Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London LifeKirwan, Daniel Joseph
History
Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London Life
Kirwan, Daniel Joseph
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- Social life and customs
The Picture Gallery has fine skylights so as to throw a shaded light
on the works of art below, and here are to be found the master pieces
of the Dutch and Flemish schools, gems of Reynolds, Watteau, Titian,
Albert Durer, Rembrandt, Teniers, Ostade, Cuyps, Wouvermans, and
others, formerly the collection in great part of George IV.
The Yellow Drawing room, a superb apartment, has a series of paintings
in panels of the royal family, there being full length pictures of
Queen Victoria, looking very fat, with the crown upon her head, and
Prince Albert in his costume of Knight of the Garter, a dress which
is supremely ridiculous in these days when none but priests and
academicians wear such drapery.
[Sidenote: QUEEN'S LIBRARY.]
The Throne Room is a gaudy looking apartment, very large and spacious,
and like all the rooms in Buckingham palace having a very low ceiling,
the prevailing decoration being curtains of striped satin, and the
alcoves are hung in rich crimson velvet relieved or rather bedizened
with an nearly obscured gilding. William IV, the sailor king, hated
this palace for its ugliness and discomfort, and this all the more that
he was used to sleeping in a hammock aboard his own frigate.
The Marble Arch, an immense pile of stone now at the corner of
Piccadilly and Hyde Park, formerly occupied the central position in
this building, and was erected in its present position at a cost of
thirty-one thousand pounds.
When the present Queen had her first child the palace was found so
uncomfortable that she had to have the nursery removed to the attic,
and there, while the royal child was getting its teeth cut, the Lord
Chamberlain of England, who had charge of the improvements, was boiling
glue and making French polish in the basement, so that altogether the
queen of the greatest nation of the earth, subsequent to her honeymoon,
was no better housed than a poor family in New York, dwelling in a
respectable tenement house.
Parliament, however, was kind enough to grant the sum of one hundred
and fifty thousand pounds to alter and repair the building, and
accordingly the palace was made habitable for her Majesty.
The Ball Room is one hundred and thirty-nine feet in length. The
Supper Room is seventy-six by sixty feet--with a promenade gallery
one hundred and nine feet in length, and twenty-one feet wide. There
is a riding school attached, with a mews or stable for horses; here
the state carriages and coaches are kept at an expense, for flunkies,
grooms, masters of the horse, stable boys, feed for horses and labor,
of thirty-six thousand pounds, or over two hundred thousand dollars
annually.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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