[5] “Yes, he even comes into the Senate, observes and singles out each of us.” Words of Cicero applied to Catiline. CHAPTER XII THE PEOPLE’S PARK The London Parks strike different people in different ways, and certainly a bailiff of the late well-known Yorkshire squire, Sir Tatton Sykes, looked upon them with different eyes from the ordinary mortal. Sir Tatton sent him to London to see the sights, and on his return asked him what he thought of London. “Lots o’ houses,” he said, “and I found some pretty good pasture, only it was a bit scattered.” This was the way he summed up the beautiful squares and parks of London. It is extraordinary how this class of people look upon things generally. I well remember an old gardener of my grandfather’s who, after fifty years’ service in the family, was given a treat to London. When he got back to Lancashire he also was asked what he thought of London. “I was just in a haze,” he said, “and they took me to bed in a hoist,”—this being his description of going up to bed in a lift at the London hotel. Like every other big town, London has its areas strictly mapped out, only in this great community the lines of cleavage are more marked than in others. Live but a few streets too far citywards, and you lose the privilege of belonging to the West End, and are merged in the great middle class. The middle class, too, has its line of divergence, to travel beyond which is to lose middle-class status, and sink into the maelstrom of the East End. All this, no doubt, is snobbish; but then every class has its snobs just as it has its bores, no matter into which particular class one may be born, or risen, or descended. Hyde Park, however, is the common heritage of all, the meeting-ground of King and coster. It is the most truly democratic spot in all London. It is surprising what tolerance there is, what good feeling pervades the throng made up of such extraordinary mixtures and contradictions. A well-dressed woman, who goes into a mean street of slum-land, is made the subject of audible remarks, mostly ribald, too often coarse. Her fashionable costume seems to excite hatred. The would-be finery of the Park no doubt envies the real finery. The workman in his heart is contemptuous of the frock-coated “swell,” but they meet there on a quiet and friendly footing. Passions of class distinction are subdued within the fairy ring of Hyde Park. A lady walking or driving in its precincts need never fear being assailed by anything likely to offend her ear. Manners, too, have changed. My father would have thought it an awful thing to have smoked in the Row. Nobody would have dreamt of doing such a thing in the sixties or seventies, or even eighties. Nowadays cigars and cigarettes are quite common, while a pipe is sometimes to be seen in the morning or evening, between the lips of some business or professional man going or coming from his office or chambers.