CHAPTER XI KEW PALACE

Kew first became a royal residence in the reign of George II., when it was leased from its private owners and used as a country seat by Frederick, Prince of Wales. Owing to his undutiful behaviour to his father, the Prince was banished from Court, when he retired to Kew, forming a sort of opposition Court there. But the actual red-brick Jacobean house, now known as Kew Palace, was then only called the Dutch House, after its original founder, Sir Hugh Portman, who was a Dutch merchant in the time of James I. It stood quite close to the more important building of Kew House, and [pg 60] was as constantly occupied by members of the Royal Family as the larger adjacent palace.

The Dutch House, or Kew Palace as it is now designated, is thoroughly typical of its period—a simple, three gabled, and dignified looking building, unpalatial indeed, but quite befitting the position of the wealthy knight who built it. The interior has been altered to suit the tastes of the royal inmates, who inserted marble fireplaces, and put in new doors, but a good deal of the original Jacobean panelling still remains. On the brass locks of the doors are to be seen the Prince of Wales's feathers, and the cypher of Frederick, Prince of Wales.

Kew Palace (the Dutch House) and George III.'s
Castellated Palace, pulled down by George IV.

George III. spent a great part of his youth at Kew, living there with his mother, the widowed Princess of Wales. He was brought up in strict retirement, his mother regulating his life and restricting his intercourse with the outer world. Strangely enough, when he succeeded to the throne of his grandfather, George III. did not revolt from the ordered régime of the early days, but maintained the same careful regularity all his life. He continued to love Kew, where he and his devoted but prosaic Queen spent several months of every year. Buying the two houses from the lease-holders, Queen Charlotte turned the Dutch House into [pg 61] a royal nursery, where her large family was brought up. Both she and the King delighted in getting away to Kew, where no kind of royal state was kept up, and where they could live the ordinary life of quiet country gentlefolk, the only life for which they were really suited. Once a week the public were admitted into the gardens, and allowed the privilege of seeing the King and Queen and the royal children en famille, talking to their friends, and walking about in their private gardens. The little riverside village of Kew became quite gay, and its inhabitants were much loved by Queen Charlotte for the spontaneous enthusiasm with which they welcomed King George, after his attempted assassination by the mad woman, Margaret Nicholson.

In order to erect a flamboyant palace, Kew House was pulled down by royal command in 1802, and a new "castellated structure of carpenters' Gothic" put up under the direction of Wyatt, the architect who was responsible for the alterations and repairs of Windsor Castle. Fortunately it was never finished, owing to the poor King's illness, and it has been said that George IV. never did a better deed in his life than when he demolished the ridiculous palace perpetrated by his father. While the building was in progress the Royal Family moved into the Dutch House.

During one of the King's periodic attacks of madness in 1789, he was confined to the Dutch House, under the charge of two doctors, and when he walked in the gardens everyone was supposed to keep out of his way. But one day, Miss Fanny Burney, then in attendance on Queen Charlotte, was walking in the gardens, having learnt that the King was to go to Richmond. To her utter dismay she came quite suddenly upon the King, [pg 62] who called out to her, "Miss Burney!" She instantly ran off, not knowing the state in which he might be, and was horrified to find herself pursued by the poor King, who chased her hotly while she in vain sought to elude him. At last, hearing from the shouts of the doctors that she must stop as it was bad for the King to run, she waited till the King came up, who accosted her with, "Why did you run away from me?" With a great effort the shy little authoress controlled herself, and, finding that the King was quite peaceful, she had a long conversation with him, during which her royal master confided in her some of his troubles.

After the King's madness had become permanent he spent the last years of his unhappy life at Windsor, but Queen Charlotte still resided for long periods at Kew, where she died in November, 1818, at the age of seventy-five. Earlier in the same year, three royal weddings had taken place within the old house, for the question of the succession had become pressing. Though Queen Charlotte had had fifteen children, she had no living grandchildren, for the Princess Charlotte, the only child of George IV. had just died. The drawing-room was fitted up with a temporary altar, and on the same day the Duke of Clarence (afterwards William IV.) was married to Adelaide, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and the Duke of Kent to Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg. A few weeks before, the Duke of Cambridge had also been married in the palace.

Suffering, like Kensington Palace, from lack of royal favour and general neglect during the latter part of the nineteenth century, it was restored in 1898 and opened to the public by the wish of Queen Victoria, as a commemoration of the Diamond Jubilee.