THE VILLAGE : IN AND ABOUT IT 145 



ruined : " He adds his soul to every other loss ; 

 and by the act of suicide renounces earth to 

 forfeit heaven." The cure of souls he had filled 

 so unworthily passed into the hands of the 

 Rev. R. B. Byam, who held it for forty years, 

 in favour with all classes and especially with 

 his chief parishioners, the royal dukes who still 

 from time to time showed themselves in Kew 

 Church. 



When Kew had been deserted by kings and 

 courtiers, its gardens being turned into a public 

 institution, the keepers of them grew to be 

 important personages, of whom more has been 

 said in the last chapter. For a time names of 

 note are less often met with in this neighbour- 

 hood. One long link with the past was the life 

 of Mrs. Gwyn, who died here in 1840, the year 

 of Madame d'Arblay's death, in whose Diary 

 this lady's name appears. She was the widow 

 of Colonel Gwyn, one of the royal equerries in 

 that time of trouble which Fanny Burney passed 

 through half a century before. She had been 

 the beautiful Mary Horneck, "the Jessamy 

 Bride" whom Goldsmith loved in vain; and 

 there may be those still alive at Kew that heard 

 her memories of Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds, 



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