Kensington Palace

“ Evelyn visited Kensington again in 1696, and speaks of it then as “noble but not greate,” commending especially the King’s Gallery, which was then filled with the finest pictures in the royal collection, “a greate collection of Porcelain, and a pretty private library. The gardens about it very delicious.” Peter the Great’s visit to William III. in this same gallery is referred to in our description of it below.
The next event of moment is William III.’s own death at Kensington Palace, after his accident in Hampton Court Park. ”

“ KENT also had a great reputation as a horticulturist, and was generally designated, at the end of last century, as the “Father of Modern Gardening”—his ghastly progeny consisting of the destructive and desolating “landscape-gardening” enterprises of “Capability Brown,” Repton, and their followers. His hand doubtless fell heavy on the old Queen Anne formal gardens about Kensington Palace. ”

“ I delighted to walk in Kensington Gardens. As I passed along the broad central walk, I saw a group on the lawn before the Palace.... The Duchess of Kent and her daughter, whose years then numbered nine, were breakfasting in the open air.... What a beautiful characteristic, it seemed to me, of the training of this royal girl, that she should not have been taught to shrink from the public eye; that she should not have been burdened with a premature conception of her probable high destiny; that she should enjoy the freedom and simplicity of a child’s nature ”

“ The old palace of Kensington, now inhabited by the Duchess of Inverness, stands at one extremity; an edifice of no great mark, built of brick, covering much ground, and low in proportion to its extent. In front of it, at a considerable distance, there is a sheet of water; and in all directions there are vistas of wide paths among noble trees, standing in groves, or scattered in clumps; everything being laid out with free and generous spaces, so that you can see long streams of sunshine among the trees, and there is a pervading influence of quiet and remoteness. ”

“ It was at Kensington, in the summer of 1836, that the Queen first saw her future husband. The Prince in his diary recorded that his aunt, the Duchess of Kent, “gave a brilliant ball here at Kensington Palace, at which the gentlemen appeared in uniform and the ladies in so-called fancy dresses. We remained until four o’clock.... Dear Aunt is very kind to us, and does everything she can to please us, and our cousin also is very amiable.” ”

“ HIS magnificent gallery, the finest of all the state rooms at Kensington Palace, was designed and built by Sir Christopher Wren for William III. about the year 1693. It owes much of its architectural effect to the great architect’s wonderful knowledge and appreciation of proportion—an element too often disregarded in buildings of modern times. Its length is 96 feet, its breadth 21 feet 6 inches, and its height 18 feet to the top of the cornice, and 19 feet 8 inches to the highest point of the ceiling. ”

“ As we sit beneath our tree, we see in the distance the dun, red-brick walls of Kensington Palace, where one night Princess Victoria was awakened to hear that she was Queen; there in quaint, hideously ugly Victorian rooms are to be seen Victorian dolls and other playthings; the whole environment is early Victorian. ”

“ I first met Browning at my cousins the Bensons. They occupied one of those unique houses in that finest of avenues, Kensington Palace Gardens. Notwithstanding the name, the houses really have gardens, and command an unlimited view over the grounds which extend from Kensington to Hyde Park. Inside the hospitable mansion all that was best in the world of art and literature would assemble, and men and women of note felt so much at home there, that they would just lay down their laurel wreaths and wipe off their war-paint, before they came in, and move about as if they were ordinary mortals. ”

“ I always left Claremont with tears for Kensington Palace. When I look back upon those years, which ought to have been the happiest in my life, from fourteen to twenty, I cannot help pitying myself. Not to have enjoyed the pleasures of youth is nothing, but to have been deprived of all intercourse, and not one cheerful thought in that dismal existence of ours, was very hard. My only happy time was going or driving out with you and Lehzen; then I could speak and look as I liked. I escaped some years of imprisonment, which you, my poor darling sister, had to endure after I was married. ”

“ And now we have traversed Kensington from end to end, and in so doing have come across many notable men and many fair women. Kensington is royal among suburbs on account of its Palace, and its annals include history as well as the anecdotes of great men. Yet though old associations live in name and tradition, none of the buildings, as at present standing, date back further than the older parts of Holland House and Kensington Palace, and the greater part are much more modern. ”

“ Even now, when the building octopus, with its stucco tentacles, has clutched and sucked in so many a fair surrounding green field, from these windows not a roof, not a chimney meets the eye; not an echo, even, of the ceaseless roar of the traffic strikes the ear.
It was in this room that the Queen was sleeping on the memorable morning of the 20th of June, 1837, when she was awakened by her mother, the Duchess of Kent, to go to the Drawing Room downstairs, where Lord Conyngham and the Archbishop of Canterbury were awaiting to inform her of her accession to the throne. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ It must have been difficult and rather dangerous to have a ball [Pg 38] as big as a croquet ball hopping about and jumping up in the air, but we do not read of any accidents happening.
Another palace in London, which is some way from the others and in another park, is Kensington Palace, and this is not now used by the King at all, but he allows some ladies and gentlemen to live there. This palace will always be of very great interest to all of us, because it was here that good Queen Victoria was born, and here she lived when she was a little girl. ”

“ Kensington Palace and the Round Pond.
(p. 215) But Kensington has not changed in essentials. In those old days it was already, as it is now, a great Roman Catholic quarter, with convents and shops for the sale of sacred objects. No great cathedral had as yet been built there; no Newman as yet looked steadfastly from his marble alcove over the noisy Brompton Road; the tendencies in that direction were, however, already paramount.
When a London suburb has once become crowded with houses, what was once picturesque becomes speedily squalid and sordid ”

“ Before recapitulating the events of the Queen’s early life here, we must give a brief outline of the history of the Palace since it became a royal residence.
The original building, of which it is probable that a good deal still stands, was erected mainly by Sir Heneage Finch, Lord Chancellor and Earl of Nottingham, who acquired the estate, including some hundred and fifty acres of meadow and park—now Kensington Gardens—from his brother Sir John Finch. ”

“ Leaving aside for the time Church Street and all the interesting district on the north, we turn to Kensington Square, which was begun about the end of James II.'s reign, and from the very first was a notably fashionable place, and more especially so after the Court was established at Kensington Palace. In Queen Anne's reign, "for beauty of buildings and worthy inhabitants," it "exceeds several noted squares in London." The eminent inhabitants have indeed been so numerous that it is difficult to prevent any account of them from degenerating into a mere catalogue. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She resided at Kensington Palace, devoting herself to the education of her daughter, and during the reign of George IV saw little society; but as the Princess Victoria grew up she took her from time to time to visit most of the places of interest in England, and gathered round her at Kensington a small highly intellectual coterie. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Although this room formed part of the state apartments built by Kent, it was much transformed in the reign of George III., so that it bears little trace of its original decoration. Indeed, it is so commonplace in appearance, that, except for the pictures which now hang on its walls, it looks more like an ordinary bedroom in an old-fashioned country inn than a king’s chamber in a palace. The plain deal dado, the common chimney-piece of black veined marble, the wood and plaster cornice, the shutters and windows, are all of the most ordinary and inartistic pattern. ”

“ The silent, asthmatic, indomitable little man was carried back here after his fall from his horse eight years later, to draw his last breath where Mary had laid down her crown. Here Anne sat, with her fan in her mouth, speaking in monosyllables to her circle. George I.'s chief connection with Kensington Palace was building the cupola and the great staircase. But his successors, George II. and Queen Caroline, atoned for the deficiency. They gave much of their time to the palace so identified with the Protestant and Hanoverian line of succession. ”

“ Besides enlarging the gardens round about the Palace, Queen Anne greatly extended the area of the park-like enclosed grounds attached to Kensington Palace. Mr. Loftie has declared that “neither Queen Anne nor Queen Caroline took an acre from Hyde Park.” But this we have found not to be the fact. In an old report on the “State of the Royal Gardens and Plantations at Ladyday, 1713,” among the Treasury Papers in the Record Office, there is a distinct reference to “The Paddock joyning to the Gardens, taken from Hyde Park in 1705, and stocked with fine deer and antelopes;” ”

“ Although Queen Caroline had to put up with a good deal of snubbing, she managed, at the same time, usually to get her own way. She was very fond of art; and it was she who discovered, stowed away in a drawer at Kensington Palace, the famous series of Holbein’s drawings. ”

“ Faulkner, writing the year after the event, confirms this identification, insomuch that he says: “The lower apartments in the south-east part of the Palace, beneath the King’s Gallery, have been for some years occupied by His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, whose premature decease—eight months after the birth of his daughter—this nation has so recently and deeply lamented; and they are still the residence of Her Royal Highness the Duchess.” ”

“ This ironwork was doubtless designed by Jean Tijou, whose name we have found in the contemporary accounts relating to this palace, and in whose style the design certainly is. As to the stair-treads, it is worthy of note that in an estimate of Wren’s for the completion of the King’s Great Staircase at Hampton Court, in 1699, he proposed that they should be made “of Irish stone such as are at Kensington, but longer and easier,” which, in fact, they are.
In King William’s time the windows must have been of a different type to those now here, which are in the style of Kent. ”

“ In this sumptuous and gorgeous chamber, with its marble-pillared doorways, its painted and gilded walls, its niches, brackets, slabs, and pediments of white marble, its gilt antique statues, its gaudy domed ceiling of blue and gold, we have the very acme and essence of the style and art of William Kent, triumphant and rampant. After our remarks on his work in the foregoing room, we shall not be expected to lose ourselves in admiration over this masterpiece of his pseudo-classic design and decoration. ”

“ Other imaginative young men with heads less "level" (to use an American expression) than that of the great novelist, actually went mad—"clean daft"—the noble passion of loving loyalty ending in an infatuation as absurd as it was unhappy. Before the Queen left Kensington Palace she was much annoyed by the persistent attentions of a provincial admirer, a respectable gentleman, who labored under the hallucination that it was his destiny and his duty to espouse the Queen. ”

“ A bright red-brick church of the Unitarians is a little further on. Behind the Mall is Kensington Palace Gardens—really a slice of the Gardens—a wide road with immense houses, correctly designated mansions, standing back in their own grounds. This road is only open to ordinary traffic on sufferance, and is liable to be closed at any time. ”