It was not until the early nineteenth century that the Star and Garter began to gain the exceptional celebrity it still enjoys, but since 1838, when it was occupied by Louis Philippe, who was visited in it by the young Queen Victoria, it has been associated with the names of many illustrious guests, including the Princess Lieven, the widowed Queen Amelia, the ill-fated Archduke Maximilian, and the Duc d'Aumale.
Opposite to the Star and Garter is Ancaster House, soon, alas, to be replaced by residential flats, named after the Duke of Ancaster, from whom it was purchased by Sir Lionel Darrell, the favourite of George III., who gave to him a portion of the park, marking it off himself with his riding-whip, when he complained that he had not room for the hothouses he wished to build. In one of the large mansions facing the famous view lives Sir Frederick Cook, who owns a fine collection of paintings of the old masters, and a house in the adjacent Downe Terrace occupying part of the site of Bishop Duppa's almshouses referred to above, was the home at one time of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and later of Mrs. Ewing, the daughter of Mrs. Gatty.
Richmond Town
The parish church of Richmond, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, replaces one of four ancient chapels that belonged to the Abbey of Merton. Its tower, a massive square structure, that has been again and again restored, is of much earlier date than the rest of the building, which has been several times added to. The general effect is not, however, inharmonious, and there is a simple dignity about the interior, that contains a number of interesting memorials of noted inhabitants of the royal borough, including a sixteenth-century brass to Robert Cotton, who was in the service of Queen Mary and Elizabeth, and one to Lady Dorothy Wright, who died in 1631. In the chancel is a monument to Lord Brouncker, who was cofferer to Charles II., and on the walls of one of the aisles are sculptures by Flaxman to the memory of the Rev. Mark Delafosse and the Honourable Barbara Lowther. The inscriptions to Mrs. Yates the great tragic actress, Lady Diana Beauclerck, the Rev. George Wakefield, Mrs. Hofland, and Edmund Kean, all of whom rest in the churchyard, are also noteworthy, but they are all surpassed in interest by the tablet commemorating the famous poet James Thomson, who lived for many years and died in 1748 in a cottage known as Rosedale, in the Kew Foot Road, that was later enlarged and now forms part of the Richmond Hospital, it having been bought by the Corporation in 1869. As is well known, Thomson greatly loved the scenery near his home, often referring to its charms in his poems; he wrote the Seasons in his garden, in a summer-house now destroyed, where he often received his fellow-poets Leigh Hunt and Pope, and the actor Samuel Quin, who once rescued him from a sponging-house into which he had drifted through his carelessness in money matters. Thomson was buried in the churchyard of the parish church, but when the latter was enlarged the new wall passed over his resting-place, which is near the brass tablet put up to his memory by Lord Buchan, at the west end of the north aisle, that bears the following inscription: 'In the earth below this tablet are the remains of James Thomson, author of the beautiful poems entitled the Seasons, the Castle of Indolence, etc., who died at Richmond, August 27, and was buried here August 29, 1748, O.S. The Earl of Buchan, unwilling that so good a man and so sweet a poet should be without a memorial, has denoted the place of his interment for the satisfaction of his admirers in the year of our Lord 1792.'
Beneath this sentence, that naively couples the name of its author with that of a man far greater than himself, is a quotation from Thomson's exquisite Winter that may well be given here, so typical is it of its writer's deeply reverent spirit:—
'Father of Light and Life! Thou God supreme,
O teach me what is good, teach me Thyself!
Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,
From every low pursuit, and feed my soul
With knowledge, conscious Peace and Virtue prove
Sacred, substantial, never-fading Bliss!'
Richmond Park