I can tell no more about it except from hearsay, for the terrible loneliness of Hugo’s house in the Place des Vosges and of Balzac’s in the Rue Raynouard in Paris dissuaded me from visiting any more houses turned into museums of their owners’ belongings. I would rather go to the Chelsea Hospital, that is very much alive with the presence of remarkably long-lived old men: one of them lived till he was 123 years and another to 116. They think nothing there of mere centenarians--they even tell you of one pensioner who had served for eighty-five years and married at the age of 100. They think that was a mistake on the whole, but they are secretly proud of it, and also of the lady warriors--one of them had the domestic-sounding name of Hannah Snell--who lie buried in the old churchyard among their comrades. Visitors can see the hospital every week-day from 10 till dusk, except for an hour from 12.45 to 1.45, and they may attend the chapel services on Sunday at 11 A.M. and 6.30, when the pensioners in their brave scarlet coats remind one of Herkomer’s picture. My advice to you, if you want to see Chelsea Hospital really well, is to enlist one of the pensioners as guide. He will show you the old leather black-jacks, and Grinling Gibbons’ statue of Charles II. in a toga, and the colonnades of the old Wren building, so fine in its severe simplicity--and the flags in the chapel, so filmy now with age that they look as if a breath of wind would blow them to pieces--and the old portraits and many other arresting things. But what he will like best to exhibit will be the fragments of the bomb that hit one of the buildings during an air-raid. He won’t allow you to hold on to the belief that Nell Gwynne had anything to do with the foundation, but he will tell you a lot of interesting details about the regulations of the Hospital--how very little like an institution it is, and you will leave the building with an added respect for Charles II. After strolling about Chelsea one’s mind turns with insistence to the thought of buns, “r-r-rare Chelsea buns,” as Swift wrote to Stella. There is now nothing left but the name of Bunhouse Place, at the corner of Union Street and the Pimlico Road, of the famous shop where 100,000 buns used to be sold of a Good Friday Eve one hundred and forty years ago, and where the Georges and their Queens used to drive to fetch their buns. It was taken down in 1839, but the fasting sightseer--being in Chelsea and not in Bloomsbury or Bayswater--can easily find other places to stay his hunger. If he does not belong to the decorative sex--the phrase is Mr. Wagner’s, not mine--he will doubtless follow that very knowledgeable guide and betake him to the “Six Bells,” 195 King’s Road--a short distance from the Chelsea Town Hall, and there find the comfort that attracts its artist _clientèle_.