3-082-881 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The London Season: Kensington Gardens, 1895. 'We are approaching the height of the London season, and town is filled with the usual fashionable throng, for whom dances, garden-parties, and receptions are being held in a rapid succession which is dazzling. The Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden Theatre is reviving the glory of the days when Grisi, Mario, Patti, or Nilsson were reigning favourites. Only one of that brilliant group remains to charm lovers of the opera to-day - Madame Adelina Patti, who is expected to return in June to the scene of her former triumphs...Kensington Gardens are too familiar to need description. Enough to say that the floral charms of the place were never greater than to-day. Those who recall Matthew Arnold's lines, "In Kensington Gardens," will find their inspiration in the cool green glades now so frequented by Londoners, and in many other parks in or around the metropolis there may be seen quite as charming landscape as we seek and find abroad. We need a poet of the park as well as of the street'. From "Illustrated London News", 1895.