(London. Printed by P. L. for J. P.)
A Prostitute Drummed Out of Hyde Park.
People were at their wits’ end to know what to do at the time of the Plague, but some laughed at a novel proposal made in London while the scourge was raging, that a vessel should be freighted with peeled onions and sail along the Thames to absorb the infection of the air; after which it should proceed to sea and throw them overboard.
But an unexpected disinfectant followed in the Great Fire, which stamped out the contagion so well that never again has London been visited by the plague. A half-witted Frenchman swung on the gallows at Tyburn on his own confession of having started the conflagration, though when making his final exit from this world he denied it.
This Frenchman was named Robert Hubert. In the opinion of many he was a madman, but in spite of this an inscription was placed on the Monument that the Great Fire was the result of a Papist conspiracy. This was removed by James II., but replaced by William III. and remained until 1830, when it was finally done away with.
In the same year as the Fire, and almost before its flames were quenched, the gay world resumed the daily drive to the Park, and we again find Pepys joining a colleague at the Admiralty and adjourning thither in a coach to secure a quiet tête-à-tête on some State question. We read of him attending a theatre or conducting his favourite actress or another of his amours, for a drive in the Park, or refreshment at the Lodge. Syllabub was greatly in fashion at Cake House. It was composed of milk whipped up with wine and sugar, or cream whipped with cider.
Pepys took his wife for frequent outings, enjoying the gossip round the Ring, dining at the “Pillars of Hercules”—an inn near the site of the present Apsley House—or eating a cheese-cake at the Lodge “with a tankard of milk”; experiencing a sense of shame at being seen in a hackney coach. “To Park in a hackney coach, so would not go into the Tour, but round the Park, and to the House, and there at the door eat and drank.”
His criticism of dress was strong to the last, for one of the first entries he makes after the return of “London” to Hyde Park was on 21st April 1666, and runs:
“Thence, with my Lord Brouncke [the first President of the Royal Society] in his coach to Hide Parke, the first time I have been there this year. There the King was; but I was sorry to see my Lady Castlemaine, for the mourning forceing all the ladies to go in black, with their hair plain, and without any spots [patches] I find her to be a much more ordinary woman than ever I durst have thought she was.”