My Life as an Author | Page 9

bottleholders, and some
"claret" drawn, and other like fashionable brutalities; also in its season
came football, but not quite so fiercely fought as it is now; and there
was Mr. Rackwitz, the man of sweets and pastries at the corner; and
another sort of rackets in the tennis court; and for another sort of court

there was then extant a bit of ruinous Gothic in old Rutland Court, a
ghostly entrance from Charterhouse Square, some thought haunted, and
long since cleared away.
And now crossing the Square we come to No. 41, the Queen Anne
fashioned mansion where Mr. Andrew Irvine (another Reverend Master,
who like all the rest, except Churton, almost never "did duty," and
when he did manifestly could neither read, preach, not pray) had a
houseful of pupils, whereof the writer was one. That long room is full
of ancient memories of past and gone Carthusians, though it is now
humiliated into a local charity school. I remember some humorous
scenes there, chiefly owing to the master's notorious niggardliness.
Andrew had some Gruyere cheese, easily accessible to the boyish
plunderers of his larder. Now we had complained that our slabs of
butter laid between the cut sides of the rolls often were salt and strong,
so one "Punsonby" (afterwards an earl) managed to put a piece of
highly-flavoured Gruyere into a roll, and publicly at breakfast produced
it before Mr. Irvine as a proof of the bad butter provided by the
unfortunate housekeeper. He was overborne against his own
convictions, by the heroic impudence of chief big boys whom he dared
not offend, and actually pretended indignation, promising better butter
in future!
For another small scholastic recollection: Andrew's Indian brother had
brought over a lot of curiosities from the East, including a rhinoceros
skin, and bows and arrows, idols, and the like, all of which were
carelessly stored away in a cellar near the larder aforesaid. Of course
the boys made a raid upon such spolia opima, and divers portions of
that thick hide were exhibited as Indian rubber: but Andrew never knew
that many other things vanished, and that for example Knighton used to
walk home on Saturdays with preternaturally stiff arms, an arrow
(possibly poisoned) being hid in each sleeve! some creeses also were
appropriated by others. I wonder if any Carthusian of my time survives
as the possessor of such loot.
Let me record, too, that in those evil days (for I am not one who can
think this age as "pejor avis") boys used to go, on their Monday

mornings' return from the weekly holiday, out of their way to see the
wretches hanging at Newgate; that the scenes of cruelty to animals in
Smithfield were terrible; that books of the vilest character were
circulated in the long-room; and that both morality and religion were
ignored by the seven clergymen who reaped fortunes by neglecting five
hundred boys. If more memories are wanted of those times, here are
two; the planned famine on one occasion, when--under monitorial
inspiration--all the juniors clamoured for "more, more," seeing they had
slabbed on the underside of the tables masses of bread and butter
supposed to have been eaten-out; and on another, that lobsters,
surreptitiously obtained from out-of-bounds by the big boys were
sworn in the débris of their smaller claws to be pieces of sealing-wax!
and nothing else: at least a reckless young aristocrat declared that they
were so,--and the mean-spirited Andrew, fearful of giving offence in
such high quarters, pretended to believe him.
Yet another trifle; for I find that such trivials are attractive to
homeflock readers, by whose taste I feel the more public pulse, even as
Rousseau did with his housekeeper. We, that is Knighton and Ellis and
I, used to return on Sunday night in my father's carriage by the back
way of Clerkenwell to Charterhouse in order to avoid the crowds of
cattle; and I well remember that sometimes we would utilise apples and
nuts from the dessert as missiles from our carriage window as we sped
along. Alas! on one occasion Knighton was skilful enough to smash a
chemist's blue bottle with an apple,--and on another I am aware that an
oil lamp in Carthusian Street succumbed to my only too-true cockshy:
"Et hoc meminisse dolendum."
Another incident was amusing in its way. Poor Mr. Irvine (who was
going to be married) mended up a very much smashed greenhouse to
greet his bride thereby with floral joy. Unluckily, the boys preferred
broken panes to whole ones, so nothing was easier than by flinging
brickbats and even mugs over the laundry wall to revel in the sweet
sound of smashed glass; moreover this would go to evidence the
popular animosity against a wretched bridegroom. Then, when he
reappeared after some temporary absence before the