This became, at the hands of the sub-editor, who had never heard of Collier, “The Bray Colliery Disaster. The remains of the late John Payne, collier,” etc.
Jesus Hospital, founded in the seventeenth century by William Goddard, of the City of London, fishmonger, and Joyce, his wife, for the housing and maintenance of forty poor persons, faces the road outside the village, on the way to Windsor. Fred Walker, in his most famous picture, The Harbour of Refuge, exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1872, took the beautiful courtyard of the Hospital for his subject, but those who are familiar with that lovely painting, now in the National Gallery, will feel a keen disappointment when they find here the original, for the artist added a noble group of statuary to the courtyard which does not, in fact, exist here, and has generally added details which make an already beautiful place still more lovely than it is.
The courtyard is, indeed, in summer a mass of beautiful homely flowers, and all the year round the noble frontage that looks upon the dusty highroad is inspiring. From an alcove over the entrance the statue of William Goddard, in cloak and ruff, looks down gravely upon wayfarers.
[3] But that’s of course, surely.
CHAPTER V
OCKWELLS MANOR-HOUSE—DORNEY COURT—BOVENY—BURNHAM ABBEY
