GENT'S PARK

I wondered, as I passed Regent's Park on my way to Hampstead, what kind
of people live in those great stuccoed terraces and crescents, with
their solemn facades and friezes and pediments and statues. People
larger than life I picture the inhabitants of those inexpensive, august,
unfashionable houses, people with a dignity of port, an amplitude of
back, an emphasis of vocabulary and conviction unknown in other regions;
Dowagers and Dignitaries who have retired from a world no longer worthy
of them, ex-Governors of Dominions, unavailing Viceroys, superannuated
Bishops and valetudinarian Generals, who wear top-hats and drive around
the Park in old-fashioned barouches--a society, I imagine it, not
frivolous, not flippant, entirely devoid of double meanings; a society
in which the memory of Queen Victoria is still revered, and regrets are
still felt, perhaps, for the death of the Prince Consort.

Or, as I have sometimes fancied, are those noble mansions the homes of
the Victorian Statesmen and Royal Ladies and distinguished-looking
Murderers who, in the near-by wax-work exhibition, gaze on the shallow,
modern generation which chatters and pushes all day before the glassy
disapprobation of their eyes?

THE AVIARY

Peacock Vanities, great, crested Cockatoos of Glory, gay Infatuations
and painted Daydreams--what a pity it is all the Blue Birds of
impossible Paradises have such beaks and sharp claws, that one really
has to keep them shut up in their not too cleanly cages!

ST. JOHN'S WOOD

As I walked on the air soon lightened; the Throne, the Altar and the
top-hat cast fainter shadows, the figures of John Bright and Gladstone
and Queen Victoria faded from my mind. I had entered the precincts of
St. John's Wood; and as I went past its villas of coquettish aspect,
with their gay Swiss gables, their frivolously Gothic or Italian or
almost Oriental faces, the lighter aspects of existence they represent,
the air they have of not taking life too seriously, began to exert their
influence.

St. John's Wood is the home in fiction of adventuresses and profligacy
and Bohemian supper-parties; often have I read about those foreign
Countesses, of unknown history and incredible fascination, who decoy
handsome young officials of the Foreign Office to these villas, and rob
them, in dim-lit, scented bedrooms, of important documents. But I at
least have never too harshly blamed these young diplomatists. Sile