

Transcribed from the 1844 edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org.
Many thanks to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Libraries,
Local Studies, for allowing their copy to be used for this transcription.

                     [Picture: Decorative title page]

                                   THE
                              FORLORN HOPE:
                                    A
                                  STORY
                                    OF
                               OLD CHELSEA.

                                    BY
                             Mrs. S. C. HALL.

                    [Picture: Chelsea from the Thames]

CHELSEA Hospital, or, as the old soldiers prefer to call it, “Chelsea
College,” appears much the same at all seasons of the year; its simple,
dignified, and, if the phrase may be permitted, healthful and useful,
style of architecture, suggests the same ideas, under the hot sun of June
and amid the snows of bleak December; bringing conviction that the
venerable structure is a safe, suitable, comfortable, and happy, as well
as honourable, retreat for the brave men who have so effectually “kept
the foreigner from fooling us.”  The simple story I have to tell,
commences with a morning in April, 1838.  It was a warm, soft morning, of
the first spring month; the sun shone along the colonnade of “the Royal
College.”  Some of the veterans—who, fearing rheumatism more than they
ever feared cold steel or leaden bullet, had kept close quarters all the
winter, in their comfortable nooks up stairs—were now slowly pacing
beside the stately pillars of their own palace, inhaling the refreshing
breeze that crossed the water-garden from the Thames, and talking
cheerfully of the coming summer.  Truly the “pensioners” seem, to the
full, aware of their privileges, and of their claims—far less upon our
sy