WONDERFUL changes have been made at Hyde Park Corner within a few years. Many have considered that this was one of the most effective architectural bits in London. For here was the great archway with the avenue beyond, while facing it was the elegant screen or colonnade, through which was seen the Park and the procession of carriages and promenaders. A dreadful and ungainly alteration has been made. A sort of unmeaning triangular slope has been cleared, the arch has been carted away and placed at an extraordinary and unmeaning angle. The space has been cut up in roadways, with triangular or rather mutton-chop-shaped “refuges,” in one of which an equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington has been set up. The bold irregularity of the whole—barbarous almost—causes a feeling of despair, for no amount of statues or decoration will cure the original radical defect. What must be lamented most is the injury to the beautiful open colonnade, designed by Mr. Decimus Burton to stand at the side of a street, and to be faced by other buildings. Now it looks too poor and mean to flank such a vast open place. Yet a little knowledge and care would have secured an effective arrangement. The arch should have been left where it was, even though it stood isolated. It was a monument. The mischief is now done, and seems irreparable.
Through the screen we can see among the trees the great bronze statue erected “by the ladies of England “ in honour of the conqueror of Waterloo. Since the days of its being cast there has always been irreverent jesting at the expense of the particular “ladies of England” who had chosen to offer this nude figure as a token of their admiration. Mr. Croker, however, once, reviewing a Frenchman’s account of a visit to London, thus vindicated the fair dames:—“Let it be known,” he says, “that the ladies of England had nothing to do with the selection of this brazen image. Both are the work, as we believe, of a self-elected committee, in which we doubt whether there was a single lady; and the whole affair was got up, we have heard, by the artist and half a dozen dilettanti, who cared little about the ladies or Wellington, or a triumphal monument, but were enraptured at the idea of erecting in London the copy of a statue which they had admired at Rome.”
Close beside is the house of the “Iron Duke.” A few “oldest inhabitants” will recall how remorselessly, after all his windows had been broken by the mob, he kept his iron shutters down until the day of his death, a span of five-and-twenty years, once pointing to them significantly when the crowd attended him home with flattering shouts. It was a fine rebuke.
Here we come to the Byron statue, a sort of schoolboy, in jacket and trousers, sitting on a triangular lump of metal, with a poorish dog. This is surely not the ideal of the noble poet. Instead of stopping with a reverential gaze and thinking of Childe Harold, we only wonder what this queer bit of pantomime signifies. The pedestal has been likened to “a cake of Pears’ soap.” It is the work of the once famous Belt, who obtained the commission from a committee of noblemen and gentlemen of taste. At the trial it was contended that one Verheyden had furnished the design, or the drawing of the design, and there was much fury of contention, cross-examination, etc., on this point. Those who wish to see what this Verheyden could do, may study the two graceful female figures over the door of the handsome New Water-colour Exhibition building in Piccadilly, and which were actually carved “in situ,” as it is called—a difficult feat.
Towards Knightsbridge we note the two large mansions which flank the entrance to the Park. One of them, long left untenanted, obtained the sobriquet of Gibraltar, because “it was never taken.” Here the once famous speculator Hudson lived, an extraordinary instance of financial reverse and romance. The story of “the Railway King,” as he was called, illustrated the meanness of fashionable life, and there were many tales circulated of the flatteries and homage of great ladies. Forgotten now are the jests that used to circulate as to the sayings and doings of his spouse, whose extraordinary and original “derangement of epitaphs” were better even than those of her famous prototype. This millionaire’s fall was as sudden and rapid as his rise. By a curious coincidence, one of the great houses close by in Grosvenor Place, the one built for the residence of the Marquis of Westminster, but never occupied by him, was tenanted during the French war by another gigantic speculator—Dr. Strousberg, also a Railway King—the crash of whose fall resounded through Europe. The Albert Gate Mansion is now the French Embassy.
These two large houses are associated with Lady Morgan in a pleasant way. When she came to live in William Street, about the time of the Coronation, Mr. Cubitt had just taken the Belgravian district in hand, but the road presented a very different aspect from what it does now. There was no entrance to the park here, nor was it needed, as no one wanted to enter, save Lady Morgan herself—with her a good reason. There was the great Cannon Brewery, with a smoking chimney; public-houses, too, galore, as indeed there are now; such are true Tories, and never move or change. “I must have a new gate,” she declared, “where the ‘Fox and Bull’ pothouse now stands. There is a rural air over the whole that is pretty. What I want is a gate where the old sewer tap now moulders, and flanks a ditch of filth and infection. A sort of little rustic bridge should be over it, which would not be without its picturesque effect.” Lord Duncannon, of the “Woods and Forests,” was appealed to, but declined to grant the favour, on the ground of the block at Hyde Park Corner—“It would not be desirable to establish another thoroughfare near it.” What an amusing book could be written on the sapient reasons offered by public men for not undertaking schemes, commencing with Lord Palmerston’s wise prophecy as to the Suez Canal!
More interesting is it still to pass on a little beyond to Albert Terrace, one of the most charming locales in London as to its rearward view, though the front is dusty and noisy, and perhaps disagreeable. But in the mornings, you may look out on the park as on your own grounds. Here used to reside Charles Reade, the author of “It’s Never Too Late to Mend,” one of the men of genius of the day, though he once mystified his friends and others by the strange inscription along his garden wall—I well remember reading with astonishment the large letters on the parapet—“Naboth’s Vineyard”: a protest against the ground landlord, who coveted his tenement “hugely for the detriment thereof,” and its re-creation in the shape of Belgravian terraces. Now one of those monstre ranges of building to hold innumerable tenants, and which are in such favour, is being erected. By-and-by the whole of the old-fashioned little terrace, with its pleasant gardens, will disappear.
Returning to the Corner, we pass Hamilton Place, recently—yet it seems long ago—a cul de sac, and no vulgar thoroughfare. What a contention was raised by the invaded fashionables when it was proposed to throw it open to general traffic! Now the waggons and cabs trundle through the sacred precinct, and one hardly credits the fact that it was so lately a gloomy and deserted inclosure. Here lived the old Chancellor Eldon, who, for so august a personage, was plagued in a most amusing way during the Queen’s Trial. The Government had agreed to find her a town house in default of a palace, and her friends maliciously selected one in Hamilton Place, next door to the Chancellor. The horror and anguish of the old gentleman may be conceived, since the noble lady was always attended home by shouting mobs, and appeared at the windows while her friend, Alderman Wood, made speeches. He wrote to the Government to say that if this was allowed he would be driven from his house and his office at the same time. The Government gave directions accordingly; but the Queen’s friends seemed to be bent on his annoyance, and proposed a subscription to purchase that house and no other. The poor Chancellor had actually to buy it, as the only way to save himself from persecution, though he was lucky enough to re-sell it again without loss.
It may be noted that there are some survivals in London which almost savour of feudal times. All may notice those “bars” which are maintained in certain districts, fashionable, or formerly fashionable, and which are kept strictly select, the guardians severely refusing passage to the heavily-laden waggon or market cart that desires to pass through; none of this class are admitted but have business in the inclosure. This is like one of the nobles’ privileges on the eve of the French Revolution. More strange is it to find that on a certain day in the year His Grace of Bedford closes his “bars” altogether at Gordon Square, Gower Street, and other points of that district, and luggage-laden cabs, making for Euston and King’s Cross, have to get round by circuitous roads as best they can. This is done to keep the right “alive,” but it seems a monstrous thing. Once this private property has been turned into a public street, the privilege of private property should cease, as the inhabitants pay rates for the use of the road.[2]
A glimpse of Park Lane, of its strange fountain, is “a sorrow for ever,” painful to the eye in spite of its Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton, presided over by the flaming gilt female blowing hard at her trumpet. The last is the peccant part, and were she removed the three poets might look dignified and respectable. Of all ugly things in the metropolis, drinking fountains offer the largest variety. There our professors of deformity revel, and the more pretentious and costly the attempt, the greater hideousness is the result. The idea generally is to produce something imposing and architectural, a sort of temple or building, if possible—ridiculous when it is considered that a little cheap “squirt” of water, dribbling into a basin, is the entire aim and end. You have all the apparatus of a grand “fountain,” only without the gush of water. There is a pretty marble boy’s figure in St. James’s Park, by Jackson, close to Queen Anne’s Gate. For years, however, it has been