A road-book to old Chelsea

by G. B. Stuart

Every 29th of May King Charles’s statue is wreathed with oak, and the pensioners get double rations of beef and plum pudding, and if you fall into conversation with one of the red-coated old soldiers in the hospital gardens, where they love to saunter and watch the nursemaids and the children and the emancipated terriers of a morning, you will find that he is well up in the legend of “poor, pretty Nelly,” and proud of his connection with an institution which is in no sense a charity.

It is impossible here to describe all that is to be seen at Chelsea Hospital, but there is no difficulty in going over it—either with a guide from the secretary’s office on application, or informally by presenting oneself at service at the Chapel on Sundays (11 a.m. and 6.30 p.m.) and glancing into the hall and the kitchens as one passes out through the beautiful colonnade, which gives upon the garden side. The old pensioners are courteous to visitors and love to show all they can. The great staircases leading to the rooms above are worth noticing, and so are the doorways, and the wonderful balance and proportion of the long lines of windows. Restrictions are few, and one is struck by the ease and freedom of the place, as compared with similar institutions in other countries.

In the chapel, the wonderful collection of flags taken in action is worth studying, with the official handbook; perhaps as interesting a study is that of the faces and expressions of the ranks of old soldiers as they sit in orderly rows. The service is not long, though when the preacher allows himself an extra five minutes’ law, I have seen a hand steal tentatively to a coat-pocket, and a before-dinner pipe stealthily prepared under shelter of the pew ledge.

The Communion plate—silver-gilt and presented by James I. to his theologians—is magnificent. An American visitor once offered the existing chaplain an exact replica of all the articles, and a thousand pounds for himself, if he would permit the set to be copied, and “no questions asked.” The transatlantic enthusiast went away with a very poor idea of English business capacity.

In the hall, which is now the pensioners’ recreation room, there are numberless objects of interest. We can only instance the case of unclaimed medals, and the “Black Jack” leather kegs used in the canteen of the Army in Flanders in Marlborough’s campaigns.

In the hall the Duke of Wellington’s coffin lay in state November 1852, and during the crowd and excitement of the two days’ ceremony, one of the French Eagles taken at Waterloo was stolen—re-captured, it is supposed, by French visitors.

The sittings in the chapel are allotted to the officers and staff of the hospital (note the Whitster’s Pew, where sits the head of the laundry), but visitors can generally find accommodation if they present themselves at the Sunday services.

Walpole House, now the Infirmary, was once the residence of the great Whig Minister, and in his garden George II. and Caroline the Illustrious, when Prince and Princess of Wales, sometimes sat down to dinner, while Chelsea people stared at them through the adjacent railings. A special permission is necessary to view the Infirmary.

One other Royal remembrance, and I must close this inadequate account of the Royal Hospital treasures. There is a fine bust of Queen Victoria executed especially for the hall, and paid for by every man in the hospital giving his pay for one day—that day being the great Jubilee of 1887. It shows the great Queen at her noblest and best, as her soldiers love to remember her.

East of the hospital lie Ranelagh Gardens, beautiful in their placid old age, and reminiscent in their glades and winding walks of a gay and frivolous past. The huge Rotunda, where nearly three thousand persons could circulate with ease, went out of fashion about 1750. Balloon ascents and fireworks ceased to attract, and in 1804 the big building was pulled down, and the gardens incorporated in the hospital grounds.