KENSINGTON AND THE MUSEUMS

Two Burial Grounds Kensington's Charm Kensington's Babies Victorian Influence Kensington Palace The London Museum Holland House Two Painters The Model Buildings The Albert Memorial Indian Treasures Machinery for Miles Heartrending Bargains A Palace of Applied Art Raphael's Cartoons Water Colours John Constable The Early British Masters The Jones Bequest The Stage and some MSS. A Perfect One-man Collection The Natural History Museum.

KENSINGTON in itself, no less than in its beautiful name, is the most attractive of the older and contiguous suburbs. The roads to it are the pleasantest in London, whether one goes thither through the greenery of the park and Kensington Gardens, deviously by the Serpentine and among the trees, or by Kensington Gore, south of the Park, or by the Bayswater Road, north of it.

The Bayswater route is the least interesting of the three, save for its two burial grounds one spreading behind the beautiful little Chapel of the Ascension, which is opened all day for rest and meditation and guards the old cemetery of St. George's, Hanover Square, now no longer used, where may be seen the grave of Laurence Sterne: and the other the garden of the keeper's lodge at Victoria Gate, which is, so far as I know, the only authorised burial ground for dogs, and is crowded with little headstones marking the last resting-place of Tiny and Fido, Max and Prince and Teufel.

Kensington is of course no longer what it was ; but the old Palace still stands on its eastern side, and Holland House still stands on its western side, and Kensington Square is not much injured on the south, and Aubrey House is as beautiful as ever, on the very summit of the hill, and Cam House and Holly Lodge (where Macaulay died) are untouched, below it. Yet active as the builder and rebuilder are they have not been allowed to smirch this reserved and truly aristocratic neighbourhood. Notwithstanding all its flats and new houses it still has its composure and is intellectually contented. Kensington knows: you can teach it nothing.

One new structure at any rate that has been added to Kensington is all to the good: I mean that marvellous little temple of white stone which causes the wayfarer to Iverna Court to rub his eyes the Armenian chapel erected, at the cost of Mr. Caloust Sarkis, in honour of his parents Mahtesi Sarkis and Dirouki Gulbenkian, in the year 1922 A.D. or 1372 of the Armenian Era. This building is not only beautiful; it is peculiar among most English edifices in having the names of its architects inscribed upon it, as in France: Mewes and Davis. My felicitations !

I said something in an earlier chapter about St. James's Street and Pail Mall and Savile Row being men's streets. Almost equally is the south pavement of Kensington High Street a preserve of women. In fact Kensington is almost wholly populated by women. Why girl babies should so curiously outnumber the boy babies of Kensington is a problem which I cannot attempt to solve. The borough has plenty of scientific men in it to make any hazardous conjectures of mine unnecessary; but I would suggest with all deference that the supply of girl babies may be influenced (1) by the necessity of maintaining the feminine character of the High Street, and (2) by fashion, the most illustrious and powerful woman of the last hundred years having been born at Kensington Palace. I rather lean to the second theory, for Kensington being so much under the dominion of the Victorian idea with the Palace on the edge of it, the amazing souvenir of the queen (a kind of granite candle) in the High Street, her statue in the gardens, and a sight of the Albert Hall and Memorial inevitably on one's way into London or out of it it is only natural that some deep impression should be conveyed.

Although Kensington Palace began its royal career with William and Mary, and it was Anne who directed Wren to add the beautiful Orangery, the triumph of the building is its association with Victoria. It was there that on May 24, 1819, she was born ; and there that she was sleeping when in the small hours of June 20, 1837, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain awakened her to hail her queen and "I will be good," she said, very prettily, and kept her word. Both these historic rooms the room where she was born and the room where she slept are now incorporated in the London Museum here; and her toys you may see, her dolls' house and her dolls, dear objects to the maternal sightseer, and also her series of amazingly minute official uniforms, together with pictures of herself, her ancestors and children, in great numbers.

The Palace is principally Wren's work and is staid and comely save for a top hamper of stone on the south facade which always troubles my eye. But the little old houses north of the main building on the west are quite charming and may be used as a collyrium. Of the charm of these and many of Kensington's older houses and some of its new I have spoken in the first chapter: although I said nothing there in praise of the Princess Beatrice's stables, which are exquisitely proportioned and always give me a new pleasure.

The leaden statue of William III, the gift to England of the Emperor of Germany, Wilhelm II, when he was a friend of this country, still stands on its inadequate pedestal in front of the south facade.

From the windows of Kensington Palace one has an unexpectedly verdant prospect. In the foreground is the Round Pond with its busy naval life. One has but to narrow the vision a little, and it is the Solent in Cowes Week. And away beyond the greenery is the City of London smoking above the grimness. Truly Kensington Gardens forms a very delectable oasis. "How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!" wrote Matthew Arnold, there, half a century ago, and it is still true; one may indeed even see the sheep sheared beneath the elms; and quite one of the most unexpected and charming things to do in London on a June morning is to have breakfast outside the pavilion near the Princes Gate entrance.

Another rare possession of Kensington is Holland House, which stands half-way up the hill, half a mile to the west of the Palace, and may be seen dimly through the trees from the main road and, hiding behind its cedar, more or less intimately through the iron gates in Holland Walk. How long it will remain, who can say? Again and again it has been threatened and a large part of the grounds is now given to a golf school! Holland House is the nearest country mansion to London ; while in the country itself are none superior in the picturesque massing of red brick and green copper, and none stored more richly with great memories. It was built in 1607: James the First stayed there in 1612 ; in 1647 Cromwell and Fairfax walked up and down in the meadow before the house discussing questions of state; William Penn lived there; Addison died there, exhibiting his fortitude in extremis to the dissolute Earl of Warwick. At last the house came to Henry Fox, Lord Holland, father of Charles James Fox and grandfather of the famous Lord Holland, the third, who made it a centre of political and literary activity and who now sits in his chair, in bronze, under the trees close to the high road, for all the world to see. A statue of Charles James Fox stands nearer the house.

Of the great days of Holland House less than a hundred years ago let an earlier occupant of the neighbouring Holly Lodge tell in one of his fine periods:--"The time is coming when perhaps a few old men, the last survivors of our generation, will in vain seek amidst new streets and squares and railway stations for the site of that dwelling which was in their youth the favourite resort of wits and beauties, of painters and poets, of scholars, philosophers and statesmen. They will then remember with strange tenderness many objects once familiar to them, the avenue and the terrace, the busts and the paintings, the carvings, the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical mottoes. With peculiar fondness they will recall that venerable chamber in which all the antique gravity of a college library was so singularly blended with all that female grace and wit could devise to embellish a drawing-room. They will recollect, not unmoved, those shelves loaded with the varied learning of many lands and many ages, and those portraits in which were preserved the features of the best and wisest Englishmen of two generations. They will recollect how many men who have guided the politics of Europe, who have moved great assemblies by reason and eloquence, who have put life into bronze and canvas, or who have left to posterity things so written as it shall not willingly let them die, were then mixed with all that was loveliest and gayest in the society of the most splendid of capitals. They will remember the peculiar character which belonged to that circle, in which every talent and accomplishment, every art and science, had its place. They will remember how the last debate was discussed in one corner, and the last comedy of Scribe in another : while Wilkie gazed with modest admiration on Sir Joshua's Baretti, while Mackintosh turned over Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation: while Talleyrand related his conversations with Barras at the Luxembourg, or his ride with Lannes over the field of Austerlitz. They will remember, above all, the grace, and the kindness far more admirable than grace, with which the princely hospitality of that ancient mansion was dispensed." Thus wrote Macaulay.

HAMPSTEAD HEATH,

AFTFR THE PICTURE BY JOHN CONSTABLE IN THE SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM

Within Holland House I have never set foot, but I know its gardens English and Dutch and Japanese and I know how beautiful they are, and when one is in them how incredible it seems that London is only just across the way, so to speak.