Royal Hospital for Incurables

Her friends included writers Laurens van der Post and William Plomer (who was also a reader for her publisher, Jonathan Cape ). They also included her housekeeper, Ellen Beckwith (with whom she put herself on...

The poem, in regular iambic pentameters, begins with long, ode-like stanzas composed mostly but not wholly of quatrains, and moves into mostly couplets as it turns from exposition (about the hospital and about fund-raising activities...

HS intended her poem entitled Incurable! or, the Suffering Family. A Poem (issued as Mrs. Gordon Smythies) to benefit the Royal Hospital for Incurables , as her title-page explained.