Cyrus Redding was a British journalist, editor, critic, and wine writer. He edited or contributed to several nineteenth-century periodicals and wrote books including A History and Description of Modern Wines.
Cyrus Redding
The Tea-Garden
In The London Magazine, August 1822, no. XXXII, vol. VI.
At length I found myself on the top of Primrose Hill...Few great cities in the world can show such a vicinity. The Regent's Park, with its handsome buildings, lay at my feet like a mass. Its clumps of young plantations, and the tall trees here and there of a darker shade of foliage, the villas, the church spires innumerable of "proud Augusta," the "sister hills that skirt her plain," with lofty Harrow in the distance, the canal lacing the green turf with a winding stripe of water of a luminous blue colour, the little silvery lakes scattered about, reflecting their "living light," and the modern Babylon stretching right and left away until it was lost in the obscurity of the atmosphere, formed together a coupe-d'oeil of magnificent though mingled character, partly natural, and partly artificial
The author meets up with a friend who turns out to be an early prophet of global warming; he has been studying weather patterns and assures him that 'the Regent's Canal will one day be choked up with mangroves.' A harmless crank, in the author's opinion.
We walked to the bottom of the hill, on the side of Chalk Farm, that most pugnacious of tea gardens, celebrated in the annals of duelling, and renowned among volunteer riflemen...We now entered the garden, surrounded by boxes, in which people of every age, and both sexes, were regaling themselves. Every spot was occupied with a table or form, save where the green sward extended itself, and a number of children were gambolling. We entered the tavern, and while sipping our port, amused ourselves with contemplating the company outside
The article is signed 'W' but is attributed to Cyrus Redding.