A Sunday Visit to Hyde Park in 1835

Loretta reports:

Following is an excerpt from Sketches from Real Life, published in The Court Magazine in January 1835.  The entire piece is interesting reading, & you might have fun guessing which people the initials & dashes & asterisks refer to.
~~~
We will enter Hyde Park by the gateway of the beautiful screen we have just glanced at . . .It is Sunday ; and we are accompanied on our entrance by streams of well dressed pedestrians, throngs of well mounted cavaliers, and strings of well appointed equipages, all tending to the same point of popular attraction, — the northern portion of that irregular shaped Ring which it is now our business to describe, with all its extraneous chasing, and all those temporary adjuncts which it wears so profusely on this its weekly jour-de-fête.

On first passing through the Screen which separates Hyde Park from the point of junction between the western extreme of Piccadilly on the one hand, and the great western road on the other, we find ourselves in an angular area, of irregular shape, and branching off, on the left, into two long and spacious carriage roads, running parallel with each other to an extent that (in our misty metropolitan atmosphere) the eye can scarcely take in. To-day these two roads are enlivened at intervals, "few and far between," the one on the left by various unpretending equipages, rolling steadily along in both directions, as if willing to avoid the vulgar noise, bustle, and dust of the public road on the one hand, and the aristocratic gaiety and splendour of the crowded Ring on the other. . .
 
The other still broader and more stately road,* running parallel with that just referred to, finds its spacious solitude enlivened by a few quietly disposed equestrians alone: for carriages are interdicted there, save those of royalty itself, and of one favoured exception, His Grace the High Falconer of England . . . Certain it is, his Duchess does not fail frequently to avail herself of this imaginary approximation to royalty. Nor can we blame her for so doing. To pay a hundred thousand a year for a turnpike ticket entitling one to travel the eight furlongs of "royal road," between Kensington and London, and then not to use the privilege, were a superfluous piece of magnificence. —The Court Magazine and Belle Assemblée, 1835

*Rotten Row

Illustrations:  
1833-Smollinger-Hyde Park section of "Improved map of London for 1833, from Actual Survey. Engraved by W. Schmollinger, 27 Goswell Terrace." (with my notes)

Rotten Row and Hyde Park Corner, London, England, between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900, courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA