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 fe 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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