Part 1

_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_

THE COTSWOLDS

By G. F. NICHOLLS and FRANCIS DUCKWORTH

NORTH DEVON

By HENRY B. WIMBUSH and F. J. SNELL

SOUTH DEVON

By C. E. HANNAFORD and CHARLES ROWE, M.J.I.

GALLOWAY

By JAMES FAED, Jun., and J. M. SLOAN

IRELAND

By FRANCIS S. WALKER, R.H.A., and FRANK MATHEW

LIVERPOOL

By J. HAMILTON HAY and DIXON SCOTT

THE PEAK COUNTRY

By W. BISCOMBE GARDNER and A. R. HOPE MONCRIEFF

KEW GARDENS

AGENTS

AMERICA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

AUSTRALASIA THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, MELBOURNE

CANADA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD. 27 RICHMOND STREET WEST, TORONTO

INDIA MACMILLAN & COMPANY, LTD. MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY 309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA

KEW GARDENS

PAINTED BY T. MOWER MARTIN, R.C.A.

DESCRIBED BY A. R. HOPE MONCRIEFF

WITH 24 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR

LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 1908

PREFACE

Kew Gardens contain what seems the completest botanical collection in the world, handicapped as it is by a climate at the antipodes of Eden, and by a soil that owes less to Nature than to patient art. Before being given up to public pleasure and instruction, this demesne was a royal country seat, specially favoured by George III. That homely King had two houses here and began to build a more pretentious palace, a design cut short by his infirmities, but for which Kew might have usurped the place of Windsor. For nearly a century it kept a close connection with the Royal Family, as the author illustrates in his story of the village and the Gardens, while the artist has found most effective subjects in the rich vegetation gathered into this enclosure and in the relics of its former state.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I

ROYAL RESIDENCES 1

II

KEW IN FAVOUR 31

III

THE STORY OF THE GARDENS 83

IV

THE VILLAGE: IN AND ABOUT IT 113

V

VISITING THE GARDENS 157

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. The Rhododendron Dell _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE 2. The Wild Garden in Spring 8 3. The Lake 18 4. The Queen’s Cottage 30 5. In Queen’s Cottage Gardens 34 6. Looking up the Thames 42 7. The Pagoda 58 8. The Water-Lily Pond 64 9. The Palace 78 10. In the Italian Garden 90 11. The Ruined Arch 96 12. The Azaleas 102 13. The Peonies 108 14. The Palm Trees and Main Gate 112 15. The Rhododendron Walk 124 16. The Poppy Beds 138 17. The Rosary 146 18. Wild Hyacinths 152 19. In the Rock Garden 158 20. The Palm House 164 21. The Greenhouse 172 22. Wild Flowers in the Beech Woods 176 23. The Lake, looking South 198 24. The Herbaceous Ground 200

KEW GARDENS

I

ROYAL RESIDENCES

The most conspicuous feature of Kew is its Pagoda, from many points seen towering over the well-wooded flat watered by a winding reach of the Thames. Such an outlandish structure bears up the odd name in giving a suggestion of China, not contradicted by the elaborate cultivation around, where all seems market-garden that is not park, buildings, groves or flower-beds. Yet the name, of old written as _Kaihough_, _Kaiho_, _Kayhoo_, and in other quaint forms--for which _quay_ of the _howe_ or _hough_ has been guessed as original--belongs to a thoroughly English parish, whose exotic vegetation, nursed upon a poor soil, came to be twined among many national memories. These, indeed, are most closely packed about what may be called the willow-plate pattern period of our history, when a true-blue conservatism had the affectation of letting itself be spangled with foreign amenities and curiosities, jumbled together without much regard for perspective or natural surroundings.

Before coming to the Gardens that are its present fame, we should understand how Kew, even in its days of obscurity, had all along to do with great folk. Almost every line of our kings has had a home in this Thames-side neighbourhood, a distinction dating from before the Conquest. Both Kew and Richmond began parochial life as dependencies of Kingston, the _King’s town_ that once made a chief seat of Saxon princes, whose coronation stone bears record in its market-place. The manor, included with that of Sheen--the modern Richmond--was held by the Crown at Doomsday. For a time it seems to have passed into the hands of subjects, but there are hints of the first Edwards having a country home at Sheen. Edward III. certainly died at a palace said to have been built by him here. Richard II.’s first queen, Anne of Bohemia, also died at Sheen, to her husband’s so great grief that he cursed the building in the practical form of ordering it to be destroyed. Henry IV. left it in ruins, and is said to have had a house at Isleworth across the river; but by his son Sheen was restored to royal state. While Henry VII. occupied it, the palace was destroyed by fire; then in rebuilding it, this king changed its name to Richmond after his Yorkshire earldom, itself another of the beauty-spots of the kingdom. Yet the old name, probably a cousin of the German _schön_, long fitly lingered in poetry--“Thy hill, delightful Sheen!” is Thomson’s invocation--and it still survives in East Sheen, which, once a hamlet of Richmond, like Kew, now begins to count rather as a suburb of London. Sheen House here had a later connection with quasi-royalty, as it was for a time occupied by the Count de Paris, heir of the Orleans family, that has hereabouts found other temporary refuges.

In Henry VIII.’s reign, the Crown gained a new seat in this neighbourhood, Hampton Court, too pretentious monument of Wolsey’s pride. At the first signs of the storm that was to wreck him, the swelling Churchman took in sail by giving up his palace to the king, who in return allowed him quarters in one of the royal lodges at Richmond, from which, as the king’s displeasure deepened, he was banished, first to Esher, finally to his archiepiscopal northern diocese. Within the hunting-park formed by Henry about Hampton, was a lodge at Hanworth that became the home of his wife Catherine Parr, when she had the luck to be his widow.

One most picturesque figure in English history must have been familiar with Kew, though its name does not appear in the sad story of fair, wise and pious Lady Jane Grey, the “nine days’ queen.” On the spindle side, she was grand-daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, married to Henry VIII.’s sister Mary, through whom came her heritage of peril. Her father, Marquis of Dorset, was created Duke of Suffolk, and succeeded to Suffolk House at Sheen. The scene of Roger Ascham’s notable visit to the studious princess was Bradgate in Leicestershire; but part of her youth would probably be spent at Suffolk House. The boy husband provided for her, Guildford Dudley, was son of a neighbour across the river, the crafty and ambitious Duke of Northumberland, who had secured Syon House here as a share of Church plunder first granted to the Protector Somerset. On Edward VI.’s death, not without suspicion of poison, Northumberland kept the event secret for three days, in hope of being able to seize the princesses Mary and Elizabeth, before carrying out his plot to put Jane and her newly wedded husband on the throne. It seems to have been at Syon that the reluctant queen was informed of the part she had to play; and thence she was taken by water to the Tower, in which she would find a heavenly crown.

Both Mary and Elizabeth lived from time to time at Richmond, recommended by its nearness to London, and by the river that made a royal highway in that age of bad roads. Here Elizabeth died, and from her death-bed Sir Robert Carey spurred through thick and thin to carry news of his inheritance to the King of Scots. James I. was not the man to neglect such a good hunting country; early in his reign we find the Courts of Law and all seated for a time at Richmond, when driven out of London by the plague. But Hampton Court up the river, as Greenwich below, seems to have been preferred for the king’s residence; then that lover of the chase found a paradise more to his mind in Theobald’s Park, near Enfield, for which he exchanged Hatfield with the Salisbury family; and this became his favourite abode. Richmond he gave to be the home of his son Henry, who from it dates a pretty letter to the Dauphin of France, all the twelve-year-old boy’s own composition, we are told, for the learned father would let him have no help. Prince Henry might not have been pleased to hear all that was said of him in the French nursery, where little Louis asked about his correspondent--“Is he called the Prince of Wales (_Galles_) because he is mangy (_galeux_)?”

Monsieur and Brother,--Having heard that you begin to ride on horseback, I believed that you would like to have a pack of little dogs, which I send you, to witness the desire I have that we may be able to follow the footsteps of the kings, our fathers, in entire and firm friendship, also in this sort of honourable and praiseworthy recreation. I have begged the Count de Beaumont, who is returning there, to thank in my name the king your father, and you also for so many courtesies and obligations with which I feel myself overcharged, and to declare to you how much power you have over me, and how much I am desirous to find some good occasion to show the readiness of my affection to serve you, and for that, trusting in Him, I pray God, Monsieur and brother, to give you in health long and happy life.--Your very affectionate brother and servitor,

HENRY.

RICHMOND, _23rd October 1605_.

This prince, we know, died young, according to one tradition through rash bathing in the Thames; but a modern physician has diagnosed the indications of his illness as typhoid fever. Richmond then passed to his brother Charles, who was much at home here and at Hampton Court. He, as king, made a new enclosure, the present Richmond Park, a hunting-ground nine miles round, formed by somewhat high-handed expropriations recalling the harsher dealings of William Rufus with the New Forest, and going to make up this king’s unpopularity. When poor Charles himself had been hunted down, the royal abode at Richmond was sold to one of the regicides, Sir Gregory Norton, the new Great Park being given over by Parliament to the citizens of London, who, at the Restoration, restored this gift to Charles II. with a courtly declaration that they had kept it as stewards of his Majesty. The Park was now put under a Ranger; and the Palace fell into neglect, though, according to Burnet, James II.’s son, the Pretender, was nursed in it. Nothing of its old state remains but the Gateway on Richmond Green, above which may be traced the arms of England, as borne by Henry VII. The adjacent row of houses, still known as the “Maids of Honour,” also the cheesecakes of that ilk, appear to record the later day when Queen Caroline’s home at Richmond was so cramped as not to allow of her ladies “living in.”

As Richmond decayed, Hampton Court flourished in royal favour; and Cromwell, in his days of mastery, made bold with its ample accommodations. Its canals and garden took the fancy of Dutch William, who in England felt most at home here. His fatal accident he met with while riding in its park; and in the palace was born the only one of Queen Anne’s many children who grew towards any hope of the crown. George I. was a good deal at Hampton Court, it being recorded of him that on his way to London he used to make his carriage drive slowly through Brentford, for which he had an admiration shared by few beholders.

George II. as Prince of Wales, acquired for his wife another seat in this princely countryside, buying from the Duke of Ormond a house in the Old Deer Park beyond Kew Gardens, which, re-christened Richmond Lodge, made a royal home at intervals for nearly half a century. Richmond was looked on as Queen Caroline’s property, the expensive improvements on it supposed to be paid out of her private purse, though, if we may trust Horace Walpole, one of his father’s ways of securing her favour was to draw from the King’s close-buttoned pocket, on the sly, for this purpose. After the death of the managing Queen, Richmond was little used, but for a weekly visit from the Court. Every Saturday in summer, says that mocking Horace, “they went in coaches and six in the middle of the day, with the heavy Horse Guards kicking up the dust before them, dined, walked an hour in the garden, returned in the same dusty parade; and His Majesty fancied himself the most gallant and lively prince in Europe.” It had been his wife’s favourite residence; and there Scott should surely have put her interview with Jeanie Deans; but he seems to mistake in placing Richmond Lodge within the present Park, whereas it was on low land beside the river, where now stands the Observatory; then to reach it from London the Duke of Argyll would never have taken his horses up Richmond Hill merely by way of gratifying the dairymaid with a fine view, which after all, appealed most to her taste as “braw rich feeding for the cows.” Sir Walter must have had the White Lodge in view, yet without considering that it is half an hour’s walk from the Richmond Hill edge of the Park.

George II. and Caroline sometimes lived at Hampton Court, as when their eldest son gave them deadly offence by secretly carrying off his wife thence to lie-in at St. James’s. And it was there that, in Frederick William fashion, the King once struck his eldest grandson, a memory that is said to have given George III. his dislike to this palace. He let it fall to its present position as a mixture of Cockney show-place and aristocratic almshouse, while he much affected Richmond Lodge, till he got possession of his boyhood’s home at Kew.

So at last we come to the Kew mansion, whose connection with royalty was comparatively a late one, and lasted only for two generations. The reader must bear in mind that this was not the present Kew Palace, which hardly seems to deserve such a title of pretence. The latter had belonged to Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and was sold by him to Sir Hugh Portman, a rich Holland merchant, who rebuilt or altered it in the Dutch style, so that it was commonly known as the Dutch House. By some local inquirers it has been identified with the “Dairy House” also mentioned in old books. Opposite this, on the other side of a public road, in the seventeenth century stood a larger mansion, Kew House, as to the original date of which one is not clear, but it may have been at least on the site of a mansion at which her Lord Keeper, Sir John Puckering, entertained Queen Elizabeth. Under Charles II., when Evelyn calls it an “old timber house,” it came by marriage to Sir Henry Capel of the Essex family, afterwards Lord Capel, who died Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. From his widow, it passed into possession of Samuel Molyneux, described as secretary to George II., soon after whose death, in 1730, it was taken on a long lease by Frederick Prince of Wales.

Thus the obscure name of Kew began to appear in the scandalous chronicles of the Georgian period. Frederick’s parents, it will be remembered, were much at the neighbouring Richmond Lodge; and when Queen Caroline took a lease of the Dutch House also, this not very affectionate royal family had a group of residences too close together, one might think, for their comfort. The official guide states that at one time Frederick, too, must have occupied the Dutch House, as shown by his cipher and the device of Prince of Wales’s feathers on the locks; but I can find no mention of his living here in memoirs of the period. It may be that he had it for a time before his marriage; but the other was the house occupied by him as a family man, and by his widow after him.

There is some mystery about the origin of the extraordinary ill-will shown both by George II. and Caroline towards their heir, a feeling surpassing the antipathy between father and son that made an heirloom in this family for generations. The King tried to keep Frederick from coming to England; then, later on, he was half-willing to cut off Hanover from the English Crown that it might be bestowed upon his favourite, William of Cumberland. The eldest son he usually abused as a puppy, a fool, a beast, and by other such elegant epithets; while the Queen, if we are to believe Lord Hervey, offered once to give him her opinion in writing “that my dear first-born is the greatest ass and the greatest liar, and the greatest _canaille_, and the greatest beast in the whole world, and that I most heartily wish he was out of it.” Yet, when father and son were not on speaking terms, all the family lived together at St. James’s, till, after the birth of the Prince’s first child, he was turned out at short notice to take refuge at Kew, and at makeshift London residences which became in turn the head-quarters of the Opposition. One would suppose that in the country those cat-and-dog neighbours might have chosen to have at least a river between them; but at Kew they were separated only by a road.

Kew House, then, began to figure in history as the country-seat of the Prince of Wales. Frederick was by no means a model husband nor a princely man; but he had affection and respect for his wife, the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, and they at least lived decently together. Here were in part brought up their children: George III.; Edward, Duke of York, who died abroad in 1767; William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, who lived to 1805; Henry, Duke of Cumberland, who, as well as the last-mentioned, came into disfavour through a _mésalliance_; Prince Frederick and Princess Louisa, who both died young; and Caroline Matilda, who married the worthless King of Denmark, and had a miserable end. Horace Walpole sneers at Frederick’s desire to name his children from heroes of English history, not always with his father’s approval; but this trait goes to show the Prince’s aspirations to be a patriotic king. He is said to have taken the “Black Prince” as a model he got no chance of following, perhaps as well for his possible subjects; but the scanty records of his career suggest rather one of Browning’s characters:--

All that the old Dukes were without knowing it, This Duke would fain know he was without being it.

During the married life of Frederick and Augusta, the memoirs of the time give slight and sometimes rather spiteful hints of their doings at Kew, as to which, indeed, Lord Hervey’s caustic pen has no worse to tell than that they walked three or four hours daily in the lanes and fields about Richmond, with a scandal-blown lady-in-waiting and a dancing-master for company. The Prince was much given to private theatricals, but also to athletic games, among them such innocent ones as rounders, tennis, and base-ball, the last not yet banished across the Atlantic. The dog given to him by Pope is remembered by the couplet inscribed on its collar:--

I am His Highness’s dog at Kew, Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

This poet-neighbour boasted himself not a follower but a friend of His Highness, who did not want for two-legged dogs wagging their tails to him in town and country, on the speculation that his father’s death might any day change the tap of honour and profit. But all such expectations were nipped short. In March 1751 the Prince caught cold at Kew, and had symptoms of pleurisy. Supposed to be out of danger, he went back to Kew, where he walked about like a convalescent; but the same night, after returning to town, showed signs of a fresh chill. Again he seemed to be on the mend, then suddenly one evening was seized with a violent fit of coughing. “_Je sens la mort!_” he exclaimed, and these were his last words. It proved that a tumour had burst, produced either by a fall or by a blow from a tennis ball three years before.

“Thus,” says Horace Walpole, “died Frederick, Prince of Wales, having resembled his pattern the Black Prince in nothing but in dying before his father.” He appears to have been not unpopular with the mob, as princes are apt to be who make the money fly; but history has no good to tell of him, unless one kindly act in his intercession for Flora Macdonald. Scholars and divines duly lamented him with overdone effusions in the _Tu Marcellus eris_ vein; but these crocodile tears of the Muses are less well-remembered than that uncourtly epitaph that seems to have better expressed the not even lukewarm loyalty of the first Georgian generation:--

Here lies Fred Who was alive and is dead. Had it been his father, I had much rather. Had it been his brother, Still better than another. Had it been his sister, No one would have missed her. Had it been the whole generation, Still better for the nation. But since ’tis only Fred, Who was alive and is dead, There’s no more to be said.

George II. behaved at first not unkindly to his widowed daughter-in-law and grandchildren. He visited the bereaved family, throwing off royal ceremonial, kissed them, wept with them, and gave the princes good advice: “They must be brave boys, obedient to their mother, and deserve the fortune to which they were born.” Horace Walpole remarks in his malicious way that the King, who had never acted the tender father, grew so pleased with playing the part of grandfather that he soon became it in earnest. For the moment, natural good-feeling reigned in the families that had been such bad neighbours. The Opposition was crushed by the death of its patron, the Prince; and the discordant place-hunters of the day let themselves be tuned to a comparative harmony of interest under the Pelham brothers, who now had all their own way. Later on there sprang up fresh clouds between Kew and Kensington, the respective horizons of the rising and of the setting sun. For a little, Prince George appears to have lived with his grandfather at Hampton Court; but they did not take to each other, and the boy went back under his mother’s wing.