poor child would live
long. He was delicate from his birth--very small--and for two months his
death was constantly expected. The doctors advised an incessant change
of nurses; and the wretched baby, as was to be expected, grew weaker and
weaker. At last, however, a fine-looking young Quakeress, a Mrs. Pack,
with a month-old baby in her arms, came up from Kingston to tell the
Princess Anne of a remedy which had done her children good. The Prince
of Denmark besought her to become wet-nurse to the suffering little
prince; and from that moment the unfortunate child began to thrive.

[Illustration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY, LOOKING TOWARD THE ALTAR. _From
etching by H. Toussaint._]

Then came the question of the most healthy residence for the baby on
whom so much depended. And Princess Anne at length chose Lord Craven's
fine house at Kensington Gravelpits, which he offered to lend her for
the little prince's nursery. He went out every day, no matter how cold
it was, in a tiny carriage which the Duchess of Ormonde presented to
him. The horses were in keeping with the size of the carriage; for they
were a pair of Shetland ponies "scarcely larger than good-sized
mastiffs," and were guided by Dick Drury, the Prince of Denmark's
coachman.

The first two or three years of the little Duke of Gloucester's life
were spent between Lord Craven's house at Kensington, and London. For in
those days Kensington was a country village, out in the woods and
fields. West of Mayfair there were no houses until Kensington was
reached on the breezy slopes of Camden Hill. South Kensington, that vast
quarter of handsome houses, has only come into existence in the last
fifty years. The writer's grandfather was laughed at for going "out of
town," when he and his old friend, Lord Essex, built themselves two of
the first houses in Belgrave Square about 1830. And one of his
sons-in-law, when a lad at Westminster School early in the century,
remembers snipe-shooting in the marshes which separated Chelsea from
London.

The Princess Anne and the queen were on exceedingly bad terms, the chief
reason of their disagreement being Anne's passionate devotion to the
famous Sarah Jennings, wife of the yet more famous Duke of Marlborough.
The Marlboroughs, a clever, able, ambitious, unscrupulous pair,
encouraged the jealousy between the sisters to secure their own ends,
and at length formed a "Princess's party," which gave William the Third
considerable trouble durin