We got glimpses of the old palace at Esher, of Hampton Court, of Pitt’s country seat at Putney, and of Jane Porter’s cottage at Esher, and in the seventh hour from leaving Portsmouth (seventy-four miles) we found the vehicles thickening, the omnibuses passing, the blue-coated policemen occurring at short intervals, and the roads delightfully watered—symptoms of suburban London. We skirted the privileged paling of Hyde Park; and I could see, over the rails, the flying and gay colored equipages, the dandy horsemen, the pedestrian ladies followed by footmen with their gold sticks, the fashionable throng, in short, which, separated by an iron barrier from all contact with unsightliness and vulgarity, struts its hour in this green cage of aristocracy.
Around the triumphal arch opposite the duke of Wellington’s was assembled a large crowd of carriages and horsemen. The queen was coming from Buckingham palace through the Green park, and they were waiting for a glimpse of Her Majesty on horseback. The Regulator whirled mercilessly on; but far down, through the long avenues of trees, I could see a movement of scarlet liveries, and a party coming rapidly toward us on horseback. We missed the Queen by a couple of minutes.
It was just the hour when all London is abroad, and Piccadilly was one long cavalcade of splendid equipages on their way to the park. I remembered many a face, and many a crest; but either the faces had beautified in my memory, or three years had done time’s pitiless work on them all. Near Devonshire house I saw, fretting behind the slow-moving press of vehicle, a pair of magnificent and fiery blood horses, drawing a coach, which, though quite new, was of a color and picked out with a peculiar stripe that was familiar to my eye. The next glance convinced me that the livery was that of Lady Blessington; but, for the light chariot in which she used to drive, here was a stately coach—for the one tall footman, two—for the plain but elegant harness, a sumptuous and superb caparison—the whole turn-out on a scale of splendor unequalled by anything around us. Another moment decided the doubt—for as we came against the carriage, following, ourselves, an embarrassed press of vehicles, her ladyship appeared, leaning back in the corner with her wrists crossed, the same in the grace of her attitude and the elegance of her toilet, but stouter, more energetic, and graver in the expression of her face, than I ever remembered to have seen her. From the top of the stage-coach I looked, unseen, directly down upon her, and probably got, by chance, a daylight and more correct view of her countenance than I should obtain in a year of opera and drawing-room observation. Tired and dusty, we were turned from hotel to hotel, all full and overflowing; and finding at last a corner at Ragget’s in Dover street, we dressed, dined, and posted to Woolwich. Unexpected and mournful news closed our first day in England with tears.