KEW PALACE
Kew first became a royal residence in the reign of George II., when
it was leased from its private owners and used as a country seat by
Frederick, Prince of Wales. Owing to his undutiful behaviour to his
father, the Prince was banished from Court, when he retired to Kew,
forming a sort of opposition Court there. But the actual red-brick
Jacobean house, now known as Kew Palace, was then only called the
Dutch House, after its original founder, Sir Hugh Portman, who was
a Dutch merchant in the time of James I. It stood quite close to the
more important building of Kew House, and was as constantly occupied
by members of the Royal Family as the larger adjacent palace.
The Dutch House, or Kew Palace as it is now designated, is thoroughly
typical of its period--a simple, three gabled, and dignified looking
building, unpalatial indeed, but quite befitting the position of the
wealthy knight who built it. The interior has been altered to suit the
tastes of the royal inmates, who inserted marble fireplaces, and put
in new doors, but a good deal of the original Jacobean panelling still
remains. On the brass locks of the doors are to be seen the Prince of
Wales's feathers, and the cypher of Frederick, Prince of Wales.
[Illustration: Kew Palace (the Dutch House) and George III.'s
Castellated Palace, pulled down by George IV.]
George III. spent a great part of his youth at Kew, living there with
his mother, the widowed Princess of Wales. He was brought up in
strict retirement, his mother regulating his life and restricting his
intercourse with the outer world. Strangely enough, when he succeeded
to the throne of his grandfather, George III. did not revolt from
the ordered régime of the early days, but maintained the same careful
regularity all his life. He continued to love Kew, where he and his
devoted but prosaic Queen spent several months of every year. Buying
the two houses from the lease-holders, Queen Charlotte turned the
Dutch House into a royal nursery, where her large family was brought
up. Both she and the King delighted in getting away to Kew, where
no kind of royal state was kept up, and where they could live the
ordinary life of quiet country gentlefolk, the only life for which
they were really suited. Once a week the public were admitted into the
gardens, and allowed the privilege of seeing the King and Queen and
the royal children _en famille_, talking to their friends, and walking
about in their private gardens. The little riverside village of
Kew became quite gay, and its inhabitants were much loved by Queen
Charlotte for the spontaneous enthusiasm with which they welcomed King
George, after his attempted assassination by the mad woman, Margaret
Nicholson.
In order to erect a flamboyant palace, Kew House was pulled down by
royal command in 1802, and a new "castellated structure of carpenters'
Gothic" put up under the direction of Wyatt, the architect who
was responsible for the alterations and repairs of Windsor Castle.
Fortunately it was never finished, owing to the poor King's illness,
and it has been said that George IV. never did a better deed in his
life than when he demolished the ridiculous palace perpetrated by his
father. While the building was in progress the Royal Family moved into
the Dutch House.
During one of the King's periodic attacks of madness in 1789, he was
confined to the Dutch House, under the charge of two doctors, and when
he walked in the gardens everyone was supposed to keep out of his way.
But one day, Miss Fanny Burney, then in attendance on Queen Charlotte,
was walking in the gardens, having learnt that the King was to go to
Richmond. To her utter dismay she came quite suddenly upon the King,
who called out to her, "Miss Burney!" She instantly ran off, not
knowing the state in which he might be, and was horrified to find
herself pursued by the poor King, who chased her hotly while she in
vain sought to elude him. At last, hearing from the shouts of the
doctors that she must stop as it was bad for the King to run, she
waited till the King came up, who accosted her with, "Why did you run
away from me?" With a great effort the shy little authoress controlled
herself, and, finding that the King was quite peaceful, she had a long
conversation with him, during which her royal master confided in her
some of his troubles.
After the King's madness had become permanent he spent the last years
of his unhappy life at Windsor, but Queen Charlotte still resided for
long periods at Kew, where she died in November, 1818, at the age of
seventy-five. Earlier in the same year, three royal weddings had taken
place within the old house, for the question of the succession had
become pressing. Though Queen Charlotte had had fifteen children,
she had no living grandchildren, for the Princess Charlotte, the only
child of George IV. had just died. The drawing-room was fitted up
with a temporary altar, and on the same day the Duke of Clarence
(afterwards William IV.) was married to Adelaide, daughter of the
Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and the Duke of Kent to Princess Victoria of
Saxe-Coburg. A few weeks before, the Duke of Cambridge had also been
married in the palace.
Suffering, like Kensington Palace, from lack of royal favour and
general neglect during the latter part of the nineteenth century, it
was restored in 1898 and opened to the public by the wish of Queen
Victoria, as a commemoration of the Diamond Jubilee.