at, and a play called ‘Martinuzzi’ had the good or evil fortune to be selected for representation. The public expectation had been stimulated to a high degree, but disappointment followed. ‘Martinuzzi’ was a lugubrious failure; but an ill-natured world would have it that it was most violently hissed by the author’s fellow-clubbists, the Syncretics. What will not a censorious world assert? The scandal-mongers affirmed that it was a Syncretic rule for each member, except the author, to hiss the play in course of representation, as each sibilant member hoped, by damning his brother’s play, to obtain a better chance of bringing his own forward earlier.

Is there anyone surviving whose pantomimic memories can flash 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.

It is a singular circumstance that, after Hyde Park--the park which had been opened to the people by King Charles--had been sold and divided under Cromwell, ‘James’s Park’ was preserved. The latter was open only to members of Cromwell’s court and to a few other privileged persons who lived in Petty France, on the south-east side of the park. Milton was one of these. Later on a wider permission was given. Commonwealth ladies ruffled it there, and Cromwell himself paced it in serious converse with serious men. His wife kept her cows there, and talked of them with mild congenial spirits. With Charles II. came courtiers, swains, nymphs, lovers. Some took the Mall, and practised gallantry openly; others--_chacun avec sa chacune_--resorted to the welcome shades round Rosamond’s Pond, in the south-west corner of the park. Under the elms in what is now Pall Mall, or under the limes which skirted the Mall in the park, all that was gay, and light, and frivolous, frisked and frolicked; but thoughtful men threaded their way among them too, and shook their heads at much which some people would have shut their eyes at. Charles, standing under the park wall to exchange light talk with Nell Gwynne, who looked down and laughed upon him from her garden on the other side, was a sight which made Evelyn groan aloud. It was a type of the general naughtiness which prevailed. Half the graceless fops and hussies of the comedy of the period play out their impudent drama in St. James’s Park. In the comedies of that time the manners of people of quality are reflected. As has been remarked, how they dressed, talked, and thought; what they did, and how they did it; what they hoped for, and how they pursued it: all may be learnt from contemporary comedy. We fully agree with the judgment which says of the personages, that the fine gentlemen are such unmitigated rascals, and the women, girls, and matrons are such unlovely hussies--in rascality and unseemliness quite a match for the men--that one escapes from their wretched society, and a knowledge of their one object, and the confidences of the abominable creatures engaged therein, with a feeling of strong want of purification and of that ounce of civet by which the imagination may be sweetened.

With all this there was a leaven of what was respectable or harmless. Charles himself may not seem heroic, but he is at least harmless as we see him, playing with his dogs, feeding his various birds, large and small, in Birdcage Walk, or walking to Whitehall, looking fresh from the dip we are told he had just taken in the canal. Occasionally a thief who admired the king’s breed of puppies would steal a favourite as it trotted at the very heels of majesty. ‘Will they never leave robbing his Majesty?’ is the query at the close of an advertisement, the opening of which implies how often the king was despoiled: ‘We must call upon you again for a black dog,’ &c.

When we remember that Charles often walked alone in both the parks, and that plotters were abroad, we may wonder that he was never molested by anyone worse than an enthusiast. It was a time when promenading ladies in the park took no offence at being accosted by gentlemen who were strangers. On the other hand, ladies saw nothing wrong in taking with them, in their drives in Hyde Park, some handsome boy who acted as girl on the stage, or walking with him in the Mall in his histrionic costume. The great glory of St. James’s was during Charles II.’s reign. His figure always has the park for a background. When he passed away the park was seldom visited by a sovereign; but William occasionally shut himself up on Duck Island, and smoked his pipe as he sat amid the all but stagnant waters. When the seventeenth century closed St. James’s belonged to the public, the lower classes of which went thither to contemplate the leaders of fashion and the gaudiest flowers of husseydom.