The Exeter Road

SIN

e, whip up the horses, and, passing the first milestone at the corner of the lane which a future

lable: TOMMY

ATKINS

Street of Kensington at the end by Palace Green, eager to see Her Majesty drive forth from Kensington Palace. They are kept at a respectful distance by a sentry in a dress which succeeding generations will think absurd. White trousers, coatee, stiff stock, rigid cross-belt

e trusted. The long era of the Georges did not breed loyalty, and for William the Fourth, just dead, the people had an amused contempt. They called him ‘Silly Billy.’

able: OLD KEN

SINGTON

NISC

f them, ‘Why, truly, I would not{55} have your Majesty’s two legs for your three kingdoms.’ He tells the friend that the King procured a more courtly and less blunt medical adviser; and we can well believe it. More stories beguile the way: how Queen Anne and Prince George of Denmark ended here in the fulness of time; how their successor, George the First, furious with Sir Robert Walpole, with his queen, with

t.’ The old gentleman who says this is a Radical, and, like all of that political creed, likes to see Royalty ‘behaving as sich, and not like common people such as you an’ me.’ Whereupon another passenger in the stage, on whom the speaker’s eye has fallen, audibly objects to being called, or thought, or included among common persons; so that relations{56} among the ‘insides’ are strained, and so continue, past Kensington Church, a