And Godalming is celebrated in modern times on two distinct counts: firstly for having been a pioneer in lighting street-lamps by electricity, and secondly for being the new home of Charterhouse School, removed from London in 1870, under the care of the Rev. W. Haig Brown, who still remains head-master of Thomas Sutton’s old foundation. The school-buildings stand on the plateau of a down, at a distance of about a mile from Godalming, and occupy a site of about eighty acres.
Here the Carthusians carry on the traditions of their old home in London, and some of the stones of the old school, deeply carved with the names of by-gone scholars, have been removed from old Charterhouse to the new building, where they are to be seen built into an archway. Charterhouse School numbers five hundred scholars, and its lovely situation, amid the Surrey Hills, together with its finely-planned buildings and spreading grounds, render this amongst the foremost public schools of the time.
One of the most interesting features of the school is its museum, housed in a building of semi-ecclesiastical aspect, built recently in the grounds. Here are many relics of old times and old scholars, together with the more usual collections of a country museum: stuffed birds, chipped flints, and miscellaneous antiquities; or, to quote the sarcastic Peter Pindar:—
“More broken pans, more gods, more mugs;
Old snivel-bottles, jordans, and old jugs;
More saucepans, lamps, and candlesticks, and kettles;
In short, all sorts of culinary metals!”
CHARTERHOUSE
Among the alumni of Charterhouse were Addison and Steele; John Wesley, the founder of Methodism; Chief Justice Blackstone, Sir Henry Havelock, Grote, Thackeray, and John Leech. Several of these distinguished Carthusians are represented here, in a fine collection of autographs and manuscripts. First, in point of view of general interest, is a collection of drawings and poems in their original MS. by Thackeray. Some thirty of his weird sketches are here, with the manuscript of “The Newcomes,” bound up in five volumes. Here also is Thackeray’s Greek Lexicon, covered thickly with school-boy scrawls and scribbles.
CHARTERHOUSE RELICS.
Leech, the caricaturist,—one of the most absurdly over-rated men of this century,—was at Charterhouse from 1825 to 1831. Here are two letters from him, written, it would seem, when he was ten years of age, and apparently before he had been taught the use of capital letters. In one to “my dear mama,” he seems to have been in a far from happy frame of mind. His “mama” had been to the school, but had not seen him, “me being in the grounds,” “That,” he adds, “made me still more unhappy.” Writing to “my dear papa,” young Leech is “happy to say I am promoted, because I know it pleases you very much. allow me to come out to see you on saturday because I have a great deal to tell you, and I want some one to assist me in the exercises because they are a great deal harder.”
