=Early History of Kensington.=
Kensington Palace, built by William and Mary, occupied by Queen Anne as
one of her favourite residences, enlarged by George I. and greatly
appreciated by George II. and his queen, Caroline, has received a
greater renown and more interesting associations from having been the
birthplace and early home of Queen Victoria. In celebration of the
eightieth anniversary of that ever-memorable and auspicious event, Her
Majesty decided on opening the State Apartments free to the public on
the 24th of May, 1899, during Her Majesty's pleasure.
Before recapitulating the events of the Queen's early life here, we must
give a brief outline of the history of the Palace since it became a
royal residence.
The original building, of which it is probable that a good deal still
stands, was erected mainly by Sir Heneage Finch, Lord Chancellor and
Earl of Nottingham, who acquired the estate, including some hundred and
fifty acres of meadow and park--now Kensington Gardens--from his brother
Sir John Finch. Hence it was known as Nottingham House; and under that
title it was bought from Daniel Finch, the second earl, for the sum of
18,000 guineas, in the summer or autumn of 1689, by King William III.,
who was anxious to have a convenient residence near enough to Whitehall
for the transaction of business, and yet sufficiently far to be out of
the smoky atmosphere, in which he found it impossible to breathe. The
King, assisted by his Queen, at once set about enlarging and
embellishing the mansion, and laying out new gardens.
=Building of the Palace.=
The works seem to have been begun on or very soon after the 1st of
October, 1689. We learn this from the enrolled account of "Thomas Lloyd,
Paymaster of Their Majesties Workes and Buildinges," made up from
"paybookes subscribed with the handes of Sir Christopher Wren, Knight
Surveyor of the workes; William Talman, Comptroller; John Oliver, Master
Mason; and Matthew Bankes, Master Carpenter, and with the hand of
Nicolas Hawkesmore, clerke of the said workes, according to the ancient
usual and due course of the office of their Majesties workes."
In the second week of November a news-letter informs us that the new
apartment, then being built, "suddenly fell flat to the ground, killing
seven or eight workmen and labourers. The Queen had been in that
apartment but a little while before."
By February 25th, 1690, they were sufficiently advanced for Evelyn to
record in his diary: "I went to Kensington, which King William has
bought of Lord Nottingham, and altered, but was yet a patched building,
but with the garden, it is a very sweete villa, having to it the Park,
and a straight new way through this Park." The making of this new road
cost just about £8,000.
Building operations were continued during the King's absence in Ireland;
and the day before the news of the battle of the Boyne reached Queen
Mary she spent a few quiet hours in the gardens here, writing the same
evening, July 5th, to William: "The place made me think how happy I was
there when I had your dear company." Until his return she continued to
overlook the building, and on August 6th following, writes again as to
the progress of the building: "The outside of the house is fiddling
work, which takes up more time than can be imagined; and while the
_schafolds_ are up, the windows must be boarded up, but as soon as that
is done, your own apartment may be furnished." And a week after: "I have
been this day to Kensington, which looks really very well, at least to a
poor body like me, who have been so long condemned to this place
(Whitehall) and see nothing but water and wall."
The work of improving Kensington House continued for another year or
more, costing during this period £60,000. It was, however, far from
finished, when, in November, 1691, a serious fire occurred,
necessitating re-building at a cost of upwards of £6,000. From the year
1691 to 1696 another £35,000 was spent in further "altering the old
house," and in additional works of decoration in the galleries and other
rooms--details as to which will be given in our description of those
apartments.
Extensive alterations and improvements were also in progress at the same
time in the gardens, which at this period were confined to the ground
east and south of the Palace, as to which we shall refer again.
=Deaths of Queen Mary and King William.=
Ere the work, however, was completed, Queen Mary was taken ill at
Kensington with small pox in December, 1694. On learning the nature of
her illness she locked herself in her closet, burned some papers, and
calmly awaited her fate, which quickly came a few days after, the 28th
of December.
Evelyn visited Kensington again in 1696, and speaks of it then as "noble
but not greate," commending especially the King's Gallery, which was
then filled with the finest pictures in the royal collection, "a greate
collection of Porcelain, and a pretty private library. The gardens about
it very delicious." Peter the Great's visit to William III. in this same
gallery is referred to in our description of it below.
The next event of moment is William III.'s own death at Kensington
Palace, after his accident in Hampton Court Park. "Je tirs vers ma fin,"
said he to Albemarle, who had hurried from Holland to his master's
bedside; and to his physician: "I know that you have done all that skill
and learning could do for me; but the case is beyond your art, I must
submit." "Can this," he said soon after, "last long?" He was told that
the end was approaching. He swallowed a cordial, and asked for Bentinck.
Those were his last articulate words. "Bentinck instantly came to the
bedside, bent down, and placed his ear close to the King's mouth. The
lips of the dying man moved, but nothing could be heard. The King took
the hand of his earliest friend and pressed it tenderly to his heart. In
that moment, no doubt, all that had cast a slight passing cloud over
their long pure friendship was forgotten. It was now between seven and
eight in the morning. He closed his eyes, and gasped for breath. The
bishops knelt down and read the commendatory prayer. When it ended
William was no more. When his remains were laid out, it was found that
he wore next to his skin a small piece of black silk ribbon. The lords
in waiting ordered it to be taken off. It contained a gold ring and a
lock of the hair of Mary."
=Queen Anne at Kensington Palace.=
Fond as William and Mary had been of Kensington, Queen Anne was even
more attached to it still;--and it became her usual residence whenever
it was necessary for her to be near the great offices of state. She
seems to have remained satisfied with the palace as it had been finished
by her predecessors, except for the addition of one or two small rooms
"in the little court behind the gallery," perhaps because King William
bequeathed to her a debt of upwards of £4,000 for his buildings at
Kensington.
She devoted, however, a great deal of care and expense to the improving
and enlarging of the Palace gardens--as to which we shall have more to
say when we come to describe them. Queen Anne, indeed, was, in this
respect, thoroughly English. She loved her plants and flowers, and would
spend hours pottering about her gardens at Kensington. The appearance of
her gardens will best be seen from our reduced facsimile of Kip's large
engraving, published about 1714 in his "Britannia Illustrata." In the
right distance is seen that most beautiful building called the
"Orangery" or green-house, erected by her orders--which we shall fully
describe on a subsequent page.
Besides enlarging the gardens round about the Palace, Queen Anne greatly
extended the area of the park-like enclosed grounds attached to
Kensington Palace. Mr. Loftie has declared that "neither Queen Anne nor
Queen Caroline took an acre from Hyde Park." But this we have found not
to be the fact. In an old report on the "State of the Royal Gardens and
Plantations at Ladyday, 1713," among the Treasury Papers in the Record
Office, there is a distinct reference to "The Paddock joyning to the
Gardens, _taken from Hyde Park in 1705_, and stocked with fine deer and
antelopes;" and again in another document, dated May 26th in the same
year, being a memorial to the Lord High Treasurer from Henry Portman,
Ranger of Hyde Park, it is stated that "near 100 acres had been enclosed
from the park of Kensington, whereby the profits he had by herbage were
much reduced." Later on, in George II.'s reign, in 1729, we find a grant
of £200 made to William, Earl of Essex, Ranger of Hyde Park, "in
consideration of loss of herbage of that part of the said park which is
laid into his Majesty's gardens at Kensington."
=Death of Prince George of Denmark.=
It was at Kensington Palace that Anne's husband, Prince George of
Denmark, at length succumbed, in 1708, to a prolonged illness of gout
and asthma. During his last sickness and death, Anne had the
"consolation" of the Duchess of Marlborough's "sympathy." Her Grace's
deportment, according to an eye-witness, "while the Prince was actually
dying, was of such a nature that the Queen, then in the height of her
grief, was not able to bear it." She actually forced her way, as
Mistress of the Robes, to the poor Prince's deathbed, and only drew into
the background when peremptorily ordered by the heart-broken wife to
leave the room. After Prince George had breathed his last, she stepped
forward again, and when all the others had left, insisted on remaining
with poor Anne, who was "weeping and _clapping_ her hands together, and
swaying herself backwards and forwards" in an agony of grief. The Queen
was at length induced to accede to the Duchess's advice to leave "_that
dismal body_" and remove to St. James's.
Two years later, in these very same state rooms of Kensington Palace
took place the famous final interview between the Queen and her whilom
favourite, also subsequently noticed in our description of "Queen Anne's
Private Dining Room."
=Death of Queen Anne.=
In the summer of the year 1714 Queen Anne was seized, at Kensington
Palace, with apoplexy, brought on by political worries. She had been
failing in health for some time; and on July 27th had an attack of blood
to the head, while presiding at her Cabinet Council, and was carried in
a dead faint to her bed. Four days after, Charles Ford, an official of
the government and a correspondent of Swift, wrote: "I am just come from
Kensington, where I have spent these two days. At present the Queen is
alive, and better than could have been expected; her disorder began
about eight or nine yesterday morning. The doctors ordered her head to
be shaved; while it was being done, the Queen fell into convulsions, or,
as they say, a fit of apoplexy, which lasted two hours, during which she
showed but little sign of life." At six in the evening of the same day,
another anxious watcher within the palace walls, says Miss Strickland,
wrote to Swift: "At the time I am writing, the breath is _said_ to be in
the Queen's nostrils, but that is all. No hopes of her recovery,"--and
in effect she breathed her last the following day, in the fiftieth year
of her age. "Her life would have lasted longer," wrote Roger Coke, in
his "Detection," "if she had not eaten so much.... She supped too much
chocolate, and died monstrously fat; insomuch that the coffin wherein
her remains were deposited was almost square, and was bigger than that
of the Prince, her husband, who was known to be a fat, bulky man."
=George I. at Kensington Palace.=
The day after the death of Queen Anne, King George was proclaimed her
successor; and soon after his accession he entered into possession of
Kensington Palace. Taking, on his part, also, a fancy to the place, he
decided, about the year 1721, to erect a new and additional suite of
state rooms, the building of which was intrusted to William Kent, as we
shall fully explain in our description of the new state rooms
constructed by him. Otherwise, we hear scarcely anything of George I. in
connection with Kensington. He lived here, indeed, in the greatest
seclusion with his German favourites, and was scarcely ever seen, even
in the gardens, which in his reign first became the fashionable
promenade, where, in the words of Tickell, who wrote a poem on the
subject, in imitation of Pope's "Rape of the Lock"--
"The dames of Britain oft in crowds repair
To groves and lawns, and unpolluted air,
Here, while the town in damps and darkness lies,
They breathe in sunshine, and see azure skies."
=George II. at Kensington Palace.=
In the reign of George II. Kensington became more than ever the
favourite residence of the court, and much insight into life within the
walls of the Palace at this time is afforded us by such books as Lady
Suffolk's "Memoirs," Lady Sundon's "Letters," Walpole's "Reminiscences,"
and, above all, of course, by Lord Hervey's "Memoirs." Here is a
malignant little sketch drawn by that treacherous, satiric hand: "His
Majesty stayed about five minutes in the gallery; snubbed the Queen, who
was drinking chocolate, for being always 'stuffing;' the Princess Emily
for not hearing him; the Princess Caroline for being grown fat; the Duke
of Cumberland for standing awkwardly; Lord Hervey for not knowing what
relation the Prince of Sultzbach was to the Elector Palatine; and then
carried the Queen to walk, and be re-snubbed, in the garden."
It was the Princess Emily just mentioned who played a practical joke one
evening at Kensington on Lady Deloraine, by drawing her chair from under
her just as she was going to sit down to cards, thus sending her
sprawling on the floor. The King burst out laughing, and, to revenge
herself, Lady Deloraine played his august Majesty the same trick soon
after, which not unnaturally led to her being forbidden the court for
some time.
Although Queen Caroline had to put up with a good deal of snubbing, she
managed, at the same time, usually to get her own way. She was very fond
of art; and it was she who discovered, stowed away in a drawer at
Kensington Palace, the famous series of Holbein's drawings. These she
had brought out, and she arranged all the pictures in the State Rooms
according to her liking. Her substituting good pictures for bad in the
great Drawing-Room during one of the King's absences in Hanover, led to
the famous and oft-quoted scene between Lord Hervey and his Majesty,
who, nevertheless, did not interfere with the Queen's alterations.
Caroline was also devoted to the then fashionable craze of gardening,
and was continually planning and altering at Kensington. It was at her
instance--as we shall see presently in greater detail--that the large
extent of land, formerly the park of old Nottingham House, and also a
portion of Hyde Park, was laid out, planted, and improved into what we
now know as "Kensington Gardens."
Queen Caroline died in 1737, while George II. survived her twenty-three
years, expiring at Kensington Palace on the morning of the 25th of
October, 1760, at the age of seventy-eight. His end was extremely
sudden. He appeared to be in his usual health, when a heavy fall was
heard in his dressing-room after breakfast. The attendants hurried in,
to find the King lying on the floor, with his head cut open by falling
against a bureau. The right ventricle of his heart had burst.
=Kensington in George III.'s Reign.=
George II. was the last sovereign to occupy Kensington Palace, which
thenceforth, during the long reign of George III., was left almost
entirely neglected and deserted. Several members of the royal family,
however, occupied, at various periods, suites of apartments in the
Palace. Among others, Caroline of Brunswick, when Princess of Wales,
lived for a short time here with her mother. Her behaviour greatly
scandalized the sober-minded inhabitants of the old court suburb. "She
kept a sort of open house, receiving visitors in a dressing-gown, and
sitting and talking about herself with strangers, on the benches in the
garden, at the risk of being discovered."
Another but more worthy occupant of the Palace in George III.'s reign
was our present Queen's uncle, the Duke of Sussex, who collected a
magnificent library here of nearly fifty thousand volumes, which he
spent the last years of his life in arranging and cataloguing.
Destined, however, to invest Kensington Palace with associations and
memories far transcending any that have gone before, was the advent here
of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, seven months after their marriage. They
occupied most of the old state rooms on the first and second floors of
the easternmost portion of the Palace. Three lives then stood between
the duke and the throne, and little could the newly-married pair have
imagined that from their union would spring the future Queen and Empress
of such a vast and mighty empire as now owns the sway of their first and
only child.
=Birth of Queen Victoria.=
The Queen was born on the 24th of May, 1819, at a quarter past four in
the morning. "Some doubt," says Mr. Loftie, "has been thrown on the
identification of the room in which the future Queen was born; but the
late lamented Dr. Merriman, whose father attended the Duchess, had no
doubt that a spacious chamber, which has been marked with a brass plate,
was that in which the happy event took place." This room, which is on
the first floor, exactly under the "King's Privy Chamber"--the State
Rooms being on the second floor--has a low ceiling, and three windows,
facing east, looking into the "Private Gardens." It has been identified
by the Queen as the one Her Majesty was always told she was born in. The
brass plate, put up at the time of the first Jubilee, in 1887, states:
_In this room Queen Victoria was born, May 24th, 1819_.
[Illustration: THE DUCHESS OF KENT WITH PRINCESS VICTORIA (AGED TWO
YEARS).
(After a picture by Sir William Beechey.)]
Faulkner, writing the year after the event, confirms this
identification, insomuch that he says: "_The lower apartments_ in the
south-east part of the Palace, beneath the King's Gallery, have been
for some years occupied by His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, whose
premature decease--eight months after the birth of his daughter--this
nation has so recently and deeply lamented; and they are still the
residence of Her Royal Highness the Duchess."
This is how the event was noticed in the "Memoirs" of Baron Stockmar: "A
pretty little Princess, plump as a partridge, was born. The Duke of Kent
was delighted with his child, and liked to show her constantly to his
companions and intimate friends with the words: 'Take care of her, for
she will be Queen of England.'"
An interesting letter of the Duke of Kent's, written a few weeks after
to his chaplain, Dr. Thomas Prince, who had addressed a letter of
congratulation to him while, at the same time, somewhat condoling with
him that a daughter and not a son had been born to him, was published in
the "Times" at the time of the Jubilee of 1897. In it the duke remarked:
"As to the circumstance of that child not proving to be a son instead of
a daughter, I feel it due to myself to declare that such sentiments are
not in unison with my own; for I am decidedly of opinion that the
decrees of Providence are at all times wisest and best."
=Queen Victoria's Early Years at Kensington.=
The next reference we have found to the future Queen, is in a letter,
written on 21st of July, 1820, when, consequently, Her Majesty was a
little more than a year old, by Mr. Wilberforce, who mentions being
received at Kensington Palace by the Duchess of Kent that morning. "She
received me with her fine animated child on the floor, by her side, with
its playthings, of which I soon became one."
Most of the future Queen's early years were passed at Kensington Palace
in great privacy and retirement. She was often seen, however, in
Kensington Gardens, her constant companion in her walks being Miss,
afterwards Baroness Lehzen.
Leigh Hunt, referring to this period, mentions in his "Old Court
Suburb," having seen her "coming up a cross path from the Bayswater
Gate, with a girl of her own age by her side"--probably the Princess
Feodore, her beloved half-sister and constant companion of her
girlhood--"whose hand she was holding, as if she loved her.... A
magnificent footman in scarlet came behind her."
The youthful Princess was sometimes driven in a goat or donkey carriage
in the park and gardens, and, as she grew older, in a small phæton,
drawn by two diminutive ponies. The following gives a little glimpse of
our Queen at this early period of her life:
"A party consisting of several ladies, a young child, and two men
servants, having in charge a donkey gaily caparisoned with blue ribbons,
and accoutered for the use of the infant ... who skipped along between
her mother and sister, the Princess Feodore, holding a hand of each."
=The Queen's Childhood at Kensington Palace.=
In further illustration of the Queen's life as a little girl with her
mother at Kensington Palace, we cannot do better than quote what Mr.
Holmes, writing with authority as the Queen's Librarian at Windsor
Castle, tells us in his interesting work, "Queen Victoria," which, as he
remarks, presents for the first time an accurate account of the
childhood of the Queen. "During these early years, and before a regular
course of studies had been attempted, the family life at the Palace was
simple and regular. Breakfast was served in summer at eight o'clock,
the Princess Victoria having her bread and milk and fruit on a little
table by her mother's side. After breakfast the Princess Feodore studied
with her governess, Miss Lehzen, and the Princess Victoria went out for
a walk or drive. It has been repeatedly said that at this time she was
instructed by her mother; but this is not the case, as the Duchess never
gave her daughter any lessons. At two there was a plain dinner, when the
Duchess had her luncheon. In the afternoon was the usual walk or drive.
At the time of her mother's dinner the Princess had her supper laid at
her side. At nine she was accustomed to retire to her bed, which was
placed close to her mother's...."
[Illustration: THE PRINCESS VICTORIA IN 1825.
(After a picture by G. Fowler.)]
"It was not till the Princess had entered her fifth year that she began
to receive any regular instruction.... In this determination not to
force her daughter's mind, the Duchess of Kent acted on the counsel of
her mother, who had advised her 'not to tease her little puss with
learning while she was so young.' The advice was justified by results,
for the Princess made rapid progress."
The Earl of Albemarle, who was in attendance on the Duke of Sussex at
Kensington, thus describes in his "Recollections" the appearance of the
Princess when seven years old: "One of my occupations on a morning,
while waiting for the Duke, was to watch from the window the movements
of a bright, pretty little girl, seven years of age. She was in the
habit of watering the plants immediately under the window. It was
amusing to see how impartially she divided the contents of the watering
pot between the flowers and her own little feet. Her simple but becoming
dress contrasted favourably with the gorgeous apparel now worn by the
little damsels of the rising generation--a large straw hat and a suit of
white cotton; a coloured _fichu_ round the neck was the only ornament
she wore."
Her education was now conducted on a regular system. Writing,
arithmetic, singing lessons, dancing lessons by Madam Bourdin, "to whose
teaching may be due in some measure the grace of gesture and dignity of
bearing which have always distinguished Her Majesty," drawing, and the
French language. "German was not allowed to be spoken; English was
always insisted upon, though a knowledge of the German language was
imparted by M. Barez. The lessons, however, which were most enjoyed
were those in riding, which has always been since one of the Queen's
greatest pleasures."
=Princess Victoria becomes Heiress to the Throne.=
The death of the Duke of York, and the remote probability of the Duke
and Duchess of Clarence having any offspring, drew increasing attention
to the movements of the Duchess of Kent and her daughter. "Many stories
are current," continues Mr. Holmes, "of the behaviour and appearance of
the young Princess. The simplicity of her tastes was particularly
noticed and admired. It was this simplicity of living and careful
training in home life, which endeared not only the Princess, but her
mother also, to the hearts of the whole nation." Charles Knight, as well
as Leigh Hunt, whom we have already quoted, has recorded the pleasing
impression made upon him by the young Princess. In his "Passages of a
Working Life" he says: "I delighted to walk in Kensington Gardens. As I
passed along the broad central walk, I saw a group on the lawn before
the Palace.... The Duchess of Kent and her daughter, whose years then
numbered nine, were breakfasting in the open air.... What a beautiful
characteristic, it seemed to me, of the training of this royal girl,
that she should not have been taught to shrink from the public eye; that
she should not have been burdened with a premature conception of her
probable high destiny; that she should enjoy the freedom and simplicity
of a child's nature; that she should not be restrained when she starts
up from the breakfast table and runs to gather a flower in the adjoining
pasture; that her merry laugh should be fearless as the notes of the
thrush in the groves around her. I passed on and blessed her; and I
thank God that I have lived to see the golden fruits of such a
training."
The Queen was just on the eve of her ninth birthday when, on May 19th,
1828, Sir Walter Scott dined at Kensington Palace with the Duchess of
Kent. He records in his diary: "I was very kindly received by Prince
Leopold, and presented to the little Princess Victoria, the
heir-apparent to the Crown, as things stand.... This little lady is
educated with much care, and watched so closely, that no busy maid has a
moment to whisper, 'You are heir of England.' I suspect, if we could
dissect the little heart, we should find some pigeon or other bird of
the air had carried the matter."
Sir Walter's surmise, Mr. Holmes informs us, was not altogether without
foundation; and two years later, when, by the death of her uncle, George
IV., only the life of William IV. stood between her and the throne, she
was formally made acquainted with her position.
"The early part of the year 1833 was passed at Kensington. There the
course of study was kept up as before, but the Princess now went out
more into society and was seen more in public.... The Princess's
amusements were her pets, and her walks and drives, and during the
spring and summer she much enjoyed riding."
It was at Kensington, in the summer of 1836, that the Queen first saw
her future husband. The Prince in his diary recorded that his aunt, the
Duchess of Kent, "gave a brilliant ball here at Kensington Palace, at
which the gentlemen appeared in uniform and the ladies in so-called
fancy dresses. We remained until four o'clock.... Dear Aunt is very kind
to us, and does everything she can to please us, and our cousin also is
very amiable."
The Princess Victoria was at Kensington when she attained her majority,
on the 24th of May, 1837. She was awakened by a serenade; she received
many presents, and the day was kept as a general holiday at Kensington.
=Queen Victoria's Accession.=
Less than a month after, King William IV. died at Windsor at twelve
minutes past two on the morning of June 20th. As soon as possible the
Archbishop of Canterbury, with Lord Conyngham (the Lord Chamberlain),
started to convey the news to Kensington, where they arrived at five
o'clock in the morning.
"They knocked, they rang, they thumped," says "The Diary of a Lady of
Quality," "for a considerable time before they could rouse the porter at
the gate; they were again kept waiting in the courtyard; they hurried
into one of the lower rooms, where they seemed forgotten by everybody.
They rang the bell, desired that the attendant of the Princess Victoria
might be sent to inform Her Royal Highness that they requested an
audience on business of importance. After another delay, and another
ringing to inquire the cause, the attendant was summoned, who stated
that the Princess was in such a sweet sleep, she could not venture to
disturb her. Then they said, 'We are come to the _Queen_ on business of
State, and her sleep must give way to that.'"
"In a few minutes she came into the room," says Mr. Holmes, "a shawl
thrown over her dressing-gown, her feet in slippers, and her hair
falling down her back. She had been awakened by the Duchess of Kent, who
told Her Majesty she must get up; she went alone into the room where
Lord Conyngham and the archbishop were waiting. The Lord Chamberlain
then knelt down, and presented a paper, announcing the death of her
uncle, to the Queen; and the archbishop said he had come by desire of
Queen Adelaide, who thought the Queen would like to hear in what a
peaceful state the King had been at the last."
=Queen Victoria's First Council.=
At nine o'clock the Prime Minister was received in audience alone; and
soon afterwards an informal gathering of Privy Councillors, including
the Queen's uncle, the Duke of Sussex, the Duke of Wellington, and a
dozen or so of ministers, prelates, and officials, was held in the
anteroom to the Council Chamber, when an address of fealty and homage
was read aloud and signed by those present.
After this the doors were opened, "disclosing"--to quote the words of
Mr. Barrett Lennard, now the sole survivor of the scene, except the
Queen herself--"a large State Saloon, close to whose threshold there
stood unattended a small, slight, fair-complexioned young lady,
apparently fifteen years of age. She was attired in a close-fitting
dress of black silk, her light hair parted and drawn from her forehead;
she wore no ornament whatever on her dress or person. The Duke of Sussex
advanced, embraced and kissed her--his niece the Queen. Lord Melbourne
and others kissed hands in the usual form, and the Usher taking the
address, closed the doors, and the Queen disappeared from our gaze. No
word was uttered by Her Majesty or by any present, and no sound broke
the silence, which seemed to me to add to the impressive solemnity of
the scene."
The room where this took place is low and rather dark and gloomy, with
pillars in it, supporting the floor of the "Cube Room" above.
The subsequent meeting of the Queen's first Council, which took place at
eleven o'clock, is familiar to everyone from Wilkie's well-known
picture--"though, at the expense of truth he has emphasized the
principal figure by painting her in a white dress instead of the black
which was actually worn." Her Majesty was introduced to the Council
Chamber by her uncles, the Dukes of Cumberland and Sussex, and at once
took her seat on a chair at the head of the table.
In describing this famous scene, it is useless to attempt anything
beyond quoting once more--often as it has been quoted--the admirable
account given by Charles Greville, Clerk of the Council:
"Never was anything like the first impression she produced, or the
chorus of praise and admiration which is raised about her manner and
behaviour, and certainly not without justice. It was very extraordinary,
and something far beyond what was looked for. Her extreme youth and
inexperience, and the ignorance of the world concerning her, naturally
excited intense curiosity to see how she would act on this trying
occasion, and there was a considerable assemblage at the Palace,
notwithstanding the short notice which was given.... She bowed to the
Lords, took her seat, and then read her speech in a clear, distinct and
audible voice, and without any appearance of fear or embarrassment. She
was quite plainly dressed and in mourning.
"After she had read her speech, and taken and signed the oath for the
security of the Church of Scotland, the Privy Councillors were sworn,
the two Royal Dukes (of Cumberland and Sussex) first, by themselves; and
as these two old men, her uncles, knelt before her, swearing allegiance
and kissing her hand, I saw her blush up to the eyes, as if she felt the
contrast between their civil and their natural relations, and this was
the only sign of emotion she evinced. Her manner to them was very
graceful and engaging: she kissed them both, and rose from her chair and
moved towards the Duke of Sussex, who was farthest from her and too
infirm to reach her. She seemed rather bewildered at the multitude of
men who were sworn, and who came one after the other to kiss her hand,
but she did not speak to anybody, nor did she make the slightest
difference in her manner, or show any in her countenance, to any
individual of any rank, station or party. I particularly watched her
when Melbourne and the Ministers and the Duke of Wellington and Peel
approached her. She went through the whole ceremony--occasionally
looking at Melbourne for instruction when she had any doubt what to do,
which hardly ever occurred--with perfect calmness and self-possession,
but at the same time with a graceful modesty and propriety particularly
interesting and ingratiating. When the business was done she retired as
she had entered.
"Peel said how amazed he was at her manner and behaviour, at her
apparent deep sense of her situation, her modesty, and at the same time
her firmness. She appeared, in fact, to be awed, but not daunted, and
afterwards the Duke of Wellington told me the same thing, and added that
if she had been his own daughter he could not have desired to see her
perform her part better."
This description of Charles Greville's, whose pen was given to anything
but flattery, is confirmed by the testimony of many others present. Earl
Grey wrote to Princess Lieven: "When called upon for the first time to
appear before the Privy Council, and to take upon herself the awful
duties with which at so early an age she has been so suddenly charged,
there was in her appearance and demeanour a composure, a propriety, an
_aplomb_, which were quite extraordinary. She never was in the least
degree confused, embarrassed or hurried; read the declaration
beautifully; went through the forms of business as if she had been
accustomed to them all her life." Lord Palmerston says in a letter to
Lord Granville: "The Queen went through her task with great dignity and
self-possession; one saw she felt much inward emotion, but it was fully
controlled. Her articulation was particularly good, her voice remarkably
pleasing."
Next day, the 21st of June, at ten o'clock in the morning, Her Majesty
was formally proclaimed Queen of Great Britain and Ireland at St.
James's Palace, when a salute was fired in the Park, and she appeared at
the window of the Presence Chamber, returning afterwards to Kensington
Palace. On the 13th of July the Queen, accompanied by her mother, the
Duchess of Kent, took her final departure from the place of her birth
and the home of her childhood.
=Kensington Palace in recent Years.=
Since the accession of the Queen, Kensington Palace has had a quiet and
uneventful history--though Her Majesty has frequently, in the course of
her reign, privately revisited her old home, where the Duchess of Kent
retained her rooms until her death in 1861; and where, soon after that
date, Princess Mary and the Duke of Teck also came to reside for a
period. Here their daughter, Princess May, now the Duchess of York, was
born in the State Room called "the Nursery," in 1867.
In the meanwhile, the apartments in the south-west corner of the Palace,
occupied by the Duke of Sussex until his death in 1843, were afterwards
tenanted by his widow, the Duchess of Inverness, who died in 1873, when
they were granted by the Queen to Princess Louise and the Marquis of
Lorne, who still reside in them.
During all these sixty years the Palace had been suffered gradually more
and more to fall into a deplorable state of disrepair. The walls were
bulging in many places, and merely remained standing by being shored up;
the rafters of the roof were beginning to rot away, tiles and slates
were broken and slipping off, so that it was becoming increasingly
difficult to keep the rain and wind at bay. The floors, also, were
everywhere deteriorating, the old panelled walls and painted ceilings of
the grand reception rooms slowly, but surely, crumbling to decay.
"More than once," said a leading article in "The Times" of January 12th,
1898, "it has been seriously proposed to pull the whole building down,
and to deal otherwise with the land, and Her Majesty's subjects ought to
be grateful to her for having strenuously resisted such an act of
Vandalism, and for having declared that, while she lived, the palace in
which she was born should not be destroyed."
=Restoration of the State Rooms.=
The Queen, it is believed, had long desired that her people's wish to be
admitted to inspect the Palace of her ancestors, and her own birthplace
and early home, should be gratified; and it seemed a fitting memorial of
the Diamond Jubilee that this should be done. An obdurate Treasury,
which, as we have hinted, had looked forward rather to demolition than
restoration, was at length induced to recommend the expenditure
necessary to prepare the State Rooms for the admission of the public,
and thus, on the 11th of January, 1898, it was possible to make the
following gratifying announcement in the press:
"Her Majesty, in her desire to gratify the wishes of Her people,
has directed that the State Rooms at Kensington Palace, in the
central part of the building, which have been closed and unoccupied
since 1760, together with Sir Christopher Wren's Banqueting Room,
attached to the Palace, shall after careful restoration be opened
to the public, during her pleasure; and the Government will
forthwith submit to Parliament an estimate of the cost of
restoration."
Accordingly the Board of Works proceeded to prepare estimates and on
March 4th following, the First Commissioner, Mr. Akers Douglas, M.P.,
submitted a vote of £23,000 for the purpose. By a unanimous vote of the
House of Commons on April 1st, the amount required was at once agreed
to, and great gratification was on all sides expressed that so happy
solution had at length been arrived at. Forthwith, the restorations were
put in hand--the most pressing repairs having, indeed, been begun in
anticipation, previous to the passing of the vote--and for many months
they consisted entirely in solid structural works, which scarcely seemed
to affect the appearance of the building at all. It was found necessary
to rebuild and underpin walls, to reslate practically the whole of the
roof over the State Apartments and renew the timbers that carried it;
and also almost all the floors. After these heavy works, and those
consequent on the installation of the hot-water warming apparatus, were
completed, the more interesting, but much more difficult, business
involved in the restoration of the old decorative ironwork, woodwork,
and paintings of the State Rooms was taken in hand.
The more substantial but less salient work having been carried out, the
decorative works were next proceeded with, under the constant
supervision of Sir John Taylor, K.C.B., Consulting Architect and
Surveyor to H.M.'s Board of Works, and the continual and immediate
control of Mr. Philip, temporary Clerk of the Works for Kensington
Palace. Moreover, the Hon. Reginald Brett, C.B., Secretary of the Board,
to whose initiative the whole scheme of the restoration, we may say, has
been mainly due, has given a constant close personal attention to
everything that has been done. Nor has any trouble, labour, or research
been spared to render everything as historically and archæologically
correct as possible.
=Methods of Restoration.=
The principles on which the restorations have been carried out will more
fully appear, in the description we give in our subsequent pages, in
regard to every detail of the work. Here we need only say that the most
studied care has been taken never to renew any decoration where it was
possible to preserve it--least of all ever to attempt to "improve" old
work into new. On the contrary, repairing, patching, mending, piecing,
cleaning, have been the main occupations of the decorators, to an extent
that would render some impatient, slapdash builders and surveyors
frantic. Yet it has been all this minute--though no doubt sometimes
costly--attention to details, this laborious piecing together of old
fragments, this reverential saving of original material and work, this
almost-sentimental imitation of the old style and taste where patching
in by modern hands was inevitable, which has produced a result and
effect likely, we think, to arouse the admiration of all who relish the
inimitable charm of antique time-mellowed work.
Never before, we may safely say, has the restoration of any historic
public building been carried out with quite the same amount of loving
care as has been lavished on Kensington Palace. The spirit has been
rather that of a private owner reverentially restoring his ancestral
home, than that of an ordinary public official, with an energy callous
to all sentiment, sweeping away the old to replace it with a
spick-and-span new building. This method of treatment has nowhere been
applied more scrupulously, and we venture to think with greater success,
than in the treatment of the old oak panelling and the beautiful
carving, all of which had been covered over with numerous coats of
paint, so long ago--we have discovered from the old accounts in the
Record Office--as 1724. In the cleaning off of these dirty
incrustations, various processes have been resorted to, as they suited
the nature of the work, and so thoroughly has this been done that the
closest inspection would give us no inkling that any part, either of the
flat surface or of the most delicate carving, had ever been painted at
all. Equal pains were taken in finishing the surface with oil and wax
polish--no stain whatever being used on the panelling, doors or
cornices--so that the real true colour of the wood is seen, varying only
with its natural variation, and exhibiting all its richness of tone, and
its fullness of grain. It makes one almost glad it should have suffered
so many years of long neglect--that when at last it has been taken in
hand, it should have been done when the historical significance and the
technical and artistic value of such things are more truly appreciated
than formerly. There can be little doubt that if an early nineteenth
century upholsterer had got hold of this Palace, most of the beautiful
old work would have been cleared out to make way for vulgar plaster-work
of white and gold.
Substantially the same principles have been followed in the cleaning and
restoration of the painted walls and ceilings, which work has been
executed with the utmost sympathy for the old work, and the most careful
efforts to preserve it. There has not been a touch of paint applied
except to make good portions absolutely destroyed, so that these
ceilings--whatever their merits or demerits--remain exactly as they
were when first completed, save for the more subdued and modulated tone
they have taken on from the softening hand of Time.
=Arrangement of the Pictures.=
A word should now be said about the pictures, which have been brought
from various Royal residences to furnish these State Apartments, and to
illustrate the history of this Palace. The bulk of them have come from
Hampton Court, and a large number are pieces which were removed when the
State Rooms were dismantled by George IV. and William IV., from the very
walls where they now once again hang. Their return here from Hampton
Court, in the overcrowded galleries of which it has been impossible ever
properly to display them, has been a most auspicious thing for that
Palace, and has rendered feasible many long-desired rearrangements and
improvements.
In selecting the pictures which seemed most suitable for hanging at
Kensington, the principle has been followed of restricting them almost
entirely to portraits and historical compositions belonging to the epoch
with which the Palace is connected--the reigns of William and Mary,
Queen Anne, and the Georges, and, finally, of course that of Queen
Victoria.
In the carrying out of this plan an endeavour has been made to group the
pictures together in the various apartments as far as possible according
to the periods to which they belong--making separate collections, at the
same time, of the curious topographical subjects relating to "Old
London," in the Queen's Closet; of the interesting series of Georgian
sea-pieces, sea-fights, and dockyards, in the King's Gallery--where for
the first time they may now at last be really seen and examined--and the
ceremonial and other pictures, relating to the Queen's reign, in the
"Presence Chamber" and the actual rooms originally occupied by Her
Majesty in her youth.
Having given these general indications as to the arrangements, it will
not be necessary to do more than refer to our subsequent pages for the
details of the scheme. Nor need we dwell on what will at once be only
too obvious to the connoisseur, that anyone who expects to behold in
this Palace a fine collection of choice works of art will certainly be
disappointed. Kneller and Zeeman, Paton and Pocock, Huggins and Serres,
West and Beechey, are not exactly names to conjure with--nor even,
indeed, Scott, Monamy, Drouais, or Hoppner, in their somewhat
second-rate productions here. Moreover, it is to be clearly understood,
that it is not as an Art Gallery that these rooms are opened to the
inspection of the public, but as a Royal Palace, with pictures hung in
it illustrative of its history and associations, and as furniture to its
walls.
Nevertheless, it is not high art only, nor great imaginative works,
which can interest and instruct; and, historically, these bewigged,
ponderous, puffy personages of the unromantic eighteenth century, whose
portraits decorate these walls, are more in accord with their setting,
than would be the finer, simpler, and nobler creations of the great
epochs of art.
=Associations with Queen Victoria.=
On the other hand, the Victorian pictures, and the apartments in which
they are arranged, stand apart on a different footing of their own. It
is to the three small, plain and simple rooms, with their contents, in
the south-eastern corner of the building, that all visitors to the
Palace will turn with the liveliest interest, and with the keenest, the
most thrilling emotion. Romance, and all the thoughts and feelings of
tender, natural affection, which appear to have been smothered in the
preceding century and a half of powder and gold-lace, seem to awaken and
revive once more with the child born in this Palace eighty years ago, in
the little girl playing about in these rooms and in these gardens, in
the youthful Queen, who stepped forth from her simple chamber here to
take possession of the greatest throne in the world!
It is as the scene of such memorable events that Kensington Palace
possesses, and will hereafter ever possess, abiding interests and
engrossing charms altogether its own; and that it will ever inspire,
among those who come to visit it, thoughts and memories moving and deep.
And not to us only in these islands; not to us only of this age; but to
thousands and thousands likewise across the seas; to countless millions
yet unborn, will this ancient structure become, now and in the ages yet
to be, a revered place of loving pilgrimage as the birthplace and early
home of Queen Victoria.
[Illustration: Decoration]
[Illustration: Decoration]