The Lure of Old London

ERD M

Dec

it up with lunch in Curzon Street, during which I discovered in myself a quite new and marked talent for fiction. I won't say more out of consideration for your scruples, but I may mention

NDLING

I have never before visited, although I have often, in passing, looked inquisitively thr

and the picture hangs in the gallery there. A kindly gentleman he looks, with ruddy smiling

the left the boys in their funny uniform of brown cloth, with red waistcoats and twinkling brass buttons. "Love children!" It always

hite collars and black bows. I noticed that Mrs. D.'s attention was focussed on the boys. The poor old lady lost two sons in the war, and I expect she was seeing them again as small boys in some of those youngsters in the red waistcoats. For myself, it was the girls who distracted my attention from prayers and psalms. Those small maidens with their burnished hair under the white caps, their rosy faces and pr

s, the children raise the aprons and hide their small countenances behind them. The d

them took a joyous slide over the tiled pavement of the ambulatory. No doubt he was glad to be out of church, and was looking forward to his dinner. We shared his pleasant anticip

d down the long tables were placed at intervals a knife and fork, a mug, a piece of bread and a cake. The girls came trooping in and stood each by her place behind the forms, then at a given signal they stepped over the forms

Sunday dinner, and as one watched their contented faces and unconcerned manners one felt that, no matter wha

tairs to inspect the dormitories, "to think that there might '

rs," I rem

mother out er wedlock. Nature never took much account er the fathers. They ony got a walkin'-

t must sometimes pay a visit to the little sleepers who have no mothers to tuck them up. Those long dormitories, too, must often be haunted at nights by ghosts of the living women, who, in their dreams, look for one round face on its pillow-t

e rare, I should think, and that long pathway leading from the hospital to the iron gates mu

ould a woman who had parted from her child of a year old know it again at five? Did such women ever go to that prosaic-looking church and search the rows of small f

ospital? It was a question which opened up all sorts of possibilities and situations. There must be mothers who had died, mothers

e governors before they consent to such an application. As a rule, once the institution takes the children they belong to it practically for life. It does not wash its hands of them

lar person to whom the small boy or girl belongs. They do not miss these things because they have never known them, and, at least, they are not burdened with objectionable or tiresome relatives. There must, though

watching the light fade through the row of long windows, and finding fresh horrors in Raf?lle's "Murder of the Innocents," an enormous cartoon which covers nearly the whole of

glass case before the windows are the old coins, pieces of ribbon worked in beads, metal hearts, crosses, and buttons which were attached to the persons of the children when they

r such James the seconds. Probably many of the children we had been watching in the chapel could write "gent." after their fa

nk is faded and brown, the flourishes have the shakiness of age. One would give a great deal for an intimate knowledge of the occasion on which it was written. The Earl of Leicester's autograph is close by, and it bears a marked resemblance to Elizabeth's. Did he model it on that of his royal mistress? Did Elizabeth love Leicester? and if she did, was it with a tragic unconsciousness of his self

of which have treasures demanding a great deal more than a cursory glance. One has to live with such things to appreciate them, and these passing glimpses seem to me in the nature of an insult. There is, behind those glimpses, a haunted atmosphere made up

heir persons and countenances with their sentiments and actions," and I wanted to see if the Earl of Leicester's countenance fitted the story of his relations with Elizabeth, whether Nell Gwynne was as at

y afternoon draw her from the fireside, where she can, in comfo

ws of faces, each making its appeal for understanding, have an exhausting effect after a t

faces staring patiently from its walls give a curiously crowded sense to its emptiness, and one pictures them at closing time when the last visitor has gone, and the attendant has switched off the lights. I think I should give the Duke of Monmouth, painted after his execution, a wide berth then.

e of his queen from her girlhood's days until his death. There have been sinister stories told about Leicester. Ben Jonson said the Earl gave his wife "a bottle of liquor which he willed her to use in any faintness, which she, not knowing it was poison, gave him, and s

eculation in the eyes, and there one finds Samuel of the Diary. Bunyan hangs next to him, a humorous looking old chap, a man o

inger in direction of her royal lover. By the by, I didn't know Whitfield squinted! There is a quaint picture of hi

e with Charles's lawful consort. How about "Bloody Queen Mary" with old John Foxe and Elizabeth with Mary Queen of Scots? Meanwhile Horace Walpole would be quizzing the lot of them (I know it by the bright busy-body expression in his eyes), and writing letters to Madame du Deffand to tell her all abo

er about Horace Walpole and Madame du Deffand as we sat over the fire drinking our tea, and she remarked that there were "no fools like old fools". This was a bit damping, and I said to myself, "George, you must be a very lonely man to seek the company of such an unsympathetic woman!"

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