Thackeray's London: a description of his haunts and the scenes of his novels

by William H. Rideing

The buildings form an irregular cluster spread over a prodigal area, and isolated by a wall of brick and stone which many London fogs and long days of yellow weather have reduced to the dismalest of colors. None of them are lofty; some of them are of granite, and others of brick, upon which age has cast a smoky mantle. They are separated by wide courts and winding passages; and when I was there in the Easter vacation these open spaces were vacant, and the brisk twittering of the sparrows was the only sound that came from them. The quiet seemed all the greater, inasmuch as all around the walls is a busy neighbourhood, full of traffic and voices. The courts are for the most part paved with small cobblestones, and are cleanly swept; but some of them are grassy—grassy in the dingy and feeble way of London vegetation. These buildings look as sad as they are old; to the juvenile imagination the high walls and the severe architecture must be sharply distressing, and many a boy has felt his heart sink with misgiving as, for the first time, he has been driven through the old gate-way, to be placed as a scholar on Thomas Sutton’s [15] famous foundation.

At this old gate-way, one day, I saw a very feeble old gentleman, strangely dressed in a scarlet waistcoat and bright blue trowsers, a brass-buttoned coat, and a high silk hat. He was very small and very weak, moving slowly with the help of a stick, and coughing painfully behind his pocket handkerchief. To my question as to the admission of strangers, he said, quaveringly: “If you are a patron, you may see the buildings, but you had better ask the janitor; there he is. I,” he added, with some hesitation, “I am one of the poor brethren.”

The old head bowed down with years and sorrow, the white hair, the troublesome cough, the courteous amiability of manner, reminded me of Colonel Newcome—Codd Newcome, as the boys began to call him; and, indeed, this old gentleman had been a captain in the Queen’s service, as the janitor afterward told us, though he was not as stately nor as handsome as the dear old Colonel was. None of the celebrities of Charterhouse possesses the same vivid interest, the same hold upon our sympathies, the same command of the affections, as the brave, high-minded, large-hearted old soldier, who sacrificed all he had in the world to keep his honour spotless, and to shield others from misery.

As the janitor took us from hall to hall in the dark, monastic buildings, Colonel Newcome was constantly before us, and his figure, even more than that of Thackeray himself, filled our minds, and made us feel kindly to the old pensioners who were sunning themselves at the doors of their rooms, or were gathered in a quiet corner of one of the courts, chatting or reading.

The pensioners, of whom there are eighty, remain in the old buildings, in which each of them has a sitting-room and a bed-room, with a servant to wait upon him. Their table is a common one, in a grand old dining-hall, and twice a day they don their gowns to go to service in the little chapel, to thank God for his manifold blessings and mercies. But the boys have been removed since 1870 to a magnificent new-school at Godalming, Surrey, thirty-four miles away from London fogs and the crowds of Smithfield, and they have taken nearly all the relics of Thackeray with them, including the little bed in which he slept while a scholar. Their part of the buildings is now occupied by the Merchant Taylors’ School, which has added a large new schoolroom to the square. The ground is immensely valuable, and from an economic point of view it seems a waste to devote it to the obsolete buildings which fill the greater part of it. Soon, no doubt, another home will be found for the poor brethren, and when commerce takes possession of Charterhouse Square, one of the most interesting piles in London town will disappear. [19]

The cleanliness and orderliness which leave no scrap of waste or wisp of straw or ridge of dust visible in the approach have also swept up every part of the interior; and though the smoke and dust have taken a tenacious hold, the charwoman’s besom and scrubbing-brush have been vigorously applied. The buildings look quite as old as they are. The oaken wainscoting is the deepest brown; the balusters and groining are massive and carved; the tapestries are indistinct and phantasmal, like faded pictures, and the walls are like those of a fortress. It is easy in these surroundings to conjure up visions of the middle ages.

The site of the dormitories of the Charterhouse boys is now occupied by the new school-room of the Merchant Taylors; but looking upon it is a dusky cloister, once given to the prayerful meditations of the friars, which in Thackeray’s time and later was used for games of ball; the gloom is everywhere. The ghosts of the silent brothers seem fitter tenants than the boys with shining faces and ringing voices. There are narrow, suspicious-looking passages, and heavily-barred, irresistible oaken doors. But these corridors and barriers against the unwelcome lead into several apartments of truly magnificent size and faded splendour. The dining-hall of the poor brethren has wainscoting from twelve to twenty feet high, a massively groined roof, a musicians’ gallery with a carved balustrade, and a large fire-place framed in ornamental oak, over which the Sutton arms are emblazoned; while at the end of the room is a portrait of the founder, dressed in a flowing gown and the suffocatingly frilled collar of his time. Parallel to this, and accessible by a low door, is the dining-hall of the gown boys, a long, narrow room, with a very low ceiling, high wainscoting, a knotty floor, insufficient windows, and another large fire-place inclosed by an elaborate mantel-piece of oak. Here almost side by side, these boys with life untried before them and the old men well-nigh at their journey’s end, ate the bread provided for them by their common benefactor, and joined voices in thanksgiving; here still the old pensioners assemble, and in trembling voices murmur grace over the provision made for them. Upstairs there is a banqueting-hall, which is not inferior in sombre grandeur to that of the poor brothers, and was once honoured by the presence of Queen Elizabeth. It also is wainscoted and groined, and hung with tapestries, out of which the pictures have nearly vanished. The fire-place is the finest of all, and above it some hazy paintings are lost in the shadow.

Thackeray was one of the foundation scholars, and lived in the school, and wore a gown. He was, from all accounts, an average boy, undistinguished by industry or precocious ability. He was very much like many of Dr. Birch’s little friends: a simple honest, and sometimes mischievous lad. Though he was never elected orator or poet, he wrote parodies, and was clever with a pencil, which he used with no little fancy and humour. The margins of books and scraps of paper of all kinds were covered with sketches, most of them caricatures; and it is said to have been a familiar thing to see the artist surrounded by an admiring crowd of his school-fellows, while he developed, with grotesque extravagance and never-failing effect, the outlines of some juvenile hero or some notability of history. The head master of the school was severe, and as Thackeray was very sensitive, it is supposed that his school days were not of the happiest. But he bore the old foundation no ill-will; who, indeed, shall ever do it more honor than he has done?

Only a few weeks before his death, Thackeray was present on Founder’s Day. He sat in his usual back seat in the old chapel. He went thence to hear the oration in the governor’s room, and, as he walked up to the orator with his contribution, was received with hearty applause. At the banquet afterward, he sat at the side of his old friend and school-mate John Leech; and Thackeray it was who, on that occasion proposed the toast of “The Charterhouse.”

Taking us through the grounds by the way of Wash-house Court, a quadrangle of very old and smoky buildings, which were attached to the original monastery, the janitor conducted us into the cool and quiet cloister which leads into the chapel. Here is the handsome memorial of the Carthusians slain in the wars, and on the walls is a commemorative tablet to Thackeray. Next to Thackeray’s is a similar tablet to the memory of Leech.