.10 
LAND & WATER 
August 9; 1917 
The Long Green Path 
By J. D. Symon 
IF the streets of midsummer London try the wayfarer's 
feet overmuch, let him, if leisure serve, try the Long 
Green Path. 
It is so obvious as to be easily missed. Men and women 
take it in part every day and are glad thereof, but its full 
charm is known only to those who realise it as one and in- 
divisible, and who set themselves to pursue it from end to 
end. missing nothing. For it is possible even in the very 
heart of London to enjoy a good three miles or so of pleasant 
country strolling in which one's feet are only for an insigni- 
ficant iuinute or two condemned to tread hard gravel and 
stone, or softer wooden paving-blocks. There is no mystery 
about it, e.KCcpt the perennial mystery of that walk s 
perfection, which is revealed to those alone who make it a 
definite pilgrimage from start to finish, beginning, as the 
reader will have guessed, at Storey's Gate and ending at 
the little wicket a few yards beyond the northern entrance 
of the Broad Walk in Kensington Gardens. 
In these days of higher railway fares, when the country 
ramble comes more seldom to careful townsfolk who think 
strictly' in terms of War Economy, here is compensation — 
rus in urbe, a veritable foretaste of that sylvan London 
raised to the n'" power of which William Morris dreamed 
in Nezt'S from Nowhere. 
The present stress has for the moment made the entrance 
into this earthly Paradise somewhat less attractive than it 
used to be. We miss the ancient cool shimmer of the lake 
in St. James's Park as we tread the sward that once with its 
attendant waters cheated us into fancying it some riverside 
lawn at Maidenhead or Pangbourne. Where the waves once 
danced stands a comely enough temporary Ministry, quite 
inoffensive as times go, with a fine old family servant, 
choice product, one fancies, and offshoot of Whitehall, on 
guard at the door. But even he, the double, almost, of an 
Imperial statesman, and the glimpses of white-bloused girl 
clerks, eternally industrious, through the open windows, 
cannot wholly reconcile us to thploss of the " moving waters 
at their priest-hke task of pure ablution." Still, it is necessary 
for the imperious hour, and no patriot dare complain. 
When Dusk Falls Misty 
Here, at the opening of the walk, escape from town is impos- 
sible : the green belt is still too narrow, and the bald huddle 
of Queen Anne's Mansions will not be denied. On a day of 
crystal atmosphere that fashionable warren hits the eye 
uncomfortably. It is only when dusk falls misty that Queen 
Anne lives. Then the piled outline of the building loses 
its gaunt and forbidding detail, the mass alone remains in veiled 
silhouette, towering above the gardens with an odd, yet 
very close, resemblance to Edinburgh Castle, as seen on a 
hazy evening from Princes Street. 
The grass is almost continuous, if you know how to steer 
among the paths and avoid too many crossings. Three at 
most should be your brief tribulations on the gravel walks, 
and with soft and cool going you are at the Victoria Memorial 
all too soon. Here the Long Green Path suffers its first con- 
siderable interruption, and some dodging of motors and taxis 
inter\'enes, but that is soon over, and the Green Park offers 
another delightful stretch of turf to the wayfarer. It seems 
to exclaim with Stevenson, " Come up here. Oh dusty feet," 
as you cross to its gently rising slope. If it does not finish 
the distich, adding " Here is fairy bread to eat," that is only 
because of late years no open space of London dare compete 
in fairy lore with Kensington Gardens. It is there that Sir 
James Barrie and Peter Pan hold fairyland in fee simple, and 
their right and title no wise mortal will dispute. But for all 
that , even the Green Park knows its midsummer magic. Not 
perhaps in the day-time ; it is too open, its glades are scarcely 
sequestered enough, hardly glades at all, and it has no falling 
water, but in the gloaming, and after, when the lights twinkle 
in Piccadilly and friendly beacons gleam from the tall houses 
of St. James's Place, this stage on the Long Green Path 
rises above its daylight monotony. It remains, however, 
the least intimately friendly of all the parks, when the best 
is said, and what it has of romance comes, perhaps, almost 
wholly from the buildings around it on the north and east. 
By association, that is. not by intrinsic beauty. And at one 
point, in certain weather, there is a glimpse almost of Italian 
landscape ; trees and the campanile of Westminster Cathedral 
alone visible ; the point is from the little gate close to a hotel. 
It is another of London's infinite surprises, her curious 
mimicries of other cities and lands. For here, could we but 
grasp it, is CosmopoHs. 
The last serious interruption to the ereen road ocscurs at the 
top of Constitution Hill, but the traveller can persevere to the 
very end across a small triangle of turf behind the gate ; and 
go out to the roar of Hyde Park Corner, past " Cavallinton," 
as the Italian colonists in London, with a neat portmanteau 
word, call the Wellington Statue. They have, by the way, 
their own descriptive nomenclature for every place. Regent 
Street " Stradone del Campanile Aguto" — " Pointed Steeple 
Street " ; Notting Hill, " Paese delle Lavandare" — "Washer- 
women's Land," but this is mere irrelevance. The longest 
and most charming stretch of the Green Path is now before 
us. and lucky is the traveller who hits that trail on a day 
when the red hawthorns beyond " that disgraceful Achilles 
Statue " (as a now old play had it) are in bloom. But 
even later in the season, when that touch of colour is 
absent, the Park is never failing. Now begins the country 
illusion in earnest ; the houses recede until at last at a point 
almost due north of the eastern balustrade of the Serpentine 
and just beneath that swell of ground where two well cared-for 
guns enjoy a'temporary lodging and threaten aerial intruders, 
London of bricks and mortar has vanished utterly away. 
Look where you will, no urban accessory breaks the sylvan 
landscape ; only the low sustained growl of traffic seeming 
to wheel in an endless circle around this happy woodland 
where the sparkle of sunlit water makes dancing points of 
light between the foliage, betrays the nearness of a roaring 
city. 
He who would know Hyde Park in her perfection should 
evade the wide and windswept northerly spaces where the 
way seems long and may be tedious ; he should evade also 
the drive beside the Serpentine. Medio jticundissimns ibis 
(the adaptation won't scan ; no matter) and the right track 
is on the turf behind the Royal Humane Society's House or 
Pavilion, where all sorts of unexpected dips and dells vary the 
pathway. Two fences must be climbed here, but that is also 
in the day's work, and there is no trespass in the act. The 
trees grow more nobly here in finely considered grouping anc;! 
at length, if you keep an eye open for the contours of the 
ground, vou will discover just eastward of the Magazine a 
neglected amphitheatre, or rather a Greek theatre, where 
30,000 spectators (the Athenian number) should one day sit by 
companies upon the green grass to see some Shakespearean 
Pastoral, As You Like It or A Midsummer Nitht's Dream 
for choice. Perhaps if we have any heart or money left to 
celebrate the Peace by a National' Festival, this hint may 
come to fruit. Curious that in the hey-day of pageantry 
this retreat was not chosen for the London Pageant, which 
came, if memory serves, to nothing. 
Once more and for the last time is it now necessary to 
endure a little bit of harder going, across the bridge and so 
on into Kensington Gardens by the gate beside the tea-chalet. 
The old narrow path to the right, where the water- fowl used to 
beg at the fence, is now barred by a sentinel, above whose 
head stretches a placard warning us that the ground is sacred 
to a training school. It matters not, for that way the long 
green path did not lie. The alley had to be kept faithfully and 
led only to the stony splendours of the ornamental garden, 
best seen at a distance and very wonderful from the bridge in 
certain lights, but not germane to this day's adventure. 
And so to Kensington Gardens and a long luxury of richer 
turf and glades more perfect in their rustic counterfeit 
and more charming than any former part of the way. Of 
Kensington Gardens, left to" the last fag end of space, piety 
bids us be silent. For they have their laureate ; the ground 
is strictly preserved and poachers need beware, lest Sir James 
, and his big dog dispute the passage. But if the right word is be- 
yond our humble power, duty calls us to worship for a little at 
the shrine of Peter Pan with its elfin riot around the pedestal, 
that little latter day renewal of Arcadian pieties in honour 
of the Arcadian god. reincarnate in a 19th century child. 
And this Pan is kind and welcoming to wayfarers : he delights 
not to leap out and scare them with rude shouting from the 
way. Strangely enough he owes his being, his sanctities, to 
the law that closes the gates after nightfall. Procul. procul 
esie, profani !. He could not dwell in neighbour Hyde, that 
night-long thoroughfare. 
On then a little further ; over the Broad Walk and there 
is still a yard or two more of the Long Green Path. But it 
hurries too quickly to an end. The furthest gate cannot be 
too long averted, for there must be no turning back or undue 
loitering, since time is of the essence of this contract. The 
Bayswater Road and its buses are upon us. The last possible 
step has been taken on the Long Green Path. An easy but 
steady pace has measured this pleasantest of London by-ways 
in (my watch says) just one hour and three quarters of 
enchanted time. ' 
