GREENWICH HOSPITAL
After being shut for some years—to protect it from certain dissatisfied ladies who in the dim and distant past took it out of pictures if they did not get the vote—the Painted Hall at Greenwich was again opened in 1919, not, I hope, to close its doors to the public any more. All people interested in our naval history and the men who made it must acquire the Greenwich habit (although whitebait and turtle soup are no longer available to sustain them at the adjacent "Ship"), but in particular should the Nelson devotees be happy, for the Painted Hall is rich in portraits of him, portraits of his friends, pictures of scenes in his life, pictures of his death, and personal relics. Indeed this Hall is to Nelson what the Invalides is to Napoleon. Sir John Thornhill (with whose daughter Hogarth ran away) may have covered its walls and its ceiling with Stuarts and allegory—at three pounds the square yard for the ceiling work and one pound for the walls—but it is not of Stuarts and allegory that one thinks, it is of the most fascinating and romantic and sympathetic of British heroes and the greatest of our admirals.
Nelson is brought very near us. Among the personal relics are the very clothes he was wearing when he died on the Victory, the codicil to his will, written in his big left-hand characters and witnessed by the friend, Captain Hardy, in whose arms he sank. On a neighbouring wall is Turner's great lurid painting of the Victory in action, while elsewhere in the Museum will be found a model of the whole battle, with the Victory closely engaged with the Redoubtable, from whose mizzen-top the fatal bullet is supposed to have been fired.
There are many other intimate souvenirs; and once there were more, but thieves intervened. From those stolen in a burglary many years ago (the windows have since had bars put to them) the only one to be regained was Nelson's gold watch; and this was found—where do you think? Hidden in a concertina somewhere in Australia. But after those wanderings and vicissitudes it now reposes again in safety in the Painted Hall, for all hero-worshippers to covet.
Complete as the Nelson collection appears to be, one realises, on reflection, that only as a sailor is he celebrated here. We see him in every aspect of his fighting career; we see his friends: sturdy old William Locker, who was a governor of this Hospital, and others; we see his admirals and captains. But of Emma Hamilton no trace!
The Painted Hall, from Wren's design, was built by William and Mary. The Museum fills several rooms in an adjacent building which was to have been a riverside palace for Charles II. It is notable chiefly for its relics of the other hero of Greenwich Hospital, Sir John Franklin. It is also rich in models of ships, but of models of ships I personally can very quickly have a surfeit; rather would I sit beside the Thames and watch the real vessels go by—the big tramp steamers homing laden from abroad or leaving in ballast for the open sea; the little busy tugs, with their retinue of lighters; and the brown-sailed barges moving swiftly with the stream. The other day there was a merry breeze under a cloudless sky, and the air was filled with the music of the Greenwich symphony, which is played by an orchestra entirely composed of foghorns and hooters.
But Greenwich is amphibious. The river may not be for all tastes; there is the park too, with its avenues climbing to the heights of Blackheath. The deer have gone; but the Observatory remains, for the accurate adjustment of watches, and there is the distant prospect of London of which the great landscape painters used to be so fond, from the corner of the terrace. It is much the same as when Turner and others limned it, save that to-day the dome of St. Paul's seems to rise from the very middle of the Tower Bridge.