The Children's Book of London

by G. E. Mitton

Though it is in the middle of London, there is a beautiful garden behind, which belongs to the Duke of Bedford, and he allows them to play there, for the house to which it belonged is now pulled down. Some of the children go hopping about on their crutches, and even play games upon the smooth turf under the great shady trees. After being out for an hour, they come in and do such interesting work. All sorts of things they make with their hands. The boys do iron work, and the girls lace; or the boys do painting and basket-making, and the girls embroidery. So that when they grow up and leave the school they may be able to earn a living for themselves.

At about three o'clock the carriage comes again, and they begin to go home. Now, cannot you fancy what a new world this is to the children? Before they went to school they knew nothing about the world they lived in, or about history, or about plants and animals. They had nothing to think of to make them forget their pain. They could just sleep or lie still all day, like little animals. Now they are bright and happy. If by any chance they cannot go to school, or the carriage does not come, they cry bitterly. There are other schools begun now like this one, so perhaps in time all the children who are invalids can go to school.

Of course, there are some cases where a child is too ill to attend any school, and then it must go to a hospital. There is one of these hospitals in Chelsea, and it looks out over the great gray river Thames. It is a large red-brick house, and boys and girls who can never get well can be taken in here and made comfortable, and saved as much pain as possible. It is a beautiful house, and it is very sad, but happy, too, to see the children, and how bright they look. They wear little red flannel jackets when they sit up in bed, and have a tray put across the bed, and upon it for them to play with are the toys that kind people have sent. The rooms are divided into two parts, for boys and girls, and the children are received between the ages of three and ten, so there are no tiny babies here. The large windows are down to the ground, so the children can see what is going on outside, and I will tell you what they see: first, the Embankment; I have told you about that. It is like a broad road, and taxi-cabs and bicycles and many other things are always passing and repassing. Then the river, up which the salt sea tide rolls every day, and when the weather is very cold and stormy the gray and white sea-gulls fly inland up the river, and wheel and scream; and when people throw bread for them they dart down upon it and catch it before it can touch the water, so quick are they.

On the river there are, in summer, pleasure-steamers crowded with people; these stop at a pier quite near the children's hospital, and sometimes they are so full that not another person can get on. Then there are great barges going slowly along, dragged by a little steam-tug; perhaps there are three or four barges one after another, so low in the water that it almost washes over their decks. They carry great piles of hay or coal further up the river, and they look like great lazy porpoises being towed along by the fussy little steamer. If they are coming in with the tide, so that the current helps them, they do not need the steam-tug; but men stand up at one end and help the barge along, and guide it by a huge oar called a sweep. Some of these men and their wives live always on these barges, and earn their living by taking things up the river. There is only a tiny dirty little cabin, the size of the smallest room you ever saw, and so Mrs. Bargeman can't bring fine frocks with her; but that doesn't matter, for it isn't likely that she has any. The faces of the men and women get quite brown with being out always in the open air. It is a queer life that, always going up and down, to and fro, upon the gray water, watching the red sun sink at night and seeing him rise again; watching the sunlight ripple in the water by day, and seeing the lights from the shore shine out sparkling like jewels at night.

The barges are quite low and have no funnels, so they can pass under the bridges; but the steamers have to bow down their funnels when they come to a bridge, and then they raise them up again, as if they were very polite gentlemen saying, 'How do you do?' to the bridge.

Well, the children in the hospital can see these things, and for those whose beds don't face the windows there are looking-glasses so arranged that all that goes on is reflected in them, so that it is like a wonderful picture-book, changing all day long. Though they look so happy, poor children! some of them suffer dreadful pain, and it is sad to think this hospital is for incurable children—that is, children who can never be well in this world.

In one room there is a large picture; I am sure you have seen one like it. It is Jesus Christ standing at a door, knocking, and the door is fast shut, and briars and brambles have grown all over it; but still Christ stands knocking, hoping it may open. In His hand there is a lantern, and the picture is called 'The Light of the World.' Now, the real picture, the one that the artist painted, from which all the others like it have been printed, was painted just where this children's hospital is; for the artist, whose name is Holman Hunt, had a house there before the hospital was built. So he gave a very large copy of his picture to the children, and wrote under it that it was from the artist who made that picture, in that place, to Christ's little ones.

There are other hospitals for children, which are for all sorts of illnesses and not only for incurable ones. There is one in Chelsea, not far from here, and another, a very large one, in Great Ormond Street, not very far from the school for sick children.

In the Great Ormond Street one they take in the very tiniest babies, and so the nurses have plenty to do looking after these mites. Sometimes a child is very naughty when it first comes in, and will do nothing but scream and cry, and the nurses have to be very patient; but it always happens that when it has been there for a time it loves them all so much that it cries when it gets well and has to go home. It is a funny sight to see a nurse or a sister having tea with perhaps three or four children who are well enough to be up. They climb all over her like little kittens, and love her so much she cannot get rid of them. In this hospital each ward is named after some member of the Royal Family: Helena Ward, Alice Ward, and so on, after the Princesses Helena and Alice, daughters of Queen Victoria.