, plentifully supplied with
wine bottles. It is lined with a profusion of crystal spar and sea
shells; it contains a deep bath, bashfully presided over by a statue of
Venus, and the steps leading up to the door are paved with horses' teeth
picked up on the battlefield of Waterloo. How the Duke of Newcastle
accomplished this feat it is difficult to imagine, for he died in 1794.
Perhaps they belonged to other horses, or perhaps the gallant Duke of
York made the addition. He was Commander-in-chief, and the grisly relics
may have been sent him as a present.

Another relic of the dead is the cemetery in which the Duchess of York
used to bury her cats and dogs and monkeys. There may be, perhaps,
thirty or forty little tombstones, each with a name.

Oatlands Park preserves a not very trustworthy legend. In the grounds
stand a number of magnificent cedars, and one of them bears a notice by
which you are informed that it was one of the first cedars of Lebanon
planted in England and was placed where it stands by Prince Henry of
Otelands. Neither statement quite fits the facts. If Prince Henry of
Oatlands planted the cedar, he must have done so either before the
outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 (in which case he would have been
hardly three years old, for he was born in 1639), or else in the summer
of 1660, the year of the Restoration, and the year in which he died. As
a matter of fact, cedars were hardly known at the time, for John Evelyn
in his _Sylva_, published in 1664, only mentions them as unsatisfactory
seedlings, difficult to grow; and the earliest cedar planted in England
is probably the Enfield cedar, which may have been set in the ground by
Dr. Uvedale, master of the Grammar-School, about that date. There are,
in any case, much finer cedars than the Oatlands Park trees in adjoining
private gardens. Probably all of them were planted by the Earl of
Lincoln or the Duke of Newcastle early in the eighteenth century.

Another of Weybridge's links with royalty is not quite so reputable.
Portmore Park is the name for a large slice of the town which lies near
the river, thickly built over with villas and cut up into new roads.
Once there stood in it Ham House, which with its park was given by James
II to his mistress Catherine Sedley, notorious at least as much for her
wit as her features. She herself, even with the brilliant eyes which
were pretty nearly all she had of good looks, could not understand the
king's infatuation.