MARLBOROUGH HOUSE 



It was probably to this garden that Charles II. was proceeding 

 with Evelyn the lover of gardens when, walking through St. 

 James's Park, he scandalized his companion by stopping to talk 

 with Nell Gwynne, on which occasion the diarist both saw and 

 heard a very familiar discourse " between the King and ' Mrs. 

 Nelly ' as they called an impudent comedian ; " she looking out 

 of her garden from a terrace at the top of the wall ; the monarch 

 standing on " the green walk beneath it." 



Since it seems certain that not only the " Royal Garden " but 

 Nell Gwynne's garden also, was incorporated in the grounds of 

 Marlborough's new mansion, I think that there can be but little 

 doubt that " the terrace " above mentioned by Evelyn, formed 

 the nucleus of the present one gay now in summer with a border 

 of fine herbaceous plants which runs the entire length of the 

 south or park side of Queen Alexandra's garden. It ends in a 

 spacious summer-house, a summer-house that has little side win- 

 dows overlooking the Mall, and that is comfortably furnished 

 with lounge chairs, but which I am informed, is not much fre- 

 quented by the royal inmates of the mansion. 



But to go back to a period even earlier than Nell Gwynne's, and 

 before the Friary on the site of which the house is built, existed. It 

 is interesting to recall that on a winter's morning in 1649, Charles I. 

 passed the spot on his way to the scaffold at Whitehall, after an 

 affecting parting with his children, who had been brought from 

 the Duke of Northumberland's at Sion, Isleworth, as mentioned 

 in the chapter on Sion, to bid him farewell. He crossed St. James's 

 Park from his lodging in the palace, on foot, and is said to have 

 pointed out on the way, to those with him, a tree that his brother, 

 the late Prince Henry, had planted. At that period St. James's 

 Park was a private park belonging to the royal palace, and the 

 general public would not be freely admitted ; thus neither the 

 merry monarch's gossip with Nell Gwynne, or his father's sad 

 passage to his doom, would be observed by curious eyes. Though, 

 strictly speaking, the parks are royal property, they belong to 

 the people in the sense that possession is nine points of the law ; 

 and it is to the credit of Sir Robert Walpole, the otherwise corrupt 

 minister of George II., that St. James's Park has been preserved 

 to the nation. Queen Caroline of Anspach proposed to turn it 

 into a garden for the palace, and " she asked my father," says 



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