WALPOLE HOUSE 



short-sighted, and did not care for games he was probably merely 

 homesick, and pining for the mother whom he had left behind 

 in India, and who soon married again, wedding one who made an 

 excellent stepfather to her son. 



So far as I know no tradition connects Walpole House with 

 a young ladies' seminary but on the authority of Lysons, writing 

 about the time Thackeray was born there had been for some years 

 a boarding-school for girls at " the College House," which was 

 also on the Mall, but a little farther west, and of which the Principal 

 was a certain Mrs. Solicux. 



College House of which no vestige now remains had had 

 an interesting history. In the reign of Elizabeth, the old 

 Prebendal Manor House which stood at the east of Chiswick 

 Church, and the corner of Chiswick Lane, was partially pulled 

 down, and the materials used for building a sanatorium " a 

 school for Her Majesty's scholars at Cheswycke in times of in- 

 fection." Up to 1733, the Master, Usher, and forty scholars of 

 Westminster, regularly retired thither during the frequent and 

 terrible visitations of the plague, so that for over 160 years there 

 was a very close connection between the great Abbey school 

 and its river-side offspring, in the Prebendal Manor of Chiswick. 

 The name " Chis wicks " applied, still I believe, to the " studies " 

 used by the Foundation boys (at the present day eighty in number) 

 sufficiently attest this fact. 



Lloyd Sanders, who makes reference to the College House 

 in his account of " Chiswick," thinks that the actual existence 

 of a boarding-school for girls on the Mall, so very near 

 to it, probably suggested to Thackeray Miss Pinkerton's famous 

 " Academy for Young Ladies," only that he located it in 

 Walpole House instead of the College House. I agree, but 

 go farther. Several generations of reverend Headmasters in 

 mortar-board and college gown, some thin and ascetic, others 

 portly and rubicund, have walked that pleasant road by the 

 Eyot, or island from end to end. They were, all alike, the 

 terror of small boys : each in turn staunchly upholding at least 

 three of the cardinal virtues for justice and prudence demanded 

 of them that they should not spare the rod and spoil the child, 

 and in this respect they fulfilled their duty but they practised 

 fortitude by proxy on their pupils with the birch. 



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