34 KEW GARDENS 



mother's hand ; and Madame Thielke brought the royal 

 nightcap. At the same hour the equerries and women- 

 in-waiting had their little dinner and cackled over their 

 tea. The King had his backgammon or his evening 

 concert ; the equerries yawned themselves to death in 

 the anteroom ; or the King and his family walked on 

 Windsor slopes, the King holding his darling little 

 Princess Amelia by the hand; and the people crowded 

 round quite good-naturedly; and the Eton boys thrust 

 their chubby cheeks under the crowd's elbows; and the 

 concert over, the King never failed to take his enormous 

 cocked-hat off, and salute his band, and say, " Thank you, 

 gentlemen ! " 



In the Memoirs of Mrs. Papendiek, whose 

 husband and father were Court pages, and 

 who was brought up at Kew, it is mentioned 

 that during the " No Popery " riots the children 

 were sent away to Kew, while the King stayed 

 at his post in London, showing courage and 

 spirit, but would ride down between four and 

 seven in the morning for a peep at his darlings, 

 brought up to their parents' early hours. 

 Other reminiscences give glimpses of the royal 

 domesticity and rusticity, not so dull to all 

 tastes as to those of a man about town like 

 Thackeray. One lad, John Rogers, who lived 

 into Victoria's reign, remembered seeing the 

 young King, shut out of Richmond Lodge after 



