Part 11

Young monkeys, still strong in jaw and gastric juice, will pay more attention to the different kinds of nuts, too reckless dealings with which has often caused nauseous draughts to be “exhibited”; and they may be surprised to learn how the triangular Brazil nuts of our shops are not independent growths, but neatly packed in parcels of two dozen or so in a shell like a cannon ball, so hard and heavy as to crack a man’s skull on which it should fall. The youth of this generation will not be so much interested as an old fogey is in carob pods, believed to be the locusts that fed St. John, and that still feed men and cattle in some parts of the world. The other day I had a shock of mild surprise in seeing dried locusts for sale in a back street shop-window, from which I had supposed them long vanished; but in my period of unpampered stomachs and scrimp pocket-money they had a great sale among schoolboys, as giving for a minimum of expenditure a maximum of sweet, stiff chewing, with this additional recommendation, that the seeds, scrunched under one’s mischievous heel, made a squeaking noise subversive of discipline--a trick, let us trust, never tried on Mr. Barlow. He will here find a cue to explain how some fruits that are to us mere luxuries more or less digestible, such as chestnuts and dates, make the staple food of certain regions, not only raw but dried, ground into flour and baked into bread; the stones of dates also being crushed as fodder for North African cattle. Then here we have the cassava, which in its native state is deadly poison, but can be prepared to feed wholesomely many tribes of Africans and South Americans, and to supply us with our toothsome tapioca. Here indeed are poisonous preparations enough to kill all Kew, including the juice of that upas tree of whose deadly shade a cock-and-bull story took such deep root in our language that it still affords a fictitious trope for orators.

Mr. Barlow might find much to say on the many useful or curious plants here represented, notably the various trees and creepers whose juice, once oozing to waste in leafy wildernesses, now becomes more and more important through the increasing demand for india-rubber in our greedy manufactures. But his hearers might begin to yawn before he had got through one-tenth of over a hundred cases here laid out for inspection; so, as soon as the shower be over that has driven us into this instructive refuge, let us go forth into the open air, only pausing to look respectfully on the portraits of botanists and explorers, among which the tutor may point to Sir Joseph Banks, or Baron von Humboldt, while the pupils will want rather to identify Captain Cook; the general public may be most concerned to see Charles Darwin or Marianne North; and those who have had the patience to read through the foregoing chapters can pick out George III., Lord Bute, the Aitons, the Hookers, and other worthies there touched upon in connection with Kew’s history.

It would take one, indeed, from opening to closing time to go through even the salient features of these spacious Gardens. What one turns to by choice will partly depend on taste, and partly on the season. Early in the year, as the official guide reminds us, we can look out for the snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils that “take the winds of March with beauty.” Then open the tulips about the Palm House, the bluebells in the remote corner marked by the Queen’s Cottage, the wild hyacinths beneath the budding beech-trees; and horse-chestnut flowers strew the way to the blooming rhododendron walks; and next comes the turn of the azaleas and roses, till the whole area is overspread by vari-coloured blooms, in autumn dying with a pale sunset of chrysanthemums.

There are some who seek out first the richest flower-beds; others who love the chequered shade of melodious groves, or the avenues of cedar, larch, and cypress at the less cleared end towards Richmond; others will ask for famous old trees like that horse-chestnut whose gouty limbs are railed in near the river bank, a little below the Syon Vista opening across the ferry from the Palm House, beside the artificial lake that might be mistaken for a river. Open-eyed youngsters hang by the pond with its colony of wild-fowl, on the other side of the Palm House. Family parties stroll through the chambers of the “Palace,” empty but for a sprinkling of pictures and relics of royalty. Certain visitors, on hot days, one observes to spend much time in and about the refreshment pavilion, towards which Tommy Merton’s eyes will be observed to wander, while Harry Sandford listens attentively to a lecture on the adjacent cedars, whose seeds may have been brought home by Bute’s adventurous mother-in-law, and their branches to-day wear no air of “sighing for Lebanon.” The official restaurant, not quite so “popular” as those outside, stands beyond the Palm House, in an open glade leading up to where the Pagoda’s towering intrusiveness marks the way to the Lion Gate at the further corner on the Richmond road. Perhaps fewest visitors show the preference of Richard Jefferies, so true a lover of Nature, who casts his vote for what might strike some of us as the most commonplace show of the Gardens, by the Cumberland Gate--that old story of “Eyes and no Eyes!”

Within this enclosure, called the Herbaceous Ground, heedlessly passed and perhaps never heard of by the thousands who go to see the Palm Houses, lies to me the real and truest interest of Kew. For here is a living dictionary of English wild-flowers. The meadow and the cornfield, the river, the mountain, and the woodland, the seashore, the very waste place by the roadside, each has sent its peculiar representatives, and glancing for the moment, at large, over the beds, noting their number and extent, remembering that the specimens are not in the mass but individual, the first conclusion is that our own country is the true Flowery Land. But the immediate value of this wonderful garden is in the clue it gives to the most ignorant, enabling any one, no matter how unlearned, to identify the flower that delighted him or her, it may be, years ago in far-away field or copse. Walking up and down the green paths between the beds, you are sure to come upon it presently, with its scientific name duly attached and its natural order labelled at the end of the patch. Had I only known of this place in former days, how gladly I would have walked the hundred miles hither. For the old folk, the aged men and countrywomen, have for the most part forgotten, if they ever knew, the plants and herbs in the hedges they had frequented from their childhood. Some few, of course, they can tell you; but the majority are as unknown to them, except by sight, as the ferns of New Zealand or the heaths of the Cape. Since books came about, since the railways and science destroyed superstition, the lore of herbs has in great measure decayed and been lost. The names of many of the commonest herbs are quite forgotten--they are weeds, and nothing more. But here these things are preserved; in London, the centre of civilisation and science, is a garden which restores the ancient knowledge of the monks and the witches of the villages.

But whatever else at Kew be done or left undone, the stranger must be pointed to what is almost the latest and not least attractive of its spectacles--the North Gallery, that stands on the Richmond road side, beyond the mound on which a Douglas pine rears what boasts itself the tallest flagstaff in the world, and near where the walk is crossed by an imitation ruined arch, overgrown with greenery, which in Sir W. Chambers’s time seemed an ornamental manner of carrying a roadway out of the grounds. The pretty building itself will at once invite attention; then hours may be spent in examining its contents, the gift and handiwork of Miss Marianne North, who well deserved to stand godmother to several plants brought to knowledge by her researches.

This lover of flowers, a descendant from the Roger North remembered by his biography of three notable brothers, was born at Hastings, for which her father sat in Parliament. Her desire to see and to paint the tropics was awakened at Kew when Sir William Hooker gave her a glorious bunch from the first _Amherstia nobilis_ to bloom in England. With her father she travelled much in Europe, and as far as Syria and Egypt. Thrown on her own guidance after his death and the marriage of her sister to J. A. Symonds, she launched out for America and the West Indies; then took a tour round the world and made some stay in India, bringing back from time to time several hundred paintings to be exhibited at South Kensington. When she found her work appreciated, Miss North resolved on presenting the whole collection to the public, and at her own expense set about the building of a gallery for it at Kew. Before this was opened in 1882, she had been to Australasia for fresh subjects; then again set off to enrich its contents from South Africa and the islands of the Indian Ocean. The gallery had soon to be enlarged, while its indefatigable founder made her last expedition, this time to Chili. The story of those peregrinations is told in her _Recollections of a Happy Life_, that pass over lightly the many hardships she braved in procuring so much pleasure for her stay-at-home countryfolk. But perilous climates and trying exertions had told on her nerves; and after a year spent in finally arranging the Kew collection, she was fain to seek the repose of a Gloucestershire garden, which many friends contributed to adorn with such beauties as she had followed far and near. Here, a few years later, she died in 1890.

The North collection is unique, not only in its scope and interest, but in its being the work of one woman, whom Queen Victoria regretted that she could distinguish by no mark of public honour: in the next reign she might have been rewarded by the new Order of Merit bestowed on Florence Nightingale. Her legacy to the nation, catalogued in more than a hundred pages, pictures some thousand species of flowers and plants, from nearly all parts of the world, for the most part executed on the spot within little over a dozen years. This is the sight no visitor should miss; and from whatever clime he comes, he is almost sure to find some _souvenir_ of it blooming here under the dullest sky and the chilliest influences, against which Kew Gardens strive to carry out their aim of epitomising the earth’s vegetable life.

FOOTNOTES

[1] _The Dictionary of National Biography_’s article on Francis Willis, written, I understand, by a descendant of his, hardly does justice to this one of his sons. The writer mentions John and Robert as concerned with treating the King at different times, but does not bring forward Thomas, who, so far as I can make out, was closely in charge during the attack of 1801.

[2] _Letting_ in Elizabethan English, of course, bore the opposite meaning to ours, as in “let and hinder.”

INDEX

Abel, musician, 125

Acorns exported from Kew, 185

Addison, quoted, 90

Æolus, Temple of, 169

Aiton, John, 102

Aiton, William, 100

Aiton, William Townsend, 102

Albert, Prince, 110

Amelia, Princess, 64, 79

Amelia’s House, Princess, 30

Arch, the ruined, 199

Argyll, Duke of, 9

Aroid House, 170

Assassination, George III.’s escape from, 36

Augusta, Princess of Saxe-Gotha, 13

Australian vegetation, 182

Ayrton, Mr., 109

Azaleas, 196

Bach, J. C., 40, 125

Bacon’s Essay, _Of Gardens_, 85

Bamboos, 186

Bauer, Francis, 146

Birch, uses of, 187

Bluebells, 196

Bohemia, Anne of, 2

Boswell, 70

Botanic Garden at Kew, 95, 101, 107, 112

Botanists, portraits of explorers and, 195

Bradley, Astronomer-Royal, 87

Brazil nuts, 193

Brentford, 8, 77, 113, 119, 132

Bridgeman, gardener, 91

Brown, “Capability,” 95

Buckingham Palace, 27, 32, 78

Buitenzorg Gardens, Java, 161

Burney, Miss, quoted, 46, 59, 66, 67

Burton, Decimus, 108

Bushey Park, 149

Bute, Earl of, 19, 23, 95, 123

“Buttonmaker,” nickname of George III., 31

Byam, Rev. R. B., 145

Cactus aloe, 169

Cambridge Cottage, 46, 123, 153, 156

Cambridge, Duke Adolphus of, 45, 81, 116, 153

Cambridge, Duke George of, 154

Cambridge, Princess Mary of, 155

Capel, Lord, 11, 87

Carleton House, 77

Carob pods, 193

Caroline, Queen, 9, 10, 94, 116

Cassava, 194

Castor-oil plant, the, 193

Cedars of Lebanon, 197

Chambers, Sir William, 96

Character of George III., 22

Charles I., 7

Charlotte, Princess, 80, 81

Charlotte, Queen, 24, 47, 52 68, 80

Chatterton, quoted, 98

Chelsea, Physic Garden of, 101

Chestnuts, 194

Chrysanthemums, 196

Church House, 123

City State Barge, 143

Clarence, Duke of, 45, 70, 81

Cobbett, William, 136

Coca leaves, 192

Coco-nut of Seychelles, 166

Coco-nut trees, uses of, 188

Colton, Charles Caleb, 143

Confucius, House of, 96

Cook’s Voyages, 105

_Copernicia cerifera_, a tree-of-all-work, 189

Cotton window, the, 191

Cowley, quoted, 84

Crocuses, 196

Cuba jungles, 171

Cumberland, Ernest, Duke of, 45, 81, 116, 150, 151

Cumberland, William of, 12, 18

Daffodils, 196

“Dairy House,” the, 11

D’Arblay, General, 71

Darwin, Erasmus, quoted, 98

Darwins, the, 102

Dates, 194

Deans, Jeanie, 9

De Candolles, the, 102

De Jussieus, the, 102

_Diary_, George Rose’s, 74

_Dictionary of National Biography_, quoted, 75

Digby, Colonel, 67

_Dissertation on Oriental Gardening_, 96

_Diversions of Purley_, the, 134

Doddington, Bubb, 20

Dowager Princess of Wales, 20, 95

Dragon-tree at Orotava, 180

“Drake, Peter,” 95

Drawing-rooms at St. James’s, 50

Duck, Misses, 116

Duck, Stephen, 94, 116, 117

Dutch House, the, 11, 29, 74

Edinburgh Botanical Garden, 103

Edward III., 2

Elizabeth, Queen, 5

“Elizabeth’s house, Princess,” 46

Engleharts, the, 126

Ernest, King of Hanover, 107 150, 151

Ernst, the page, 126

Eucalyptus, 181

Evelyn, John, 86

Explorers, portraits of botanists and, 195

“Farmer George,” 31

Finch, Lady Charlotte, 46

Fischer, musician, 40, 125

Fitzherbert, Mrs., 45

Fortnum, 125

Frederick, Duke of York, 37, 43, 46

Frederick, Prince of Wales, 11, 15, 88

Gainsborough, Thomas, 129

Gardening, art of, 88

Gardens, celebrated, 87, 88

GARDENS, THE STORY OF THE, 82

Garrick, quoted, 96

George, Duke of Cambridge, 154

“George, Farmer,” 31

George I., 8

George II., 8, 10, 24

George III., 13, 74, 76, 78, 95, 120

George III., accession of, 24

George III.’s character, 22

George III.’s escape from assassination, 36

George III.’s illness, 51

George III. meets Miss Burney, 47

George III.’s tutors, 17

George IV., 77, 106

George IV., Prince of Wales, 37, 40, 53, 55

George IV.’s intrigue with “Perdita” Robinson, 41

Giant gum trees at Melbourne, 164

Gordon, General, 166

Great Palm House, 165

Green, the gardener, 99

Greenhouse, the, 170

Greville, Charles, quoted, 150

Grey, Lady Jane, 4

Gwyn, Mrs., the “Jessamy Bride,” 145

Ha-ha fence, 93

Ham House, 87, 114

Hampton Court, 3, 8, 10

Hanover, Ernest, King of, 107

Hanover, George of, 152

Haverfield, John, 99

Hawkins, the brothers, 123

Helps, Sir Arthur, 147

Hemp plants, 192

Henry, Prince, 6

Herbaceous ground, 169, 198

Herbarium library, 152

_Heroic Epistle_, Mason’s, 95

Hervey, Lord, quoted, 12, 14

Highwaymen, 121

Hill, Sir John, 96

Hofland, Barbara, 146

Hollow Walk, the, 123

“Honour, Maids of,” 8

Hooker, Sir J. D., 109, 181

Hooker, Sir W. J., 108, 109

Horne Tooke, John, 132

Horse-chestnut, old, 196

Horticultural Society’s Garden, 107

Huntingdon, William, S.S., 138

Hurlbut, W. H., quoted, 171

“Improvers,” 88

India-rubber plants, 195

Islay, Lord, 97

Italian Gardens, 89

Jacobi, Mdlle., 69, 72

James I., 5

Jefferies, Richard, quoted, 198

Jones, Henry, 98

Jones, Inigo, 88

Juniper Hill, 71

“Junius,” 134

Kava root, 192

Kent, Duke of, 45, 81

Kent, William, 88

Kew Bridge, 118

Kew Castle, 77

Kew Church, 115

Kew Churchyard, 129

Kew Cottage, 147

Kew Green, 75, 157

Kew House, 10, 29, 32, 46, 51, 54, 64, 76

KEW IN FAVOUR, 31

“Kew in lilac-time,” 158

Kew Observatory, 9, 88, 97, 111

Kew, origin of name, 1

Kew Palace, 10, 78, 80, 112, 197

Kew Priory, 143

Kew Volunteers, 149

Kingston, 2

Kirby, Joshua, 129

Kit-Cat Club, 114

Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 114

Kneller Hall, 114

Knight, Charles, 79

Knight, Miss Cornelia, 73

_Lacon_, quoted, 144

Lake, the, 197

Langley, Batty, 91

Lauderdale, Duke of, at Ham House, 87

Lebanon, cedars of, 197

Lely, Sir Peter, 113

Lennox, Lady Sarah, 26

Le Nôtre, 89

Levens Hall, 89

Linnean classification, the, 190

Linnés, the, 102

Lion Gate, the, 197

Liquorice root, 192

Little, John, story of, 141

“Love Lane,” 33

Macaulay, quoted, 47

Macnab, James, 103

Macnab, William, 102

Macnab, William Ramsay, 103

“Maids of Honour,” 8

Mammoth sequoia, 181

Marvell, A., quoted, 93

Mary of Cambridge, Princess, 155

Mason’s _Heroic Epistle_, 95

Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Dowager Grand-Duchess of, 155

Melbourne, giant gum-trees at, 164

“Merlin’s Cave,” 94

Meyer, Jeremiah, 126

Molyneux, Samuel, 11, 87

Monastery of Sheen, the, 83

Montague, Lady Mary Wortley, 123

Moor Park, Hertfordshire, 85

Murray, Miss Amelia, quoted, 124

Museums and Economic Houses, 185

New Zealand Vegetation, 183

Niepce, J. N. de, 146

“No Popery” riots, 34

North Gallery, 199

North, Miss Marianne, 161, 163, 199

Nôtre, Le, 89

Noyes, Mr. A., quoted, 158

Observatory, the, 9, 88, 97, 111

Old Brentford, 132

Old Deer Park, 36, 111, 141

Opium, 192

“Orangery,” the, 190

Orotava, dragon-tree at, 180

Pagoda, the, 1, 96, 197

Palace at Richmond, proposed new, 28

Palm House, 108

Papendiek, Mrs., Memoirs of, 34, 40, 43, 56, 72, 99, 120, 121, 123, 125

Papyrus reeds, 167

Pavilion, the Brighton, 77

Peradenia, Gardens of, 164

Petersham, 114

Phillips’s _Morning’s walk from London to Kew_, 142

Physic Garden, Chelsea, 101

Pond, the, 197

Pope, quoted, 15, 89

Portraits of botanists and explorers, 195

Potato, the, 185

Prain, Colonel, 109

Prince Albert, 110

Prince Frederick of Wales, 11, 15, 88

Prince George of Hanover, 152

Prince Henry, 6

Princess Amelia, 30, 64, 79

Princess Charlotte, 80, 81

“Princess Elizabeth’s House,” 46

Princess Marie’s wedding, 155

Princess Victoria, 81

Pringle, Sir John, 123

Proctor, Richard, 147

Queen Caroline, 9, 10, 116

Queen Charlotte, 27, 68, 80

Queen Elizabeth, 5

Queen Victoria, 112, 149

“Queen’s Cottage,” the, 29, 196

“Queen’s Lodge” at Windsor, 32

Quinine, 193

_Rafflesia_, 162

_Recollections of a Happy Life_, 200

Regency Bill, 53, 62

Regency, the Prince’s, 79

Repton, Humphrey, 93

Richmond, 3, 5, 113, 140

Richmond Gardens, 94, 110

Richmond Lodge, 8, 10, 28, 32, 97, 110

Richmond Palace, 3

Richmond Park, 7, 30

Richmond, proposal of new palace at, 28

Rio de Janeiro, Botanic Garden, near, 164

Riots, “No Popery,” 34

Robinson, “Perdita,” 41

Rock Garden, the, 168

Rogers, John, Reminiscences, 34, 101

Rose, George, _Diary_ of, 74

Roses, 196

St. James’s Drawing-rooms, 50

St. James’s Palace, 27

Saxe-Gotha, Princess Augusta of, 13

Scholarship, George IV.’s, 37

Schwellenberg, Mrs., 49, 68

Scotsmen as gardeners, 100, 105

Senna, 192

Seychelles, coco-nut of, 166

Sharp, Granville, 122

Sheen, 2

Sheen Common, 94

Sheen, the Monastery of, 83

Snowdrops, 196

Somerset, Protector, 84

South African plants, 168

_Spectator_, the, quoted, 90

Spencer, Lady Elizabeth, 27

STORY OF THE GARDENS, THE, 82

Strand-on-the-Green, 113, 126

Strawberry Hill, 90, 91

Succulent House, 169

Sudbrook Park, 114

Suffolk House, 4

Sun, Temple of the, 169

Sunday opening, 110

Sussex, Duke of, 45

Swift, quoted, 114

Switzer, Stephen, 87, 91

Sydney, Botanic Gardens at, 164

Syon House, 4, 84

Syon Vista, the, 197

Tamerlane’s garden, 100

Teck, Duke of, 155

Temple, Sir William, 87

Temple of Æolus, 169

Temple of the Sun, 169

Temple Grove, 87

Thackeray, quoted, 34

Theobald’s Park, Enfield, 5

Thiselton-Dyer, Sir W. T., 109

Thomson, James, 140

“Thresher-poet,” the, 116

_Thresher’s Labour, The_, quoted, 117

Thurlow, Lord Chancellor, 62

Timber Museum, No. III., 190

Tooke, John Horne, 132

Topiarian art, the, 89

Trimmer, Mrs., 129

Tropical Lily House, 166

Tropics, plagues of the, 176

Tulips, 196

Turner, Dr. William, 83

Tutors of George III., 17

Twickenham, 21

“Two Kings of Brentford,” the, 132

Upas tree, 195

Victoria Gate, 112

Victoria, Princess, 81

Victoria, Queen, 112, 149

Victoria Regia, the, 162, 167

VISITING THE GARDENS, 157

Wales, Dowager Princess of, 20, 95

Wales, Prince Frederick of, 11, 88

Wallace, Dr. A. R., quoted, 174

Walpole, Horace, 9, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 28, 45, 63

Wedding of Princess Marie, 155

Wells, Mr. J. W., quoted, 189

West, Sir Algernon, quoted, 109

Weymouth, 65, 76

White House, the, 46

White Lodge, 155

Whitton Place, 97

Wild hyacinths, 196

Wilkes, John, 26, 131

Wilkes’s head, 76

“Wilkes and Liberty,” 89, 133

Wilkinson, Mr., _Reminiscences_, 154

William of Cumberland, 12, 18

William III., 8, 89

William IV., 87

Willis, Rev. Dr., 56, 68

Willises, the, 75

Windsor Castle, 32, 50, 78

Wolsey, 3

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 118

York, Frederick, Duke of, 37, 42, 64

Zoffany, John, 127

THE END

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