CHAPTER XLVI.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.
The Grey Friars in Newgate Street—The Origin of Christ's Hospital—A Fashionable Burying-Place—The Mean Conduct of Sir Martin Bowes—
Early Private Benefactors of Christ's Hospital—Foundation of the Mathematical School—Rebuilding of the South Front of Christ's
Hospital—The Plan of Christ's Hospital—Famous Pictures in the Hall—Celebrated Blues—Leigh Hunt's Account of Christ's Hospital—
The "Fazzer"—Charles Lamb—Boyer, the Celebrated Master of Christ's Hospital—Coleridge's Experiences—Erasmus—Singular
Legacies—Numbers in the School—The Education at Christ's Hospital—Eminent Blues—The Public Suppers—Spital Sermons—Ceremony
on St. Matthew's Day—University Exhibitions—The Diet—"Gag-eaters"—The Rebuilding in 1803.
Lives there a Londoner who has not, at some stray
hour or other, leant against the tall iron gates in
Newgate Street, and felt his golden youth return,
as he watched the gambols of the little bareheaded
men in blue petticoats and yellow stockings? Can
any man of thought, however hurried Citywards, but
stop a moment to watch and see the "scrouge,"
the mad rush after the football, the dashing race to
rescue prisoners at the bases? Summer or winter,
the yellow-legged boys form a pleasant picture of
perpetual youth; nor can one ever pass a strapping
young Grecian in the streets without feeling some
veneration for the successor of Coleridge and
Charles Lamb, Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt.
Where the fine old school now stands was the
site of a convent of Grey (or Mendicant) Friars,
who, coming to London in the thirteenth century,
after a short stay in Holborn and Cornhill, were, in
1225, housed on the north side of Newgate Street,
on a good plot of ground next St. Nicholas Shambles, by John Ewin, a pious and generous mercer,
who eventually became a lay brother. The friars
of St. Francis, aided by men like Ewin, throve well
on the scraps of Holborn and Cheapside, and their
chapel soon grew into a small church, which was
rebuilt in 1327 with great splendour. The Grey
Friars' church, says Pennant, was reckoned "one of
the most superb of the conventual establishments of
London," and alms poured fast into its treasury. It
received royal offerings and sheltered royal dead.
In 1429 the immortal Whittington built the studious
friars of Newgate Street a library, 129 feet long and
31 broad, with twenty-eight desks, and eight double
settles. In three years it was filled with books,
costing £556 10s., whereof Richard Whittington
gave £400, and Dr. Thomas Winchilsey, one of
the friars, the rest, adding an especial 100 marks
for the writing out the works of D. Nicholas de
Lyra, in two volumes, to be chained there. Among
the royal contributors to the Grey Friars we may
mention Queen Margaret, second wife of Edward I.,
who gave in her lifetime 2,000 marks, and by will
100 marks, towards building a choir; John Britaine,
Earl of Richmond, gave £300 towards the church
building, besides jewels and ornaments; Mary,
Countess of Pembroke, sent £70, and Gilbert de
Clare, Earl of Gloucester, twenty great oak beams
from his forest at Tunbridge and £20; the good
Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III., £62; and
Isabel, queen-mother of Edward III., £70.
The founder of the school is by most people supposed to have been Edward VI., but it was really
his father, Henry VIII., and it was one of the few
works of mercy which originated in that cruel
tyrant. At the dissolution, when sacramental cups
and crucifixes were being melted down by the
thousand, to maintain a bad king in his sumptuous
splendour, the English Sultan, in one of his few
good moments, near the end of his reign, gave the
Grey Friars' church to the City, to be devoted to
the relief of the poor. The building had previously
been used as a storehouse for plunder taken from
the French. The gift, confirmed by the pious
young king, Edward VI., was announced by Dr.
Ridley, Bishop of Rochester, at a public sermon
at Paul's Cross. The parishes of St. Ewin, St.
Nicholas, and part of St. Sepulchre's were at this
time compressed into one large parish, and called
Christ Church.
The good work remained in abeyance, till, in
1552, the worthy Ridley, preaching before the
young king, his subject being "mercy and charity,"
made, says Stow, "a fruitful and godly exhortation"
to the rich to be merciful to the poor, and also
to move those who were in authority to strive, by
charitable ways and means, to comfort and relieve
them. The young king, always eager to do good,
hearing that London swarmed with impoverished
and neglected people, at once sent for the bishop
to come to him after sermon. The memorable interview between Ridley and Edward took place
in a great gallery at Westminster, where the king
and bishop were alone. A chair had been already
provided for the bishop, and the king insisted on
the worthy prelate remaining covered. Edward first
gave the bishop hearty thanks for his good sermon
and exhortation, and mentioned the special points
which he had noted. "'Truely, truely,' remarks
Ridley (for that commonly was his oath), 'I could
never have thought that excellency to have been
in his Grace, but that I beheld and heard it in
him.' At the last the king's majestie much commended him for his exhortation for the reliefe of
the poore. 'For, my lord,' quoth he, 'you willed
such as are in authority to bee careful thereof, and
to devise some good order for theire reliefe, wherein
I think you mean mee; for I am in highest place,
and therefore am the first that must make answer
unto God for my negligence, if I should not be
careful therein, knowing it to bee the expresse
commandment of Almighty God to have compassion of his poore and needy members, for
whom we must make an account unto him. And
truely, my lord, I am (before all things else)
most willing to travaile that way, and doubting
nothing of your long and approved wisdome and
learning, who have such good zeale as wisheth
health unto them; but also that you have had
some conference with others what waies are best
to be taken therein, the which I am desirous
to understand; I pray you therefore to say your
minde.'"
The bishop, amazed to hear the wisdom and
earnest zeal of the child-king, confessed that he
was so astonished that he hardly knew what to
reply; but after a pause, he urged the special claims
of the poor of London, where the citizens were
wise, and, he doubted not, pitiful and merciful, and
would carry out the work. The king, not releasing
Ridley till his letter to the mayor was written,
signed, and sealed, sent his express commandment
to the mayor that he should inform him how far
he had proceeded. Ridley, overjoyed at such
youthful zeal, went that night to Sir Richard Dobbes,
the Lord Mayor, and delivered the king's letter
and message. The mayor, honoured and pleased,
invited the bishop to dine the next day with two
aldermen and six commoners, to discuss the
charitable enterprise. On the mayor's report to
the king, Edward expressed his willingness to grant
a charter to the new governors, and to be proclaimed as founder and patron of the new hospital.
He also confirmed his father's grant of the old
Grey Friars' monastery, and endowed it (to bring
the charity at once into working order) with lands
and tenements that had belonged to the Savoy, of
the yearly value of about £450. He also consented
to the City's petition that they might take, in mortmain or otherwise, without licence, lands to the
yearly value of —. Edward filled up the
blank with the words "4,000 marks," and then,
before his whole council, exclaimed, with his usual
pious fervour, "Lord, I yield Thee most hearty
thanks that Thou hast given me life thus long, to
finish this work to the glory of Thy name."
Edward, says the Rev. W. Trollope, the historian
of Christ's Hospital, lived about a month after
signing the Charter of Incorporation of the Royal
Hospitals. The citizens, roused by the king's
fervour, and touched by his untimely death, set to
work with gold and steel, and in six months the old
Grey Friars' monastery was patched up sufficiently
to accommodate 340 boys, a number increased to
380 by the end of the year.
As the Grey Friars' churchyard was thought, in
the Middle Ages, to be peculiarly free from incubi
and flying demons of all sorts, it soon became a
fashionable burying-place, and almost as popular
as the great abbey even with royalty. Four queens
lie there, among countless lords and ladies, brave
knights, and godly monks—Margaret, second wife
of Edward I., and Isabella, the infamous wife and
part murderess of Edward II., both, as we have
before mentioned, benefactors to the hospital;
Joan, daughter of Edward II. and wife of David
Bruce, King of Scotland; and, lastly, Isabella, wife
of William, Baron Fitzwarren, titular Queen of Man.
The English Queen Isabella, as if to propagate an
eternal lie, was buried with the heart of her murdered husband on her breast. Her ghost, according to all true "Blues," still haunts the cloisters.
Here, also, rest other knights and ladies, almost
equally illustrious by birth; among others, Isabella,
daughter of Edward III. and wife of Ingelram de
Courcy, Earl of Bedford; John Hastings, the young
Earl of Pembroke, slain by accident at a Christmas
tournament in Woodstock Park, 1389; John, Duke
of Bourbon, one of the noble French prisoners
taken at Agincourt, who had been a prisoner in
the Tower eighteen years; Walter Blunt, Lord
Mountjoy, Lord Treasurer to Edward IV., and the
"gentle Mortimer," the wretched paramour of
Queen Isabella, who was hung at Tyburn, and
left two days withering on the gallows. Lastly,
those two rapacious favourites of Richard II., Sir
Robert Tresilian, Chief Justice of England, and Sir
Nicholas Brembre, Lord Mayor of London, both
hung at Tyburn. Tradition goes that they could
not hang Tresilian till they had removed from
his person certain magic images and the head of
a devil.
The friars'churchyard seems also to have been
fashionable with state criminals of the Middle
Ages, for here also lies Sir John Mortimer, an
unhappy Yorkist, hung, drawn, and quartered at
Tyburn by the Lancastrian party in 1423 (the
second year of the reign of the child-king, Henry
VI.) To the same bourne also came a victim of
Yorkist cruelty, Thomas Burdet, for speaking a few
angry words about a favourite white buck which
Edward IV. had carelessly killed. A murderess, too,
lies here, a lady named Alice Hungerford, who,
for murdering her husband in 1523, was carted
to Tyburn, and there hung. All these ancient
monuments and tombs were basely and stupidly
sold, in 1545, by Sir Martin Bowes, Lord Mayor,
for a poor fifty pounds. The Great Fire of 1666
destroyed the Grey Friars' church, which Wren
shortly afterwards rebuilt, a little further to the
east; and in the old church perished the tomb of
the beautiful Lady Venetia Digby, whom Ben
Jonson celebrated, and who, it was absurdly supposed, perished from viper-broth, administered by
her husband to heighten her beauty.
One of the earliest private benefactors of this
hospital was Sir William Chester, Lord Mayor in
1554, who built the walls adjoining to St. Bartholomew's Hospital; and the next was John Calthrop,
draper, who, at his own expense, arched and
vaulted the noisome town ditch, from Aldersgate
to Newgate. Nor must we forget that worthy
though humble benefactor, Castell, the shoemaker,
from his early habits generally known as "the
Cock of Westminster," who left to the hospital
£44 a year from his hard-earned store. The
greater part of the school (except the venerable
cloisters) so often echoing with the merry shouts
of boyish happiness, was rebuilt by Sir Christopher,
In 1673, Charles II., at the suggestion of our
old friend Pepys, Sir Robert Clayton, and Lord
Treasurer Clifford, founded a mathematical school
for the instruction of forty boys in navigation, and
appointed Pepys one of the governors. King
Charles endowed the school with £1,000 for seven
years, and added an annuity of £370 out of the
Exchequer, for the educating and sending to sea
ten boys annually, five of whom pass an examination before the Elder Trinity Brothers every six
months. These boys used to be annually presented
by the president to the king, upon New Year's
Day, when that festival was observed at court, and
afterwards, upon the queen's birthday. They wear,
says Mr. Trollope, a badge upon the left shoulder,
the figures upon which represent Arithmetic, with
a scroll in one hand, and the other placed upon
a boy's head; Geometry, with a triangle in her
hand; and Astronomy, with a quadrant in one
hand and a sphere in the other. Round the plate
is inscribed, "Auspicio Caroli secundi Regis, 1673."
The dye is kept in the Tower.
THE WESTERN QUADRANGLE OF OLD CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, ABOUT 1780.
Mr. Stone, a governor, to supplement the king's
grant, left a legacy for the maintenance of a preliminary class of twelve boys, who were to be taught
navigation. The "Twelves" wear a badge on the
right shoulder, the king's boys wearing theirs on the
left. Sir Robert Clayton, after a severe illness,
in 1675, built the south front of the hospital, which
had been in ruins since the Great Fire, and, on
the death of his partner, Mr. Morrice, who had
offered to halve the expense, Sir Robert secretly
paid the whole £5,000, which was not known till
the Tories had deprived him of the mayoralty and
of the governorship of the hospital.
In 1680 Sir John Frederick, the president, rebuilt the great hall, which the Fire had injured, at
a cost of more than £5,000; and, three years
after, the governors erected a branch building at
Hertford (where all the younger children are educated), to which a large hall was added in 1800. In
1694 Sir John Moore, alderman, built a writingschool. The good work went on, for, in 1724,
Samuel Travers gave the hospital an estate for
the maintenance of forty or fifty sons of lieutenants,
to be educated for the navy. Later, John Stock,
Esq., left £3,000 to the school, for the maintenance of four boys, children of naval lieutenants,
to be educated two as sailors and two as tradesmen. In 1783 John Smith, Esq., left money to
build a new grammar-school, and several masters'
houses were afterwards pulled down, and a good
entrance made from Little Britain.
THE MATHEMATICAL SCHOOL, CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. (From a View published by N. Smith, 1793.)
This re-disposition of the ground made room
for three playgrounds—the ditch, the garden, and
the new playground. The site of the grammarschool was taken from the south side of the ditch.
The following used to be a sufficiently accurate
account of the school premises:—On the south
side of the entrance from Little Britain is the
treasurer's house, and the other houses in this playground are occupied by the matron, masters, and
beadles. Proceeding in an easterly direction leads
to the south-east entrance from Butcher Hall Lane,
Newgate Street, and in this space (which is called
the counting-house yard) stands the counting-house,
and several other houses, which are inhabited by
the clerks and some of the masters. The treasurer
has also a back entrance to his house, at the end
of the counting-house, and his garden runs at the
back of all the houses on the east side of this yard.
The opposite building is occupied by the boys, and
in a niche in the centre, fronting the door of the
counting-house, is a statue of King Edward (considered the most perfect one), which represents his
majesty, who stands on a black marble slab, in the
act of delivering the charter.
The mathematical school is over the old west
entrance, now closed up, and was built by Wren,
with a ward for the foundation boys over it. A
robed statue of Charles II., dated 1672, stands
over the gateway. The entrance leads to the
north-west corner of the cloisters, which form the
four shady sides of the garden playground, and
have porticoes, with Gothic arches all round. The
walls are supported by abutments of the old priory.
Wren repaired the cloisters, which are useful to
the young blue monks for play and promenade in
wet weather.
The great dining-hall is every way worthy of the
grand old City school. It was erected from
designs of John Shaw, architect, and stands partly
on the foundations of the ancient refectory, and
partly on the site of the old City wall. The style
is pure Gothic, and the southern or principal front
is built of Portland stone with cloisters of Heytor
granite, running beneath a portion of the dininghall. Nine large and handsome windows occupy
the entire front. On the ground storey are the
governors' room, the wardrobe, the buttery, and
other offices; and the basement storey contains,
besides cellars, &c., a spacious kitchen, 69 feet
long by 33 feet wide, supported by massive granite
pillars. The hall itself, with its lobby and organgallery, occupies the entire upper storey, which is
187 feet long, 51½ feet wide, and 46½ feet high. It
was at one time (and perhaps still is) famous for
its rats, who, attracted by the crumbs and fragments of food, foraged about after dark in hundreds.
It used to be the peculiar pride of an old "Blue"
to catch these rats with his hands only, traps
being considered cowardly aids to humanity and
unworthy of the hospital. The old dusty pictureframes are favourite terraces for these vermin.
The two famous pictures in the hall—neither of
them of much real merit, but valuable for their
portraits—are those of Edward VI. renewing his
father's gift of the hospital, and of St. Thomas and
Bridewell, to the City, falsely ascribed to Holbein, who died seven or eight years before it took
place; and "sprawling" Verrio's picture of James
II. receiving an audience of Christ's Hospital boys
and girls. The pseudo-Holbein and the painting by
Verrio are both well described by Malcolm. The
so-called Holbein "adorns the west wall, and is
placed near the entrance, at the north end of the
hall. The king is seated on a throne, elevated on
two steps, with two very clumsy brackets for arms,
on which are fanciful pilasters, adorned with carving,
and an arch; on the left pilaster, a crowned lion
holding a shield, with the letter 'E'; a dragon on
the other has another inscribed 'R.' Two angels,
reclining on the arch, support the arms of England.
The hall of audience is represented as paved with
black and white marble; the windows are angular,
with niches between each. As there are statues in
only two of those, it seems to confirm the idea that
it is an exact resemblance of the royal apartment.
"The artist has bestowed his whole attention on
the young monarch, whose attitude is easy, natural,
and dignified. He presents the deed of gift with
his right hand, and holds the sceptre in his left.
The scarlet robe is embroidered, and lined with
ermine, and the folds are correctly and minutely
finished. An unavoidable circumstance injures the
effect of this picture, which is the diminutive
stature of the infant-king, who shrinks into a dwarf,
compared with his full-grown courtiers; unfortunately, reversing the necessary rule of giving most
dignity and consequence to the principal person in
the piece.
"The chancellor holds the seals over his crossed
arms at the king's right hand. This officer and
three others are the only standing figures. Ridley
kneels at the foot of the throne, and shows his face
in profile with uplifted hands. On the right are
the mayor and aldermen, in scarlet robes, kneeling.
Much cannot be said in praise of those worthies.
The members of the Common Council, &c., on the
other side, are grouped with more skill, and the
action is more varied. The heads of the spectators
are generally full of anxious attention.
"But five of twenty-eight children who are introduced in the foreground turn towards the king; the
remainder look out of the picture. The matron on
the girls' side (if a portrait) was chosen for her
mental and not her personal qualifications. Such
are the merits and defects of this celebrated painting, which, though infinitely inferior to many of
Holbein's Dutch and Italian contemporaries, is a
valuable, and in many respects an excellent, historic composition.
"Verrio's enormous picture" of James II. and
the Bluecoat children "must originally have been
in three parts: the centre on the end wall, and the
two others on the adjoining sides. Placed thus,
the perspective of the depths of the arches would
have been right; as it is at present, extended on
one plane, they are exactly the reverse. The
audience-chamber is of the Ionic order, with twenty
pilasters, and their entablatures and arches. The
passage, seen through those, has an intersected
arched ceiling. The king sits in the centre of the
painting, on a throne of crimson damask, with the
royal arms embroidered on the drapery of the
canopy, the front of which is of fringed white cloth
of gold. The footstool is of purple cloth of gold,
and the steps of the throne are covered by a rich
Turkey carpet, not remarkably well painted. The
king holds a scroll in his left hand, extends the
right, and seems to address a person immediately
before him. The position of his body and the
fore-shortened arm are excellent, and the lace and
drapery are finely drawn and coloured. On the
sides of the throne are two circular portraits.
"The painter has committed a strange error in
turning the king's face from the Lord Mayor, who
points in vain to an extended map, a globe, and
all the kneeling figures, exulting in the progress of
their forty boys in the mathematics, who are busily
employed in producing their cases and definitions.
Neither in such an attitude could the king observe
fourteen kneeling girls, though their faces and persons are handsome and graceful, and the matron
and her assistant seem eager to place them in the
monarch's view. Verrio has stationed himself at
the extreme end of the picture, and his expression
appears to inquire the spectators' opinion of his
performance. On the opposite side a yeoman of
the guard clears the way for some person, and a
female seems alarmed at his violence, but a fulldressed youth before him looks out of the picture
with the utmost indifference. There is one excellent head which speaks earnestly to a boy.
Another figure, probably the master or steward,
pulls a youth's hair with marks of anger. Several
lords-in-waiting are correct and good figures.
"At the upper end of the room, and on the
same west wall, is a large whole-length of Charles II.
descending from his throne, a curtain from which
is turned round a pillar. The king holds his robe
with his right hand, and points with the left to a
globe and mathematical instruments.
"Some years past"—the date of Malcolm's
writing is 1803—"an addition was made to the
hall, by taking part of the ward over the south
cloister into it. In this are several portraits.
Queen Anne, sitting, habited in a gown of cloth of
gold with a blue mantle laced with gold and lined
with ermine. Her black hair is curled, and without
ornament; the arms are too small, but the neck
and drapery are good. She holds the orb in her
left hand, rested on the knee; the right crosses
her waist."
"Although Christ's Hospital is, and has been
from its foundation, in the main a commercial
seminary," says Mr. Howard Staunton, "the list of
'Blues' who have acquired celebrity in what are
called the 'liberal professions' would confer honour
upon a school of much loftier pretensions. Notably
among the earliest scholars are the memorable
Jesuit, Edmund Campion, a man whose unquestionable piety and marvellous ability might well have
saved him from a horrible and shameful death; the
great antiquary, William Camden, though the fact
of his admission is not satisfactorily authenticated;
Bishop Stillingfleet (according to the testimony
of Pepys); David Baker, the ecclesiastical historian; John Vicars, a religious controversialist of
considerable learning and indefatigable energy, but
whose fanaticism and intolerance have obtained
him an unenviable notoriety from the pen of the
author of 'Hudibras;' Joshua Barnes, the Greek
scholar; John Jurin, another scholar of great
eminence, and who was elected President of the
College of Physicians; Jeremiah Markland, a
man of distinction, both as scholar and critic;
Richardson, the celebrated novelist; Bishop Middleton, of Calcutta; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and
Robert Allen.
"In the present century Christ's Hospital can
boast of Thomas Mitchell, the well-known translator
of Aristophanes; William Henry Neale, Master
of Beverley School; Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb,
George Dyer, James White, James Scholefield,
Regius Professor of Greek in Cambridge; the
Rev. George Townsend; and Thomas Barnes, a
late editor of the Times, 'than whom,' Leigh Hunt
tells us, 'no man, if he had cared for it, could
have been more certain of distinction.'
"In the cloisters," says Leigh Hunt, "a number
of persons lie buried, besides the officers of the
house. Among them is Isabella, wife of Edward II.,
the 'she-wolf of France.' I was not aware of this
circumstance then; but many a time, with a recollection of some lines in Blair's 'Grave' upon me,
have I run as hard as I could, at night-time, from
my ward to another, in order to borrow the next
volume of some ghostly romance. In one of the
cloisters was an impression resembling a gigantic
foot, which was attributed by some to the angry
stamping of the ghost of a beadle's wife!"
"Our dress," says the same pleasant author,
"was of the coarsest and quaintest kind, but was
respected out of doors, and is so. It consisted of
a blue drugget gown, or body, with ample skirts to
it; a yellow vest underneath, in winter-time; smallclothes of Russia duck; worsted yellow stockings;
a leathern girdle; and a little black worsted cap,
usually carried in the hand. I believe it was the
ordinary dress of children in humble life, during
the reign of the Tudors. We used to flatter ourselves that it was taken from the monks; and there
went a monstrous tradition that at one period it
consisted of blue velvet with silver buttons. It
was said, also, that during the blissful era of the
blue velvet we had roast mutton for supper, but
that the smallclothes not being then in existence,
and the mutton suppers too luxurious, the eatables
were given up for the ineffables. . . .
"Our routine of life was this: We rose to the
call of a bell at six in summer and seven in
winter; and after combing ourselves and washing
our hands and faces, went at the call of another
bell to breakfast. All this took up about an hour.
From breakfast we proceeded to school, where we
remained till eleven, winter and summer, and then
had an hour's play. Dinner took place at twelve.
Afterwards was a little play till one, when we again
went to school, and remained till five in summer
and four in winter. At six was the supper. We
used to play after it in summer till eight: in winter
we proceeded from supper to bed. On Sundays,
the school-time of the other days was occupied in
church, both morning and evening; and as the
Bible was read to us every day before every meal
and on going to bed, besides prayers and graces,
we rivalled the monks in the religious part of our
duties. . . .
"When I entered the school," says Leigh Hunt,
speaking of the Grecians, "I was shown three
gigantic boys—young men, rather (for the eldest
was between seventeen and eighteen)—who, I
was told, were going to the university. These
were the Grecians. They were the three head
boys of the grammar-school, and were understood
to have their destiny fixed for the Church. The
next class to these—like a college of cardinals
to those three popes (for every Grecian was in our
eyes infallible)—were the deputy-Grecians. The
former were supposed to have completed their
Greek studies, and were deep in Sophocles and
Euripides. The latter were thought equally competent to tell you anything respecting Homer and
Demosthenes."
The "fazzer," in Leigh Hunt's time, was the
mumbo-jumbo of the hospital. "The fazzer,"
says author, "was known to be nothing more
than one of the boys themselves. In fact, he consisted of one of the most impudent of the bigger
ones; but as it was his custom to disguise his face,
and as this aggravated the terror which made the
little boys hide their own faces, his participation
of our common human nature only increased the
supernatural fearfulness of his pretensions. His
office as fazzer consisted in being audacious, unknown and frightening the boys at night, sometimes
by pulling them out of their beds, sometimes by
simply fazzing their hair ('fazzing' meant pulling
or vexing, like a goblin); sometimes (which was
horriblest of all) by quietly giving us to understand,
in some way or other, that the 'fazzer was out,'
that is to say, out of his own bed, and then being
seen (by those who dared to look) sitting, or otherwise making his appearance, in his white shirt,
motionless and dumb."
Charles Lamb talks of the earlier school in a
different vein, and with more poetry and depth of
feeling. "I must," he says, "crave leave to remember our transcending superiority in those invigorating sports, leapfrog and basting the bear;
our delightful excursions in the summer holidays to
the New River, near Newington, where, like otters,
we would live the long day in the water, never
caring for dressing ourselves when we had once
stripped; our savoury meals afterwards, when we
came home almost famished with staying out all
day without our dinners; our visits, at other times,
to the Tower, where, by ancient privilege, we had
free access to all the curiosities; our solemn processions through the City at Easter, with the Lord
Mayor's largess of buns, wine, and a shilling, with
the festive questions and civic pleasantries of the
dispensing aldermen, which were more to us than
all the rest of the banquet; our stately suppings
in public, when the well-lighted hall, and the confluence of well-dressed company who came to see
us, made the whole look more like a concert or
assembly than a scene of a plain bread and cheese
collation; the annual orations upon St. Matthew's
Day, in which the senior scholar, before he had
done, seldom failed to reckon up among those who
had done honour to our school, by being educated
in it, the names of those accomplished critics and
Greek scholars, Joshua Barnes and Jeremiah Markland (I marvel they left out Camden, while they
were about it). Let me have leave to remember
our hymns and anthems, and well-toned organ;
the doleful tune of the burial anthem, chanted in
the solemn cloisters upon the seldom-occurring
funeral of some schoolfellow; the festivities at
Christmas, when the richest of us would club our
stock to have a gaudy-day, sitting round the fire,
replenished to the height with logs, and the penniless and he that could contribute nothing partook
in all the mirth and some of the substantialities of
the feasting; the carol sung by night at that time
of the year, which, when a young boy, I have so
often lain awake to hear, from seven (the hour of
going to bed) till ten, when it was sung by the
older boys and monitors, and have listened to it in
their rude chanting, till I have been transported in
fancy to the fields of Bethlehem, and the song
which was sung at that season by angels' voices
to the shepherds.
"Nor would I willingly forget any of those
things which administered to our vanity. The
hem-stitched bands and town-made shirts, which
some of the most fashionable among us wore;
the town girdles, with buckles of silver or shining
stone; the badges of the sea-boys; the cots, or
superior shoe-strings, of the monitors; the medals
of the markers (those who were appointed to hear
the Bible read in the wards on Sunday morning
and evening), which bore on their obverse, in
silver, as certain parts of our garments carried,
in meaner metal, the countenance of our founder,
that godly and royal child, King Edward the Sixth,
the flower of the Tudor name—the young flower
that was untimely cropt, as it began to fill our land
with its early odours—the boy-patron of boys—the
serious and holy child, who walked with Cranmer
and Ridley, fit associate, in those tender years, for
the bishops and future martyrs of our Church, to
receive or (as occasion sometimes proved) to give
instruction:—
'But, ah! what means the silent tear?
Why, e'en mid joy, my bosom heave?
Ye long-lost scenes, enchantments dear!
Lo! now I linger o'er your grave.
'Fly, then, ye hours of rosy hue,
And bear away the bloom of years!
And quick succeed, ye sickly crew
Of doubts and sorrows, pains and fears!
Still will I ponder Fate's unalter'd plan,
Nor, tracing back the child, forget that I am man.'"
Of the hospital good Lamb says:—"I remember
L— at school, and can well recollect that he
had some peculiar advantages which I and others
of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived in
town, and were near at hand; and he had the
privilege of going to see them, almost as often
as he wished, through some invidious distinction,
which was denied to us. The present worthy subtreasurer to the Inner Temple can explain how that
happened. He had his tea and hot rolls in a
morning, while we were battening upon our quarter
of a penny loaf— our 'crug'—moistened with
attenuated small beer, in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured
from. Our Monday's milk porridge, blue and tasteless, and the pease-soup of Saturday, coarse and
choking, were enriched for him with a slice of
'extraordinary bread and butter' from the hot loaf
of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet,
somewhat less repugnant—(we had three banyan to
four meat days in the week)—was endeared to his
palate by a lump of double-refined, and a smack
of ginger (to make it go down the more glibly), or
the fragrant cinnamon. In lieu of our half-pickled
Sundays, or quite fresh boiled beef on Thursdays
(strong as caro equina), with detestable marigolds
floating in the pail, to poison the broth—our scanty
mutton scrags on Fridays, and rather more savoury
but grudging portions of the same flesh, rotten
roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish
which excited our appetites and disappointed our
stomachs in almost equal proportion)—he had his
hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting
griskin (exotics unknown to our palates), cooked
in the paternal kitchen (a great thing), and brought
him daily by his maid or aunt! I remember the
good old relative (in whom love forbade pride),
squatted down upon some odd stone in a by-nook
of the cloisters, disclosing the viands (of higher
regale than those cates which the ravens ministered
to the Tishbite), and the contending passions of
L— at the unfolding. There was love for the
bringer; shame for the thing brought and the
manner of its bringing; sympathy for those who
were too many to share in it, and, at top of all,
hunger (eldest, strongest of the passions!) predominant, breaking down the strong fences of
shame, and awkwardness, and a troubling overconsciousness. . . . .
"Under the stewardship of Perry, can L—
have forgotten the cool impunity with which the
nurses used to carry away openly, in open platters,
for their own tables, one out of two of every hot
joint which the careful matron had been seeing
scrupulously weighed out for our dinners? . . . .
"I was a hypochondriac lad; and the sight of a
boy in fetters, upon the day of my first putting on
the blue clothes, was not exactly fitted to assuage
the natural terrors of initiation. I was of tender
years, barely turned of seven, and had only read of
such things in books, or seen them but in dreams.
I was told he had run away. This was the punishment for the first offence. As a novice, I was
soon after taken to see the dungeons. These were
little square Bedlam cells, where a boy could just
lie at his length upon straw and a blanket—a mattress, I think, was afterwards substituted—with a
peep of light, let in askance, from a prison orifice
at top, barely enough to read by. Here the poor
boy was locked in by himself all day, without sight
of any but the porter, who brought him his bread
and water, who might not speak to him, or of the
beadle, who came twice a week to call him out to
receive his periodical chastisement."
THE CLOISTERS, CHRIST'S HOSPITAL. (From a View published in 1804.)
"The culprit who had been a third time an
offender, and whose expulsion was at this time
deemed irreversible, was brought forth, as at some
solemn auto da fe, arrayed in uncouth and most
appalling attire, and all trace of his late 'watchet
weeds' being carefully effaced, he was exposed in a
jacket resembling those which London lamplighters formerly delighted in, with a cap of the
same. The effect of this divestiture was such
as the ingenious devisers of it must have anticipated. With his pale and frightened features, it
was as if some of those disfigurements in Dante
had seized upon him. In this disguisement he
was brought into the hall (L—'s favourite stateroom), where awaited him the whole number of his
schoolfellows, whose joint lessons and sports he
was henceforth to share no more; the awful presence of the steward, to be seen for the last time;
of the executioner-beadle, clad in his state robe
for the occasion; and of two faces more, of direr
import, because never but in these extremities
visible. These were governors, two of whom, by
choice or charter, were always accustomed to
officiate at these ultima supplicia—not to mitigate
(so, at least, we understood it), but to enforce the
uttermost stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne and
Peter Aubert, I remember, were colleagues on
one occasion, when the beadle turning rather pale,
a glass of brandy was ordered to prepare him for
the mysteries. The scourging was, after the old
Roman fashion, long and stately. The lictor
accompanied the criminal quite round the hall.
We were generally too faint with attending to the
previous disgusting circumstances to make accurate
report with our eyes of the degree of corporal
suffering inflicted. After scourging he was made
over, in his san benito, to his friends, if he had any,
or to his parish officer, who, to enhance the effect
of the scene, had his station allotted to him on the
outside of the hall gate."
Of Boyer, the celebrated master of Christ's
Hospital, Leigh Hunt says:—"The other master,
the upper one, Boyer—famous for the mention of
him by Coleridge and Lamb—was a short, stout
man, inclining to punchiness, with large face and
hands, an aquiline nose, long upper lip, and a
sharp mouth. His eye was close and cruel. The
spectacles which he wore threw a balm over it.
Being a clergyman, he dressed in black, with a
powdered wig. His clothes were cut short; his
hands hung out of the sleeves, with tight wristbands, as if ready for execution; and as he
generally wore grey worsted stockings, very tight,
with a little balustrade leg, his whole appearance
presented something formidably succinct, hard, and
mechanical. In fact, his weak side, and undoubtedly his natural destination, lay in carpentry,
and he accordingly carried, in a side-pocket made
on purpose, a carpenter's rule.
SUPPER AT CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.
"Jeremy Boyer had two wigs, both pedantic,
but of different omen—the one, serene, smiling,
fresh-powdered, betokening a mild day; the other,
an old, discoloured, unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent and bloody execution. Woe to
the school when he made his morning appearance
in his passy, or passionate wig. No comet expounded surer. Jeremy Boyer had a heavy hand.
I have known him double his knotty fist at a poor
trembling child (the maternal milk hardly dry upon
its lips), with a 'Sirrah, do you presume to set your
wits at me?' Nothing was more common than to
see him make a headlong entry into the schoolroom, from his inner recess or library, and, with
turbulent eye, singling out a lad, roar out, 'Od's
my life, sirrah!'—his favourite adjuration,—'I have
a great mind to whip you;' then, with as sudden a
retracting impulse, fling back into his lair, and, after
a cooling lapse of some minutes (during which all
but the culprit had totally forgotten the context),
drive headlong out again, piecing out his imperfect
sentence, as if it had been some devil's litany,
with the expletory yell, 'and I will, too!'"
Of Coleridge at school Charles Lamb says:—
"Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the
dayspring of thy fancies, with hope, like a fiery
column, before thee—the dark pillar not yet
turned—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, logician, metaphysician, bard! How have I seen the casual
passer through the cloisters stand still, entranced
with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garb of the young
Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and
sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus or
Plotinus (for even in those years thou waxedest
not pale at such philosophic draughts), or reciting
Homer in his Greek, or Pindar, while the walls of
the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the accents of
the inspired charity-boy! Many were the 'witcombats' (to dally awhile with the words of old
Fuller) between him and C. V. Le Grice, 'which,
too, I behold, like a Spanish great galleon and an
English man-of-war. Master Coleridge, like the
former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but
slow in his performances. C. V. L., with the
English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in
sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and
take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of
his wit and invention.'"
"The discipline at Christ's Hospital, in my
time," says Coleridge, in his "Table-Talk," in
1832, "was ultra-Spartan; all domestic ties were
to be put aside. 'Boy!' I remember Boyer saying
to me once, when I was crying, the first day of my
return after the holidays, 'boy! the school is your
father; boy! the school is your mother; boy! the
school is your brother; the school is your sister;
the school is your first cousin, and your second
cousin, and all the rest of your relations. Let's
have no more crying!' No tongue can express
good Mrs. Boyer. Val Le Grice and I were once
going to be flogged for some domestic misdeed,
and Boyer was thundering away at us by way of
prologue, when Mrs. B. looked in, and said, 'Flog
them soundly, sir, I beg!' This saved us. Boyer
was so nettled at the interruption, that he growled
out, 'Away! woman, away!' and we were let off."
"The upper grammar-school was divided into four
classes, or forms. The two under ones were called
Little and Great Erasmus; the two upper were occupied by the Grecians and Deputy-Grecians. We
used to think the title of Erasmus taken from the
great scholar of that name; but the sudden appearance of a portrait among us, claiming to be the
likeness of a certain Erasmus Smith, Esq., shook us
terribly in this opinion, and was a hard trial of our
gratitude. We scarcely relished this perpetual
company of our benefactor, watching us, as he
seemed to do, with his omnipresent eyes. I believe
he was a rich merchant, and that the forms of Little
and Great Erasmus were really named after him.
It was a poor consolation to think that he himself,
or his great uncle, might have been named after
Erasmus. Little Erasmus learned Ovid; Great
Erasmus, Virgil, Terence, and the Greek Testament. The Deputy-Grecians were in Homer, Cicero,
and Demosthenes; the Grecians in the Greek plays
and the mathematics."
"I have spoken," says Leigh Hunt, speaking of
Charles Lamb, "of the distinguished individuals
bred at Christ's Hospital, including Coleridge and
Lamb, who left the school not long before I entered it. Coleridge I never saw till he was old.
Lamb I recollect coming to see the boys, with a
pensive, brown, handsome, and kindly face, and a gait
advancing with a motion from side to side, between
involuntary consciousness and attempted ease. His
brown complexion may have been owing to a visit
in the country; his air of uneasiness, to a great
burden of sorrow. He dressed with a quaker-like
plainness. I did not know him as Lamb; I took
him for a Mr. 'Guy,' having heard somebody
address him by that appellative, I suppose in jest."
Soon after the foundation of the schools, says the
latest writer on the subject, we find lands and
legacies pouring in for the benefit of the charity;
many, however, of the gifts being for the blind and
aged, for exhibitions, for apprenticing, and for
many other objects not strictly attached to the hospital, considered merely as a school. In the same
manner many persons left estates and moneys to
the governors, on condition that a certain number
of scholars should be taken from the ranks of
certain City companies, or from certain particular
parishes, or should be nominated by some public
body, fixed by the donor. From these causes the
present property of the trust is encumbered with
many charges for purposes which, in the present
day, are unnecessary, and often impracticable.
Thus, one person left a legacy on condition that a
certain number of boys should receive pairs of
gloves, on which should be printed, "Christ is risen,"
and these were to be worn in the various processions in which the school took part in Easter
week. The gloves are still given, but instead of
being printed on the glove, a little badge is worn,
with the words required by the founder. A certain
Mary Hunt gave £100, that £3 yearly should
be expended for a dinner of boiled legs of pork,
while several other persons left moneys to be expended on roast beef and mutton, one of them
expressly stating that his gift was to be in addition
to the ordinary meat provided for the scholars. If
Charles Lamb is to be believed—and he himself
was a "Blue"—the gifts of extra meat were, at that
date, very much needed; and we are also told that
in addition to the quantity being small, the quality
also was then far from good. No such complaints
can be made in the present day. Many of the
contributions given for the hospital were very large,
that of Lady Mary Ramsey, wife of a Lord Mayor
of London, being now worth over £4,000 a year;
and within the last ten years Mr. Richard Thornton
bequeathed a large sum to the charity. One cannot, therefore, be astonished to find, particularly
when we remember that the school is especially
connected with the Corporation of London, that
the present gross income of Christ's Hospital is
now about £70,000 per annum, of which about
£42,000 is expended on education.
The Schools' Inquiry Commissioners hesitate to
disturb the old dress, which Charles Lamb has declared it would be a kind of sacrilege to change;
it is, however, very distasteful to the "Grecians,"
or senior boys.
The number of boys in the school at present is,
as a rule, about 1,200, of whom somewhat less than
800 are at the premises in Newgate Street; the
remainder—the younger boys—being kept at Hertford for from one to three years before being sent
to the London institution. As a general rule the
boys are supposed to leave at fifteen years of age,
the Grecians and Deputy-Grecians, with a few of
the King's scholars, who require a further time for
their studies, remaining longer in the school. The
age of admission is seven, the boys, as is well
known, being nominated by the various members
of the governing body. In addition to the fixed
body of governors there are a large number of presentation governors, who have each paid £500 to
the funds of the charity. This payment, indeed,
is not supposed necessarily to cause the donor to
be elected a governor, but as the privilege has
rarely been withheld, it is practically the fact that
such a gift will, in all reasonable probability, secure
an appointment as governor with its corresponding
benefits. It has been calculated that a governor
so appointed has, in twelve years from his appointment, through his nominees, received a benefit of
over £900 from the charity. Whether the charity
was founded with this intention, we leave our readers
to judge. No doubt, in many cases the quasi-purchased presentations relieve distressed parents, but
there can be no doubt that many of the children in
the school (we might almost say the larger number)
belong to a class of persons perfectly able to support them, without any appeal to the funds of the
charity.
The education given at the hospital is of a superior class, and many of the past students have taken
high honours at both universities. Between twenty
and thirty masters are employed as the London
staff, of whom we remark that the head master
receives what appears a very small sum for such a
position.
The eminent "Blues" of former times, whom we
have before epitomised, deserve a word or two to
themselves. Edmund Campian, the celebrated
Jesuit, after a quiet life as a professor of rhetoric in
a Catholic college at Prague, came to England proselytising, but being seized by Walsingham, Elizabeth's zealous Secretary of State, was tried, found
guilty, and hung at Tyburn, in 1581. William
Camden, that patriarch of English antiquaries,
whose indefatigable researches and study of Saxon
rendered his work of special value, was finally appointed by Sir Fulke Greville, his friend, to a post in
the Heralds' College. Camden, as a herald, was consulted by Bacon as to the ceremonies for creating
him viscount. In his old age Camden founded a
history lecture at Oxford, and died at his house at
Chiselhurst, in Kent (afterwards occupied by the
French ex-emperor), in 1623. Camden's papers
relative to ecclesiastical affairs belonged to Archbishop Laud, and were, it is supposed, destroyed
by Prynne and Hugh Peters. Camden seems to
have been an easy, unruffled man. He was accused by his enemies of borrowing too freely, and
without acknowledgment, from his predecessor,
Leland. He wrote some by no means indifferent
Latin poetry, and an epitaph on Mary Queen of
Scots. Joshua Barnes, Greek professor at Cambridge, was another shining light of the Bluecoats.
His editions of Homer and Anacreon were in their
time celebrated. He died in 1712, and on the old
scholar's monument it is recorded that he had read
his small English Bible through 121 times. Dr.
Bentley used to say of Joshua Barnes that "he
understood as much of Greek as an Athenian
cobbler." In Emmanuel Library great bundles of
Barnes's Greek verses fade and gather dust, together with part of a Latin-Greek lexicon never
finished. Jeremiah Markland, a learned scholar
and critic, was another memorable "Blue." He
vindicated Addison's character against Pope's
satire, was sneered at by Warburton, and edited
many editions of classical works. Latterly, this
worthy scholar lived in retirement, near Dorking,
and twice refused the Greek professorship. Poor
George Dyer, Lamb's friend, a true "Blue" indeed, was originally a reporter and private tutor.
He wrote some weak poems, and edited Valpy's
unsuccessful Delphin classics. Dr. Middleton, Lord
Bishop of Calcutta, another "Blue," was early in
life vicar of St. Pancras. Val Le Grice, mentioned
so lovingly by Charles Lamb, afterwards became a
perpetual curate of Penzance, where he helped to
found a geological society, and was an opponent of
the Methodist revival. James White, another
"Blue" of this epoch, for some time filled a post
in the hospital country house. His "Letters of
Falstaff" were much applauded by the Lamb set.
Meyer, nephew of Hoppner, an eminent engraver,
was placed in the hospital by Boydell's interest.
He was an eminent portrait-painter, and a friend of
George Dyer. Another great credit to the Bluecoat School was the Rev. Thomas Mitchell, the
admirable translator and commentator upon the
plays of Aristophanes. Previous to his dexterous
rendering, only two out of the fifty-four comedies
of Aristophanes had been translated into English.
Among the pictures in the dining-hall we should
not forget a simple-hearted representation of Sir
Brook Watson (Lord Mayor) escaping when a boy
from the shark that bit his leg off while bathing.
This is the work of Copley, the father of Lord
Lyndhurst. A wit of the time had the cruelty, from
personal knowledge of this worthy Lord Mayor, to
observe that if the shark had got hold of Sir Brook
Watson's skull, instead of his leg, the shark would
have got the worst of it.
There is a curious history attached to the portrait
of a Mr. John St. Arnaud, the grandfather of a
benefactor to the hospital, which hangs in the
treasury. By the terms of James St. Arnaud's will
all the money he left passes to the University of
Oxford, if this picture is ever lost or given away;
and the same deprivation occurs if this picture is
not produced once a year at the general court, and
also shown, on requisition, to the Vice-Chancellor
or his deputy. As the St. Arnauds had intermarried,
in the reign of Henry III., with the luckless Stuarts,
there is a tradition in the school that this picture
is the portrait of the Pretender, but this is an unfounded notion.
A very old feature of Christ's Hospital is the
public suppers on the seven Sunday evenings preceding Easter, for which pleasant sight the treasurer
and governors have the right of issuing tickets. It
is a pretty, quaint ceremony of the old times, and
was witnessed by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert,
in 1845. The long tables are laid with cheese in
wooden bowls, beer, in wooden piggins, poured
out from black leather jacks, and the bread is borne
in in huge baskets. The interesting ceremony
commences by the steward rapping a table three
times with a hammer. The first stroke is for taking
places, the second for silence, the third is the signal
for a Grecian to read the evening lesson from the
pulpit, which lesson is followed by appropriate
prayers. The Lord Mayor, as President, is seated
in a state chair made of oak from old St. Katherine's Church. A psalm is then sung, which is
followed by a short grace. The "amen" at the
end of the prayers, pronounced by nearly 800
voices, has an electrical effect. The visitors walk
between the tables, and mark the happy, excited
faces and the commensurate appetite of youth.
After supper, about which there is no "coy, reluctant, amorous delay," an anthem is sung, and
the boys then pass before the president's chair in
procession, bow, and retire.
The wards are each headed by their special
nurses, who formerly, when the public suppers
began at Christmas and ended at Easter, were each
preceded by a little Bluecoat holding two high
candlesticks, the "trade boys" of each ward carrying the piggins and jacks, the bowls, candlesticks,
tablecloths, bread-baskets, and knife-baskets. It
was a prettier sight with lights than it is now by
daylight, and it makes one young again to see it.
The Spital sermons, says Mr. Timbs, are preached
in Christchurch, Newgate Street, on Easter Monday
and Tuesday, before the Lord Mayor and corporation, and the governors of the five royal hospitals;
the bishops in turn preaching on Monday, and
usually his lordship's chaplain on Tuesday. On
Monday the children, headed by the beadle, proceed to the Mansion House, and return in procession to Christchurch, with the Lord Mayor and
the City authorities, to hear the sermon. On
Tuesday the children again go to the Mansion
House, and pass through the Egyptian Hall before
the Lord Mayor, each boy receiving a glass of
wine, two buns, and a shilling, the monitors half-acrown each, and the Grecians a guinea. They then
return to Christchurch, as on Monday. The boys
formerly visited the Royal Exchange on Easter
Monday, but this has been discontinued since the
burning of the last Exchange in 1838.
"At the first drawing-room of the year," says the
same writer, "forty 'mathematical boys' are presented to the sovereign, who gives them £8 8s. as
a gratuity. To this other members of the Royal
Family formerly added smaller sums, and the
whole was divided among the ten boys who left
the school in the year. During the illness of
George III. these presentations were discontinued,
but the governors of the hospital continued to pay
£1 3s., the amount ordinarily received by each, to
every boy on quitting. The practice of receiving
the children was revived by William IV."
Each of the "mathematical boys," having passed
his Trinity House examination, and received testimonials of his good conduct, is presented with a
watch worth from £9 to £13, in addition to an
outfit of clothes, books, mathematical instruments,
a Gunter's scale, a quadrant, and sea-chest.
On St. Matthew's Day (Sept. 21) the Grecians
deliver orations before the Lord Mayor, corporation, governors, and their friends, this being a
relic of the scholars' disputations in the cloisters.
"Christ's Hospital," says an author we have already
quoted, "by ancient custom possesses the privilege
of addressing the sovereign, on the occasion of his
or her coming into the City, to partake of the hospitality of the corporation of London. On the visit
of Queen Victoria in 1837 a booth was erected for
the hospital boys in St. Paul's Churchyard, and on
the royal carriage reaching the cathedral west gate
the senior scholar, with the head master and treasurer, advanced to the coach-door and delivered a
congratulatory address to Her Majesty, with a copy
of the same on vellum."
The annual amount of salaries in London and
Hertford was about £5,000. About 200 boys, says
Mr. Timbs in 1868, are admitted annually. By the
regulations passed at a court in 1809 it was decreed
"that no children of livery servants (except they be
freemen of the City of London), and no children
who have any adequate means of being educated
or maintained, and no children who are lamed,
crooked, or deformed, or suffering from any infectious or incurable disease, should be admitted.
Also, that a certificate from a minister, churchwarden, and three principal inhabitants of the parish
be required with every child, certifying its age, and
that it has no adequate means of being educated
or maintained." How far this rule of the old charity
has been carried out, and in what way the rigour
of such a binding form has been evaded, it is not
for us to say; but one thing is certain, that at least
one-half of the boys brought up in Christ's Hospital
are the sons of well-to-do gentlemen. It is no
use denying the disagreeable but certain fact that
Christ's Hospital was originally a charity intended
to educate dependent children, and it is now a
gratuitous school for the sons of professional men.
Mr. Howard Staunton, writing in 1869, says:
"On an average four scholars are annually sent to
Cambridge with an Exhibition of £80 a year,
tenable for four years, and one to Oxford with
£100 a year for the like period. Besides these
there are the 'Pitt Club' Scholarship and the
'Times' Scholarship, each of £30 a year for four
years, which are awarded by competition to the
best scholar in classics and mathematics combined,
and held by him in addition to his general Exhibition. Upon proceeding to the university each
Grecian receives an allowance of £20 for books,
£10 for apparel, and £30 for caution-money and
settling-fees."
The dietary of the boys is still somewhat monastic. The breakfast, till 1824, was plain bread
and beer, and the dinner three times a week consisted only of milk-porridge, rice-milk, and peasoup. The old school-rhyme, imperishable as the
Iliad, runs—
"Sunday, all saints;
Monday, all souls;
Tuesday, all trenchers;
Wednesday, all bowls;
Thursday, tough Jack;
Friday, no better;
Saturday, pea-soup with bread and butter."
The boys, like the friars in the old refectory, still
eat their meat off wooden trenchers, and ladle their
soup with wooden spoons from wooden bowls.
The beer is brought up in leather jacks, and retailed
in small piggins. Charles Lamb, as we have seen
before, does not speak highly of the food. The
small beer was of the smallest, and tasted of its
leather receptacle. The milk-porridge was blue
and tasteless; the pea-soup coarse and choking.
The mutton was roasted to shreds; the boiled beef
was poisoned with marigolds.
There was a curious custom at Christ's Hospital
in Lamb's time never to touch "gags" (the fat of
the fresh boiled beef), and a "Blue" would have
blushed, as at the exposure of some heinous immorality, to have been detected eating that forbidden portion of his allowance of animal food,
the whole of which, while he was in health, was
little more than sufficient to allay his hunger. The
same, or even greater refinement, was shown in the
rejection of certain kinds of sweet cake. What
gave rise to these supererogatory penances, these
self-denying ordinances? The gag-eater was held
as equivalent to a ghoul, loathed, shunned, and
insulted. Of a certain juvenile monster of this
kind Lamb tells us one of his most charming
anecdotes, droll and tender as his own exquisite
humour. A gag-eater was observed to carefully
gather the fat left on the table, and to secretly stow
away the disreputable morsels in the settle at his
bedside. A dreadful rumour ran that he secretly
devoured them at midnight; but he was watched
again and again, and it was not so. At last, on a
leave-day, he was marked carrying out of bounds
a large blue check handkerchief. That, then, was
the accursed thing. It was suggested that he sold
it to beggars. Henceforward he moped alone. No
one spoke to him; no one played with him. Still
he persevered. At last two boys traced him to a
large worn-out house inhabited by the very poor,
such as then stood in Chancery Lane, with open
doors and common staircases. The gag-eater stole
up four flights of stairs, and the wicket was opened
by an old woman meanly clad. Suspicion being
now certainty, the spies returned with cruel triumph
to tell the steward. He investigated the matter
with a kind and patient sagacity, and the result
was, that the supposed mendicants turned out to
be really the honest parents of the brave gag-eater.
"This young stork, at the expense of his own good
name, had all this while been only feeding the old
birds." "The governors on this occasion," says
Lamb, "much to their honour, voted a present
relief to the family, and presented the boy with a
silver medal. The lesson which the steward read
upon rash judgment, on the occasion of publicly
delivering the medal, I believe would not be lost
upon his auditory. I had left school then, but I
well remember the tall, shambling youth, with a
cast in his eye, not at all calculated to conciliate
hostile prejudices. I have since seen him carrying
a baker's basket. I think I heard he did not do
so well by himself as he had done by the old folks."
THE HALL OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.
"There were some school-rhymes," says Leigh
Hunt, "about 'pork upon a fork,' and the Jews
going to prison. At Easter a strip of bordered
paper was stuck on the breast of every boy, containing the words, 'He is risen.' It did not give
us the slightest thought of what it recorded; it
only reminded us of an old rhyme which some of
the boys used to go about the school repeating—
'He is risen, he is risen,
All the Jews must go to prison.'
A beautiful Christian deduction! Thus has charity
itself been converted into a spirit of antagonism;
and thus it is that the antagonism, in the progress
of knowledge, becomes first a pastime and then a
jest.
BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE OLD CHARTERHOUSE.
"When a boy," says the same writer, "entered
the upper school, he was understood to be in the
road to the university, provided he had inclination
and talents for it; but, as only one Grecian a year
went to college, the drafts out of Great and Little
Erasmus into the writing-school were numerous.
A few also became Deputy-Grecians without going
farther, and entered the world from that form.
Those who became Grecians always went to the
university, though not always into the Church,
which was reckoned a departure from the contract.
When I first came to school, at seven years old,
the names of the Grecians were Allen, Favell,
Thomson, and Le Grice, brother of the Le Grice
above mentioned, and now a clergyman in Cornwall. Charles Lamb had lately been DeputyGrecian, and Coleridge had left for the university."
In 1803 it was resolved by degrees to rebuild
Christ's Hospital. Part of the revenues were laid
aside for a building-fund, and £1,000 was given
by the corporation. The first stone of the great
Tudor dining-hall was laid by the Duke of York,
April 28, 1825, John Shaw being the architect.
The back wall stands in the ditch that surrounded
old London, and is built on piles driven twenty
feet deep. In excavating, some Roman coins and
a pair of Roman sandals were discovered. The
southern front, facing Newgate Street, is supported
by buttresses, and has an octagonal tower at each
extremity, and is embattled and pinnacled in a
trivial and unreal kind of way. The great metal
gates of the playground are enriched with the arms
of the hospital, argent, a cross gules in the dexter
chief, a dagger of the first on a chief azure between
two fleurs-de-lis, or, a rose argent. Behind the hall
is the large infirmary, built in 1822, and on the east
and west sides of the cloisters are the dormitories.
"In the year 1552," says Stow, "began the
repairing of the Grey Friars' house, for the poor
fatherless children; and in the month of (23) November, the children were taken into the same, to
the number of almost four hundred. On Christmas
Day, in the afternoon, while the Lord Mayor and
aldermen rode to Paules, the children of Christ's
Hospital stood from St. Lawrence Lane end, in
Cheape, towards Paules, all in one livery of russet
cotton, three hundred and forty in number; and in
Easter next they were in blue at the Spittle, and so
have continued ever since."
A dinner given the other day to Mr. Tice, late
head beadle of the hospital, to present him with a
purse of seventy guineas, strongly marks the brotherhood that prevails among old "Blues." The first
toast drank was to the grand old words—"The
religious, royal, and ancient foundation of Christ's
Hospital. May those prosper who love it, and
may God increase their number." One of the
speakers said—" Mr. Tice had an immense amount
of patronage in his hands, for he promoted him to
be 'lavatory-boy' and 'jack-boy,' till at last he rose
to the height of his ambition, and was made
'beer-boy.' He remembered there was a tradition
amongst all the boys who went to Peerless Pool,
that unless they touched a particular brick they
would inevitably be drowned. The grandest days
of all, though, were the public suppings, at which
Mr. Tice had to precede the Lord Mayor in the
procession, and people used to be always asking
who he was. He was taken for the French Ambassador, for Garibaldi, and indeed for everybody but
Mr. Tice."
"The School Inquiry Commissioners," says a
London paper of the day, "propose to abolish the
Hertford School, on which £11,000 a year is
expended, and devote this sum to the establishment
of good day-schools in various districts of the
metropolis. The present London school they will
preserve, making, however, the places in it only to
be gained by merit, the time to be spent in the
school being shortened. The Endowed School
Commissioners have been for some time treating
with the governing body, but as yet it is feared
without much success, although Mr. Forster stated
in the House of Commons last year that it was
hoped some agreement would, before long, be
successfully carried out. Whether £42,000 a year
ought not to do more than it at present does, is a
question which many good judges have, for many
years, answered in the affirmative."