ART IN HOSPITALS.
LORD DERBY said the other day at Liverpool that if We are not an artistic people, we have never had the chance of being such. He thought that our smoky atmosphere and our ugly factories had not given Englishmen fair-play in showing their real artistic capabilities. We rather fear that this analysis, so soothing to the national pride, goes no deeper than do some of his Lordship's observations on the Eastern Question. He did not stop to consider whether we make what use we might of our artistic opportunities. Of course we do not ; and a glaring instance of this will at once occur to most of us. The most distinctive build- ings of our age are, on the whole, our great hospitals, and yet we have done almost nothing to beautify them internally. Ancient art lavished its facile strength on its temples and vast public buildings. 11/Le1itev5l art found worthy occupation on the great Cathedrals which piety scattered over Europe, or in the Town-
halls which the outburst of tree civic life built in the Low Countries and theItalian Republics. We cannot again build temples or cathedrals such as those already built for us ; but we have our hospitals, as distinctive of our time as the Parthenon and the Cloth Hall at Ypres, the Town Hall at Louvain, and the Cathe- drals of Chartres and Rheims were of theirs ; and why should they not be monuments of beauty ? We do not speak so much of archi- tectural merits,—that implies much cost, and we can quite under- stand the stern necessity which makes most hospitals—all, in fact, except a few old ones, such as the Ospitale Grande at Milan— outwardly very plain. We refer to their interiors, which are now, as a rule, hideous and repulsive in their bareness,—veri- table wastes of whitewash—and which at no impracticable expense might be made very much the reverse. In short, Art in Hospitals, which is now almost non-existent, as we conceive it, might be a fruitful field.
We rather think that the public is just awakening to this fact. A few people—Mr. Herbert, RA., for example—have long preached what we now say. They did do so for many a day with not much effect ; but now, if we may judge by many letters which have appeared in the newspapers for some months back, the con- viction is rapidly spreading that a modern hospital ward, dull, blank, and bare, is a mistake. The old notions that pictures ought not to be brought into hospitals because the frames would harbour dust, and because they would disturb the mental peace of the patients, are being shaken ; and we know of children's hospitals with wards which are fresh and beautiful, and fair to see. Of course, we are bound to respect all prejudices connected with hospital manage- ment springing from a love of cleanliness. Certainly it is quite essential that the walls should be such that they can be washed often and easily ; and it would be necessary to use a little ingenuity in hanging pictures, and to be careful that the frame did not become the receptacles of dirt or dust. But these are, as is now generally admitted, not insuperable obstacles,—neat, willing hands, and plenty of soap-and-water or wet towels will overcome them ; and we have noticed with much pleasure many expressions of desire to make our hospitals beautiful with pictures, and occasionally with sculpture. Let ue not be misunderstood on this point. We do not say that bright, sunny landscapes hung in comfortless wards would work miracles,—that the lame would take up their beds and walk by dint of looking at some soothing Madonna on the opposite wall, and that pain would be dulled and the weary pillow smoothed by the sight of some ideal scene of love and charity pictured above the sufferer's head. As a positive agency of healing, the sight of quietly beautiful objects all around might not, indeed, be without appreciable effect, if it be true, as a high authority, Miss Nightingale, says, that "the first necessity of a convalescent hospital is that it should not be like a hospital at all," and that it is of the utmost consequence "to get rid of the idea of being in hospital altogether from the minds of the inmates, and to substitute for it that of home, As long as they are hospital inmates, they feel as hospital inmates, they think as hospital in- mates, they act as hospital inmates, not as people recovering." "Variety of form and brilliancy of colour in the objects presented to patients," says the same lady, "are actual means of recovery." But we do not press this ; we are looking now at the indirect, less visible effects of beauti- fying our hospitals ; and in this point of view, consider what a priceless pleasure to convalescents may be one picture, lighting up the homelessness of a dull, cheerless ward I Question those who have come triumphantly through a long, tedious illness, and who are getting well, and they will generally tell you that one of the effects of their waiting for the return of health has been to grave in their memories something which, but for their illness, would have been forgotten as soon as noted, or would not have been observed at all. But unfortunately, these enduring memories are generally of trivial, worthless things. The patient will tell you, if he is frank, that he recollects with strange vividness some crack in the ceiling above his bed, some flaw in the window- glass, which, in his delirium, he distorted into terrible faces and menacing forms of evil, and which, in his calm, convalescent hours, he tried fantastically to turn into mystical letters, or half-formed sketches of what was passing within himself. Question him a little more as to the days when he was getting, well, and you will know—if you are not a nurse, perhaps for the. first time—that these were days of strange susceptibility ; that childhood's freshness and receptiveness seemed to return ; that the mind was indeed then like the metaphysician's sheet of white paper, ready to take any passing impression, for good or bad ; and that as he stepped on the threshold of strength, his
eyes and ears took in what before was too subtle or delicate for his ken. Patients will tell you, with something like enthusiasm, of their joy as they heard the swish of the swaying, wind-tossed trees under their chamber windows, or watched the twinkling motion of the leaves of a tall poplar, the top of which might be just seen from their bed. They never forget how they chanced in their many waking hours to see the moon hovering over a neighbouring spire—like the dot to an i, as Alfred de Musset has it—and embowered in clouds and her own diffused loveliness. A chance flower, a bit of verse repeated by a nurse, a scrap of music, wafted from the street below, a pretty sentence in the letter of a friend, will thrill them as they never were moved before, and will cling limpet-like to their memories. The sight of "the baby" was sometimes more to them than the visit of the doctor. "I shall never forget," says one whose words carry just weight on this subject, "the rapture of fever-patients over a bunch of bright-coloured flowers." Nurses will tell you that there often comes to the most callous and withered human beings in these times a restless longing to see something fresh and beautiful, and that the obtusest betray a craving to look out of the window and to watch the motions of the birds and listen to their songs. These are the times when the parched mind, barely capable of bearing the common, cheap grain of life, seems to show possibili- ties of fruit and flower ; and why not use the opportunity ? Charles Lamb, writing of the convalescent, says, "His bed is a very discipline of humanity and tender heart ;" and why indeed should not the bed of a patient in one of our hospitals who has emerged from the darkness of actual pain, but who has not yet gained "the ttrra _firma of established health," be in sober fact that which Lamb called it in playful irony ? Why should we despair of occasionally sending forth the inmates of our great hospitals not only sound in limb and body, but with new senses awakened within them, now and purer sources of delights opened for them, and the days of their confinement being not only the date of their return to health, but also of their spiritual new birth ? And what could there be more fitted to stir up the dor- mant capabilities of better things in sufferers than some picture luminously setting forth a noble thought, the memory of which will be as an ever-burning light within them ?
If we are not much mistaken, too, the development of art in hospitals would be beneficial to artists as well as to the sick. The best and most earnest-minded of the former complain that they must so often paint for rather mean and frivolous objects, quite unworthy of their capabilities ; that their best pictures will pro- bably be buried in private houses, that their art cannot be in the best sense practical, and that they can so rarely feel the inspira- tion which comes from their work being connected with religion, or becoming part and parcel of some great public institutions. If they are successful, what does it mean but that their pictures will be bought well, and will be consigned to great galleries and collections, where the really good work will not be seen to most advantage, and where, owing to multifarious distractions, it will assuredly never be lovingly appreciated as it deserves? Here, we say, is their opportunity also. In the first place, their pictures will be well seen, for the great rule of modern nursing is, "Let there be light." The tall walls, now so blank, and the good lightstreaming through the wide windows, will give them all they can desire for hanging their pictures. They will have attentive, thankful specta- tors, in the generations of sick,who will look up hour after hour with gratitude to their handywork, which lights up the cruel vacancy of the dull walls. And what nobler inspiration could they have than the consciousness that they will minister to the weal of thousands most in need of comfort, and that their names must go down to posterity in company with institutions which are likely to last, in one form or another, while humanity itself endures?
If once the idea which we have indicated is grasped by many people, its success on a large scale is in this country assured. But as a beginning, little things ought not to be despised. In lack of better art, the best chromos or oleotypes ought not to be utterly spurned ; only they should be few, not small, and—if such can be found—with something large and generous in their treatment and subjects. They should be chosen by artists, or failing that, in accordance with the wish of really intelligent nurses. Committees ought to have no say in the matter ; they would be sure to splash the walls with gaudy daubs, or pictures destitute of character. But certainly a few humble ehromos do not form our notion of what art in hospitals ought to be. We look for a time when many of the greatest pictures of our genera- tion, instead of being cooped up in galleries and collections—which are no more the natural abodes of art treasures than a big crowd ja the natural place for man—will find fit resting-place in the
lofty, well-lighted wards of our great hospitals. If the State does not lend, as it well might, some of the pictures which are now lodged in the National Gallery or Kensington, men of wealth who now think of bequeathing their art collections to the nation may be induced to think of the greater wants of our hospitals. Man lives not by bread alone, nor is he certainly cured by abundance of cod-liver oil, other things being wanting. And we see no reason why occasionally liberal congregations or towns, wishing to benefit a hospital, should not say, without reproach on the score of folly or waste, "Ye shall subscribe to buy some sea-piece by Brett, some Scriptural work by Holman Hunt, or some worthy copy of a great master, and put it in the chief ward, as our best votive offering to health." It would be the box of ointment over again.
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