THE PARKS AND THE ZOO

London's Open Spaces Slumberers Park Characteristics The Bulbs The Marble Arch Theologians Kensington Gardens "The Little White Bird" Regent's Park The Zoo The Seals and Sea Lions Feeding-time Evolutions A rival to Man Lord's--Fragrant Memories Dorset Square.

FOR those who have to get there, London's finest open space--or "lung," as the leader-writers say; is Hampstead Heath. But Hampstead Heath is a journey for special occasions: the Parks are at our doors Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, St. James's Park and Green Park, Regent's Park and Battersea Park. What London would be like without these tracts of greenery and such minor oases as the gardens of her squares one cannot think. In hot weather she is only just bearable as it is. (Once again I apply the word London to a very limited central area: for as a matter of fact there are scores of square miles of houses and streets in the East End that have no open space near them, Victoria Park having to suffice for an immense and over-crowded district, whereas the Westender may if he likes walk all the way from Kensington to Westminster under trees.)

Each of these parks has its own character; but one sight is common to all, and that is the supine slumberer. Even immediately after rain, even on a sunny day in February (as I have just witnessed), you will see the London working-man (as we call him) stretched on his back or on his front asleep in every park. I have seen them in the Green Park on a hot day in summer so numerous and still that the place looked like a battlefield after action. Do these men die of rheumatic fever, one wonders, or are the precautions which most of us take against damp superfluous and rather pitifully self-protective?

To come to characteristics, Battersea Park is for games ; St. James's Park for water fowl ; the Green Park for repose ; Hyde Park for fashion and horsemanship ; Kensington Gardens for children and toy boats; and Regent's Park for botany and wild beasts. You could put them all into the Bois de Boulogne and lose them, but they are none the worse for that ; and in the early spring their bulbs are wonderful. One has to be in London to see how beautifully crocuses can grow among the grass.

I have said that Hyde Park is for fashion and horsemanship ; but it is for other things too for meets of the Four-in-Hand club (which still exists in spite of petrol) : for flag-signalling: for oratory. Just within the park by the Marble Arch is the battle-ground of the creeds. Here on most afternoons, and certainly on Sundays, you may find husky noisy men of all colours trimming God to their own dimensions or denying Him altogether: each surrounded by a little knot of listless inquisitive idlers, who pass from one to another quite impartially. To be articulate being the beginning and end of all Marble Arch orators, the presence of an audience matters little or nothing. Now and then an atheist tackles a neo-Christian speaker, or a Christian tackles an atheist ; but nothing comes of it. Such good or amusing things as we have been led to suppose are then said are (like the retorts of 'bus drivers) mostly the invention of the descriptive humorist in his study.

KENSINGTON PALACE FROM THE GARDENS

Unless you want very obvious space, an open sky and straight paths enclosed by iron railings, or unless you want to see fashionable people in carriages or in the saddle, my advice to the visitor to Hyde Park is to walk along the north side until he reaches the Serpentine, follow the east bank of it (among the peacocks) to the bridge, and then cross the bridge and loiter in Kensington Gardens. In this way he will see the Serpentine at its best, remote from the oarsmen and the old gentlemen who sail toy boats; he will see all the interesting water fowl; and he will have been among trees and away from crowds all the time.

Personally I would view with composure a veto prohibiting me from all the parks, so long as I might have the freedom of Kensington Gardens. Here one sees the spring come in as surely and sweetly as in any Devonshire lane; here the sheep on a hot day have as unmistakable a violet aura as on a Sussex down; here the thrush sings (how he sings!) and the robin; here the daffodils fling back the rays of the sun with all the assurance of Kew ; here the hawthorns burst into flower, as cheerily as in Kent ; here is much shade, and chairs beneath it, and cool grass to walk on. Here also is a pleasant little tea-house where I have had breakfast in June in the open air as if it were France; while in winter the naked branches of the trees have a perfectly unique gift of holding the indigo mist: holding it, and enfolding it, and cherishing it.

And here is the delicious sunk Dutch garden with its lime tree walls.