Kew Gardens: With 24 full-page Illustrations in Colour — John Shaqi
Kew Gardens: With 24 full-page Illustrations in ColourMoncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
History
Kew Gardens: With 24 full-page Illustrations in Colour
Moncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
Kew (London, England); Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
In the middle of March, after their unusually long stay at Kew, the royal
family moved to Windsor, the King riding on horseback, to be received by
the townsfolk with an ovation of welcome. In June, to complete the cure,
he went to Weymouth for sea-bathing, everywhere on the journey hailed
with acclamations and demonstrations that might well have turned a weak
head. At Weymouth, the exuberant loyalty of the people was embarrassing.
All the shops and bathing-machines placarded _God Save the King_, a
device repeated on the bonnets and waists of the bathing-women, as indeed
on dresses all over England. “All the children,” reports Miss Burney,
“wear it in their caps--all the labourers in their hats, and all the
sailors _in their voices_; for they never approach the house without
shouting it aloud--nor see the King, or his shadow, without beginning to
huzza, and going on to three cheers.… Nor is this all. Think but of the
surprise of His Majesty when, the first time of his bathing, he had no
sooner popped his royal head under water than a band of music concealed
in a neighbouring machine struck up ‘God save great George our King!’”
It was now that occurred the ludicrous incident of the wooden-legged
Mayor presenting an address, and not being able to kneel, to the scandal
of the officials. And here, the “Royals” having gone on a day’s visit
to Sherborne Castle, for the first time in three years Miss Burney had
a holiday, which she spent with a friend in a “romantic and lovely
excursion” to the ruins of Sandsfoot Castle near the neck of Portland
Island, a peep into which she might have found more romantic, had some
couple of miles not been a Georgian lady’s limit on foot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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