CHAPTER VIII 

 WALPOLE HOUSE 



THE MALL, CHISWICK 



WHEN the present century was in its teens and on a sun- 

 shiny morning in June, there drove up to the great 

 iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's Academy for young 

 ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses 

 in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered 

 hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour. A black servant 

 who reposed on the box beside the fat coachman, uncurled his 

 bandy legs as soon as the equipage drew up opposite Miss Pinker- 

 ton's shining brass plate, and as he pulled the bell at least a score 

 of young heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of 

 the stately old brick house. Nay, the acute observer might have 

 recognized the little red nose of good-natured Miss Jemima Pinker- 

 ton herself, rising over the geranium pots in the window of that 

 lady's own drawing-room." 



At the moment when William Makepeace Thackeray wrote 

 these words in the well-known opening to " Vanity Fair," there 

 is no doubt that he had in his mind's eye Walpole House the 

 beautiful old Restoration House on Chiswick Mall at which, once 

 upon a time, he had been at school. A certain Doctor Turner 

 was the pedagogue into whose care the little fatherless boy from 

 India had been entrusted. There is no reason to think that he 

 was not kindly treated though he seems to have been very unhappy 

 there and to have attempted to run away, but got no farther 

 than Young's Corner. A pretty, gentle, timid child who was 



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