But it is the fate of humanity that in the gayest scenes of life dark Tragedy will thrust her hand, and in the midst of this wonderful assembly in 1816 spread the news that Harriet Westbrook, the wife of the poet Shelley, had committed suicide in the Serpentine.
Fifty years later—to make a wide digression—Mrs. Jane Welsh Carlyle went for a drive in Hyde Park, entering at Queen’s Gate, where she alighted and took her little dog for a run. After returning to the carriage, she drove to a quiet place on the Tyburnia side of the Park, and the dog was put out again, but opposite Stanhope Place it was knocked over by a passing brougham. Mrs. Carlyle and the occupant of the other brougham alighted, and Mrs. Carlyle returned to her carriage with the dog, after which the coachman heard nothing but a slight whimper from the animal. After driving round the Park again, he was surprised at receiving no orders, and seeing his mistress in exactly the same posture as he had observed her some distance back, he asked a lady to look in, who found that Mrs. Carlyle had passed away.
Whether the tragedy of Shelley’s wife, and others of like kind, gave Society a distaste for the vicinity of the Serpentine, history does not say, but the drive from Apsley House to Cumberland Gate became the fashionable quarter. The four-rowed belt of walnut-trees had been removed some time before, and thus the road was considerably widened, but it was commonly crowded to excess. There were already evidences of the Man in the Street asserting his claim to this former Royal preserve, not so much on week days as on Sundays, and Greville tells us of the Duchess of Cambridge being mobbed to her very door, and so terrified that she almost fainted. Moreover, on such occasions as the Fair in 1814, the Coronation of George IV., and also the severe winters of 1820 and 1821, the populace reigned supreme, and Society was not by any means a mighty factor in Hyde Park.
It was during this migration to the east side of the Park and Park Lane in 1820 that two dozen chairs were first set out at Stanhope Gate, the forerunners of those 35,000 which are now to be found scattered about on the grass and by the gravel-walks.
Following closely on all the follies and shows in honour of George IV.’s Coronation came a most disgraceful scene. Caroline of Brunswick died a few days after she received the refusal of the King to allow her to enjoy the rights of a Queen. According to her desire she was to be buried in Brunswick, and the body was to be embarked at Harwich. The most direct route to that place would have been through the City, but, lest the citizens should wish to pay a last honour to the poor lady who had passed such an unhappy life in their country, the order was given that the body should be taken to Harwich by a circuitous route. The procession was denuded of all dignity, and directions were given that it should turn up Church Street, Kensington, into the Bayswater Road. But this the crowd, which numbered some thousands, would not permit. A company of Life Guards were sent for, but on their arrival they had to give way before the dense mob.
It was finally decided to take the direct route to London. Orders were again sent that the procession must go round, and not through the City. The crowd, however, prevented it from turning into Hyde Park or up Park Lane. But by a rapid manœuvre, part of the troops with the hearse forced their way into the Park, the gate was closed on the mob, and the body was taken at full gallop from Hyde Park Corner to the Cumberland Gate. There the crowd forestalled them, and made all progress impossible. Volleys were fired, and caused a temporary giving way, which enabled the procession to move towards Edgware Road, which was also rendered impassable. All this went on in a terrible storm of wind and rain. After again firing on the populace, with the result that only a little headway was made, and struggling for seven hours to obey orders, those in command of the procession were forced to turn back and pass by Tyburn, Oxford Street, Holborn, and Drury Lane into the Strand, to the City. For thus giving way the officer in command lost his commission.
It is impossible to contemplate such an outrageous scene without a glance at that calm February morning, almost a century later, grey, still and chilly, when from early dawn the population of London—even to the loafer and the noisy hooligan of the street—went with subdued demeanour towards Hyde Park, there to stand, or sit in the trees for hours, until the funeral cortége of Queen Victoria should pass through London. Even Nature herself seemed to hold her breath as the stately procession wound its way across the Park, on that very road taken by the galloping horses eighty years before. Where a raging crowd had run yelling with fury and indignation in Park Lane, a mass of the people silently stood with bared heads—rows upon rows of them—as that simple gun-carriage, with its regal burden, slowly filed by and vanished through the Marble Arch. Where the clattering hoofs of the soldiers’ steeds at the funeral of Caroline of Brunswick had mixed with the fury of the storm, sovereigns, princes, ambassadors, statesmen, soldiers, and sailors, paced by with saddened mien, to the muffled strains of military bands—a pageant as imposing as it was solemn.
But returning to those days of George IV., one notable figure at least must not escape mention—the beautiful Lady Blessington. How beautiful she was subsequent generations have learnt from the picture by Sir Thomas Lawrence, now among the treasures of the Wallace Collection—a portrait which probably has been more often engraved than the work of any other British portrait-painter.
She is represented about eighteen years of age, when she had recently come from Ireland, and in the first flush of her maidenhood; though, in fact, she had been forced into marriage when only fourteen with a worthless Captain Farmer, whom she left after three months.
When a widow of twenty-nine she married the Earl of Blessington. From comparative penury, she was raised at one step into the most luxurious and fashionable life of the time. Her equipage was considered one of the most elegant in the Park, where she drove regularly until she went abroad with her husband.