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 nobleness." Yet the Serpentine, too, has its tragic associations. Perhaps it suggests, in its beauty, the haunting lines:
"When Life hangs heavy, Death remains the door
To endless rest beside the Stygian shore."
Always a noted spot for suicides, it was the place chosen by Harriet Westbrook, the unfortunate first wife of Shelley, 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 Shelley's, during the two years which immediately preceded her death, tended to cause." "Shelley," 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, noblest, and most lamented of her line. With her, most of all, are the associations of Kensington Gardens now bound up. In these pretty walks crowded still by the children and nurses of the wealthy and noble, 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!