HYDE PARK ON SUNDAY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 33, 16 August 1890, Page 5

HYDE PARK ON SUNDAY.

„ « YDE PARK in London has many sides; but Ike two most impressive are, perhaps, the social and socialistic sides. After morning service one has an exißfr*cellent opportunity to watch the class - that is pleased because it has dressed too • well ; and precisely at half-past three one may hear, near the Marble Arch, the class that is angry liecause it cannot dress well enough. These two classes keep as much apart as if an unbridged Serjientine flowed between them. These Sundays of early spring must be very trying to the social young men. Their winter methods of dress have become odiously familiar, and people of no reputation have begun to wear the baggy blue overcoat. The coat with a collar of expensive fur is less abominably common, but is too abominably hot now, ami its propriety in the morning has been questioned. And the weather is not yet hot enough to justify any summery method of procedure. Yet last Sunday, when these young men took gentle walking exercise after divine service—or shall we say after the hours of divine service ?—they were still as perfectly beautiful as heretofore, and as much like one another. All had the frock-coat with silk facings; all had those miraculous trousers that have never been worn before, and yet are innocent of the tailor’s crease. It was only in such slight matters as flowersand neckties that individuality was allowed to assert itself at al). But one or two men —pioneers possibly—did appear in a wondrous grey confection, completing the costume with blue-grey suede gloves, an eyeglass, a half-smile, ami patent-leather boots. The tulips in the enclosures looked particularly happy, as they compared their own scarlet glory with these quiet lines, and knew that nosocial young man—at any late no civilian—could be arrayed in such a way as to at all resemble one of them. The peacocks too may have been pleased with a feeling of superiority, for their vanity gives them so much less trouble. < Ine says nothing about the dresses of the ladies except that they were very pretty. For details a reader may be referred to the society papers passim, and to other journals which make this mysterious subject a specialty. But there aie other things in the park on Sunday besides beauty ami boats, boots and dogs. When London wishes to speak, it does so in the neighbourhood of the Marble Arch ; and it speaks in the most contradictory ways. Speaker follows speaker on these afternoons. Justice. the organ of the social democracy, is sold in the park. It does well in pointing out that a successful strike means higher prices as well as higher wages. It does excellently well in putting the case for the ‘ blackleg ’ with great fairness and temperance, but it is by no means so sanguine about the Ist of May as is 77te Commonweal, which also is part of the Hyde Park literature. It would be impossible to describe the speeches ami the people of a Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park fully in one article. To study the Marble Arch side at all is at once to despair and to hope. The chief cause for despair lies with the audiences; they are sympathetic, but they are desperately fickle. If a hearer disagrees with an opinion expressed,'he swears and moves to the next group. He is always more ready to laugh than to learn, and he laughs at things which might make the angels weep. Many of the speakers are men of marked ability, of interesting experiences, and of some little reading. But they are nearly as unfair and stupid in their views of the upper classes, as the upper classes generally are in their opinions of that Hyde Park oratory to which they never listen. The audiences should be six times as large. The majority of the poorer classes must be apathetic indeed if they can take no interest in hearing one of themselves speak publicly of their condition. Possibly the eloquence has been repeated too often : such words as ‘ proletariate ’ and * bourgeois ’ have lost the charm of length or novelty. Yet one cannot but feel hopeful in finding that any interest at all is taken in some of the social and political questions which were discussed last Sunday ; although one would wish for larger audiences and more generosity, and less contempt and more knowledge in those who address them. So much for the socialistic side, and we have used the word quite freely and inaccurately. While these speeches were going on, the social side was hearing the band ami paying to sit on chairs. There are plenty of people who would stand on one leg for a certain time every day if they only had to pay for it. The bourgeois class mingle with both sides, and are mildly interested in both. They look contented and happy. They walk in couples. In this lies the great bond of union, the point where all grades of society sympathise. Two sentences were spoken so loudly that it was easy to overhear them. The first was : ‘ Yes, we’ve quarrelled. She’s got such an infernal temper.’ The second was : ‘ It's all off between me ami Annie, yer know.’ The numerous children are the pleasantest class to remember. Theyearenot fordress,or the proletariate,or forthe eternity of the universe ; and they have no occasion to care as yet. It is enough for them to play, and to quarrel, and to make it up again in the sunshine, when there is any sunshine. A little boy and two sisters were playing a sort of elementary football with an empty meat-can. The rules were evolved as they went on, the exclamation, ‘ That ain’t fair,’being prohibitive and final. Then the boy desired to play at something else, and not being a chivalrous little stage impossibility—struck his sister as a sort of preliminary measure. He got very, very much the worst of it, and wept, and was comforted. Majilis sorrows always be as short lived.