The most conspicuous feature of Kew is its Pagoda, from many points seen towering over the well-wooded flat watered by a winding reach of the Thames. Such an outlandish structure bears up the odd name in giving a suggestion of China, not contradicted by the elaborate cultivation around, where all seems market-garden that is not park, buildings, groves or flower-beds. Yet the name, of old written as Kaihough, Kaiho, Kayhoo, and in other quaint forms—for which quay of the howe or hough has been guessed as original—belongs to a thoroughly English parish, whose exotic vegetation, nursed upon a poor soil, came to be twined among many national memories. These, indeed, are most closely packed about what may be called Before coming to the Gardens that are its present fame, we should understand how Kew, even in its days of obscurity, had all along to do with great folk. Almost every line of our kings has had a home in this Thames-side neighbourhood, a distinction dating from before the Conquest. Both Kew and Richmond began parochial life as dependencies of Kingston, the King’s town that once made a chief seat of Saxon princes, whose coronation stone bears record in its market-place. The manor, included with that of Sheen—the modern Richmond—was held by the Crown at Doomsday. For a time it seems to have passed into the hands of subjects, but there are hints of the first Edwards having a country home at Sheen. Edward III. certainly died at a palace said to have been built by him here. Richard II.’s first queen, Anne of Bohemia, also died at Sheen, to her husband’s so great grief that he cursed the building in the practical form of ordering it to be In Henry VIII.’s reign, the Crown gained a new seat in this neighbourhood, Hampton Court, too pretentious monument of Wolsey’s pride. At the first signs of the storm that was to wreck him, the swelling Churchman took in sail by giving up his palace to the king, who in return allowed him quarters in one of the royal lodges at Richmond, from which, as the king’s One most picturesque figure in English history must have been familiar with Kew, though its name does not appear in the sad story of fair, wise and pious Lady Jane Grey, the “nine days’ queen.” On the spindle side, she was grand-daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, married to Henry VIII.’s sister Mary, through whom came her heritage of peril. Her father, Marquis of Dorset, was created Duke of Suffolk, and succeeded to Suffolk House at Sheen. The scene of Roger Ascham’s notable visit to the studious princess was Bradgate in Leicestershire; but part of her youth would probably be spent at Suffolk House. The boy husband provided for her, Guildford Dudley, was son of a neighbour across the river, the crafty and ambitious Duke of Northumberland, who had secured Syon House here as a share of Church plunder first granted to the Protector Both Mary and Elizabeth lived from time to time at Richmond, recommended by its nearness to London, and by the river that made a royal highway in that age of bad roads. Here Elizabeth died, and from her death-bed Sir Robert Carey spurred through thick and thin to carry news of his inheritance to the King of Scots. James I. was not the man to neglect such a good hunting country; early in his reign we find the Courts of Law and all seated for a time at Richmond, when driven out of London by the plague. But Hampton Court up the river, as Greenwich below, seems to have been preferred for the king’s residence; then that lover of the chase found a paradise more to his mind in Theobald’s Park, near Enfield, for which he Monsieur and Brother,—Having heard that you begin to ride on horseback, I believed that you would like to have a pack of little dogs, which I send you, to witness the desire I have that we may be able to follow the footsteps of the kings, our fathers, in entire and firm friendship, also in this sort of honourable and praiseworthy recreation. I have begged the Count de Beaumont, who is returning there, to thank in my name the king your father, and you also for so many courtesies and obligations with which I feel myself overcharged, and to declare to you how much power you have over me, and how much I am desirous to find some good occasion to show the readiness of my affection to serve you, and for that, trusting in Him, I pray God, Monsieur and brother, to give you in health long and happy life.—Your very affectionate brother and servitor, Henry. Richmond, 23rd October 1605. This prince, we know, died young, according to one tradition through rash bathing in the Thames; but a modern physician has diagnosed the indications of his illness as typhoid fever. Richmond then passed to his brother Charles, who was much at home here and at Hampton Court. He, as king, made a new enclosure, the present Richmond Park, a hunting-ground nine miles round, formed by somewhat high-handed expropriations recalling the harsher dealings of William Rufus with the New Forest, and going to make up this king’s unpopularity. When poor Charles himself had been hunted down, the royal abode at Richmond was sold to one of the regicides, Sir Gregory Norton, the new Great Park being given over by Parliament to the citizens of London, who, at the Restoration, restored this gift to Charles II. with a courtly declaration that they had kept it as stewards of his Majesty. The Park was now put under a Ranger; and the Palace fell into neglect, though, according to Burnet, James II.’s son, the Pretender, was nursed in it. Nothing of its old state remains but the Gateway on Richmond Green, above which may be traced the arms of England, as borne by Henry VII. The adjacent As Richmond decayed, Hampton Court flourished in royal favour; and Cromwell, in his days of mastery, made bold with its ample accommodations. Its canals and garden took the fancy of Dutch William, who in England felt most at home here. His fatal accident he met with while riding in its park; and in the palace was born the only one of Queen Anne’s many children who grew towards any hope of the crown. George I. was a good deal at Hampton Court, it being recorded of him that on his way to London he used to make his carriage drive slowly through Brentford, for which he had an admiration shared by few beholders. THE WILD GARDEN IN SPRING George II. as Prince of Wales, acquired for his wife another seat in this princely countryside, buying from the Duke of Ormond a house in the Old Deer Park beyond Kew Gardens, which, re-christened Richmond Lodge, made a royal home at intervals for nearly half a century. George II. and Caroline sometimes lived at Hampton Court, as when their eldest son gave them deadly offence by secretly carrying off his wife thence to lie-in at St. James’s. And it was there that, in Frederick William fashion, the King once struck his eldest grandson, a memory that is said to have given George III. his dislike to this palace. He let it fall to its present position as a mixture of Cockney show-place and aristocratic almshouse, while he much affected Richmond Lodge, till he got possession of his boyhood’s home at Kew. So at last we come to the Kew mansion, whose connection with royalty was comparatively a late one, and lasted only for two generations. The reader must bear in mind that this was not the present Kew Palace, which hardly seems to deserve such a title of pretence. The latter had belonged to Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and was sold by him to Sir Hugh Portman, a rich Holland merchant, who rebuilt or altered it in Thus the obscure name of Kew began to appear in the scandalous chronicles of the Georgian period. Frederick’s parents, it will be remembered, were much at the neighbouring Richmond Lodge; and when Queen Caroline took a lease of the Dutch House also, this not very affectionate royal family had a group of residences too close together, one might think, There is some mystery about the origin of the extraordinary ill-will shown both by George II. and Caroline towards their heir, a feeling surpassing the antipathy between father and son that made an heirloom in this family for generations. The King tried to keep Frederick from coming to England; then, later on, he was half-willing to cut off Hanover from the English Crown that it might be bestowed upon his favourite, William of Cumberland. The eldest son he usually abused as a puppy, a fool, a beast, and by other such elegant epithets; while the Queen, if we are to believe Lord Hervey, offered once to give him her opinion in writing “that my dear first-born is the greatest ass and the greatest liar, and the greatest canaille, and the greatest beast in the whole world, and that I Kew House, then, began to figure in history as the country-seat of the Prince of Wales. Frederick was by no means a model husband nor a princely man; but he had affection and respect for his wife, the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, and they at least lived decently together. Here were in part brought up their children: George III.; Edward, Duke of York, who died abroad in 1767; William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, who lived to 1805; Henry, Duke of Cumberland, who, as well as the last-mentioned, came into disfavour through a mÉsalliance; Prince Frederick and Princess Louisa, who both died young; and Caroline Matilda, who married the worthless King of Denmark, and had a miserable All that the old Dukes were without knowing it, This Duke would fain know he was without being it. During the married life of Frederick and Augusta, the memoirs of the time give slight and sometimes rather spiteful hints of their doings at Kew, as to which, indeed, Lord Hervey’s caustic pen has no worse to tell than that they walked three or four hours daily in the lanes and fields about Richmond, with a scandal-blown lady-in-waiting and a dancing-master for company. The Prince was much given to private theatricals, but also to athletic games, among them such innocent ones as rounders, tennis, and base-ball, the last not yet banished across the Atlantic. The dog given to him by I am His Highness’s dog at Kew, Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you? This poet-neighbour boasted himself not a follower but a friend of His Highness, who did not want for two-legged dogs wagging their tails to him in town and country, on the speculation that his father’s death might any day change the tap of honour and profit. But all such expectations were nipped short. In March 1751 the Prince caught cold at Kew, and had symptoms of pleurisy. Supposed to be out of danger, he went back to Kew, where he walked about like a convalescent; but the same night, after returning to town, showed signs of a fresh chill. Again he seemed to be on the mend, then suddenly one evening was seized with a violent fit of coughing. “Je sens la mort!” he exclaimed, and these were his last words. It proved that a tumour had burst, produced either by a fall or by a blow from a tennis ball three years before. “Thus,” says Horace Walpole, “died Frederick, Prince of Wales, having resembled his pattern the Black Prince in nothing but in Here lies Fred Who was alive and is dead. Had it been his father, I had much rather. Had it been his brother, Still better than another. Had it been his sister, No one would have missed her. Had it been the whole generation, Still better for the nation. But since ’tis only Fred, Who was alive and is dead, There’s no more to be said. George II. behaved at first not unkindly to his widowed daughter-in-law and grandchildren. He visited the bereaved family, throwing off royal ceremonial, kissed them, wept with them, The first care of the King and the Ministry was to appoint instructors for the young Princes, an important choice in the case of the Heir to the Crown. The Governor appointed was Lord Harcourt, who “wanted a governor himself,” THE LAKE The question of the Regency had to be settled, in case of the King’s death before his grandson came of age. That high office might have fallen to George II.’s brother, the Duke of Cumberland, between whom and his sister-in-law, the Princess of Wales, no love was lost; nor was he beloved by the nation, least of all by the Jacobites. A lady, who any day might thus become the chief personage in the State, would not lack courtiers in a generation of politicians more concerned about interest than principle. Among her special friends came to be noted John Stuart, Earl of Bute, that unpopular bogy of the next reign. Their intimacy did not fail to pass for scandalous; but the Archangel Gabriel himself would hardly have escaped scandal had he moved in Court society of the period. Bute had been a favourite and boon companion of the Prince, and remained a close counsellor of the widow, The best-founded reproach made against the Princess is that she brought up George III. and his brothers in strict seclusion, entirely under her influence and Bute’s. A careful mother’s excuse might well be the manners of the fashionable world. Bubb Doddington, admitted to walks and talks with her in Kew Gardens, reports her as anxious to keep the future King out of bad society, and not knowing where to find good companions for him among the dissipated nobility. Our age can sympathise with this desire more than did the factious scandalmongers of the period, who soon raised a cry that the Princes were being trained in principles of arbitrary power. To Doddington the Princess protested that she did not interfere with her son’s teachers. Between the contradictory statements of friends and foes, it is difficult to judge how far she was sincere in such professions; but it is clear that George loved her as sons of that Before long the staff of preceptors fell all by the ears, the high officials quarrelling with the sub-tutors, who were understood to be in more favour with the mother. The former complained of Stone as taking too much on himself; and as for Scott, Horace Walpole tells a wicked story of the Bishop turning him out of the Prince’s Chamber “by an imposition of hands that had at least as much of the flesh as of the spirit.” What brought these jars to light was the Bishop finding in the Prince of Wales’s hands a French book written to justify James II.’s measures, an offence which Stone tried to palliate by making out that this Jacobite treatise had been lent the Prince by his sister, to whom, one understands, it would do no such great harm. The end of it was that both Governor and Preceptor resigned their offices, replaced by Lord Waldegrave and the Bishop of Peterborough, who appear to have got on for a time more smoothly with the subordinate instructors, as with the family. The new Bishop, said their mother, gave great satisfaction, and the children What seems most certain as to George III.’s education is that he learned very little from books, not even to spell, but that he came to speak French and German, and that he allowed his mother and her friend, if not his tutors, to stamp the theory that a king of England should not only reign but govern, upon a nature that proved wax to receive and marble to retain such impressions. The mother spoke of George as a good, dutiful boy, rather serious in his disposition than otherwise, but a little wanting in spirit. Whether at her apron-string he grew up sly as well as shy and sleepy, is a question raised by the story of his youthful amour with a Quakeress named Hannah Lightfoot, which makes the plot We need not rake up all the scandals that echoed about the quiet household at Kew. The Whigs went on sounding an alarm that the Prince of Wales was brought up in Jacobite principles, a particular hullabaloo being raised by a charge that his tutor Stone had drunk the Pretender’s health twenty years back, in company with Murray, better known as Lord Mansfield. The chief reproach against Bute, as yet, seems to have been his easily supposed illicit relations with the Princess, of which there is no proof. It was after the accession, rather, that he came to be pilloried as having laid himself out to heighten the Prince’s notion of the prerogative. There can be no doubt that he had At eighteen, when the Prince was considered fit to have done with tutors, in the new household formed for him, Waldegrave being shunted as a persona ingrata, the Kew influence availed to have Bute made his official mentor as Groom of the Stole. The King offered him quarters at Kensington, with a royal allowance; but the lad declared that he would stick to his mother, which seems only a way of speaking, as by this time he had a home of his own at Saville House in Leicester Fields. He was at Kew, at all events, when, starting for London on horseback one morning, he met a messenger with the news of George II.’s sudden death, confirmed presently by the appearance of the Prime Minister’s carriage on its way westwards to the new fountain of power and pensions. We know with what fair prospects George III. ascended the throne, “glorying in the name of Briton,” as Bute is said to have prompted him in addressing a people of whom the majority would One thing cannot be denied by his worst enemies, that this king made an honest effort to rule himself, to lead a clean, simple and wholesome life, which did so much in the end to win back respect for royalty among the respectable classes. At the outset of his reign he seems ready to have married for love of the bewitching siren, Lady Sarah Lennox, who took care to be seen making hay on the lawn of Holland House, as the young king rode by on the road to Kew. But that mock-Arcadian romance was nipped in the bud by his managing mother, who made haste to look out a wife for him among the Protestant princesses of Germany. George “sighed as a lover, but obeyed as a son.” Lady Sarah, great-grand-daughter of Charles II. as she was, had to content herself with serving as bridesmaid to the new queen. She soon got over The royal bride chosen was Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a girl of seventeen, who for more than half a century gave a new tone to English society. After a little flutter of gaiety natural in her position, she entered upon a life of dignified propriety and domesticity with a husband who won her heart as well as her hand, and George, whatever wild oats he may or may not have sown, made a constant husband to his rather plain bride. This model couple agreed in the simple tastes at which worldly courtiers sneered. St. James’s Palace they kept as a stage for State functions; and they made little use of Windsor in the first years of the reign. For the “Queen’s House” was bought the Duke of Buckingham’s red-brick mansion on the site of what is now Buckingham Palace; and out of town the King lived a good deal at Richmond Lodge soon proving too small for the growing royal family, George III. proposed to build a new palace for himself in Richmond Gardens, near the river opposite Syon House. The design is still preserved, and the work was actually begun; but a hitch occurred in the obstinacy of the Richmond people, who refused to sell the King a piece of ground he wanted to round off his demesne. Then the Princess Dowager, when her other sons left the nest, The smaller house—the present Kew Palace—was kept up by them with a separate establishment, at first used as the royal nursery, later on for the education of the older sons: and for a time it came to be known as the Prince of Wales’s House. Even then there was not accommodation for the dozen or so of youngsters who spent much of their childhood at Kew; and we hear of the King leasing or buying houses on Kew Green, where his flock of princes and princesses could be brought up in good air, the old Kew House serving always as the family rendezvous. In the grounds, towards the Richmond Park side, Charlotte built the picturesque “Queen’s Cottage,” where this industrious lady would ply her needle with her children about her, while the King read aloud, often from Shakespeare, for whom he professed a truly British admiration, though, as he told Miss At the beginning of George III.’s reign, the present Kew Palace is found described as “Princess Amelia’s House,” so George II.’s old-maid daughter, whose proposed marriage with Frederick the Great fell through, as Carlyle has told at length, must have lived here for a time; but she soon moved to Gunnersbury, not far off. This wilful Princess Amelia, who had faults and merits of her own, held the office of Ranger of Richmond Great Park, that brought her into collision with the public. She tried to keep the gates shut against both gentle and simple, but found that she was living in a free country, when one Lewis, a Richmond brewer, took the lead in an action for right-of-way, which would have gone against her, had George II. not anticipated the result by throwing the Park open. Having thus marked out all the royal residences in and about Kew, let us next fix our attention on Kew House during the period when it was the favourite residence of George III. THE QUEEN’S COTTAGE |