AND ANOTHER THING
What has Johnson finally gone mad?
No, it's just that he's a Londoner
PAUL JOHNSON
here are times when I hug myself on my good fortune in being a Londoner. What — has Johnson finally gone mad? Not at all: let me make my case. This has been a wet May and June but the compen- sation is that, for the first time in some years, the grass of the parks looks genuine- ly green once more, and not just green but, seen in the shade against strong sunlight, almost blue in its luxuriance and riot. Rid- ing gently down Constitution Hill in a taxi this week, I glimpsed again a sight which is to me quintessentially London: contrasting strips of blue-green shade and brilliant sun- lit grass under the umbrageous canopy of great, ancient trees, while all around one is conscious of massive buildings and the vibrant, teeming life of a huge metropolis — the true rus in urbe.
No other capital city can provide these glimpses. Nor are they glimpses alone. A few minutes from my house in Bayswater, I can enter Kensington Gardens at Notting Hill Gate and walk across the grass all the way through Hyde Park, Green Park and St James's Park to Westminster while scarcely setting foot on a pavement — a grand, rus- tic perambulation through the heart of London, taking in not just endless sward and countless trees, but masses of splendid borders, ornamental lakes, bridges, foun- tains, pagodas and follies, not to speak of wildfowl both homely and spectacular.
Don't tell me you can do this in New York because Central Park, excellent though it is in its way, is rather a grim, grey place. One is conscious that it is built on impenetrable, heartless rock, because it breaks through the thin skin of earth in many places as if to remind you that, close to the surface, this is still the savage New World, not an ancient, long-domesticated haunt of civilised man. Indeed, when I walk in Central Park even in broad daylight, I am conscious of wild human beasts lurking in the undergrowth or hidden in the rocks — dniggies, sex maniacs, black militants, aimless assassins, heavily armed beggars who will kill you for a dime and think noth- ing of it. The endless rim of skyscrapers always visible on high makes a gritty state- ment that Central Park is not nes in urbe but a rocky back garden in megalopolis. Anyway, by this time of year, when London is at its incomparable best, the Big Apple is already too hot and sweaty, going rotten, the ugly worms peering out in search of trouble. Paris comes closer to the ideal, but, as even Nancy Mitford had to admit, there are not proper parks in the city of light. The Tuilleries, the Elysee, the Luxembourg, Monceau and so on are dainty, artificial parterres, with altogether too much gravel, which becomes glaring white in the summer sun and gets into your shoes. These are gar- dens in which a boulevardier may stretch his legs a tiny bit, in the hope of picking up a soubrette (some hope, in my experience) or even a grue; floral tablecloths in which a fliineur may dawdle ornamentally, but not real parks for walking in. To be sure, such do exist, but right at the end of the Metro, so that just getting there involves an expe- dition through interminable jammed streets or the torrid bowels of the earth, and even when you reach Vincennes or the Bois de Boulogne you rediscover that the French have never been able to grow real grass.
The grass in Green Park is the best in London. Although this little Eden is only 36 acres, with its splendid trees and lack of artificial ornamentation it comes closest to the sylvan-meadow ideal of a great city park. We owe this glorious green oasis to Charles II who found it a mess — banks, ditches, barren earth — enclosed it behind a high red-brick wall and called it 'Upper St James's Park'. He put deer in it, built a snow-house and an ice-house, and took his daily walk up it, the route becoming known as Constitution Hill. Queen Caroline, long- suffering wife of George II, also loved this stretch and had William Kent build her a little library there, reached by what is still known as the Queen's Walk.
Green Park was much used by the mili- tary to do those intricate evolutions, in gleaming brass and pipeclay beloved of 18th-century sovereigns, so it was a natural venue for celebrations of victories. To mark the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, George II ordered a tremendous firework display there. Captain Thomas Desaguliers, described as Chief Fire-Master of His Majesty's Laboratory, had at his disposal 88 Catherine-wheels, 87 'air balloons', 21 'cas- cades', 71 fixed and 131 vertical suns and wheels, 12,200 sparklers, 10,650 skyrockets and numerous other feux d'artifice. A Tem- ple of Peace, 400 feet long and 114 high, was designed and built, from which the King and other grandees could watch the display. It included a musical gallery, and in it a 96-piece orchestra, mainly of brass, wind and percussion, performed Handel's 'Music for the Royal Fireworks', specially written for the occasion and punctuated by discharges from 100 cannon. In all this demonstration of firepower, the Temple of Peace was ignited and burned down, the conflagration also consuming the Queen's Library.
No detonations in Green Park nowadays, thank God. I like to lie calmly in its herba- ceous tranquillity, gazing up at the skyline of dwellings stretching from the Ritz to Spencer House, in which London's super- rich live. Lord Beaverbrook made his Lon- don home there, in Arlington House, from which he could take his morning constitu- tional, like Charles II. One day when Ran- dolph Churchill called, the butler (who always referred to his master thus) told him, 'The Lord is walking,' to which Ran- dolph replied hopefully, 'On the water?' Where the Beaver once growled out instructions to his editors, it is appropriate that Rupert Murdoch should now reside, on his brief touchdowns in London that is; and Jacob Rothschild can also be seen, at times, on the broad stone terrace of the town palace he has so magnificently restored and brought to glittering life. Indeed, when a royal garden party is on, as occasionally happens this time of year, the place really looks quite posh, and stable, especially when the strains of 'Pomp and Circumstance' come drifting over the walls from Buckingham Palace. Once again, there is nothing like this in New York and Paris. If London could only keep itself clean, and lock up its burglars and car- thieves, what a grand city it would be.
Previous page
