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HOSPITAL SKETCHES

1916




HOSPITAL SKETCHES

BY

ROBERT SWAIN PEABODY


          BOSTON & NEW YORK
          HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
          _The Riverside Press Cambridge_
          1916




          COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY ROBERT SWAIN PEABODY
          ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
          _Published December 1916_


          "_Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
            Enwrought with golden and silver light,
            The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
            Of night and light and the half light;
            I would spread the cloths under your feet:
            But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
            I have spread my dreams under your feet;
            Tread softly because you tread on my dreams._"
                                               W. B. YEATS.




NOTE


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS are made to Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons for
permission to use a passage from Edith Wharton's _Fighting France_ and
to The Macmillan Company for the use of the poem "Aedh wishes for the
Cloths of Heaven," by W. B. Yeats.




CONTENTS


  INTRODUCTION                                              ix

  VIEW FROM THE HOSPITAL TERRACE                             1

  UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
      I. The Minster and the Meadows                         3
     II. The Church Yard                                     7
    III. The Village                                        11
     IV. The Hall                                           15
      V. Trong's Almshouses                                 19

  RANCONEZZO
     VI. The Town and the Lake                              23
    VII. Piazza Garibaldi                                   27
   VIII. Piazza Cavour                                      31
     IX. North Door of the Duomo                            35
      X. Interior of the Duomo                              39
     XI. The Villa of the Cardinal Schalchi-Visconti        43
    XII. Santa Prassede, the Cardinal's Church              47
   XIII. The Cloisters of Sta Prassede                      51
    XIV. The Tomb of the Cardinal in Sta Prassede           55

  ROCHER-ST.-POL
     XV. The Town and the River Merle                       59
    XVI. La Grande Rue and La Place de la Republique        63
   XVII. L'escalier de Jacob                                67
  XVIII. Le Parvis de Ste Fredigonde                        71
    XIX. Interior of the Church of Ste Fredigonde           75
     XX. Sacristy Steps in the Church of Ste Fredigonde     79
    XXI. The Chateau Beaumesnil                             83
   XXII. La Tour de la Dame Blanche                         87

  AEGINASSOS
  XXIII. The Temple and the Forum                           91
   XXIV. The Temple and the Forum                           95




INTRODUCTION


                                              JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL,
                                               BALTIMORE, MARYLAND,
                                                _December, 1915._

ONE of my good friends, a stanch upholder of what to him is "The
Catholic Church," looks back to the thirteenth century as marking the
highest tide of Christian civilization. He longs for a restoration (but
under other rule) of that monastic life which then gave shelter to Art,
Science, Learning, and Religion. It does not appear that this longing is
coupled with any regret for the exceptionally happy domestic life with
which he personally has been blessed. Probably his hopes are that even
if he establishes, others will maintain, that monastic life and
discipline which, duly purified from Ultramontane tendencies, he thinks
would be so uplifting and beneficial to our times.

However that may be, if he is ever immured for many weeks in a great
hospital, he will be surprised to find how many are the similarities
between its life, its discipline and its atmosphere, and those of the
great monasteries. I mean those mediaeval houses which spread from the
parent at Monte Cassino to Citeaux and Cluny and Vezelay and thence to
far-away parts of Europe, and which were even more abundant in England
where the ruins of the Yorkshire Abbeys still attest to their former
power. When the time is ripe for the change longed for by our friend he
will find that very slight additions to a modern hospital will give him
what he wants in great perfection.

Grateful though I am to them--deeply grateful--yet I know little