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 ‘“‘Chiswicks” 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 
Kyot, 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. 
189 
