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The Lion Gate _Frontispiece_
The Great Gatehouse, West Entrance 8
A Corner of Wolsey's Kitchen 14
Anne Boleyn's Gateway, Clock Court 20
Master Carpenter's Court 26
Fountain Court 32
The Great Hall 38
The Pond Garden 42
East Front from the Long Water 46
The Wilderness in Spring 50
The Long Walk 54
The Long Water in Winter 58
[Illustration: HAMPTON COURT]
"Close by those meads for ever crown'd with flowers
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising towers
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name."--_Pope._
I
For combined beauty and interest--varied beauty and historical
interest--there is no place "within easy reach of London", certainly
no place within the suburban radius, that can compare with the stately
Tudor palace which stands on the left bank of the Thames, little more
than a dozen miles from the metropolis and, though hidden in trees,
within eye-reach of Richmond. It is not only one of the "show places",
which every traveller from afar is supposed to visit as something of a
duty, but it is a place that conveys impressions of beauty and
restfulness in a way that few others can. It remains ancient without
having lapsed into a state of desuetude that leaves everything to the
imagination; it is a living whole far from any of the garishness that
belongs to contemporaneity. Whether seen from the outside on the west,
where the warm red brick, the varied roofs, the clustered decorative
chimneys suggestive of the Tudor time make a rich and harmonious
whole; or from the south east, where the many-windowed long straight
lines of the Orange additions show the red brick diversified with
white stone, it is a noble and impressive pile. Within, too, are
priceless treasures, themselves alone the objective of countless
pilgrimages. And recognizing the attractions of the buildings and
their contents is to take no account of the lovely grounds, and of the
crowding associations of a place that, since its establishment four
hundred years ago, has again and again been the centre at which
history was made.
Throughout our records for many centuries the valley of the Thames has
been favoured when our monarchs have sought to establish a new home.
Greenwich and London--the Tower, Whitehall, Buckingham Palace--Richmond
and Hampton Court, Windsor, Reading and Oxford, are some of the places
that have at one time or another been the chosen centre of royal life;
and Hampton Court Palace is the newest of those situated close on the
river's bank, though nearly two hundred years have elapsed since it was
a regular royal residence. It was, indeed, for something less than the
same length of time that it was in use as a home of the sovereign, but
within that period it saw two revolutions, and the change of national
conditions from the comparative mediaevalism of the days of the eighth
Henry to the comparative modernity of the beginning of the Hanoverian
era. It is not, perhaps, overfanciful to see something of the lavish
richness, the opulent homeliness, of the earlier period typified in the
varied buildings, courts, and gateways of the Tudor portion of the
Palace, and the more formal grandeur of the later time in the
symmetrical stateliness of the later part.
Hampton Court Palace was the centre of many of the bluff King Henry's
hunting parties--and the scene of some of his marital excitements, and
here, too, his long-hoped-for son was born; it was the scene of
Elizabethan pageantry, and of the attempt on the part of the Virgin
Queen's successor to force other men's religion into his own
particular groove; at Hampton Court Charles the First was seen at his
best in the domestic circle and--after the interregnum--where his son
was seen at his worst in anti-domestic intrigues. Here Cromwell sought
rest from cares greater than those of a king, and here he was
stricken with mortal illness; here William and Mary dwelt, and here
the former met with the seemingly trivial accident which cost him his
life. That the "story" of Hampton Court is, indeed, a full, splendid,
and varied one is shown in the three fine volumes in which it is set
forth by Mr. Ernest Law, a work to which no writer on the history of
the Palace can help feeling indebted. Those who would learn the
intimacies and details of the history of the place have Mr. Law's
history, and those who seek a "guide" are well provided for in the
official publications. Here, I am concerned with the history of the
place only in its broader and more salient points, and with the minor
details necessary in a guidebook not at all; I seek rather to give
something of an impression of the past and present of the Palace,
something that shall at once indicate the associations of the place,
indicate its story, and hint at what there is to see, and that shall
serve as souvenir and remembrancer of that which has been seen.
[Illustration: THE GREAT GATEHOUSE, WEST ENTRANCE]