ST. JAMES’S fi? GREEN PARKS 69 
beautiful and fascinating women, great ladies as well 
as more humble charmers, and bold adventuresses, were 
to be seen there daily. 
The crowds seem to have been very free in their 
admiration of some of the distinguished ladies. When 
the three lovely Misses Gunning captivated everybody 
with their wit and beauty, they had only to appear in 
the Mall to be surrounded by admirers. On one occasion 
they were so pressed by the curious mob that one of 
these matchless young charmers fainted and had to be 
“ carried home in a sedan.” 
On looking at an old print of the ladies in their thin 
dresses walking in the Mall, it is customary to bemoan 
the change of climate, to wonder if our great-great-grand¬ 
mothers were supernaturally strong and not sensitive 
to cold, or to conclude that they only paraded there in 
fine weather. Apparently this last is not the correct 
solution, for in 1765 they astonished Monsieur Grosley 
by their disregard of the elements. He is horrified at 
the fog. “The smoke,” he writes, “forms a cloud 
which envelopes London like a mantle; a cloud which 
the sun pervades but rarely; a cloud which, recoiling 
back upon itself, suffers the sun to break out only 
now and then, which casual appearance procures the 
Londoners a few of what they call glorious days. The 
great love of the English for walking defies the badness 
of other days. On the 26th April, St. James’s Park, 
incessantly covered with fogs, smoke, and rain, that 
scarce left a possibility of distinguishing objects at a 
distance of four steps, was filled with walkers, who were 
an object of musing and admiration to me during the 
whole day.” Few ladies nowadays fear a little fog or 
rain, but to walk in it they must be attired in short 
