For another small scholastic recollection: Andrew's Indian brother had brought over a lot of curiosities from the East, including a rhinoceros skin, and bows and arrows, idols, and the like, all of which were carelessly stored away in a cellar near the larder aforesaid. Of course the boys made a raid upon such _spolia opima_, and divers portions of that thick hide were exhibited as Indian rubber: but Andrew never knew that many other things vanished, and that for example Knighton used to walk home on Saturdays with preternaturally stiff arms, an arrow (possibly poisoned) being hid in each sleeve! some creeses also were appropriated by others. I wonder if any Carthusian of my time survives as the possessor of such loot.
Let me record, too, that in those evil days (for I am not one who can think this age as "pejor avis") boys used to go, on their Monday mornings' return from the weekly holiday, out of their way to see the wretches hanging at Newgate; that the scenes of cruelty to animals in Smithfield were terrible; that books of the vilest character were circulated in the long-room; and that both morality and religion were ignored by the seven clergymen who reaped fortunes by neglecting five hundred boys. If more memories are wanted of those times, here are two; the planned famine on one occasion, when--under monitorial inspiration--all the juniors clamoured for "more, more," seeing they had slabbed on the underside of the tables masses of bread and butter supposed to have been eaten-out; and on another, that lobsters, surreptitiously obtained from out-of-bounds by the big boys were sworn in the _débris_ of their smaller claws to be pieces of sealing-wax! and nothing else: at least a reckless young aristocrat declared that they were so,--and the mean-spirited Andrew, fearful of giving offence in such high quarters, pretended to believe him.
Yet another trifle; for I find that such trivials are attractive to homeflock readers, by whose taste I feel the more public pulse, even as Rousseau did with his housekeeper. We, that is Knighton and Ellis and I, used to return on Sunday night in my father's carriage by the back way of Clerkenwell to Charterhouse in order to avoid the crowds of cattle; and I well remember that sometimes we would utilise apples and nuts from the dessert as missiles from our carriage window as we sped along. Alas! on one occasion Knighton was skilful enough to smash a chemist's blue bottle with an apple,--and on another I am aware that an oil lamp in Carthusian Street succumbed to my only too-true cockshy: "Et hoc meminisse _dolendum_."