Hyde Park, Its History and RomanceAlec-Tweedie, Mrs. (Ethel)
History
Hyde Park, Its History and Romance
Alec-Tweedie, Mrs. (Ethel)
Hyde Park (London, England); London (England) -- Social life and customs
The above quotations are among the closing entries of the old writer.
That month of May often brought him to Hyde Park—“in our own coach”
as he proudly indites. He drove there on Whit-Sunday, and twice took
his wife for refreshment to “The World’s End,” which he describes as a
drinking-house by the Park, at Knightsbridge; and both he and Evelyn
mention the wonderful display of fireworks on the King’s birthday (29th
May 1669).
Records and letters preserved by many of the noble families contain
numerous references to the gaieties of Hyde Park under the Restoration.
In the Harley Papers at Welbeck Abbey, and the Rutland Manuscripts at
Belvoir Castle, letters exist written by Edward Harley to his father,
Sir Edward Harley, and from Lady Mary Bertie to her niece, describing
in detail the review that was held in “Hide Parke” in honour of the
visit of the Prince of Orange (afterwards William III.), then a youth
of nineteen. Mr. Harley says: “Yesterday there was a review in Hyde
Park of all the Guards, horse, foot, cannon, and pioneers, to entertain
the Prince of Orange.”
Lady Rachel Russell writes to Lady Granby at Belvoir Castle:
“Lady Salisbury was at Hyde Park a Sunday night, mighty Frenchified in
her dresse, as your brother says.... Mr. Beaumont was upon the road and
met two coaches and six horses, and the lady lifted up a curtain, and
in French, spoke to aske how far ’twas to Hatfield.”
This was another evidence of the love of everything French under the
régime of Charles II.
With another letter from the Rutland Papers, delightful and only
a trifle scandalous, this chapter may be fitly closed. The little
incident, told in such a matter-of-fact way, of her Grace of Sussex
and Madame Mazarin going down to St. James’s Park with drawn swords
under their night-gowns, and making “several fine passes” before an
applauding circle of men, tells more of those times than pages of
moralising. It is from Lady Chaworth to Lord Ross:
DEC. 25, 1676.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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