Hyde Park, Its History and Romance

by Mrs. Alec-Tweedie

“It is also interesting to watch the different aspects it presents at different times of the day. How fascinating, is it not, to see the strong, youthful figures of young England plunging into the cool water, racing, boxing, and playing games, and to see the men, of the same steel-like, well-proportioned race as the magnificent English horses galloping up and down.

“After four o’clock Hyde Park displays a spectacle of wealth, beauty, and elegance such as can only be found in cities of a very ancient culture; perhaps only in the Vienna ‘Prater’ or in the ‘Buen-Retiro’ of Madrid. But while in Vienna the light ‘fiacre’ predominates, and in Madrid the heavy state-coaches drawn by majestic Andalusians, London shows every conceivable kind of vehicle, from the stately turn-out with footmen with powdered hair to the modern electric-car.”

An Airing in Hyde Park, 1793.
From a Print in Crace Collection, British Museum.

The keynote of this fully appreciative criticism lies in a single sentence—“so different from anything else.” Let us take credit to ourselves that we have been content to let Nature work its own will to a great extent. In return Nature has given us much of her best. To those familiar with the cultivated glories of Versailles and others of the huge continental gardens, where rows and rows of well-laid flower-beds and lawns of velvet testify to the loving care of an army of custodians, there may seem something disparaging in the comparison to “an English heath.” But what, after all, is more glorious than an English heath in the first tints of autumn, what more health-giving and welcome in the heart of London than broad acres, over which one may roam undisturbed, owing their beauty to the whole panorama of lawn and tree and shrub, rather than to the attention to smaller details which gives delight to a well-ordered garden?

For really beautiful gardening, in the true sense, one must go to the Regent’s Park, or to Ranelagh Club. Let no one suppose, however, that Nature is the only gardener on the Park staff. Because the hand of man is unobtrusive, it does not follow that there is a lack of attention in assisting Nature in her beautiful work. An immense amount of planting and bedding is constantly going on, results of which are seen in the always fresh appearance of the Park, and the glories of the flowering plants as they follow one another in season. If “landscape gardening”—a much-abused term—be looked for, it may be admitted there is little of it.

Indeed, almost the sole attempt has been the construction of the waterfall trickling between the boulders, and the pool, covered in summer with green growth, below the Serpentine’s steep bank. It is pretty enough, and quite a paradise for the birds and rabbits, to whom the railed-in enclosure is sacred, and yet it appears oddly out of keeping with the surroundings. It seems to have been an experiment at artificial decoration which has not been repeated. The flatness of the ground generally has no doubt set limitations on the work of the landscape gardener; and where the space is so large, the natural is better than the artificial landscape.

One need not be a botanist to admire the endless variety of the trees alone—their grotesque trunks and tapering stems; their leaves, so divergent in form and structure; the blooms that in season conceal the wealth of the green by a mass of bright colour, and when the chestnut spikes break out, Hyde Park can almost rival for a week or two the famous avenue in Bushey Park.

Earlier in the year, when the trees are throwing out their fresh green leaves, the almond blossom glows, the grass looks fresh, and the daffodils and narcissi give hope of coming achievement. Possibly Hyde Park possesses no trees so ancestral as the old elm which stands on the edge of the lake in the neighbourhood of St. James’s Park, beneath which the monks at Westminster are said to have fished for a Friday’s meal. It still bears leaves, and though its roots are plastered up, seems likely to thrive for many years. But there is at least one patriarch, an old oak stump covered with ivy, on the right side of the water near the superintendent’s house, to which an interesting story attaches. It is said that the tree was raised from an acorn gathered from the celebrated Boscobel oak, in which Charles II. concealed himself after the battle of Worcester in 1651. Held up by props, with its trunk devoid of bark, and cracked in all directions, it survives as a relic of bygone days.