The little chapel is much as it was in their time and long before. The founders’ tomb, with its grotesque carvings, monsters, heraldries, still darkles and shines with the most wonderful shadows and lights, as Thackeray described it. There, in marble effigy, lies Fundator Noster in his ruff and gown, awaiting the great examination day. Just in front of this elaborate monument, Thackeray himself used to sit when a boy. The children are present no more; but yonder, twice a day, sit the pensioners of the hospital, listening to the prayers and the psalms,—four-score of the old reverend black gowns. The custom of the school was that, on the twelfth of December, the head gown boy should recite a Latin oration; and, though the scholars are removed to Godalming, the ceremony is perpetuated. Many old Carthusians attend this oration; after which they go to chapel and hear a sermon, which is followed by a dinner, at which old condisciples meet, old toasts are given, and speeches are made. The reader has surely not forgotten how Pendennis, himself a Grayfriars boy, came to the festival one day quite unaware of his friend’s presence.
“The pensioners were in their benches, the boys in their places, with young fresh faces and shining white collars. We oldsters, be we ever so old,” Pendennis has written, “become boys again as we look at that old familiar tomb, and think how the seats are altered since we were here, and how our doctor—not the present doctor, the doctor of our time—used to sit yonder, and his awful eye used to frighten us shuddering boys on whom it lighted; and how the boy next us would kick our shins during service time, and how the monitor would cane us afterwards, because our shins were kicked. Yonder sit forty cherry-cheeked boys, thinking about home and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit the pensioners coughing feebly in the twilight. Is Codd Ajax alive you wonder?—the Cistercian lads called these old gentlemen Codds, I know not wherefore—but is old Codd Ajax alive I wonder? or Codd soldier? or kind old Codd gentleman? or has the grave closed over them?
“A plenty of candles light up this chapel, and this scene of age and youth, and early memories, and pompous death. How solemn the well-remembered prayers are, here uttered again in the place where in childhood we used to listen to them. How beautiful and decorous the rite, how noble the ancient words of the supplications which the priest utters, and to which generations of fresh children, and troops of by-gone seniors have cried Amen! under those arches! The service for Founder’s Day is a special one; one of the Psalms selected being the thirty-seventh, and we hear:—23. ‘The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord; and He delighteth in His way. 24. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand. 25. I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.’ As we came to this verse, I chanced to look up from my book toward the swarm of black-coated pensioners, and amongst them—amongst them—sat Thomas Newcome.” The noble old man had come to end his days here, and we know of no chapter in English literature more affecting than that in which his light is put out, and he softly murmurs Adsum.
Tears often refuse to flow when manhood has blunted the sympathies, and we are unmoved when we read again the books which summoned copious floods in youth, but the pathos of Colonel Newcome’s death, never loses its effect; it is so deep and genuine, that the description starts our grief anew whenever we read it, and it leaves us with an acute sense of profound bereavement. We feel a tender interest in the poor brothers, and a high respect for them, because the Colonel was one of them, and because Thackeray, in his imperishable prose, has made them representative of honorable but unfortunate old age. [29]
Charterhouse is the centre of a neighbourhood which Dickens chose for many of his scenes, as the reader of this knows. “Only a wall,” says Thackeray, in Mr. and Mrs. Frank Berry, “separates the playground, or ‘green,’ as it was called in his time, from Wilderness Row and Goswell street. Many a time have I seen Mr. Pickwick look out of his window in that street, though we did not know him then.” Not only of Mr. Pickwick, but of many other characters, do we find reminiscences in Smithfield. The Sarah Son’s Head, as John Browdy called it, Snow Hill, Saffron Hill, Fleet Lane, and Kingsgate street are not far away. The buildings with the ancient fronts, the idlers at the corners, and the confusing little alleys, which lead where no one would expect them to lead, all belong to Dickens’s London. The miserable associations of his early life, his interest in the poor, and his relish for the grotesque, drew him into the shady and disreputable quarters of the city; and the student of his works can track him with greater ease and ampler results in neighbourhoods like Smithfield than in the West End. With Thackeray, the reverse is the case; and, excepting Charter-house, the reader who desires to identify his localities finds little to reward him in a search east of Pall Mall, or south of Oxford street.
IV.
On the site of the Imperial Club in Cursitor street, Chancery Lane, stood a notorious “sponging house,” to which Rawdon Crawley was taken when arrested for debt, immediately after leaving the brilliant entertainment given by the Marquis of Steyne, and from which he wrote an ill-spelled letter to his wife (who had appeared triumphantly in some charades at that entertainment), begging her to send some money for his release. The reader remembers how the faithless little woman answered,—assuring him of her grief and anxiety, and telling him that she had not the money, but would get it; though, as poor, blundering, soft-hearted Rawdon discovered afterward, she had a very large sum at the moment she wrote to him, and did not send him any of it because she wished to keep him in jail that she might intrigue with the licentious old marquis; and the reader will remember that Rawdon was released at the instance of his cousin’s wife, and went to the little house in Curzon street, where he surprised his deceitful spouse, and nearly murdered her companion, the same old Marquis of Steyne, knight of the garter, lord of the powder-box, trustee of the British Museum, etc.
When we come to the end of that passage, we put the book on our lap and lean back in the chair, and, while we are still glowing with the excitement of the scene, we are filled with admiration of the genius which produced it. How did Thackeray achieve his effects? Becky Sharp is a unique and permanent figure in literature, a subtle embodiment of duplicity, ambition, and selfishness. She is avaricious, hypocritical, specious, and crafty. Though not malignant nor to a certainty criminal, she is a conscienceless little malefactor, whose ill deeds are only limited by the ignoble dimensions of her passions. She lies with amazing glibness, is utterly faithless to her hulking husband, and utterly indifferent to her child. Her mendacity is superlative, and double-dealing enters into all her transactions. But she is so shrewd, so vivacious, so artful, so immensely clever and good-humoured, she has so much prettiness of manner and person, that, while we despise her, and have not the least pity for her when retribution falls heavily upon her, our indignation against her is not so great as we feel that it ought to be, principally because her sins have a certain feminine archness and irresponsibility in them, which keeps them well down to the level of comedy. When we close the book we know her through and through, and thoroughly understand all the complex workings of her strategic mind. How do we know her so well? Thackeray is not exegetical, and does not depend on elaborate analysis for his effects. The actions of the characters are themselves fully expository, and do not call for any outside comments or enlargement on the part of the author. This is the case to such an extent that, when we examine the completeness with which the characters are revealed to us, we are inclined to believe that Thackeray’s art is of the very highest kind, and that, though in form it is undramatic, intrinsically it is powerfully dramatic.
But we are straying from our purpose, which is simply to look for ourselves at the places which he has described. Across the way from the bottom of Chancery Lane is the Temple, to the interest of which he has added many associations. He was fond of its dark alleys, archways, courts, and back stairs.
In 1834 he was called to the bar, and for some time he occupied chambers in the venerable buildings with the late Tom Taylor. His rooms, which were at number 10 Crown Office Row, have disappeared before “improvements” that present a modern front to the gardens and the river. Philip had chambers in the Temple, and there, also, in classic Lamb’s Court, Pendennis and Warrington were located.