Next to the representatives of the reigning family and to the statesmen who were the props of the young Queen's throne, the attention of the Hyde Park crowd was fixed upon a little group of gentlemen, remarkable for the perfection of their toilettes, and for the special attention manifestly bestowed upon their hair, not as to-day cut down to the scalp, but falling gracefully over the white collar. These were the dandies. The last of the tribe has not long passed away. But as a race they have left no successors. The late Mr Alfred Montgomery had for his associates Count Alfred D'Orsay, whose Christian name was perpetuated by a dandies' club. 'The Alfred' flourished in Albemarle Street till a decade or two since. Its founder survived till the nineties, Alexis Soyer, high priest of the mysteries of the fine art of cookery as well as the original of Thackeray's 'Mirobolant' in _Pendennis_. Others who sat for their portraits to the novelist were well known in the fashionable section of the Hyde Park crowd. Morgan John O'Connell, a leader of dandies, was of course there. There, too, was that other O'Connell, known by his friends as Lord Kilmarlcock, from whom Thackeray never denied that he had taken the traits of The O'Mulligan. Possibly, too, there might have been seen here Mr Arcedeckne, whom the same novelist has immortalised in 'Harry Foker,' and who thus early in the Victorian era prefigured the social friendship since grown more common between the gentlemen who live to labour, and their comrades who live to enjoy. Still more noticeable among the Hyde Park loungers on foot, standing not far from D'Orsay and Montgomery were the two inseparables, the then Sir George Wombwell and Lord Adolphus, better known as 'Dolly,' Fitzclarence, the latter curiously like Lawrence's picture of George IV.
The editor of the _Times_, J. T. Delane, scarcely less powerful in the social and political system than in his own office, would have been mistaken, by those who did not know him personally, for the plain country gentleman whose life he liked to lead. His square, neatly compacted figure, with cleanly shaven upper lip, and penetrating, but pleasant, expression of eyes, was among the last to enter and to leave the Park. Not less well known to most Londoners and to many provincials were two of Mr Delane's literary friends, though not both of them wrote for his paper. One of these was Thackeray, towering above all the smaller men. The other was tall Thackeray's taller friend known to his contemporaries as 'Big' Higgins, still better known to the public at large as Jacob Omnium. The two were generally to be found together. The eyes of all passengers were strained, and their tongues silenced as these two tall lumbering figures manoeuvred slowly up or down the Row; not so much ridden in then as it was afterwards.