KEW IN FAVOUR 77 



in the early years of his reign, took a fancy for 

 building a castle here, after plans prepared by 

 Wyatt, the then esteemed architect, in the bad 

 taste of the period. The design is to be seen in 

 one of the rooms of the present palace. The 

 other house was pulled down in' 1802, to make 

 way for the new structure, which would have 

 stood nearer the river-side, looking over to the 

 not very royal town of Brentford, that " town of 

 mud," so strangely admired by the Georges and 

 reviled by their poets. But the works were 

 interrupted by the King's fresh attack in 1804, 

 and this building never got further than the state 

 of a pretentious shell, which stood idle for nearly 

 a quarter of a century, and was then demolished 

 by George IV. That monarch had no more 

 love for Kew than his father for Hampton Court. 

 He had spent freely upon his own whims, on 

 Carleton House, and on the Pavilion, the latter 

 gimcrack medley a laughing-stock even for 

 contemporary taste, and a byword with irreverent 

 writers like Byron 



Shut up, no, not the King, but the Pavilion, 

 Or else 'twill cost us all another million ! 



His father, unless for saddling us with so many 

 expensive sons, had lived so carefully and 



