A Park was like a Chase, as to laws and custodians, but was always enclosed by a wall or paling. Later, Parks and Chases could be held by private individuals, but a Forest could only belong to a King.
Situated as Hyde Park now is, right in the heart of the great city, with its seven million inhabitants, it seems well-nigh impossible to picture the same place even half a century ago, standing as it then did on the border of market gardens. Yet such was the case. The Memoirs of a modern artist like William Frith, R.A., painter of the once famous “Derby Day,” and only published at the end of the nineteenth century, speak of the writer’s youthful rambles through the market gardens on which now stands Cromwell Road, adjacent to the Park.
A perfect storehouse of such recollection is Frederic Harrison, historian, essayist, Positivist, and man of letters. In 1907, referring to Hyde Park, he wrote me the following:
“I am more of a boy at seventy-five than I was at fifteen”; and then he goes on to say how well he remembers the neighbourhood where Tyburn formerly stood.
“When I came to London in 1840, Connaught Place was nearly the farthest western extension of regular houses along the Bayswater Road. From Albion Street, westwards and northwards, there were open market gardens. Hyde Park Gardens and Square, Oxford and Cambridge Squares, Gloucester and Sussex Squares were just beginning to emerge, and I have played cricket on the site of Westbourne Terrace. At that time a long brick wall ran along the north side of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens beside the Bayswater Road, and very dismal and dirty it was. There was no Marble Arch then, and the burial-ground was used daily. Notting Hill Gate, of course, was a “pike.” Working people, servants in livery, and dogs were not allowed in Kensington Gardens. On the occasion of a storm the rule was relaxed, and footmen for once were allowed to bring in the umbrellas!
“My father, who was born in the eighteenth century, as a boy lived in No. 9 Berkeley Street, opposite to the garden of Devonshire House, in the house which my aunt ultimately sold to Prince Louis Napoleon. About the year 1810, the boys would often spend a holiday in Hyde Park, which was then a deer-park, as rural and solitary as Windsor Forest now. Of course, there was neither bridge over the Serpentine nor Powder Magazine. The corner of the Park between Kensington Gardens and the Serpentine was a solitude, where the boys would bring their baskets and picnic.
“Sixty years ago I can remember magnificent forest trees, chestnuts, oaks, and elms, in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, as fine as any in this island. They are nearly all gone. I have seen about a thousand swept away.
“The rows of carriages, often two deep, continued in Hyde Park down to about 1860, as thick as shown in Doyle’s sketches for Pip’s Diary in Punch. Ten or twenty thousand ‘bucks’ or ‘dandies’ hung over the rails on the footpath to look on. And the carriages were so closely packed in line that they could only just walk. On one occasion, about 1856, the throng of carriages to see the muster of the Four-in-Hand Club Drags was so great that the carriages could not be extricated from the line. Many had to remain into the night, and the fine ladies were obliged to descend and walk home in the dusk.
“The famous tearing down of the railings of the Park in 1866 was an accident, and almost a joke. A good-humoured crowd had gathered to see what Mr. Edmond Beales and the Reform League would do when the police stopped them from entering the Park. Mr. Beales turned back and went home, and never knew what happened, as he told me himself, till he reached his home at night. The crowd, seeing no fun, began to amuse themselves with singing and climbing up on the railing, which was hardly strong enough, or high enough, to stop a flock of sheep. Suddenly, with shouts of laughter, the rail fell inwards, and the crowd naturally followed, but without a thought of any concerted action. The people got hot and angry on the following days. But the famous Hyde Park Riot of 1866 was a mere street scramble owing to the rotten state of the old railing.”