Thanks to his efforts, and those of Sir Francis Burdett, Mr. Windham, and Mr. Creevy, the scheme was abandoned and the park saved.
As has been said, the name of Rotten Row is not of any great antiquity, the first printed mention of it being only found as recently as 1781, though it is believed that the ride in question was known by that name for some years anterior to that date. Though it is still much frequented at certain hours. Rotten Row does not now evoke the idea of fashion and pleasure, combined with a certain air of luxurious dissipation, which it formerly did. People nowadays, I fancy, go there more to take a ride for the benefit of their health than anything else, and the joking letter written by a friend of mine in the early ’sixties would to-day be quite meaningless. The writer was under the impression that I was out of town, but, chancing to be taking a stroll in Hyde Park, caught sight of me riding there, which prompted the following missive:—
Dear Lady Dorothy—I thought you were in innocence with your flowers, but, instead, find you caracoling in the paradise of the lost—in Rotten Row.
In old days no one would have dreamt of riding in the Row in country costume; but now, I fancy, no rule whatever prevails about this, and people ride in anything they like, whilst the brilliant and eccentric figures which at times used to make their appearance have now totally disappeared, having given way to a dull and monotonous uniformity of costume.
During the season white duck trousers used to be much worn by gentlemen in the park, and the extreme tightness which fashion at one time prescribed for these occasionally led to some ludicrous incidents. A former Duchess of Beaufort, I remember, used to relate a story of such a mishap having happened to one of her admirers. Years ago there was a good deal more romance surrounding the love-making and engagements of young people than prevails to-day, and young men would often send a little present to the lady of their choice with the message that its acceptance would signify that their suit had proved successful, and its return the opposite. At the time before the Duchess’s marriage, when she was Lady Georgiana Curzon, a certain peer who was very much in love with her at last determined to learn his fate, and so sent her a beautiful little riding-whip, together with an impassioned note, in which he said that he should be in the park the next morning, when he would expect to discover her decision. This would be indicated by her riding-whip; that is to say, the presence of one he had sent her would mean acceptance, and its absence refusal.
The next morning the young lady duly rode in the park, but, to his extreme disgust, her expectant swain saw that the riding-whip she carried was not the previous day’s gift, whereupon, overcome with rage and mortification, he at once put his horse into a gallop, with the result (at the recollection of which the Duchess could never help laughing) that his tight white trousers burst right up the side.
BARON DE GÉRAMB
In Rotten Row Lady Diana Beauclerk was once wont to ride in a green velvet riding habit, whilst the Prince of Orange caracoled by her side. Here also used to canter the dashing Baron de Géramb, whose plumed kalpack and furred pelisse made such an impression upon the British military authorities as to cause the creation of certain cavalry regiments dressed as hussars, which are still part of the English army. This Baron, who ended his days as the chief of a Trappist monastery, was an extraordinary and somewhat mysterious character, who, after having offered to raise 24,000 Croatian troops to assist in the overthrow of Buonaparte, was denounced as an impostor and ordered out of England. Upon this he barricaded himself in his house, hanging out a board on which was written, “My house is my castle,” and announced that he would sustain a long siege whilst awaiting the arrival of his Croatians, and at the last extremity would blow up his house and all Bayswater rather than yield. His resistance, however, did not last long, for that very evening he was captured, taken to Harwich, and sent out of the country. In later life Géramb, becoming a monk, rose, as has been said, to a very high position in the Trappist community. Indeed, when he went to Rome in 1837 he created such a sensation that Pope Gregory XVI. said, “There are two popes now—Pope Géramb and myself.” The favourite motto of Géramb, in his later years, when he had become a pattern of simple devotion and zeal, was “se taire, souffrir et mourir,” words which he caused to be inscribed on the walls of his modest cell. This Procureur-Général of the Trappist Order, who was the creator of the English hussar, died at Rome on the 15th of March 1848.
The era of the dandies has long since passed away, and were he to return to the scene of his sartorial triumphs, D’Orsay,
Prince of unblemished boots and short napped hat,