WESTMINSTER ABBEY, LOOKING TOWARD THE ALTAR. From etching by H. Toussaint.
Then came the question of the most healthy residence for the baby on whom so much depended. And Princess Anne at length chose Lord Craven's fine house at Kensington Gravelpits, which he offered to lend her for the little prince's nursery. He went out every day, no matter how cold it was, in a tiny carriage which the Duchess of Ormonde presented to him. The horses were in keeping with the size of the carriage; for they were a pair of Shetland ponies "scarcely larger than good-sized mastiffs," and were guided by Dick Drury, the Prince of Denmark's coachman.
The first two or three years of the little Duke of Gloucester's life were spent between Lord Craven's house at Kensington, and London. For in those days Kensington was a country village, out in the woods and fields. West of Mayfair there were no houses until Kensington was reached on the breezy slopes of Camden Hill. South Kensington, that vast quarter of handsome houses, has only come into existence in the last fifty years. The writer's grandfather was laughed at for going "out of town," when he and his old friend, Lord Essex, built themselves two of the first houses in Belgrave Square about 1830. And one of his sons-in-law, when a lad at Westminster School early in the century, remembers snipe-shooting in the marshes which separated Chelsea from London.
The Princess Anne and the queen were on exceedingly bad terms, the chief reason of their disagreement being Anne's passionate devotion to the famous Sarah Jennings, wife of the yet more famous Duke of Marlborough. The Marlboroughs, a clever, able, ambitious, unscrupulous pair, encouraged the jealousy between the sisters to secure their own ends, and at length formed a "Princess's party," which gave William the Third considerable trouble during his reign. The Queen insisted that Lady Marlborough, as she then was, should be dismissed from the Princess's service. Anne was equally determined to keep her beloved friend about her at all risks. This led to endless disputes and quarrels between the royal ladies; and the little Duke of Gloucester became a fresh subject of contention. When she was in town,
the Princess, who was a tender mother, passed much of her time in the nursery of her heir.... Whenever the Queen heard her sister was there she forebore to enter the room, but would send an inquiry or a message to her royal nephew—"a compliment," as it was called in the phraseology of the day. The set speech used to be delivered by the queen's official in formal terms to the unconscious infant, as he sat on his nurse's knee; and then the courtly messenger would depart, without taking the slightest notice of the Princess Anne, although she was in the room with her child. Sometimes Queen Mary sent her nephew rattles or balls, or other toys, all which were chronicled in the Gazette with great solemnity; but every attention to the little Gloucester was attended with some signal impertinence to his mother.[109]
For two years the little boy throve well in the good air of Kensington, without any illness. But in the third year he was attacked by ague. Fifty years before he would probably have been bled and reduced in every way, and would speedily have died. But medical science was improving; and a wonderful discovery had been made in far-off Peru. The ague was cured by Doctor Radcliffe and Sir Charles Scarborough, "who prescribed the Jesuit's Powder, of which the Duke took large quantities early in the spring of 1694, for the same complaint most manfully."[110]