King's House

“ There is one doorway in the great white house, and it stands wide with marble portals yawning for kings, but when it shall receive thee, and thine obeisance hath been made because of thine obligation to the thirty Kings, thou shalt find at the back of the house an unknown door through which the soul of a King may just pass, and leaving thy bones upon a golden throne thou shalt go unseen out of the great white house to tread the velvet spaces that lie among the worlds. ”

“ Outside the House are the lobbies, where the members go on a division. The interior of the House is plain, excepting the ceiling, which is richly decorated. The House of Peers is most gorgeously ornamented, having on either side six lofty stained-glass windows with portraits of sovereigns, these windows being lighted at night from the outside. The room is ninety-one feet long, and at each end has three frescoed archways representing religious and allegorical subjects. Niches in the walls contain statues of the barons who compelled King John to sign Magna Charta. ”

“ The doors are on a level with the floor, and just large enough to let one of the labourers go in."
"Why, Uncle Philip, how do the king and queen ever get out then."
[Pg 121]
"They never do get out, boys; they live in that house always, and they are not the first kings and queens who have found that a palace is sometimes a prison. Just around this house of the king and queen are other houses built of clay, arched at the top, and of different shapes. These are for the servants or labouring ants, who remove the eggs of the queen as fast as she discharges them. ”

“ There are a few stores and shops of brick, and there are some temples whose spires rise above the buildings that surround them. The palace of the king is the finest edifice in the place; it was designed by a French architect, and the construction was supervised by him, but all the actual work was performed by natives. It is like a fine dwelling-house in the neighborhood of New York or London, and the internal arrangement of the rooms is entirely European in character. ”

“ The valley is lovely, and the King is building a house here; the grounds are partially laid out, we are living in a building which will form a part of the offices of the new house. My apartment is on the ground floor, and the King and Queen are above me. The people are an industrious race. ”

“ This sixteenth century was a great time for the building of large houses; indeed, the new nobles had better ideas of what a comfortable house was than the older barons had.
Summary.—In the time of King Edward III many Norman castles were altered so as to be more comfortable dwelling-places. Most of them could hold bands of men-at-arms.
King Henry VII put down these large bands of retainers, and the new nobles whom he made were not allowed to keep up bands of men-at-arms. The need for castle-dwellings was gone. The new nobles were most of them raised from the merchant class. ”

“ Some private citizens of various towns followed the example of London and obtained from Parliament the right to levy a house rate for paving and lighting. Physicians and lawyers lived in two-story brick mansions with attics and sash windows that could be lifted up and down with the help of a pulley. ”

“ The palace of Whitehall, anciently called York House, and the home of thirty successive Archbishops of York, was seized by King Henry VIII at the fall of Wolsey and converted into a royal residence. [660] The new proprietor at once made improvements after his own taste, among which were tennis-courts, bowling-alleys, and an amphitheatre for the "royal sport" of cock-fighting. In Stow's description of the palace we read:
On the right hand be diverse fair tennis courts, bowling alleys, and a Cockpit, all built by King Henry the Eight. ”

“ In a word, a hundred points of deep and exciting interest, picturesquely beautiful and historically interesting, may be seen and “taken note of,” from the several points to which a drive through the Park conducts.
We give an engraving of the mansion. Parts of it are as old as the reign of Henry VIII., but its outward signs of remote age are few; it seems built for comfort; it is thoroughly a domestic house; the rooms are neither large, lofty, nor stately; but all of them are made to live in—so many parts of a home. We may except the Great Hall, however ”

“ And thus conversing, the brothers-in-arms returned to the castle, and entered the great hall, which was so spacious and so high in the roof that a man on horseback might have turned a spear in it with all the ease imaginable. It was, indeed, a stately apartment; the ceiling consisting of a smooth vault of ashlar-work, the stones being curiously joined and fitted together; and the walls and roof decorated by some of those great painters who flourished in England under the patronage of King Henry and his fair and accomplished queen, Eleanor of Provence. ”

“ The house is a castle which the king cannot enter. ”

“ A social function of some kind was going on, and a number of carriages were drawn up at the curb near a great stone house that faced the broader and more fashionable thoroughfare to the east, or else were moving slowly up and down, their coachmen thrashing vigorously with their arms to restore circulation in their numbed fingers. Forrest recognized the once familiar brougham of the Allisons', and conjectured that Florence, with her now desperately devoted Hubbard, was among the guests. At the eastward end of the street all was light and bustle, clattering hoofs and slamming carriage-doors. ”

“ Many of the old houses, round about, speak very plainly of those days when Kingston was a royal borough, and nobles and courtiers lived there, near their King, and the long road to the palace gates was gay all day with clanking steel and prancing palfreys, and rustling silks and velvets, and fair faces. The large and spacious houses, with their oriel, latticed windows, their huge fireplaces, and their gabled roofs, breathe of the days of hose and doublet, of pearl-embroidered stomachers, and complicated oaths. They were upraised in the days "when men knew how to build." ”

“ The apartments in which these people were at work, presented very convincing indications of the mutability of human ambition.
This palace was allotted to the celebrated Council of Five Hundred. During their ephemeral reign, these very rooms were designed for their halls of audience, and levees, the rich mouldings, and cornices of which were half gilt, and covered with silver paper to preserve them: the poor council were never indulged in a house warming.
The pictures, which were collected by Henry IV, and deposited in the gallery there, which bears his name, are said to be valuable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Houses for the accommodation of the King’s suite have been erected at a short distance from the monastic palace, which the royal family divide with the numerous community of Hieronymites, to whom Philip II. assigned one wing of that magnificent structure. But such as, following the Court on business, are obliged to take lodgings in the neighbourhood, must be contented with the most wretched hovels. ”

“ I was established in one of those old Elizabethan country-houses which with their vast parks, their self-sufficing resources of subsistence and company, and the absolute deference shown on all sides to the lord of the manor, give one the impression rather of a little kingdom with a castle in its heart, than of an abode for a gentleman subject. The house itself (called, like most houses of this size and consequence in Warwickshire, a ‘Court,’) was a Gothic half-castellated square, with four round towers, and innumerable embrasures and windows ”

“ Every window in the entire building was brilliantly illuminated in the most beautiful colors of every hue and in a charming variety of scenes. There were represented the western heavens at sunset in crimson and gold; the rising glories of the approaching monarch shown on the eastern hill tops; scenes of classical beauty shone in bewitching effect. Any attempt to particularize fails in the very effort. Suffice to say Government House blazed, not in the spontaneous spirit which displayed itself when the former building succumbed, but by the heightening aid of artistic skill and design. ”

“ Many types of people besides the nobility and knights now had property and thus were considered gentry: female lines of the nobility, merchants and their sons, attorneys, auditors, squires, and peasant-yeomen. The burgess grew rich as the knight dropped lower. The great merchants lived in mansions which could occupy whole blocks. Typically, there would be an oak-paneled great hall, with adjoining kitchen, pantry, and buttery on one end and a great parlor to receive guests, bedrooms, wardrobes, servants' rooms, and a chapel on the other end or on a second floor. ”

“ One of the best tests of the prosperity of England under the Yorkist rule seems to be the immense amount of building that was on hand. Despite the needs of civil war, it was not on castles that the builders’ energy was spent; the government Architecture. discouraged fortresses in private hands, and the dwellings of the new nobility of Edward IV. were rather splendid manor-houses, with some slight external protection of moat and gate-house, than old-fashioned castles. But the church-building of the time is enormous and magnificent. ”

“ That evening, after dark, the queen, her five daughters, and Richard, duke of York, stole out of the palace of Westminster into the shelter of the abbot's house, which fortunately lay within the sanctuary precincts. All night long the dwelling, usually so quiet, was a scene of bustle and confusion, for every moment servants were arriving from the palace at Westminster bearing with them great chests full of jewels, clothes, hangings, and carpets. ”

“ Drawing-room, dining-room, billiard-room, and library are spacious enough for royalty, while small enough for comfort when royalty is in happy retreat in little more than a large family circle rusticating from choice. The corridors look brown and simple, like the rest of the house, and lack the white statuary of Osborne, and the superb vases, cabinets, and pictures of Buckingham Palace and Windsor. ”

“ It will thus be seen that the only really private part was the house itself between the inner courtyard and the river; the great hall and both courtyards being practically open to the public under the supervision of the custodian at the outer gate, who was responsible only to the Queen, and was a constant source of friction with the foreign occupants of the house. ”

“ On its banks, buried in foliage, which is reflected in the clear water, stands the royal residence, part of which is of bamboo, the rest being whitewashed. We went through several apartments, in which poor Annamite women were weaving silk, and, after passing in front of the treasury and the king’s magazines, finally reached a vast hall which, here, is peculiarly called the palace. The interior does not come up to what might be expected from an outside view. ”

“ If the fittings of Buckingham Palace were piled up on the front lawn, they would hardly be impressive. And you are keenly conscious that your furniture has nothing on King George's. The only thing to do is to pretend that you don't see your neighbors while your sofas and chairs stand on their heads on the sidewalk, kicking their ancient legs in the air, and showing with painful frankness the places where they have been mended. ”

“ Of the various specimens of this clumsy blue and white delf, displayed in the numerous rooms of this once magnificent palace, the pride of Wolsey and splendour of Henry VIII., the eight large pots for the reception of King William III.’s orange-trees, now standing in her Majesty’s gallery, certainly have claims to future protection. As for the old and ragged bed-furniture, it is so disgraceful to a palace, that, antiquary as I in some degree consider myself, I most heartily wish it in Petticoat Lane. ”

“ It is sad to think that the first part of the hitherto unbroken line of wall round this courtyard to succumb to this fell disease will be the most interesting portion of this historic house.
The kitchens, which lie between the Queen’s rooms and the banqueting hall, are likewise in a sad state; the depressed form of arch surmounting most of the doorways, despite the presence of “arches of construction,” are fast bowing their heads beneath the weight of masonry and the neglect of centuries. ”

“ If earth contained a thing to wish for in those six months, Grace Truscott could not name it. Her pretty army house is the gem of the military community, the envy of many a wife. Her husband is a man whom all men honor and hold in deep esteem. In strength, in dignity, in soldierly ability, and in his devotion [Pg 47] to her he is all her heart could ask. If she loved him dearly when they were married, her love has developed into almost an idolatry,—"Jack" is her world. ”

“ Temples, palaces, bridges, aqueducts, cathedrals, towers of marvelous delicacy and strength, grew to perfection while the common people lived in hovels, and the richest lodged in the most gloomy and contracted quarters. The dwelling-house is a modern institution. It is a curious fact that it has only improved with the social elevation of women. Men were never more brilliant in arms and letters than in the age of Elizabeth, and yet they had no homes. They made themselves thick-walled castles, with slits in the masonry for windows, for defense, and magnificent banquet-halls for pleasure ”