Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen (Vol. 1&2). Sarah Tytler
each side of the church and was best known by its Charity School, and its pastrycook's shop, at the sign of the "Pineapple," to which Queen Caroline had graciously given her own recipe for royal Dutch gingerbread. David Wilkie's apartments represented the solitary studio. Nightingales sang in Holland Lane; blackbirds and thrushes haunted the nurseries and orchards. Great vegetable-gardens met the fields. Here and there stood an old country house in its own grounds. Green lanes led but to more rural villages, farms and manor-houses. Notting Barns was a farmhouse on the site of Notting Hill. In the tea-gardens at Bayswater Sir John Hill cultivated medicinal plants, and prepared his "water-dock essence" and "balm of honey." Invalids frequented Kensington Gravel pits for the benefit of "the sweet country air."
Kensington Palace had been bought by William III. from Daniel Finch, second Earl of Nottingham. His father, the first Earl, had built and named the pile of brick-building Nottingham House. It was comparatively a new, trim house, though Evelyn called it "patched up" when it passed into the hands of King William, and as such might please his Dutch taste better than the beautiful Elizabethan Holland House—in spite of the name, at which he is said to have looked, with the intention of making it his residence.
The Duke of Sussex, as well as the Duke and Duchess of Kent, had apartments in the palace. He dwelt in the portion of the southern front understood to belong to the original building. His brother and sister-in-law were lodged not far off, but their apartments formed part of an addition made by King William, who employed Sir Christopher Wren as his architect.
The clumsy, homely structure, with its three courts—the Clock Court, the Princes' Court, and the Princesses' Court—had many interesting associations in addition to its air of venerable respectability. William and Mary resided frequently in the palace which they had chosen; and both died under its roof. Mary sat up in one of these rooms, on a dreary December night in 1694, after she felt herself stricken with small-pox, seeking out and burning all the papers in her possession which might compromise others. The silent, asthmatic, indomitable little man was carried back here after his fall from his horse eight years later, to draw his last breath where Mary had laid down her crown. Here Anne sat, with her fan in her mouth, speaking in monosyllables to her circle. George I.'s chief connection with Kensington Palace was building the cupola and the great staircase. But his successors, George II. and Queen Caroline, atoned for the deficiency. They gave much of their time to the palace so identified with the Protestant and Hanoverian line of succession. Queen Caroline especially showed her regard for the spot by exercising her taste in beautifying it according to the notions of the period. It was she who caused the string of ponds to be united so as to form the Serpentine; and he modified the Dutch style of the gardens, abolishing the clipped monsters in yew and box, and introducing wildernesses and groves to relieve the stiffness and monotony of straight walks and hedges. The shades of her beautiful maids of honour, "sweet Molly Lepell," Mary Bellenden, and Sophy Howe, still haunt the Broad Walk. Molly Lepell's husband, Lord Hervey (the "Lord Fanny" of lampoons and songs), composed and read in these rooms, for the diversion of his royal mistress and the princesses, with their ladies and gentlemen, the false account of his own death, caused by an encounter with footpads on the dangerous road between London and the country palace. He added an audacious description of the manner in which the news was received at Court, and of the behaviour of the principal persons in the circle.
With George II. and Queen Caroline the first glory of the palace departed, for the early Court of George III. and Queen Charlotte took its country pleasures at Kew. Then followed the selection of Windsor for the chief residence of the sovereigns. The promenades in the gardens, to which the great world of London flocked, remained for a season as a vestige of former grandeur. In George II.'s time the gardens were only thrown open on Saturdays, when the Court went to Richmond. Afterwards the public were admitted every day, under certain restrictions. So late as 1820 these promenades were still a feature on Sunday mornings.
Kensington Palace has not yet changed its outward aspect. It still stands, with its forcing-houses, and Queen Anne's banqueting-room—converted into an orangery—in its small private grounds, fenced off by a slight railing and an occasional hedge from the public gardens. The principal entrance, under the clock-tower, leads to a plain, square, red courtyard, which has a curious foreign aspect in its quiet simplicity, as if the Brunswick princes had brought a bit of Germany along with them when they came to reign here; and there are other red courtyards, equally unpretentious, with more or less old-fashioned doors and windows. Within, the building has sustained many alterations. Since it ceased to be a seat of the Court, the palace has furnished residences for various members of the royal family, and for different officials. Accordingly, the interior has been divided and partitioned off to suit the requirements of separate households. But the great staircase, imposing in its broad, shallow steps of black marble and its faded frescoes, still conducts to a succession of dismantled Presence-chambers and State-rooms. The pictures and tapestry have been taken from the walls, the old panelling is bare. The distinctions which remain are the fine proportions of the apartments—the marble pillars and niches of one; the remains of a richly-carved chimneypiece in another; the highly-wrought ceilings, to which ancient history and allegory have supplied grandiose figures—their deep colours unfaded, the ruddy burnish of their gilding as splendid as ever. Here and there great black-and-gold court-stools, raised at the sides, and finished off with bullet heads of dogs, arouse a recollection of Versailles or Fontainebleau, and look as if they had offered seats to Court ladies in hoops and brocades, and gentlemen-in-waiting in velvet coats and breeches and lace cravats. One seat is more capacious than the others, with a round back, and in its heavy black-and-gold has the look of an informal throne. It might easily have borne the gallant William, or even the extensive proportions of Anne.
There is a word dropped of "old kings" having died in the closed rooms behind these doors. George II., in his old age? or William, worn out in his prime? or it may be heavy, pacific George of Denmark, raised to the kingly rank by the courtesy of vague tradition? The old chapel was in this part of the house. Leigh Hunt tells us it was in this chapel George I. asked the bishops to have good short sermons, because he was an old man, and when he was kept long, he fell asleep and caught cold. It must have been a curious old chapel, with a round window admitting scanty light. The household and servants sat below, while a winding staircase led round and up to a closed gallery in near proximity to the pulpit. It was only a man's conscience, or a sense of what was due to his physical well-being, which could convict him of slumbering in such a peaceful retreat. It is said that her late Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent objected to the obscurity of this place of worship, and, to meet her objections, the present little chapel was fitted up.
The Duchess of Kent's rooms were in an adjacent wing; spacious rooms enough, and only looking the more habitable and comfortable for the moderate height of the ceilings. In a room with three windows on one side, looking out on the private grounds, the Queen was born. It was thinking of it and its occupants that the warm-hearted, quick-witted Duchess-mother, in Coburg, wrote: "I cannot express how happy I am to know you, dearest, dearest Vickel, safe in your bed, with a little one. … Again a Charlotte—destined, perhaps, to play a great part one day, if a brother is not born to take it out of her hands. The English like queens; and the niece (by marriage) of the ever-lamented, beloved Charlotte, will be most dear to them."
In another wide, low room, with white pillars, some eighteen years later, the baby Princess, become a maiden Queen, held her first Council, surrounded by kindred who had stood at her font—hoary heads wise in statecraft, great prelates, great lawyers, a great soldier, and she an innocent girl at their head. No relic could leave such an impression as this room, with its wonderfully pathetic scene. But, indeed, there are few other traces of the life that budded into dawning womanhood here, which will be always linked with the memories of Kensington Palace. An upper room, sunny and cheerful, even on a winter's day, having a pleasant view out on the open gardens, with their straight walks and great pond, where a child might forget sometimes that she had lessons to learn, was a princess's school-room. Here the good Baroness who played the part of governess so sagaciously and faithfully may have slipped into the book of history the genealogical table which was to tell so startling a tale. In another room is a quaint little doll's-house, with the different rooms, which an active-minded child loved to arrange. The small frying-pans and plates still hang above the kitchen dresser; the cook stands unwearied by the range; the chairs are placed round the tables; the tiny