120 KEW GARDENS 



The bridge put Kew upon improving its roads. 

 The King, at his own expense, to give work for 

 the unemployed in winter, had a carriage-way 

 made to Richmond, hitherto reached directly 

 by a rough lane. Then the inhabitants of sur- 

 rounding parishes got up a subscription to mend 

 the ways on the Surrey side from Putney Bridge 

 " in order that His Majesty may not be obliged 

 to take the dusty road from Brentford when he 

 honours them with his residence in summer.' 

 So now we come to Kew's palmy days, in the 

 seventies of the eighteenth century, while George 

 and Charlotte lived much here, before their 

 flitting to Windsor ; and many new houses 

 were built to accommodate the attendants and 

 hangers-on of the rustic Court. Mrs. Papendiek, 

 who was brought up at Kew, gives us glimpses 

 of the village in its state of transformation, 

 among them such a curious one as this : 



The farmhouse, now Hollis's, was Mrs. Clewly's, who 

 supplied the inhabitants with milk, butter, eggs, pork and 

 bacon. She, becoming a widow, married a Mr. Frame, 

 whose son, by a former marriage, lived upon housebreaking 

 and footpad robberies. Upon his father becoming an 

 inhabitant of Kew, the question was inquired into, when 

 he said : " I always take care to act so as to escape justice. 

 Blows and murders belong not to my gang ; and if I am 



