CORONATION OF GEORGE IV.

Dear reader, it was no idle boast about royal residences, for when it came to pass that my father left his post at Somerset House, and, preferring to live in London, took up his abode in Upper Berkeley Street, where we often visited him, my mother and the rest of the family settled at Hampton Court. This proved to be the home of the longest standing I can remember, as with occasional, I may say frequent, flittings, we remained there till 1840. The grant of apartments in those days was in the gift of the Lord Chamberlain, and Lord John Thynne (afterwards Lord Carteret) had bestowed a set of rooms, some years before, on his friend and connection, Mrs Courtenay Boyle. Things altogether were at that time on a very different footing to what they are now, for the palace had gained the name of the Quality Alms House, and, as regarded the quality part of the title, it was well named, seeing that the inhabitants counted Seymours, Montagus, Pagets, Walpoles, Ponsonbys, and other names connected with the Upper House, many of them far from being bedesmen and bedeswomen, and for the most part better off than the present inmates of the palace. Then, too, such a minor detail as a husband did not disqualify a lady from being an occupant. Things are entirely on a different footing now. Now the grant of rooms is solely in the hands of the sovereign, and our beloved Queen,[[12]] who cares for the fatherless, and befriends the cause of the widow, takes more into consideration the needs of the candidates, and the services and merits of the husband or relative they survive, than any recommendation of family or of rank.

[12]. Her late Majesty Queen Victoria.

CHAPTER V
LIFE AT HAMPTON COURT

Our apartments were situated in the older, or Wolseyan, portion of the building, not in the square edifice which Sir Christopher Wren built for Dutch William. The architect’s monogram may still be found over a small door in Fountain Court, to mark where he lodged. Our windows looked out on the Chapel Court on one side, and Tennis Court Lane on the other; and under those windows I often listened of a summer’s night, with mingled pride and rapture, to a quartette of serenaders, who sang there in Mary’s honour. Those beautiful boyish voices which still echo in my ears, and make sweet, sad music in my memory! Frank and Charlie Sheridan, Cavendish Boyle and Alfred Montgomery.[[13]] Alas! only one of that little band now remains to whom I can say, “Do you remember?” And alas! once more, those dear old rooms, the scene of so many happy days; they were totally destroyed by fire, through the wanton carelessness of a housemaid, in 1886. The Sheridans were our dearest friends, and as some of their windows faced some of ours, we invented a code of signals for our own convenience. How many assignations were made, how many fishing parties, how many boating expeditions, how many rehearsals! Yes, I “have had playmates, I have had companions; all—all are gone, the old familiar faces,” the forms have vanished and their voices hushed before their time. One of that dear company passed away but a few short years ago; she wrote to me just before her death, to say, “She felt as if the daisy quiet were slowly stealing over her.” I am speaking now of Georgina, Duchess of Somerset, in whose limpid blue eyes and matchless smile I could trace, lingering to the last, the charms of the “Queen of Love and Beauty,”[[14]] and wonder that her undoubted claim to that proud title were ever questioned. Alas! of all the members of that generation of two loving families, I alone remain!

[13]. Alas! to say, Alfred Montgomery—most genial of critics as of playmates—died in 1896.

[14]. Jane Georgina, daughter of Thomas Sheridan, married, in 1830, Edward, twelfth Duke of Somerset, and died in 1884. As Lady St Maur she was the “Queen of Beauty” at the Eglinton tournament in 1839.

It was in the cloisters, coming out of chapel, that I first saw, in a little brown frock, the future Governor-General of Canada and Viceroy of India, now (1888) the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava, and since that time every day of our re-meeting has been marked with a red-letter in my calendar.

QUEEN MARY’S GARDEN