KEW FROM 1820 TO 1841 
2 7 
Sir Everard 
Home. 
Francis 
Bauer. 
place in the scientific world equal to Sir Joseph’s, nor was the 
condition of things that obtained at Kew at all similar. What 
we know of Home’s connection with Kew is chiefly 
due to the local author, Scheer. Writing in 1840, when 
the fate of Kew Gardens hung in the balance, he 
says in regard to the temporary residence of Mr. A. B. Lambert (a 
well-known authority on conifers) in the village : “ He recalled the best 
days of Sir Everard Home, who for some length of time used to meet 
here, almost every Saturday, at Mr. Bauer’s, many of the eminent 
men of the day, for purposes connected with Botany and other 
branches of Natural Philosophy, and a friendly and social intercourse. 
Had some one of our chief inhabitants pursued a similar system 
[after Home’s death in 1831], the world would have been spared the 
pain of ever discussing the possibility of closing our gardens.” 
It will be convenient to give some brief mention of the famous 
artist whose name occurs incidentally in the extract which has just 
been quoted. Francis Bauer was born at Felsberg, in 
Austria, in 1758. At the age of thirty he came to England, 
and in 1790 settled at Kew. His connection with the 
Botanic Garden, to which he was attached as draughtsman, affords a 
striking instance of Sir Joseph Banks’s liberality towards Kew. Not 
only did he pay Bauer’s salary up to his own death in 1820, but in his 
will made such provision for the artist as to “ place him in a position of 
moderate independence, enabling him to pursue through life the bent 
of his genius unshackled by the caprice of the public and independent 
of booksellers and critics ” (Scheer). Bauer stands in the very first 
rank of botanical artists, securing, as but few flower painters have 
been able to do, the exactness and detail required by science, without 
sacrificing a truly artistic presentation of his subject. In the more 
mechanical art of microscopical drawing he is said, in his time, to 
have been unrivalled. He lived at Kew in a house near the Pond 
in the north-eastern corner of the Green, and died there on December 
nth, 1840, in his eighty-third year. He had known and worked for 
Kew in the palmy days of the late eighteenth century and during 
its decline ; and although he did not live long enough to behold its 
resuscitation under Sir William Hooker, a hopeful future was already 
dawning before he died. 
Although William IV. is said to have taken a warm interest in 
the place where so many of his younger days had been spent, his 
