Some of them have survived the old place itself; for while they are in a new home, the ancient building has changed, if even it be not altogether dismantled. The leases paid good interest, and eight years ago a new French hospital arose – away from the dingy old precinct of the Golden Acre.
To see this later "Providence" aright, you must come through the very heart of that neighbourhood which was once the great Silk Colony, thread the bye-ways of Poverty Market, note the tall silent houses where the looms no longer rattle, nor the sharp whirr of the shuttle stirs cage-birds to sing; pass across the debatable land lying on the edge of Shoreditch, where human beings live in sties built in the backyards of other houses, in streets that are still with the blank silence of misery and want. You should walk amidst pigeon and dog fanciers; call in at certain dingy, slipshod taverns, where at night a slouching company will meet to hear bullfinches pipe for wagers, and where starving men and women stand and drink away the pence that are all too few to buy food for the starving brood at home, and so are flung upon the sloppy counter in exchange for the drugged drink that feels like food and fire in one. Through Bethnal Green, with its "townships" and its "Follies," extending in sordid rows of tenements built to one dreary pattern. Over districts which, only a few years ago, were fields and open spaces, leading to farm lands and hedgerows, and so away to the great expanse of marsh land where the dappled kine wade knee-deep in the lush pastures, and the stunted pollards stand like patient fishermen upon the river's brink.
Yes, the present "French Hospital" – New Providence – was built ten years ago in the border-land beyond the Weavers' Garden, that great garden and pleasure-ground known as Victoria Park. It is the only garden left to the descendants of those old craftsmen who once dwelt in houses every one of which had its gay plot of flowers, its rustic arbour, or its quaint device of grotto-work, built up of oddly-shaped stones and pearl-edged oyster-shells. Do you think there is now no remnant of the old French folk left? Come for a stroll among the grand beds and plantations of this East-end playground, and you shall see. On holidays and alas! on those days when (to use the expressive term handed down from prosperous times) the weaver is "at play" – that is to say, waiting for woof and weft, and so wiling away the sad and often hunger-bringing hours – you will see him, with his keen well-cut face, his dark appreciative eye, his long delicate hands, his well-brushed, threadbare coat and hat; and the mark of race is plainly to be noted in his intensity of look and his subdued patient bearing. He comes of a stock which had it not been of the hardiest and the most temperate and enduring in the world, would have disappeared a century ago. On Sunday mornings, when the bells are sounding round about him, he is to be met with lingering (with who shall say what inner sense of worship) by the strange shrubs and flowering plants, or standing with a pathetic look of momentary satisfaction on his lean, mobile face, to mark the rare glow and gush of colour made by the blooms in a "ribbon" device of flowers on a sunny border by a dark background of cedar. But come and see what his forefathers might have called, in their Scripture phraseology, "the remnant of the children of Israel;" the old inmates of that French Hospital founded so long ago when De Ruvigny was the "beloved cousin" of George I., and Philippe Menard preached at St. James's; when the Duchess de la Force brought donation after donation to the work, and Philippe Hervart, Baron d'Huningue gave £4,000, all in one splendid contribution, to the building fund. Could they have seen (who knows that they have not?) this great French château rising beyond the park palings in a neighbourhood fast filling with houses, but still open to the air that blows from the Weavers' Garden and from the great expanse of land leading towards the forest, they would have recognised the familiar style of those grand mansions which in France succeeded the castles of the feudal nobility when Henry Quatre was king. The high-pointed roof with its irregularly picturesque lines, the quaint towers and spires, the slate blue and purple, and rosy tints of colour in slope and wall and gable; the various combinations of form and hue changing with every point of view, make this modern copy of the old French château a wonderful feature in any landscape, and the unaccustomed visitor seeing it as it stands there in its own ornamental ground, surrounded by a quaint wall decorated in coloured bands, wonders what can be the meaning of a building so full of suggestion; while if he be of an imaginative turn, he may fall into a daydream when he peers through the gate that stands by the porter's lodge.
But let us pass through this gate, and so up to the entrance-hall, and we shall seem to leave behind us not only the Weavers' Garden, but most things English. The hall itself, paved with encaustic tile, leads to a flight of broad, shallow steps, beneath an arched ceiling of variegated brick and two screen arches. These steps conduct us at once to a central corridor, extending for the entire length of the building, and rising to the greatest height of the open roof of timber with its lofty skylights. In front of us is a double stone staircase, one branch being for the old ladies, the other for the men; and immediately at the foot of the former division is the entrance to the refectory, a large handsome dining-hall, where, at two long tables, this wonderful company assemble, only the very infirm having their meals carried to the upper ward, where they are waited on by paid attendants. Separate staircases are provided for the servants of the establishment, whose rooms are in the tower above the main wards – or rather, let us say, principal apartments, for they are not so much wards as a series of twenty-two large bedrooms, linen-rooms, and two bath-rooms. The steward of the hospital, a venerable gentleman with the courteous air and speech of some seneschal of olden time, has also his own apartments, reached by a third stair, his sitting-room and office occupying a space close to the entrance. On the right of the main staircase and at the end of the corridor is the ladies' sitting-room, a fine high-windowed light and lofty place, admirably warmed, as indeed all the building is, and so furnished that at each large square table four old ladies can sit and have not only ample space for books or needlework, but on her right hand each can open a special separate table-drawer with lock and key, wherein to keep such waifs and strays – shreds, patches, skeins, and unconsidered trifles – as children and old women like to accumulate. There is another day-room beside this, and a similar, though not quite so large an apartment is provided for the men, both rooms being furnished with sundry books and a few sober periodicals of the day.
It must not be forgotten though that many of the old gentlemen have grown accustomed to the use of tobacco, and here in the basement is a smoking-room, quite out of the way of the ordinary sitting and dining-rooms, and not far from the laundry and drying-rooms, which form an important part of the establishment.
But, hush! there is a hymn sounding yonder in the refectory; a hymn sung by voices, many of which are yet fresh and clear, though the singers number more than eighty years of life, and of life that has often been hard and full of heaviness.
It is the grace before meat, and the hot joints, with the fresh vegetables from their own garden, have just come up from the big kitchen by means of a lift to the serving-room.
There are no servants to wait at table, and the family dinner-party is a private one, inasmuch as it is the custom here for the most active of the inmates to agree among themselves who shall be butler, or beaufetière, for each day during the week. So the dinner-time goes pleasantly and quickly, the meat, the vegetables, and the capital household beer, of which each man has a pint twice a day, and each woman half a pint, being the only articles that require serving.
The good old-fashioned family custom of everybody having his or her own teapot is observed here. A great gas-boiler stands on one side the refectory, and a row of convenient lockers on the other; and each inmate has tea and coffee from the stores, while bread and butter are also served out for consumption according to each individual fancy, and not in rations at each meal time. Thus those old ladies and gentlemen who have spending money, or friends to bring them some of the little luxuries that they so keenly appreciate, can add a relish to their breakfast or to the evening beer.
We will not go in while they are at dinner, for there are those here yet who "might have been gentlefolk" but for the mutability of mortal affairs. Stay! here come the old ladies, with old-fashioned curtseys, which are more than half a bow, and not a mere vulgar "bob." There is no mistaking some of their faces. You may see their like in French pictures, or in old French towns still. Some of them with eyes from which the fire had not yet died out; with deftly-moving fingers; with a quick, springy step; with an inherited