DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.67417#0147
WILLIAM III. AND CHRISTOPHER WREN IO9
no less than twenty miles of grass chaise-ridings, or
grass drives, to be made in the Park, and had the
ground levelled and drained and ferns and nettles
cleared away. Swift, who was at Hampton Court
in October, speaks of the Queen as hunting the stag
in a chaise with one horse which she drove herself,
and remarks that she drives furiously like Jehu and
is a mighty hunter like Nimrod. In his “ Journal
to Stella,” the Dean relates how he and the Portu-
guese envoy paid a visit to Lord Halifax, “the only
Whig in England he loved or had any good opinion
of,” who had lately been appointed Steward of the
Manor. They went to the Queen's drawing-room
before dinner, “expecting to see nobody, but met
acquaintance enough. I walked in the gardens,”
adds Swift, “ and saw the cartoons of Raphael, and
with great difficulty got from Lord Halifax, who
would have kept me to-morrow to show me his
house and park and improvements. We left Hamp-
ton Court at sunset, and got here in a chariot
and two horses time enough by starlight. That’s
something charms me mightily about London; that
you go dine a dozen miles off in October, stay all
day, and return so quickly ; you cannot do anything
like this in Dublin.” 1
It was on a picnic excursion to Hampton Court
in the following summer that Lord Petre cut off
a lock of hair from the fair Arabella Fermor’s head.
This rash act led to a serious quarrel between his
family and hers, and has been immortalised by Pope
1 “Journal to Stella,” ii. 31,
no less than twenty miles of grass chaise-ridings, or
grass drives, to be made in the Park, and had the
ground levelled and drained and ferns and nettles
cleared away. Swift, who was at Hampton Court
in October, speaks of the Queen as hunting the stag
in a chaise with one horse which she drove herself,
and remarks that she drives furiously like Jehu and
is a mighty hunter like Nimrod. In his “ Journal
to Stella,” the Dean relates how he and the Portu-
guese envoy paid a visit to Lord Halifax, “the only
Whig in England he loved or had any good opinion
of,” who had lately been appointed Steward of the
Manor. They went to the Queen's drawing-room
before dinner, “expecting to see nobody, but met
acquaintance enough. I walked in the gardens,”
adds Swift, “ and saw the cartoons of Raphael, and
with great difficulty got from Lord Halifax, who
would have kept me to-morrow to show me his
house and park and improvements. We left Hamp-
ton Court at sunset, and got here in a chariot
and two horses time enough by starlight. That’s
something charms me mightily about London; that
you go dine a dozen miles off in October, stay all
day, and return so quickly ; you cannot do anything
like this in Dublin.” 1
It was on a picnic excursion to Hampton Court
in the following summer that Lord Petre cut off
a lock of hair from the fair Arabella Fermor’s head.
This rash act led to a serious quarrel between his
family and hers, and has been immortalised by Pope
1 “Journal to Stella,” ii. 31,