Highways and Byways in LondonCook, Emily Constance Baird
History
Highways and Byways in London
Cook, Emily Constance Baird
London (England) -- Description and travel
The whole of the Charterhouse breathes the old man's spirit; is
perambulated by his frail ghost, the shadow of a Grey Friar. The
letters, "I.H." worked out in red on the bricks in Washhouse Court,
(part of the old monastery), though supposed to show the initials of
the martyred Prior Houghton, are not so vivid to us as the little
house in the same court, pointed out as the place where Colonel
Newcome died!
Ghosts there may be in the Charterhouse, but their identity is not
divulged. "Some people," the porter owns, under pressure, "have been
known to see strange things," though he for his part has only come
across rats, so far. Perhaps the boys have "laid" them! boys, it must
be confessed, would make short work of most ghosts. The boys, on the
"Founder's Day" mentioned by Thackeray, used always to sing the
Carthusian chorus in the old merchant's honour:
"Then blessed be the memory
Of good old Thomas Sutton,
Who gave us lodging, learning,
As well as beef and mutton."
They sing it still, no doubt, equally heartily at Godalming; yet,
surely, some among them must yearn for the historic associations of
the old place. But, indeed, all the ancient schools are going, or
gone, from the City; St. Paul's School is moved to Hammersmith; the
picturesque Christ's Hospital is just disintegrated; its
characteristic Lares and Penates are removed to Horsham; and the
passengers along noisy Newgate Street will no longer stay to enjoy the
romps and the foot-ball of the yellow-legged, blue-coated boys.
The brick courts of the Charterhouse have a solid and collegiate air;
its small Jacobean chapel, of which the groined entrance alone dates
from monastic times, contains a splendid alabaster tomb of the
Founder. Here is Thackeray's striking description of a "Founder's Day"
service:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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