“Thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea.”
The Georges seem rather to have neglected Hampton Court, which in the last century or so occasionally housed royal guests, but has become mainly a sort of aristocratic almshouse, the apartments being granted to widows of distinguished public servants or ladies better born than endowed. The inmates of these dignified quarters are liable to be disturbed by the clatter of the adjacent barracks, by an uncertain ghost of one or other of Henry’s wives, that does not fail to haunt here, and most of all, perhaps, by the sightseers, who on holidays throng the quiet courts, the galleries with their thousand pictures, the hall with its tapestries, the gardens with their gigantic vine, the Long Walk by the river, the banks of the Long Water in Hampton Park, and the Maze near the Lion Gate, outside of which the palace is separated from Bushey Park by a fair-ground of refreshment houses.
The station for Hampton Court is at Molesey, on the Surrey side of the river, here making a string of shady islets and creeks well known to boating parties. The tramways from London come to Hampton Green, such a spacious and well-shaded area as beseems its royal neighbourhood. Along this, or through the south-west corner of Bushey Park, one can pass on to the village of Hampton, which touches the river at its rebuilt Church; but the banks are much blocked by private residences, and soon disfigured by huge water reservoirs. The most famous house here is Garrick’s villa, that seems to have been designed as an understudy of Pope’s. Besides this noble retreat, Garrick had a
town-house at the Adelphi, and was lord of Hendon Manor; few actors have managed to be so prudent, so prosperous, and so well off for “the things that make death terrible,” as was Johnson’s comment on his old pupil’s display. Sir Christopher Wren retired to a home on Hampton Green, about which there remain several houses and gardens where wigs and ruffles would look hardly out of place. New Hampton, to the north, is more commonplace, where Hampton’s railway-station, on the Shepperton branch, stands half an hour’s walk from the palace. About as far to the north of this line is Hanworth, traversed by the artificial Queen’s or Cardinal’s River formerly mentioned, and once distinguished by a Tudor hunting-lodge which became the home of Henry VIII.‘s lucky widow.