Cloister of Chapel — Grey Friars by F. Hopkinson Smith. 1913. Photographic reproduction of charcoal on paper from In Thackeray's London, p. 35. Scanned image, formatting and text by George P. Landow. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you credit and link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Here the Colonel had walked to and from chapel service, and in the same black Pensioner's clock that Ethel had kissed. Here, too, when the organ had played them out of chapel at length, Pendennis, with heavy heart, had strolled with him on his way back to his room. "And I take it uncommonly kind of you," the Colonel, with flushed, wan face, had said, "and I thank God for you, sir. Why, sir, I am as happy as the day is long."
This ante-chapel is but little changed, and, judging from the uneven surfaces of the several panes of glass in the queer sashes with rounded tops, the windows looking out upon the adjoining court, must be the same as those that lighted the Colonel's way. Nor can there be any doubt that the flooring of stone slabs, marking the graves of the long-ago dead, was the very same which had reechoed the sound of his footfalls. There was a new tablet, of course, on the opposite wall—several of them in fact, one bearing the name of the Colonel's creator — and another that of John Leech, his dear friend and brother Carthusian — or Cistercian, as Thackeray chooses to call them. And there were still others, bearing the names of Sir Henry Havelock, John Wesley, Roger Williams (founder of Rhode Island), and various distinguished Carthusians, many of which the Colonel must have looked on as he walked bareheaded to his prayers. [30, 33]
References
Smith, F. Hopkinson. & In Thackeray's London. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1916.
Last modified 9 July 2012