A ride by rail of half an hour takes one to Sydenham. It is a charming walk from the station through the tastefully arranged grounds, with their shrubberies, roseries, and fountains, along the pebble-strewn paths, crowded this day with visitors. The palace itself is so like its familiar pictures as to need no description. Much of the grandeur of its vast proportions within is lost by its divisions and subdivisions. There are courts representing the various nations of the earth,—America, as usual, felicitously and truthfully shown up by a pair of scantily attired savages under a palm tree; there are the courts of the Alhambra, of Nineveh, and of Pompeii; there are fountains, and statues, and bazaars innumerable, where one may purchase almost anything as a souvenir; there are cafés where one may refresh the body, and an immense concert hall where one may delight the soul,—and how much more I cannot tell, for the crowd was almost beyond belief, and a much more interesting study than Egyptian remains, or even the exquisite mass of perfumed bloom, that made the air like summer, and the whole place a garden. They were of the English middle class, the upper middle class, bordering upon the nobility,—these rotund, fine-looking gentlemen in white vests and irreproachable broadcloth, these stout, red-faced, richly-attired ladies, with their soft-eyed, angular daughters following in their train, or clinging to their arms. We listened for an hour to the queen's own band in scarlet and gold, and then came back to town, meeting train after train filled to overflowing with expensively arrayed humanity in white kids, going out for the evening.
A DAY AT HAMPTON COURT.
It was Whit-Monday,—the workingman's holiday,—a day of sun and shower; but we took our turn upon the outside of the private omnibus chartered for the occasion, unmindful of the drops; our propelling power, six gray horses. By virtue of this private establishment we were free to pass through Hyde Park,—that breathing-place of aristocracy, where no public vehicle, no servant without livery, is tolerated. It was early, and only the countless hoof-prints upon Rotten Row suggested the crowd of wealth and fashion that would throng here later in the day. One solitary equestrian there was; perched upon a guarded saddle, held in her place by some concealed band, serenely content, rode a queen baby in long, white robes. A groom led the little pony. She looked at us in grave wonder as we dashed by,—born to the purple! I cannot begin to describe to you the rising up of London for this day of pleasure; the decking of itself out in holiday attire; the garnishing of itself with paper flowers; the smooth, hard roads leading into the country, all alive; the drinking, noisy crowd about the door of every pot-house along the way. It was a delightful drive of a dozen or more miles, through the most charming suburbs imaginable,—past lawns, and gardens, and green old trees shading miniature parks; past "detached" villas that had blossomed into windows; indeed, the plate glass upon houses of most modest pretension was almost reckless extravagance in our eyes, forgetting, as we did, the slight duty to be paid here upon what is, with us, an expensive luxury. No wonder the English are a healthful people,—the sun shines upon them. I like their manner of house-building, of home-making. They set up first a great bay-window, with a room behind it, which is of secondary importance, with wide steps leading up to a door at the side. They fill this window with the rarest, rosiest, most rollicksome flowers. Then, if there remain time, and space, and means, other rooms are added, the bay-windows increasing in direct proportion; while shades, drawn shades, are a thing unknown. "But the carpets?" They are so foolish as to value health above carpets.
It was high noon when we rolled up the wide avenue of Bushey Park, with its double border of gigantic chestnuts and limes, through Richmond Park, with its vast sweep of greensward flecked with the sunbeams, dripping like the rain through the royal oaks, past Richmond terrace, with its fine residences looking out upon the Thames, the translucent stream, pure and beautiful here, before going down to the city to be defiled—like many a life. We dismounted at the gates to the palace, in the rambling old village that clings to its skirts, and joined the crowd passing through its wide portals.
It is an old palace thrown aside, given over to poor relatives, by royalty,—as we throw aside an old gown; a vast pile of dingy, red brick that has straggled over acres of Hampton parish, and is kept within bounds by a high wall of the same ugly material. It has pushed itself up into towers and turrets, with pinnacles and spires rising from its battlemented walls. It has thrust itself out into oriel and queer little latticed windows that peep into the gardens and overhang the three quadrangles, and is with its vast gardens and park, with its wide canal and avenues of green old trees, the most delightfully ugly, old place imaginable. Here kings and queens have lived and loved, suffered and died, from Cardinal Wolsey's time down to the days of Queen Anne. It is now one of England's show places; one portion of its vast extent, with the grounds, being thrown open to the public, the remainder given to decayed nobility, or wandering, homeless representatives of royalty,—a kind of royal almshouse, in fact. A curtained window, the flutter of a white hand, were to us the only signs of inhabitation.
Through thirty or more narrow, dark, bare rooms,—bare but for the pictures that crowded the walls,—we wandered. There were two or three halls of stately proportions finely decorated with frescoes by Verrio, and one or two royal stairways, up and down which slippered feet have passed, silken skirts trailed, and heavy hearts been carried, in days gone by. The pictures are mostly portraits of brave men and lovely women, of kings and queens and royal favorites,—poor Nell Gwynne among them, who began life by selling oranges in a theatre, and ended it by selling virtue in a palace. The Vandyck faces are wonderfully beautiful. They gaze upon you through a mist, a golden haze,—like that which hangs over the hills in the Indian summer,—from out deep, spiritual eyes; a dream of fair women they are.
There were one or two royal beds, where uneasy have lain the heads that wore a crown, and half a dozen chairs worked in tapestry by royal fingers,—whether preserved for their questionable beauty, or because of the rarity of royal industry, I do not know. We wandered through the shrubberies, paid a penny to see the largest grape vine in the world,—and wished we had given it to the heathen, so like its less distinguished sisters did the vine appear,—and at last lunched at the King's Arms, a queer little inn just outside the gates, edging our way with some difficulty through the noisy, guzzling crowd around the door—the crowd that, having reached the acme of the day's felicity, was fast degenerating into a quarrel. In the long, bare room at the head of the narrow, winding stairs, we found comparative quiet. The tables were covered with joints of beef, with loaves of bread, pitchers of ale, and the ubiquitous cheese. A red-faced young man in tight new clothes—like a strait-jacket—occupied one end of our table with his blushing sweetheart. A band of wandering harpers harped upon their harps to the crowd of wrangling men and blowsy women in the open court below; strangely out of tune were the harps, out of time the measure, according well with the spirit of the hour. A loud-voiced girl decked out in tawdry finery, with face like solid brass, sang "Annie Laurie" in hard, metallic tones,—O Music, how many murders have been committed in thy name!—then passed a cup for pennies, with many a jest and rude, bold laugh. We were glad when the day was done,—glad when we had turned away from it all.
QUEEN VICTORIA'S HOME AT WINDSOR.
The castle itself is a huge, battlemented structure of gray stone,—a fortress as well as a palace,—with a home park of five hundred acres, the private grounds of Mrs. Guelph, and, beyond that, a grand park of eighteen hundred acres. But do not imagine that she lives here with only her children and servants about her,—this kindly German widow, whose throne was once in the hearts of her people. Royalty is a complicated affair,—a wheel within a wheel,—and reminds us of nothing so much as "the house that Jack built."
This is the Castle of Windsor.