poverty, who, like so many other Scots unwelcome to Wilkes and Johnson,
came to seek fortune in London. He got a place at the Physic Garden of
Chelsea, and thence, perhaps by patronage of Bute, was put in charge
of the Princess Dowager’s Botanic Garden, whose reputation throve with
his own. His functions must have grown beyond the limits of the Botanic
Garden, then only a few acres, for this was the Scotsman who set Cobbett
to work, among other jobs, at sweeping up leaves by the Pagoda, on the
farther side of the Kew grounds. John Rogers, who worked in the gardens
at this time, says that on the death of the elder Haverfield, Aiton
came into the entire management both at Kew and Richmond. His first
appointment was in the last year of George II. A quarter of a century
later, we find him clearly head of the whole establishment. Aiton
certainly rose to be no mere working gardener, who published a catalogue
of the plants at Kew. He held his post till towards the end of the
century, and was then succeeded by his son William Townsend Aiton, to
rule at Kew for half a century more; while another son, John, had charge
of the royal gardens at Windsor and at Kensington.
[Illustration: THE AZALEAS]
In the Aiton succession, we come across the fact that a talent for the
study of plants is apt to be hereditary. There were two Linnés, not equal
in fame, four De Jussieus, three De Candolles, three Darwins of different
degrees of note in science; and for more than a century Kew Gardens were
under the two dynasties of Aitons and Hookers. In the reign of William
Aiton the second, among Scotsmen finding employment in Kew Gardens was
a William Macnab, who rose to be foreman here, and in 1810 went to the
Edinburgh Botanical Garden as curator or principal gardener. One cannot
propitiate Dr. Johnson’s Manes by describing the Edinburgh Garden as a
branch from Kew. It is, in fact, an older institution, founded in Charles
II.’s reign, and now grown into a model, both of _utile_ and _dulce_,
worthy the Modern Athens. The point I have to make is that William Macnab
was succeeded at Edinburgh by his son James Macnab, godfather of the
_Cupressus Macnabiana_, etc., who managed this garden till his death,
1878, and whose only son, William Ramsay Macnab, bade fair, through a too
short life, to continue the family distinction in the botanical world.
This botanist by birth and birthplace was a schoolfellow of mine, whose
early career deserves notice. His masters could have seen little promise
in such a scholar, for, under the _régime_ then styled education, our
lessons simply did not interest him, and I often wondered how he picked
up the _quantum_ of Latin necessary for his medical examinations. But
at fourteen he printed a monograph, either on ferns or on seaweeds, of
which I had a copy but cannot lay hands on it. At the same age he gave a
lecture on plant life, illustrated by diagrams prepared by himself. He
also excited the wondering admiration of his schoolfellows by practising
the then young art of photography. Before reaching school days, he had
bought his first microscope. Not yet out of his teens, he had what I had
heard called the best collection of beetles in Scotland. About this time
I accompanied him and some older scientific adventurers on a natural
history expedition to the Bass Rock, when, unfortunately, all the pundits
were so overcome by sea-sickness, that nothing could then be added to the
stock of knowledge.
Macnab left our school in dudgeon against a master who, having prescribed
an essay on starch, not unnaturally accused him of plagiarising an
elaborate composition based on original experiment. From another school
he went early to Edinburgh University, and if I am not mistaken, to
Germany, where he used his time so well that he had to wait some months
to come of age for taking his M.D. degree at twenty-one. After a short
digression into lunacy practice, he followed his bent in a professorship
of Natural History at the Agricultural College of Cirencester, and
soon became Botany Professor at the Royal College of Science, Dublin.
There he died prematurely, else his life would surely have figured on
some more authoritative pages than mine. The last time I saw him, if I
remember right, he was staying at Kew, engaged in some work or study in
the Gardens where his grandfather had been foreman. The above digression
relates to the fact that the Kew gardeners were apt to be kinsmen,
or at least kindly Scots. Macnab, Lockhart, Begbie, Kerr, Fraser,
Morison--these are only some names occurring early among the staff to
show how the Aiton dynasty did not overlook their countrymen’s claims to
employment.
If not scientific men themselves, the Aitons had the advice and help
of the best naturalists of their day, specially of Sir Joseph Banks,
Captain Cook’s companion, who introduced to this country the fuchsia,
the hydrangea, and other exotic plants. Under this President of the
Royal Society, less distinguished collectors were sent out to all parts
of the world, sometimes in ships of war, to procure specimens for Kew.
Two such emissaries were on board the _Bounty_ on its celebrated voyage,
one of them sticking by the commander, the other going off with the
mutineers. To the honour of Banks, it is told that when consignments of
rare specimens intended for the royal gardens at Paris were captured
by our cruisers, he several times used his influence to have them sent
on intact, a scientific courtesy that repaid the orders of the French
Government to treat Cook’s vessels as neutral, when war with England
broke out during his last expedition. Banks, indeed, a wealthy man who
sought no salaried post, appears to have been practically the scientific
authority of Kew Gardens in his lifetime, well deserving the royal
confidence, though he came in for his share of caricaturing as a Court
favourite. His picture, and those of other noted botanists, are treasured
in the Kew Museums, where the mere literary man will often be put to
shame to find how many names he never heard, live not forgotten among the
votaries of a special study.
Under Aiton the second, Kew Gardens began to fall off, lying as they did
in the shade of royal neglect. George IV. began by showing some interest
in them, which soon withered away. They were opened to “all well-dressed
strangers” on Sundays in summer, the Botanic Garden being accessible at
other times to those who took an interest in it; but the empty palace
no longer attracted people of fashion, and for the ordinary citizen Kew
was still rather out of the way, though “stages” left Piccadilly every
quarter of an hour in the season, and in 1808 there were already “houses
of entertainment” on Kew Green, as we find particularised in a guide-book
of that date. Later on, the Gardens were open every day except Sunday.
But by this time they were ceasing to be attractive. Aiton had been
appointed director of all the royal parks and gardens, employment which
appears to have taken off his attention from Kew, where money as well as
interest ran short. The part kept up shrank to the dozen or score acres
of the original Botanic Gardens, the rest relapsing into thickets that
made a game preserve for Ernest, King of Hanover. A formidable rival was
the Horticultural Society’s Garden at Turnham Green, recently removed to
Wisley Common. By the beginning of Victoria’s reign, the Kew Gardens had
fallen so low that there was a talk of breaking them up and dispersing
the collection, to the indignation of the inhabitants, who had an old
grievance that they had given part of their Green to enlarge this royal
property, on the understanding that they were to be freely admitted to
its amenities.
From such extinction Kew was rescued in 1840 by the report of a
parliamentary committee, upon which steps were taken and funds provided
for bringing the Gardens to their present position at once as a popular
resort and as a national scientific collection, while still they remained
nominally a royal demesne. Aiton being pensioned off, Sir W. J. Hooker,
formerly Botanical Professor at Glasgow, was appointed Director. Here
appears another case of heredity, for Hooker was the son of a botanist,
and came to be replaced by his own son.
[Illustration: THE PEONIES]
Under his management the Gardens grew apace, the botanic part being much
enlarged, while the Museums of Economic Botany were now set on foot.
Decimus Burton, the fashionable architect of his day, was called in to
design new buildings like the Palm House, unrivalled in England unless
by Paxton’s Great Conservatory at Chatworth, which was the model of the
Crystal Palace. To make room for such useful structures, a sweep had to
be made of many of the fanciful “temples” and other gimcrackeries of the
Georgian age, specimens of which are still dotted about the grounds,
now laid out on a principle of compromise with formality, “the aim being
to weave the various collections of trees and shrubs into a whole, which
should avoid an artificial and yet yield an agreeable effect, while still
subserving a definite purpose.”
In 1865, Sir W. J. Hooker was succeeded by Sir J. D. Hooker, who in his
younger days had made adventurous journeys to the Himalayas and elsewhere
in the interest of botanical science. He still lives at a good old age,
after twenty years’ service having given place to his son-in-law, Sir
W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, who also has gone on the _emeritus_ list; and the
present head is Colonel Prain, whose experience in India should give a
new strain of efficiency.
Sir Joseph Hooker’s management was marked by a vehement quarrel between
him and his official superior, Mr. Ayrton, head of the Board of Works,
a Kew man by birth, who perhaps for that reason felt himself the more
moved to aggressive interference. The scientific world warmly took up the
cause of its _confrère_; and Ayrton earned general unpopularity by his
overbearing tone; but Sir Algernon West, then Private Secretary to the
Prime Minister, Gladstone, after having had a good deal of trouble over
arranging the dispute, gives us his opinion that there were faults on
both sides.
It is understood that in the management of the Gardens there has been
sometimes a certain friction between the demands of a scientific
establishment and of a scene for popular recreation. But these two ideas
seem now fairly harmonised. With the exception of isolated _penetralia_,
the Gardens are open from 10 or 12 A.M. till sunset, and on Sunday
afternoons. This was one of the first of our public institutions to be
thrown open on Sunday, by the influence, it is said, of Prince Albert
prevailing over the Sabbatarian austerity that dominated Mrs. Proudie’s
generation.
As the Kew Gardens flourished, those of Richmond had withered away.
The royal pleasure-grounds on that side were turned into George III.’s
model farm, then into a park, which has become a golf-course and a
recreation-ground, though it was only the other day that its quasi-public
character came to be fully recognised by a foot-bridge thrown over the
muddy moat cutting off this enclosure from the river-bank. The site of
Richmond Lodge is approximately marked by the Observatory, built for
George III. by Sir William Chambers, with a special view to the transit
of Venus observed by Cook and Banks from Tahiti. When Kew Gardens were
taken under the wing of Parliament, the Royal Society refused a free gift
of this building; but it was kept going by subscriptions, then under the
auspices of the Board of Trade became a Meteorological Station, with the
important function of testing instruments like barometers, thermometers,
and sextants, to be hall-marked with the initials of Kew Observatory. But
of late years it proved not secluded enough for this work, the electric
currents induced by tramways threatening its most delicate operations,
so that the magnetic branch was recently transplanted to the wilds of
Dumfries, where also, one hears, it had a narrow escape from interference
in being housed in walls at first chosen from an ironstone quarry. Other
parts of the work are now carried on at the new Physical Laboratory in
Bushy Park.
A ha-ha fence cuts off Richmond Old Deer Park, as it is called, from Kew
Gardens, which in all cover a space of some 250 acres. The wire fence has
gone that marked the now hardly valid distinction between the Botanic
Garden proper and the former pleasure-grounds. Queen Victoria showed her
interest in the institution by granting successive stretches of private
garden, to be added to what had become practically a public one. At the
end of her reign the so-called Kew Palace, the old “Dutch House,” was
given up to be opened as a museum of pictures and other relics of its
history. This is soon reached by the broad walk leading straight on from
the chief entrance gates on Kew Green. The Victoria Gate, on the Richmond
Road, is the approach for visitors coming from Kew Station. There are
other entrances both from the Richmond Road and from the riverside,
where, opposite Brentford’s wharves, one closed gate reminds us how this
was once a royal home.
[Illustration: THE PALM TREES AND MAIN GATE]
IV
THE VILLAGE: IN AND ABOUT IT
Kew itself does not stand in the forefront of its own story, for long
remaining little more than an obscure river-side hamlet, half a dozen
miles out of London, connected by a ferry with Brentford, and with its
quaint little neighbour Strand-on-the-Green, which might have risen to
equal note had Gunnersbury or Chiswick taken a king’s fancy. It was
not till the eighteenth century that Kew began to burgeon under royal
favour; and for the first half of that century, Richmond lay basking on
the sunnier side of patronage. When George III. left Richmond for Kew,
the quiet village blossomed forth as in a forcing-house, to grow into a
banyan grove of princely dwellings.
The first distinguished resident mentioned is Sir Peter Lely, as having
a country house on the Green, where the Herbarium now stands. From
first to last he may have been a good deal in this neighbourhood, for he
painted Charles I. at Hampton Court, and after doing the same service
for Cromwell, he became the fashionable artist of Charles II.’s Court,
whose frail beauties still live on his canvas. His successor in vogue
was Sir Godfrey Kneller, who contributed to artistic vocabulary in his
portraits of the Kit-Cat Club, that had its rendezvous at Barn Elms,
now the Ranelagh Club. He also settled not far off, in the house behind
Twickenham named Kneller Hall, that, after various vicissitudes, has
become the Army School of Music.
Swift, in his letters to Stella, mentions dining with the Duke of Argyll
at Kew in 1712. I do not find any other allusion to this residence:
perhaps Swift landed at Kew and went on to Sudbrook Park, where the Duke
had a seat, that should rather be reckoned as belonging to Petersham,
united with Kew as one dependent district of the Kingston parish. This
mansion was near the famous avenues of his birthplace, the Duke of
Lauderdale’s Ham House, said to have been originally intended for Prince
Henry, son of James I., and chosen by the Lords of the Council as a
fitting retreat for James II., when the Prince of Orange was about to
enter London. It would be the convenience of water transit that had
dotted the Thames side with lordly mansions and villas; and of course it
should be borne in mind how, at a time when the Court could be spoken of
as moving from Kensington to London, places like Kew and Richmond were
practically as far from town as now are Haslemere or Missenden, while the
champaign rusticity of the former would be more to the taste of Cowley’s
and Pope’s generations.
Kew is said to have had some sort of chapel before the Reformation; but
it was not till 1714 that its church was built, the brick building on
the Green, that, with additions and dubious ornaments, has mellowed into
a specimen of what may be called the ugly picturesque. The excrescence
at the east end marks the sepulchral chamber containing the Duke of
Cambridge’s tomb. The organ is understood to have been Handel’s, and to
have been played on by George III. The gallery, added in 1805, still
keeps its dusty state as a royal pew, though now used on occasion for
less illustrious worshippers. Both inside and outside are many memorials
to persons, famous or forgotten, some of whom must presently be
mentioned. In the close-packed churchyard an unusual number of foreign
names seem related to the German colony of Queen Charlotte’s attendants,
and to the Hanover connection long kept up through the Dukes of Cambridge
and Cumberland, the former of these princes having acted as regent or
viceroy of Hanover till the Salic law put his unbeloved brother on its
throne.
One of the early ministers at Kew was that Stephen Duck, already
mentioned, who began life as a Wiltshire labourer, then by dint of
self-education came to be known as the “thresher-poet,” taken up by Queen
Caroline, to the jealousy of unpatronised poets like Swift. She settled
a pension on him, made him first a Yeoman of the Guard, then, as a post
more suitable to the poet than to the peasant, Keeper of her library at
Richmond. He married her housekeeper at Kew; and one takes to be his
daughters the Misses Duck, who half a century later are found in charge
of the Dutch House, the last of them living till 1818. The father’s
ambition led him on to take Orders; and he preached with much acceptation
at Kew Chapel. Before long he had been put into the Rectory of Byfleet
under St. George’s Hill; then, a few years later, only fifty years old,
he drowned himself in a fit of dejection. But for the merit of being able
“to burst his life’s invidious bar,” he hardly deserved patronage, his
verses being a mere echo of the epithetical commonplaces of a generation
whose rhyming shepherds hardly knew a crook from a flail. Perhaps the
most readable of his effusions is _The Thresher’s Labour_, an account of
a farm-servant’s life, in which now and then he drops pseudo-Arcadianism
for touches of human nature and actual experience.
Soon as the rising Sun has drank the Dew,
Another Scene is open to our View:
Our Master comes, and at his heels a Throng
Of prattling Females, armed with Rake and Prong;
Prepared, whilst he is here, to make his Hay;
Or, if he turns his Back, prepared to play;
But here, or gone, sure of this comfort still,
Here’s Company, so they may chat their Fill.
Ah! were their hands so active as their Tongues,
How nimbly then would move the Rakes and Prongs!
In 1769, the Kew Chapel of ease was promoted to be a parish Church. Some
ten years before this, Kew had another rise in life by the building of a
bridge, under an Act of Parliament obtained by the owner of the ferry.
There had also been a ford at low water. The first wooden bridge was
a somewhat makeshift structure, which after a quarter of a century or
so became replaced by another, standing to the beginning of the present
century, when a new Kew Bridge was opened by Edward VII., the old one
condemned as too steep of access.
Its bridge gave Kew an advantage not easily realised by our generation.
Putney Bridge was only a little older, though a bridge of boats had been
thrown across the river there at the time of the Civil War. Westminster
Bridge was not built till 1738, an improvement hotly opposed by various
vested interests, the cry being that it would ruin the City as well
as the watermen. For centuries, unless by water, the Thames could not
be crossed between London Bridge and Kingston. This fact explains the
roundabout manner of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s attack upon the City in that
ill-managed insurrection against the Spanish marriage that cost Lady Jane
Grey’s head as well as his own. In my youth, at least, one was apt to
take one’s notion of his proceedings from Harrison Ainsworth’s _Tower of
London_, where a desperate storm of the Tower is described, with fierce
hand-to-hand fighting, on the model of a like scene in _Ivanhoe_. But
this was all imagination. As a matter of fact, Wyatt failed to get across
London Bridge, the drawbridge in the middle having been taken up and the
gate beyond being stoutly guarded against his advance. The Southwark
people, who had welcomed him to the Borough, begged him to be gone when
the Tower guns were turned upon their homes. Setting out in the morning,
hampered by cannon to be dragged along through miry ways, he did not get
to Kingston till well on in the afternoon. Here, too, the bridge had been
broken, but its defenders fled from his guns; some sailors swam across
to fetch back barges moored on the farther side; the gap was hastily
repaired with planks; then before midnight he was able to continue his
march. A gun breaking down delayed him at Brentford, then perhaps the
Kew people were for the nonce rather thankful not to have a bridge, as
that force passed by to assail London on the Middlesex side. So must they
have been in the next century, when across the river they could hear the
shouts and shots with which Royalists set Roundheads flying through the
narrow streets of Brentford.
The bridge put Kew upon improving its roads. The King, at his own
expense, to give work for the unemployed in winter, had a carriage-way
made to Richmond, hitherto reached directly by a rough lane. Then the
inhabitants of surrounding parishes got up a subscription to mend the
ways on the Surrey side from Putney Bridge “in order that His Majesty
may not be obliged to take the dusty road from Brentford when he honours
them with his residence in summer.” So now we come to Kew’s palmy days,
in the seventies of the eighteenth century, while George and Charlotte
lived much here, before their flitting to Windsor; and many new houses
were built to accommodate the attendants and hangers-on of the rustic
Court. Mrs. Papendiek, who was brought up at Kew, gives us glimpses of
the village in its state of transformation, among them such a curious one
as this:--
The farmhouse, now Hollis’s, was Mrs. Clewly’s, who supplied
the inhabitants with milk, butter, eggs, pork and bacon. She,
becoming a widow, married a Mr. Frame, whose son, by a former
marriage, lived upon housebreaking and footpad robberies. Upon
his father becoming an inhabitant of Kew, the question was
inquired into, when he said: “I always take care to act so as
to escape justice. Blows and murders belong not to my gang; and
if I am allowed to take my beer on the Green, and sit with my
neighbours, without being insulted, I shall take care that no
harm happen here. I am well aware of the bearings of the place.”
We all spoke with him as a friend when we met; and of my father
he asked for any trifle he wanted, and was never refused.
This diarist had not always such a friendly experience of highwaymen, for
on their way back from Vauxhall to Kew, her party was stopped and robbed
at Mortlake. The encounter was so little expected that Mr. Papendiek
had laid away his new watch in a corner of the coach, and when our
schoolgirl, as she then was, heard the robbers say that the ladies should
not be molested, she hid the watch for him; then, on her giving it back
to its owner, the danger past, he rewarded her by making sheep’s eyes,
which in time brought about a marriage.