[Illustration: THE PALM TREES AND MAIN GATE] IV THE VILLAGE: IN AND ABOUT IT Kew itself does not stand in the forefront of its own story, for long remaining little more than an obscure river-side hamlet, half a dozen miles out of London, connected by a ferry with Brentford, and with its quaint little neighbour Strand-on-the-Green, which might have risen to equal note had Gunnersbury or Chiswick taken a king’s fancy. It was not till the eighteenth century that Kew began to burgeon under royal favour; and for the first half of that century, Richmond lay basking on the sunnier side of patronage. When George III. left Richmond for Kew, the quiet village blossomed forth as in a forcing-house, to grow into a banyan grove of princely dwellings. The first distinguished resident mentioned is Sir Peter Lely, as having a country house on the Green, where the Herbarium now stands. From first to last he may have been a good deal in this neighbourhood, for he painted Charles I. at Hampton Court, and after doing the same service for Cromwell, he became the fashionable artist of Charles II.’s Court, whose frail beauties still live on his canvas. His successor in vogue was Sir Godfrey Kneller, who contributed to artistic vocabulary in his portraits of the Kit-Cat Club, that had its rendezvous at Barn Elms, now the Ranelagh Club. He also settled not far off, in the house behind Twickenham named Kneller Hall, that, after various vicissitudes, has become the Army School of Music. Swift, in his letters to Stella, mentions dining with the Duke of Argyll at Kew in 1712. I do not find any other allusion to this residence: perhaps Swift landed at Kew and went on to Sudbrook Park, where the Duke had a seat, that should rather be reckoned as belonging to Petersham, united with Kew as one dependent district of the Kingston parish. This mansion was near the famous avenues of his birthplace, the Duke of Lauderdale’s Ham House, said to have been originally intended for Prince Henry, son of James I., and chosen by the Lords of the Council as a fitting retreat for James II., when the Prince of Orange was about to enter London. It would be the convenience of water transit that had dotted the Thames side with lordly mansions and villas; and of course it should be borne in mind how, at a time when the Court could be spoken of as moving from Kensington to London, places like Kew and Richmond were practically as far from town as now are Haslemere or Missenden, while the champaign rusticity of the former would be more to the taste of Cowley’s and Pope’s generations.