One does not need to be an artist nor learned in artistic lore to feel the peculiar charm of the Elgin Marbles. I have seen quite ignorant people approach them with unseeing eyes and some flippancy about their mutilation on the lips, but after a few minutes’ contemplation, something of the calm beauty of the pose, the benignant sweep of the drapery, damp with the sea-spray, the mystery of those nostalgic figures, penetrates the onlooker and the work of Pheidias and his craftsmen has wrought its spell.
Now and then the official lecturer tells the story of what they had in their minds when they carved those noble statues, carved every inch of them, even the parts they thought would never again be seen by any human eye once they were placed on the pediment of the Great Temple, and you come away feeling that your eyes have been opened to a great beauty and the truth of it sinks into the soul.
It is not possible in these brief notes to mention more than a very few of the unnoticed treasures in the British Museum. As the old porter said, there is something to interest everyone.
If you search you may come across the manuscript of Rupert Brooke’s immortal sonnet, the toys small children played with 2000 years ago, Mrs. Delany’s curious paper flowers in the students’ room of the print collection and many, many other things to draw you there.
Foundling Hospital
“O what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town,
Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own!”
Blake.
Not far from the British Museum is the Foundling Hospital in Guilford Street. One hears of it vaguely as an orphan asylum where the children wear quaint costumes that may be seen at the service in the chapel on Sunday mornings, when the singing attracts many visitors.
But there are more reasons than that to take you to this corner off the beaten track of the West End. For one thing, it may not be there very long. Already there are rumours that the Foundling Hospital may be moved to the country and one more link with eighteenth-century London be snapped.
Institutions as a rule are about as dull to see as to live in, but the Foundling Hospital is an exception. Handel, Hogarth and Dickens all gave tangible proof that they loved the place, and people from all over the world come to see it, attracted either by the reputation of the choir, the fame of the pictures in the museum, or the pathetic interest of the children, who indeed look merry, healthy little creatures.
Its story is almost too well known to need repetition: A seventeenth-century sea-captain, living during the latter half of his life in Rotherhithe, was distressed by the sight of deserted children he saw on his way to and from the city. It took good Captain Thomas Coram seventeen years of hard work to turn his dream of a well-endowed hospital for deserted children into a reality, but in 1739 he got a royal charter and a house was opened for them in Hatton Garden. The Foundling Hospital, as we know it, was begun in 1742.