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On the 19th of May the Queen laid the foundation of the military hospital at Netley, which she had greatly at heart. In June a serious accident, which might have been fatal, occurred to the Princess Royal while her promised bridegroom was on a visit to this country.
One seemed to be no nearer the war there than in London or Manchester. Troops marched to the station and disappeared into the night; so they did at home. There were hospitals there, filled with wounded men; none so large or so full as Netley. There was a big camp there; not so big a camp as Aldershot.
St Bernard loved the valleys as St Benedict the hills, and as St Bernard was the refounder of the Cistercian Order to which Beaulieu belonged, it, like Waverley, Tintern, Netley, and a hundred others in England, was set in one of those delicious vales in which I think England is richer than any other country, and which here, in England of my heart, seem to demand rather our worship than our praise.
Two or three miles to the southward lies Netley, a small village with the remains of an abbey dating from the reign of Henry I. The road to Netley followed the shore closely, but on nearing the village suddenly entered an avenue of fine trees which so effectually concealed the ruin that we stopped directly opposite the abbey to inquire its whereabouts.
I put the case to the captain, and after he had learned all the particulars he hastened to assure me that he would waive prosecution of the offense. He said some of the people in Netley were prejudiced against motors and no doubt were annoyed by the numerous tourists who came there to visit the abbey.
'It seems to me, Lord Palmerston wrote to Lord Panmure, 'that at Netley all consideration of what would best tend to the comfort and recovery of the patients has been sacrificed to the vanity of the architect, whose sole object has been to make a building which should cut a dash when looked at from the Southampton river... Pray, therefore, stop all further progress in the work until the matter can be duly considered. But the Bison was not to be moved by one peremptory letter, even if it was from the Prime Minister.
Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister; she had known him from her childhood; he was a near neighbour of her father's in the New Forest. She went down to the New Forest, armed with the plan of the proposed hospital and all the relevant information, stayed the night at Lord Palmerston's house, and convinced him of the necessity of rebuilding Netley.
And then when Netley walked up to the head of the table and laid down a cheque for a hundred dollars conditional on the fund reaching one hundred thousand the room was in an uproar. A hundred thousand dollars! Just think of it! The figures fairly stagger one. To think of a hundred thousand dollars raised in five minutes in a little place like Mariposa! And even that was nothing!
I toiled with fluttering hands that day, and I believe that I was of the colour of ashes to my very lips. By half-past two o'clock I was finished, and by three was coasting down Southampton Water by Netley Hospital and the Hamble-mouth, having said not one word about anything at the telephone, or even to my own guilty heart not a word.
We proceeded to Netley Creek to breakfast, where we met Pigewis the chief of a tribe of Saulteaux Indians, who live principally along the banks of the river. This chief breakfasted with the party, and shaking hands with me most cordially, expressed a wish that "more of the stumps and brushwood were cleared away for my feet, in coming to see his country."
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