Though his other scenes are misty, no reader of Thackeray who engages in a search for the places which he describes is likely, however, to overlook the Charterhouse, the ancient foundation to which he refers again and again, dwelling on it with many fond reminiscences. It is the school in which he himself was educated, and he has associated three generations of his characters with it. Thomas Newcome received instruction here, also his son Clive, with Pendennis, Osborne, and Philip of the second generation, after whom came Rawdon Crawley’s little son and young George Osborne; and, finally, the dear old Colonel, when broken down and weary, joined the poor brethren who are pensioners of the institution, and within its monastic walls cried Adsum as he heard a voice summoning him to the everlasting peace. Occasionally it is called Slaughter-house, once or twice “Smiffle” (after the boys’ way of pronouncing Smithfield, where it is situated); but in Thackeray’s later works he generally speaks of it as Grayfriars or Whitefriars.

“It had been,” he says in Vanity Fair, “a Cistercian convent in old days when the Smith field, which is contiguous to it, was a tournament ground. Obstinate heretics used to be brought thither, convenient for burning hard by. Henry the Eighth seized upon the monastery and its possessions, and hanged and tortured some of the monks who would not accommodate themselves to the pace of his reform. Finally, a great merchant bought the house and land adjoining, in which, with the help of other wealthy endowments of land and money, he established a famous foundation hospital for old men and children. An extra school grew round the old, almost monastic foundation, which subsists still with its middle-age costume and usages; and all Christians pray that it may flourish.

“Of this famous house some of the greatest noblemen, prelates and dignitaries in England, are governors; and as the boys are very comfortably lodged, fed and educated, and subsequently inducted to good scholarships at the University, and livings in the Church, many little gentlemen are devoted to the ecclesiastical profession from their tenderest years, and there is considerable emulation to procure nominations for the foundation. It was originally intended for the sons of poor and deserving clerics and laics; but many of the noble governors of the institution, with an enlarged and rather capricious benevolence, selected all sorts of objects for their bounty. To get an education for nothing, and a livelihood and profession assured, was so excellent a scheme, that some of the richest people did not disdain it; and not only the great men’s relations, but great men themselves, sent their sons to profit by the chance. Right reverend prelates sent their own kinsmen as the sons of their clergy, while on the other hand some great noblemen did not disdain to patronize the children of their confidential servants, so that a lad entering this establishment had every variety of youthful society wherewith to mingle.”

As a rule, however, the boys, belong to the upper classes, and an education obtained at Charterhouse is scarcely less of a social distinction than the much coveted and costly preparation of Eton, Harrow, or Winchester. The history of the school is full of brilliant names, and among its scholars have been Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Isaac Barrow, General Havelock, Sir William Blackstone, Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough, Lord Liverpool, John Wesley and George Grote.

It is possible that one may know London intimately, and yet be ignorant of the situation of the Charterhouse. Smithfield is out of the way of the main lines of traffic: it is a squalid neighbourhood, north of Ludgate Hill, and it retains its ancient characteristics more than almost all other parts of the great city,—which has been so modernized that Cheapside looks like a slice of Broadway, and once shabby Fleet Street is showing all sorts of ornamental fronts. It has in it many solemn brick houses of a blackish purple, with glowing roofs of red tiles; smaller buildings of an earlier period, with high peaked gables and overlapping second stories; sequestred alleys, and courts bearing queer names, and many curious little shops.

One of the most direct approaches to it is through the Old Bailey from Ludgate Hill. On this route we pass the austere granite of Newgate Prison and also Pye Corner, where as the sign-board of a public house tells us, the great fire of 1666 ended, after burning from the 2nd to the 10th of September; we also pass Cock Lane, famous for its ghost, and the quaintest of old London churches, St. Bartholomew the Great, which is hemmed in and partly extinguished by the surrounding houses, that hide all but its smoked and patched tower, and a few square feet of grass, which is justifiably discouraged in its want of sunshine and space; thence our path is by the extensive buildings of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, about which there is a morbid activity in the flow of officials and visitors, most of the latter being slatternly and anxious-looking women, with babies and baskets on their arms, and from the Hospital we cross the street, and so through the new cattle market, which fills the space once occupied by the pens, and covers the spot whence the souls of many martyrs have passed in flame from the stake to heaven.