Surrey: Painted by Sutton Palmer; Described by A.R. Hope MoncrieffMoncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
History
Surrey: Painted by Sutton Palmer; Described by A.R. Hope Moncrieff
Moncrieff, A. R. Hope (Ascott Robert Hope)
Surrey (England) -- Description and travel
With such modestly hidden charms are contrasted a rank growth of
conspicuous Institutions--schools, orphanages, "homes," asylums,
barracks, prisons and the like, thick set in certain spots, as about
Sutton or Caterham. Some of these have been able to adapt stately old
mansions to their use, as at Beddington and Roehampton; but more often
they are modern, ungraceful, appalling, usurping, dominating landscapes
thrown away on criminals or lunatics. It seems an ominous sign of the
times that as often as one sees a new pile rising on Surrey heights, it
is apt to turn out a lunatic asylum, for which the flats about Hanwell
surely offer a fitter site. The most showy of such structures are the
far seen Holloway College above Egham, and the Sanatorium for the insane
in the valley below, which cost over a million, made out of the profits
of notorious patent medicines, to be given back thus to the public by a
benefactor who here showed himself a posthumous humorist in bricks and
mortar. Or was his will made in some mood of repentance, such as led
mediæval cut-throats to endow churches and chantries? His College, for
which _olet_ would make an appropriate motto, is devoted to the higher
education of women, that they may teach their children to put no faith
in quackery, even when disguised under the American euphemism of
"proprietary articles."
Had I had the ear of such a pious founder, I would have counselled him
to leave part of his ill-got gains as a fund for prosecuting,
pillorying, pelting, daubing with hatred and ridicule, whipping at the
cart's tail of public opinion, transporting to some Malebolge, foul with
their own concoctions, those unspeakable humbugs, who, not content with
the lower-class religious papers as an area to be defiled by their lying
advertisements, impudently deface the fair scenes of Surrey with
loathsome placards of this and that mischievous or worthless nostrum, to
sicken the considerate passer-by at the thought of popular ignorance and
credulity so easily preyed upon. Some day this mean offence may be
repressed by law. Might we not begin by restricting the pill-and
potion-mongers to Hackney Marsh or Barking Level as a sink for their
shameless besliming? There is no spot in Surrey, not even the New Cut,
Lambeth, nor the Sewage Farm of Croydon, that deserves such pollution.
The endowment above invited may be vested in a body bearing the mystic
device S. C. A. P. A., a league of champions sworn to slay this hideous
Jabberwock, which one should not fear to mention by its legion names,
for the last thing such an impostor dare do is to look twelve honest men
in the face and have wrung out of him the composition of his panacea,
swallowed so trustfully by the fools who enrich knaves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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