Free They Hanged My Saintly Billy by Robert Graves Page A

acquainted with the circumstances of Palmer's leaving his appointment in Liverpool, and of his ill-behav iour at Dr Tylecote s; and doubtl ess also of his profligate life while walking the wards in Stafford Infirmary. To encourage such a depraved young man to marry my Annie for her money was nothing short of criminal; and so I told him to his face.
    Chapter V
    STAFFORD INFIRMARY
    S TAFFORD, an ancient borough and market-town celebrated for its red bricks, its shoes, and its salt works, contains no less than thirteen thousand inhabitants; of whom at least three thousand (or so we were assured by the landlord of The Junction Hotel) are usually sober—reckoning children among that number. As seen from the railway, the town appears, at this season, like an island lying in a yellowish lake. The farmers here flood their mea dows to manure them, and the aptl y named River Sow is therefore divided into a dozen or more streams, which career crazily along with their discoloured waters, in haste to hurl themselves into the swollen Trent below.
    All the new houses are built in brick so red that it hurts the eyes —as though one were staring at a fire—and capped by ugly slate roofs. Yet cross the long wooden bridge with its white railings, near the railway station, turn around by a flour mill and follow the lane until you reach Greengate Street'; and there you will find a charming row of old half-timbered houses on either side of the street, some large, some small, but all with heavy carved gables, and warm-coloured plaster set between the dark-brown timbers.
    One house close to the Market Place is well worth a visit. Its great forehead hangs halfway over the pavement, with large bay windows like four-poster bedsteads let into the wall. The pale oaken beams standing out from the plaster-work are arranged in a variety of graceful lines that recall the tattooing on the body of a South Sea blander. Messrs Jenkinson & Co., linen-drapers, occupy the premises, and their shop window is decked out with every article 'that fashion can require or beauty desire*—as an advertisement informs us. Festoons of pink and blue ribbon elegantl y droop from side to side, and bright yellow driving gloves are arranged in straight lines across the panes. At the entrance door, a bundle of coloured silk parasols and another of sober black umbrellas are stacked like so many halberds in an armoury; and through the bay windows above you can see piles of blue hat- boxes, tall slabs of linen cloth , and portly canvas blocks of unpacked goods, bound around with bands of iron, as if to keep their figures in. Mr Jen kin son, the proprietor, will be introduced to our readers presently.
    Meanwhile, here is the Town Hall, towering up from th e Market Place, with a clock stuck against it like a target. It can hardly be called a pretty building, having no more ornament than a blank sheet of wr iting paper, and the windows are mere holes in the wall; but at least it is built of Portland stone, not red brick. On either side of it stand half-timbered houses, with cock-hat roofs and their fronts slashed like a soldier's uniform, which lend its pallid stucco walls a certain aristocratic dignity, as it might be an austere and gloomy Tsar surrounded by his merry Muscovite bodyguard. Then, for Tsarina, you have the tall, white, square tower of St Mary's, a church founded by King John, and famous for its memorial to Stafford's most celebrated son—Izaak Walton, the Angler. Passing the Grammar School, an ancient foundation enlarged by King Edward VI, you will observe a dozen or more inns; an elegant bowling green; and the Stafford Infirmary, about whose architecture t he less said the better, but whi ch has now acquired a certain historic lustre from the circumstance of William Palmer's having, for a period, walked its wards.
    There are many better—and we fear, many even worse— hospitals for the indigent sick than this Infirmary. Money for its support being grudgingly voted,