64. Poetry in motion at Joyce Green Hospital.

Poetry in motion at Joyce Green Hospital.

Key words/phrases: Head Gardener: “Mac” MacIntyre, Etienne de Grellet du Mabillier (a.k.a. Stephen Grellet), Lyon Military College, body-guard of Louis XVI, Queens District of New York City, Quakers, William Penn, George Fox, Illinois, New Orleans, Canada, Pope Pius VII, Czar Alexander 1st and the Kings of Spain and Prussia.

No. 64

I once shared an office with a health visitor who had a poster behind her desk of a sunset bearing the caption: “We don’t remember hours, we remember moments.”

Does that ring true in your experience ? Can you still remember brief experiences, thoughts or feelings that occurred long ago with an unexpected degree of clarity ? If so I suppose that this says something important about the profound impact that certain things have upon us at the time that they occur ?

One of the many things that I can remember happening to me whilst I was working at Joyce Green Hospital was being given a lift by “Mac” MacIntyre, the head gardener, in the Gardens Dept van down the main drive and out of the hospital. I was on my way to Dartford and he stopped just before the Porter’s Lodge by the main gate and offered me a lift.

It was a cold morning and I had just missed the bus that would have dropped me off at Dartford railway station. As we set off in the van, I thanked him for taking the trouble to stop and offer me a lift, to which his response was: “I shall pass this way but once.”

I asked him what he meant and in his rolling Scottish accent he said, “Do ye nae know tha ?” I shook my head to show that I didn’t, which prompted him into reciting part of a poem as he drove further down the drive. A verse of which - very strangely - has stayed in the back of my mind for the last 40 years:

“I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

But why did this verse have such an impact on me, so much so that it became burnt into my memory ? I suppose that it was one another of those occasions in early adulthood when the brevity of life dawned on me and “Mac”, who was also aware of how short life can sometimes be had “walked the talk” that day in offering me a lift.

The poem, by the way, is attributed to a certain Etienne de Grellet du Mabillier who later on in life became known as Stephen Grellet.

He was the son of a well-to-do counsellor to King Louis XVI, was raised as a Roman Catholic & was educated at the Military College in Lyon. At the age of 17yrs he joined the body-guard of Louis XVI but when he was sentenced to be executed in 1795 (during the French Revolution) he escaped & fled to Newtown, now part of Queens, New York City.

In 1796, impressed by the writings of William Penn, George Fox and the Quaker faith he joined the Society of Friends. He traded in New York and used his profits to finance a series of missionary tours extending through all the settled parts of the USA, west to Illinois, north into Canada and south to New Orleans.

Driven by his faith he developed an interest in education, in prison and hospital conditions, in provision for the poor and in various other social problems and he made it his business to inquire into prevailing conditions in every country that he visited. Somewhat surprisingly he was granted meetings with various rulers and dignitaries around the globe including Pope Pius VII, Czar Alexander I and the Kings of Spain and Prussia to whom he made recommendations for improvements in conditions wherever he could.

I suppose that it dawned upon him that he was only likely to be able to influence certain situations once in his life - as he passed by - and it seems to have made him determined to take action wherever it was possible, as “Mac” did that day when he had the chance on the main drive of Joyce Green Hospital and made that small gesture.