The Forlorn Hope: A Tale of Old ChelseaHall, S. C., Mrs.
General
The Forlorn Hope: A Tale of Old Chelsea
Hall, S. C., Mrs.
Chelsea (London, England) -- Fiction
Footnotes.
{6} This was the third botanic garden, established about the year 1673,
in England. In a very old manuscript the spot is thus quaintly
described:—“Chelsea physic garden has great variety of plants, both in
and out of green-houses; their perennial green hedges, and rows of
different coloured herbs, are very pretty, and so are the banks set with
shades of herbs in the Irish style.” The drawing Mr. Fairholt was so
good as to make for this little book, gives a faithful representation of
the statue of Sir Hans Sloane, by Rysbach, the two famous cedars, and the
water-gate; and as this time-honoured garden is about to be converted
into “a square of houses,” I am glad of the opportunity to preserve a
memorial of it. It is not only sacred to science, but full of pleasant
memories: Evelyn has sate beneath those cedars; Sir Joseph Banks used to
delight in measuring them, and proving to his friends that the girth of
the larger “exceeded twelve feet eleven inches;” and it is said that,
when Dean Swift lodged at Chelsea, he was often to be found in this
“physic garden.” When we call to mind the number of persons of note who
selected the “sweet village of Chelsea” as a residence, there can he no
lack of associations for this spot. Between the garden and the college
is the place (according to Maitland) where Cæsar crossed the Thames.
{26a} PHILIP ROSE, ESQ., the Hon. Sec. and Founder of the Institution.
{26b} Independent of advantages afforded within the present Hospital,
application for orders to obtain “out of door” advice and medicine have
been very numerous; and they have not unfrequently been made by persons
far superior to those who are supposed (but most erroneously) to be the
only recipients of charitable aid. I entreat the reader’s indulgence
while I briefly relate one circumstance within my own knowledge. A few
months ago, a lady (for poverty is no destroyer of birth-rights)
requested from me a ticket for an out-door patient; and, in answer to my
inquiries, at length, with trembling lips and streaming eyes, confessed
it was for her husband she needed it. She had made what is called a
_love-match_; her family refused to do anything to alleviate the poverty
which followed his misfortunes, unless she forsook her husband; her
knowledge of the most sacred duty of woman’s life, and, indeed, I
believe, poor thing, her enduring love, prevented her having the great
sin to answer for, of abandoning him in his distress; and her skill in
drawing and embroidery enabled her to support her sick husband and
herself. “I can do _that_,” she said, “and procure him even little
luxuries, if I have not a doctor’s bill to pay; but the medicines are so
expensive, that he will be comfortless unless we can receive aid from
this Institution; I have paid, during the last two weeks, twelve
shillings for medicine.” His case was utterly and entirely without hope,
but, as she told me afterwards, no words could express the alleviation to
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