“Her Majesty, in her desire to gratify the wishes of Her people, has directed that the State Rooms at Kensington Palace, in the central part of the building, which have been closed and unoccupied since 1760, together with Sir Christopher Wren’s Banqueting Room, attached to the Palace, shall after careful restoration be opened to the public, during her pleasure; and the Government will forthwith submit to Parliament an estimate of the cost of restoration.”
Accordingly the Board of Works proceeded to prepare estimates and on March 4th following, the First Commissioner, Mr. Akers Douglas, M.P., submitted a vote of £23,000 for the purpose. By a unanimous vote of the House of Commons on April 1st, the amount required was at once agreed to, and great gratification was on all sides expressed that so happy solution had at length been arrived at. Forthwith, the restorations were put in hand—the most pressing repairs having, indeed, been begun in anticipation, previous to the passing of the vote—and for many months they consisted entirely in solid structural works, which scarcely seemed to affect the appearance of the building at all. It was found necessary to rebuild and underpin walls, to reslate practically the whole of the roof over the State Apartments and renew the timbers that carried it; and also almost all the floors. After these heavy works, and those consequent on the installation of the hot-water warming apparatus, were completed, the more interesting, but much more difficult, business involved in the restoration of the old decorative ironwork, woodwork, and paintings of the State Rooms was taken in hand.
The more substantial but less salient work having been carried out, the decorative works were next proceeded with, under the constant supervision of Sir John Taylor, K.C.B., Consulting Architect and Surveyor to H.M.’s Board of Works, and the continual and immediate control of Mr. Philip, temporary Clerk of the Works for Kensington Palace. Moreover, the Hon. Reginald Brett, C.B., Secretary of the Board, to whose initiative the whole scheme of the restoration, we may say, has been mainly due, has given a constant close personal attention to everything that has been done. Nor has any trouble, labour, or research been spared to render everything as historically and archæologically correct as possible.
HE principles on which the restorations have been carried out will more fully appear, in the description we give in our subsequent pages, in regard to every detail of the work. Here we need only say that the most studied care has been taken never to renew any decoration where it was possible to preserve it—least of all ever to attempt to “improve” old work into new. On the contrary, repairing, patching, mending, piecing, cleaning, have been the main occupations of the decorators, to an extent that would render some impatient, slapdash builders and surveyors frantic. Yet it has been all this minute—though no doubt sometimes costly—attention to details, this laborious piecing together of old fragments, this reverential saving of original material and work, this almost-sentimental imitation of the old style and taste where patching in by modern hands was inevitable, which has produced a result and effect likely, we think, to arouse the admiration of all who relish the inimitable charm of antique time-mellowed work.
Never before, we may safely say, has the restoration of any historic public building been carried out with quite the same amount of loving care as has been lavished on Kensington Palace. The spirit has been rather that of a private owner reverentially restoring his ancestral home, than that of an ordinary public official, with an energy callous to all sentiment, sweeping away the old to replace it with a spick-and-span new building. This method of treatment has nowhere been applied more scrupulously, and we venture to think with greater success, than in the treatment of the old oak panelling and the beautiful carving, all of which had been covered over with numerous coats of paint, so long ago—we have discovered from the old accounts in the Record Office—as 1724. In the cleaning off of these dirty incrustations, various processes have been resorted to, as they suited the nature of the work, and so thoroughly has this been done that the closest inspection would give us no inkling that any part, either of the flat surface or of the most delicate carving, had ever been painted at all. Equal pains were taken in finishing the surface with oil and wax polish—no stain whatever being used on the panelling, doors or cornices—so that the real true colour of the wood is seen, varying only with its natural variation, and exhibiting all its richness of tone, and its fullness of grain. It makes one almost glad it should have suffered so many years of long neglect—that when at last it has been taken in hand, it should have been done when the historical significance and the technical and artistic value of such things are more truly appreciated than formerly. There can be little doubt that if an early nineteenth century upholsterer had got hold of this Palace, most of the beautiful old work would have been cleared out to make way for vulgar plaster-work of white and gold.
Substantially the same principles have been followed in the cleaning and restoration of the painted walls and ceilings, which work has been executed with the utmost sympathy for the old work, and the most careful efforts to preserve it. There has not been a touch of paint applied except to make good portions absolutely destroyed, so that these ceilings—whatever their merits or demerits—remain exactly as they were when first completed, save for the more subdued and modulated tone they have taken on from the softening hand of Time.
WORD should now be said about the pictures, which have been brought from various Royal residences to furnish these State Apartments, and to illustrate the history of this Palace. The bulk of them have come from Hampton Court, and a large number are pieces which were removed when the State Rooms were dismantled by George IV. and William IV., from the very walls where they now once again hang. Their return here from Hampton Court, in the overcrowded galleries of which it has been impossible ever properly to display them, has been a most auspicious thing for that Palace, and has rendered feasible many long-desired rearrangements and improvements.
In selecting the pictures which seemed most suitable for hanging at Kensington, the principle has been followed of restricting them almost entirely to portraits and historical compositions belonging to the epoch with which the Palace is connected—the reigns of William and Mary, Queen Anne, and the Georges, and, finally, of course that of Queen Victoria.
In the carrying out of this plan an endeavour has been made to group the pictures together in the various apartments as far as possible according to the periods to which they belong—making separate collections, at the same time, of the curious topographical subjects relating to “Old London,” in the Queen’s Closet; of the interesting series of Georgian sea-pieces, sea-fights, and dockyards, in the King’s Gallery—where for the first time they may now at last be really seen and examined—and the ceremonial and other pictures, relating to the Queen’s reign, in the “Presence Chamber” and the actual rooms originally occupied by Her Majesty in her youth.
Having given these general indications as to the arrangements, it will not be necessary to do more than refer to our subsequent pages for the details of the scheme. Nor need we dwell on what will at once be only too obvious to the connoisseur, that anyone who expects to behold in this Palace a fine collection of choice works of art will certainly be disappointed. Kneller and Zeeman, Paton and Pocock, Huggins and Serres, West and Beechey, are not exactly names to conjure with—nor even, indeed, Scott, Monamy, Drouais, or Hoppner, in their somewhat second-rate productions here. Moreover, it is to be clearly understood, that it is not as an Art Gallery that these rooms are opened to the inspection of the public, but as a Royal Palace, with pictures hung in it illustrative of its history and associations, and as furniture to its walls.
Nevertheless, it is not high art only, nor great imaginative works, which can interest and instruct; and, historically, these bewigged, ponderous, puffy personages of the unromantic eighteenth century, whose portraits decorate these walls, are more in accord with their setting, than would be the finer, simpler, and nobler creations of the great epochs of art.
N the other hand, the Victorian pictures, and the apartments in which they are arranged, stand apart on a different footing of their own. It is to the three small, plain and simple rooms, with their contents, in the south-eastern corner of the building, that all visitors to the Palace will turn with the liveliest interest, and with the keenest, the most thrilling emotion. Romance, and all the thoughts and feelings of tender, natural affection, which appear to have been smothered in the preceding century and a half of powder and gold-lace, seem to awaken and revive once more with the child born in this Palace eighty years ago, in the little girl playing about in these rooms and in these gardens, in the youthful Queen, who stepped forth from her simple chamber here to take possession of the greatest throne in the world!
It is as the scene of such memorable events that Kensington Palace possesses, and will hereafter ever possess, abiding interests and engrossing charms altogether its own; and that it will ever inspire, among those who come to visit it, thoughts and memories moving and deep. And not to us only in these islands; not to us only of this age; but to thousands and thousands likewise across the seas; to countless millions yet unborn, will this ancient structure become, now and in the ages yet to be, a revered place of loving pilgrimage as the birthplace and early home of Queen Victoria.
D E S C R I P T I V E
A N D
H I S T O R I C A L
G U I D E.
EFORE making our way to the public entrance to the state rooms of the Palace, let us take a glance at the history of the gardens lying round it, and the exterior of the building; and first as to the gardens on the east and south of the building. The whole ground here down to the highway was laid out quite early in the reign of William and Mary; but its present uninteresting appearance gives us but little idea of how it looked at that time. We find from the old accounts that large sums, amounting to several thousands of pounds, were expended on garden works—for levelling, gravelling, and planting, all in the formal Dutch style, with figured beds and clipped trees—and also much ornamental work, such as urns, stone vases, statues, and seats. There are, for instance, many items such as these:
“To Edward Pearce for carving a chaire for the garden with a canopy of drapery, £43 16s.; more for carving 4 chairs and 2 seats with Dolphins, scollop shells, etc., and other works done about the said gardens, £43 2s. 4d.—in both £86 18s. 4d.”
We have also a contemporary account of the gardens as formed by William and Mary, in a “View of the Gardens near London,” dated December, 1691: “Kensington Gardens are not great, nor abounding with fine plants. The orange, lemon, myrtle, and what other trees they had there in summer, were all removed to Mr. London’s and Mr. Wise’s greenhouse at Brompton Park, a little mile from them. But the walks and grass laid very fine; and they were digging up a flat of four or five acres to enlarge the garden.”
The northern boundary of King William’s gardens is marked by two piers of excellent red brickwork, evidently erected by Wren at that time. They are surmounted by very fine vases of carved Portland stone; and are perhaps two of the “Four great fflower-pots of Portland stone, richly carved,” for which, we find from the old bills, the statuary Gabriel Cibber, the father of Colley Cibber, was paid £187 5s. Between these piers, which stand 39 feet apart, there was probably, in old days, a screen and gates of fine wrought iron. They stand at the south end of what was called “Brazen Face Walk,” and between them the visitor passes to the public entrance to the Palace. The fencing in of this part of the gardens is perhaps referred to in the following entry belonging to the years 1692-95:
“William Wheatley for makeing and setting up Pallizadoes and gates in and about the said Palace—£152 5s. 10d.”
To the north of these piers lies the north-west corner of the now so-called “Kensington Gardens,” where were formerly situated that part of the old gardens appurtenant to the Palace, laid out by Queen Anne. The present bare uninteresting appearance of the ground round about is now entirely different from what it then was.
OWACK, in his “Antiquities of Middlesex,” writing in the reign of Queen Anne, in 1705, tells us of her improvements: “There is a noble collection of foreign plants and fine neat greens, which makes it pleasant all the year, and the contrivance, variety, and disposition of the whole is extremely pleasing, and so frugal have they been of the room they had, that there was not an inch but what is well improved, the whole with the house not being above twenty-six acres. Her Majesty has been pleased lately to plant near thirty acres more towards the north, separated from the rest by a stately green-house, not yet finished; upon this spot is near one hundred men daily at work, and so great is the progress they have made, that in less than nine months the whole is levelled, laid out, and planted, and when finished will be very fine. Her Majesty’s gardener had the management of this.” Of Queen Anne’s “stately green-house” we shall speak in a moment.
Addison, also, in No. 477 of the “Spectator,” expatiated on the beauties of the gardens: “Wise and London are our heroick poets; and if, as a critic, I may single out any passage of their works to commend, I shall take notice of that part in the upper garden, at Kensington, which was at first nothing but a gravel pit. It must have been a fine genius for gardening, that could have thought of forming such an unsightly hollow into so beautiful an area, and to have hit the eye with so uncommon and agreeable a scene as that which it is now wrought into.”
The cost of these improvements amounted to several thousands of pounds—in levelling, planting, turfing, gravelling. The appearance of the east and south gardens in the reign of Queen Anne will, as we have already said, best be conveyed by Kip’s plate; the general plan of the new enclosed garden to the north, north-east, and north-west, by Rocque’s engraving, published in 1736. From this we see that Queen Caroline, who embarked in so many gardening enterprises, left Queen Anne’s new gardens substantially intact; though she made a clean sweep of all the old fantastic figured flower beds and formal walks of William III.’s parterres to the south and east of the Palace; substituting therefor bare and blank expanses of lawn and wide gravel paths.
During the reigns of George III. and George IV. all the gardens were allowed to become more and more uncared for; and at last those to the north of the Palace were destroyed altogether. The “old Wilderness” and “old Gravel Pit” of Queen Anne and the early Georges now exist no longer—converted by an insane utilitarianism partly into park land, the rest into meadow.
The old gardens to the east, already flattened out and spoilt by Queen Caroline, now exist but in part; the small portion, which has not been covered with hideous forcing houses and frames, is, however, to a certain extent nicely shrubbed, and closed in by trees and hedges. The site of the old south gardens, curtailed now to a small enclosure, which retains little of the old English picturesque air, might with advantage, we think, be less stiff and bare. There is here little more than a clump or two of trees and shrubs, a wide gravel path, and two large vacant lawns, separated from the public walk by a wire fence, and between this and High Street mere expanses of grass. Fortunately, the devastating notions of the “landscape gardener” whose one idea was so to arrange the ground surrounding a house as to look as if it stood plump in the middle of a park—for all the world like a lunatic asylum—are not quite so much in favour as they were.
The blankness and barrenness of all the ground between the south front and the street was even more painfully apparent in Leigh Hunt’s time, who in his “Old Court Suburb” drew attention to this salient defect nearly fifty years ago. “The house,” he remarked, “nominally possesses ‘gardens’ that are miles in circumference.... There is room enough for very pleasant bowers in the spaces to the east and south, that are now grassed and railed in from the public path; nor would the look of the Palace be injured with the spectator, but rescued from its insipidity.” His suggestion has been acted on to a certain extent in recent times, but too partially in our view.
UEEN ANNE is the sovereign to whom we owe the erection of this exceedingly fine specimen of garden architecture—one of the most beautiful examples of the art of the Renaissance in London, if not in England. If we could say with truth that there ever was a “Queen Anne style,” this would, indeed, be a representative and unrivalled example of it—as it certainly is of Sir Christopher Wren’s, which, developing in the reign of Charles II., was definitely formed and fixed in that of William and Mary.
To an artist like Wren to beautify the ordinary and useful was to give expression to one of the highest functions of architecture; and therefore in this mere store-house for the Queen’s treasured plants and flowers, probably also a place where Queen Anne liked to sit and have tea, we have a building—unimportant though its object may be considered—which attains the very acme of his art, exhibiting all his well-balanced judgment of proportion, all the richness of his imagination in design.
The building of this greenhouse was begun in the summer of the year 1704. A plan, prepared by Sir Christopher at Queen Anne’s express orders, was submitted to and approved by her, and the original estimate, which is still in the Record Office, dated June 10th, 1704—probably drawn up by Richard Stacey, master bricklayer, and entitled: “For building a Greenhouse at Kensington” at a cost of £2,599 5s. 1d.—was accordingly laid before the officers of Her Majesty’s Works, Sir Christopher Wren, John Vanbrugh, Benjamin Jackson, and Matthew Bankes, for a report thereon. Their opinion, after “considering the measures and prices,” was that “it may be finished soe as not to exceed the sum therein expressed, viz., £2,599;” and the Lord Treasurer was accordingly prayed “to pay £2,000 into the Office of Works that it may be covered in before winter, according to Her Majesties expectation.”
The work was consequently put in hand forthwith, but there is some reason to suspect that Wren’s original intentions were departed from, and that the estimate approved by the Board of Works was afterwards cut down by the Treasury by a thousand pounds or so. This appears probable from the fact that Richard Stacey, the bricklayer who contracted for the work, and who, in a petition dated September 13th, was clamouring for payment of £800, on account of money then already disbursed by him, referred to that sum as part of a total of £1,560, “lately altered from the first estimate.”
Whether this is so or not, the details of the original estimate are interesting. The bricklayer’s charges came to £697; mason’s, to £102; “Glass windows, doors, and the window shutters, £340; Glazier for Crowne Glass, £74; Carpenter, £363,” etc.; added to which was: “More to be laid out the next year: The mason to pave it with stone fine-sanded, £246; more for stone steps to go up into it, £72; more for wainscoting and painting the Inside up to the top, £264.”
The last item is especially noteworthy, proving, as it does, that the woodwork was originally painted.
The beauty of Wren’s masterpiece of garden architecture seems to have been thoroughly appreciated in the time immediately succeeding its erection; but with the steady decline in taste during the Georgian epoch, it fell more and more into disregard, until, when the court deserted Kensington in 1760, it was abandoned to complete neglect. Britton and Brayley, writing in 1810 in their “Beauties of England,” refer to it regretfully: “The whole is now sinking into a state of unheeded decay.” Soon after this, however, it seems to have undergone some sort of repair, so, at least, wrote Faulkner, ten years after, who added: “It is now filled with a collection of His Majesty’s exotic plants.” He called it a “superb building,” and clearly regarded it with a much more appreciative eye than did its official guardians, who probably about this time perpetrated the barbarism of cutting windows in the north wall, right through the fine panelling and cornice!
Faulkner, nevertheless, was of course quite wrong in declaring, as he did, that “it was originally built by Queen Anne for a Banqueting House, and frequently used by Her Majesty as such.” There is absolutely no foundation whatever for either part of this statement, though it has often been repeated and was improved upon by Leigh Hunt, who asserted that “balls and suppers certainly took place in it.” Funny “balls” they must have been on the old brick floor! Hunt has nothing more to say of it than rather scornfully to call it “a long kind of out-house, never designed for anything else but what it is, a greenhouse.” In so great contempt, indeed, does it appear to have been held about this time, that it is said the idea was once seriously entertained by some official wiseacre of pulling it down and carting it away as rubbish! And this while the State was annually devoting hundreds of thousands of pounds to art education, art schools, art teachers, and art collections, leaving one of our most precious monuments to perish from decay! “Out-house” and “greenhouse” though it be, we would rather see it preserved than half the buildings of recent times.
Terrace of Queen Anne’s Orangery.
BEFORE examining the orangery in detail, let us stand a moment in front of it, on the terrace, platform, or estrade—by whichever name we may call it—of Portland stone, with steps going down from it in front and at both ends. Here formerly stood, in the summer, some of Queen Anne’s choicest exotics; and here Her Majesty doubtless often sat to have tea, gossiping with the Duchess of Marlborough or Abigail Hill. In front the steps led down into a formal parterre.
Now, however, the most prominent objects to the eye here, are the glass-houses, and the tops of the forcing frames, in which the whole stock for the bedding out in the park and gardens has been reared for the last thirty or forty years. It is truly an amazing thing that a piece of ground, situated as this is, close under the windows of the Palace, and opposite this orangery, should have been appropriated to so grossly disfiguring a use. This particular spot is the very last, one would have supposed, which would have been pitched on for the purpose. It will not be long, we trust, before the whole ground will be cleared, and devoted once more to an old-fashioned sunk formal garden, with such quaint devices as clipped shrubs, trimmed box, figured beds, sundials, leaden vases—such as still survive in many an old country house.
Nor do we see why such restorations should stop here, nor why much of the ground around the Palace should not be laid out in the old English style, with some, at any rate, of the many embellishments for which Evelyn pleaded as suitable for a royal garden: “Knots, trayle work, parterres, compartments, borders, banks, embossments, labyrinths, dædals, cabinets, cradles, close walks, galleries, pavilions, porticoes, lanthorns, and other relievos of topiary and horticulan architecture, fountaines, jettes, cascades, pisceries, rocks, grottoes, cryptæ, mounts, precipices, and ventiducts; gazon theatres, artificial echoes, automate and hydraulic music!”
Barring the last half dozen items, something in the antique formal style would, indeed, be a relief from the tedious monotony of modern “landscape” gardening.
Exterior of Queen Anne’s Orangery.
AS a specimen of an unaffectedly ornamented exterior of brick, this elevation to the south, aiming rather at simplicity and plain dignity than magnificence or grandeur, is to our view admirable.
In the centre is a compartment, more decoratively treated than the rest, with four rusticated piers or pillars of brick, supporting an entablature of the Doric order, mainly in stone. The cornice, though probably modelled on the original, must be modern, for it is in Roman cement, a material which did not come into use in England until about a hundred years ago; and it so happens that the date, 1805, has been found on part of the woodwork adjoining. Above the cornice, over the central window, or rather doorway, is a semi-circular window, apparently to give light into the roof. On each side of the central compartment are four high windows, with sashes filled with small panes; and at each end are slightly projecting wings, or bays, with window-doors, extra high, and reaching to the floor level, to admit tall-grown oranges and other plants. These are flanked by plain rusticated piers of bright red brick; beyond which are plain brick niches, with small brackets above them.
A very similar arrangement of windows and niches is repeated at the east and west return ends of the building; where, however, the large window is surmounted by a small semi-circular recess or panel, and the whole overhung by the deep, wide eave of the gable of the roof.
The total exterior length of the building is 171 feet, the width 32 feet.
Interior of Queen Anne’s Orangery.
IT is not, however, the exterior of this building, but the interior, which will arouse in those who behold it the greatest admiration, for it is here that we can appreciate Wren’s imaginative and constructive genius at its very best. The longer we know and contemplate it, the more supremely beautiful does it strike us, both in the mass and in its details. We will not describe it with any minuteness; but content ourselves with recording that the central portion of each wall, is treated more elaborately than the rest, being ornamented with Corinthian columns, supporting a richly carved entablature. The rest of the walls, both between the windows on the south side, and on the unbroken surface of the opposite north side, are panelled in deal wood, with beautiful carved cornices above. At each end, both east and west, there is an arch, flanked with panelled niches, and surmounted by festoons of Gibbons’ carving. These, we may observe in passing, proved, after being cleaned, to be so worm-eaten, as to necessitate their being repainted—mere staining not being sufficient to prevent their falling to pieces. They are now in fact, held together by the coatings of new paint.
The dimensions of this main portion of the interior are: 112 feet long and 24 feet wide between the brick walls, three inches less each way between the woodwork. The height to the ceiling is 24 feet 6 inches, and to the top of the cornice 22 feet 9 inches.
The Alcoves of Queen Anne’s Orangery.
FINE, however, as is the main and central portion of this interior, the alcoves, into which we pass through the arches at each end of it, impress us still more with their admirable proportions, their supreme grace of design, the exquisite beauty of their decorative detail.
Their shape is circular, with fluted Corinthian columns, supporting highly-carved architraves and cornices, and flanking the entrances, the windows opposite these and on the south, and the panelled spaces on the north wall. There are also intervening niches with semicircular heads, springing from richly carved imposts. The ceilings, which are circular, rising in coves from behind the cornices, are “saucer-domed.”
The dimensions of these alcoves are: east one, diameter, 24 feet, west one, 24 feet 4½ inches; height to the centre of the dome, 24 feet 2 inches, to the top of the cornice 20 feet.
Restoration of Queen Anne’s Orangery.
THE whole of this beautiful interior, however, now presents a very different appearance from what it did when taken in hand about a year ago.
This is how it was described in an interesting article in “The Times” on the 28th of January, 1898: “The exquisite interior has been the victim not merely of neglect, but of chronic outrage. For, as the little garden between this and the Palace has been found a convenient place on which to put up the glasshouses, frames and potting-sheds necessary for the park gardeners, what more natural, to the official eye, than that the Orangery close by should be pressed into the same service? Accordingly, at some time or other, which cannot have been very many years ago, more than half the beautiful high panelling of this building was torn down and has disappeared, the gardeners’ stands have been let into the walls, and there the daily work has proceeded with no thought that it was daily desecration.”
The work of restoring all these beautiful carvings, which has been in progress during the last fifteen months, has now put an entirely different aspect on this interior, and not in vain has every piece of old carving been treasured up, cleaned, repaired, and patched in, with scrupulous care.
When this work was completed, the question arose, whether the woodwork was to be all painted over white, as it doubtless originally was, or merely lightly stained. White painting would, perhaps, have been artistically, as well as archæologically, the preferable course. But it was thought that white paint, in the smoky, foggy atmosphere of modern Kensington, and with the clouds of dust particles from the tread of numberless visitors, would soon take on the dirty tinge of London mud; and thus have required such frequent renewal as eventually to choke up again all the sharpness of the delicate chiselling of the foliated capitals, architraves and cornices.
The decision eventually come to, therefore, was to stain it, with a tone of colour like oak, which gives full prominence and clearness to the carved surfaces. This staining alone, apart from the previous cleaning, has involved no less than eight distinct processes: (1) washing down; (2) vinegaring over to take out lime stains; (3) the same repeated; (4) sizing to keep the stain from penetrating the wood; (5) the same repeated; (6) staining; (7) varnishing; (8) flat-varnishing.
HE modern so-called “Kensington Gardens” are, as we have already explained, identical with the original domain of old Nottingham House, increased by the addition of some hundred acres or more taken from Hyde Park. When William III. first acquired the Nottingham estate he appointed his favourite, Bentinck, Earl of Portland, “Superintendent of Their Majesties’ Gardens and Plantations within the boundary lines of Their Majesties’ said house at Kensington”—an office distinct from that of Ranger of Hyde Park—and some planting and other improvements seem to have been carried out at that time in these “plantations.”
Queen Anne’s inclosure of a hundred acres from Hyde Park to form a paddock for deer we have already noted.
Faulkner’s exaggerated statement that nearly three hundred acres were taken in and added to Kensington Gardens by Queen Caroline has been confuted by Mr. Loftie; but he has gone to the other extreme in declaring that no alteration whatever was, at any time, made in the boundary between the park and the gardens. Nevertheless, it is still doubtful whether Queen Caroline is to be held responsible for any “rectification” of these frontiers. The reference already quoted, in the Treasury Papers of the year 1729, for an allowance of £200 to the ranger “in consideration of loss of herbage of that part of the said park, which is laid into His Majesty’s gardens at Kensington,” may of course refer to the portion previously taken in by Queen Anne.
Queen Caroline’s Improvements in Kensington Gardens.
TO Queen Caroline, however, is certainly due the main credit of the creation of Kensington Gardens, as we now know them; for it was her reforming and transforming zeal which made the great “Basin” or “Round Pond;” turned a string of small ponds, in the course of the “West Bourne,” into the Serpentine; laid out the “Broad Walk,” and designed the diverging and converging vistas and avenues of trees intersecting the grounds in all directions.
In all these extensive works of improvement Charles Bridgeman, the King’s gardener, was employed; and we find from the old Treasury Minute Book that in 1729 no less a sum than £5,000 was due to him “for works in the paddock and gardens at Kensington.”
About the same date, Queen Caroline, during one of George II.’s absences in Hanover, issued an order that:
“The King’s ministers being very much incommoded by the dustiness of the road leading through Hyde Park, now they are obliged to attend Her Majesty at Kensington, it was her pleasure that the whole of the said road be kept constantly watered, instead of the ring in the Park; and that no coaches other than those of the nobility and gentry be suffered to go into or pass through the Park.”
Kensington Gardens in the Nineteenth Century.
AT that period the gardens were opened to the public only on Saturdays, when the company appeared in full dress. This was the time of the great fashionable promenade. During the reign of George III. they were opened every day in the week, summer and winter, under certain regulations, “and the number of the gatekeepers,” says Faulkner, writing in 1819, “have lately been increased, who are uniformly clothed in green.” He adds: “The great South Walk, leading to the Palace, is crowded on Sunday mornings in the spring and summer with a display of all the beauty and fashion of the great metropolis, and affords a most gratifying spectacle, not to be equalled in Europe.”
In the middle of this century the tide of fashion set back towards Rotten Row and Hyde Park Corner; and Kensington Gardens have, for the last sixty or eighty years, been very little frequented by the “world.” Their attractions, however, have not suffered on this account in the view of the poet, the artist, and the lover of nature. “Here in Kensington,” wrote Haydon the painter, “are some of the most poetical bits of trees and stump, and sunny brown and green glens and tawny earth.”
But it is not within the scope of these pages, confined as they are to topics directly connected with Kensington Palace as a new public resort, to describe these two hundred and fifty acres of delightful verdant lawns, sylvan glades, and grassy slopes. We must resist the temptation, therefore, to wander away into the attractive prospect, which unfolds itself beneath our gaze when looking out from the windows of the state rooms, or into which we can saunter when we quit the Palace. Moreover, their charms, as they were and are, have been drawn by too many master hands—by Tickell, Leigh Hunt, Thackeray, Disraeli—to encourage any attempt at their description here. In our own day they have still been the favourite resort of many a jaded Londoner, in which to snatch a few hours of quiet and repose, out of the whirl of the great city around. Matthew Arnold’s charming poem, “Lines written in Kensington Gardens,” will occur to many, especially that stanza:
Screen’d by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end to stay the eye,
Those black-crown’d, red-boled pine trees stand.”
SOUTH FRONT OF KENSINGTON PALACE IN 1819.
(After Westall.)
E may look upon this façade as architecturally the most interesting portion of the existent Palace of Kensington, for it shows us the exterior almost exactly as finished by Wren for William and Mary, about the year 1691. While unpretentious and plain, it is well and solidly built, and altogether appropriate to the purpose which it was intended to serve, namely, that of a comfortable, homely, suburban residence for the King and Queen and the court.
The long lower building of two main storeys, in deep purple-red brick, to the left, forms the south range of the chief courtyard; and there is every reason to believe that it is a part of the original Nottingham House, altered and improved by Wren. The loftier building, to the right, of three storeys, in bright red brick, is unquestionably entirely Wren’s, and in the old accounts is referred to as “the new Gallery Building.” All the windows on the top or second floor here, except the two on the extreme right, are those of the “King’s Gallery” (described on page 117). The floor beneath consisted, and consists, of the sovereign’s private apartments. The four fine carved vases of Portland stone, surmounting the four pilasters of the same, are probably those mentioned in the old accounts as carved by Gabriel Cibber for £787 5s.
Wren’s Domestic Style.
THOSE who are at all acquainted with Wren’s style and inclinations will not be surprised at the marked plainness of his work here—so little accordant with ordinary pompous preconceived notions of what befits a regal dwelling-house. In planning habitable buildings we find he always mainly considered use and convenience—adapting his external architectural effects to the exigencies of his interiors. Ever ready, indeed, to devote the full range of his great constructive genius to the commonest works, rendering whatever he designed a model for the use to which it was to be put, he was, in these respects, essentially a “builder” before all; not only a designer of elevations and a drawer of plans, but a practical worker, thinking nothing useful beneath his notice. There was, in fact, nothing of the lofty, hoity-toity architect about him; on the contrary, absorbed with questions of adaptability and convenience; searching into details of material and workmanship; we find him in his seat at the head of the Board of Works rigorously testing, sifting and discussing estimates, values, specifications and “quantities.” It is due to this side of his mind that so much of his work has endured intact to this day; while we owe it to his positive intuitive genius for rendering his creations well-proportioned and dignified, as well as convenient and comfortable; to his wonderful skill in arranging positions, sizes, and shapes to meet the exigencies of light and air, that his houses still remain so habitable, and are distinguished by so homelike an air.
HIS aspect of Kensington Palace, which we almost hesitate to dignify with the name of “Front” consists mainly of two distinct portions: first, the “return” or end of Wren’s “Gallery Building,” on the left, distinguished by its fine red brickwork and its deep cornice, similar to the same on the south side; and on the right, the building tacked on to it, built for George I. by Kent, as already mentioned on page 23, and further referred to on pages 86, 93, and 99. We must frankly say—and few are likely to differ from us—that Kent’s building here is about as ugly and inartistic as anything of the sort could be. It is not alone the common, dirty, yellow, stock brick with which it is built, but the whole shape and design, with its pretentious pediment, ponderous and hideous, the prototype of acres upon acres of ghastly modern London structures in the solid “workhouse” style. It is amazing that Kent, with so excellent a model of plainness and simplicity in Wren’s buildings on each side, should have stuck in this ill-formed, abortive block between them. Fortunately, his taste as a decorator was greatly superior to his powers as an architect, so that the interior portions of this building of his, which consists of additional state-rooms, are not entirely deficient in merit, as we shall see. The three central windows are those of the “King’s Drawing Room,” (see page 99).
To the north-west of the structure comprising Kent’s state apartments lies another of the older parts of the Palace, a low building of two storeys, in deep russet brick, of uniform appearance, with fifteen windows in a row on the first floor. This range, built, or, at any rate, altered and improved by Wren, and forming the east side of Princess’s Court, comprises the state and habitable rooms of Queen Mary and Queen Anne. At its extreme north end is the “Queen’s Staircase,” now the public entrance to the state rooms.
CCESS to the state rooms open to the public being by way of the “Queen’s” or “Denmark Staircase,” situated in the northernmost angle of the building, visitors approach it from the north-west corner of “Kensington Gardens,” where, as we have already explained, were formerly situated those parts of the old formal gardens attached to the Palace, which were laid out by Queen Anne, called the “Old Gravel Pit,” the “Wilderness,” etc. The path here, leading straight up to the present public entrance, was then known as “Brazen-face Walk.” Going along it southwards, we pass between a pair of fine gate-posts of red brick, surmounted by richly-carved vases of Portland stone, evidently designed by Wren, already referred to in our account of “Old Kensington Palace Gardens” on page 48; and then between a privet hedge and a wire fence up to the public doorway into the “Queen’s Staircase.”
This doorway, on the north wall, is very commonplace; with a porch in the later Georgian style, consisting of a couple of pillars of Portland stone, glazed between, and supporting a hood above.
Round the corner, however, on the east wall, is a very different doorway, both interesting and picturesque. It is the one which originally gave access to the staircase, and was designed and built by Sir Christopher Wren, probably in the year 1691. The space within the hood or circular pediment above the door is filled with beautiful stone carving, in the centre of which is a shield or panel bearing the initials W. M. R. Above this is a brick niche with a bracket, on which stands an old urn or flower-pot. Something very similar probably stood here formerly, and was thus charged for in the old parchment accounts for the years 1689-91: