Category: O. Salvin

Liddell has during the holidays carried his alterations up School still further by painting all below the gas pipes which was plastered last Bartholmy & also adding an extra coat of paint to the old Coat of Arms over the shell.* The Sixth Forms have also been removed & oak ones put in their stead corresponding with the rest of the forms, & instead of sitting in his former place as of old Liddell has removed his chair and table to the middle of the Sixth, round which is a sort of octagon shaped form matching the rest of School & behind his chair is a sort of wooden canopy painted oak which looks as if it could be a door and is not. To add to all this the old examination table has been placed I suppose to make it look new; and all the names on the top most of which were, as will be remembered, exceedingly well cut, have been demolished by putting a new board covering the whole of them. What the meaning of all this unnecessary trouble and expense is not at all evident, for if our predecessors were able to sit at the old forms why should not we? The only trace of the old forms is the upper shell, the humanities table, & the last boy which I have no doubt will soon share the fate of the rest, and undergo the same renovating system which has destroyed so many old names of Old Westminsters. When this will stop I cannot venture to assert but I am afraid not until the whole of School has had and perhaps of everything else pertaining to Westminster has been converted into a sort of “Private Academy for the Education of Young Gentlemen.” I for my part, & I hope my readers will sympathise with this, like to see old customs kept up and old memories both of forms & houses to be left as they have been for so many years.

*now being sort of gingerbread coloured shield supported by green dragons

O Salvin. Princeps Oppidamus.