It is understood that in the management of the Gardens there has been sometimes a certain friction between the demands of a scientific establishment and of a scene for popular recreation. But these two ideas seem now fairly harmonised. With the exception of isolated penetralia, the Gardens are open from 10 or 12 A.M. till sunset, and on Sunday afternoons. This was one of the first of our public institutions to be thrown open on Sunday, by the influence, it is said, of Prince Albert prevailing over the Sabbatarian austerity that dominated Mrs. Proudie’s generation.

As the Kew Gardens flourished, those of Richmond had withered away. The royal pleasure-grounds on that side were turned into George III.’s model farm, then into a park, which has become a golf-course and a recreation-ground, though it was only the other day that its quasi-public character came to be fully recognised by a foot-bridge thrown over the muddy moat cutting off this enclosure from the river-bank. The site of Richmond Lodge is approximately marked by the Observatory, built for George III. by Sir William Chambers, with a special view to the transit of Venus observed by Cook and Banks from Tahiti. When Kew Gardens were taken under the wing of Parliament, the Royal Society refused a free gift of this building; but it was kept going by subscriptions, then under the auspices of the Board of Trade became a Meteorological Station, with the important function of testing instruments like barometers, thermometers, and sextants, to be hall-marked with the initials of Kew Observatory. But of late years it proved not secluded enough for this work, the electric currents induced by tramways threatening its most delicate operations, so that the magnetic branch was recently transplanted to the wilds of Dumfries, where also, one hears, it had a narrow escape from interference in being housed in walls at first chosen from an ironstone quarry. Other parts of the work are now carried on at the new Physical Laboratory in Bushy Park.

A ha-ha fence cuts off Richmond Old Deer Park, as it is called, from Kew Gardens, which in all cover a space of some 250 acres. The wire fence has gone that marked the now hardly valid distinction between the Botanic Garden proper and the former pleasure-grounds. Queen Victoria showed her interest in the institution by granting successive stretches of private garden, to be added to what had become practically a public one. At the end of her reign the so-called Kew Palace, the old “Dutch House,” was given up to be opened as a museum of pictures and other relics of its history. This is soon reached by the broad walk leading straight on from the chief entrance gates on Kew Green. The Victoria Gate, on the Richmond Road, is the approach for visitors coming from Kew Station. There are other entrances both from the Richmond Road and from the riverside, where, opposite Brentford’s wharves, one closed gate reminds us how this was once a royal home.

THE PALM TREES AND MAIN GATE

IV
THE VILLAGE: IN AND ABOUT IT

Kew itself does not stand in the forefront of its own story, for long remaining little more than an obscure river-side hamlet, half a dozen miles out of London, connected by a ferry with Brentford, and with its quaint little neighbour Strand-on-the-Green, which might have risen to equal note had Gunnersbury or Chiswick taken a king’s fancy. It was not till the eighteenth century that Kew began to burgeon under royal favour; and for the first half of that century, Richmond lay basking on the sunnier side of patronage. When George III. left Richmond for Kew, the quiet village blossomed forth as in a forcing-house, to grow into a banyan grove of princely dwellings.

The first distinguished resident mentioned is Sir Peter Lely, as having a country house on the Green, where the Herbarium now stands. From first to last he may have been a good deal in this neighbourhood, for he painted Charles I. at Hampton Court, and after doing the same service for Cromwell, he became the fashionable artist of Charles II.’s Court, whose frail beauties still live on his canvas. His successor in vogue was Sir Godfrey Kneller, who contributed to artistic vocabulary in his portraits of the Kit-Cat Club, that had its rendezvous at Barn Elms, now the Ranelagh Club. He also settled not far off, in the house behind Twickenham named Kneller Hall, that, after various vicissitudes, has become the Army School of Music.