been shut up at Windsor. In 1813, Sir Richard Phillips made his
_Morning’s walk from London to Kew_, where he did not admire George
III.’s unfinished “Bastile,” then cumbering the ground. He is not the
only writer of the period to mention a singular exhibition, not quite
obliterated a dozen years later, a fresco on a scale unsurpassed by
Raphael or Michael Angelo. “As I quitted the lane, I beheld, on my
left, the long boundary-wall of Kew Gardens; on which a disabled sailor
has drawn in chalk the effigies of the whole British navy, and over
each representation appears the name of the vessel, and the number of
her guns. He has in this way depicted about 800 vessels, each five or
six feet long, and extending, with intervening distances, above a mile
and a half. As the labour of one man, the whole is an extraordinary
performance; and I was told the decrepit draughtsman derives a competency
from passing travellers.”
A sight that lasted longer was the City State Barge, the _Maria Wood_,
rotting at Kew Bridge almost to our own day, till it had to be broken
up; but well on in the nineteenth century it still made a scene of
junketings, and earlier it had cruised with aldermanic guests as far as
Richmond and Twickenham, not to speak of that famous voyage to Oxford
described in the _Middlesex_ volume of this series. Another lion of Kew
in the early part of the last century was a pretentious modern structure,
said to have been built from the materials of George III.’s unfinished
palace, but as Sir R. Phillips notes them both on his walk this statement
seems doubtful. It took the name of the Priory, that has been spread over
a district of the present suburb.
The Priory was built by a Catholic parishioner. Romanists and Dissenters
would have every chance of making way at Kew, when its living, still
conjoined with Petersham, was held for ten years, from 1818, by Charles
Caleb Colton, a parson who might well speak of himself as only a
“finger-post” on the road to heaven. This eccentric divine was more
concerned about angling in the Thames than to be a fisher of men. He did
not live at either of his cures, but in shabby lodgings in Soho, going
down to Kew only for necessary services, and spending the week-days
after the manner of a Bohemian author, perhaps not unknown to Thackeray.
At one time he carried on business, _sub rosâ_, as a wine-merchant, in
cellars underneath a Methodist chapel, a possible hint for Mr. Sherrick’s
dealings at Lady Whittlesea’s; but Colton had none of the Rev. Charles
Honeyman’s suave humbug, while in some respects he may have sat as model
for the coarser reprobate who blackmailed Philip Firmin’s father. His
most unclerical pursuit was gambling, through which he got into some
difficulty that packed him off to America in haste. He returned to put
in an appearance at his living, which, however, seems now to have lapsed
out of his incumbency. He next went to Paris, plunged head over heels
into gaming, and blew out his brains in 1832. Yet this was the author of
that once popular book _Lacon_, that among other edifying and sententious
sentiments denounces the desperate gamester as doubly ruined: “He adds
his soul to every other loss; and by the act of suicide renounces earth
to forfeit heaven.” The cure of souls he had filled so unworthily passed
into the hands of the Rev. R. B. Byam, who held it for forty years, in
favour with all classes and especially with his chief parishioners, the
royal dukes who still from time to time showed themselves in Kew Church.
When Kew had been deserted by kings and courtiers, its gardens being
turned into a public institution, the keepers of them grew to be
important personages, of whom more has been said in the last chapter. For
a time names of note are less often met with in this neighbourhood. One
long link with the past was the life of Mrs. Gwyn, who died here in 1840,
the year of Madame d’Arblay’s death, in whose _Diary_ this lady’s name
appears. She was the widow of Colonel Gwyn, one of the royal equerries
in that time of trouble which Fanny Burney passed through half a century
before. She had been the beautiful Mary Horneck, “the Jessamy Bride”
whom Goldsmith loved in vain; and there may be those still alive at Kew
that heard her memories of Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds, of the first
night of _She Stoops to Conquer_, and the first fame of the _Vicar of
Wakefield_.
About the same time as Mrs. Gwyn, died Francis Bauer, a half-century
resident at Kew, brought there by Sir Joseph Banks to exercise his
remarkable skill as a natural history draughtsman. At the end of the
eighteenth century he had brought out a volume of delineations of
the exotic plants in the Gardens; and many of his plates lie still
unpublished at South Kensington. It is said that in 1827 he laid before
the Royal Society a paper by J. N. de Niepce, another foreigner living
at Kew, who sought in vain to draw attention to some such process as was
afterwards developed by Daguerre, so that Kew may claim to be a cradle of
photography. While we are on the head of art, Hofland the painter should
be mentioned as having been brought up at Kew; also his wife, the once
popular novelist Barbara Hofland, who wrote a book about the Richmond
neighbourhood, sumptuously illustrated in the style of its day (1832),
with much the same aim as the present volume, but containing a larger
proportion of fine words to a smaller stock of matter.
[Illustration: THE ROSARY]
We now approach our own time, in which Kew seems more favoured by
authors than by artists. An inhabitant still remembered is Sir Arthur
Helps, Clerk of the Privy Council, and recorder of those “Friends in
Council” who were so familiar to readers of the last generation; nor does
the mild wisdom of “Milverton,” “Ellesmere” and the rest, deserve to
seem out of date. Perhaps his most enduring work will be the narratives
in which he told the dark story of Spanish American conquest, with its
dubious heroes. He acted as editor for Queen Victoria’s first confidences
in print; and she granted him a residence at Kew Cottage, near the chief
gates. To a member of his family whom I count among my friends, I am
indebted for threads of information woven into these pages.
I can speak from acquaintance of another Kew resident, Richard Proctor,
the well-known writer and lecturer on astronomy, editor of _Knowledge_
and a high authority upon whist, to which his devotion was so sincere
that he never would play for money. Yet he won a prize at the card-table,
for, as he remarks in one of his disquisitions on the relation of
skill and chance, “the lady who was my partner in this game is now my
partner for life.” He was destined to end his busy life lamentably,
far from Kew, when, having in latter days married an American lady, he
transplanted his household gods across the Atlantic. In passing through
New York from the South, he had an attack of fever, mistaken, it seems,
for the terrible “Yellow Jack” that from time to time scares Uncle Sam,
so poor Proctor was turned out of his hotel, and packed off to die in a
hospital.
One could tell of other noted authors living at or about Kew, not always
in such enviable quarters as that “cottage of gentility” at which Queen
Victoria visited Sir Arthur Helps, but perhaps the general reader, who,
even in these Radical days, likes to hear about great folk, would take
more interest in an aftermath of princely memories.
Our late Queen came to Kew only as a visitor. The widowed Duchess of Kent
had quarters given her at Kensington Palace, where she devoted herself
to educating her daughter for the crown that would be her almost certain
inheritance; and the Princess was carried about on temporary sojourns
in different parts of the kingdom, to the marked displeasure of William
IV., who did not like to be reminded how he was only a caretaker of the
throne. But more than one of the royal family still kept residences at
Kew, which, along with her interest in the Gardens, made Queen Victoria
no stranger here.
William IV. did not live at Kew after his boyhood, though he showed his
favour for the place by enlarging the church. Between his naval service
and his accession, he had homes not far off, first at Richmond, then at
Bushey Park, in the house turned into a National Physical Laboratory
by almost the last public act of Queen Victoria. During the scare of
the French invasion, we find the Sailor Prince enrolling himself as a
private in the Teddington Volunteers, perhaps a mere honorary enlistment,
as elsewhere he is spoken of as commanding a Volunteer force styled
the Spelthorne Legion, Spelthorne being the south-western Hundred of
Middlesex. Loyal Kew did not fail to have its own company, with the chief
gardener as lieutenant, and John Haverfield as Chairman of the Committee
appointed at a general meeting of the inhabitants, August 3, 1803. The
strength of the company was sixty men, with two drummers, two fifers,
a fugleman and an armourer; and there appears to have been no lack of
recruits, one of the rules providing that vacancies should be filled up
“from those who have offered their services, according to their character
and permanent continuance in the Parish.” Discipline was maintained by
fines, as in the case of “Every person appearing intoxicated at drill or
exercise shall immediately quit the ranks, and be fined one shilling.”
This made part of what is spoken of as the King’s Own Regiment, and
doubtless it did not want for royal countenance.
When Victoria came to the throne, it is understood that some bigoted
Tories inclined towards a plot for raising the cry of “No Popery!” as
excuse for giving the Crown to Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, who, without
question, succeeded to Hanover. This bigoted and bitter-tongued Prince
was the most unpopular of the whole family, so that, on William’s death,
the Duke of Wellington advised him to clear out of England as fast as
possible, “and take care you don’t get pelted.” He offended his mother by
marrying a divorced princess, on whom the moral Queen looked coldly; the
scandal-loving Charles Greville reports that one of Her Majesty’s latest
seizures was brought on by her wrath when she heard how the Duchesses of
Cumberland and Cambridge had embraced each other in Kew Gardens. Ernest
was by no means a fool, and seems to have had a good deal of character
and courage, but also a perfect itch for rubbing people’s sore points.
In his German kingdom he ruled with a high hand, getting his own way
more easily than in England, and playing the bully not only with those
who opposed him, but with his subservient courtiers, as appears in the
reminiscences of his chaplain, Mr. Wilkinson.
The hatred for him in London had come out at the time of a mysterious
tragedy enacted (1810) in his apartments at St. James’s, when the Duke
was found bleeding from several sword cuts, and in an adjoining room,
locked inside, his Piedmontese valet, Sellis, lay dead with his throat
cut. The coroner’s jury gave a verdict that Sellis had committed suicide
after trying to assassinate his master; but many were inclined to believe
that the murder had been “the other way on”; and an unfortunate printer
went to prison for publishing such suspicions. A generation later, heads
were again shaken over a strange robbery of the registers from Kew
Church: men whispered the name of one illustrious parishioner who might
have an interest in hiding some record of his youth. Nothing seemed too
bad to be believed of this Prince, whose ambition to reign over us, if
attained, would probably have turned the kingdom into a republic.
[Illustration: WILD HYACINTHS]
The Duke of Cumberland had a house at Kew, which stood at the north-west
corner of the Green, and became adapted as the present Herbarium and
Library, the new block built after his death in 1851. Here he lived
occasionally even while King of Hanover; and here was born his son Prince
George, whose birthday was long kept on the Green, as an old inhabitant
tells us: “We used to have the climbing-pole, the jumping in sacks, the
grinning through horse-collars, the running for shifts, and the pig with
a soaped tail, to the infinite delight of the laughter-loving section
of the parish.” This British-born Prince was the blind King of Hanover,
who, so sadly inheriting one of his grandfather’s infirmities, lived to
be dethroned by the Prussian armies, and to retire to a paradise exile
among the Austrian lakes, its lovely scenery lost on him, while, like his
grandfather, he found comfort in music. I can recall a touching glimpse
of him in his latter days as he came out of a London hotel leaning on
the arm of an equerry or some such attendant, whose duty, one supposes,
would be to nudge his master when any salutations had to be done. A small
crowd of butchers’ and bakers’ boys and the like had gathered to stare at
the equipage, and the blind King bowed graciously right and left to an
unappreciative public, that simply stared at him without the least sign
of respect.
The one branch of the royal family that kept up closer connection with
Kew, till quite lately, was the Cambridges. The good-natured and popular
Prince Adolphus had his town residence at Cambridge House, Piccadilly,
afterwards occupied by Lord Palmerston, now the Naval and Military Club,
known to cabmen as the “In and Out,” from the drive behind which it
stands back from the street. The Duke of Cambridge held also Cambridge
Cottage, marked by its portico, on the west side of the Green; and it was
in the church here that he gave amusement and scandal by his habit of
talking aloud to himself, after a trick of his father’s. When the parson
read out “Let us pray,” the Duke would respond, “With all my heart,” but
when the prayer for rain came on, he audibly remarked “No use till the
wind changes!” Then on the story of Zacchæus being read, “Behold, the
half of my goods I give to the poor,” his Royal Highness’s outspoken
comment was “No, no! that’s too much for any man--no objection to a
tenth!” The Rev. Mr. Wilkinson, in the _Reminiscences_ above-mentioned,
asserts that one nervous curate was driven out of the parish by princely
interruptions to the service, not to speak of criticisms on the sermon.
“A damned good sermon!” was the remark Sir William Gregory heard him
make, coming out of a London chapel where the preacher had eloquently
held forth against swearing. The Duke was buried in Kew Church, while his
brother of Sussex chose to “lie among the people” at Kensal Green, where
indeed he lies among such mere “people” as Thackeray, Leigh Hunt, Tom
Hood, Sydney Smith, Isambard Brunel, George Cruikshank, John Leech, and
a whole academy of R.A.’s. In Kensal Green Cemetery also was buried the
last Duke of Cambridge, beside his wife Mrs. Fitz-George, who seems to
have won love as well as respect in her anomalous position.
This Duke, the Commander-in-Chief of our day, was born and partly brought
up in Hanover, of which his father had been Regent. He had there two
English nurses, Mrs. Page and Mrs. Ford, names that gave George IV. the
cue for a jocular remark, “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” It was after King
William’s death, when Ernest succeeded to Hanover, that the Cambridge
family came back to live at Kew, of which their eldest son is found
remarking in Olendorffian style, “The houses we occupy are very bad,
but the place itself is very cheerful.” It is not recorded of him that
he interfered with the Church service, though his everyday language was
criticised as too much borrowed from its comminatory forms. In 1866, his
sister, the Princess Mary of Cambridge, was married at Kew Church to the
Duke of Teck, to whom was given the White Lodge in Richmond Park, whence
came a bride for our present Prince of Wales.
The last quasi-royal function at Kew was the marriage in 1899 of
the Princess Marie, grandchild of the Dowager Grand Duchess of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, who, as daughter of the former Duke of Cambridge,
is the sole surviving grand-daughter of George III. At the parish church,
in presence of the Prince of Wales and several other members of the
royal family, the young Princess was married to Count Jametal, by a bevy
of clergymen, among whom the Rev. F. F. Reavely, Rector of Lexham, took a
chief part at the Grand Duchess’ special request. The wedding breakfast
was given at Cambridge Cottage, which, till the death of the late Duke,
remained a link between Kew and royalty. It is understood to have been
since offered to various members of the royal family, who declined it as
involving too much expense in repairs and upkeep; and it now seems likely
to be in some way turned to public use, like the rest of King George’s
property here.
V
VISITING THE GARDENS
Kew has grown out to run into Richmond by blocks of commonplace suburban
houses, some of which boast to stand on a dozen feet of gravel. The
quaint Georgian mansions have mostly sunk in relative importance; and the
homely cottages that once neighboured them have gone, or are like to go,
though some of them still do a trade in refreshments, notably in sixpenny
and ninepenny teas served to holiday parties. One side of the Green,
turning from the Bridge to the main gate, is a row of houses and gardens
of entertainment, at the doors of which, on a Sunday afternoon, clamorous
touts strive to draw in the coming and going streams of sightseers, thus
admitted to dwellings where celebrities of the past may once have been at
home. This is a sign how as Kew waned in aristocratic favour, it waxed
as a scene of popular resort, through the attractions of its oasis in
Greater London’s desert of brick and mortar.
[Illustration: IN THE ROCK GARDEN]
From all parts of London it is easy to get to Kew, by railways from
north and south to either side of the river, by tramways to the
Brentford end of the Bridge, by omnibuses, of which specimens may soon
be worth preserving in museums along with fossil trees and Ichthyosaurus
skeletons; and by steamboats plying in summer time up the devious
reaches of the river. The Gardens are open at all reasonable hours of
daylight, and their hot-houses after midday. It is on Sunday and holiday
afternoons, naturally, that His Majesty’s subjects take most advantage of
their privileges, and, of course, fine weather will help to waft abroad
the poet’s invitation to “Come down to Kew in lilac-time”--
And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer’s wonderland.
…
The nightingale is rather rare and yet they say you’ll hear him there,
At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!)
The linnet and the throstle, too, and after dark the long halloo,
And golden-eyed _tu-whit, tu-whoo_ of owls that ogle London.
For Noah hardly knew a bird of any kind that isn’t heard
At Kew, at Kew in lilac-time (and oh, so near to London!)
And when the rose begins to pout and all the chestnut spires are out
You’ll hear the rest without a doubt, all chorusing for London.
This minstrel, as is the way with his order, has an eye upon one
sweetest season and upon one frequent class of visitors, who, when they
get to Kew, might almost as well, it seems, be anywhere else. Noah,
whose ornithological experience should have been larger than Mr. Noyes
contemplates, was familiar with a phenomenon often seen at Kew, of
visitors going in couples, all eyes for one another, with no more regard
to their leafy and flowery surroundings than may suffice to give a vague
sense of treading primrose paths. Such pairs are observed to seek out
retired nooks, where perhaps they light on a wonderland hidden from more
curious survey. I can tell of a blind man every day taking a walk in
those spacious gardens. One can see spectacled gentlemen peering into the
hothouses and museums, who may be suspected of a studious intent. But
by far the majority of holiday visitors come clearly in a true holiday
spirit, roaming here and there like butterflies from clump to clump
of bloom or greenery, to carry away a general impression of something
bearing the same relation to their own familiar back gardens as Windsor
Castle or Chatsworth to a semi-detached suburban villa.
The visitors make as miscellaneous a collection as the plants. Exotic
promenaders will be common on Sundays, when our foreign guests are apt
to complain of a want of public amusements. All classes are represented,
from disguised millionaires perhaps seeking a hint for their own newly
laid out grounds, to servant girls fondly persuaded that the lilies of
the field can show nothing to match the glories of their holiday array.
Family parties are much in evidence. There is always a large proportion
of youngsters, whose parents and guardians may be tempted to improve
the occasion with useful information, more or less correct. Here would
be a chance for Mr. Barlow to open the minds of Masters Sandford and
Merton, or for the tutor of _Evenings at Home_ to lecture his inquisitive
pupils. But the reader need not be afraid of me as likely to abuse
an opportunity of being dull and dry, if I were qualified to play
the botanic pedagogue. I shall not even attempt to be a guide to the
Gardens, which have their own official hand-books sold at the entrance;
I only invite the visitor to stroll about with me in a desultory manner,
while together we make a few observations and reflections on this great
national collection.
Kew Gardens have been boasted the finest and most complete botanical
collection in the world, as they certainly are if a handicap be allowed
for a climate suggesting the antipodes of Eden. Their chief rival
is perhaps the Buitenzorg Gardens of Java, where the Dutch turn for
horticulture has full play upon the glories of tropical vegetation
brought as it were to a focus. A thousand feet above the sea, amid
magnificent volcanic forest-clad scenery, Buitenzorg, _Sans Souci_, the
Richmond of Batavia, basks under a sunny sky that yet is by no means
parching, for Miss North was interrupted at her easel here by rain coming
down regularly each afternoon in such sheets and torrents that five
minutes would turn the roads into streams a foot deep. The gardeners
need be at little trouble or expense for watering this exuberant
greenery, through which runs an avenue of foliage arched a hundred feet
above the ground, each tree wreathed with a different creeper, “sending
down sheets of greenery and lovely flowers.” Here, amid a court of “all
the gorgeous water-lilies of the world,” the Victoria Regia flourishes
in the open air, as at Kew only in its hothouse shelter. Here grows the
_Rafflesia_, named after Sir Stamford Raffles--founder of our Zoological
Gardens, as of Singapore--called the largest flower in the world, at
Kew represented only by a wax model, which seems just as well, since
this vegetable monster, measuring some yards across, soon becomes foully
infested by insects, so as to putrefy with a disgusting smell. Here,
too, a palm like a gigantic primrose is said to have the largest fruit
and the largest leaves of any tree in the world, the former two, and the
latter ten feet in diameter. For Javan curators, indeed, the trouble
is to provide in _cool_-houses such shelter as artificially heated
conservatories are under our scrimped sunshine; and a separate Garden,
some thousands of feet higher up, makes an asylum for our familiar plants
carefully cultivated as a pigmy show of exotics in the East. Our most
tenderly nursed enclosures might cut a poor figure in a climate that does
its own gardening. With all the money spent at Kew, one can imagine what
results might be produced, where, outside of the Gardens, Miss North
could draw a picture far more highly coloured than anything fairly to be
said for Kew Green, or for the Thames bank at Brentford.