where perhaps his mother still liked to keep him near her. Every evening, it appears, King and Queen dutifully visited that domineering princess either at Kew, or at her London residence, Leicester House. Carlton House, afterwards given to the next Prince of Wales, was also hers; and at one or other of these she lived “in a privacy that exceeded economy.” That is Horace Walpole’s reproach, who speaks of her as avaricious, but does not give the Dowager credit for paying off her husband’s debts, nor for her liberal charities. Her worst fault seems to have been a masterful temper that expressed itself in the lesson imprinted on her son’s softness, “George, be a king!”
Richmond Lodge soon proving too small for the growing royal family, George III. proposed to build a new palace for himself in Richmond Gardens, near the river opposite Syon House. The design is still preserved, and the work was actually begun; but a hitch occurred in the obstinacy of the Richmond people, who refused to sell the King a piece of ground he wanted to round off his demesne. Then the Princess Dowager, when her other sons left the nest, gave up Kew House to George and Charlotte, taking for herself the “Dutch House” across the way, till her death, not long afterwards; and when the lease ran out, it was bought for the Queen. The larger mansion had also been acquired, the royal family thus, from tenants, coming to be owners of both houses.
The smaller house—the present Kew Palace—was kept up by them with a separate establishment, at first used as the royal nursery, later on for the education of the older sons: and for a time it came to be known as the Prince of Wales’s House. Even then there was not accommodation for the dozen or so of youngsters who spent much of their childhood at Kew; and we hear of the King leasing or buying houses on Kew Green, where his flock of princes and princesses could be brought up in good air, the old Kew House serving always as the family rendezvous. In the grounds, towards the Richmond Park side, Charlotte built the picturesque “Queen’s Cottage,” where this industrious lady would ply her needle with her children about her, while the King read aloud, often from Shakespeare, for whom he professed a truly British admiration, though, as he told Miss Burney, the great poet’s works contained “much sad stuff—only one must not say so!”
At the beginning of George III.’s reign, the present Kew Palace is found described as “Princess Amelia’s House,” so George II.’s old-maid daughter, whose proposed marriage with Frederick the Great fell through, as Carlyle has told at length, must have lived here for a time; but she soon moved to Gunnersbury, not far off. This wilful Princess Amelia, who had faults and merits of her own, held the office of Ranger of Richmond Great Park, that brought her into collision with the public. She tried to keep the gates shut against both gentle and simple, but found that she was living in a free country, when one Lewis, a Richmond brewer, took the lead in an action for right-of-way, which would have gone against her, had George II. not anticipated the result by throwing the Park open.
Having thus marked out all the royal residences in and about Kew, let us next fix our attention on Kew House during the period when it was the favourite residence of George III.
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