Hospital Sketches

by Robert Swain Peabody

UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS

THE RIVER

It was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along and sat down together, with no thought that life would ever change much for them; they would only get bigger and not go to school, and it would be always like the holiday; they would always live together and be fond of each other. And the mill with its booming—the great chestnut tree under which they played at house—their own little river, the Ripple, where the banks seemed like home, and Tom was always seeing water-rats while Maggie gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds which she forgot, and dropped afterwards—above all, the great Floss, along which they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing spring-tide, the awful Eagre, come up like a hungry monster, or to see the Great Ash which had once wailed and groaned like a man—these things would always be just the same to them. Tom thought people were at a disadvantage who lived in any other spot of the globe; and Maggie when she read about Christiana passing "the river over which there is no bridge," always saw the Floss between the green pastures by the Great Ash.

George Eliot.

I
UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
The Minster and the Meadows

THE MINSTER

Strong as time, and as faith sublime,—clothed round with shadows of hopes and fears,
Nights and morrows, and joys and sorrows, alive with passion of prayers and tears,—
Stands the shrine that has seen decline eight hundred waxing and waning years.
Tower set square to the storms of air and change of season that blooms and glows,
Wall and roof of it tempest proof, and equal even to suns and snows,
Bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth as a straight stem grows.
A. Swinburne.

ELEGY

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

. . . . . . . . . .

Beneath these rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

. . . . . . . . . .

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
Gray.

THE CHURCHYARD

It was a very quiet place, as such a place should be, save for the cawing of the rooks who had built their nest among the branches of some tall old trees, and were calling to one another, high up in the air. First one sleek bird, hovering near his ragged house as it swung and dangled in the wind, uttered his hoarse cry, quite by chance as it would seem, and in a sober tone as though he were but talking to himself. Another answered, and he called again, but louder than before; then another spoke and then another; and each time the first, aggravated by contradiction, insisted on his case more strongly. Other voices, silent till now, struck in from boughs lower down and higher up and midway, and to the right and left, and from the tree-tops; and others arriving hastily from the grey church turrets and old belfry window, joined the clamour which rose and fell, and swelled and dropped again, and still went on; and all this noisy contention amidst a skimming to and fro, and lighting on fresh branches, and frequent changes of place, which satirized the old restlessness of those who lay so still beneath the moss and turf below, and the useless strife in which they had worn away their lives.

Charles Dickens.

II
UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
The Church Yard

THE PARSON

As I was walking with him last night, he asked me how I liked the good man whom I have just now mentioned? and without staying for my answer told me, that he was afraid of being insulted with Latin and Greek at his own table; for which reason he desired a particular friend of his at the university to find him out a clergyman rather of plain sense than much learning, of a good aspect, a clear voice, a sociable temper, and, if possible, a man that understood a little of backgammon. "My friend," says Sir Roger, found me out this gentleman, who, besides the endowments required of him, is, they tell me, a good scholar, though he does not show it. I have given him the parsonage of the parish; and because I know his value, have settled on him a good annuity for life....

At his first settling with me, I made him a present of all the good sermons which have been printed in English, and only begged of him that every Sunday he would pronounce one of them in the pulpit. Accordingly he has digested them into such a series, that they follow one another naturally, and make a continued system of practical divinity.

As Sir Roger was going on in his story, the gentleman we were talking of came up to us, and upon the Knight's asking him who preached to-morrow, for it was Saturday night, told us, the bishop of St. Asaph in the morning, and Dr. South in the afternoon. He then showed us his list of preachers for the whole year, where I saw with a great deal of pleasure, Archbishop Tillotson, Bishop Saunderson, Dr. Barrow, Dr. Calamy, with several living authors who have published discourses of practical divinity.

Addison.

THE SWAN INN

Last night I lay at the Swan Inn in Lathbury town. A sad night I had of it! My chamber was warmed fair enough by a fire of sea coal. There was a sweet smell of lavender in the sheets which a hot warming pan had also made comfortable. All this promised well, but Polly had forgot to put my silk night cap into my saddlebags! That vexed me sore! All night I felt I was taking a rheum. Some clodhoppers roystering in the tap room forbade sleep at first and as I am not wont to hear the quarters stricken the Abbey bells roused me at frequent intervals and made me swear roundly. About midnight the Royal Mail rolled over the bridge with a noise fit to wake the Seven Sleepers! The hoof beats of its cattle echoed on the stone walls of the houses like a salute by His Majesty's Footguards! How I ached for my quiet chambers in the Temple. At length I fell to sleep and so sound that when I waked the sun had long been shining through my lattice. I was late in meeting the Squire and the Vicar, and that too after making express this arduous ride. Indeed I was vexed—and I showed it.

Swain's Old Salop.

The Swan is a venerable and rambling building, stretching itself lazily with outspread arms; one of those inns (long may they be preserved from the rebuilders!) on which one stumbles up or down into every room, and where eggs and bacon have an appropriateness that make them a more desirable food than ambrosia. The little parlor is wainscotted with the votive paintings—a village Diploma Gallery—of artists who have made the Swan their home.

E. V. Lucas.

III
UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
The Village

One almost expects to see a fine green moss all over an inhabitant of Steyning. One day as I passed through the town I saw a man painting a new sign over a shop, a proceeding that so aroused my curiosity that I stood for a minute or two to look on. The painter filled in one letter, gave a huge yawn, looked up and down two or three times as if he had lost something, and finally descended from his perch and disappeared. Five weeks later I passed that way again, and it is a fact that the same man was at work on the same sign. Perhaps when the reader takes the walk I am about to recommend to his attention—a walk which comprises some of the finest scenery in Sussex—that sign will be finished, and the accomplished artist will have begun another; but I doubt it. There is plenty of time for everything in Steyning.

Louis Jennings.

THE OLD COUNTRY HOUSE

If our old English folk could not get an arched roof, then they loved to have it pointed, with polished timber beams on which the eye rested as on looking upwards through a tree. Their rooms they liked of many shapes, and not at right angles on the corners, nor all on the same dead level of flooring. You had to go up a step into one, and down a step into another, and along a winding passage into a third, so that each part of the house had its individuality. To these houses life fitted itself and grew to them; they were not mere walls, but became part of existence. A man's house was not only his castle, a man's house was himself. He could not tear himself away from his house, it was like tearing up the shrieking mandrake by the root, almost death itself.... Dark beams inlaid in the walls support the gables; the slight curve of the great beam adds, I think, to the interest of the old place, for it is a curve that has grown and was not premeditated; it has grown like the bough of a tree, not from any set human design. This too is the character of the house. It is not large, not overburdened with gables, not ornamented, not what is called striking, in any way, but simply an old English house, genuine and true. The warm sunlight falls on the old red tiles, the dark beams look the darker for the glow of light, the shapely cone of the hop-oust rises at the end; there are swallows and flowers and ricks and horses, and so it is beautiful because it is natural and honest. It is the simplicity that makes it so touching, like the words of an old ballad ... why even a tall chanticleer makes a home look homely. I do like to see a tall proud chanticleer strutting in the yard and barely giving way as I advance, almost ready to do battle with a stranger like a mastiff.

Jeffries, Buckhurst Park.

IV
UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
The Hall

THE BEDESMEN

There he lies, Fundator Noster, in his ruff and gown, awaiting the great Examination Day.... Yonder sit some threescore old gentlemen pensioners of the hospital, listening to the prayers and the psalms. You hear them coughing feebly in the twilight,—the old reverend blackgowns.... How solemn the well-remembered prayers are, here uttered again in the place where in childhood we used to hear them! How beautiful, and decorous the rite; how noble the ancient words of the supplications which the priest utters, and to which generations of fresh children and troops of bygone seniors have cried Amen! under those arches! The service for Founder's Day is a special one; one of the psalms selected being the thirty-seventh and we hear—

23. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delighteth in his way—

24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.

25. I have been young and now am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their bread.

W. M. Thackeray.

HIRAM'S HOSPITAL

Hiram's Hospital, as the retreat is called, is a picturesque building enough, and shows the correct taste with which the ecclesiastical architects of those days were imbued. It stands on the banks of the little river, which flows nearly round the cathedral close, being on the side furthest from the town. The London road crosses the river by a pretty one-arched bridge, and looking from this bridge, the stranger will see the windows of the old men's rooms, each pair of windows separated by a small buttress. A broad gravel walk runs between the building and the river, which is always trim and cared for; and at the end of the walk, under the parapet of the approach to the bridge, is a large and well-worn seat, on which, in mild weather three or four of Hiram's bedesmen are sure to be seen seated. Beyond this row of buttresses, and further from the bridge and also further from the water which here suddenly bends, are the pretty oriel windows of Mr. Harding's house, and his well mown lawn. The entrance to the hospital is from the London road and is made through a ponderous gateway under a heavy stone arch, unnecessary, one would suppose, at any time, for the protection of twelve old men, but greatly conducive to the good appearance of Hiram's charity. On passing through this portal, never closed to any one from six a.m. till ten p.m., and never open afterwards, except on application to a huge, intricately hung mediæval bell, the handle of which no un-initiated intruder can possibly find, the six doors of the old men's abodes are seen, and beyond them is a slight iron screen, through which the more happy portion of the Barchester élite pass into the Elysium of Mr. Harding's dwelling.

Anthony Trollope, The Warden.

V
UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
Trong's Almshouses

---