Once again, the Journal is packed with articles which display the extraordinary range of Eton’s Collections, and the energy with which the team under Rachel Bond make them available for teaching, research, and just good fun involving not only the Eton community, past and present, but our neighbours and partner schools.
You can read good articles from some who have benefited, as well as from our boy Keepers. I am delighted that you will also learn about the intricate work of conservation of lepidoptera in our Natural History Museum: caring for what we own is a vital part of our responsibility. You
From the Provost Event Listings
Film Screening
Every Picture Tells a Story
Directed by James Scott
BFI Unlocking Film Heritage
In conjunction with William Scott
Form Colour Space, Verey Gallery
The Firestation Centre for Arts & Culture
Friday 27 January 7.30pm
will read an account of an outstandingly important research finding concerning one of the wonderful volumes in the magnificent Kessler collection in College Library. You will read how Eton’s current battle to improve indoor sports facilities particularly to give the boys something to do when there are floods has been an issue since the nineteenth century. And much more: Shakespeare, Malcolm Arnold, ceramics, and fascinating records of our ownership of London property in Hampstead.
It was a delight to me to be reminded of the arrival on Agar’s of the World War One SE5a fighter, around which was
focussed fascinating research into Eton’s early aviators, using material from the Macnaghten Library; and of course of the arrival in my garden on long loan of three internationally important sculptures by Moore, Rodin and Epstein. You can read about both these developments here. Perhaps most satisfying of all is the fact that we now have three important museums open to the public on Sundays: the revitalised Museum of Eton Life, the Natural History Museum, and the Museum of Antiquities in the Jafar Gallery. I hope you find as much to enjoy in the Journal as I did! Lord Waldegrave of North Hill
Works on Paper Art Fair
9–12 February 2017
‘Sport at Eton’
Eleanor Hoare, College Archivist
9 March 2017
6.30pm – 8.30pm Election Hall
£15 (including drinks reception)
Royal Geographical Society, Exhibition Road, SW7
A selection of 18th- to 19th-century British watercolours from the Fine & Decorative Art (FDA) Collection will be on display.
Philippa Martin, Keeper of FDA, will give a talk on the watercolours
Friday 10 February at 2.30pm
For further information or to purchase tickets. www.worksonpaperfair.com.
Museum of Eton Life
The last few months have been exciting times for the Museum of Eton Life which has benefited from renewed focus on the conservation and display of its collections. At the beginning of the summer half 2016 the museum re-launched after one room had been closed for refurbishment. Showcasing a new present-day boy’s room to update the Edwardian room scene, and a new co-curricular display, bringing together items from Eton’s societies, studentproduced journals, CCF and community service, the museum continues to tell the story of life at the school. Other displays have been refreshed, with some objects such as the Eton Foundation buildings model receiving specialist conservation. The museum has been
popular and busy throughout 2015/16 as these developments have progressed, and reopened to the public late 2016.
The new present-day boy’s room occupies the last room of the museum, in the ‘House Life’ section. Mirroring the Edwardian Boy’s room located through the doorway, the aim of this display is to demonstrate early twenty-first century house life. It provides comparison and contrast between how boys lived in 1900 to house life today. This display sets a scene with very different décor and technology from its Edwardian counterpart; there are no longer open fires in bedrooms! Illustrating the academic life of a boy during his time at Eton, the display echoes other exhibits throughout the museum with its school books, sports
equipment and uniform. However, it demonstrates that a boy’s room is also a personal space, mapping out his character in the evidence of sports, hobbies, academic subjects and individual tastes.
The construction of the room was a great achievement for the Eton College Buildings Department.Built in-situ following designs by Philip Kersey, who previously worked with the museum, it was fitted without making fixings into the historic brickwork. With a recessed window and lighting to create the window ‘view’, careful attention to detail in the décor and furnishings to mimic rooms in the houses, the empty stage was transformed into a bedroom scene. Once dressed with items demonstrating the interests and subject of a fictional Eton boy the scene was set. Feedback on the display has been positive although unanimous that it should be messier to be a realistic teenage boy’s bedroom!
Boys at the school, House Masters and Dames have all helped with the concept and construction of this display, which explores the history of the college and connects traditional and contemporary life at Eton.
A case opposite the new boy’s room also required re-development. Now a cocurricular display it explores areas of Eton life which were not elsewhere addressed in the museum. This case examines cocurricular activities focusing on Eton’s many student societies, Debate studentled papers such as The Chronicle, charitable work and community service, and the CCF. It complements the new bedroom display, and builds on the subject-based displays throughout the museum.
Present day boy’s room
In addition to the new displays, existing exhibits have also received attention, from gentle object cleaning to repairs and conservation. Model conservator Stephen Umpleby cleaned and consolidated the model of the Eton Foundation buildings. A gentle surface clean has brightened the whole model, and by reattaching any broken pieces and consolidating paint and paper which was lifting, the model appears in finer detail. As the first item that greets the visitor on entering the museum, it is looking much happier.
These efforts to rejuvenate the displays have gone alongside a renewed effort to
All three Eton Museums are now open to the public every Sunday afternoon
2.30 - 5.00pm. Free Admission.
welcome visitors through the museum doors. Since the closure of the Visits Office, public access to the museum has been limited. During the last year, despite some displays awaiting completion, the school and Eton community have been welcomed to access the museum. Used for tutorials, events and group visits, and open with new displays on the Fourth of June, the museum has been popular. Building
on this, the Museum of Eton Life is now open on Sunday afternoons to the general public. Admission free, and it is a real boon for the Museum of Eton Life, along with the Museum of Antiquities, to join the popular Eton College Natural History Museum in opening on Sundays.
Rebecca Tessier Museum Officer
Conservation of the NHM butterfly collection
As Eton’s newly appointed Conservation Steward I have been spending the last couple of months familiarising myself with the collections, prioritising the treatment of items in poor condition and assessing our current display and storage environments.As a conservator whose passion is the treatment of mixed media objects, the Eton collections can only be described as a veritable treasure trove. Materials such as textiles, ceramics, wood and stone are commonly found in most collections (and the basics of addressing these are taught in general artefact conservation); however natural history specimens and taxidermy are rarer, needing a more specialised understanding of their materials and makeup.
Ask any conservator why they are passionate about their job and one of the many answers you will undoubtedly receive is the opportunity to continually learn new skills and enhance their knowledge of how objects are made, put together and fall apart. To be a conservator working within an institution that values this passion and feeds it is a true privilege.
Working alongside George Fussey it was identified that the Lepidoptera collection in the Natural History Museum was greatly in need of remedial treatment conservation as well as a strong cleaning and monitoring plan moving forward. Many of the examples we have are extremely rare if not extinct
so the act of preserving them for future study was of the utmost importance. As neither I nor Sara Spillett (Conservation Housekeeper) had ever worked with a Lepidoptera collection before we requested that a specialist conservator be invited to give a one day, on-site training course covering the topics of handling, cleaning, and reconstruction of Lepidoptera.
On August 6th 2016, Simon Moore, an accredited conservator through the Institute of Conservation, came to Eton to deliver a day full of natural history conservation training. Simon’s experience includes working for the British Museum, 18 years as the conservator of Natural Science at the Hampshire County Council Museum Service, as well as an advisor and conservator of natural science to the National Trust. In 2009 he became a freelance conservator and divides his time between performing complex remedial treatments and teaching natural history conservation and specimen preservation. Right from the beginning we realised that Simon was a fantastic teacher. He would demonstrate a technique once and then we would each have a few chances to practise on collection butterflies. The first problem we tackled was re-attaching wings when they had come apart from their bodies. The butterfly would be removed from the case and pinned into a Styrofoam cup for support. The wings were carefully picked up using forceps and lightly dipped into a white PVA adhesive. This adhesive was chosen as it dries clear, is reversible and has an ideal drying time allowing for slight adjustments to be made during the reattachment process. The wings were then replaced on the body, being careful to adhere to the symmetry of the butterfly
Aimee Sims
and supported using entomological pins whilst they dried into place.
The second problem we tackled was repairing tears in the wings which if not repaired could lead to the complete loss of part of the wing. This was done using a Japanese tissue called Gampi which is a thin, but very strong paper made from vegetable fibres. A piece of the tissue was torn to a slightly larger size than would cover the tear and coated in PVA adhesive. The tissue is torn rather than cut as it produces a softer edge which integrates more easily into the original material. The tissue is then placed over the tear (on the reverse side of the butterfly) and forceps are used to apply some light pressure to secure the bond. When the tissue and adhesive dry they turn clear and the colours of the wings can be seen through.
The final problem we tackled was how to reconstruct the body of the butterfly if it had been damaged or lost but the wings still remained. As before a strip of Gampi tissue was coated in adhesive and then rolled into a long cylinder and a pin put through the middle. Once the adhesive was dry to the touch the roll was able to be shaped and trimmed to size. When completely dry the
Sara Spillett
wings and antennae could be re-attached and the body toned to the correct colour using watercolour paints.
Simon is also an expert in taxidermy. We took the opportunity to consult him on how best to clean our specimens, some of which have grown very dusty over time. George, Sara and I chose a Quoll to be the first animal cleaned. We were instructed to use a cleaning foam that was worked into the fur and then the dirt wiped off with a clean towel. The next step was to apply rubbing alcohol to remove any greasy residue from the foam and to add some shine to the fur. Finally the fur was dried using a combination of hairdryers and air drying before being brushed back into its correct place. The visual transformation
was amazing as the quoll had completely returned to its natural light brown colour. This kind of treatment is classed as an interventive treatment which could speed up the decay of the specimen if practised too often. In this case now that it is clean it can be returned to the showcase and lightly dusted annually, which will prevent it from needing to be re cleaned so thoroughly.
Overall the day was a complete success and armed with our newfound conservation skills we are putting together a plan to treat and clean the entire Lepidoptera collection as well as clean a number of our taxidermy specimens that are in need.
Aimee Sims Collections Steward
George Fussey
George Pyne (1801–1884): a blighted career
This year the Friends of the Collections generously funded the purchase of a watercolour drawing showing a view of the Cloister at Eton College. They are seen from the eastern side, looking back towards Lupton’s Tower and what is now the Print Room of the Fine & Decorative Art (FDA) collection. Around the edge of the central lawn neat shrubs are visible, as are the Georgian iron railings on the far western side, later removed by architect Edmond ‘Bear’ Warre (1877–1959), son of former Provost Dr Warre.
This watercolour joins a further six topographical views of Eton in the FDA collection painted by George Pyne. Pyne was a skilled and prolific architectural and topographical artist, who worked from the 1820s through to the 1870s. So why then has he remained relatively unknown, while his father, William Henry Pyne (1770–1843), and father-in-law, John Varley (1778–1842), are considered significant
watercolourists of their age? Although George Pyne was not as innovative and gifted as Varley, the reason may in part be explained by the turbulent circumstances of his personal life, which caused him to retreat from public life and the pursuit of a conventional career.
George Pyne was born in London on 5 July 1801, one of ten children of William Henry Pyne, an artist, writer and founding member of the Old Water-colour Society. Despite an apparently successful career, W. H. Pyne found himself in serious financial difficulty in later life, suffering bankruptcy and imprisonment for debt during the 1820s and ‘30s. Two of his sons, George and Charles Claude, trained under their father and collaborated with him on projects, including Fisher’s Grand National Improvements (1828) and Lancashire Illustrated (1831), publications to which W. H. Pyne contributed text, while his sons made illustrations.
George’s career bore similarities to that of his father. He wrote teaching manuals: A Rudimentary and Practical Treatise on Perspective for Beginners (first published 1848) and Practical Rules on Drawing for the Operative Builder, and Young Students in Architecture (1854) and in 1827 was elected an associate member of the Old Water-Colour Society. However, he also followed his father into debt, entering a debtor’s prison twice. In fact, father and son were simultaneously imprisoned during the summer of 1828.
In September that year, shortly after his release, George married Esther Varley, the daughter of landscape artist John Varley, his father’s friend. The union was not a success and George continued to struggle with debt, causing the couple to move repeatedly to escape creditors. There followed a period of separation in 1830, when Esther stayed with relatives in Devon. The couple reunited and lived for a time with Esther’s father, in Bayswater (1830–33) but George returned to a debtor’s prison in 1833. His release was followed by a failed attempt to start a new life with his wife in Devon (1838–39). This stressful and financially desperate period culminated in George’s departure for France in 1841, reportedly at the request of his father-in-law, which spelled the end of the marriage. Pyne occasionally wrote to his wife from France during the early 1840s, but seems to have remained abroad for several years, despite his own father’s death in 1843. When he returned to England, probably in 1847/48, he did not contact Esther. He also never again publicly exhibited his work. By 1851 he was living with a new partner, (Sarah) Ann Young, in Marylebone, London.
George Pyne (1801–1884), The Cloisters at Eton College, pencil and watercolour on paper
On New Year’s Day, 1858, the day that the Matrimonial Causes Act came into effect, George was living with Ann in Oxford, with their four young daughters: Emily (c.4), Jessie (c.2), Leonora (1) and new baby, Dorothy. Until then, divorce had been the preserve of the Church and so remained extremely rare. Esther’s divorce petition of February 1858 was one of the very first to be filed; in fact, the second ever such petition. Much of the information we have on the marriage of George and Esther comes from this document. She was unrestrained in her condemnation; accusing her husband of neglecting and abandoning her, of drunkenness, squandering career opportunities and having affairs.
A further damning assessment of Pyne’s character is found in Alfred Thomas Story’s 1894 joint biography of miniature painter James Holmes and John Varley, which states:
...there appear to have been no depths of infamy to which this creature could not sink... his habits made him an object loathsome to every decent-minded person... when the wretch had not the means, the fruit of his own industry, to indulge his appetite, he would steal from his wife’s father, sneaking into his room at night and taking the money from his pocket...
However, the writer cannot bring himself to criticise Pyne’s skill in his profession, describing him as a ‘clever artist’ and ‘a man of so much natural talent that he could have earned any amount by his brush... while he was the author of one of the best works on perspective that has ever been written.’
Pyne’s watercolours include some genre scenes and many topographical views, particularly focusing on the university buildings of Oxford and Cambridge, and of Eton College. His precise watercolour drawings of Eton include both distant views of the Foundation buildings and scenes of life at the school, set within the Foundation area or in neighbouring streets. They were made at a time when security was not as necessarily high as it is today and any artist could wander freely through the Foundation buildings with a sketchbook. Almost all Pyne’s views of the college are populated with figures, including boys in uniform, Masters and others. Most of these Eton works were painted between 1849 and 1854, following his return from France but preceding the trauma of the divorce, although he returned to the subject at least twice, in 1859 and 1871. It is possible that he made use of a camera lucida, which uses a lens to project an image onto a sheet of paper, so that outlines can be traced.
However, his writings on perspective suggest he would also have been adept at drawing the buildings without such a device. A contemporary commentator described him as ‘particularly good at handling the texture of old stone buildings’ and he demonstrated the importance he assigned to their texture and imperfections in his Rudimentary Perspective, written while he was in Paris in 1846, which concludes with a visual demonstration of how to age and weather a perspective drawing of a stone cross, and with the words: ‘It is the absence of formality that constitutes picturesque form.’
After the divorce case, George and Ann Young waited three years before marrying discreetly (they had long been living as Mr and Mrs Pyne) in Oxford, in 1861. The marriage endured and they went on to have four further children: Sarah, George, Rose and Felica, remaining in Oxford for the rest of their lives. Pyne worked consistently until his final years, despite the comment in Roget’s 1891 History of the Old WaterColour Society that ‘there is not much to record of his final career. His name last appears in the [Old Water-Colour Society] catalogue in 1843 with no address…’ Along with no record of his later career, other than the evidence of his surviving dated works, there is also no suggestion of further debt or incident following the scandal of the divorce. Pyne’s death in Oxford, at the age of 84, went unnoticed.
Philippa Martin Keeper of FDA
George Pyne (1800–1884) Durnford House and Hawtrey House 1859, pencil and watercolour
Illustration from Perspective for Beginners by George Pyne, 1870 edition
Sport at Eton College
Sport is a significant part of life at Eton, and there are nearly 90 different authorised school colours for the different teams a boy can be part of. Sport at Eton today includes badminton, basketball, eventing, fencing, fives, golf, martial arts, rackets, sailing, shooting, squash, table tennis, and water polo, as well as the more traditional field game, wall game and rowing.
However, this was not always the case, and the original Statutes of 1452 focus more on what the boys were not allowed to do, rather than what they could. There it states that there shall be “no jumping or wrestling” or “throwing of stones or balls”. Members of the College shall not keep “hounds, nets, ferrets, sparrow-hawks or goshawks for sport”.
Early references to physical activity can be traced from the Vulgaria, a Latin textbook published in 1519 by William Horman, Head Master from 1486-1495, in which phrases such as “We wyll playe with a ball full of wynde” and “he hyt me in the yie with a tenys balle” appear, suggesting at least that a version of football and tennis were known to the boys.
Letters home, diaries, Keepers’ books and reports show that by the 18th century, sport was very much part of the daily life of the boys. Although fencing and dancing were the only activities officially offered by the school, the boys were free to organise any games themselves. One game that is instantly recognisable and still enjoyed by children today is “Slide down the sides of the stairs from Cloysters to College kitchen”. Many of the games would take place outdoors, and there was little official
Sport at Eton
6.30pm, 9th March 2017
Election Hall.
Talk & Reception (Friends of the ECC)
provision apart from the School of Arms. This informal organisation with minimal interference from the school continued until well into the 20th century.
By 1863, the boys would bemoan the lack of facilities, stating in the Chronicle that “A Gymnasium at Eton College has long been wanted, and still forms a gap in our scholastic routine of education.” The main reason for one, they stated, was that “on a wet day, there is positively nothing to do by way of amusement, but to eat, or else annoy your Tutor by quasi-gymnastic exercises in the passage, or a 10-feet square cage, called a “room” at Eton.” A similar complaint would appear in 1891, when the boys would also lament the lack of a swimming bath and squash courts. They wanted to be able to “exercise under cover for wet days, a form of amusement which absolutely does not exist here at present, except in the form of passage-football and steeple-chases round School Library. “
Despite this, it would not be until 1907 that the school would really provide for physical activity. In that year, the first gymnasium was built and the first instructor in Physical Training, Lieut. F.H. Grenfell R.N., appointed to instruct the boys according to the Swedish System.
There was still however to be an additional charge to use the gymnasium, and despite the existence of the facilities, compulsory physical education for all boys was not introduced until 1937, with time taken from the Classics’ teaching hours.
This presentation will trace the history of sport at Eton College, showing the development from the origins of the school, through the 1670s when finally sporting activity was encouraged, albeit only skittles, to the Eton of today, when we can boast of producing Olympic gold medallists, the most recent being Constantine Louloudis, (KS 2010 and Captain of Boats), who was one of the rowers in the team that claimed a fifth consecutive Olympic title in the men’s four in Rio.
Using examples from the archives, join us to find out which former Prime Minister the Captain of College Wall described as “though rather young and weak for his position played an excellent if inconspicuous game” and discover which sport one boy described as providing “equal opportunities for the snappy dribbler and seventy ton tank”.
Eleanor Hoare College Archivist
A souvenir of the Bentham brothers’ adventures in Russia
In the Kessler Collection in College Library is a heavy volume, splendidly bound. The black goatskin binding boasts a design representing church spires and trees characteristic of Russia. Inside is a collection of late 18th-century engravings of cities in Russia and Siberia—the only copy presently known in a British, Western European or American library, and one of a very small number traced anywhere in the world. Preserved within the beautiful book lie the remains of an earlier binding for the engravings. Mounted and bound in behind the plates themselves, the older binding is downright scruffy by comparison. The earlier, perhaps original simple blue paper cover bears a succinct, handwritten description of the contents: ‘Views of Towns in Russia & Siberia’.
At first glance such a description seems hardly surprising. But the fact that it is in English, in a very early 19th-century hand, is peculiar. At this period, even including a small expatriate merchant community in St Petersburg, relatively few Britons had significant links to Russia. This peculiarity led travel book specialist Barbara GrigorTaylor (librarian to Nicholas Kessler, the benefactor who donated this book) to embark on a historical detective hunt.
The series of 34 engraved views, collectively known as Sobraniie rossiiskikh i sibirskikh gorodov [The Collection of Russian and Siberian Cities], were at first sold separately. They were then offered for sale as a group in an album, at the Chancellery Bookshop of the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg, from the 1780s until the beginning of the 19th century, when the Engraving Chamber of the Academy was closed. These were the first published views of any Russian
cities and towns apart from St Petersburg and Moscow, and the collection provides perhaps the most important visual record of Russian expansion east of the Caspian Sea.
The engravings are from drawings by artists at the Academy, including Mikhail Makhaev. These in turn were based on drawings by artists attached to imperial expeditions made over the reigns of three empresses, following two routes: through Siberia to the Bering Sea from 1733 to 1745 (the ‘Great Northern Expedition’), and down the Volga River to the Caspian Sea in 1765.
The search for the early 19th-century owner of this volume began in the British Library. There, Grigor-Taylor identified manuscripts of Britons in Russia dating between 176970 (when the engravings were published) and 1807 (the date of the watermark of the blue English paper used for the cover). Focusing on those who could have bought the engravings in St Petersburg, and who may have had a particular interest in these localities and routes, she ultimately narrowed the search to Samuel Bentham (1757-1831).
Samuel Bentham, after completing an apprenticeship to a master shipwright in
London, and finding insufficient prospects for his chosen career as an inventor, went to Russia in 1779 to seek his fortune. Soon employed by Prince Potyomkin, he embarked on a two-year tour to report on natural resources and propose improvements in their use. He travelled through Siberia as far as the border with China by the very route illustrated in the engravings. Subsequently he was based on Potyomkin’s estate in the Crimea and fought in the Russo-Turkish War of 178792 before going back to England, where he remained for the rest of his life apart from a return visit to Russia in 1805-07. A considerable number of his manuscripts survive, which made it possible to establish very quickly that Samuel Bentham’s hand is not at all similar to that of the title for the engravings.
The Bentham papers at the British Library, however, are part of a larger collection, centred on Samuel’s far more famous elder brother, the philosopher and reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). The collection includes a complete transcription by Jeremy of Samuel’s Siberia travel journal, as well as Jeremy’s own diary documenting the visit he made in 1786-87 to Samuel in
Considered the founder of modern utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham developed this doctrine based on the premise that ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the only right and proper end of government’. He was a leading figure in legal philosophy and made significant contributions to social reform. He is also remembered for his scheme for a panopticon penitentiary, to which can be traced modern ideas of surveillance. The initial idea for ‘a central inspection house’ came from his brother Samuel, who drew it up while involved in the management of factories in the Crimea. Much of Jeremy’s own visit to Russia was spent developing the idea with Samuel and writing letters later published as Panopticon
the Crimea. Here at last was a match: the handwriting in the manuscripts by Jeremy Bentham himself appeared to be the same as that of the inscription on the early cover.
Recently, this discovery was confirmed by Philip Schofield, Director of the Bentham Project at University College London, who concurs that the cover title for the engravings was written by Jeremy Bentham ‘in his best handwriting’. Grigor-Taylor sums up the probable story behind the inscription and the book’s journey from Russia to England:
‘Samuel was in St Petersburg when these engravings were sold… They were the first and only illustrated record of his Siberia journeys, and easily procured at the Academy of Sciences. The brothers’ common interests and collaborative projects, their close relationship and their travels (shared through letters and books if not in person), further contribute to the likelihood that Samuel gave this collection to Jeremy as a pictorial souvenir of his travels through Siberia.’
Rachel Bond College Librarian
View of Irkuktsk in Siberia, from Sobraniie rossiiskikh i sibiriskikh [St Petersburg: Academy of Sciences, 1769-1771].
Review
Recently we have been working to develop partnerships with secondary schools, the link up with Theale Green School being a prime example. In addition to the Shakespeare Challenge Day programme for Year 4s described by Stephie Coane (p. 16), which was partly delivered by Theale Green students, students from the school also joined Etonians for the opening preview of the Baldwin and Henderson ceramics exhibition in the Verey Gallery. They produced their own work in response back at school and then came back to attend a talk tracing the story of British studio pottery given by Emma Crichton-Millar.
We are also supporting Windsor Girls School with their Aspiring High group, set up for Year 11 and Year 12 students considering applying to Russell Group universities.
Over 50 university hopefuls participated in a programme focussed on the Natural History Museum and the Eton Museum of Antiquities, exploring ethics in museum collecting and display. Follow up research was undertaken at school before the programme culminated in a strongly argued and highly articulate debate held in the Jafar Hall: ‘This House believes the Elgin Marbles should be returned to Greece’.
Students from the school have also attended a talk by Grayson Perry, the Baldwin & Henderson exhibition private view, and a talk by Lance Corporal Derek Derenalagi, 2nd Battalion Mercian Regiment, one of the injured veterans photographed by Rankin for the exhibition and book ‘For Queen & Country’. The project aims to raise money for the Haig Housing Trust which funds specially adapted housing.
Charlotte Villiers
Exhibitions & Outreach Coordinator
It was Friday afternoon on the 14th of October when I found myself with nothing to do, stressed over homework, and yet extremely bored. I clicked on a link in an email a teacher had sent me, decided to follow it through and attended a talk at Eton College. This is where I learned about Derek Derenalagi.
Derek’s story was moving and inspirational. He moved from Nadi, Fiji, where he grew up, to west London in 2000. After studying, he became a soldier to serve Britain. By the time of his accident, he had served six years in the military. It was when he was posted in Afghanistan that disaster struck.
His regiment was ordered by his colonel to make it to higher ground, to get a better view of the area for tactical purposes. The Range Rover carrying his squad had reversed on an improvised explosive device and Derek, unfortunately, took full impact of the explosion. He was flung 30 metres in the air and then, landed on a pile of rocks. He described it as being so quick, that he remembers trying to get up, only to find both of his legs up to his knee joint had been blown off. In addition, he had broken his left collar bone and lost a couple of front teeth.
He stayed between life and death after his legs were amputated and fell into a coma for nine days. When he woke up, he
decided his source of inspiration was God. He found motivation to keep living through a prayer he devised.
He came back home in England where it took him eight months to train to walk again. During his rehabilitation, Derek was selected by a talent-spotter for Team GB and went on to represent his country as a discus thrower. He is now a Paralympian and is training for the Tokyo Paralympics 2020.
As well as the talk, we had the pleasure of walking down to the Rankin exhibition in the Verey Gallery, where we looked at portraits of other brave and determined veterans, and read of their heroic stories.
What I learnt from this talk is that sometimes we need go out, and broaden our education through pure curiosity. From the people we meet, to the things we see and do, we can learn from every new experience we encounter. What I learnt from Derek’s story was that not everything is as bad as it seems to be, since someone will always be worse off than you are. No matter what source of motivation you get inspiration from, make sure you stay resilient and strong through tough times. Suffering is always a test: it is your choice on how you choose to handle it.
Darcy Aigle-Boucher Windsor Girls School
Acclaimed photographer Rankin has supported Haig Housing Trust’s fundraising campaign, Coming Home, by creating a book of portraits of wounded veterans, For Queen & Country.
It came as a surprise to me that this is only the second year in which the Keeper of Collections has been an existing position. I would have assumed that such a fundamental part of Eton’s heritage would have been cause for a boy role for many years already. The introduction of it now, though, offers great potential to the Collections.
I became involved with the Collections in D block, through Hordern Farr’s (AW 2015) After School club programme for primary age children, and subsequently worked on every After School Club throughout D and C blocks. This was a hugely rewarding experience and has partly prompted my determination to put the Collections firmly on the radar of all boys in F Block and beyond. I am joint Boy Keeper with Arthur Parish and we have a number of projects and responsibilities agreed for this year. We are continuing the After School Club, with some developments. We intend to create a slightly more varied experience for the students who take part, exploring not only objects in the Collections but also spaces such as College Chapel, Lower School and Lower Chapel which have an impressive history. We are actively promoting the accessibility of the Collections to boys, and pushing awareness of events and exhibitions. We support the Collections in looking after students from other schools who attend previews and lectures – we were both on hand for the Studio Pottery evening and Derek Derenalagi’s talk, when I gave the vote of thanks. We are working to link up all boys engaged in the Collections, whatever their block, and support Charlotte Villiers Exhibitions & Outreach Coordinator in coordinating their contribution.
The recent development of the Jafar gallery, a contemporary home for the Myers Collection, has been a tremendous advancement in the openness of the Collections, something which the donor of the core Egyptian collection, Major Myers, himself was primarily concerned with, opening up his house as he did to boys for the purpose of displaying the artefacts he had collected. My particular interest is indeed the Myers Collection, owing to my academic interests in Classics. I first began to realise quite how lucky we are to have this when, having been reading about the Parthenon’s destruction in 1687 one morning, I was later looking at the shell that did the damage in the Jafar Gallery. This is an item which is mentioned in the Duveen Gallery at the British Museum, and the fact that boys can see it, along with other fantastic artefacts, such as some preColumbian pots and an unbelievably well preserved Roman portrait is extraordinary. There is so much more to the Collections than the Gutenberg Bible …
The item which has caught my attention more than any other thus far is the Egyptian coffin, which until very recently was housed in the Brewhouse. Aside from its beautiful colours and decoration, I enjoy the coffin because of the genuine insights it gives to the Egyptian trade. The coffin appears to be constructed using sycamore fig, but upon much closer inspection, one can see that the less visible parts were made using some far more fibrous wood, which would have been far cheaper to produce. This is wonderful and revealing evidence of ancient carpenters cutting costs.
One of the most astounding facts is that there is something relevant to most
subjects studied within the college and beyond. Personally, studying Classics, I have been fortunate enough to pore over some of Richard Porson’s original documents, which are so consequential as to have been the model for the font used in most editions of Ancient Greek texts. In a Geography division I have studied the evolution of maps through analysing those we had in College Library and College Archives. This was in F block, and the very fact that I can remember it now surely suggests that the employment of the artefacts was not only interesting but an effective teaching method. I would argue that this type of educational activity is beneficial for both boys and the Collections themselves.
I am sure that there is much within the Collections which I am yet to realise is there. I am looking forward to a diverse year of modern artists talking in the Verey Gallery, introducing people to the Collections, and also exploring them further myself.
Will Whipp PBS
Will Whipp working on the Children’s University
Teaching Shakespeare
The fourth centenary of the death of William Shakespeare in 2016, marked across the English-speaking world and beyond with special exhibitions and cultural events, has amply confirmed Ben Jonson’s prediction in his dedicatory verses prefixed to the First Folio of Shakespeare’s dramatic works that Shakespeare ‘was not of an age, but for all time.’
Somewhat gingerly as a modern linguist who last studied English literature in an Italian secondary school, but confident that with the combined intellects of the College Librarian Rachel Bond, English literature MA graduate Maddy Smith, and former School Librarian and College Librarian Michael Meredith, we could not go wrong, I therefore made the suggestion that an exhibition with such universal appeal and scope for teaching students of all ages was in the vernacular a ‘no-brainer’. With the library’s rich holdings in English literature and theatre history, and a continuing tradition of Etonians going on to become acclaimed actors, the mere fact of having done a Shakespeare exhibition ten years ago was no good reason not to do another one.
A lot of hard work later, the exhibition ‘Shakespeare on Page and Stage’ opened at the end of April to an enthusiastic uptake by the Eton community, with all the Summer half tutor group slots advertised ‘selling out’ in less than 24 hours. It was deliberately conceived so that each section could be approached independently of the others, to maximise flexibility for teaching, and one of the most exciting parts of the exhibition has been the opportunity to use Eton’s incredibly varied collections of rare books, graphic works and theatre ephemera to present our curatorial knowledge and
build on the College Collections’ work in recent years to devise teaching, access and engagement sessions in connection with exhibitions that are flexible enough to be presented at Eton or at an external school, scalable to different ages and interest groups, and whenever possible linked to actual objects that can be used in lessons.
Under the inspired (and inspiring) guidance of Charlotte Villiers Exhibitions & Outreach Cordinator and in dialogue with senior staff at Eton End School in Datchet, the College Collections team created three sessions for delivery at primary schools using original items from the collections. This built on the success of similar events in previous years, particularly a ‘puzzle day’ of activities focused on the notorious ‘flogging head master’ Dr Keate held for Year 4 Gifted & Talented children in March 2015 at Eton End School acting for the first time as a hub for other local independent and state schools. The Shakespeare centenary exhibition was an obvious topic to build on that success, and two months before the exhibition opened, 48 children from nine schools took part in a day of activities inspired by Shakespeare. Experimenting with different ways of learning, four sessions focusing on history, art, English, and science approached Shakespeare from different angles so that the children’s knowledge and understanding grew over the course of the morning as they rotated through the sessions.
Three of these were devised and presented by Eton staff. The College Archivist Eleanor Hoare presented ‘Who was Shakespeare?’ in which she explored what we can and cannot learn from the surviving documentary evidence of Shakespeare the man. Using original documents from the College
Archives, the children were set the task of deciphering Elizabethan secretary hand –notoriously challenging for adults let alone nine-year-olds! – and encouraged to think about different kinds of historical evidence, and the difference between verifiable fact, fiction, and suppositions made within reasonable doubt: for example the traditional date of 23 April given for Shakespeare’s birthday is extrapolated from the date of his baptism on 26 April, which customarily took place three days after a baby’s birth.
Charlotte Villiers led ‘Imagining Shakespeare’, a session using original 19th- and 20thcentury drawings and photographs of Shakespearean costume designs from College Library to outline three possible approaches: presenting a play in the costume of Shakespeare’s own day, that of the period in which the play is set, and that of one’s own time (or any other time). The children were then inspired to create their own intepretations of four Shakespearean characters – Othello, Romeo, Titania, and a Witch – using colours, swatches of material and written words. (The Witch was overwhelmingly the most popular.)
My own session, ‘Shakespeare’s Plays’, focused on how the plays which have become part of the world’s cultural DNA came to print in the first place. Shakespeare wrote his plays as scripts for the playhouse, not as literature for private reading, and the texts became the property of his theatre company. It is thought that the theatre companies only started selling the plays to printers in large numbers as a source of income when the theatres were closed due to plague in the 1590s. If it hadn’t been for these early quarto editions and later the iconic First Folio, the first collected
edition of Shakespeare’s plays published posthumously in 1623, 18 of his plays including the likes of The Tempest and Macbeth would probably have been lost like thousands of plays of the period known only by their titles or not at all. Using facsimile editions of the First Folio and some early quartos and by way of analogy with ink stamps and potato printing, I explained the process of handpress era printing to children more accustomed to iPads and desktop printers. I then asked the children to consider the difference between different formats and to compare different editions of Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Henry V to tease out differences in text and presentation. It was incredibly challenging to make this complex material accessible to nine-year-olds, particularly considering that I was only first introduced to some of the concepts myself as a postgraduate student at Oxford!
The final session, ‘Bubble Bubble,’ was taught by one of the school’s science teachers based on the contents of a witch’s cauldron, and the morning sessions culminated after lunch with performance workshops guided by a drama teacher in which the children worked together to present ‘abridged’ Shakespeare plays. In the course of these activities children from different schools who had never met before worked together learning concrete things and broader life skills such as collaborating, speculating, and problem-solving. I was particularly struck by how many children were familiar with Shakespeare (especially Macbeth).
Two of the sessions were reprised for the Eton End Leavers (Year 6) at the Tony Little Centre for Innovation and Research in Learning (CIRL) in May 2016, followed by break-out sessions in CIRL’s two learning spaces to build on concepts introduced beforehand; in June Charlotte, and the
Archives Assistant, James Harrison, and I travelled to Theale Green School in West Berkshire to repeat the entire puzzle day for another group of 47 Gifted & Talented children drawn from eight schools. Each time we took the opportunity to adapt and refine our sessions. These sessions were adapted again for a visit in September by year 11 students from the City of London Freemen’s School and the City Academy, Hackney. On that occasion, the palaeography session was repeated alongside a curatorial tour of the exhibition, in which students were given a sense of the many different ways Shakespeare can be explored today. These and similar sessions can be endlessly repeated for more children in future as Shakespeare will never be out of fashion… especially as we look forward to the 400th birthday of the First Folio in 2023.
Stephie Coane Deputy Curator of Modern Collections, College Library
Brainstorming in the CIRL
Children playing in the streets ... English Photographer 20th century
The College Archives and the history of a London estate
Many will have heard of the Foundation Charter, the 1882 FA Cup Final programme, or the confirmation by William II of a grant of land, the earliest item in the archives. However, these treasures are but a small fraction of the Eton College Archives, which also contain boxes upon boxes of hidden treasures as yet unknown to researchers, but which can provide fascinating insights into life in the past. As the Archives Assistant in 2016, one of my responsibilities has been to catalogue and index some of these underappreciated materials, ranging from scrapbooks and letters to boarding house files. During the cataloguing and indexing processes I have been fascinated with the stories they have told, including the time a hive of bees swarmed on the statue of the Founder, an incident involving the Kaiser of Germany and the accidental firing of a weapon, and the tragic loss of four Eton masters who died whilst climbing on Piz Roseg in the Alps.
As part of these cataloguing responsibilities, I have had the opportunity to catalogue a large number of records related to the Chalcots Estate. Granted to Eton by the Crown in 1448, it was the former London estates of the hospital of St James. Chalcots was what the college was left with when Henry VIII decided he wanted the hospital to build what is now St James’s Palace and made Eton swap it for other lands. The estate originally comprised mostly farmland before witnessing waves of development and building in the 19th century. This history can still be seen today, with streets in the Hampstead area boasting names such as Eton College Road and Fellows Road. The first step of the cataloguing process was to go through each of the 32 boxes, identifying each individual item. It was during this stage of the process that intriguing insights into life in Hampstead, London, in the early 20th century emerged. Among hundreds of leases, licences, surrenders and transfers was a bundle of
grubby and folded correspondence, dating from 1911 to 1916, regarding the state of Steele’s Mews South.
The earliest item in this bundle certainly sets the tone; a petition from Mews South tenants and lessees, dated 24 June 1911, demanding a response from the Provost and Fellows to save the property from deterioration and deprecation, and shield the lessees from pecuniary loss. The great threat these desperate residents face? Noisy children. ‘These children use Steele’s Road as a playground, playing cricket, hopscotch, and other games, and disturbing the peace of the inhabitants by shouting and yelling. They are under no control and have no sense of order or even in some cases decency.’ This petition hints to the origins of this crisis, with a row of Coach Houses now occupied by ‘a very poor class of tenants with large families of young children.’ This petition is the first of a number of documents that capture a time when children frequently played together outside in the streets. The descriptions of children playing long forgotten games are particularly evocative.
More accusations follow in later correspondence, including the throwing of canisters full of rocks, digging around trees and strewing roads with rubbish. The response of the Provost and Fellows, to instruct a solicitor to call upon lessees to avoid causing annoyance to neighbours, appears to have had little effect, with correspondence in early 1912 now raising the possibility of the children turning the neighbourhood into a slum, and discussing the solution of removing the guilty tenants. All of this came as a surprise to Thompson Kirtley & Co., tasked with dealing with the
children of the tenants, noting that they received no complaints themselves, and that during their inspections the number of young children they had found was small, and they all appeared clean and well behaved.
This situation continued for five years, with a steady stream of letters from tenants between 1911 and 1916 complaining about the continued poor behaviour of the neighbourhood’s children. By June 1914 tenants were complaining that the road was worse than ever, and providing detailed descriptions of the children’s outrages. In one case up to 30 children were ‘hooting and screaming, one section devoting itself to the playing of tip cat. What is particularly interesting about this correspondence is how the Great War, which would break out in only a month’s time, and would continue to rage on during the remaining correspondence, is never mentioned. However, it is safe to presume that the families of both the children and the complaining tenants were both impacted by the conflict. Perhaps there were so many ‘rampaging’ children on the streets because so many of their parents were occupied by the war, but we will likely never know for certain.
The legal opinion from Hallowes & Carter in May 1916 provided little hope for the besieged tenants, explaining that not only would there be great difficulty in identifying the actual perpetrators, but also in bringing home responsibility for their actions to the lessors, as the disturbances being caused do not breach the terms of the leases. This left Eton and the tenants with only three options: bring the matter to the police, in the hope that the Police Courts would put an end to the disturbances; Eton inducing the lessors to choose their tenants more carefully; or Eton acquiring the mews in order to shut them up or convert them into another use which would avoid the risk of undesirable tenants.
New problems had arisen by July 1916, with a complaint that the nuisance was worse
than ever, and had ‘been supplemented by a gang of hobbledehoys who assemble of an evening to smoke cigarettes, & use filthy language.’ The choice of language in these documents was a great source of enjoyment to me during the cataloguing process, and could comprise an entire article by itself. The complaint continues, arguing that the nuisance has become so bad that tenants of the North Mews have been communicating with the police, but to no avail as the police have order not to interfere with children playing. The tenant finishes his letter by claiming that he and his family will soon be leaving the neighbourhood, as they cannot stand to have ‘their nerves wracked in the way that they have been.’
Alas, it seems the hobbledehoy scourge went unresolved into October 1916, with a letter, from the same tenant, stating that the evil pervading the estate is past repair, and that the estate will now rapidly become a slum, as no one will take a house in the road at any price. The writer continues, noting that there will soon be five empty houses in a row, as he cannot submit his family to the torture which they have suffered any longer. The letter concludes that Eton could have avoided this situation if there had been more discrimination in letting the mews tenements.
While the correspondence at first seemed to be providing an amusing story of tenants overreacting to children behaving as children do, as the correspondence continues year after year, with the situation not only remaining unresolved, but escalating to the point of forcing tenants to move elsewhere in desperation, leaving empty houses in their wake, it becomes a
rather more depressing and frustrating tale. It is clear that all those responsible with dealing with the disturbances were either unwilling or unable to, allowing the situation to fester, forcing tenants into eventually abandoning the area altogether. While I have had the pleasure of working with some of Eton’s greatest archival treasures during my time here, I chose to shed light on a neglected bundle of 20th century correspondence for the vivid picture it paints of Hampstead in the 1910s. As we reflect and remember the Great War, these documents have an additional resonance, highlighting that while life continued to go on at home, the effects of the conflict could be felt on every street. Archive materials are incredibly useful for providing information on the past, but often they fail to evoke peoples’ lives, experiences, thoughts and feelings. This correspondence reveals to us how people in and connected with Eton lived, how they spoke and the situations they faced in vivid detail.
Harrison Archives Assistant 2015/16
James
The Provost’s Garden
Convivial conversations between friends can often spark inspired ideas and a discussion between the Provost and Sir Henry Keswick over lunch with Lord Rothschild was the catalyst for a group of major sculptures by three of the most controversial and innovative masters of the last 150 years - Rodin, Epstein and Moore - to be sited this spring in the Provost’s Garden at Eton.
In the 1950s Sir Henry Keswick’s father Tony began to put together a collection of sculptures to be placed in the landscape of wild open country at his hill farm Glenkiln in Dumfriesshire. At the time his approach was surprising and individual – ahead of his time. This was well before the era of sculpture parks, which have become so much of part of our culture today; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Goodwood, Jupiter Art Land The New Art Centre et al., appeared much later.
Since there is a “right to roam” over private land in Scotland, Tony Keswick was effectively sanctioning public access to what became a collection of six iconic bronze pieces: a Rodin, an Epstein and four Henry Moores. The works were sited in spectacular spots across his property, most of them visible for miles around, so that they attracted both curious casual walkers as well as pilgrims and art-lovers who arrived to seek them out. Unfortunately the theft of one of the bronzes in 2013 led to the sad decision to remove all but one of the sculptures from Glenkiln. After that one of the Moores – “King and Queen” – had been loaned to the gallery at Waddesdon Manor. The lunchtime discussion between Lord Rothschild, Sir Henry and the Provost, though admiring of this exhibition, had revolved around how Moore’s sculpture was
really best viewed when placed outside in nature. The Provost’s Garden was suggested and accepted as an exceptional aesthetic outdoor setting for the Moore sculpture and ultimately two other Glenkiln pieces. Earnest negotiations began from there resulting in the delivery this spring (with the help of reinforced scaffolding, a gantry crane and various other bits of heavy lifting hydraulic machinery) of “King and Queen” by Moore (1952-3), Jacob Epstein’s “The Visitation” (1926) and Auguste Rodin’s “John the Baptist” (1878-80).
Today when we think of Henry Moore’s work we associate it first and foremost with display in an outdoor setting. It is astounding to discover through interviews done with Moore about his friendship
and association with Tony Keswick that making work for Glenkiln entirely shaped and transformed the sculptor’s idea of where his work was best sited. ‘I’m very grateful to Tony for starting me with that real connection, real experience of working with nature. Nothing has overshadowed it [Glenkiln] in my mind.’
Moore’s friendship with Tony Keswick spanned over three decades. Bizarrely, Tony’s first visit to Moore’s studio at Perry Green, Much Hadham, resulted from the misapprehension that Moore could supply him with a set of craftsman-made brass taps! The Keswicks had a weekend retreat nearby at Theydon Bois so Tony had popped over to make a purchase, soon realising his mistake. Plumbing fittings were not in evidence; contemporary sculpture works abounded. He quickly recovered his composure and the relationship led on from there. Years of collaboration and friendship between the two men followed with Moore visiting Glenkiln to view his works in place.
Though Tony said that “King and Queen” was named because it was made in 1953 the year of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, Moore had in fact turned down a request to produce a memorial work for that event and stated that the regal authority and aristocratic elegance of the piece was more inspired by the fairy stories of princes and princesses that he had been reading to his daughter Mary.
Placed in a corner of the Provost’s Garden “KIng and Queen” sits in front of the tall cascading plant shapes of Datisca cannabina and Schefflera taiwanina which were added to the established herbaceous border by the Old Etonian garden designer James
The Visitation, Jacob Epstein, (1880-1959)
King and Queen, Henry Moore, (1898-1986)
Alexander Sinclair in a recent revamp of the garden. These dramatic structural plants form a backdrop which mimic in the outdoors the swags and drapes that might appropriately surround royalty in an interior setting.
In stark contrast is the placing of Epstein’s “The Visitation” which portrays the heavily pregnant Virgin Mary appearing before her cousin Elizabeth at the moment she is first recognised by her kinswoman as the mother of Jesus (Luke 1:39:45). The figure has been sited simply on a flagstone terrace against the plain red brick exterior of the Provost’s Lodge. The unadorned background sets in relief the humility and vulnerability of the Virgin in this evocative bronze interpretation. At a recent primary school visit organised through Eton’s Collections engagement programme a small child took the Provost’s wife Caroline Waldegrave’s hand saying ‘she’s rather scary, I’m glad you are here’. The sculpture does not portray a woman beautified or made vain by the importance of the task that has been God given, but rather one overpowered and exhausted by the burden of her responsibility.
This cast of “The Visitation” was originally the one Epstein had retained for himself. On one of Tony’s early visits to his studio he happened to arrive at the moment when removal men turned up to take away this cast for scrap. Epstein was trying to complete two new busts, one of Winston Churchill, and had run out of cash to buy the bronze to cast these new works and so was flogging for scrap his own cast of “The Visitation”. Tony intervened and purchased the sculpture from Epstein on the spot.
In the biblical story of “The Visitation” Elizabeth herself was pregnant with John the Baptist when she recognises that her cousin is bearing God’s child, so there is a wonderful continuum in the narrative of having Rodin’s majestic figure of a naked “John the Baptist” set adjacent to “The Visitation” in the garden.
In a sheltered glade formed between the building and a magnificent magnolia that dominates the lawned area of the garden the Rodin figure strides confidently, his expressive arms outstretched as he prepares the way for the ministry of Jesus.
The loan by the Keswick family of these important sculptures to the Provost’s Garden represents not only a bountiful educational resource for Eton but also for its numerous local partner schools and for art students and organisations both countrywide and internationally who will be able to visit.
No longer will these bronzes be blasted by the elements on the lonely, wild hills of Glenkiln but instead they have found a more protected outdoor sanctuary and a different context in this fine historic garden setting.
Fiona McLeod
I’ve been a freelance journalist for over 20 years and have contributed to all the broadsheets and a clutch of magazines over the years. Recently I’ve been working for the Weekend FT, House and Garden, The Sunday Times, The Scottish Field and Town and Country. I write features about art, design, interiors, gardens and travel.
I’ve had two boys at Eton and so I was aware of the incredible cultural riches that the college has tucked away. Neither boy was particularly artistic, literary or musical – both were fanatical sportsmen so my visits to Eton seemed to revolve around football pitches and cricket grounds rather the cultural venues. The Friends of the Eton College Collections gave me the opportunity to see the side of the school I felt I was not involved in as much as I’d like and being a real ‘culture vulture’ has given me great pleasure.
Brief Biography of Fiona McLeod, freelance journalist and Friend of the Collections
John the Baptist, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)
The Isle is full of Noises: Malcolm Arnold’s Tempest
The Theatre World critic described the music in the 1954 Old Vic production of The Tempest as ‘entrancing’, a perfect accompaniment to Shakespeare’s play, carrying the audience away with delight, wonder and rapture. Such high praise, shared by most of those who saw the play, was a tribute to the work of the young composer Malcolm Arnold, who had been commissioned to undertake the task by the director Robert Helpmann after he had heard Arnold’s ballet music to Homage to the Queen at Sadler’s Wells.
College Library has recently bought all that survives of the manuscript score Arnold handed over, piece by piece, to the conductor and musical director Christopher Whelan during rehearsals. We also have on loan a complete orchestral score of The Tempest’s incidental music, copied out by Arnold five days before the opening night. These two documents enable us to reconstruct the play’s performance history
and explain why it was that the Theatre World was so entranced by Arnold’s music.
The 1953-54 season at The Old Vic saw the beginning of an ambitious plan to perform all Shakespeare’s plays in the First Folio, starting with Hamlet, with Richard Burton as the Prince, and taking five years to complete. A strong company was assembled, including Michael Hordern, Fay Compton, Claire Bloom, Robert Hardy and, of course, Richard Burton, who was then establishing his name as a stage actor. The Tempest was the last of the season’s plays and had its first night on 13th April 1954.
The first problem facing Robert Helpmann was the permanent set erected for the five-year plan: a façade of three Palladian arches, held up by four sturdy pillars, which was ideal for most of the tragedies and histories, but completely unsuitable for the magic of Prospero’s island. Helpmann and his designer Leslie Hurry had to disguise
this, and so started the play with Prospero ordering strange-shaped monsters to dress the set and arrange strands of tropical vegetation round the pillars, transforming the stage into a mysterious and beautiful island. Malcolm Arnold’s music, therefore, contributed to this transformation by creating a magical sound picture, alluring but strangely sinister, before a word was spoken. Once the set was in place, the monsters disappeared and an enormous storm burst over the theatre with a doomed ship viewed through the middle arch, lit by a single spot. As the frightened passengers cried out and the mariners struggled to keep the boat afloat, it split in two and sank in full view of the audience. Arnold’s storm, aided by wind-machines and thundersheets, was created by eight musicians playing oboe, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, harp, celesta and many different percussion instruments. It was superbly choreographed by Helpmann and subsided into a quiet conversation in Prospero’s cell, in front of
the left arch, as the rightful Duke of Milan, played by Michael Hordern, instructed his daughter Miranda about their past history. This, too, was accompanied by echoes of music, as peace and harmony was restored.
For many critics, Ariel stole the show. The young Robert Hardy was painted sulphuryellow, naked apart from a small decorated thong , his hair stiffly blown back. He moved with balletic grace and spoke and sang with an other-worldly charm, like the airy spirit he was intended to be. Hardy made much of the music Arnold wrote for his four songs. The composer carefully went through each one with him at the piano, making sure that ‘Come unto these Yellow Sands’ had the right lure and ‘Full Fathom Five’ a tingling melancholy. But Arnold did more than set Shakespeare’s songs to his own musical ideas. He also wrote bars of music to cover the entrances and exits of many of the characters. Thus Ariel’s first entrance was to the plucking of a harp, and Caliban lumbered in to a slow tune on the trombone with bass drum accompaniment. Caliban was probably the only disappointment of the production, a lovable moon-calf, played as a broadly comic character by Richard Burton.
Malcolm Arnold’s music, therefore, fulfilled a number of different functions in the play: it set the mood of a scene; it helped to create character; it gave a new beauty to Shakespeare’s songs. But its most original use was in providing an accompaniment to the dialogue in a number of scenes. Thus, at the appearance of the magical banquet at the end of Act 3, the villainous men of sin spoke in tandem with Arnold’s bold, discordant music. Likewise, almost all Miranda and Ferdinand’s scenes were accompanied by music, particularly effective where Ferdinand was moving logs and where the lovers were discovered playing chess. This, of course, required careful rehearsal to make sure the blend of voice and instruments was perfect, but it succeeded so well that Miranda and Ferdinand, often merely rather dull young lovers, were given greater prominence.
In Helpmann’s production they were proclaimed as the new generation who would repudiate the sins and neglect of their fathers in restoring order and prosperity to Milan and Naples. Claire Bloom and John Neville made the most of this opportunity and both gave memorable performances.
Arnold found it easy to work with Helpmann (whom others found tricky) and was clearly
inspired by the vision of The Tempest he was asked to interpret. The two of them, aided by Christopher Whelen, made a good team, each man sparking ideas from the others. The surviving manuscript scores show that throughout rehearsal there were changes and modifications and that Arnold was often composing late into the night to get fresh accompaniments ready for the next day.
There is much to learn from Arnold’s fascinating manuscript scores, which are freely available to members of the Eton community in College Library and to the general public in College Library. It is also hoped that some time before the end of the Malcolm Arnold Project (a three-year, joint venture by the Eton Music Department and College Library) in December 2018 some of The Tempest music may be played at Eton, so that a modern audience may get some small idea of what excited the audience at the Old Vic way back in 1954.
Michael Meredith Curator Modern Collection
Richard Burton, Michael Hordern and Claire Bloom in The Tempest
Eton’s Aviators
In 1916 Ian Napier (L.S.R.B, J.F.C & L.S.R.B, 1914) landed his BE2c on Agar’s Plough in the middle of a cricket match. In commemoration of this event, and in remembrance of all Etonian aviators, the only original SE5a in the world, still flying, with World War 1 wartime combat history was brought to the school by a team from the Shuttleworth Collection for a memorable week of viewings, startups and taxying across Agar’s.
Numerous boys were brought over to Agar’s as part of their study and tutorial programmes, or came across under their own steam, and were able talk to the highly knowledgeable pilot, Dodge Bailey, and team of engineers.
We were also able to share the occasion with the Eton community as a whole, and their friends and families, as well as with groups of pupils from other schools in the area. There were easily over 100 members of the community at the engine start-up one evening, and over 80 students from local primary and secondary schools, including Eton End, Bishopsgate and Holyport, were able to participate in this unique occasion.
In parallel, we put on a special exhibition in the Macnaghten Library looking at flight and reconnaissance photography during the Great War, and the careers of three Etonian pilots – Ian Napier himself, William Acland (S.A.D., P.V.B., S.A.D., G.H.B., 1906) who was the first to land his aeroplane on Agar’s in 1915, and Arthur Rhys Davids (K.S., J.F.C, 1916). School Library put out a related display of combat in the air reports.
Napier joined the RFC in 1916 and was awarded the MC, the Legion d’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre.
Portrait of Ian Napier (LSRB ‘14). Photographic Archive
Acland joined the RFC in 1914 and was one of the very first fighter pilots. On 20th June 1915 he was hit by anti-aircraft fire. From 4,000 feet he successfully landed his blazing aircraft, both he and his observer surviving severe burns. Amongst other objects, the exhibition included his album of photographs taken whilst at Eton, and a Sent-Up for science from 1905. Rhys Davids flew with McCudden’s 56 Squadron and was credited with shooting down German ace Werner Voss. He sat for Sir William Orpen just a week before being lost in action. The Macnaghten Library display therefore included work by this war artist.
Sadly, we do not have a photograph in the Archives capturing the landings of Napier and Acland, but we do have an image of an aeroplane making a forced landing in 1917 on what appears to be South Meadow, taken by a boy here at the time.
In the Great War 330 OEs served in the Royal Flying Corps, Royal Naval Flying Service or the Royal Air Force, of whom 68 died. This was an unforgettable week of great educational and commemorative value, and would not have been possible without the generosity of donors to the project, and the dynamic and invaluable support of David Napier (R.J.N.P, ‘60), Ian Napier’s son.
Charlotte Villiers Exhibitions & Outreach Coordinator
Aerial photograph taken by Captain Gladstone Adams, Macnaghten Library collection
Eton Society 1916. Photographic Archive
Aeroplane making a forced landing in 1917 on what appears to be South Meadow
The SE5a aircraft on Agar’s Plough
Perhaps you recall going to Agars to see the SE5a in June this year. The visit recognised the centenary of Ian Napier (LSRB ‘14) landing his aircraft during a cricket match and scattering the delighted cricketers. What is perhaps less well known is that several Old Etonians became fighter pilots in WW1 and had distinguished combat records in the Royal Flying Corps over the Western Front. Their stories were also related during the week of events in June.
These days most people see flying as an essential part of the fabric of life but one hundred years ago aviation science and practice was in its infancy i.e. somewhere between birth and toddling. Between the pioneering flights of the Wright brothers in 1903 and 1914 the development of aircraft had been very slow – partly inhibited by the technical challenges involved but not
helped by the Wrights taking out a US patent threatening legal action on those who attempted to emulate their techniques. In Europe the holy grail for safe flight was thought to be ultimate aircraft stability – in a manner akin to a correctly loaded boat (or a Weeble for that matter), the expectation being that an aircraft should return automatically to its initial position after any disturbance, while the pilot would exercise some influence over the direction of travel but little else. This somewhat blinkered European requirement for stability resulted in very lacklustre flying machines and it was not until after the Wrights demonstrated their aircraft in France that somewhat speedier progress began to be made in Europe. In fact, the exigencies of war would later drive very rapid development and by the end of hostilities in 1918, aviation had come of age.
One of the essential requirements of aircraft design is to make the aircraft strong enough (and most importantly rigid enough) for flight while minimising the structure weight. The oft quoted aircraft design mantra ‘simplify and build in lightness’ is as important today as it was then. But combining strength and lightness is bound to need compromise and if the designer swings too far towards lightness his aircraft structure fails, if he swings too far towards strength the weight increases. The folks that set about making aircraft in those early days did so because they had the manufacturing wherewithal to build robust but light structures such as furniture or bicycles – sadly very few of them had much if any understanding of the underlying science of flight.
Some aspirants got lucky and made an aircraft that flew (after a fashion), Geoffrey
Eton boys in front of the SE5a
de Havilland, Alliott Verdon Roe, Thomas Sopwith being typical examples. These men went on to found great aircraft firms but only because they were lucky enough to survive crashes in their early, usually frightful, contraptions; others fared less well.
With war looming the Royal Aircraft Factory came into being at Farnborough and, for the early part of the war, set to designing and manufacturing aircraft exclusively for the Royal Flying Corps. This arrangement proved too stultifying and private firms were also encouraged to manufacture aircraft of their own designs for both the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. Firms like Sopwith and Bristol proved very successful and their products frequently out-performed the more conservative products of the ‘Factory’. Later in the war the Factory had recruited some very able people and the team of Kenworthy and Folland created the SE5a.
What was it about the SE5a which made it superior to its contemporaries? To explain that one needs to gain an appreciation of the competition. The closest rival to the SE5a as a fighting machine was probably
the private-enterprise Sopwith Camel. Described at the time as a ‘ferocious beast’ it was unstable and fitted with a rotary engine - the precessional forces generated by the spinning engine made the aircraft unpredictable and counter-intuitive to fly. This combination of challenging characteristics led to the early demise of many an aspiring scout pilot. In its favour, once a pilot had fully adapted to it, the Camel was a formidable fighting machine and was well respected by the German pilots. Another contemporary of the SE5a was the Bristol F2b (Brisfit or Bristol Fighter) this was a bigger aircraft with a gunner carried behind the pilot. Powered by a large water-cooled V12 Rolls Royce engine, it had long range and a good turn of speed but it was not agile and could easily be out manoeuvred by a well flown single-seat scout.
Turning now to the SE5a. The Factory exploited the best aerodynamic data, derived from wind tunnels tests at the NPL, the latest flight dynamics philosophies, and hard-won combat experience to produce the SE5a. The best all-round wing section of the day – the RAF 15 – was adopted
for the SE5a, this section derived from wind tunnel results, which were to be somewhat discredited later on, showed that very thin wings were more efficient. However this thin wing section limits the depth of the wooden wing spars and additional arrangements must be made to ensure that the structure is sufficiently strong and rigid. The biplane arrangement was almost universal at the time and by adopting this layout the ‘I’-value of the biplane ‘cellule is greatly increased. Even so, the SE5as designers knew that, being a war fighting machine, the pilots would on occasion have to fly very fast to engage or escape and they were unlikely to respect any theoretical speed limitation imposed by someone with a slide rule at Farnborough. So additional bracing was added to enhance the structures strength and rigidity and this allowed the aircraft to be dived to its terminal velocity free from aeroelastic instability.
What about its flying qualities? In very simple terms flying qualities are the means by which pilots assess the relative merits of aircraft in terms of the aircraft’s performance, its handing qualities, its systems and ‘mission equipment’.
The most significant aspects of aircraft performance relate to its specific excess power (which enables it to climb and/or accelerate) and the aerodynamic efficiency of the aircraft as this characteristic will determine its maximum level speed, its maximum flying range, not to mention its gliding ability should the engine stop. For a fighting scout such as the SE5a flying range and glide performance would have been of secondary importance – what counted then was the ability to climb more quickly than, and be able to fly faster than, the enemy so as to brings its guns to bear. In the case of the SE5a its excellent performance derives from designing the smallest/ lightest machine capable of carrying the armament and crew, and equipping it with the most powerful engine that can be accommodated, in this case the 200 BHP
One of the younger aviators from the Eton Community
Wolseley Viper. Being of the stationary V8 layout this engine was free from the gyroscopic complications of the earlier rotary engines, was reliable, and simple to operate and this gave its pilots confidence in their ability to handle the machine and its engine in all circumstances. Confidence such as this makes for good moral – which is vitally important in war fighting conditions. The handling qualities referred to earlier arise inter alia from the relative magnitudes of stability and controllability. An aircraft operates in three dimensional space and has six degrees of freedom so its longitudinal, directional, and lateral stability and controllability all contribute to the ease or otherwise of accurate flight path control by the pilot. While many of its contemporaries were deficient in stability in one or more respects, the SE5a was designed from the outset to be stable in all three. Not overly stable - still allowing it to be extremely controllable when needed - but stable enough to look after the pilot. You can see evidence of the designer’s intention to provide this desirable stability in the shape of the aircraft and its appendages. In the SE5a the longitudinal stability is provided by sensible placement of the wings and
location of the significant masses within the fuselage along with a generously sized horizontal stabiliser. Similarly, directional stability has been assured by employing a suitably sized fixed tail fin, with area above and below the fuselage. Finally, so called lateral stability, was provided by cranking the wings up somewhat when viewed from the front in what is called dihedral. All these features will be found in modern aircraft designs.
While the deficiencies in stability found in other aircraft of the time did not materially affect their controllability as a fighting machine they did mean that such aircraft were somewhat trickier to handle and importantly, if the controls were damaged the aircraft would likely ‘crash out of control’. However, aircraft with some inherent stability allow the pilot to bring the aircraft to a survivable landing following a primary control system failure. In fact, that underlying requirement for three-axis static stability, established in the SE5a in 1917, still remains in the presentday Certification Specifications for new civil aircraft.
In summary the Royal Aircraft Factory SE5a was the best British fighting scout of WW1. Others may have been rivals for that accolade, such as the rotary engined Sopwith Camel, but that line of development had insurmountable limitations and it was the SE5a that set the direction of development in the years that followed.
But what of the SE5a that came to Agars in June? That aircraft, serial number F904, saw active service albeit briefly when, flown by Major Pickthorn, a Fokker D VII of the German Air Force was engaged and destroyed on the 10th November 1918, the day before the Armistice. F904 is now owned by The Shuttleworth Collection, a charitable trust based at Old Warden aerodrome near Bedford. The Shuttleworth Trust was established following the death of OE Richard Ormonde Shuttleworth, while serving as a pilot in the Royal Air Force in WW2. Among other things such as agriculture and motor racing ROS was passionate about aviation so one of the charitable objects of the Trust is to educate the public in the history and practice of aviation. That object is accomplished in a number of ways, including maintaining in flying condition an internationally acclaimed collection of historically significant aircraft and demonstrating them to the public. This collection of aircraft and other artefacts is open to the public throughout the year and Shuttleworth forges links with a wide range of educational institutions. During its visit to Eton College last June the SE5a not only served to commemorate some very brave gentlemen it also provided a unique opportunity to educate the current generation about the evolution of aviation in this country.
Dodge Bailey Chief Pilot Shuttleworth
Students from Holyport took part
Review
The Gordon Baldwin and Ewen Henderson ceramics exhibition in the Verey Galley was very well received – much to my delight! Baldwin had of course been a most popular beak at Eton and had inspired boys to produce some remarkably good and colourful work. Henderson’s mysterious rough shapes were most intriguing. The notably wellattended Friends’ evening continued in the Provost’s Garden where the three bronze statues by Rodin, Epstein and Moore, on loan from Sir Henry Keswick, were newly established. Thanks to an excellent commentary by Justin Nolan these extraordinary works came alive in their very different ways. Amazing.
Justin later outlined our plans to commission a pair of silver candlesticks and a chalice for use on the low altar in College Chapel. The appeal was launched in July to considerable acclaim and donations sailed past the target figure in just a few weeks. We must now wait patiently for the silversmiths to do their work! More details of events surrounding this important project will be published as soon as they become available.
In late November we visited Leighton House to hear the curator Daniel Robbins speak superbly on the iconic picture, Flaming June, and its creator. Frederick Lord Leighton was not only a formidable artist, he was also a man of great influence in Victorian Britain, and the Leighton House Museum website is well worth a visit. It was a memorable evening.
In March 2017, Eton’s Archivist Eleanor Hoare has kindly agreed to give us a talk on Sport. A wide canvas indeed! But Eton has had a seminal role in the development
of many popular games and I know it will be fascinating to learn of their origins from Eleanor who has all the facts and figures at her fingertips.
Ian Cadell Membership Secretary Friends of
the College Collections
Verey Gallery, Eton College 10th November 2016 31st March 2017
EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION
500 YEARS OF LEARNING AT ETON COLLEGE
THE TOWER GALLERY, ETON COLLEGE 10 NOVEMBER 2016 - 31 MARCH 2017
For further information on any of the articles in this Journal, or to book tickets for events, please contact the editor Charlotte Villiers (Editor), Exhibitions and Outreach Coordinator.
