KEW IN FAVOUR 51 



had to be provided to make the princesses 

 tolerably comfortable. All the luxury of this 

 house was outside, in its spacious gardens. But 

 the want of state was made up for by the more 

 home-like life of Kew, though that had also its 

 disadvantages ; the ladies and gentlemen were 

 not free to see their friends where the King and 

 his younger children might at any time come 

 wandering along the passages and poking into 

 the small rooms. There was not even a chapel 

 in the house; and when the Royal Family 

 happened to spend a Sunday here by some 

 chance, they heard prayers in a private room, 

 through the door of another, where the chief 

 attendants took their place, the servants being 

 edified in an outer apartment, which reminds us of 

 the complaint of one of Queen Anne's chaplains 

 that he had " to whistle the Gospel through the 

 keyhole." It was later that George III. fitted 

 Kew Church with a gallery to serve as royal pew. 

 Towards the end of 1788, this routine was 

 painfully broken upon by the King's illness, 

 which began during one of his temporary stays 

 at Kew, prolonged then for more than a week, to 

 the great discomposure of the household, ill- 

 provided with clothes, or with books in Miss 



