is the flogging-block, which is indeed no block at all, but a stout pair of steps, two steps high. The youthful Carthusian who is about to play his part in the good old game of tickle-toby kneels on the lower one of these steps, and remains there whilst the reverend gentleman who is the other performer carries the operation through. There must have been some disagreeable moments spent in that little apartment. How the books and papers which were lying about in the large school-room carried me back in thought to other days! On a scrap of paper the following “exercise” was written in a fine sprawling school-boy hand:
A husbandman one day found a viper, stiff, and frozen with cold. The husbandman took the viper in his bosom, and carried it home. The husbandman put the viper before the fire, but as soon as it was warm and comfortable, the viper stung the husbandman.
Moral. Ingratitude is always to be expected from the ungrateful.
Then there were “selections” from Latin authors. One could almost believe the books to be the very ones through which one had been whipped oneself in a former state of existence. Against the walls there were, as well as the big maps, tablets with the names of the young Carthusians who had been the “Orators” and “Gold Medallists” of their day. I did not remark in these lists for the last thirty years the name of any one who had subsequently obtained serious distinction in life, although Carthusians in general hold their own very respectably amongst the marking men of the day, and though in the present century they reckon among their number the names of Grote, Havelock, Thirlwall, Monk, and Thackeray.
We strolled out into the green again, which is so large that one portion of it forms an excellent cricket-ground. It is surrounded by high walls, and is overlooked from the upper windows of the houses in the adjacent streets. J. mentioned to me a story of a young Carthusian’s mother which was, I thought, touching enough. She had sent her little boy, then a mere child, to this huge school. It had cost her many a pang to part with him; but as she was a lady of good sense, as well as of gentle heart, she resolved to abstain from visiting him at his boarding-house. She knew it was right that he should be left to take his chance with the others, and she had sufficient strength of mind not to sacrifice his future welfare to the indulgence of her own affection. See him, however, she would, but in such a way that the child could not see her. She therefore hired a room in one of the houses which commanded a view of the Carthusian playing-ground; and here she would sit behind a blind day after day, happy and content so that she could get a glimpse of her child. Sometimes she would see him strolling about with his arm round the neck of one of his little companions, as the way of schoolboys is; sometimes he was playing and jumping about with childish glee; but still the mother kept her watch. You may see the place where she did it. Look yonder, that upper window, just beside the gold-beater’s arm.
It is an odd coincidence that the tuck-shop is situated precisely under the flogging-room; so that, whilst one young Carthusian is suffering the torments of the birched over-head, the friend may be sucking sweet lollipops below. Underneath the long gallery of which I have already spoken there is an old cloister, which looks on the green on one side; on the other there used to be a series of arches, which, probably, in the old time led into the cells of the monks. It is a pity that these have all been bricked up, save one, for it does away with the old-world look of the place. This cloister must be a fine withdrawing-room for the young Carthusians on rainy days. Jones pointed out to me some trees on the other side of the Green, which he told me were known in those latitudes as the “coach tree.” What on earth could trees have to do with coaches? The explanation was this. In the old coaching days great numbers of the mails and stage-coaches bound to the northward used to pass just outside the Charter-House walls. Now the boys did not see why they should be debarred from this delectable sight; and, accordingly, they used to climb up these trees to the upper branches, from which they could see the coaches. They had notched the trees, and driven in spikes at ticklish points of the ascent, so that they could climb up the more easily. Another tree (it might have been trees) was remarkable as the hoop-tree. It appeared that, according to the custom of the Charter House, the boys only played at hoops at particular seasons of the year. A Carthusian would as soon have played at hoops out of the season as a sportsman would shoot a partridge in July. When this season was at an end, the correct thing was to jerk the hoops up into this tree, so that it became perfectly festooned with them. Another peculiarity about Charter House hoop play was, that the boys always drove two, and even four, hoops, instead of one, urging them on in teams, side by side, with a long thin stick.
From the Green we strolled on through the pensioners’ quarter. The old gentlemen whom we saw about seemed to be cheerful and content enough; and certainly they have but scant cause of complaint. We went-first into the Hall, where the cloths were laid for their dinner; they dine in messes of eight. It is an exceedingly fine room in the collegiate style; but as I am not writing a guide-book, I will spare the reader all talk about screens, music-galleries, and so forth. Having seen where the pensioners dine, we thought the best thing we could do was to step round to the kitchen, and see what they were to have for dinner. Some very appetising joints of meat were being roasted before a huge fire for their benefit; and on a side table were placed helpings of gooseberry tart; very nice it all seemed. I should like very well to dine with the Charter House pensioners. Over the fire-place is an inscription,
DEO DANTE DEDI.
And what seemed to me whimsical enough, against the wall there hung the shell of a departed turtle, and on it was engraved in fair characters,
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT.
