32 KEW GARDENS 



and not wasting his money. As the homely 

 and frugal ways of this royal couple gave 

 offence not only to dissipated courtiers, who 

 felt themselves rebuked, but to the mob, 

 always apt to be a snob, " meanly admiring 

 mean things," the caricaturists and lampooners 

 of the reign found abundant encouragement to 

 make coarse fun of George's and Charlotte's 

 domestic virtues as well as of their public 

 offences. But one guesses that Gillray and 

 Peter Pindar were not applauded by the King's 

 neighbours at Kew. 



For some ten years, as we have seen, 

 Richmond Lodge made his favourite country- 

 seat ; and for about the same period he was 

 most at home in Kew House. Then, after 

 taking up their residence at Windsor, the royal 

 family went on making longer or shorter visits 

 to Kew, kept as a villeggiatura where they 

 could be under less ceremony and restraint 

 than in their statelier palaces. Their winter 

 abode was usually Buckingham House. Not 

 till George had been nearly twenty years on 

 the throne did he care for living at Windsor. 

 The castle itself had fallen so much out of 

 repair, that a new "Queen's Lodge" was built 



