Kew

“ While we are on the head of art, Hofland the painter should be mentioned as having been brought up at Kew; also his wife, the once popular novelist Barbara Hofland, who wrote a book about the Richmond neighbourhood, sumptuously illustrated in the style of its day (1832) , with much the same aim as the present volume, but containing a larger proportion of fine words to a smaller stock of matter.
THE ROSARY
We now approach our own time, in which [147] Kew seems more favoured by authors than by artists. ”

“ That Lord Kew should be at Baden is no wonder. If you heard of him at the Finish, or at Buckingham Palace ball, or in a watch-house, or at the Third Cataract, or at a Newmarket meeting, you would not be surprised. He goes everywhere; does everything with all his might; knows everybody. Last week he won who knows how many thousand louis from the bank (it appears Brown has chosen one of the unlucky days to back his lordship) . He will eat his supper as gaily after a great victory as after a signal defeat; and we know that to win with magnanimity requires much more constancy than to lose. ”

“ True, sharing the intimate sensations of alien life forms like Kew, the female Venusian, had been exciting. Especially the sex experiences which, in a flower of Kew's type, was certainly something. There were interesting things to being a part of the Crew all right. But the main purpose, survival, had been forgotten. Now being the Crew was an end in itself. Kelly could imagine the Crew business going on and on until finally even the material bodies in the bunkroom would be forgotten entirely and allowed to rot away to dust about which the Crew would no longer care. ”

“ Papendiek, who was brought up at Kew, gives us glimpses of the village in its state of transformation, among them such a curious one as this:—
The farmhouse, now Hollis’s, was Mrs. Clewly’s, who supplied the inhabitants with milk, butter, eggs, pork and bacon. She, becoming a widow, married a Mr. Frame, whose son, by a former marriage, lived upon housebreaking and footpad robberies. Upon his father becoming an inhabitant of Kew, the question was inquired into, when he said: “I always take care to act so as to escape justice. Blows and murders belong not to my gang ”

“ Johnson’s feet, she married a Brentford man, and went to live across the river, where she brought up a round dozen of children on the best of principles. She seems to have been a model of virtues from her youth. When at Kew she carried on a contest of early rising with a friend on the opposite bank, the first up hanging a handkerchief out of her window as triumphant token. ”

“ It is difficult, indeed, to draw the line between these neighbour villages that have now grown into each other. The Old Deer Park of Richmond ran into the parish of Kew. They had a common excitement in 1795, making a more than local sensation, when one John Little, said to have been a favourite attendant of George III. in his walks through the Gardens, came to a bad end. He is described as keeper or porter of the Observatory, who passed for being a quiet, worthy, and even religious man till he committed a most brutal murder under circumstances that suggest insanity. ”

“ It was very pleasant to see a person so happy as Mrs. Kew was that day, and I dare say in speaking of the occasion she would say the same thing of Kate and me,—for it was such a good time! We bought some peanuts, without which no circus seems complete, and we listened to the conversations which were being carried on around us while we were waiting for the performance to begin. There were two old farmers whom we had noticed occasionally in Deephaven ”

“ The conditions under which the culture of the Ouvirandra fenestralis has been pursued at Kew have been so favourable, and its treatment so successful, that it has grown remarkably well, attaining a size and exhibiting a freshness and vigour equal to any attained in its native streams. ”

“ Dreadful foolish piece of business that embargo was!
"Now I declare," said Captain Sands, after he had finished this narrative, "here I'm a telling stories and you're doin' all the work. You'll pull a boat ahead of anybody, if you keep on. Tom Kew was a-praisin' up both of you to me the other day: says he, 'They don't put on no airs, but I tell ye they can pull a boat well, and swim like fish,' says he. There now, if you'll give me the oars I'll put the dory just where I want her, and you can be getting your lines ready. ”

“ And then you will want to go home and be unable to find the gate; but after a little time the Observator will observe you with his telescope from the top of the Pagoda and mention it to the Curator, who will direct a bronzed and amiable man in a blue uniform to lead you to the turnstile.
I am told that there are some people who do not care to sample their Spring at Kew or in the country either, but prefer to go to San Remo or spend Saturday afternoon toiling in their own back-garden. Let them mind their peas, I say, while I go down to Kew. ”

“ Her grammar in moments of emergency always impressed Kew. ”

“ Thomas Gainsborough lies here, not as a Kew resident, but buried by his own desire beside his lifelong friend and fellow East Anglian, Joshua Kirby, F.R.S., who began life as a coach-painter at Ipswich, and rose to fame as a writer on art and architecture. Helped on by Hogarth and Joshua Reynolds, Kirby had the luck to become teacher of perspective drawing to Prince George, and the King liked this master so well as to give him a permanent appointment as Clerk of the Works set on foot in Kew Gardens, under Sir William Chambers. ”

“ "Oh, Kew, I want to go out into the country, I want to thread the pale Spring air, and hear the lambs cry. I want to brush my face against the grass, and wade in a wave of bluebells. ”

“ Blindness came gradually on to increase his afflictions. In 1809 the nation joyfully celebrated his Jubilee, with much feasting of the poor—and the rich—relieving of prisoners for debt, pardoning of military culprits, illuminations, libations, and such memorials as the statue on the Weymouth Esplanade, that records the townsfolk’s gratitude to the King, whose stay at his favourite bathing-place had so often sent up the price of its [79] lodgings. We may be sure Kew, in its small way, was not behindhand in such loyal doings. ”

“ The above digression relates to the fact that the Kew gardeners were apt to be kinsmen, or at least kindly Scots. Macnab, Lockhart, Begbie, Kerr, Fraser, Morison—these are only some names occurring early among the staff to show how the Aiton dynasty did not overlook their countrymen’s claims to employment.
If not scientific men themselves, the Aitons had the advice and help of the best naturalists of their day, specially of Sir Joseph Banks, Captain Cook’s companion, who introduced to this country the fuchsia, the hydrangea, and other exotic plants. ”

“ I sat at the window of Tavistock Villa, watching the men returning from the city to their quiet, suburban homes. I wondered if they were glad to free themselves from the much maligned atmosphere of London for this invigorating air, or if they would have preferred the metropolis, with all its unhealthy faults, to the sedate and monotonous wholesomeness of Kew.
I would sooner live ten years in the city than fifty years in the country. I hate the balmy atmosphere of rurality; I loathe the suburban surroundings. Give me the city with its life, its motion, its meaning, its excitement. ”

“ Windsor life, with halts at Kew in the summer. But henceforth Miss Burney’s diary has little to say about Kew; and after another year we lose that peep-hole into royal domesticity. The life of a glorified waiting-maid began to tell upon her health and spirits: “Lost to all private comfort, dead to all domestic endearment, I was worn with want of rest and fatigued with laborious watchfulness and attendance.” Her chief comfort had been a sort of intermittent philandering with the Queen’s Vice-Chamberlain, Colonel Digby—the “Mr. ”

“ Gwen herself we recognise as S. Wenn; she was the mother of S. Cuby, founder of Duloe and Tregony. Docwin or Cyngar, brother of Solomon, was an abbot in Somersetshire. In his old age his nephew Cuby took his uncle with him to Ireland, where he kept a cow for providing the old man with her milk. A chief carried off the cow, and Cuby left Ireland and brought the aged uncle back with him. Docwin or Cyngar was the founder of S. Kew.
Again, another uncle of S. Cuby was Cado, Duke of Cornwall, who makes a great figure in Geoffrey of Monmouth's fabulous history, and in the Arthurian romances. ”

“ He is said to have a heart of ice, and to afflict the Indians in many ways. It is he who tears the bark from the wigwam, and who frightens men and women. Kewok is the being in whom a Norse divinity has been recognized by one or two well-known scholars. ”

“ Malherb smiled.
"Kekewich is a sort of skeleton at life's feast. The sour truth and nothing but the truth he utters. Yet truth's a tonic, and your father knows it."
"Truth is often very impertinent—especially as Kek tells it. If any other man spoke to father as he does, he would soon be measuring his length on the ground."
"It shows my husband's marvellous judgment that Kekewich never angers him."
"To me the man is merely a piece of earth animated. ”

“ Kestern and Paul had left the night before. The gaily-coloured paper had indeed been incongruous against the natural flowers, and Mrs. Kestern had exclaimed at it. Her husband had been ruthless likewise. But Paul had criticised their edict.
"Father," he had said, with his direct logic, "ought you to take away old Miller's chains? He thinks them beautiful. They're his offering to our Saviour. Surely God looks at the devotion more than at the thing. And you abolish my flowers too. Surely there's nothing Popish in a vase or two of chrysanthemums!" ”

“ He was buried at Exminster near Exeter. Kekewich was a strong churchman and conservative. A man of fine physique and active habits, a keen shot and fisherman, he became in his later years an enthusiastic golf-player. ”

“ Keppel had gone alone to the telegraph office in a cab.
The soft, balmy Italian night had fallen, and the white streets and piazzas of Leghorn were filled, as they always are at evening, with the light-hearted crowds of idlers; men with their hats stuck jauntily askew, smoking, laughing, gossiping; and women, dark-haired, black-eyed, the most handsome in all Italy, each with a mantilla of black lace or some light-coloured silk as head-covering, promenading and enjoying the bel fresco after the toil and burden of the day. ”

“ Youatt gives an excellent illustration of the effects of a course of selection which may be considered as unconscious, in so far that the breeders could never have expected, or even wished, to produce the result which ensued—namely, the production of the distinct strains. The two flocks of Leicester sheep kept by Mr. Buckley and Mr. Burgess, as Mr. Youatt remarks, "Have been purely bred from the original stock of Mr. Bakewell for upwards of fifty years. ”

“ Some men are born with a natural magnetism for Latin words; and others, like myself, have to look up quoque as many as nine times in a page of Mr. Horace's celebrated metrical salve-slinging. Keg went into a literary society, too, and developed such an unholy genius at wadding up the other fellow's words and feeding them back to him that he made the Kiowa debate in his Freshman year. He also chased locals for the college paper, made his class football team, got on the track squad and won the Freshman essay prize. ”

“ Early the next day Kokua was about her preparations. She took Keawe’s chest that he went with sailoring; and first she put the bottle in a corner; and then packed it with the richest of their clothes and the bravest of the knick-knacks in the house. “For,” said she, “we must seem to be rich folks, or who will believe in the bottle?” All the time of her preparation she was as gay as a bird; only when she looked upon Keawe, the tears would spring in her eye, and she must run and kiss him. As for Keawe, a weight was off his soul ”

“ Keppel invited me to walk in the garden, and as his guest I could not very well refuse."
"You know what an ill-bred, vulgar old fellow he is, and you might therefore have had some respect for his guests."
"I know that he is an honest, plain-spoken man," I said calmly. "He may be ill-bred, but, nevertheless, he's more the gentleman than half the over-dressed cads who so perpetually hang about us just because we happen to be both good-looking." ”

“ The sky, too, was alive with soft lights of grey and white and blue. Where the road bends out of sight of the last houses, Paul took the hand that swung by the girl's side, and, remote and virginal, they walked together hand in hand.
"Well, Paul dear," she said, "tell me everything." And Paul tried to tell her....
"And Keswick," he said at last, "only sums it all up. You can't escape from it, Edith. People believe all sorts of different things even here. 'All one in Christ'—but they aren't. ”

“ After the first weeks of autumn gloom spent in solitary 34 lodgings in the dingiest part of London, Keats expresses, in a rimed epistle to Felton Mathew, the fear lest his present studies and surroundings should stifle the poetic faculty in him altogether. About the same time he takes pains to get into touch again with Cowden Clarke, who had by this time left Enfield and was living with a brother-in-law in Clerkenwell. ”

“ One day in early spring (1817) the whim seized them over their wine to crown themselves ‘after the manner of the elder bards.’ Keats crowned Hunt with a wreath of ivy, Hunt crowned Keats with a wreath of laurel, and each while sitting so adorned wrote a pair of sonnets expressive of his feelings. While they were in the act of composition, it seems, three lady callers came in—conceivably the three Misses Reynolds, of whom we shall hear more anon, Jane, afterwards Mrs Thomas Hood, Marianne, and their young sister Charlotte. ”