Works of art in the Park—Drinking fountain—Marble Arch—Hyde Park Corner—Achilles statue—Walk round the Park—Cemetery of St. George’s, Hanover Square—Sterne’s tomb and burial—Tyburn tree—The Tybourne—People executed—Henrietta Maria’s penance—Locality of the gallows—Princess Charlotte—Gloucester House—Dorchester House—Londonderry House—Apsley House—Allen’s apple stall—The Wellington Arch—Statues of the Duke—St. George’s Hospital, Knightsbridge—A fight on the bridge—Albert Gate and George Hudson—Knightsbridge Barracks. Works of Art in the Park are conspicuous by their general absence. There is a drinking fountain near the Bayswater Road, a fountain on the site of the Chelsea Waterworks reservoir—the statue of Achilles, the Marble Arch, and the Gate at Hyde Park Corner. The drinking fountain was dedicated on Feb. 29, 1868, with a great function in which figured the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Duke of Cambridge, Lord Harris, and many other noblemen. This fountain was the gift of the Maharajah of Vizianagram, K.C.S.I., and cost about £1200. The material employed is box-ground stone, the columns being blue pennant, and the bowls polished granite. The form of the fountain is quadrangular, and the style early Gothic. On two sides are the portrait and arms of the Maharajah; and on the remaining two sides the portrait and arms of her Majesty The old Cumberland Gate, which was built about 1744, was, as may be seen by a water-colour drawing in the Crace Collection (Port. ix. 75), a very ugly brick construction with wooden gates—but it was removed in 1822, and handsome iron gates substituted for it. But 1851—which turned Hyde Park topsy-turvy—did away with them, and in their place was erected the present Marble Arch, which was originally the chief entrance to Buckingham Palace. The original estimate for it was £31,000, but that included £6000 for an equestrian statue of George IV., which was to surmount it, but was placed instead in Trafalgar Square. One authority says it cost £80,000, whilst its metal gates cost £3000. It was designed by Nash, the favourite architect of the Regency and reign of George IV., and is an adaptation from the Arch of Constantine at Rome. Flaxman, Westmeath, and Rossi did the ornamentation, and, being of Carrara marble, and kept scrupulously clean, it forms a very effective entrance to the north of the Park. Its removal was effected with great rapidity—for the foundations were not begun to be dug till the middle of January, 1851. We hear of it in The Times of Feb. 25, that “the Arch is in a very advanced state, and is, in fact, fast approaching towards completion. The works are so far advanced that the massive gates have been fixed in their In 1756, as we may see by a water-colour drawing by Jones (Crace Collection, Port. x. 39), the Piccadilly entrance to Hyde Park consisted only of wooden gates, and so it remained until the present entrance was made from designs by Decimus Burton in 1827. This is a screen of fluted Ionic columns, supporting an entablature. This is divided into three arched entrances for carriages, and two for foot passengers. The frieze, which represents a naval and military triumph, was designed by Henning—and if it were finished as he wanted it, with groups of statuary on the top, it would be very fine. By the way, talking of statuary at this spot, in “A New Guide to London,” 1726, p. 83, we find: “If you please, you may see a great many Statues at the Statuaries at Hyde-Park Corner.” Visible from this entrance is the Achilles Statue—the first public nude statue in England. A great deal of rubbish has been talked about this statue, especially in attributing its original to Pheidias. Whoever was its sculptor, it was a marble statue which formed part of a group on the Quirinal Hill TO ARTHUR, DUKE OF WELLINGTON, This statue was lampooned and caricatured very considerably, but both are somewhat too broad for reproduction nowadays. Let us now take a walk round the Park—outside—beginning on the North side. All along the Park, till we come to Tyburn, was open fields and market gardens, except the mortuary chapel and cemetery of St. George’s, Hanover Square, and its concomitant, St. George’s Terrace, which we see in Sandby’s camp picture of “The Toilet.” This burial ground was enclosed and consecrated in 1764, and comprises an area of about four acres. It is popularly supposed that Laurence Sterne is buried here—and if you do not believe it, there is a tombstone to testify to the fact. It is near the centre of the west wall of the cemetery, and it bears the following inscription:— Alas, poor Yorick. If a sound head, warm heart and breast humane, Unsully’d worth, and soul without a stain, If mental powers could ever justly claim The well-won tribute of immortal fame, Sterne was the Man who, with gigantic stride, Mow’d down luxuriant follies far and wide. Yet, what though keenest knowledge of mankind, Unseal’d to him the springs that move the mind, What did it boot him? Ridicul’d, abus’d, By foes insulted, and by prudes accus’d. In his, mild reader, view thy future fate, Like him despise what ’twere a sin to hate. This monumental stone was erected to the memory of the deceased by two Brother Masons, for, although he did not live to be a member of their Society, yet all his incomparable performances evidently prove him to have acted by Rule and Square; they rejoice in this opportunity of perpetuating his high and unapproachable character to after ages. W. & S. If we analyze the above, and search out the truth Ann Radcliffe, the novelist, who died in 1823, was also buried here. The old chapel is now pulled down, and a new and much handsomer one erected in its place; whilst the cemetery has been levelled, planted, pathed, and seated, in accordance with modern taste. Continuing our walk, we come to dread Tyburn, with its fatal tree of which it was written:— “Since Laws were made for ev’ry degree To curb vice in others as well as me, I wonder we ha’n’t better Company Upon Tyburn Tree. . . . . . . . . . . In short, were Mankind their merits to have, Could Justice mark out each particular knave, Two-thirds the Creation would sing the last stave Upon Tyburn Tree.” It derives its etymology either from Twy bourne—Two brooks, or the united brooks; or else from Aye-bourne Tyburn has been a place of execution for centuries, the earliest I can find being in “Roger de Wendover,” who mentions that, A.D. 1196, William Fitz-osbert, or Longbeard, was drawn through the City of London, by horses, to the gallows at Tyburn. We hear occasionally of executions there in the 14th and 15th centuries, and Perkin Warbeck was hanged there in 1499—as was also Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent, in 1534—but I have no That the shape of the Tyburn Gallows was triangular is proved by many quotations, one of which, from Shakespeare’s Loves Labour’s Lost (Act. iv. Sc. 3), will suffice:— Biron.—Thou mak’st the triumviry, the corner cap of society, The shape of love’s Tyburn, that hangs up simplicity. There is a story that Queen Henrietta Maria did penance under the gallows at Tyburn in expiation of the blood of the martyrs who had suffered thereon. That it was a matter of public report there can be no doubt, as we may read in the “Reply of the Commissioners of his Majesty the King of Great Britain, to the proposition presented by Mons. le MarÉschal de Bassompierre, Ambassador Extraordinary from his most Christian Majesty.” That Charles I. believed this story, there can be but little doubt, for, on July 12, 1626, he writes to his Ambassador in France: “I can no longer suffer those that I know to be the cause and fomenters of these humours, to be about my wife any longer, which I must do if it were but for one action they made my wife do; which is to make her go to Tyburn in devotion to pray, which action can have no greater invective made against it than the relation.” Replying to the Commissioners, Bassompierre takes up the cudgels for the Queen, and denies the accusation thus: “The Queen of Great Britain, with the permission of the King, her husband, gained the jubilee at the Chapel of the Fathers of In the Print Room of the British Museum, in that fine collection of pictures relating to London—Crowle’s interleaved edition of Pennant’s London—is a very fine engraving of the Queen, praying under the gallows by moonlight, assisted by a torch-bearer—a coach and six awaiting her return; but as this picture is manifestly of the last century, it is not worth reproducing in any way. Where the gallows stood is still a moot point—but evidence points that No. 49, Connaught Square was built on its site, and in the lease of the house from the Bishop of London it is so expressed. Against this a correspondent in “Notes and Queries” (2 S. x. 198) says, “that the late Mr. Lawford, the bookseller of Saville Passage, told me that he had been informed by a very old gentleman who frequented his shop, that the Tyburn Tree stood as nearly as possible to the public house in the Edgware Another correspondent (4 S. xi. 98) practically endorses this site. He says: “The potence itself was in Upper Bryanston Street, a few doors from Edgware Road, on the northern side. The whole of this side of the street is occupied by squalid tenements and sheds, now (Feb. 1, 1873) in the course of demolition, and on the site of one of these, under the level of the present street, is to be seen a massive brickwork pillar, in the centre of which is a large socket, evidently for one of the pillars of the old gallows. An ancient house at the corner of Upper Bryanston Street and Edgware Road, which has been pulled down within the last few weeks was described to me as the only one existing in the neighbourhood when executions took place at Tyburn, and from the balcony in front of which the Sheriffs of London used to take their official view of the proceedings.” The date of the last hanging at Tyburn was Nov. 7, 1783. A curious thing connected with Tyburn was the Tyburnia is that part of London bounded south by the Bayswater Road, east by the Edgware Road, and the west includes Lancaster Gate. There was a Turnpike called Tyburn Gate which commanded the Edgware and Uxbridge Roads; and close by, on the north side of the Bayswater Road—from the corner of the Edgware Road—is Connaught Terrace; No. 7 of which was, in 1814, the residence of Queen Caroline—wife of George IV. It was here, and to her mother, that the Princess Charlotte ran, rather than live at Carlton House, or marry the Prince of Orange. Then there was great consternation, and the Lord Chancellor, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and others, came to reason with her, but she would none of them, and not even her kind uncle, the Duke of Sussex, could prevail with her to go back. Lord Brougham was more successful, and this is a portion of his account of how he managed the wayward girl: “We then conversed upon the subject with the others, and after a long discussion on that “The day now began to dawn, and I took her to the window. The election of Cochrane (after his expulsion, owing to the sentence of the Court, which both insured his re-election and abolished the pillory) was to take place that day. I said, ‘Look there, Madam; in a few hours all the streets and the park, now empty, will be crowded with tens of thousands. I have only to take you to the window, show you to the crowd, and tell them your grievances, and they will rise in your behalf.’ ‘And why should they not?’ I think she said, or some such words. ‘The commotion,’ I answered, ‘will be excessive; Carlton House will be attacked,—perhaps pulled down; the soldiers will be ordered out; blood will be shed; and if your Turning down Park Lane, we find Gloucester House, the residence of H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge, and it is so called because it was bought by the late Duke of Gloucester on his marriage. Formerly the Earl of Elgin lived here, and here he exhibited the “Elgin Marbles” which are now the pride of the classical section of the British Museum. Byron, in his Curse of Minerva, thus writes of them:— “While brawny brutes, in stupid wonder stare, And marvel at his lordship’s ‘stone shop’ there.” Lower down is Dorchester House, the residence of Capt. Holford, erected in 1852-4. It is so named because it stands on the site of a house belonging to the Damers, Earls of Dorchester. It is celebrated for its libraries, engravings, and paintings by the old masters. Yet nearer Hyde Park Corner is Londonderry House, the town house of the Marquess of Londonderry, K.G. Hyde Park Corner, as shown in a water-colour drawing of 1756 in the Crace Collection, gives us a good idea of what it was like—its wooden gates, its In 1820 it was purchased by the nation and settled on the great Arthur, Duke of Wellington, and his heirs for ever, but it had to undergo many alterations before it took its present shape. Many of my readers will remember the bullet-proof iron shutters which were put up at every window facing Piccadilly, after all the windows had been smashed by a mob during the popular ferment caused by the Reform Bill. They were never opened during the old Duke’s life, and were only taken down by his son in 1856. The story of these iron shutters is thus told by the Rev. R. Gleig, in his Life of Arthur, Duke of Wellington (ed. 1864, p. 360):— “The Duke was not in his place in the House of Lords on that memorable day when the King went down to dissolve (prorogue) Parliament (April 22nd, 1831). He had been in attendance for some The illustration representing the Duke looking out of his smashed windows is taken from Political Sketches by H.B. (John Doyle), No. 267, June 10th, 1833, and is entitled “Taking an Airing in Hyde Park; a portrait, Framed but not YET Glazed.” Nearly opposite Apsley House, and at the top of Constitution Hill, stands an Arch which was originally intended as a private entrance to Buckingham Palace; but it was erected on its present site about 1828, when Burton put up his screen at the entrance to Hyde Park. It is now more generally known as the Wellington Arch, from its having been surmounted by a colossal bronze equestrian statue of the great Duke, by Matthew Cotes Wyatt, in 1846. This was the outcome of a public subscription for the purpose, which is said to have amounted to £36,000. So much ridicule, however, was heaped upon it, that it was taken down in January, 1883, and removed to Aldershot in August, 1884, where it now is. A new statue on a pedestal supported by four soldiers, by Sir J. E. Boehm, was afterwards erected on nearly the same spot, and was unveiled by the Prince of Wales, on December 21, 1888. St. George’s Hospital, which stands close by, owes its existence to some dissension in the government of the Westminster Infirmary—and the seceders, in 1733, took Lanesborough House, on the site of the present hospital. The house being found too small, wings were added, and, even then, want of space compelled the governors to pull it down and erect a new one, which was finished in 1834—since when it has been much enlarged. Knightsbridge is a very old hamlet—adjacent to Hyde Park Corner and thence running westward, bounded on the north by the Park. It is supposed to have taken its name from a bridge over the Westbourne, which ran across the road previous to its falling into the Thames at Chelsea. In Ellis’s Introduction to Norden’s Essex, p. XV., he says that Norden, describing in 1593 the bridges of most use in Middlesex, “enumerates ‘Kinges bridge, commonly called Stone bridge, nere Hyde parke corner, wher I wish noe true man to walke too late without good garde, unless he can make his partie good, as dyd Sir H. Knyvet, Knight, who valiantlye defended himselfe, ther being assaulted, and slew the master theefe with his owne hands.’” This bridge was as near as possible where Albert Gate now stands—one of the mansions there being once occupied by George Hudson, the Railway King, who bought it for £15,000. From being a The Barracks for the Household Cavalry are also in Knightsbridge, and not many years ago they were condemned as being unsanitary, and the present magnificent block built in their stead. From them to Kensington Gardens, there is nothing particular to note. LONDON: FOOTNOTES: |