

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
sympathies than upon our gratitude and respect.  The college is THEIRS;
they look, walk, and talk, in perfect and indisputable consciousness that
it is their house, and that those who cross its courts, loiter in its
gardens, or view its halls, chapel, and dormitories, are but
visitors—graciously admitted, and generously instructed by them.  And who
will dare to question their right?

                       [Picture: The Summer House]

The veterans are, as they may well be, proud of their country and their
hospital; they are too natural to disguise the feeling that they love a
good listener; to such they will tell how Madam Gwyn asked the king—the
second Charles—to endow a last earthly home for his brave soldiers; and
how rejoiced she was to have it built at Chelsea, because she was born
there, for that all human souls love the places where they were born!
They point to the tattered flags in the noble hall and sacred chapel, as
if the trophies were actually won by their own hands; they will digress
from them to Sir Christopher Wren, not seeming to know very clearly
whether the great architect or Charles the Second planned the
structure—they are apt to confound Henry the Eighth with the second
James, who presented to their church such splendid communion plate; but
make no mistake at all about Queen Victoria, who came herself to see
them—“God bless her Majesty!”  I never met one who was not proud of his
quarters; they praise the freshness and sweetness of the air, the
liberality of the treatment, and point out, with gratitude, their little
gardens which occupy the site of the famous Ranelagh of fashionable
memory, where they can follow their own fancies, cultivating, in their
plots of ground, the flowers, or herbs, or shrubs that please them best;
THE SUMMER-HOUSE, which they say Lord John Russell built for them,
occupies a prominent position there; it was worthy a descendant of the
noble house of Bedford to care for brave soldiers in the evening of their
days.  If you have patience, and feel interested in the cheerful
garrulities of age, they will hint that they fear the new embankment of
“The Thames” will still more dry up the land-springs, and injure their
fine old trees.  Some can describe the ancient conduit which supplied
Winchester Palace and Beaufort House with water, and point out (if you
will extend your walk so far) the various sites of houses in the
immediate vicinity, where dwelt the great men of old times,—chiefest
among them all, the wise Sir Thomas More, Lord High Chancellor of
England, who lived “hard by,” and had for his near neighbours the Earl of
Essex, the Princess Elizabeth; and, farther down, at Old Brompton, Oliver
Cromwell and Lord Burleigh.  But those who would know more than the
pensioners can tell them concerning Chelsea, and its neighbourhood—that
suburb of London most rich in honourable and interesting associations
with the past—may consult good Mr. Faulkner, the accurate and
pains-taking Historian of the district, who lives in a small book-shop
near at hand, flourishing, as he ought to, in the very centre of places
he has so effectually aided to commemorate.

                     [Picture: Nell Gwyn and Charles]

The story of “Mistress Nelly’s” prayer that an asylum might be provided
for aged veterans, “whose work was done,” rests mainly on tradition; but
there is nothing of improbability about it.  Her influence over the
voluptuous monarch,

    “Who never said a foolish thing
    And never did a wise one,”

was, at one period, unbounded.  It was in this instance, at least,
exerted in the cause of mercy and virtue, as well as gratitude; the
College remains a lasting contradiction to the memorable epigram I have
quoted; inasmuch as a “wiser thing” than its foundation, to say nothing
of its justice, is not recorded in the chronicles of the reign of any
British sovereign.  Many a victory has been won for these kingdoms by the
knowledge that the maimed soldier will not be a deserted beggar—by the
certainty that honourable “scars” will be healed by other ointment than
that of mere pity!  Chelsea and Greenwich are enduring monuments to prove
that a Nation knows how to be grateful.  The brave men who pace along
these corridors may “talk o’er their wounds,” and while shouldering their
crutches, to “show how fields were won,” point to the recompense as a
stimulus to younger candidates for glory.  Who can sufficiently estimate
the value of this reward?  Let us ask what it has done for our country;
but let us ask it on the battle fields, where French eagles were taken:
eagles, a score of which are now the trophies of our triumphs, in the
very halls which the veterans, who won them, tread up and down.

The pensioners—though, as human beings, each may have a distinctive
character—are, to a certain degree, alike; clean and orderly, erect in
their carriage for a much longer period than civilians of equal ages, and
disputing all the encroachments of time, inch by inch—fighting with as
much determination for life as formerly they did for glory.  When they
die, they die