RICHMOND AND KEW
The Woking of the Surrey Thames.--Peasants in the field.--Ham
House.--The Cabal.--Petersham.--Richmond Hill.--_The Heart of
Midlothian._--Deer in the sunlight.--Queen Elizabeth dying.--Kew
Palace.--The secret of the Gardens.
Woking is the centre to which it is difficult not to return in exploring
the Wey and the Wey villages: Surbiton is the centre of the roads about
the Surrey Thames. Surbiton has tramways besides a railway, and Surbiton
station is perhaps the most convenient starting point either for Hampton
Court on the Middlesex bank, or for Kingston, or through Kingston to Ham
and Richmond and Kew. Kingston, in one direction, has its own chapter;
so have the Dittons and Walton in another; beyond Kingston lies a walk
(not often taken, perhaps), along the river bank to Ham and Petersham; a
walk that leads to Richmond Park and its deer dozing among the bracken
in the afternoon sun, and Kew Gardens waiting in the evening--the best
hour of all the day among those ordered flowers and trees.
I never saw Ham until one day, walking out from Kingston, I suddenly
found myself in the fruitful spaces of market gardens and farms. It is
the suddenest change. Kingston, with the oldest memories of all Surrey
towns, is as new and noisy as a thoroughly efficient service of tramways
can make it; and then, within a stone's throw of bricks and barracks,
you come upon acres beyond acres of level farmland, bean-fields and
cabbage-fields and all the pleasantness of tilled soil and trenched
earth and the wealth of kindly fruits. When I saw the fields by Ham on a
hot day in August there were country women gathering runner beans into
coarse aprons, stooping over the clustered plants, the humblest and
hardiest of workers of the farm. Under that hot sun, in the wide spaces
of those unfenced fields, with no English hedge to shut off neighbouring
crops and tillage, the air of those bent, lowly figures was of French
peasantry, French nearness to the difficult livelihood of the soil. They
might have gleaned for Millet; they should cease their work at the
Angelus.
[Illustration: _Richmond Bridge._]
Teddington Lock, a mile down stream from Kingston suburbs, joins Surrey
to Middlesex and the tide to the tideless river with a vast piece of
engineering. Further down, Eel Pie island breaks the stream, a bunch of
chairs, tables and trees, where, for all I know, others may still eat
and praise eel pie. But the fascination of this stretch of river is on
the Surrey bank, where Ham House stands among noble trees. Ham House is
not a "show house"; and indeed, considering its nearness to Richmond and
London, it would be impossible that it should be. There are limits to
the claims which may be made upon owners of historic houses who may also
wish to live in them. But Ham House holds other magnets than its
pictures and relics of Stuarts and Lauderdales. The guide-books
catalogue the pictures, and perhaps I need not copy the catalogues. The
real fascination is Ham House with its history, the meeting-place of the
great Cabal. But you may see that Ham House from a distance; the house
as the Duke of Lauderdale saw it from the river bank, or driving to the
door to join his fellow Ministers; the garden front, with its statue of
Father Thames, the statue at which Buckingham and Arlington used to
stare, perhaps, wondering how much longer their sinister power would be
left to them. All that they knew and saw day by day remains--the dull
red brick, the wrought iron gate, the quaint statuary of the walls; and
round the garden walls and shading the wide lawn behind the house, the
trees as later, gentler souls saw them; Thomson, walking from his
Richmond cottage, and Hood, strolling under the long avenue of elms.
Petersham has riverside houses which would dignify Georgian aldermen;
square red houses set about with wistaria and high garden walls, worthy
to be neighbours of Richmond Park; worthy, too, of a handsomer neighbour
than Petersham church, an insignificant little building which yet was
thought sufficient for the dust of the Duchess of Lauderdale. Outside in
the churchyard lies the sailor who sought for the North-west passage and
named Vancouver's Island.
[Illustration: _The Thames from Richmond Hill._]
Of Richmond Park, and the view from Richmond Terrace, and the departed
glories of Richmond's palace which was the palace of Sheen, what should
be said? How should the beauty of the view from the Terrace be measured?
Scott has set it in the pages of _The Heart of Midlothian_, and Scott,
perhaps, thought it the loveliest and richest of English landscapes. It
was "a huge sea of verdure, with crossing and intersecting promontories
of massive and tufted groves." It was "tenanted by numberless flocks and
herds, which seemed to wander unrestrained and unbounded through the
rich pastures. The Thames, here turreted with villas and there garlanded
with forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch of
the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but accessories, and bore
on its bosom an hundred barks and skiffs, whose white sails and gaily
fluttering pennons gave life to the whole." That was the scene which was
shown to Jeanie Deans, arrived at Richmond to sue for pardon for her
sister, by the Duke of Argyle. "We have nothing like it in Scotland,"
said the Duke of Argyle. Is that the secret? Is it because it is all
that is typical of south country greenness and the peace of broad water
and deep woodlands that it made its appeal to the Scot used to grey
crags and barren moorland? Or is its chief appeal not to the Scot but to
the Londoner, and does the Londoner praise Sir Walter's taste because
Sir Walter has praised his? That is part of the story of the beauty of
the Richmond view, perhaps. It is so easily found from London. It has
all that the Londoner loves to look at. It is the country as he wishes
to see it. A glorious stretch of luxuriant woodland, a noble breadth of
shining water, sunlight on wide meadows; but above all, setting a
difference between this orderly beauty and the wild splendours of some
western or northern moorland valley, the presence of befriending,
comrade man. The boats, the sails, the swans, the water flashing on the
oars; the neighbouring roofs, the patterned flower gardens, the comforts
of hotels at hand, the readiness with which it is all won and
enjoyed--those are some of the secrets of the ideal. It is the country
seen from an outdoor theatre.
[Illustration: _Palace Yard, Richmond._]
Richmond Park itself would be worth visiting for any countryman because
of its deer. Deer standing about in the bracken; deer asleep in thick
fern under great oaks; deer feeding slowly up wind on a distant slope of
green; deer leaping shadows of tree-stems one after another as if the
shadows were water, which is one of the deer's prettiest games in the
sun: deer trotting off as you try to come nearer to them, with that
curious quivering, shaking amble which is born of lissom daintiness and
muscles like steel; deer with hot sunlight on their coats--it is the
Richmond Park deer which are the creatures to come and see. How many are
there? Who should count them? Sixteen hundred fallow deer and fifty red
deer, the figures are given; Farnham Park, I think, comes next in
Surrey, with three hundred fallow deer.
The great palace has left little more than an archway on Richmond Green.
More history belongs to it, or rather to the succession of palaces which
have stood at Sheen, which was the old name, than I can deal with.
Edward III died at Sheen Palace, unloved and alone. Richard II's queen,
Anne of Bohemia, died there seventeen years later, and Richard in his
grief threw the palace down. It was rebuilt by Henry V, burnt down in
1497, rebuilt and renamed Richmond by Henry VII; then the Richmond who
named it died in his new palace. But the overmastering sense of
unhappiness which somehow has set itself about the story of Richmond
Palace belongs to the closing days of Elizabeth. Elizabeth's death, and
the month that went before it, patch English history like a week of
night. She had been so strong, so untiring, so wise in her council
chamber and so magnificent in her victorious fleet, and the fortune that
followed her like a wind; the life of her body had been so unfailing,
she had jested, wittily and coarsely, with so many courtiers; she had
commanded the chivalry of young and splendid nobles, she had lived to
see one of her favourites die and to send another to the block; and now
she herself was dying. She knew it, and she would not hear of death. She
was never so ready for the gaiety she could not enjoy. Her strength left
her, she was a skeleton; still she sat with her dress unchanged, staring
before her, flashing sudden rages at her ministers, rallying at the
mention of an heir's name. Beauchamp, heir to the Suffolks, they put
forward; she cried out he was the son of a rogue. The King of Scots?
they asked; she answered nothing. Dead, propped among her pillows, an
old woman in ruff and stays, the memory of her last days shadows
Richmond Palace like a drawn blind.
[Illustration: _Richmond Hill._]
To the north beyond Richmond Hill and the huge hotel, twice burnt down,
which looks over the woods and the river, one may come by tramways and
railways to Kew and Kew Gardens. Kew, too, once had a palace, or an
attempt at a palace. Frederick Prince of Wales, George III's
father--the prince who did so much for Surrey cricket, and died,
perhaps, from the blow of a cricket ball--lived at Kew House, and so did
George III after him. George III pulled down Kew House in 1803, and
built another; to be not less royal, George IV pulled that down. A
smaller building, vaguely named Kew Palace still, stands in the Gardens;
Queen Charlotte died there; you may see the room, and look, if you wish,
on the tables and sofas she knew. But the pictures in Kew Palace were
not all Queen Charlotte's; they are catalogued to-day, and so are many
manuscripts and autograph letters of royal persons which attract careful
readers. From remarks which can be overheard in those sombre rooms, many
visitors, I think, imagine the paintings of still life, of flowers in
vases, odd representations of game and fruit, and so forth, to have
been selected and hung in the house as specially suitable for public
gardens. The portraits of royal gentlemen in blue and red puzzle them;
why should they be shown these at Kew? These are for palaces and
galleries; Kew is for a flower show.
What is the chief, the compelling fascination of Kew Gardens? What is it
that sets Kew apart, not more beautiful than other gardens, but
different from them, with a different attraction peculiarly its own? Is
it the sense of change from roaring streets to quiet lawns, noble trees,
spaces and scents of grass and flowers? There may be a sense of change,
but that is not all the secret, for Kew keeps the same charm for one who
has come fresh from the broad aisles and avenues of some great country
garden. Is it the rarity and the wealth of the Kew museums and
houses--the orchid houses with their strange, lovely, uncanny
inflorescences, flowers that have fancies and wilfulnesses, flowers that
would people the dark with faces; or the lily-houses and the superb
_Victoria regia_ that would cradle a water-baby; or the great palm
houses, where you may walk in a gallery among enormous leaves and
tropical creepers as if you were back again with your grandfathers in
the tree tops? That is an attraction, but it is not all of it. Nor is it
the achievement of the gardens in the separate spheres of gardening. The
sheets of crocuses in the low March sunlight, and of daffodils shaking
in an April wind, add a glory to the spring at Kew, but it is a glory
that can belong to other lawns and other vistas of flowers. The Kew
rose-garden has a wealth of roses, but it has, too, a wealth of old tree
stems and broken branches which a garden meant for nothing but roses
would hide. The herbaceous border grows luxuriant phloxes and
delphiniums, but the background of glass houses sets a wrong light about
it. The rock garden shows more rock and fewer masses of Alpine flowers
than other English gardens more lately made, with better knowledge of
what wall and rock flowers need.
Then what is the abiding charm? To me, at all events, Kew has much the
same appeal as the Londoner finds in Richmond Hill. It is a London
garden, the garden of a town, perfectly made for its purpose. It can
never, even with its glorious trees and its wide spaces of grass, have
the peace or know the spirit of a country garden. Too many feet tread
its lawns; too many voices chatter in its walks. It may spread its wild
flowers and grow its curious blossoms for those who know where and how
to look for them; but its main effects must be of ordered gravel, of
shaven grass, of patterned beds, of flowers that will suit artificial
lakes and buildings and stone balustrades. The keynote of Kew is by the
wide pond, with the smooth green turf and the white stone, and the
masses of pansies and heliotrope and brilliant red geraniums. Those are
the flowers which suit best the steps down to the water, and the
fountains, and the swimming ducks and the birds on the banks. There is
the right touch of artificiality about them; the right note of London.
The birds are Londoners themselves. The stately brown geese stalk over
the lawns careless of poulterers or punt-guns. The cormorant, who most
certainly knows he is being watched, dives to show off before admiring
children. Even the blackbirds have forgotten their country habits, and
will sing when country blackbirds are silent for the year. Once, late in
July, I heard four singing in evening sunshine after rain. They would
take any countryman back to the days of chestnut blossom and the scent
of Surrey may; but that indolent melody, in July sunshine, belongs to
London.
[Illustration: _Kew Church._]