THE QUEEN’S COTTAGE
II
KEW IN FAVOUR
The chief memories of Kew are associated with its royal master who, by his doings here, earned the nickname of “Farmer George,” in his unpopular days also belittled as the “Buttonmaker,” a sneer at his turning-lathe, and the taste for other mechanical pursuits which he shared with Louis XVI. The “Squire of Kew” is a title that would have suited him better; and he might have lived more happily and usefully had his station been no higher than that which he here affected. When he could get away from State functions and cares, not indeed neglected by him, he liked to live at Kew as a simple country gentleman, keeping a pack of hounds, superintending a model farm, improving his grounds, looking after his children, walking out with his wife, and not wasting his money. As the homely and frugal ways of this royal couple gave offence not only to dissipated courtiers, who felt themselves rebuked, but to the mob, always apt to be a snob, “meanly admiring mean things,” the caricaturists and lampooners of the reign found abundant encouragement to make coarse fun of George’s and Charlotte’s domestic virtues as well as of their public offences. But one guesses that Gillray and Peter Pindar were not applauded by the King’s neighbours at Kew.
For some ten years, as we have seen, Richmond Lodge made his favourite country-seat; and for about the same period he was most at home in Kew House. Then, after taking up their residence at Windsor, the royal family went on making longer or shorter visits to Kew, kept as a villeggiatura where they could be under less ceremony and restraint than in their statelier palaces. Their winter abode was usually Buckingham House. Not till George had been nearly twenty years on the throne did he care for living at Windsor. The castle itself had fallen so much out of repair, that a new “Queen’s Lodge” was built where now are the royal stables; then this took the place of Kew as chief summer residence. When the Richmond people found they were like to lose such distinguished and profitable neighbours, they sorely repented their refusal to sell the bit of land coveted by the King, which was now pressed upon him, but too late to change his intention. That Naboth’s vineyard was eventually taken into the royal grounds; then by an Act of Parliament closing “Love Lane,” a public way between them, George was able to unite the grounds of Richmond and Kew, which long, however, remained distinct enclosures.
So George and Charlotte settled down, had a large family, and lived happily in private life, till fresh troubles came upon them. We should all know Thackeray’s sly account of that life:—
King George’s household was a model of an English gentleman’s household. It was early; it was kindly; it was charitable; it was frugal; it was orderly; it must have been stupid to a degree which I shudder now to contemplate. No wonder all the princes ran away from the lap of that dreary domestic virtue. It always rose, rode, dined at stated intervals. Day after day was the same. At the same hour at night the King kissed his daughters’ jolly cheeks; the princesses kissed their mother’s hand; and Madame Thielke brought the royal nightcap. At the same hour the equerries and women-in-waiting had their little dinner and cackled over their tea. The King had his backgammon or his evening concert; the equerries yawned themselves to death in the anteroom; or the King and his family walked on Windsor slopes, the King holding his darling little Princess Amelia by the hand; and the people crowded round quite good-naturedly; and the Eton boys thrust their chubby cheeks under the crowd’s elbows; and the concert over, the King never failed to take his enormous cocked-hat off, and salute his band, and say, “Thank you, gentlemen!”
