“When the mob during the Reform Bill agitation stoned the house, the windows of the gallery on the first floor fronting the Park were broken, and some of those facing Piccadilly. The Duke thereupon caused outside shutter blinds of steel to be fixed to the windows (similar blinds still protect the picture gallery windows, but I think these are now wood). Those in front were certainly removed by the second Duke. When the first Duke was asked to remove them he is reported to have said: ‘No! They shall remain where they are as long as I live, as a sign of the gullibility of the mob, and the worthlessness of the popularity for which they who give it can assign no reason.’
“There is a fine portrait of Napoleon as First Consul by Dabos in the small yellow drawing-room of Apsley House, to which rather a curious story is attached. In May 1824 the Duke wrote an invitation to dinner to a Mr. Fleming. The messenger, by mistake, delivered it at the house of another gentleman of the same name. Finding his error, the man went again and asked for the return of the invitation. Mr. Fleming replied that the invitation signed by the Duke had been delivered to him, and he meant to avail himself of it, as he should never have such an honour again—mistake or no mistake, he should come to dinner to Apsley House. The Duke was told, and, after inviting him, could hardly refuse him admittance, so made the best of it, though Mr. Fleming found a very frigid reception. The next day he sent this fine picture to His Grace by way of amends.
“At the foot of the great staircase is a gigantic nude statue of Napoleon by Canova, a splendid work eleven feet high.
“In the long gallery overlooking the Row and the Park, surely one of the most stately rooms in London, was held every recurring 18th of June, to the end of the great Duke’s life, the Waterloo banquet, where the dwindling band of companions in arms of the Chief met in the glittering panoply of the brave days gone by, to celebrate the crowning victory that brought peace to Europe. The well-known print by Moon represents one of the last of these historic banquets, where, under the splendid canvasses of Velasquez, Murillo, and Titian, the Duke of Wellington is represented standing at the long, crowded dinner-table, surrounded by his old comrades, to propose his annual toast. In the large yellow drawing-room the portraits of many of the old generals hang: Lord Anglesea, Picton, Hill, Somerset, Beresford, Alava, and the rest of them, their strong faces glowing still with the bright brushes of Lawrence and Pienemann, and their splendid uniforms shaming the utilitarian khaki of to-day. Some of these great old soldiers, like Lord Combermere—padded and dyed phantoms they seemed, as one recollects them—were spared to ride in the Park almost daily within the memory of those not yet effete, but not many of them outlived their great leader.”
A recent addition to the few pieces of statuary that enrich Hyde Park is Watts’ colossal “Physical Energy,” which in 1907 was placed on a site in Kensington Gardens, near the Serpentine. It is the most majestic work of its kind that the nation possesses, and even now, perhaps, we do not realise how splendid was the gift. The horse and rider are early recollections of mine. When I was a girl some time in the eighties, I remember being taken to Melbury Road by Dr. Bond, at that time surgeon to Westminster Hospital, and also to the Metropolitan Police, to see the great painter, G. F. Watts. At this period I was painting a good deal myself, and exhibiting little pictures with the Lady Artists, etc., and Dr. Bond, who was very fond of art and wished to encourage me to take it up seriously, suggested this expedition to Watts’ studio. I was a little alarmed as I drove up with the doctor in his brougham, and the alarm was not decreased after walking up a flight of stairs to see a little old gentlemen in a black velvet skull cap step forth to greet us.
This was the great Watts himself. He seemed to be very old, although he could not have been seventy, for he did not die for about twenty years after that, during which time he re-married.
The things that impressed me most were the age of the artist, his apparent feebleness, his great geniality and charm, and, beyond all else, the enormous statue, “Physical Energy,” on which he was at that time at work. He touched it and fondled it, stroked it, and spoke of it with the warmest enthusiasm and love. His life’s interest seemed on that occasion to be centred in his statue. He continued to work at it for many years, after which it was exhibited.
Perhaps the most delightful modern innovation in Hyde Park, or rather Kensington Gardens, is the arrangement for tea in the summer. The ground is spread with little tables, sheltered beneath pretty shady umbrellas, and shaded still further by the glorious elms and oaks and limes. Here tea at a shilling a head, or at another part of the ground for half that price, is served on warm days. It is quite a fashionable place for little tea-parties, and bachelor-girls or old-maid men, who live lives of solitude in “diggings” or clubs, come forth like the butterflies and entertain their friends in this inexpensive yet charming way, by giving a tea-fight within sight of where our good Queen Victoria was born.
This is advance at the western end of the Park, but farther east, that is to say in Piccadilly, still further advance is found. For within a stone’s throw of Hyde Park Corner, and near where the Duke of Cambridge lived so long, is a Ladies’ Club and also an Automobile Club. Ladies’ Clubs are not so new, although it is within the memory of many women of fifty when the first women’s club was started by an Englishwoman, Mrs. Croley, in New York. But even five years ago motors were of such recent introduction that a club for enthusiasts would have been a meagre affair, while now it is filled to overflowing. So quickly moves the world.