T The opening history of St. James’s and Green Parks is similar to that of Hyde Park. They formed part of the same manor in early days, and became Crown property in Henry VIII.’s time. St. James’s Park was chiefly a marsh. The Thames overflowed its banks nearly every year, and the low-lying parts were a swamp and the haunt of wild fowl, and the chief use of the Park was for the sport the wild birds afforded. The Tyburn flowed through it on its way from where it crossed the modern Oxford Street to where it joined the Thames, a little west of where Vauxhall Bridge afterwards stood. It passed right across Green Park, where the depression of its valley can still be traced between Half Moon Street and Down Street. The name, St. James’s, originated with the hospital for lepers, dedicated to St. James, on the site of the present palace. The exact date of its foundation is lost in the mists of antiquity, but it was established by the citizens of London, “before the time of any man’s memorie, for 14 Sisters, maydens, that were leprous, living chastly and honestly in Divine Service.” Later, there were further gifts of land and money from the citizens, and “8 brethren to minister Divine Service there” were added to the foundation. All these gifts were subsequently confirmed by Edward I., who granted a fair to be held for seven days, commencing on the eve of St. James’s Day, in St. James’s Fields, which belonged to the hospital. The letting out of the land for booths became a source of further income to the lepers. Stowe shortly tells the subsequent history. “This Hospital was surrendered to Henry the 8 the 23 of his reigne: the Sisters being compounded with were allowed Pensions for terme of their lives, and the King builded there a goodly Mannor, annexing thereunto a Park, closed about with a wall of brick, now called St. James’s Parke, serving indifferently to the said Mannor, and to the Mannor or Palace of Whitehall.” At first sight the summary ejection of these helpless creatures appears unusually heartless, even for those days; but leprosy, which during the time of the Crusades had grown to a formidable extent, was declining in the sixteenth century in England. It is probable, therefore, that the poor outcast sisters, possessed of their pensions, would be able to find shelter in one of the other leper hospitals, of which there were still a number in the country.

The space between Whitehall and Westminster, acquired from the Abbey, was turned into an orchard. The site of Montagu House was the bowling-green of the Palace, which stretched to the river. A high terrace and flight of steps led to the Privy Garden of Whitehall, so, except for the Palace and the Westminster group, there were no buildings between the river and the Park. It requires some stretch of the imagination to efface the well-known edifices which now surround it, and to see it in its natural state. Flights of wild birds would pass from the marshy ground to the river, unchecked by the pile of Government offices. Behind the Leper Hospital lay fields and scattered houses. The far-off villages of Knightsbridge and Chelsea would scarcely come into sight, while beyond the village of Charing the walls and towers of the City would loom in the distance. Henry VIII. made some alterations, and may have partially drained the ground and stocked it with deer. Old maps show a pond at the west end, near the present Wellington Barracks, called Rosamund’s Pond. The origin of the name is uncertain, but “Rosemonsbore, or Rosamund’s Bower,” occurs in a lease of land near this spot from the Abbey of Westminster as early as 1520. Hard by was a “mount,” such as was to be seen in every sixteenth-century garden, probably with an arbour and seat on the top to overlook the pond. The first mention of St. James’s as a Park is in 1539, on an occasion described in Hall’s Chronicle, when Henry VIII. held a review of the city militia. “The King himself,” writes the chronicler, “would see the people of the Citie muster in sufficient nombre....” Some 15,000, leaving the City after passing by St. Paul’s Churchyard, went “directly to Westminster and so through the Sanctuary and round about the Park of St. James, and so up into the fields and came home through Holborne.”

It was not until James I.’s time that the Park began to be esteemed as a resort for those attached to the Court. Prince Henry, the elder brother of Charles I., made the tilting-ring on the site of the present Horse Guards’ Parade, and brought the enclosure more into vogue for games. James I. made use of the Park for his own hobbies, one of which was the encouragement of growing vines and mulberries in England. He planted considerable vineyards, and in 1609 he sent a circular letter to the Lords-Lieutenant of each county, ordering them to announce that the following spring a thousand mulberry trees would be sent to each county town, and people were required to buy them at the rate of three-farthings a plant. To further prosecute his plan, the King set an example by planting a mulberry orchard at the end of St. James’s Park. The place afterwards became a fashionable tea garden, and Buckingham Palace is partly built on the site. The King kept also quite a large menagerie of beasts and birds presented to him by various crowned heads, or sent to him by friends and favourites. There are records of elephants, camels, antelopes, beavers, crocodiles, wild boars, and sables, besides many kinds of birds. The keepers of the animals received large salaries, and the cost of the care of these beasts would frighten the Zoological Society of to-day. No expense was spared to give the best and most suitable surroundings to the animals. For instance, as much as £286 was expended in 1618 by Robert Wood, the keeper of the cormorants, ospreys, and otters, “in building a place to keep the said cormorants in and making nine fish-ponds on land within the vine garden at Westminster.” Fish were put in for these creatures, and a sluice was made to bring water from the Thames to fill the ponds. These strange beasts and birds and their attendants must have been a quaint and unusual sight. The keepers were dressed in red cloth (which cost nine shillings a yard), embroidered with “I.R.” in Venice gold, and must have added to the picturesque appearance of this early Zoological Garden.

Gradually the Park became more and more a favourite place in which to stroll. Others were admitted besides the Court circle, the privilege being first accorded to the tenants of the houses at Westminster. Milton, who lived at one time in Petty France, near where Queen Anne’s Gate now stands, planted a tree in the garden overlooking the Park, which survived until recent times, would be one of those to enjoy the advantage. Charles I. passed this way on his last journey to Whitehall on the fatal 30th of January, and tradition says he paused to notice a tree planted by his brother Henry. During the Commonwealth, the Park still was resorted to. In the sprightly letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple are some vivid little touches in reference to it. She writes from the country in March 1654: “And hark you, can you tell me whether the gentleman that lost a crystal box the 1st of February in St. James’s Park or Old Spring Gardens has found it again or not? I have a strong curiosity to know.” Again, in June of the same year, she writes from London, where she was paying a visit: “I’ll swear they will not allow me time for anything; and to show how absolutely I am governed, I need but tell you that I am every night in the Park and at New Spring Gardens, where, though I come with a mask, I cannot escape being known nor my conversation being admired.”

The most brilliant days of its history began, however, in Charles II.’s reign. He entirely remodelled it, and began the work soon after his return from exile, imbued with foreign ideas of gardening. It has always been supposed that Le Nôtre was responsible for the designs, and it has often been asserted that he himself came to England to see them carried out. But close investigation has furnished no proof of this, and it is practically certain that, although invited, and allowed by Louis XIV. to come to England, he never actually did so. Other “French gardeners” certainly came, and one of them, La Quintinge, made many English friends, and kept up a correspondence with them after his return to France. Perrault probably visited London also, and may have superintended the “French gardeners” who were employed on St. James’s Park. They transformed the whole place. Avenues—the Mall and “Birdcage Walk”—were planted. A straight canal passed down the middle, and at the end, near the present Foreign Office, was the duck decoy. The “Birdcage Walk” is no fantastic title, for birds were literally kept there in cages. These were probably aviaries for large birds, and not little hanging cages, as has been sometimes suggested. A well-known passage occurs in Evelyn’s Diary, 1664, where he enumerates some of the birds and beasts he saw during one of his walks through the Park. The pelican delighted him, although “a melancholy waterfowl,” and he watched the skilful way it devoured fish; and it is not surprising that he recorded the strange fact that one of the two Balearian cranes had a wooden leg, made by a soldier, with a joint, so that the bird could “walk and use it as well as if it had been natural”; and he speaks with interest of a solan goose, a stork, a milk-white raven, and “a curious sort of poultry,” besides “deer of several countries,” antelopes, elk, “Guinea goats, Arabian sheep, etc.” The duck decoy lay at the south-west end of the long canal, which formed part of the new French design. This “duck island” was rather a series of small islands, as it was intersected by canals and reed-covered channels for catching duck. This was a favourite resort of Charles II., who has often been described feeding his ducks in St. James’s Park. To be keeper of the ducks, or “Governor of Duck Island,” was granted to St. Evremond, an excuse for bestowing a yearly salary on a favourite. The birds continued after the King, who had found in them a special recreation, had passed away. In William III.’s time the Park is still described as “full of very fine walkes and rowes of trees, ponds, and curious birds, Deer, and some fine Cows.” A Dutch traveller who was in England from 1693–96 notices the famous old white raven. By that time the ducks were no longer the fashion, and evidently there was an inclination to despise the former craze for wild fowl. A Frenchman, named M. de Sorbiere, visited England about this time, and wrote an account of his impressions. Some of his adverse criticisms of English people and institutions got him into trouble. A supposed translation of his book was published in 1698, and until 1709 was held to be a correct version. In reality it was a clever skit, and not in the least like the original. In the true version he describes the Park with its rows of trees and “admirable prospect” of the suburbs, and mentions that the King had “erected a tall Pile in the Park, the better to make use of Telescopes, with which Sir Robert Murray shew’d me Saturn and the Satellites of Jupiter.” Not a word about the ducks. But in the spurious parody of 1698 there is a humorous description, which shows how the next generation laughed at the amusements of King Charles II. “I was at St. James’s Park; there were no Pavillions, nor decoration of Treilliage and Flowers; but I saw there a vast number of Ducks; these were a most surprising sight. I could not forbear to say to Mr. Johnson, who was pleased to accompany me in this Walk, that sure all the ponds in England had contributed to this profussion of Ducks; which he took so well, that he ran immediately to an Old Gentleman that sate in a Chair, and was feeding of ’em. He rose up very obligingly, embraced me, and saluted me with a Kiss, and invited me to Dinner; telling me he was infinitely oblig’d to me for flattering the King’s Ducks.”

Little attention was paid to the wild fowl in the Park after that date, until the Prince Consort took an interest in them. In 1841 he became the Patron of the Ornithological Society, and the cottage on Duck Island was built for the Bird-keeper. For some thirty years the Society flourished, and kept up the supply and cared for the birds in the Park. In 1867, however, their numbers were greatly reduced, and the Society sold their collection of birds to H.M. Office of Works, which has since then had them under its charge. It is pleasant to know that the old tradition of the wild fowl in that part of the Park is maintained. Although the duck pond of King Charles’s time must have looked somewhat different from that of to-day, the birds can be made as much at home, and they nest peacefully on the modern Duck Island, its direct descendant. Moorhens and dabchicks, or little grebes, have for the last twenty years nested in the Park. They used to leave for the breeding season, but since 1883, when the first moorhen nested, they have gradually taken to remaining contentedly all through the year, and bring up their young there. Birds seem to choose the Park to rest in, and many migratory ones have been noticed. Kingfishers have recently been let out near the site of the ancient bird cages, in the hope that they may carry on the historic association.

The cows, which were a part of ancient history, as were the birds, have not been so fortunate. Although a newspaper clamour in defence of the cows was raised, the few remaining were finally banished in 1905, when the alterations in the Mall were made. These survivals standing by the dusty stalls could scarcely be called picturesque; and although interest undoubtedly was attached to them as venerable survivals of an old custom, they hardly suggested the rural simplicity of the days when cows were really pastured in the Park. For over two centuries grazing was let to the milk-women who sold milk at the end of the Park, near Whitehall. They paid half-a-crown a week, and after 1772 three shillings a week, for the right to feed cattle in the Park. A Frenchman, describing St. James’s at that time, is astonished at its rural aspect. “In that part nearest Westminster nature appears in all its rustic simplicity; it is a meadow, regularly intersected and watered by canals, and with willows and poplars, without any regard to order. On this side, as well as on that towards St. James’s Palace, the grass plots are covered with cows and deer, where they graze or chew the cud, some standing, some lying down upon the grass.... Agreeably to this rural simplicity, most of these cows are driven, about noon and evening, to the gate which leads from the Park to the quarter of Whitehall. Tied to posts at the extremity of the grass plots, they swill passengers with their milk, which, being drawn from their udders on the spot, is served, with all cleanliness peculiar to the English, in little mugs at the rate of a penny a mug.” The combination of the gay crowd in hooped petticoats, brilliant coats, and powdered wigs, with the peaceful, green meadows and the browsing deer and cows, forms an attractive picture.

All this had changed long before the final departure of the cattle, when the last old woman was pensioned off, and the sheds carted away. A use was found for the fragments of the concrete foundations of the last milkmaid’s stall. They were made into a sort of rockery, on which Alpine plants grow well, to support the bank at the entrance to the new frame-grounds at Hyde Park.

But to return to Charles II.’s time, when the cows were undisturbed. The great feature of what Pepys calls the “brave alterations” was the canal. He mentions more than one visit when the works were in progress. In October 1660 he went “to walk in St. James’s Park, where we observed the several engines at work to draw up water, with which sight I was very much pleased.” The canal, when finished, was 2800 feet long and 100 broad, and ran through the centre of the Park, beginning near the north end of. Rosamund’s Pond. An avenue of trees was planted on either side, passing down between the canal and the duck decoy to a semicircular double avenue near the tilting-ground. Deer wandered under fine old oaks between the canal and the avenues of “the Mall.” These old trees have gradually disappeared, as much through gales as from the wanton destruction of the would-be improver. At the hour of Cromwell’s death, when the storm was so fierce the Royalists said it was due to fiends coming to claim their own, much havoc was wrought; and from time to time similar destructions have taken place, one of the most serious being in November 1703, when part of the wall and over 100 elms were blown down. Another notable gale was on March 15, 1752, when many people lost their lives. “In St. James’s Park and the villages about the metropolis great numbers of trees were demolished.”

The broad pathway, between avenues on the opposite side of the Park to the Birdcage Walk, now called the Mall, derives this name from the game of “paille-maille,” which is known to have been played in France as early as the thirteenth century, and which was popular in England in the seventeenth. The locality, however, where it was first played in James I.’s time was on the northern side of the street, which is still called from it, Pall Mall. In those days fields stretched away beyond where now St. James’s Square lies, and a single row of houses lay between the playground and the Park. As the game became more the fashion, the coaches and dust were found too disturbing for enjoyment, and a new ground was laid out, running parallel to the old one, but within the Park. The game is considered by some to be a forerunner of croquet, as it was played with a ball (= pila) and mallet, the name being derived from these two words. One or more hoops had to be passed through, and a peg at the further end touched. The winner was the player who passed the hoops and reached the peg in the fewest number of strokes. The whole course measured over 600 yards, and was kept brushed and smooth, and the ground prepared by coating the earth with crushed shells, which, however, remarked Pepys, “in dry weather turns to dust and deads the ball.” Both Charles II. and James II. were much addicted to the game, and the flattering poet Waller eulogises King Charles’s “matchless” skill:—

The Park was by his time a much-frequented spot, and crowds delighted to watch the King and his courtiers displaying their dexterity. Charles II. is more intimately connected with St. James’s Park than any other great personage. He sauntered about, fed his ducks, played his games, and made love to fair ladies, all with indulgent, friendly crowds watching. He stood in the “Green Walk,” beneath the trees, to talk with Nell Gwynn, in her garden “on a terrace on the top of the wall” overlooking the Park; and shocked John Evelyn, who records, in his journal, that he heard and saw “a very familiar discourse between the King and Mrs. Nelly.” Charles’s well-known reply to his brother, that no one would ever kill him to put James on the throne, was said in answer to James’s protest that he should not venture to roam about so much without attendants in the Park. His dogs often accompanied him, and perhaps, like most of their descendants, these pets had a sporting instinct, and ran off to chase the deer. Anyhow, they managed frequently to escape their master’s vigilance, and fell a prey to the unscrupulous thief, and descriptions of the missing dogs were published in the Gazette. One, answering to the name Towser, was “liver colour’d and white spotted”; and a “dogg of His Majestie’s, full of blew spots, with a white cross on his forehead about the bigness of a tumbler,” was lost on another occasion.

Charles with his dogs, his ducks, his wit, his engaging manners, his doubtful morals, is the central figure of many a picture in St. James’s Park, but it does not often form a background to his Queen. One scene described by Pepys has much charm. The party, returning from Hyde Park on horseback with a great crowd of gallants, pass down the Mall; the Queen, riding hand in hand with the King, looking “mighty pretty” in her white laced coat and crimson petticoat. Again, on another occasion, the Queen forms an attractive vision, as she walks with her ladies from Whitehall to St. James’s dressed from head to foot in silver lace, each holding an immense green fan to shade themselves from the fierce rays of the June sun, while a delighted crowd throng round them.

The popularity of the Mall as the rendezvous of all classes lasted for over a century. Through the reigns of Queen Anne and George I. and II. all the fashionable world of London congregated there twice daily. In the morning the promenade took them there from twelve to two, and after dinner in full dress they thronged thither again, not to play the game of paille-maille, which was then out of fashion, but simply to walk about under the trees and be amused with races, wrestlings, or an impromptu dance. Every well-known person—courtiers, wits, beaux, writers, poets, artists, soldiers—and all the beautiful and fascinating women, great ladies as well as more humble charmers, and bold adventuresses, were to be seen there daily.

The crowds seem to have been very free in their admiration of some of the distinguished ladies. When the three lovely Misses Gunning captivated everybody with their wit and beauty, they had only to appear in the Mall to be surrounded by admirers. On one occasion they were so pressed by the curious mob that one of these matchless young charmers fainted and had to be “carried home in a sedan.”

On looking at an old print of the ladies in their thin dresses walking in the Mall, it is customary to bemoan the change of climate, to wonder if our great-great-grand-mothers were supernaturally strong and not sensitive to cold, or to conclude that they only paraded there in fine weather. Apparently this last is not the correct solution, for in 1765 they astonished Monsieur Grosley by their disregard of the elements. He is horrified at the fog. “The smoke,” he writes, “forms a cloud which envelopes London like a mantle; a cloud which the sun pervades but rarely; a cloud which, recoiling back upon itself, suffers the sun to break out only now and then, which casual appearance procures the Londoners a few of what they call glorious days. The great love of the English for walking defies the badness of other days. On the 26th April, St. James’s Park, incessantly covered with fogs, smoke, and rain, that scarce left a possibility of distinguishing objects at a distance of four steps, was filled with walkers, who were an object of musing and admiration to me during the whole day.” Few ladies nowadays fear a little fog or rain, but to walk in it they must be attired in short skirts, thick boots, and warm or mackintosh coats. It must have been much more distressing in the days of powdered hair, picture hats, and flimsy garments. No wonder M. Grosley was astounded at the persistence of the poor draggled ladies.

All foreign visitors to London naturally went to see the Mall. Here is the account of a German baron, describing the man of the world: “He rises late, dresses himself in a frock (close-fitting garment, without pockets, and with narrow sleeves), leaves his sword at home, takes his cane, and goes where he likes. Generally he takes his promenade in the Park, for that is the exchange for the men of quality. ’Tis such another place as the Garden of the Tuileries in Paris, only the Park has a certain beauty of simplicity which cannot be described. The grand walk is called the Mall. It is full of people at all hours of the day, but especially in the morning and evening, when their Majesties often walk there, with the royal family, who are attended only by half-a-dozen Yeomen of the Guard, and permit all persons to walk at the same time with them.”

A writer in 1727, waxing eloquent on the charms of the Park, gives up the task of describing it, as “the beauty of the Mall in summer is almost past description.” “What can be more glorious than to view the body of the nobility of our three kingdoms in so short a compass, especially when freed from mixed crowds of saucy fops and city gentry?” But more often the company was very mixed, and manners peculiar. This brilliant and motley assembly indulged in all kinds of amusements. Even the grandest frequenters afforded diversion sometimes to the “saucy fops.” Wrestling matches between various courtiers attracted crowds, or a race such as one between the Duke of Grafton and Dr. Garth, of 200 yards, was the excitement of the day. There were odd and original races got up, and wagers freely staked. Some inhuman parents backed their baby of eighteen months old to walk the whole length of the Mall (half a mile) in thirty minutes, and the poor little mite performed the feat in twenty-three minutes. What comments would modern philanthropic societies have made on such a performance!

A race between a fat cook and a lean footman caused great merriment, but as the footman was handicapped by carrying 110 lbs., the fat cook won. Another time it was a hopping-race which engrossed attention—a man undertook to hop one hundred yards in fifty hops, and succeeded in doing it in forty-six—and endless variety of similar follies. The crowds who assembled indulged in every sort of gaiety; “in short, no freedoms that can be taken here are reckoned indecent; all passes for raillery and harmless gallantry.”

Although open to all the world for walking, only royal personages or a few specially favoured people were allowed to drive through. It was one of the grievances of the Duchess of Marlborough when the Duke was in disgrace that the privilege of driving her coach and six through the Park was denied her. The remaining restrictions with regard to carriages have only passed away in very recent years. The notice board stating that Members of Parliament during the session might drive through the Park from Great George Street to Marlborough House was only removed when the road was opened to all traffic in 1887, and Constitution Hill only became a public highway in 1889. The use of the road passing under the Horse Guards’ Archway is still restricted to those who receive special permission from the sovereign.

The Park had never been drained, and had always shown signs of its marshy origin, and “Duck Island” was really a natural swamp. An unusually high tide flooded the low-lying end where the Horse Guards’ Parade and the houses of Downing Street with their little gardens now stand. What state secrets they could divulge had they the power of speech! The tilting-ground was often in a condition quite unfit for the exercise of troops, so with a view to preventing this, it was paved with stone early in the eighteenth century. It has always been used for military displays, and the trooping of the colours on the King’s birthday takes place on the same ground which witnessed the brilliant scene when the colours, thirty-eight in number, captured at the battle of Blenheim were conveyed to Westminster Abbey. On the parade-ground now stands the gun cast at Seville, used by Soult at Cadiz, and taken after the battle of Salamanca. Here many an impressive ceremony of distributing medals, and countless parades, have taken place through many generations. Here, with the brutality of old days, corporal punishment was administered, and offending soldiers were flogged in full view of the merry-making crowds assembled in the Park. Round the Park lay other marshy lands, also frequently flooded by the Thames, and it was not surprising that on one occasion an otter found its way from the river and settled down on Duck Island and there grew fat on the King’s carp. Sir Robert Walpole sent to Houghton for his otter-hounds, and an exciting hunt ensued, in which the Duke of Cumberland took part, and the offending otter was captured.

Rosamund’s Pond had, in the course of time, become stagnant and unpleasant, and there were frequent complaints of its unsavoury condition. About 1736 a machine for pumping out water was invented by a Welshman, and used successfully to empty the pond, and it was thoroughly cleansed. Thirty years later the same evil began again to be a nuisance, and it was decided to drain and fill up the pond entirely, which was accomplished about 1772. The trees on the island were felled, and those near the bank died from the lack of water, so at first the absence of the slimy pond must have been disfiguring. The shady walk near it, known as the Close Walk or the Jacobites’ Walk, must have disappeared when the trees died. About the same time the swampy moat round Duck Island was filled up and the canal cleaned out. When these improvements were completed in 1775 some birds were put on the canal. One of them was a swan called Jack, belonging to Queen Charlotte, which was reared in the garden of Buckingham House. This bird ruled the roost for many a day, and was a popular favourite. It lived until 1840, when some new arrivals, in the shape of Polish geese, pecked and ill-treated the poor old bird so seriously that he died.

About 1786 fashion began to desert the Mall for the Green Park, and the crowds which collected there were no longer intermingled with the Court circle. In a letter to her daughter Madame Roland describes the company in the Mall as very different from what it was a few years earlier, for though it was “very brilliant on a Sunday evening, and full of well-to-do people and well-dressed women, in general they are all tradespeople and citizens.” A generation later the Mall seems to have become quite deserted. Sir Richard Phillips, in his morning’s walk from London to Kew in 1817, bemoans the absence of the gay throng:—

“My spirits sank, and a tear started into my eyes, as I brought to mind those crowds of beauty, rank, and fashion which, until within these few years, used to be displayed in the centre Mall of this Park on Sunday evenings during spring and summer. How often in my youth had I been the delighted spectator of the enchanted and enchanting assemblage. Here used to promenade, for one or two hours after dinner, the whole British world of gaiety, beauty, and splendour. Here could be seen in one moving mass, extending the whole length of the Mall, 5000 of the most lovely women in this country of female beauty, all splendidly attired, and accompanied by as many well-dressed men. What a change, I exclaimed, has a few years wrought in these once happy and cheerful personages! How many of those who on this very spot then delighted my eyes are now mouldering in the silent grave!”

About 1730 Queen Caroline, who was then busy with the alterations in Hyde Park, turned her attention to what is now known as the Green Park also. It had all formed part of St. James’s Park, and was known as the Upper Park or Little St. James’s Park. It was enclosed by a brick wall in 1667 by Charles II., who stocked it with deer. In the centre of the Park an ice-house was made, at that time a great novelty in this country, although well known in France and Italy. In his poem on St. James’s Park Waller alludes to it:—

No further alterations were made, except that, in 1681, Charles effected an exchange of land with the Earl of Arlington, on which, a few years later, Arlington Street was built. The path which runs parallel with the backs of these houses was Queen Caroline’s idea, and she used it frequently herself, and it became known as the “Queen’s Walk.” The houses overlooking the Park went up in value as the occupants could enjoy the sight of the Queen and the Princesses taking their daily walk. The line of this path is no longer the same, as a piece was cut off the Park in 1795 and leased to the Duke of Bridgewater to add to the garden of his house. The Queen also built a pavilion known as the Queen’s Library in the Park, where she spent some time after her morning promenades. Although Queen Caroline took to the Upper Park, the world of fashion did not follow at once, and it was not until about 1786 that the Green Park for some reason suddenly became the rage. The only incident of historic interest between this date and the making of the road was the celebration of the end of the War of Succession in the spring following the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. A great pavilion like a Doric temple, 410 feet long and 114 feet high, was erected near the wall separating the Green Park from St. James’s, and on the 27th of April a grand display of fireworks was arranged. A fire, however, broke out just as the performance was beginning, when a grand overture composed by Handel had been performed, and the King and dense crowds were watching the illuminations. The flames were got under, but not before much of the temporary building had been destroyed, and the greater part of the fireworks perished in the flames, and several fatal and serious accidents further marred the entertainment.

Near the top of the Park was a reservoir or “fine piece of water” belonging to the Chelsea Waterworks, and the path round it was included in the fashionable promenade by those who paraded in the Queen’s Walk after dinner. Lower down, where there is still a depression, was a little pond, originally part of the Tyburn stream. The “green stagnant pool” was abused by a writer in 1731, who regretted that trees had just been planted near it, which probably meant that the offensive pool would “not soon be removed.” The prophecy was correct, for it was more than a hundred years later before this was filled up. The Park wall ran along Piccadilly, and here and there, as was often the case in the eighteenth century, there were gaps with iron rails, through which glimpses of the Park could be obtained. Some persons had private keys to the gates leading into the Park from Piccadilly. Daring robberies were by no means uncommon, and thieves, having done mischief in the streets near Piccadilly on more than one occasion, were found to be provided with keys to the gates, through which they could make their escape into the Park and elude their pursuers. The Ranger’s Lodge stood on the northern side, and was rebuilt and done up in 1773. It was made so attractive that there was great competition, when it was completed, to be Deputy-ranger and live there. The two stags which now stand on Albert Gate, Hyde Park, once adorned the gates of this Ranger’s Lodge. It is described in 1792 as “a very neat lodge surrounded by a shrubbery, which renders it enchantingly rural.” When George III. bought Buckingham House, then an old red-brick mansion, he took away the wall which separated the Green Park from St. James’s, and put a railing instead. In this wall was another lodge, and a few trees near it, known as the Wilderness.

The aspect of the Mall has greatly changed since the days when its fashion was at its height. Then the gardens of St. James’s Palace ran the whole length of the north side from the Palace towards Whitehall. Stephen Switzer, writing in 1715, extols the beauty of the garden, which by his time was cut up and partly built on. “The Royal Garden in St. James’s Park, part of which is now in the possession of the Right Honourable Lord Carlton, and the upper part belonging to Marlborough House, was of that King’s [Charles II.] planting, which were in the remembrance of most people the finest Lines of Dwarfs perhaps in the Universe. Mr. London” ... presumed “before Monsieur de la Quintinye, the famous French gardener, ... to challenge all France with the like, and if France, why not the whole World?”

Carlton House, a red-brick building, with the stone portico now in front of the National Gallery, was built in 1709 on part of this garden. Some twenty years later, before it was purchased by Frederick, Prince of Wales, the grounds belonging to the house were laid out by Kent. Until Carlton House was pulled down in 1827, therefore, the Mall was bounded on the north by choice gardens. Between the Mall and the walls of these gardens ran the “Green Walk,” or “Duke Humphrey’s Walk,” as it was also often called. The origin of the latter name is to be traced to old St. Paul’s. The monument to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, in the centre aisle of old St. Paul’s Cathedral was where “poore idlers” and “careless mal-contents” congregated—

When Duke Humphrey’s Walk in St. Paul’s was burnt the name became attached to the walk in St. James’s Park, where idlers also sauntered. Some writers attribute the transference of the name to the fact that the arched walk under the trees was like the cathedral aisle. Anyhow the name clung to this walk in the Park from 1666 and during the eighteenth century.

When Carlton House became the centre of attraction the Park itself was in a very neglected state. The canal was turbid, the grass long, and the seats unpainted. How long it would have remained in this condition is uncertain had not a new impulse of gardening possessed the whole nation, and once more it was resolved to alter the entire Park.

The rage for landscape gardening was at its height. Capability Brown had done his work of destruction, and set the fashion of “copying nature,” and his successors were following on his lines, but going much further even than Brown. The sight of a straight canal had become intolerable. The Serpentine was designed when the idea that it might be possible to make the banks of artificial sheets of water in anything but a perfectly straight line was just dawning, but the canal in St. James’s Park was transformed when half the stiff ponds and canals in the kingdom had been twisted and turned into lakes or meres. Brown had had a hand in the alterations at the time Rosamund’s Pond was removed, but it was Eyton who planned and executed the work fifty years later. It was begun in 1827, and a contemporary writer praises the result as “the best obliteration of avenues” that has been effected. Although he owns it involved “a tremendous destruction of fine elms,” he is lost in admiration of the “astounding ingenuity” which “converted a Dutch canal into a fine flowing river, with incurvated banks, terminated at one end by a planted island and at the other by a peninsula.” A permanent bridge was first made across the water about this time. Previously a temporary one had been made when the Allied Sovereigns visited London in 1814—a kind of Chinese design by Nash, surmounted by a pagoda of seven storeys. It was this flimsy edifice which made Canova say the thing that struck him most in England was that Waterloo Bridge was the work of a private company, while this bridge was put up by the Government. It was on the canal in St. James’s Park that skates of a modern type first appeared in London. Bone ones were in use much earlier on Moorfields. Both Evelyn and Pepys saw the new pattern first in the Park in 1662. Two years later Pepys notes going to the canal with the Duke of York, “where, though the ice was broken and dangerous, yet he would go slide upon his scates, which I did not like, but he slides very well.” Just before the alterations began, and the complete change of the canal was taken in hand, the Park was lighted with gas lamps, an innovation which caused much excitement. At the same time orders were issued to shut the gates by ten every evening. A wit on this occasion wrote the following lines, which were found stuck up on a tree:—

The same lamps inspired another poet, who wrote, just before the destruction of the avenues took place:—

Yet once more has St. James’s Park been subjected to renovation. The work, which is a memorial to our late beloved Queen Victoria, is not yet completed, so its description must be imperfect. The design aims at drawing together the several quarters of the Park towards Buckingham Palace and a central group of statuary. The Mall is now the scene of ceaseless traffic, and the sauntering pedestrian is a thing of the past. A wide road runs at right angles across the Green Park, and so once again more closely associates the Upper with the Lower St. James’s Park. Probably the greatest praise of the alterations would be to say that Le Nôtre would have approved them. They seem to complete the design in a fitting manner, but they banish once and for all time, the semi-rural character which for so many centuries clung to the Park. The design includes a series of formal parterres which are filled with bedding-out plants raised in Hyde Park. In the summer of 1906 they were planted with scarlet geraniums with an edging of grasses and foliage and a few golden privets, and on hot July days there were many people ready to pronounce the arrangement as extremely bad taste. It seemed a reversion to the days when a startling mass of colour was the only effect aimed at. As they appeared all through the mild October days, when a soft foggy light enveloped the world, and the trees looked dark and dreary, with their leaves, devoid of autumn tints, still struggling to hold on, the vivid colouring of the beds gave a very different impression. The charm of the warm red tone against the cold blue mists must have given a sensation of pleasure to any one sensitive to such contrasts.

The Park in spring has nothing of the stiff, early Victorian gardening left. Under the trees crocuses raise their dainty heads, as cheerily as from out of Alpine snows, and the slopes of grass spangled with a “host of golden daffodils” are a delight to all beholders.

The palmy days of St. James’s Park may have passed away—no longer is the fate of nations and the happiness of lives decided under its ancient elms—but those days have left their mark. Every path, every tree, every green-sward, could tell its story. The Park is now more beautiful than it ever was, even though fashion has deserted it. The last changes are but one more link in the long historic chain. It brings the Park of the Stuarts, the Mall of the Queen Anne’s age of letters, down to our own great Queen and the days of Expansion and Empire. A stroll under its shady trees and by its sparkling water must be replete with suggestions to the moralist, with thoughts to the poet, and with an inexpressible charm to the ordinary appreciative Londoner.