Desecration!

Known to every British schoolboy is the mythical Etonian to whom a statue was erected for shooting his father who wore brown boots on Sunday. Sir H. Walter Gilbey, Bart., famed horseman and gin distiller, is a Harrovian, but he too has his principles.

Sir Walter is 72. He has worn a mauve carnation in his buttonhole every day for 35 years. He owns and wears Britain's finest collection of fancy waistcoats (all with buttons engraved with his initials), a collection rivaled only by the de la Baume-Pluvinel collection in Paris. One day lately Sir Walter with a fresh carnation and a new waistcoat from Savile Row took his usual constitutional along Rotten Row.

The Row, a straight mile of tanbark along the southern edge of Hyde Park, is as sacred to British horsemen as Shakespeare's tomb is to poets, Westminster to statesmen. It is the King's Road (the name is a British attempt to pronounce Route du Rois), the path that ancient sovereigns took when they rode from Westminster to hunt in the royal forests. Here Queen Victoria used to drive in her barouche, smiling grimly under her swivel-topped black parasol. Here King George takes his genteel canters. Here the morning sun shines on the finest horses, the best cut breeches in Britain. Sportsmen of Sir Walter Gilbey's generation would sooner go to Buckingham Palace in their shirtsleeves than appear in the Row improperly clad. The blood of the old distiller chilled as he saw the world's most aristocratic bridle path encumbered with several persons riding in turtleneck sweaters and bareheaded!

Sir Walter went home as fast as possible, and in his capacity as President of the International Light Horsebreeding Society, made a speech:

"I wish to state how shocked I am to see so many people of both sexes turn up in our wonderful Rotten Row to do their riding in costumes which are not only a disgrace to the royal park but to the country. ... I haven't heard the word 'desecration' used yet, but that's actually what I think it is. There should be regulation to stop it. The next thing we'll see will be bathing costumes and shorts in the Row!

"It is unpardonable to ride without a hat, particularly in the finest Row in the world . . . where strangers watching will get a totally improper impression of British horsemanship. . . . Nothing looks prettier in the world on a woman than a bowler hat with a riding costume."

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