450 Anthology

450 450 ANTHOLOGY

Contents INTRODUCTION FROM THE EDITOR, LUCY ASHE

5

FICTION AND POETRY

6

George Gordon Byron, She Walks in Beauty; and from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Anthony Trollope, from Barchester Towers Robert Bulwar-Lytton (Owen Meredith), from Disappointment in Love, ‘The Portrait’ John Galsworthy, from The Forsyte Saga Cecil William Mercer (Dornford Yates), from Berry and Co. L P Hartley, from The Go-Between John Mortimer, from The Collected Stories of Rumpole Simon Sebag-Montefiore, from Sashenka

DRAMA, THEATRE, MUSIC, AND ART

22

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, from The Rivals Cecil Beaton, from The Wandering Years: 1922–39 John Summerson, from The Classical Language of Architecture James Blunt, Monsters and Smoke Signals Terence Rattigan, from The Browning Version Alexander Galbraith ‘Sandy’ Wilson, from The Boyfriend Mike D’Abo, Build Me Up Buttercup and Handbags and Gladrags Paul Binski, from Gothic Wonder: Art, Artifice, and the Decorated Style, 1290–1350

TRAVEL

38

Philip Marsden, from The Summer Isles: A Voyage of the Imagination Michael Carroll, from Greece: A Literary Guide for Travellers Guy Stagg, from The Crossway

HISTORY, POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

45

Robert Peel, from his speech on Catholic Emancipation, 5 February 1829 Stanley Baldwin, from his last speech as prime minister, 1937

Harrowschool.org.uk

Winston Churchill, from his speech on 4 June 1940 Henry Edward Manning, from his sermon Love of God in Darkness Rupert Wieloch, from Churchill’s Abandoned Prisoners J. Andrew Kirk, from Being Human: An Historical Enquiry Into Who We Are Simon Sebag-Montefiore, from Jerusalem

SCIENCE

61

Joseph Banks, from The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks John William Strutt (Lord Rayleigh), from his Nobel Lecture: The density of gases in the air and the discovery of argon Nicholas Patrick, from his speech at Churchill Songs, 2012

HARROW SCHOOL

69

Horace Annesley Vachell, from The Hill: A Romance of Friendship Augustus Hare, from The Story of My Life Arnold Lunn, from The Harrovians

Cover image: The seal granted by Elizabeth 1 to John Lyon in 1572.

3

INTRODUCTION Harrow boys are surrounded by inspiring reminders of the talents of those who have gone before them. In their first few weeks as Shells, they visit the Peachey Stone where Lord Byron ‘frequently mused the twilight hours away’; they walk down Obadiah Slope, reminder of Trollope’s vivid imagination; they explore the impressive collections in the Vaughan Library; Churchill’s name is found on many a School site; they are introduced to societies named after Old Harrovians: Pigou, Summerson, Rattigan, Sheridan, L P Hartley, Peel, Butler, Fox Talbot, Manning, Nehru and Trevelyan, to name just a few.

This anthology barely touches the surface of the immense writings produced by Old Harrovians: to include all we wished for would result in numerous volumes of work. We are grateful to the Old Harrovians who expressed their enthusiasm and interest in this project and kindly gave permission for their work to be included.

The anthology is intended to be inter-disciplinary and we encourage readers to approach the work with an enthusiasm for exploration, finding links between subjects. However, we did need to find a structure and we hope this loose grouping into topics will be an enjoyable way to read the texts. There is a wonderful range of writings: we have poetry, play scripts, song lyrics, short story and novel extracts. The travel section is rich and inspiring, taking us from Greece, to Cornwall, Ireland, and Scotland, as well as a trip from Canterbury to Jerusalem. There are speeches from prime ministers, brilliantly evocative non-fiction passages, and philosophical explorations into our humanity. The ambitious, inquisitive, and outward-looking nature of Harrovians is abundantly clear in the writings of scientists and their discoveries. Finally, we look inwards to where it all began: the small section on writings about Harrow School itself is honest, open, and probing.

Harrow boys are invited to enter the Essay Prize 450. Inspired by the texts that were in this anthology, boys can choose from an exciting range of challenges. There are research projects, essays, creative writings and re-creations.

We look forward to reading the work that emerges from this prize.

We would like to extend further thanks to all those who have helped make this anthology possible. Firstly, to Peter Hunter, ex-House Master of the Park and Harrow English teacher, whose encyclopaedic knowledge helped us to find the extracts; to Perena Shryane for her support in contacting Old Harrovians; to Tace Fox for searching through the Archives for information and images; and to the Communications department for their work in producing this beautiful anthology.

Editing this anthology has been a rewarding experience. The opportunity to read extensively from each full text, selecting the passages, and exploring each writer’s life and achievements has been inspiring and uplifting. We hope you will feel the same as you read the work of this impressive selection of Old Harrovian writings.

Lucy Ashe Editor

4

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

5

FICTION AND POETRY

GEORGE GORDON BYRON, 6TH BARON BYRON Lord Byron’s (Harrow 1801²) time at Harrow is significant for the development of his emotional involvements with other boys. After leaving education, Byron travelled, loved, and wrote poetry: Caroline Lamb famously described him as ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’. He became a celebrity on the publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in 1812 and went on to write poetry that now sets him firmly as a Romantic poet. The figure of the ‘Byronic hero’ is central to much of his work, this idealised, deep-thinking character going on to influence many writers of the 19th century. He died in Greece in 1824 after developing sepsis.

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o’er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express, How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all below, A heart whose love is innocent!

6

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

7

FROM CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is a narrative poem written between 1812 and 1818. In four parts, it describes the melancholy, reflective and world-weary travels of a young man. This poem contributed to the cult of the Byronic hero who

Anthony Trollope (Home Boarder 1823²) is most famous for his series of novels known as The Chronicles of Barsetshire.

contemplates the world, drawn to philosophical musings inspired by an interaction with nature.

CANTO III

FROM BARCHESTER TOWERS CHAPTER XLVI: MR SLOPE’S PARTING INTERVIEW WITH THE SIGNORA

XVIII

On the following day the signora was in her pride. She was dressed in her brightest of morning dresses, and had quite

And Harold stands upon this place of skulls,

a levee round her couch. It was a beautifully bright October afternoon; all the gentlemen of the neighbourhood were

The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo!

in Barchester, and those who had the entry of Dr Stanhope’s house were in the signora’s back drawing-room. Charlotte

How in an hour the power which gave annuls

and Mrs Stanhope were in the front room, and such of the lady’s squires as could not for the moment get near the

Its gifts, transferring fame as fleeting too!

centre of attraction had to waste their fragrance on the mother and sister.

In ‘pride of place’ here last the eagle flew, Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain, Pierced by the shaft of banded nations through: Ambition’s life and labours all were vain; He wears the shattered links of the world’s broken chain.

XIX

The first who came and the last to leave was Mr Arabin. This was the second visit he had paid to Madame Neroni since he had met her at Ullathorne. He came he knew not why, to talk about he knew not what. But, in truth, the feelings which now troubled him were new to him, and he could not analyse them. It may seem strange that he should thus come dangling about Madame Neroni because he was in love with Mrs Bold; but it was nevertheless the fact; and though he could not understand why he did so, Madame Neroni understood it well enough.

She had been gentle and kind to him, and had encouraged his staying. Therefore he stayed on. She pressed his hand

Fit retribution! Gaul may champ the bit,

when he first greeted her; and whispered to him little nothings. And then her eye, brilliant and bright, now mirthful,

And foam in fetters, but is Earth more free?

now melancholy, and invincible in either way! What man with warm feelings, blood unchilled, and a heat not guarded

Did nations combat to make ONE submit;

by a triple steel of experience could have withstood those eyes! The lady, it is true, intended to do no mortal injury;

Or league to teach all kings true sovereignty?

she merely chose to inhale a slight breath of incense before she handed the casket over to another. Whether Mrs Bold

What! shall reviving thraldom again be

would willingly have spared even so much is another question.

The patched-up idol of enlightened days?

And then came Mr Slope. All the world now knew that Mr Slope was a candidate for the deanery, and that he was

Shall we, who struck the Lion down, shall we Pay the Wolf homage? proffering lowly gaze And servile knees to thrones? No; PROVE before ye praise!

XX If not, o’er one fall’n despot boast no more!

In vain fair cheeks were furrowed with hot tears For Europe’s flowers long rooted up before The trampler of her vineyards; in vain years Of death, depopulation, bondage, fears,

generally considered to be the favourite. Mr Slope, therefore, walked rather largely upon the earth. He gave to himself a portly air, such as might become a dean, spoke but little to other clergymen, and shunned the bishop as much as possible. How the meagre little prebendary, and the burly chancellor, and all the minor canons and vicars choral, ay, and all the choristers too, cowered and shook and walked about with long faces when they read or heard of that article of the Jupiter. Now were coming the days when nothing would avail to keep the impure spirit from the cathedral pulpit. That pulpit would indeed be his own. Precentors, vicars, and choristers might hang up their harps on the willows. Ichabod! Ichabod! The glory of their house was departing from them.

Mr Slope, great as he was with embryo grandeur, still came to see the signora. Indeed, he could not keep himself away.

He dreamed of that soft hand which had kissed so often, and of the imperial brow which his lips had once pressed,

Have all been borne, and broken by the accord

and he then dreamed also of further favours.

Of roused-up millions: all that most endears

And Mr Thorne was there also. It was the first visit he had ever paid to the signora, and he made it not without due

Glory, is when the myrtle wreathes a sword

preparation. Mr Thorne was a gentleman usually precise in his dress, and prone to make the most of himself in an

Such as Harmodius drew on Athens’ tyrant lord.

unpretending way. The grey hairs in his whiskers were eliminated perhaps once a month; those on his head were softened by a mixture which we will not call a dye; it was only a wash. His tailor lived in St James’s Street, and his

XXI

his shirts was a matter not lightly thought of in the Ullathorne laundry. On the occasion of the present visit he had

And Belgium’s capital had gathered then

rather overdone his usual efforts, and caused some little uneasiness to his sister, who had not hitherto received very

Her Beauty and her Chivalry, and bright

cordially the proposition for a lengthened visit from the signora at Ullathorne.

The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,

8

bootmaker at the corner of that street and Piccadilly. He was particular in the article of gloves, and the getting up of

There was a sound of revelry by night,

There were others also there – young men about the city who had not much to do, and who were induced by the lady’s charms to neglect that little; but all gave way to Mr Thorne, who was somewhat of a grand signor, as a country gentleman always is in a provincial city.

And all went merry as a marriage bell;

‘Oh, Mr Thorne, this is so kind of you!’ said the signora. ‘You promised to come; but I really did not expect it. I thought

But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!

you country gentlemen never kept your pledges.’

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

9

ROBERT BULWAR-LYTTON, 1ST EARL OF LYTTON (OWEN MEREDITH) ‘Oh, yea, sometimes,’ said Mr Thorne, looking rather sheepish, and making salutations a little too much in the style of the last century.

Writing as Owen Meredith, Lord Lytton (The Park 1846²) was a poet who was also in diplomatic service as Minster at

‘You deceive none but your consti-stit-stit; what do you call the people that carry you about in chairs and pelt you

Lisbon, Governor-General of India and Ambassador in Paris.

with eggs and apples when they make you a member of parliament?’

‘One another also, sometimes, signora,’ said Mr Slope, with a deanish sort of smirk on his face. ‘Country gentlemen do deceive one another sometimes, don’t they, Mr Thorne?’

FROM DISAPPOINTMENT IN LOVE ‘THE PORTRAIT’

Mr Thorne gave him a look which undressed him completely for the moment; but he soon remembered his high hopes,

MIDNIGHT past! Not a sound of aught

and recovering himself quickly, sustained his probable coming dignity by a laugh at Mr Thorne’s expense.

Through the silent house, but the wind at his prayers.

‘I never deceive a lady, at any rate,’ said Mr Thorne; ‘especially when the gratification of my own wishes is so strong an

I sat by the dying fire, and thought

inducement to keep me true, as it now is.’

Of the dear dead woman upstairs.

A night of tears! for the gusty rain Had ceased, but the eaves were dripping yet; And the moon looked forth, as though in pain, With her face all white and wet: Nobody with me, my watch to keep, But the friend of my bosom, the man I love: And grief had sent him fast to sleep In the chamber up above.

Nobody else, in the country place All round, that knew of my loss beside, But the good young Priest with the Raphael-face, Who confessed her when she died.

That good young Priest is of gentle nerve, And my grief had moved him beyond control; For his lips grew white, as I could observe, When he speeded her parting soul.

I sat by the dreary hearth alone: I thought of the pleasant days of yore: I said, “The staff of my life is gone: The woman I loved is no more.

“On her cold dead bosom my portrait lies, Which next to her heart she used to wear – Haunting it o’er with her tender eyes When my own face was not there.

10

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

11

JOHN GALSWORTHY John Galsworthy (Moretons 1881²) is most famous for his series of novels called The Forsyte Saga. He won the Nobel

were framed within Dundreary whiskers. In his hands he turned and turned a piece of china. Not far off, listening to a

Prize in Literature in 1932.

lady in brown, his only son Soames, pale and well-shaved, dark-haired, rather bald, had poked his chin up sideways, carrying his nose with that aforesaid appearance of ‘sniff,’ as though despising an egg which he knew he could not

FROM THE FORSYTE SAGA, THE MAN OF PROPERTY PART I CHAPTER I: ‘AT HOME’ AT OLD JOLYON’S

digest. Behind him his cousin, the tall George, son of the fifth Forsyte, Roger, had a Quilpish look on his fleshy face, pondering one of his sardonic jests. Something inherent to the occasion had affected them all.

Those privileged to be present at a family festival of the Forsytes have seen that charming and instructive sight – an upper middle-class family in full plumage. But whosoever of these favoured persons has possessed the gift of psychological analysis (a talent without monetary value and properly ignored by the Forsytes), has witnessed a spectacle, not only delightful in itself, but illustrative of an obscure human problem. In plainer words, he has gleaned from a gathering of this family – no branch of which had a liking for the other, between no three members of whom existed anything worthy of the name of sympathy – evidence of that mysterious concrete tenacity which renders a family so formidable a unit of society, so clear a reproduction of society in miniature. He has been admitted to a vision of the dim roads of social progress, has understood something of patriarchal life, of the swarmings of savage hordes, of the rise and fall of nations. He is like one who, having watched a tree grow from its planting – a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success, amidst the deaths of a hundred other plants less fibrous, sappy, and persistent – one day will see it flourishing with bland, full foliage, in an almost repugnant prosperity, at the summit of its efflorescence.

On June 15, eighteen eighty-six, about four of the afternoon, the observer who chanced to be present at the house of old Jolyon Forsyte in Stanhope Gate, might have seen the highest efflorescence of the Forsytes.

This was the occasion of an ‘at home’ to celebrate the engagement of Miss June Forsyte, old Jolyon’s granddaughter, to Mr. Philip Bosinney. In the bravery of light gloves, buff waistcoats, feathers and frocks, the family were present, even Aunt Ann, who now but seldom left the comer of her brother Timothy’s green drawing-room, where, under the aegis of a plume of dyed pampas grass in a light blue vase, she sat all day reading and knitting, surrounded by the effigies of three generations of Forsytes. Even Aunt Ann was there; her inflexible back, and the dignity of her calm old face personifying the rigid possessiveness of the family idea.

When a Forsyte was engaged, married, or born, the Forsytes were present; when a Forsyte died – but no Forsyte had as yet died; they did not die; death being contrary to their principles, they took precautions against it, the instinctive precautions of highly vitalized persons who resent encroachments on their property.

About the Forsytes mingling that day with the crowd of other guests, there was a more than ordinarily groomed look, an alert, inquisitive assurance, a brilliant respectability, as though they were attired in defiance of something. The habitual sniff on the face of Soames Forsyte had spread through their ranks; they were on their guard.

The subconscious offensiveness of their attitude has constituted old Jolyon’s ‘home’ the psychological moment of the family history, made it the prelude of their drama.

The Forsytes were resentful of something, not individually, but as a family; this resentment expressed itself in an added perfection of raiment, an exuberance of family cordiality, an exaggeration of family importance, and – the sniff. Danger – so indispensable in bringing out the fundamental quality of any society, group, or individual – was what the Forsytes scented; the premonition of danger put a burnish on their armour. For the first time, as a family, they appeared to have an instinct of being in contact, with some strange and unsafe thing.

Over against the piano a man of bulk and stature was wearing two waistcoats on his wide chest, two waistcoats and a ruby pin, instead of the single satin waistcoat and diamond pin of more usual occasions, and his shaven, square, old face, the colour of pale leather, with pale eyes, had its most dignified look, above his satin stock. This was Swithin Forsyte. Close to the window, where he could get more than his fair share of fresh air, the other twin, James – the fat and the lean of it, old Jolyon called these brothers – like the bulky Swithin, over six feet in height, but very lean, as though destined from his birth to strike a balance and maintain an average, brooded over the scene with his permanent stoop; his grey eyes had an air of fixed absorption in some secret worry, broken at intervals by a rapid, shifting scrutiny of surrounding facts; his cheeks, thinned by two parallel folds, and a long, clean-shaven upper lip,

12

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

13

CECIL WILLIAM MERCER (DORNFORD YATES) Dornford Yates, the pseudonym for Cecil William Mercer (Home Boarder 1889²), was a barrister and a novelist. His

“I said, ‘We’re back at last, and – don’t faint – we’re all coming to Church to-morrow, and you’ve got to come back to

comedy Berry novels and Chandos thrillers were bestsellers between the two World Wars.

lunch.’ And now, for goodness’ sake, go and change.”

“But we shall perspire,” said Berry. “Profusely. To walk half a mile in this sun is simply asking for it. Besides –”

FROM BERRY AND CO. CHAPTER 1

“What’s the car done?” said Jonah. “I’m going, and I can’t hurry with this.” He tapped his short leg affectionately. “We

HOW WILL NOGGIN WAS FOOLED, AND BERRY RODE FORTH AGAINST HIS WILL.

“Right oh,” said my sister, rising. “Is ten-minutes-to early enough?”

“Who’s going to church?” said Daphne, consulting her wrist-watch.

Jonah nodded.

There was a profound silence.

“This,” said Berry, “is a conspiracy for which you will all pay. Literally. I shall take the plate round, and from you four I

My sister turned to Jill.

“Are you coming?” she said. “Berry and I are.”

“I beg your pardon,” said her husband.

“Of course you’re coming,” said Daphne.

“Not in these trousers. This is the first time I’ve worn them, and I’m not going to kneel in them for any one.”

“Then you’ll change,” said his wife. “You’ve plenty of time.”

needn’t take Fitch. Boy or I can drive.”

shall accept nothing but paper. Possibly I shall –” Here the girls fell upon him and bore him protesting into the house and out of earshot.

“Who’s going to look after the car while we’re in church?” said I. “There’s sure to be somebody ready to earn a couple of bob,” said Jonah. “Besides, we can always disconnect the north-east trunnion, or jack her up and put the wheels in the vestry or something.”

“All right. Only we don’t want her pinched.” With a yawn I rose to my feet. “And now I suppose I’d better go and turn her out.”

Berry groaned.

“Right oh,” said Jonah, picking up his paper again.

“This is sheer Bolshevism,” he said. “Is not my soul my own?”

I strolled into the house.

“We shall start,” said Daphne, “in twenty minutes.”

We were proud of the car. She was a 1914 Rolls, and we had bought her at a long price less than a week ago. Fresh

It was nearly half-past ten in the morning of a beautiful summer day, and we were all taking our ease in the sunshine

from the coach-builder’s, her touring body was painted silver-grey, while her bonnet was of polished aluminium. Fitted

upon the terrace. It was the first Sunday which we had spent all together at White Ladies for nearly five years.

with every conceivable accessory, she was very good-looking, charming alike to ride or drive, and she went like the

So far as the eye could see, nothing had changed.

At the foot of the steps the great smooth lawn stretched like a fine green carpet, its shadowed patches yet bright with

wind. In a word, she did as handsome as she was.

It was eight minutes to eleven as we slid past the lodge and on to the Bilberry road.

dew. There were the tall elms and the copper beech and all the proud company of spreading giant – what were five

Before we had covered two furlongs, we swung round a corner to see a smart two-seater at rest by the dusty

years to them? There was the clump of rhododendrons, a ragged blotch of crimson, seemingly spilled upon the green

hedgerow, and a slight dark girl in fresh blue and white standing with one foot on the step, wiping her dainty fingers

turf, and there the close box hedge that walled away the rose-garden. Beyond the sunk fence a gap showed an acre or

on a handful of cotton-waste.

so of Bull’s Mead – a great deep meadow, and in it two horses beneath a chestnut tree, their long tails a-swish, sleepily nosing each other to rout the flies; while in the distance the haze of heat hung like a film over the rolling hills. Close at hand echoed the soft impertinence of a cuckoo, and two fat wood-pigeons waddled about the lawn, picking and stealing as they went. The sky was cloudless, and there was not a breath of wind.

The stable clock chimed the half-hour.

My sister returned to the attack.

“Are you coming, Boy?” “Yes,” said I. “I am.”

Berry sat up and stared at me.

“Don’t be silly,” he said. “There’s a service this morning. Besides, they’ve changed the lock of the poor-box.”

“I want to watch the Vicar’s face when he sees you,” said I. “It will be a bit of a shock,” said Jonah, looking up from the paper. “Is his heart all right?”

“Rotten,” said Daphne. “But that doesn’t matter. I sent him a note to warn him yesterday.”

“What did you say?” demanded her husband.

14

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

15

L P HARTLEY DIARY FOR THE YEAR 1900

L P Hartley (West Acre 1910³) read Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford, before working as a book reviewer, editor and writer. The Go-Between was published in 1953 and tells the story of a schoolboy, Leo Colston, who becomes embroiled in an affair between a man and woman from different social classes. The novel is a bildungsroman, exploring the challenges of growing up and learning about love and relationships. A television adaptation was

it said in a copperplate script unlike the lettering of today; and round the year thus confidently

broadcast on BBC One in 2015, starring Old Harrovian Jack Hollington (Rendalls 2014–2019)

heralded, the first year of the century, winged with hope, clustered the signs of the zodiac, each

as Leo. This extract is from the start of the novel, with its very famous opening line.

somehow contriving to suggest a plenitude of life and power, each glorious, though differing from the others in glory.

How well I remembered them, their shapes and attitudes! And I remembered too, though it was no longer potent for

FROM THE GO-BETWEEN PROLOGUE THE PAST is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

me, the magic with which they were then invested, and the tingling sense of coming fruition they conveyed – the lowly creatures no less than the exalted ones.

The Fishes sported deliciously, as though there were no such things as nets and hooks; the Crab had a twinkle in its eye, as though it was well aware of its odd appearance and thoroughly enjoyed the joke; and even the Scorpion

When I came upon the diary, it was lying at the bottom of a rather battered red cardboard collarbox, in which as a small

carried its terrible pincers with a gay, heraldic air, as though its deadly intentions existed only in legend. The Ram,

boy I kept my Eton collars. Someone, probably my mother, had filled it with treasures dating from those days. There were

the Bull, and the Lion epitomized imperious manhood; they were what we all thought we had it in us to be; careless,

two dry, empty sea-urchins; two rusty magnets, a large one and a small one, which had almost lost their magnetism; some

noble, self-sufficient, they ruled their months with sovereign sway. As for the Virgin, the one distinctively female

negatives rolled up in a tight coil; some stumps of sealing-wax; a small combination lock with three rows of letters; a twist

figure in the galaxy, I can scarcely say what she meant to me. She was dressed adequately, but only in the coils and

of very fine whipcord; and one or two ambiguous objects, pieces of things, of which the use was not at once apparent: I

sweeps of her long hair; and I doubt whether the school authorities, had they known about her, would have approved

could not even tell what they had belonged to. The relics were not exactly dirty nor were they quite clean, they had the

the hours of dalliance my thoughts spent with her, though these, I think, were innocent enough. She was, to me, the

patina of age; and as I handled them, for the first time for over fifty years, a recollection of what each had meant to me

key to the whole pattern, the climax, the coping-stone, the goddess – for my imagination was then, though it is no

came back, faint as the magnets’ power to draw, but as perceptible. Something came and went between us: the intimate

longer, passionately hierarchical; it envisaged things in an ascending scale, circle on circle, tier on tier, and the annual,

pleasure of recognition, the almost mystical thrill of early ownership – feelings of which, at sixty-odd, I felt ashamed.

mechanical revolution of the months did not disturb this notion. I knew that the year must return to winter and begin

It was a roll-call in reverse; the children of the past announced their names, and I said “Here.” Only the diary refused to disclose its identity. My first impression was that it was a present someone had brought me from abroad. The shape, the lettering, the

again; but to my apprehensions the zodiacal company were subject to no such limitations: they soared in an ascending spiral towards infinity.

purple limp leather curling upwards at the corners, gave it a foreign look; and it had, I could see, gold edges. Of all the exhibits it

And the expansion and ascension, as of some divine gas, which I believed to be the ruling principle of my own life,

was the only one that might have been expensive. I must have treasured it; why, then, could I not give it a context?

I attributed to the coming century. The year 1900 had an almost mystical appeal for me; I could hardly wait for it:

I did not want to touch it and told myself that this was because it challenged my memory; I was

“Nineteen hundred, nineteen hundred,” I would chant to myself in rapture; and as the old century drew to its close, I began to wonder whether I should live to see its successor. I had an excuse for this: I had been ill and was acquainted

proud of my memory and disliked having it prompted. So I sat staring at the diary, as at a blank space in a crossword

with the idea of death; but much more it was the fear of missing something infinitely precious – the dawn of a Golden

puzzle. Still no light came, and suddenly I took the combination lock and began to finger it, for I remembered how, at

Age. For that was what I believed the coming century would be: a realization, on the part of the whole world, of the

school, I could always open it by the sense of touch when someone else had set the combination. It was one of my show-

hopes that I was entertaining for myself.

pieces and, when I first mastered it, drew some applause, for I declared that to do it I had to put myself into a trance; and this was not quite a lie, for I did deliberately empty my mind and let my fingers work without direction. To heighten the effect, however, I would close my eyes and sway gently to and fro, until the effort of keeping my consciousness

The diary was a Christmas present from my mother, to whom I had confided some, though by no means all, of my aspirations for the future, and she wanted its dates to be worthily enshrined.

at a low ebb almost exhausted me; and this I found myself instinctively doing now, as to an audience. After a timeless

In my zodiacal fantasies there was one jarring note, to which, when I indulged them, I tried not to listen, for it flawed

interval I heard the tiny click and felt the sides of the lock relax and draw apart; and at the same moment, as if by some

the experience. This was my own role in it.

sympathetic loosening in my mind, the secret of the diary flashed upon me.

My birthday fell in late July and I had an additional reason, an excellent one, though I should have been loath to

Yet even then I did not want to touch it; indeed my unwillingness increased, for now I knew why I distrusted it. I looked

mention it at school, for claiming the Lion as my symbol. But much as I admired him and what he stood for, I could

away and it seemed to me that every object in the room exhaled the diary’s enervating power and spoke its message

not identify myself with him, because of late I had lost the faculty, which, like other children, I had once revelled

of disappointment and defeat. And as if that was not enough, the voices reproached me with not having had the grit to

in, of pretending that I was an animal. A term and a half at school had helped to bring about this disability in my

overcome them. Under this twofold assault I sat staring at the bulging envelopes around me, the stacks of papers tied up

imagination; but it was also a natural change.

with red tape – the task of sorting which I had set myself for winter evenings, and of which the red collar-box had been almost the first item; and I felt, with a bitter blend of self-pity and self-reproach, that had it not been for the diary, or what

I was between twelve and thirteen, and I wanted to think of myself as a man.

the diary stood for, everything would be different. I should not be sitting in this drab, flowerless room, where the curtains were not even drawn to hide the cold rain beating on the windows, or contemplating the accumulation of the past and the duty it imposed on me to sort it out. I should be sitting in another room, rainbow-hued, looking not into the past but into the future; and I should not be sitting alone.

So I told myself, and with a gesture born of will, as most of my acts were, not inclination, I took the diary out of the box and opened it.

16

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

17

JOHN MORTIMER Sir John Mortimer (The Grove 1937²) was a barrister and a playwright, as well as writing his famous collection of stories about a barrister named Horace Rumpole.

‘Well, not quite the thing to say. Of course I’m terrifically glad you’ve been made a QC. I think you’ve done jolly well.’

‘For a woman!’ A short, somewhat bitter laugh from Mrs Erskine-Brown emphasized her point.

‘But it’s just not “the thing” to crow about it.’ Erskine-Brown spoke with the full moral authority of his prep school

FROM THE COLLECTED STORIES OF RUMPOLE ‘RUMPOLE AND PORTIA’

and Winchester.

This is a story of family life, of parents and children, and, like many such stories, it began with a quarrel. There was

having children if you’re going to send them away to boarding school.’

I, ensconced one evening in a quiet corner of Pommeroy’s Wine Bar consuming a lonely glass of Château Thames Embankment at the end of a day’s labours, when the voices of a couple in dispute came drifting over from the other side of one of Jack Pommeroy’s high-backed pews which give such an ecclesiastical air to his distinguished legal watering-hole. The voices I heard were well known to me, being those of my learned friend, Claude Erskine-Brown, and of his spouse, Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown, née Trant, the Portia of our Chambers, whom I befriended and advised when she was a white-wig, and who, no doubt taking advantage of that advice, rose to take silk and become a Queen’s Counsel when Claude was denied that honour, and thus had his nose put seriously out of joint. The union of Claude

‘Sorry, Claude! I don’t know what “the thing” is. Such a pity I never went to Boggers. Anyway, I don’t see the point of

At that point, and much to my regret, the somewhat grey and tedious barrister named Hoskins of our Chambers, a man weighed down with the responsibility of four daughters, sat down at my table in order to complain about the extortionate price of coffee in our clerk’s room, and I lost the rest of the Erskine-Brown family dispute. However, I have given you enough of it to show the nature of their disagreement and Phillida’s reluctance to part with her young hopeful. These were matters which were to assume great importance in the defence of Stanley Culp on a charge of illicit arms dealing, for Stanley was a father who would have found our Portia’s views entirely sympathetic.

and Phillida has been blessed with a girl and a boy named, because of Claude’s almost masochistic addiction to the

In most other respects, the home life of the Culps and the Erskine-Browns was as different as chalk and cheese.

lengthier operas of Richard Wagner (and an opera isn’t by Richard Wagner if it’s not lengthy), Tristan and Isolde. It was

Stanley Culp was a plump, remorselessly cheerful, disorganized dealer in second-hand furniture – bits of junk and

the subject of young Tristan which was causing dissension between his parents that evening.

dubious antiques – in a jumbled shop near Notting Hill Gate. Unlike the Erskine-Browns, the Culps were a one-parent

‘Tristan was still in bed at quarter to eight this morning,’ Claude was complaining. ‘He won’t be able to do that when he goes away to Bogstead.’

‘Please, Claude’ – Phillida sounded terminally bored – ‘don’t go on about it.’

family, for Stanley was in sole charge of his son, Matthew, a scholarly, bespectacled little boy of about Tristan’s age.

Some three and a half years before, Mrs Culp, so Stanley informed me when we met in Brixton Prison, had told her husband that he had ‘nothing romantic in his nature whatever’. ‘So she took off with the manager of Tesco, twenty years older than me if he was a day. Can you understand that, Mr Rumpole?’

‘You know when I was at Bogstead’ – no Englishman can possibly resist talking about his boarding school – ‘we used to be woken up at half past six for early class, and we had to break the ice in the dormy washbasins.’

‘You have told me that, Claude, quite often.’

‘We had to run three times round Tug’s Patch before early church on saints’ days.’

‘Did you enjoy that?’

‘Of course not! I absolutely hated it.’ Claude was looking back, apparently on golden memories. ‘Why do you imagine Tristan would enjoy it then?’ ‘You don’t enjoy Bogstead,’ Claude was pointing out patiently. ‘You’re not meant to enjoy it. But if I hadn’t gone there I wouldn’t have got into Winchester and if I hadn’t got into Winchester I’d never have been to New College. And I’ll tell you something, Philly. If I hadn’t been to Bogstead, Winchester and New College, I’d never be what I am.’

‘Which might be just as well.’ Our Portia sounded cynical.

‘Whatever do you mean by that?’ Claude was nettled. I strained my ears to listen; things were obviously getting nasty.

‘It might be just as well if you weren’t the man you are,’ Claude’s wife told him. ‘If you hadn’t been at Bogstead you might not make such a terrible fuss about losing that gross indecency today. I mean, the way you carried on about that, you must still be in the fourth form at Boggers. I notice you don’t talk about sending Isolde to that dump.’

‘Bogstead is not a dump,’ Claude said proudly. ‘And you may not have noticed this, Philly, but Isolde is a girl. They don’t have girls there.’

‘Oh, I see. It’s a boy’s world, is it?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Poor old Isolde. She’s going to miss all the fun of breaking the ice at 6.30 in the morning and running three times round Tug’s Patch on saints’ days. Poor deprived child. She might even grow up to be a Queen’s Counsel.’

‘Come on, Philly. Isn’t that a bit…?’

‘A bit what?’ I had taught Phillida to be dead sharp on her cross-examination.

18

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

19

SIMON SEBAG-MONTEFIORE Simon Sebag-Montefiore (The Knoll 1978³) writes fiction and history. His novels include the Moscow Trilogy of novels: Sashenka, Red Sky at Noon and One Night in Winter. His work has been short-listed for and won numerous prizes, including the Political Novel of the Year Prize. His latest book is Voices of History: Speeches that Changed the World.

‘Mne zavout Mrs Lewis,’ said the Englishwoman in bad Russian.

‘Greetings to a bespoke guest, Lala! I am be-named Sashenka,’ replied the child in appalling English. And that had been that: Mrs Lewis was henceforth ‘be-named’ Lala. The need met the moment. They loved each other on sight.

‘It’s two minutes to five,’ said the chauffeur tinnily through the speaking tube.

The governess sat forward, unhooked her own speaking tube and spoke into the brass cup in excellent Russian

FROM SASHENKA PART ONE St Petersburg, 1916 It was only teatime but the sun had already set when three of the Tsar’s gendarmes took up positions at the gates of the Smolny Institute for Noble Girls. The end of term at the finest girls’ boarding school in St Petersburg was no place

(though with an English intonation). ‘Thank you, Pantameilion.’

‘What are the pharaohs doing here?’ said the driver. Everyone used the slang term for the political police, the Gendarmerie. He chuckled. ‘Maybe the schoolgirls are hiding German codes in their petticoats?’

Lala was not going to discuss such matters with a chauffeur. ‘Pantameilion, I’ll need you to come in and get her trunk,’ she said sternly. But why were the gendarmes there? she wondered.

for policemen but there they were, unmistakable in their smart navy-blue tunics with white trimming, shiny sabres, and

The girls always came out on time. Madame Buxhoeven, the headmistress, known to the girls as Grand-maman, ran

lambskin helmets with sultan-spikes. One clicked his fingers impatiently, another opened and closed the leather holster

the Institute like a Prussian barracks – but in French. Lala knew that Grand-maman was a favourite of the Dowager

of his Mauser revolver and the third stood stolidly, legs wide, with his thumbs stuck into his belt. Behind them waited a

Empress Maria Fyodorovna and the reigning Empress Alexandra.

traffic jam of horse-drawn sleighs, emblazoned gold and crimson with family crests, and a couple of gleaming limousines.

A cavalry officer and a gaggle of schoolboys and students in gold-buttoned uniforms and caps walked through the

The slow, slanting snowfall was visible only in the flickering halo of streetlights and the amber lamps of touring cars.

gates to meet their sweethearts. In Russia, even schoolboys had uniforms. When they saw the three gendarmes, they

It was the third winter of the Great War and it seemed the darkest and the longest so far. Through the black gates,

started, then walked on, glancing back: what were the political police doing at a boarding school for noble girls?

down the paved avenue, the white splendour of the pillared Institute rose out of the early twilight like an ocean liner

Waiting to convey their masters’ daughters home, the coachmen, in ankle-length padded robes lined with thick

adrift in the mist. Even this boarding school, of which the Empress herself was patron and which was filled with the daughters of aristocrats and war profiteers, could no longer feed its girls or heat its dormitories. Term was ending prematurely. The shortages had reached even the rich. Few could now afford the fuel to run a car, and horsepower was fashionable again.

The winter darkness in wartime St Petersburg had a sticky arctic gloom all of its own. The feathery snow muffled

white lamb’s fur, red sashes and bowler hats, stamped their feet and attended to their horses. They too observed the gendarmes.

Five o’clock. The double doors of the Smolny swung open, casting a ribbon of canary light down the steps towards the gates.

the sounds of horses and engines but the burning cold made the smells sharper: petroleum, horse dung, the alcohol

‘Ah, here they come!’ Lala tossed her book aside.

on the breath of the snoring postilions, the acrid cologne and cigarettes of chauffeurs in yellow- and red-trimmed

At the top of the steps, Madame Buxhoeven, severe in her black cape, serge dress and high white collar, appeared in

uniforms, and the flowery scents on the throats of the waiting women.

the tent of light – as if on wheels like a sentry on a Swiss clock, thought Lala. Grand-maman’s mottled bosom, as broad

Inside the burgundy leather compartment of a Delaunay-Belleville landaulet, a serious young woman with a heart-

as an escarpment, was visible even at this distance – and her ringing soprano could crack ice at a hundred paces. Even

shaped face sat with an English novel on her lap, lit by a naphtha lamp. Audrey Lewis – Mrs Lewis to her employers and Lala to her beloved charge – was cold. She pulled the bushy lambskin up over her lap; her hands were gloved, and

though it was freezing, Lala pulled down her window and peered out, excitement rising. She thought of Sashenka’s favourite tea awaiting her in the little salon, and the biscuits she had bought specially from the English Shop on the

she wore a wolf-fur hat and a thick coat. But still she shivered. She ignored the driver, Pantameilion, when he climbed

Embankment. The tin of Huntley & Palmers was perched beside her on the burgundy leather seat.

into his seat, flicking his cigarette into the snow. Her brown eyes never left the door of the school.

The coachmen clambered up on to their creaking conveyances and settled themselves, whips in hand. Pantameilion

‘Hurry up, Sashenka!’ Lala muttered to herself in English. She checked the brass clock set into the glass division that

pulled on a beribboned cap and jacket trimmed in scarlet and gold and, stroking a well-waxed moustache, winked at

kept the chauffeur at bay. ‘Not long now!’

A maternal glow of anticipation spread across her chest: she imagined Sashenka’s long-limbed figure running towards her across the snow. Few mothers picked up their children from the Smolny Institute, and almost no fathers. But Lala,

Lala. Why do men expect us to fall in love with them just because they can start a motor car? Lala wondered, as the engine chugged, spluttered and burst into life.

Pantameilion smiled, revealing a mouthful of rotten fangs. His voice came breathily through the speaking tube. ‘So

the governess, always collected Sashenka.

where’s our little fox then! Soon I’ll have two beauties in the car.’

Just a few minutes, my child, she thought; my adorable, clever, solemn child.

Lala shook her head. ‘Hurry now, Pantameilion. A trunk and a valise, both marked Aspreys of London. Bistro! Quick!’

The lanterns shining through the delicate tracery of ice on the dim car windows bore her away to her childhood home in Pegsdon, a village in Hertfordshire. She had not seen England for six years and she wondered if she would ever see her family again. But if she had stayed there, she would never have known her darling Sashenka. Six years ago, she had accepted a position in the household of Baron and Baroness Zeitlin and a new life in the Russian capital, St Petersburg.

Six years ago, a young girl in a sailor suit had greeted her coolly, examined her searchingly and then offered the Englishwoman her hand, as if presenting a bouquet. The new governess spoke scarcely a word of Russian but she knelt on one knee and enclosed that small hot hand in her own palms. The girl, at first hesitantly then with growing pressure, leaned against her, finally laying her head on Lala’s shoulder.

20

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

21

DRAMA, THEATRE, MUSIC AND ART RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Harrow 1762) was an Irish playwright and Whig politician. He is best known for his plays The Rivals, The School for Scandal and The Duenna. The Harrow English Literature Society is named after Sheridan.

FROM THE RIVALS: ACT 1, SCENE 2 [Enter MRS MALAPROP and SIR ANTHONY ABSOLUTE.] MRS MALAPROP

There, Sir Anthony, there sits the deliberate simpleton who wants to disgrace her family, and lavish herself on a fellow not worth a shilling.

LYDIA

Madam, I thought you once…

MRS MALAPROP

You thought, miss! I don’t know any business you have to think at all – thought does not become a young woman. But the point we would request of you is, that you will promise to forget this fellow – to illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.

LYDIA

Ah, madam! our memories are independent of our wills. It is not so easy to forget.

MRS MALAPROP

But I say it is, miss; there is nothing on earth so easy as to forget, if a person chooses to set about it. I’m sure I have as much forgot your poor dear uncle as if he had never existed – and I thought it my duty so to do; and let me tell you, Lydia, these violent memories don’t become a young woman.

SIR ANTHONY

Why sure she won’t pretend to remember what she’s ordered not! – ay, this comes of her reading!

LYDIA

What crime, madam, have I committed, to be treated thus?

MRS MALAPROP

Now don’t attempt to extirpate yourself from the matter; you know I have proof controvertible of it. – But tell me, will you promise to do as you’re bid? Will you take a husband of your friends’ choosing?

LYDIA

Madam, I must tell you plainly, that had I no preferment for any one else, the choice you have made would be my aversion.

MRS MALAPROP

What business have you, miss, with preference and aversion? They don’t become a young woman; and you ought to know, that as both always wear off, ‘tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion. I am sure I hated your poor dear uncle before marriage as if he’d been a blackamoor – and yet, miss, you are sensible what a wife I made! – and when it pleased Heaven to release me from him, ‘tis unknown what tears I shed! – But suppose we were going to give you another choice, will you promise us to give up this Beverley?

LYDIA

Could I belie my thoughts so far as to give that promise, my actions would certainly as far belie my words.

MRS MALAPROP

Take yourself to your room. – You are fit company for nothing but your own ill-humours.

LYDIA

Willingly, ma’am – I cannot change for the worse.

MRS MALAPROP

There’s a little intricate hussy for you!

SIR ANTHONY

It is not to be wondered at, ma’am, – all this is the natural consequence of teaching girls to

[Exit.]

read. Had I a thousand daughters, by Heaven! I’d as soon have them taught the black art as their alphabet!

MRS MALAPROP

22

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

Nay, nay, Sir Anthony, you are an absolute misanthropy.

23

CECIL BEATON SIR ANTHONY

In my way hither, Mrs Malaprop, I observed your niece’s maid coming forth from a circulating

Sir Cecil Beaton (High Street 1918¹) was a writer, artist and photographer, well known

library! – She had a book in each hand – they were half-bound volumes, with marble covers!

for his photographs of celebrities including Winston Churchill, Vivien Leigh, Marilyn

– From that moment I guessed how full of duty I should see her mistress!

Monroe, Princess Diana, the Queen and Elizabeth Taylor. He was also an award-winning

MRS MALAPROP

Those are vile places, indeed!

SIR ANTHONY

Madam, a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical! It blossoms

costume designer for stage and film. This extract is from one of his diaries: a series of five diaries have been published, with The Wandering Years as the first in the series.

through the year! – And depend on it, Mrs Malaprop, that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last.

FROM THE WANDERING YEARS: 1922–39

MRS MALAPROP

Fy, fy, Sir Anthony! you surely speak laconically.

PART I: CAMBRIDGE, 1922

SIR ANTHONY

Why, Mrs Malaprop, in moderation now, what would you have a woman know?

After three escapist years at Harrow School, where my fledgling interests were ex-curriculum, and any signs of

MRS MALAPROP

Observe me, Sir Anthony. I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning; I don’t think so much learning becomes a young woman; for instance, I would never let her meddle with Greek, or Hebrew, or algebra, or simony, or fluxions, or paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches of learning – neither would it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments. – But, Sir Anthony, I would send her, at nine years old, to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice.

Then, sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts; – and as she grew up, I

SIR ANTHONY

intelligence were seen only out of class, my father was faced with the problem of what to do with me. Most of my contemporaries now knew what they wanted to be in life; but at the age of eighteen I showed no particular aptitude for any known career. I had acquired somewhat of a reputation, and a certain amount of scandalous disapproval, for being able to make people laugh, and was considered sophisticated for my age. Yet I was, in many ways, remarkably undeveloped. It is true that I had been the art master’s prize pupil, with a knack for water-colour sketches, and a derivative flair for caricature and theatre design; but I, myself, had little confidence in these talents. In fact, secretly I was as anxious about my future as my father must have been.

would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious

It was therefore a welcome reprieve when my parents decided that my education should be continued at a university.

countries; – but above all, Sir Anthony, she should be mistress of orthodoxy, that she might

Most parents already knew to what university, and to which college their offspring were to go. But my father was

not mis-spell, and mis-pronounce words so shamefully as girls usually do; and likewise that

delightfully casual about such things, and one Saturday afternoon, at the thirteenth hour, set off at the wheel of the

she might reprehend the true meaning of what she is saying. This, Sir Anthony, is what I

family Renault for Cambridge. Here he interviewed a Mr Armitage of St John’s college. It is only now, so many years

would have a woman know; – and I don’t think there is a superstitious article in it.

later, that I understand what a remarkably generous and loving parent I was fortunate enough to have. Perhaps too

Well, well, Mrs Malaprop, I will dispute the point no further with you; though I must confess, that you are a truly moderate and polite arguer, for almost every third word you say is on my side of the question. But, Mrs. Malaprop, to the more important point in debate – you say you have no objection to my proposal?

close a proximity prevented his children from seeing him as the wistful and rather whimsical person he was; and with the years he wore a sad expression that may have been the result of feeling unappreciated. When, however, he came across some stranger who reacted to his charm or his wit, his whole being changed, and he shone brilliantly. My father had been all his life an enthusiastic cricketer and was, in fact, renowned as a wicket-keeper.

Mr Armitage immediately recognised my father’s charm, straightforwardness of manner, and simplicity of character,

and he enjoyed the cricket talk. After the interview, it was arranged that, although the college was full, I should have rooms in Bridge Street and could ‘go up’ at the beginning of the next term and remain on, provided I could pass a special examination to be taken on arrival. Neither of my parents was particularly interested in the arts or in their manifestations. My mother certainly had an innate taste and sense of design and proportion, which I have consulted all through my life. My father, as a young man, was an amateur actor in the days when the amateur theatre had a certain status; and he often delighted, and at the same time embarrassed, us by his imitations of the actors of his day. But it must have been baffling for this straight-sailing couple to discover that the eldest of their four children was turning out to be so different from all that was expected.

Even as a child, I preferred to sit silent and self-conscious among the grown-ups while other children played rounders or rolled in the mud. I displayed not the slightest interest in cricket, or how to throw a ball with a twist on it, and now I was showing dissatisfaction with home life, as well as signs of outrageous snobbishness. I was full of inner yearnings, growing my hair ‘like a piano-tuner’, and developing other ridiculous aspects of aestheticism.

My ambition to break out of the anonymity of a nice, ordinary, middle-class family certainly manifested itself in other tiresome outward forms; one of which was the pleasure I took in surprising, or even shocking people by the inimitable way in which I adorned myself. Thus, it is not at all unexpected that, on the first occasion here recorded, I should purposely have allowed myself to be caught wearing a peculiar assortment of garments, before changing into a conventional suit, by the Victorian Mrs Perry, the only bona fide actress, albeit retired, my parents knew. Mrs Perry was the extremely respectable widow of a Folkestone doctor, with whom my family had made friends when holidaying one summer. Although Mrs Perry was an aggressive personality, and enjoyed every opportunity to take the centre of the stage, she had never been celebrated in the professional theatre. Yet to our somewhat conventional family house in Hyde Park Street she brought a distant exciting flicker of the footlights.

24

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

25

JOHN SUMMERSON John Summerson (Rendalls 1918³) was a renowned English architectural historian. He was Curator of Sir John Soane’s

Serlio’s book on the orders starts with an engraving – the very first of its kind – in which all five orders are shown standing

Museum from 1945 until his retirement in 1984, and was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University 1958–59.

side by side like ill-assorted ninepins ranged according to their relative slimness, that is to say, according to the ratio of

He also lectured on the history of architecture at Birkbeck College London. Of his many books, the best known are

lower diameter to height. All are on pedestals. The stubby Tuscan is on the left; then the similar but slightly taller Doric;

probably Georgian London and Architecture in Britain 1530–1830, both standard works. He was at Harrow School from

the elegant Ionic; the lofty, elaborate Corinthian’ and finally the still more elongated and further enriched Composite. In

1918–22 and the School’s History of Art society is named after him.

the text accompanying this plate Serlio explains himself. He says that just as the ancient dramatists used to preface their plays with a prologue telling audiences what it was all going to be about, so he is putting before the principal characters

FROM THE CLASSICAL LANGUAGE OF ARCHITECTURE CHAPTER 1: THE ESSENTIALS OF CLASSICISM One thing at a time. First, what are the orders? On [illustration 1] you will find a very clear diagram of the Doric order. It consists, you see, of a temple column standing on a pedestal and carrying on its head the architrave, frieze and cornice, those elements which are collectively called the entablature. Then, in [illustrations 2–5] you see the Doric order again, with its four companions;

in his treatise on architecture. He does it in a way which makes the orders seem as categorical in the grammar of architecture as, say, the four conjugations of verbs in the grammar of the Latin language.

Illustration 2–5: 2. Sebastiano Serlio, woodcut, 1540 (plate 1) 3. Giacoma Barozzi da Vignola, copper engraving, 1563 (plate 2) 4. Vicenzo Scamozzi, wood-engraving, 1615 (plate 3) 5. Claude Perrault, copper engraving, 1676 (plate 4)

it is the second from the left, with the Tuscan to the left, the Ionic, Corinthian and Composite to the right. An ‘order’ is the ‘column-and-superstructure’ unit of a temple colonnade. It does not have to have a pedestal and often does not. It does have to have an entablature (columns are meaningless unless they support something), and the cornice represents the eaves.

Now, why are there five orders? This is a little more difficult when it is necessary to glance back to some origins.

The earliest written description of any of the orders is in Vitruvius. The name of this Roman author will crop up frequently in this book and this is the moment to introduce him. He was an architect of some consequence in the reign of Augustus and wrote a treatise in ten books, De Architectura, which he dedicated to the Emperor. This is the only treatise of its kind to have survived from antiquity and for that reason has been accorded enormous veneration.

Vitruvius was not himself a man of any great genius or literary talent or indeed – for all we know – of architectural talent. The thing about his treatise is that it rounds up and preserves for us an immense quantity of traditional building lore: it is the code of practice of a Roman architect of the first century AD, enriched with instances and historical notes.

In the course of Vitruvius’s third and fourth books he describes three of the orders – Ionic, Doric and Corinthian – and gives a few notes on another, the Tuscan. He tells us in which part of the world each was invented. He relates them to his descriptions of temples and tells us to which gods and goddesses each order is appropriate. His descriptions are by no means exhaustive, he gives no fifth order, he does not present them in what we think of as the ‘proper’ sequence (Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian) and – most important – he does not present them as a canonical formulae embodying all architectural virtue. That was left for the theorists of the Renaissance.

In the middle of the fifteenth century, fourteen hundred years after Vitruvius, the Florentine architect and humanist, Leon Battista Alberti, described the orders, partly with reference to Vitruvius and partly from his own observations of Roman remains. It was he who added, from observation, a fifth order – the Composite – which combines features of the Corinthian with those of the Ionic. But Alberti was still perfectly objective and Vitruvian in his attitude. It was Sebastiano Serlio, nearly a century later, who really started the orders – the five orders now – on their long career that Serlio quite meant to do this but that is what he did.

Serlio was a man of the High Renaissance, an exact contemporary of Michelangelo, a near contemporary of Raphael and an associate of the architect-painter Baldassare Peruzzi whose designs he inherited. He built a few quite important buildings but his greatest service to architecture was to compile the first full-scale fully illustrated architectural grammar of the Renaissance. It came out as a series of books. The first two appeared in Venice, the later books in France under the patronage of Francois I. The books became the architectural bible for the civilised world.

The Italians used them, the French owed nearly everything to Serlio and his books, the Germans and Flemings based their own books on his, the Elizabethans cribbed from him and Sir Christopher Wren was still finding Serlio invaluable when he built the Sheldonian at Oxford in 1663.

26

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

27

JAMES BLUNT James Blunt (Elmfield 1987³) is a singer and songwriter, and was in the army in the Life Guards, serving under NATO during the 1999 Kosovo War. He rose to fame with his debut album Back to Bedlam, the album selling over 11 million copies worldwide. His most recent album is called Once Upon a Mind (released in 2019).

FROM MOON LANDING (2013), ‘SMOKE SIGNALS’ One by one they pass me by.

And I’ve used up my supplies.

Out of water. Out of hope.

MONSTERS

Can’t make fire. Only smoke.

Oh, before they turn off all the lights.

Here I am alone in silence

I won’t read you your wrongs or your rights,

Castaway on a desert island.

The time has gone.

A traveller in an ocean lost at sea.

I’ll tell you goodnight, close the door,

Smoke signals in the night sky

Tell you I love you once more.

Hope you see them as you pass by.

The time has gone. So here it is.

I’m screaming from the cliff top

I’m not your son,

You’re the only one I’ve got

You’re not my father, We’re just two grown men saying goodbye.

No need to forgive. No need to forget.

I know your mistakes and you know mine.

To rescue me to rescue me.

Why can’t you see, why can’t you see?

I don’t think that I’ll survive.

I’ll die here without you.

And while you’re sleeping, I’ll try to make you proud,

Oh, I can’t live without you.

So daddy, won’t you just close your eyes, don’t be afraid.

The sun comes up. The sun goes down.

It’s my turn to chase the monsters away.

Wonder if I’ll ever be found?

Oh, well I’ll read a story to you,

Here I am alone in silence

Only difference is this one is true.

Castaway on a desert island.

Time has gone.

A traveller in an ocean lost at sea.

I’ve folded your clothes on the chair.

I hope you sleep well, don’t be scared.

Time has gone. So here it is.

Smoke signals in the night sky Hope you see them as you pass by.

I’m screaming from the cliff top

You’re the only one I’ve got

CHORUS

To rescue me to rescue me.

Sleep a lifetime.

Yes, and breath a last word You can feel my hand on your arm.

I will be the last one,

Why can’t you see, why can’t you see?

I don’t think that I’ll survive.

I’ll die here without you.

Oh, I can’t live without you.

So, I’ll leave a light on.

Let there be no darkness in your heart.

28

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

29

TERENCE RATTIGAN Sir Terence Rattigan (The Park 1925²) was a playwright who is most famous for The Browning Version, The Winslow

ANDREW. (Murmuring gently, not looking at TAPLOW.) When I was a very young man, only two years older than you

Boy and French Without Tears. The School’s drama and theatre society is named after him.

are now, Taplow, I wrote, for my own pleasure, a translation of the Agamemnon – a very free translation – I remember – in rhyming couplets.

FROM THE BROWNING VERSION ANDREW CROKER HARRIS…sits at the table and makes a sign for TAPLOW to sit beside him. He picks up a text of the Agamemnon and TAPLOW does the same.

ANDREW. Line thirteen hundred and ninety-nine. Begin.

TAPLOW. Chorus. We – are surprised at – ANDREW. (Automatically.) We marvel at.

TAPLOW. The whole Agamemnon – in verse? That must have been hard work, sir.

ANDREW. It was hard work; but I derived great joy from it. The play had so excited and moved me that I wished to communicate, however imperfectly, some of that emotion to others. When I had finished it, I remember, I thought it very beautiful – almost more beautiful than the original.

TAPLOW. Was it ever published, sir?

ANDREW. No. Yesterday I looked for the manuscript while I was packing my papers. I was unable to find it. I fear it is lost – like so many other things. Lost for good.

TAPLOW. We marvel at – thy tongue – how bold thou art – that you –

TAPLOW. Hard luck, sir.

ANDREW. Thou. (ANDREW’S interruptions are automatic. His thoughts are evidently far distant.)

ANDREW is silent again. TAPLOW steals a timid glance at him.

TAPLOW. Thou – can –

Shall I go on, sir?

ANDREW. Canst –

ANDREW, with a slight effort, lowers his eyes again to his text.

TAPLOW. Canst – boastfully speak –

ANDREW. (Raising his voice slightly.) No. Go back and get that last line right.

ANDREW. Utter such a boastful speech –

TAPLOW, out of Andrew’s vision, as he thinks, makes a disgusted grimace in his direction.

TAPLOW. Utter such a boastful speech – over – (In a sudden rush of inspiration.) – the bloody corpse of the husband

TAPLOW. That – thou canst utter such a boastful speech over thy husband –

you have slain –

ANDREW. Yes, And, now, if you would be so kind, you will do the line again, without the facial contortion which you

ANDREW looks down at his text for the first time. TAPLOW looks apprehensive.

just found necessary to accompany it –

ANDREW. Taplow – I presume you are using a different text from mine – TAPLOW. No, sir.

ANDREW. That is strange for the line as I have it reads: ἥτις τοιόνδʼ ἐπʼ ἀνδρὶ κομπάζεις λόγον. However diligently I search I can discover no ‘bloody’ – no ‘corpse’ – no ‘you have slain’. Simply ‘husband’ – TAPLOW. Yes, sir. That’s right.

ANDREW. Then why do you invent words that simply are not there?

TAPLOW. I thought they sounded better, sir. More exciting. After all she did kill her husband, sir. (With relish.) She’s just been revealed with his dead body and Cassandra’s weltering in gore – ANDREW. I am delighted at this evidence, Taplow, of your interest in the rather more lurid aspects of dramaturgy, but I feel I must remind you that you are supposed to be construing Greek, not collaborating with Aeschylus.

TAPLOW. (Greatly daring.) Yes, but still, sir, translator’s licence, sir – I didn’t get anything wrong – and after all it is a play and not just a bit of Greek construe.

ANDREW. (Momentarily at a loss.) I seem to detect a note of end of term in your remarks. I am not denying that the Agamemnon is a play. It is perhaps the greatest play ever written – TAPLOW. (Quickly.) I wonder how many people in the form think that?

Pause. TAPLOW is instantly frightened of what he has said.

Sorry, sir. Shall I go on?

ANDREW does not answer. He sits motionless staring at his book.

Shall I go on, sir?

There is another pause. ANDREW raises his head slowly from his book.

30

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

31

ALEXANDER GALBRAITH WILSON ‘Sandy’ Wilson (The Head Master’s 1937³) is most famous as a lyric writer and composer, known in particular for the

Life without us is impossible

musical The Boy Friend (1953). During the Second War World, he served in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps.

And devoid of all charms No amount of idle gossip’ll

FROM THE BOYFRIEND

Keep them out of our arms We’re blue without

Any girl who’s reached the age

Can’t do without

Of seventeen or thereabouts

Our dreams just won’t come true without

Has but one desire in view

That certain thing called “The Boy Friend”

She knows she has reached the stage

We’re blue without

Of needing one to care about Nothing else will really do Childhood games are left behind

Can’t do without Our dreams just won’t come true without That certain thing called “The Boy Friend”

And her heart takes wing Hoping that it soon will find Just one thing We’ve got to have, We plot to have, For it’s a dreary not to have That certain thing called “The Boy Friend” We scheme about And dream about And we’ve been known to scream about That certain thing called “The Boy Friend” He is really a necessity If you want to get on And we might as well confess it He is a sine qua non We sigh for him And cry for him, And we would gladly die for him That certain thing called “The Boy Friend” We plead to have, We need to have, In fact our poor hearts bleed to have That certain thing called “The Boy Friend” We’d save for him And slave for him We’d even misbehave for him That certain thing called “The Boy Friend”

32

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

33

MIKE D’ABO Mike D’Abo (Bradbys 1957³) is a singer and songwriter. His musical career

Why do you build me up (build me up) buttercup, baby

started at Harrow and he went on to form A Band of Angels with a group

Just to let me down (let me down) and mess me around?

of Old Harrovians. He left the group and joined Manfred Mann in 1966. He

And then worst of all (worst of all) you never call, baby

wrote Build Me Up Buttercup with Tony Macaulay and it was released by

When you say you will (say you will) but I love you still

the Foundations in 1968, with Colin Young singing lead vocals. He wrote

I need you (I need you) more than anyone, darlin’

Handbags and Gladrags in 1967 when he was lead singer of Manfred Mann.

You know that I have from the start

Rod Stewart recorded the song in 1969 with Mike d’Abo playing the piano.

So build me up (build me up) buttercup, don’t break my heart I, I, I need you more than anyone, baby

BUILD ME UP BUTTERCUP Why do you build me up (build me up) buttercup, baby

You know that I have from the start So build me up (build me up) buttercup

Just to let me down (let me down) and mess me around?

And then worst of all (worst of all) you never call, baby When you say you will (say you will) but I love you still I need you (I need you) more than anyone, darlin’ You know that I have from the start So build me up (build me up) buttercup, don’t break my heart

Ever seen a blind man cross the road Trying to make the other side Ever seen a young girl growing old Trying to make herself a bride

“I’ll be over at ten,” you told me time and again

So what becomes of you my love

But you’re late, I wait around and then (bah dah dah)

When they have finally stripped you of

I went to the door, I can’t take any more

The handbags and the gladrags

It’s not you, you let me down again

That your Grandad had to sweat so you could buy

(Hey, hey, hey) baby, baby, try to find (Hey, hey, hey) a little time and I’ll make you mine (Hey, hey, hey) I’ll be home I’ll be beside the phone waiting for you Ooh ooh ooh, ooh ooh ooh Why do you build me up (build me up) buttercup, baby Just to let me down (let me down) and mess me around?

And then worst of all (worst of all) you never call, baby When you say you will (say you will) but I love you still I need you (I need you) more than anyone, darlin’ You know that I have from the start So build me up (build me up) buttercup, don’t break my heart

Baby Once I was a young man And all I thought I had to do was smile You are still a young girl And you bought everything in style Listen But once you think you’re in you’re out ‘Cause you don’t mean a single thing without The handbags and the gladrags That your Grandad had to sweat so you could buy Sing a song of six-pence for your sake And take a bottle full of rye Four and twenty blackbirds in a cake

You were my toy but I could be the boy you adore

And bake them all in a pie

If you’d just let me know (bah dah dah)

They told me you missed school today

Although you’re untrue, I’m attracted to you all the more

So what I suggest you just throw them all away

Why do I need you so?

The handbags and the gladrags

(Hey, hey, hey) baby, baby, try to find (Hey, hey, hey) a little time and I’ll make you mine (Hey, hey, hey) I’ll be home I’ll be beside the phone waiting for you Ooh ooh ooh, ooh ooh ooh

34

HANDBAGS AND GLADRAGS

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

That your poor old Granddad had to sweat to buy They told me you missed school today So I suggest you just throw them all away The handbags and the gladrags That your poor old Granddad had to sweat to buy ya

35

PAUL BINSKI Paul Binski (The Park 1970³) is Professor of History of Medieval Art at the University of Cambridge and author of

musical instrument, producing a satisfying concord: the ‘well-tempered clavier’ as Bach called it. That we encounter

numerous books and essays, including Gothic Wonder, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation and Becket’s Crown:

ill-tempered human beings goes without saying. The purpose of tempering is harmony and therefore an experience,

Art and Imagination in Gothic England.

sensory and reasonable, of rightness and well-being; that practical everyday rightness which makes life livable and

GOTHIC WONDER: ART, ARTIFICE, AND THE DECORATED STYLE, 1290-1350 FINAL CHAPTER

which is the objective of craft as much as of medicine.

At the heart of one of the most powerful Romantic concepts of Gothic art and architecture is the idea that Gothic is a style of ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’; that rather than being a style of perfected, unalterable and unaltering beauty like Classicism, it is a style if not exactly of beauty, then at least of action, of dynamic change like a natural thing urging towards self-realization. This concept is often attributed to the great Swiss formalist art historian Heinrich Wölfflin.

But its roots extend even beyond the sublime of the poet Goethe, who when writing on German architecture in 1772 saw in Gothic architecture the urge to ‘build toward heaven ... like a sublimely towering, wide-spreading tree of God which, with its thousand branches, millions of twigs and leaves more numerous than the sands of the sea, proclaims to the surrounding country the glory of its master, the Lord’. The forest had for some time been an image for the inner imperative of Gothic architecture. In thought, the ancient basis of all such notions of becoming lies in the distinction drawn in Plato’s Timaeus between being and becoming, intelligible firm knowledge and shifting opinion; it was God who implanted intelligence into the created world, and who as maker, father and builder coaxed order out of chaos.

The Timaeus was the only work of Plato known directly in the Middle Ages.

It was not lost on ancient and medieval conceptions of nature that creation itself was in a constant state of becoming, always at risk of reversion into primordial imbalance, disorder and decay. The whole thing was like some marvellous balancing act, held delicately together in equilibrium, always at risk, its mixtures and components poised in everlasting but perilous suspense. The system’s microcosm, the human body as envisaged by Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Galen and medieval physicians, was also a shifting unstable compound, tensive in nature, viscous and humoural, needing balance. The humoural character of medieval aesthetics too allows us to understand what style and ornament are: not superficial things, but ways in which outwards appearances, surfaces, were suffused connectedly from within, their style, elegance, colour and working, all indicative of inner ordering. This is why the surfaces of works of art are eloquent things, and why medieval, and especially Gothic, art could use the natural imagery of growth, secretion and change so persuasively. Vigour, the natural vigour of stuff and of human experience, is a keynote. The medieval imaginary accepted that such things as stones possessed virtus, ‘power’, and that natural things could morph and shape-shift, a truth as apparent in the understanding of the lability of late-medieval Gothic architecture as of the Green Man. This too the crafter had to cope with and put to good use, for materials, as we have said, have

To tend to something is to encourage it through care, even ‘tough love’. It is the proper direction of the will or desire of someone or something (the term ‘tend’ is related to the group of words also including ‘intention’). It carries with it the idea of tempering and controlling the desire or natural inward movement of a thing, as perhaps with the inherent tendencies or ‘character’ of ivory or wood that need cutting or carving. The Romans, so practical, so effective, understood that while we end in a tomb, we pass pleasurable life in gardens real or imaginary: cultivation – itself a powerful metaphor – provided the ancient and medieval world with a useful body of concepts for shaping and directing things, as did the image of building and architecture. Through their skills and methods, the gardener, woodsman or farmer allied utility with beauty. They understood the virtus of the natural world and that things divided, approximately, into the wild and the tamed. In his Historia naturalis Pliny the Elder classified two kinds of trees – wild ones, silvestres, and kindly or civilized ones, urbani. For Cicero, the great rhetorician, the difference between rustic speech, sermo rusticus, and urbane communication, sermo urbanus, was as much a register of differences of speech, of social cultivation. Roughness or asperitas was a quality of style to be smoothed out unless it served a purpose, as it does in the case of some carved imagery. Our term ‘rude’ still signifies both impoliteness and something unworked, and our work ‘polite’ is descended from the Latin and Romance words for ‘polish’. These terms of civility, language or style are relational – that’s how the arts work, through subtle metaphors. They are also to do with the narrative of process, because tending and tempering change this into that. Quintilian, the Roman rhetorician who vividly bridges the art-language divide, writes of the difficulties of writing itself, but in terms of the analogy with cultivation. In composition he says that we can, if we wish, imprudently rush a text out so creating a mass of unformed ‘raw material’ or draft – for this he uses term silva, alluding to abundant thickets of woodland, that which is always becoming but is not fully realized; but a better way is to plan things with due care and to carve them into shape only in a finishing or polishing process. Beauty and good order have utility, the expression of which is the orderly planting of fruit trees in straight lines, as well as their vigorous but judicious cutting back to prevent them running off or bolting. The point is that we discipline, prune, things in order not simply that they may display but that by being leaner and so flourishing they may nourish and so be useful. The Latin verb putare includes the senses of pruning, cleansing, reckoning and thinking. So things should be correct, and that correctness turns frequently on nature’s management and selfmanagement as a model for how art and literature might also work effectively.

(metaphorically speaking) a ‘character’: they urge, tend and fight – and the artisan duly urges, tends and fights back.

If they lost, the Wild could easily become the Dead. Natural science, art and ethics all acknowledged that the world urges and pushes, strains toward flourishing, pleasure and death, risking excess and vice: and it was through restraint and discipline that rebalancing was sought and found. These necessary and health-giving constraints entailed effort, willed self-mastery (enkrasia) and inevitably difficulty – an uplifting, even heroic, concept in the verbal and non-verbal arts. For getting life ‘right’ is hard for all of us, and requires work: no pain, no gain.

For Aristotle, as for Thomas Aquinas his medieval follower, the virtue of temperance, temperantia – the regulation of appetite, pleasure – governs the sense of touch, for touch, along with taste and smell, is the sense most near to the pleasures of animals and thus most needing to be regulated: what makes humans human is the tempering of such appetite by reason, a uniquely human faculty. The word temperance had wide practical and ethical purchase.

It required getting things back to a balanced state, back into proportion.

The notion of a ‘medium’, that which stands mid-way between things in a combination or blend but which is also a thing in itself – is useful here. In the visual arts, we encounter a substance that blends and binds together pigments into a productive and correctly balanced state, namely tempera. We speak of the tempering of steel, and indeed of temperament in the nice tuning of a

36

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

37

TRAVEL PHILIP MARSDEN Philip Marsden (The Park 1974³) is a writer of numerous travel books. In his wooden sloop Tsambika, he sailed from his home in Cornwall up the west coast of Ireland to the north of Scotland. The Summer Isles: A Voyage of the Imagination is the account of that journey, and an exploration of islands, both real and imagined.

FROM THE SUMMER ISLES: A VOYAGE OF THE IMAGINATION It was my grandfather who taught me to sail. He showed me how to hank on the jib, sweat the halyards, make off the sheets and hoist the main by hauling the throat and the peak together (he taught me too the pleasure, the necessity, of the language). He passed on the art of helming, of feeling the boat through the tiller as a rider feels the mouth of a horse; he taught me how to trim the sails, to tie the right knots, to row and to scull. These were the practical lessons. But behind them were also unspoken things that settled far deeper in me – the strange elemental appeal of being on the water, the mystique of boats, the way he spoke about his own, the tenderness he showed every piece of tackle, the winter routine of hanging all the blocks on a lanyard and lovingly varnishing each one, the visceral hurt he felt when anything was damaged.

Later in my teens, I jumped at any opportunity to crew. Friends, friends of friends, anyone who had a boat and wanted an extra pair of hands. I sailed up and down the south coast of England, to Cork and Bantry Bay, back and forth across the Channel to Brittany and Normandy. I loved the footloose rhythm of those trips, arriving in unfamiliar harbours, sailing on the next morning. I gazed out to sea, I read a lot. I enjoyed bad weather, reefed down in heavy seas. It seemed then a perfect existence – contemplation mixed with moments of high adventure. But like all teenage dreams, it was big on ideals and light on responsibility: I was utterly ignorant of the weight those skippers bore.

Now years later, I had still not skippered a boat to anywhere I couldn’t reach by lunchtime. But I had decided to explore the west coasts of Ireland of Scotland, in search of real and fictitious islands. Sailing there single-handed, in a boat I didn’t have, using skills I’d never acquired, was not the easiest way to reach them. But if I have learned anything from years of travelling, it is that a journey’s trickiness is what makes it most rewarding. Looking for imaginary places isn’t meant to be easy.

HERE HE LEAVES THE HARBOUR OF KILRONAN, ON IRELAND’S ARAN ISLANDS. I woke to sun and no wind. The sea was all shine and glitter. Another boat lay a little way off in the harbour and its mooring rope dropped rod-straight from the bow. Beside it, an inverted image of itself stretched out across the water in a scribble of broken spars and rigging. When I motored out of the bay, my bow left a clean v of wash on the surface.

A shag swam off at my approach, then took flight, full of indignation, as if it was frankly impertinent for anyone to be moving about on such a morning.

For an hour or more I followed the treeless coast of Inis Mór. The regularity of the limestone scarp made it look like a flat-pack island just pulled from the box (vegetation not included). On the other side, way off to the north, the skyline of Connemara was more fulsome, bulbous with the granite peaks of the Twelve Bens.

A mile or so in front of me, dead on my course, were Na Sceirdí, the Skerd Rocks. The name comes from the Irish sceird, a ‘bleak, windswept place’. The largest of them rose more than sixty feet from the water, and there was threat in its height and blackness. Even today, it was surrounded by skirts of surf. I’d read of the nine women dropped off on Sceird Mór years ago to collect dulse. The weather came in and they could not be picked up. For nine days and nine nights they were stranded there. But they were tough, those Connemara women, and the only ill effects were swollen jaws from chewing the dulse – although, according to one of their husbands, they ‘weren’t as good as they used to be until a fortnight after coming home’. In October 2000, a large trawler – the Arosa – was driven on to the Skerd Rocks: just one man from a crew of thirteen was rescued.

I adjusted my course. I wanted those rocks well to the north. I didn’t trust them. Sure enough, after going below for a few minutes, I found that they’d sneaked nearer on the tide. Close up, their presence was more animate, with sculpted

38

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

39

MICHAEL CARROLL brows and haunches. Every now and then, waves rose up their fringe, ghostly arms stretching out to try and get a hold.

The Skerd archipelago is also visible from the north, from the mainland. The rocks lie far enough offshore to have become part of that hazy and suggestive territory, the cartography of the not-quite-real, the wished-for, the possible.

Michael Carroll (Newlands 1949²) is a travel writer whose work includes books on Greece and Iran. His literary guide for travellers explores the cultural gems of Greece, including Lord Byron’s time in the country and many of the Greek myths and legends that have inspired writers such as Durrell, Twain, Flaubert and Fowles.

Roderic O’Flaherty wrote of them in the 1680s: ‘These rocks sometimes appear to be a city far off, full of houses, castles, towers, chimneys, sometimes full of blasing flames, smoke and people running to and fro.’

From the cockpit, I watched them closely as they passed, shape-shifting with each glance. They slid past my beam, then my quarter. Then they were astern and shrinking.

FROM GREECE: A LITERARY GUIDE FOR TRAVELLERS On 5 January 1824 Lord Byron, after narrowly escaping Turkish warships, landed in Missolonghi, for years a centre of Greek resistance which the Turks were determined to destroy. G F Abbott’s Songs of Modern Greece (1900)

The hours melted one into the next. Overhead the sun remained half-hidden behind a film of high cloud. It added to the

celebrates its defiance in a siege not long before Byron’s arrival when Markos Botsaris was its leader: ‘They all swore

strange suspension of that morning. The sea surface was so colourless and smooth that I felt I was flying – like the sky-

by Ahmed Mohammed to enter Mesolonghi and feast there on Christmas day, before sunrise. “Allah! Allah!” they

ships of medieval Ireland. Having cleared the end of Inis Mór, I picked up a swell from yesterday’s blow. The waves were

shouted and rushed forward. The Turks planted ladders to climb on the trenches, but the musket-shots and the sabre

long enough not to trouble the boat, but each time I was in a trough, the rise of water was surprising, deep enough to

strokes made them fall as thick as frogs.’

hide the land.

Byron had been appointed by the London Greek Committee as its agent in support of the Greeks; he had waited

Towards Slyne Head, a breeze came out of the south. I pulled up the sails and cut the engine. The quiet came as a

several months in Kefalonia before making his move to the mainland. The Ionian Islands were under British rule and

shock. My ears rang with relief; their only stimulus now the gentle slop of water past the gunwale. I looked ahead to

England refused to take sides in the conflict; Byron chose to stay in Kefalonia, rather than Zante or Corfu, because he

where the land tapered to a point, breaking into a dot-dot-dot of islands and rocks. My internal chatter was toying with

had become a friend of the governor Charles Napier (later renowned as the conqueror of Sind), who was sympathetic

names. Slyne Head: slyne …skerd; down in Kerry, there’d been Slea Head and Sybil Point. I wondered about the snakey

to the Greek cause.

sibilance, whether there was a link to their threat. I couldn’t think of any other examples so I dropped the theory and focused on getting past the headland.

Lord Byron had felt an affinity with Greece from his first visit in 1809. He loved the beautiful and often dramatic scenery and was drawn to the mountain warriors of Souli, many of whom he took on as his private bodyguard;

Around such points is often great agitation. Blocks of tide-driven water pour along the coast at different rates,

romantically, they were his kind of people. In Athens, he took the trouble to learn modern Greek. Foreigners at that

at different levels; where they meet, there’s usually some reckoning to be done. The swells become confused and

time had a low opinion of the natives, deriding and looking down on them. Byron, however, found much to admire

steep. Overfalls can add to the chaos. The charts mark these places with a couple of discreet wave symbols, while the

in the Greeks, and perhaps because he was aware of the contradictions and failings in his own character, liked them

pilot books advise that they are ‘best given a wide offing’.

despite their faults. In his notes to Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage he rebutted the common accusation thrown at Greeks

But they move around, these tide races. Sometimes they’re close in, sometimes further out; the winds affect them, and

of ingratitude:

the state of tide. Now on the skyline, just a few hundred yards off, I could see upturned wedges of water. I was trying to

‘Now, in the name of Nemesis, for what are they to be grateful? Where is the human being who has ever conferred

work out a course to avoid them when the sea became oddly flat. Sooner than expected. I pushed down the helm and

a benefit on Greece or Greeks? They are to be grateful to the Turks for their fetters, and the Franks for their broken

headed back towards the head. There was often an inside passage of calmer water close to the land. But now disturbed

promises and lying counsels. They are to be grateful for the artist who engraves their ruins and to the antiquary who

water lay in all directions.

carries them away: to the traveller whose janissary flogs them and to the scribbler whose journal abuses them! This is

Suddenly the boat dropped away to port. I stumbled. My shoulder knocked hard against a winch. My arm was in water.

the amount of their obligations to foreigners.’

As the boat righted, I picked myself up. At once the stern lifted and we were being driven forward, fast, with another

Byron had arrived in a Greece at war yet divided by factions who feared each other as much as they hated their

train-size flood. I turned on the engine, stowed the genoa. The wind was too light: I needed power for steerage.

common enemy. Today there is a memorial garden on the site of the house where he stayed for the last months of his

I looked around. All was angles, formless slopes and dips, shapes that water couldn’t hold for long, and didn’t, collapsing in violent patches of froth that now dotted the seascape. It made me think of the field of chevaux-de-frise outside Dún Aonghasa. This was a liquid version.

life, where he was welcomed ashore in triumph to the shouts of the crowd and the salute of cannon. The building was destroyed during World War II, but we know something about it thanks to several contemporary descriptions. It was a large two-storeyed house with wooden balconies on the shore of the lagoon, with rambling outhouses where Byron’s rumbustious Souliotes were quartered. On the first floor was Colonel Stanhope (later Earl of Harrington), charged by

In a large and regular sea, you develop a rhythm at the helm. No two waves are ever the same but they follow a pattern,

the London Committee to educate and generally improve the Greeks by setting up a printing press and distributing

like a piece of music. This was just noise. Great stands of water would come surging out of the mess. All I could do was

a large supply of bibles. Byron called him ‘the typographical colonel’. Byron’s own rooms were on the top floor,

grip the tiller against them. Hoisted for a moment on a mound of sea, I took in my surroundings: acres and acres of

furnished with Turkish sofas and decorated with every type of weapon, including ‘carbines, fowling pieces, pistols,

turbulence, a fluid plain of jut and rupture. It was hard to tell what progress the engine was making through the water –

swords, sabres, a claymore’, where he lived with Pietro Gamba, younger brother of his ex-mistress the countess

four or five knots on the instruments. But with the shifting of the water itself, that meant little against the land.

Teresa Guiccioli, the page Lukas, some very large dogs and his two main servants, the long-suffering Fletcher, his

In fact, it was working in my favour. I could see the headland and its lighthouse moving south. And now ahead, a

valet for the last 20 years, and Tita Falcieri, a giant of a man who had been Byron’s gondolier in Venice (and was later

hundred yards or so, all was smooth again. One more shove from the sea, one more yank of the helm. The movement

employed by Benjamin Disraeli). According to one visitor it was more like a busy inn than a private house.

began to settle. Soon Tsambika had found her feet again, and we were free, following the line of a different coast,

For northerners accustomed to clouds and rain through much of the year, a wet spring is never a surprise, but in

pushing north.

Greece something better is always expected; and yet how often, instead of blue skies and warming sun, day can follow day of drenching rain. It was Byron’s misfortune to spend the last months of his life at Missolonghi during a long bout of such atrocious weather, when wet winds blew coldly from the south and continuous rain turned the marshy flatlands to a sea of mud. He wrote to his banker friend Hancock that ‘if we are not taken off by the sword, we

40

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

41

are like to march off with an ague in this mud-basket’; he added that he would probably die – apologising for ‘a very

Seek out – less often sought than found –

bad pun’ – ‘not martially but marsh-ally.’

A soldier’s grave, for thee the best;

Fiona MacCarthy, in Byron: Life and Legend (2002), suggests that Byron’s real heroism at Missolonghi was the sacrifice of his frequent need for quiet and solitary withdrawal. As soon as he arrived he was exposed to repeated visits by the

Then look around, and chose thy ground, And take thy Rest.

chiefs and primates, each with his own large noisy following of undisciplined armed men, and since his presence and

Byron’s health was deteriorating. He had a serious fit in February, following an earlier attack some months before.

opinions were in continual demand his house was the meeting place of everyone concerned with planning the war. ‘He,

Depression and fears for his mental health led to dieting, purgatives and heavy drinking. ‘I especially dread, in this

whose irritability was so intense, had to cope with the various military factions at Missolonghi, the constant sound of

world, two things […] growing fat and growing mad.’ He might have added, ‘and growing old’. He was appalled at the

gunfire in the street. The writer disgusted by the brutal facts of war now had to endure the massacres and horrors of a

signs of ageing, which were becoming all too apparent.

primitive and savage confrontation in which prisoners were slaughtered without compunction.’ Byron’s days of selfindulgence were over. The romantic swing of this poem hardly conceals a reluctant acceptance that his life was changing: So we’ll go no more a-roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving And the moon be still as bright.

He wrote to Teresa Guiccioli, ‘Of course you might suppose that this is not exactly the place to pass the carnival in.’

As representative of the London Greek Committee, which was raising a large loan to support the war, he had frequently to complain to its members about their unrealistic ideas – ‘high-flown notions of the sixth form at Harrow or Eton’. He derided the often-irrelevant material sent to support the Greek cause, ‘for instance the Mathematical instruments are thrown away – none of the Greeks know a problem from a poker […] The use of trumpets too may be doubted – unless Constantinople were Jericho – for the Hellenists have no ear for Bugles – and you must send us somebody to listen to them.’ Aided by his sardonic humour and acute sense of the ridiculous, the poet was finding his feet as man of action. Increasingly he was becoming the voice of practical common sense.

Much of Byron’s time was spent trying to keep the peace between the three rival armed parties in different regions of Greece whose bitter feuds prevented united action against the Turks. A rich man, he had sold the remainder of his

Byron was also in love – with his page-boy Lukas Chalandritsanos, feelings which were not returned. In the poem for his birthday he tried to overcome these emotions: Tread those reviving passions down, Unworthy manhood! – unto thee Indifferent should the smile or frown Of Beauty be.

Byron’s main sexual energies were directed towards women, but his attraction to adolescent boys was never far below the surface. He and his friends made every effort to keep these feelings hidden: in Byron’s day for the crime of sodomy you could be hanged. And yet he still wrote: Thus much and more – and yet thou lov’st me not, And never wilt – Love dwells not in our will – Nor can I blame thee – though it be my lot To strongly – wrongly – vainly love thee still.

These and other references to the love that dare not speak its name were carefully removed by his friends after his death; and in a famous fireside scene in the office of John Murray, his London publishers, Byron’s friends and executors consigned his memoirs to the flames.

property in England and was now devoting his entire fortune to the Greek cause. While waiting for the loan from the London Committee, he used his own money to relaunch the Greek fleet lying at Hydra, and to plan an assault on the fortress port of Lepanto (Nafpaktos) using 500 Souliote warriors he now took on his payroll.

On 22 January 1824, the night before his thirty-sixth birthday, he had worked on a poem. Some of its verses proved to be prophetic.

My days are in the yellow leaf: The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker and the grief Are mine alone! […]

The Sword, the Banner, and the Field, Glory and Greece, around me see!

The Spartan, borne upon his shield, Was not more free. […]

If thou regret’st thy youth, why live?

The land of honourable death Is here: – up to the Field, and give Away thy breath!

42

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

43

GUY STAGG

HISTORY, POLITICS, PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

Guy Stagg (The Park 2001³) made a pilgrimage from Canterbury to Jerusalem in 2013.

For ten months, he hiked alone on ancient paths, crossing ten countries and more than 5,500 kilometres. The Crossway is an account of this extraordinary adventure.

FROM THE CROSSWAY It was the last week of May, and the temperature was rising: twenty-four degrees, twenty-five, twenty-eight. Setting off in midwinter, I had given no thought to hiking in the heat, but now I became listless. Though I walked in T-shirt and swimming trunks, my boots were heavy, my feet hot, and my eyes ached behind sunglasses.

An overexposed light haunted the coast, making the shoreline look stripped, the settlements neglected. The hotel doorways were boarded up and the cafes had newspapered windows. Beach grass grew shaggy on the sand, while the sea was banded like rock strata – layers of cobalt and azure, purple and black. Each afternoon I knelt in the shallows to wash the sweat from my face, or else dived into the dark water and hid from the sun.

At the end of the month I reached Asprovalta and started moving east again – three hundred kilometres to the border.

On the plains of Thrace, I wandered down roads with no signs and through hamlets with no names, or entered villages in the noonday still and felt like I was trespassing. No birds sang in the heat, no shadows formed in the light. The men smiled when they did not understand me, the children stared but would not meet my eyes. I saw no women. And I missed the settled rhythm of Mt Athos, for here little seemed lasting.

In early June I arrived at the Nestos Delta, a flat expanse of farmland at the foot of the Rhodope Mountains. Villages floated on the wheat fields – gliding closer towards me, drifting farther away, closer towards me, farther away – and the cornhusks made a burning noise in the breeze, their dry hairs crackling. I kept pushing east, though my knees clicked and my ankles ticked, as if the machinery in my legs were coming loose.

Lagoons punctured the shore beyond the Nestos River, breaking the land into spits and bars, islands and islets.

Swarms of midges turned the air opaque, obscuring the rushes and reedbeds. Sunshine floated like soap scum on the water.

That evening I stopped at a campsite. Although a light was on above the gates, the place was abandoned. I tramped round in the gloom, between rows of caravans in black cladding. Their metal shells resembled elephant corpses, the campsite some overgrown graveyard. A few had smashed windows or folded roofs, others were penned in behind plastic fencing, but not one of them was occupied. And yet, despite the darkness, I noticed odd signs of life: a blackened barbecue propped on bricks, or a string of fairy lights with broken bulbs, or a fuse box hanging half-open, its circuits glinting like icons in a dingy grotto.

Pine trees divided the caravans from the beach, their cones sewn together with cobweb. As I pitched my tent beneath the trees, I spotted a bonfire down by the water. The flames cast quivering shadows over the sand, where six teenagers were sitting in a circle, laughing exhausted laughs. A seventh teenager danced in the waves, making a sound like a siren.

‘Sleep anywhere!’ one of them shouted. ‘We occupy the campsite.’

Another member of the group asked why I was here. I explained that I had been hiking across the Balkans, via Ohrid, Bitola and Thessaloniki. But, when she asked where I was going, I paused. By this point I was certain I should cut short my pilgrimage in Turkey, so I told her I was aiming for Istanbul.

The girl looked troubled. ‘Istanbul is fire,’ she said, but I did not understand. She began to punch the air, wave an imaginary flag, and then lay on her back as if fainting, but still I did not understand. Eventually a third member of the group showed me his phone. It was playing a clip from the news, the footage cutting between a park covered in tents and a street heaving with demonstrators. Riot police marched through the smoke – but still, still I did not understand.

‘Istanbul is fire,’ the girl repeated. ‘Is fire.’

44

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

45

ROBERT PEEL Sir Robert Peel (Harrow 1800) served twice as prime minister, from 1834–35 and from 1841–46. He also served twice

Fourthly – Though I have not the slightest apprehension of the result of civil commotion – though I believe it could be

as Home Secretary. He founded the Metropolitan Police Service. Biographer Norman Gash wrote that Peel ‘looked

put down at once – yet I think the necessity of being constantly prepared for it while the Government is divided, and

first, not to party, but to the state’. He also wrote that Peel had ‘capacity for work, personal integrity, high standards, a

the two Houses of Parliament are divided, on the Catholic Question, is a much worse evil than its actual occurrence.

sense of duty [and] an outstanding intellect.’

Fifthly – The state of political excitement in Ireland will soon render it almost impracticable to administer justice in cases in which political or religious considerations are involved. Trial by jury will not be a just or a safe tribunal, and,

FROM HIS SPEECH ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION, 5 FEBRUARY 1829 I think that the Roman Catholic Question can no longer remain what is called an open question, but that some definite course must be taken with respect to it by His Majesty’s servants in their collective capacity.

It is not consistent with the character of the Government – with the proper exercise of authority in Ireland – nor with the permanent interests of the Protestant Establishments – that the Roman Catholic Question should continue to be thrown loose upon the country – the King’s Ministers maintaining neutrality, and expressing no opinion in common upon the subject.

Experience must have convinced us that neither a divided Government in Ireland, not a Government in that country united in opinion, but acting under a divided Government in this, can administer the law with that vigour and authority which are requisite in the present condition of Irish affairs…

above all, not just nor safe in cases wherein the Government is a party.

These are practical and growing evils, for which I see no sufficient remedy if the present state of things is to continue; and the actual pressure is so great as fully to warrant, in my opinion, a recourse to other measures.

My advice therefore to His Majesty will be, not to grant the Catholic claims, or any part of them, precipitately and unadvisedly, but in the first instance to remove the barrier which prevents the consideration of the Catholic Question by the Cabinet – to permit his confidential servants to consider it in all its relations, on the same principles on which they consider any other great question of public policy, in the hope that some plan of adjustment can be proposed, on the authority and responsibility of a Government likely to command the assent of Parliament, and to unite in its support a powerful weight of Protestant opinion, from a conviction that it is a settlement equitable towards the Roman Catholics, and safe as it concerns the Protestant Establishment.

The more I consider the subject the more I am satisfied that a Government ought to make its choice between two courses of action, either to offer united and unqualified resistance to the grant of further privileges to the Roman Catholics, or to undertake to consider without delay the whole state of Ireland, and to attempt to make some satisfactory adjustment on the various points which are involved in what is called the Catholic Question.

If it be admitted that such are the alternatives, it remains to be considered which of the two it is most practicable or most expedient to adopt.

Can the first be adopted? Can a Government be formed on the principle of unqualified resistance, which shall be composed of persons of sufficient ability and experience in public life to fill with credit the high offices of the State, and which can command such a majority of the House of Commons as shall enable it to maintain the principle on which it is founded, and to transact the public business?

I think it must be granted that the failure of such a Government – either through its sudden dissolution or its inability to conduct public business on account of its weakness in the House of Commons – would have a prejudicial effect generally, and particularly in reference to the Catholic Question. It would surely render some settlement of the question in the way of concession unavoidable, and would in all probability materially diminish the chances of a safe and satisfactory settlement.

No man can therefore honestly advise the formation of an exclusive Protestant Government, unless he believes that it can maintain its ground, and can conduct with credit and success the general administration of the country.

The present state of the House of Commons appears to me an insuperable obstacle, if there were no other, to the successful issue of this experiment.… There are other considerations which incline me to think that the attempt to settle that question should be made.…

First – There is the evil of continued division between two branches of the Legislature on a great constitutional question.

Secondly – The power of the Roman Catholics is unduly increased by the House of Commons repeatedly pronouncing an opinion in their favour. There are many points in regard to the Roman Catholic religion and Roman Catholic proceedings in Ireland, on which Protestant opinion would be united, or at least predominant, if it were not for the difference which exists as to the civil incapacities.

Thirdly – In the course of the last autumn, out of a regular infantry force in the United Kingdom, amounting to about 30,000 men, 25,000 men were stationed either in Ireland or on the west coast of England with a view to the maintenance of tranquillity in Ireland – this country being at peace with the whole world.

46

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

47

STANLEY BALDWIN, 1ST EARL BALDWIN OF BEWDLEY

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Sir Stanley Baldwin (Small Houses and The Head Master’s 1881³) was a prime minister who faced a period of economic

Sir Winston Churchill (The Head Master’s 1888²) is celebrated for his time leading

and political turmoil that included the General Strike of 1926 and the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936. By 1937, the

the country as prime minister from 1940 to 1945, during the Second World

year of this broadcast, the international outlook had turned very ominous, as the extreme nationalist policies of Nazi

War. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953. His four-volume A History of

Germany increasingly threatened war. Under this shadow, Baldwin used his last speech as prime minister to make

the English-Speaking Peoples is his most famous literary endeavour, reflecting

comparison with the positive qualities of the British way of life.

attitudes towards Empire and the country’s past at the time of writing. The extract below is from one of his most celebrated speeches during the Second World War.

This is an edited extract from a longer recording.

FROM HIS LAST SPEECH AS PRIME MINISTER, 1937 Let me end in this, the last speech I shall make before a great audience as prime minister of this country. Let me proclaim my faith, which is the faith of millions of all races from end to end of the British Empire. Here we have ceased to be an island, but we are still an Empire.

FROM HIS SPEECH ON 4 JUNE 1940 From the moment that the French defences at Sedan and on the Meuse were broken at the end of the second week of May, only a rapid retreat to Amiens and the south could have saved the British and French Armies who had entered Belgium at the appeal of the Belgian King; but this strategic fact was not immediately realised. The French

And what is her secret? Freedom, ordered freedom, within the law, with force in the background and not in the

High Command hoped they would be able to close the gap, and the Armies of the north were under their orders.

foreground: a society in which authority and freedom are blended in due proportion, in which state and citizen are

Moreover, a retirement of this kind would have involved almost certainly the destruction of the fine Belgian Army of

both ends and means. It is an empire organised for peace and for the free development of the individual in and

over 20 divisions and the abandonment of the whole of Belgium. Therefore, when the force and scope of the German

through an infinite variety of voluntary associations. It neither deifies the state nor its rulers.

penetration were realised and when a new French Generalissimo, General Weygand, assumed command in place of

The fruits of a free spirit of men do not grow in the garden of tyranny. It’s been well said that slavery is a weed that

General Gamelin, an effort was made by the French and British Armies in Belgium to keep on holding the right hand of

grows in every soil. As long as we have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of

the Belgians and to give their own right hand to a newly created French Army which was to have advanced across the

liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, men will turn their faces towards us and draw their breath

Somme in great strength to grasp it.

more freely. The association of the peoples of the Empire is rooted and their fellowship is rooted in this doctrine of the

However, the German eruption swept like a sharp scythe around the right and rear of the Armies of the north. Eight

essential dignity of the individual human soul: that is the English secret, however feebly and faintly we have, at times

or nine armoured divisions, each of about four hundred armoured vehicles of different kinds, but carefully assorted

and places, embraced and obeyed it.

to be complementary and divisible into small self-contained units, cut off all communications between us and the

And the torch I would hand to you and ask you to pass from hand to hand along the pathways of the Empire, is a

main French Armies. It severed our own communications for food and ammunition, which ran first to Amiens and

great Christian proof rekindled anew in each ardent generation: that is a message I’ve tried to deliver as prime minister

afterwards through Abbeville, and it shore its way up the coast to Boulogne and Calais, and almost to Dunkirk. Behind

of England in a hundred speeches, and I can think of no better message to give you to take away tonight than that.

this armoured and mechanised onslaught came a number of German divisions in lorries, and behind them again there plodded comparatively slowly the dull brute mass of the ordinary German Army and German people, always so ready to be led to the trampling down in other lands of liberties and comforts which they have never known in their own.

I have said this armoured scythe-stroke almost reached Dunkirk – almost but not quite. Boulogne and Calais were the scenes of desperate fighting. The Guards defended Boulogne for a while and were then withdrawn by orders from this country. The Rifle Brigade, the 60th Rifles, and the Queen Victoria’s Rifles, with a battalion of British tanks and a thousand Frenchmen, in all about four thousand strong, defended Calais to the last. The British Brigadier was given an hour to surrender. He spurned the offer, and four days of intense street fighting passed before silence reigned over Calais, which marked the end of a memorable resistance. Only 30 unwounded survivors were brought off by the Navy, and we do not know the fate of their comrades. Their sacrifice, however, was not in vain. At least two armoured divisions, which otherwise would have been turned against the British Expeditionary Force, had to be sent to overcome them. They have added another page to the glories of the light divisions, and the time gained enabled the Graveline water lines to be flooded and to be held by the French troops.

Thus it was that the port of Dunkirk was kept open. When it was found impossible for the Armies of the north to reopen their communications to Amiens with the main French Armies, only one choice remained. It seemed, indeed, forlorn. The Belgian, British and French Armies were almost surrounded. Their sole line of retreat was to a single port and to its neighbouring beaches. They were pressed on every side by heavy attacks and far outnumbered in the air.

When, a week ago today, I asked the House to fix this afternoon as the occasion for a statement, I feared it would be my hard lot to announce the greatest military disaster in our long history. I thought – and some good judges agreed with me – that perhaps twenty- or thirty-thousand might be re-embarked. But it certainly seemed that the whole of the French First Army and the whole of the British Expeditionary Force north of the Amiens-Abbeville gap would be broken up in the open field or else would have to capitulate for lack of food and ammunition. These were the hard and heavy tidings for which I called upon the House and the nation to prepare themselves a week ago. The whole

48

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

49

HENRY EDWARD MANNING root and core and brain of the British Army, on which and around which we were to build, and are to build, the great

Cardinal Manning (Small Houses 1821³) was ordained as an Anglican deacon in 1832 and became Archdeacon of

British Armies in the later years of the war, seemed about to perish upon the field or to be led into an ignominious and

Chichester in 1841. Manning converted to Catholicism in 1851 and was made Archbishop of Westminster in 1865. He

starving captivity.

was arguably the most important promoter of the definition of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council in 1870. His

That was the prospect a week ago. But another blow which might well have proved final was yet to fall upon us. The King of the Belgians had called upon us to come to his aid. Had not this Ruler and his Government severed themselves from the Allies, who rescued their country from extinction in the late war, and had they not sought refuge in what was proved to be a fatal neutrality, the French and British Armies might well at the outset have saved not only Belgium but perhaps even Poland. Yet at the last moment, when Belgium was already invaded, King Leopold called upon us to

international reach was further extended through his role in the creation of Catholic social teaching, which has guided many Catholic nations throughout the world for over a century. He acquired the site for Westminster Cathedral, but prioritised the expansion of Catholic education. He personally intervened on behalf of workers in industrial disputes. Such was his popularity that, when he died in 1892, no London funeral had seen such a large, grateful crowd since that of the Duke of Wellington in 1852.

come to his aid, and even at the last moment we came. He and his brave, efficient Army, nearly half a million strong, guarded our left flank and thus kept open our only line of retreat to the sea. Suddenly, without prior consultation, with the least possible notice, without the advice of his Ministers and upon his own personal act, he sent a plenipotentiary to the German Command, surrendered his Army, and exposed our whole flank and means of retreat.

I asked the House a week ago to suspend its judgment because the facts were not clear, but I do not feel that any reason now exists why we should not form our own opinions upon this pitiful episode. The surrender of the Belgian Army compelled the British at the shortest notice to cover a flank to the sea more than thirty miles in length.

Otherwise all would have been cut off, and all would have shared the fate to which King Leopold had condemned the finest Army his country had ever formed. So in doing this and in exposing this flank, as anyone who followed the operations on the map will see, contact was lost between the British and two out of the three corps forming the First French Army, who were still farther from the coast than we were, and it seemed impossible that any large number of Allied troops could reach the coast.

The enemy attacked on all sides with great strength and fierceness, and their main power, the power of their far

FROM HIS SERMON ‘LOVE OF GOD IN DARKNESS’ The bond of our union with God is the love of God above all things. He that dwelleth in charity dwelleth in God, and God in him. Here is the link of gold which binds the soul to God. Keep that link fast, and do not be afraid when the consciousness of your past sins and of your many temptations seems to come down upon you and to overwhelm you as a flood. In those darkest times, be sure that if you love God you are still united with Him. It is not when we walk in the brightness of the noonday only that we are united with Him. The purest union with God is when we walk with Him in the darkness, without consolation and without joy; having no other guide; our hand in His hand; going on like children, not knowing wither; but obeying the inspirations of God to do or not to do as He wills: out in the bleak cold sky, with no joy in our prayers and no rest of heart, in constant inward fears, with temptations all around, but always faithful to the guidance of the Spirit of God. ‘Whosever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God’ (Rom:8:14). There are two axioms in the Kingdom of God which shall never fail: no penitent soul can perish, and no soul that loves God can be lost. (10)

more numerous Air Force, was thrown into the battle or else concentrated upon Dunkirk and the beaches. Pressing in upon the narrow exit, both from the east and from the west, the enemy began to fire with cannon upon the beaches by which alone the shipping could approach or depart. They sowed magnetic mines in the channels and seas; they sent repeated waves of hostile aircraft, sometimes more than a hundred strong in one formation, to cast their bombs upon the single pier that remained, and upon the sand dunes upon which the troops had their eyes for shelter. Their U-boats, one of which was sunk, and their motor launches took their toll of the vast traffic which now began. For four or five days an intense struggle reigned. All their armored divisions – or what was left of them – together with great masses of infantry and artillery, hurled themselves in vain upon the ever-narrowing, ever-contracting appendix within which the British and French Armies fought. ….

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government – every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

50

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

51

RUPERT WIELOCH Rupert Wieloch (Rendalls 1972³) served in the 17th and 21st Lancers, as Captain and Expedition Leader. He is the

effusively for their rescue and hired two private droshkies and three ponies for 1,500 roubles. Sitting on top of their

author of non-fiction books and writes regularly on his website about history and the military.

possessions, they clung on to what they could, but the tracks were rutted with many obstacles and the treacherous going caused them many problems.

FROM CHURCHILL’S ABANDONED PRISONERS: THE BRITISH SOLDIERS DECEIVED IN THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR

After a couple of hours, Emerson, who sat on “a camel hump of saddlery”, fell asleep and suddenly found himself in

Everybody feels the need of a clear-cut policy in regard to Russia, and many people ask for a clear-cut policy. But it is a

hooves, but he eventually retrieved his glasses and jumped aboard another cart that looked as if it had some space.

great deal easier to ask for a clear-cut policy, a clear, bold, wise, moderate, far-seeing, and decisive policy, in regard to Russia than it is to supply it. Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, 5 November 1919 Without previous reference here, no negotiations which might be construed as recognizing the Bolshevik Government are on any account to be entered into. Winston Churchill’s telegram to the British Military Commander in Russia, 10 April 1919

the snow, having lost his precarious grip of the side of the sleigh. His spectacles fell off his nose and he floundered about, desperately searching for them with numb hands. As other sleighs passed by, he was hit by a horse’s perilous Unfortunately, it was a Partisan’s sleigh and the driver headed off the main route into the forest before the other passengers threw their English stowaway overboard.

Lost in a desert of snow, Emerson started to retrace the tracks towards the main route, wading through the deep drifts. Just as he was about to give up hope, he saw a man on a pony and shouted out in his best Russian. The kindly horseman helped him up and agreed to take him to the next station in the easterly direction. They rode on for about

They put me in dirty rooms and filled me up with lice; I could show you the marks on my back now. Henry Benjamin

thirty minutes and then as they descended into a gully, a queue of sleighs blocked their way. Emerson suddenly saw

Jeffers, a Black British wine trader, released from a Moscow jail in the first round of prisoner exchanges, giving

his comrades up ahead and breathed a huge sigh of relief!

evidence in London on 15 June 1920

He realized that he had been incredibly fortunate. If he had not been helped by the Jaeger, he would soon have become one of the hundreds of corpses that marked the side of the track. It was now so cold that everyone took turns

FROM CHAPTER 8: DASH FOR FREEDOM

to “run beside the sleigh for a mile or two” to keep their blood circulating. Fortunately, Emerson had also invested in a pair of pymwy, which protected him from frost bite. At last they arrived at a sizeable village and knocked on the door

…The next day was one of the worst for Emerson. Halted at the small station of Bolotnaya, only 118 versts from Novo-

of a house belonging to a woman with five children. That night, eighteen of them had to crowd into a room that was

Nikolaevsk, he was called forward for his technical opinion and had the sad duty to inform everyone that their engine

twelve foot by ten. They lay down head to toe on the floor and were so exhausted that sleep came quickly, but in the

had finally given up. Horrocks went to the office of the besieged station master to negotiate for a new locomotive, but

morning the putrid smell in the room was unforgiving.

there were dozens of train commandants complaining about the unfair assignment of the engines, so he was unable to acquire a replacement from the poor man.

They were not alone invading the peasants’ houses along the route. These poor individuals had their possessions, food and animals commandeered by Kolchak’s soldiers and endured much suffering as a result. On one occasion, a

Reporting back to Vining, they discussed what to do. It would have been impossible to hire local sleighs, but by a

homeowner politely asked the Russian soldiers to leave his hut, so that his wife could give birth. When they returned a

piece of good fortune an officer from the Jaeger artillery regiment that Edward Steel mentored, who spoke fluent

short time later, the mother of the new born baby was making tea at the stove.

English, gave them a letter to his colonel asking him to provide them with a sleigh. Vining and the others set off to find the battery and by another stroke of fortune they met a driver who knew where it was camped. When they arrived at the battery, they saw that each gun had a small Union Jack painted on it and the horses were large Canadian animals.

Graciously, the officer in charge of the battery agreed to give a lift and instructed them to jump onto the transport sleighs as they passed later that evening.

In the meantime, Horrocks arranged for the 24 ladies and unfit men to be transferred to a Polish train. They piled as much luggage into the one car which contained eight coupés and crammed boxes of canned food into it. The men then thrust a few personal items into kit-bags and they burned their classified documents and code books. The scene was desperate, surrounded by a large crowd; it was like evacuating a home that they had lived in for seven months in half an hour.

Most of the group tumbled off the sledge at one time or another. Francis McCullagh was fortunate to be hoisted aboard another sleigh by a Canadian riding behind the British after falling for the first time. On another occasion he became separated from Emerson’s group at night, but made his way to the next village where he tried to find a house for shelter. He forced himself into one room full of Russian officers, some of whom were sleeping whilst sitting up in the chairs. Suddenly, he realized that the man next to him was in fact dead and had probably expired from typhus, so he made a rapid exit and found a more welcoming nest.

The fellowship set off at four o’clock each morning to beat the rush hour. As they left the villages in the dark, they watched the flames of the huge fires in the pine forests where Russian soldiers, who had not been able to find a room in a village, had made themselves as comfortable as possible. When the wind increased, it acted like a whip across their faces and visibility dropped to a few feet. Icicles formed on their mufflers and even with their layers of clothes

At 5p.m. the artillery regiment arrived and the British soldiers jumped on board the sleighs “passing like bats out of

and fur overcoats, the cold penetrated their bones, so they had to pause every two or three hours to warm themselves

a cave” on the track parallel to the railway line. It was bitterly cold. Many of them had not slept for 72 hours and they

in livestock barns before they collapsed from the cold. Incredibly, they all survived intact apart from Private James,

were not prepared for a night on the sleighs perched on top of the baggage. It was almost dark when they set off in

whose frost-bitten heel turned black.

horrendous conditions, with the mercury rapidly dropping below twenty degrees Celsius.

Despite their hardships, Vining’s cohort felt they had made a sensible decision to take to the sleighs. The queues of

At about midnight, they stopped in a small town, where they sheltered in the council house. Vining paid liberally with

trains they passed were so bad that on 16th December the commander-in-chief of the Czech forces, General Syrovi,

roubles, canned food and rum to rent the main chamber. They spread a blanket on the floor and very soon a medley of

issued an order to uncouple all the engines conveying Russians and to use these locomotives to hasten the evacuation

snores filled the room. Unfortunately, Private Percy James, who still wore the boots issued to British troops that were

of the Czech Legion. He justified this order on the grounds that the Russians had not fulfilled their oft repeated

about as useful “as a sick headache”, had frozen feet. Vining wrapped them in a blanket and applied goose fat to the

promise to provide sufficient engines and fuel for the eastward move of his forces.

enormous blisters on the first and second toes and on his heel. He also bought a pair of felt boots, or pymwy, which probably saved Percy James from losing his foot to gangrene.

Breakfast the next morning, 16th December, was baked potatoes and butter. They thanked the artillery commander

52

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

The general’s orders resulted in Admiral Kolchak’s personal trains being stopped outside Krasnoyarsk on 17th December. His entourage included the remnants of the Imperial Gold Reserve, although one quarter of this had been exchanged for war credits1. Despite his protests, the Czech in charge of the station refused to let the train move

53

J. ANDREW KIRK any further. After furious telegrams were passed between Kolchak and the French head of the Allied forces, General

J. Andrew Kirk (The Grove 1950³) is a theologian, teacher, international lecturer and writer. His book Being Human

Maurice Janin, he was eventually allowed to move on, but this turned out to be a critical delay for the Supreme Leader.

explores the complexity of human existence and experience. Other books he has published include What is Mission?

Meanwhile, Emerson and his group battled through the weather for five days. The sleighs and their occupants were a

Theological Explorations and The Abuse of Language and the Language of Abuse.

sorry sight. The wiry ponies were exhausted with their heavy burdens. The long hair on their heaving flanks was frozen in patches where the sweat had turned to ice. They frequently slipped into the deep snow and had to be fished out.

Jets of vapour extended from their icicle framed nostrils and drooping muzzles into the frosty air.

Progress was very slow, but after covering ninety miles they reached Tayga, where the Polish commandant explained that the line ahead was clear. Suddenly, one of them saw the carriage with their women and children standing in the yard. The spontaneous greeting as they knocked on the carriage door was highly emotional. The women begged the men to stay with them, so they all crowded into the carriage, which was intended for only sixteen passengers.

That day, Kolchak’s rear-guard evacuated Tomsk, 100 miles east of Novo-Nikolaevsk as the Red Army approached.

Their rapid speed magnified the fear further down the line and three days later, on 23rd December, the White Army fought its final battle in Siberia. Reporting on this comprehensive defeat, the Manchester Guardian2 commented that: “the shattered remains of Kolchak’s army scattered and all stores, munitions and practically all artillery were lost”. General Kappel issued orders to make for Krasnoyarsk as the next major defensive line. However, this proved impossible as forty-five echelons of the White Army were held up on the railway line with frozen engines, stuck between Bogotol and Kozulka.

The next evening, the British made the most of their situation. There was a babble of noise as forty people, squeezed into one carriage, ate their Christmas Eve supper of soup, rice and vodka. A whisky bottle was shared around and they held an impromptu sing song until 11.30 p.m. with a magnificent rendition of Helen of Troy and Give me the Moonlight.

Footnotes:

1 During his research for this book, the author discovered evidence in the Hampshire Regiment Archives that some of the Imperial Treasury was removed from Omsk by 9th Battalion in September 1919; see Cyclist Stanley Green’s diary excerpt in Chapter 5.

2 The Manchester Guardian published Leo Steveni’s account of the retreat in three episodes on 20, 21 and 22 July 1920. Captain Steveni, an Old Rugbean, had run British Military Intelligence operations in Omsk for a year from November 1918.

FROM BEING HUMAN: AN HISTORICAL ENQUIRY INTO WHO WE ARE CHAPTER 12: THE GAINING OF WISDOM? “What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour.

You have given them dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet.” (Psalm 8: 4–6).

“We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.” (Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)).

“Rather than a science or a dogma, humanist thought proposes a practical choice: a wager. Better to wager that they are capable of acting willfully, loving purely and treating one another as equals than the contrary...The humanists of the French tradition do not necessarily believe in final causes, but they judge it useful to act as if this way were really open to men. It is true that, unlike Pascal, they do not promise those who wager “an eternity of life and happiness,” but only a fragile and fleeting felicity.” (Tzvetan Todorov, Imperfect Garden: The Legacy of Humanism (2002))

PRELUDE These three quotations, from vastly different epochs in my historical inquiry over the past half millennium about what it means to be human, have come to substantially different conclusions. The response of many inhabitants of presentday Western culture might well be, “so what?” “does it matter?” “Is not one of the glories of our modern secular, humanistically-oriented societies in the West that they promote free-thought?” Sartre forcefully portrays an existential reality that we have at last grasped for ourselves after several centuries: “man will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature since there is no God to conceive of it...man is nothing than what he makes of himself”.1 We are at liberty to choose the wager of which Toderov speaks: to believe that humans are, generally speaking, “more capable of acting willfully, loving purely and treating one another as equals than the contrary.” And, even though life may appear at times spiritually, mentally and physically painful and incomprehensible, it does afford some “fragile and fleeting felicity.” Trying to wrestle with the empirical and philosophical complexities of being human may be of interest to a small minority of intellectually inclined people, but frankly it does not fascinate the majority of humankind.

This conclusion to an inquiry like this one may seem relatively commonsensical to most people, and yet, in reality... the notion that we owe ourselves the duty of discovering our own identity as a member of the human species is not entirely absent. One author has made the point: “in the contemporary sense the term ‘humanism’ denotes the view that whatever ethical outlook we adopt, it has to be based on our best understanding of human nature and the human condition.”2 It is not too difficult to cite countless examples of “in reality,” where convictions about what is authentically human greatly influence our laws, our institutions, the way we treat people and our own self-assessment. What sort of creatures we are in relation to the teeming myriads of other creatures that inhabit the same planet becomes a key question in ecological matters to do with environmental care. Human rights spring from and depend, in their 1 Sartre, Jean-Paul, Existentialism is Humanism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007, 22.

2 Grayling, Anthony C., 'Humanism, Religion and Ethics' in Cummings, Dolan (ed.), Debating Humanism. Exeter: Societas, 2006, 47 (emphasis – the author).

54

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

55

interpretation and application, on society’s consensus about the significance, purpose and value of the human person.

It cannot, therefore, be a source of factual knowledge and understanding. Freud, for example, mirrored the belief of

So, in actual fact, societies and cultures do not easily dismiss the fundamental importance of searching for the truth

many that the only knowledge that can be justified as true is that which can be demonstrated by means of empirically

about being human.

proven evidence. It is important, then, to note that, within this framework, when it comes to tracing the origin of the human species and the rise of its moral sentiments, it is obliged to adopt a genealogical approach, i.e. to resort to

ASSUMPTIONS

an historical (or even pre-historical) search of evidence that might be counted as sufficiently credit-worthy to be classified within the bounds of the natural sciences.

Unlike Sartre’s type of existentialist belief, we are not born as though we were clean slates, on which we can write our

Materialism, by its very nature, is compelled to dismiss the entire notion of an extra-material reality, usually referred

own versions of what we want to call ourselves. Along the way, through parental nurture, education, the media, our

to as a spiritual or transcendental realm, that can also be a reliable cause of knowledge and understanding of human

peer group or people we respect, what we pick up to read, we acquire assumptions that guide what we believe. We

existence. Perhaps the easiest and quickest way of accomplishing this end is by ridding the human imagination and

have perceived in every chapter of this inquiry that such a process is inevitable. Assumptions are opinions we adopt

fancy of the conviction that a deity, deities or lesser spirits exist in a parallel domain from that which humans inhabit,

as foundational beliefs or principles that allow us to organize our thoughts into more or less coherent convictions that

but undetectable by them. The most famous example of this deicide is Nietzsche’s madman, whom he portrays

then direct our actions.

as answering his own question in the public square: “Where is God?” “We have killed him – you and I...God is dead.

In the course of this study, we have encountered two fundamental assumptions, from which flow numerous lesser

And we have killed him.”7 For Nietzsche and all atheists, of course, God was never alive. He never was, except in the

ones, that give rise to criteria to which we adhere. The first assumption, prevalent and predominant in the Western

mythological world of a false vision.

world from approximately the second quarter of the fourth century, when the Christian faith became the officially

Strict materialists, as a consequence, are convinced that they live in a purely natural order, totally devoid of any extra-

recognized religion of the Roman Empire, until the late eighteenth century, when the Ancien Regime was overthrown

terrestrial explanation. In Nietzsche’s fable, God’s alleged assassins, are those who are now prepared, firstly to rejoice

in France and select divine rights were contested elsewhere, was that of theism. A supreme spiritual being who

at being relieved of God, and secondly to take up the task of creating a different world-order from that handed down

“inhabits eternity,”3 known in the Hebrew Scriptures as Yahweh and in the Christian Scriptures as Pater hemon (“our

by religions. Nietzsche called it the revaluation of all values:

Father”) was acknowledged as the creator of the universe, the solar system and within it a small planet known as earth. Everything that exists, and ever existed, was due to the creative act of this Being. Not only did this God set the universe in motion, as though God was a kind of pre-eminent watch-maker that wound the whole machinery up and,

“All sciences must, from now on, prepare the way for the future work of the philosopher: the work being understood to mean that the philosopher has to solve the problem of values and that he has to decide on the hierarchy of values.”8

thereafter, allowed it to continue perpetually under its own mechanism, but maintained a moment by moment creative

Nietzsche was the most consistently dedicated to this task. There was nothing of Christian morality that he wished

involvement in its life and development.

to keep. It was, he believed, the morality of the herd, kept in moral bondage by a dominant body (the priests of the

According to this assumption, this same, sole, divine Being, created another being like himself, with whom he

church) who wished to impose their illusory beliefs on the population and, thus, keep themselves in power.

communicated through specially chosen messengers, known as prophets and apostles. What they heard in the

If there is no God, there is no creator. Faith in an eternally existing supreme Being, who is the source of all being and

conversations are recorded, in their own words, in a variety of publications and collected together in one single volume

meaning, is a myth in the sense of a fantastical day-dream. All the deeply human questions that the Christian faith

known as the Bible. The central thesis of God’s action has been his own short residency in the world, in the person of

thinks it has solved have to be re-opened: such as, the origin of life on earth; the origin of the first members of a fully

his beloved Son (or Messiah), to bring a message that God’s rule over all peoples had now arrived. The meaning of this

human species; a convincing and dependable foundation for human behaviour; the creation of a worthwhile meaning

event is summarized in two short statements from the prophet Isaiah:

for one’s existence; a plausible explanation of the human belief in evil; the intuition that personal life does not cease

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace (shalom), who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’”4 “I will give you (my people) as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”5

at death. Secular materialistic humanism has no right to build its beliefs and values on foundations which it has disowned. Or, as Tolstoy intimated, to go on picking chosen flowers once the roots had been destroyed.

If there is no creator of all that exists, it follows that the universe must be self-generating and self-sufficient. It has no personal cause: life on planet earth has not arisen as the act of an unrestrained, self-determining being, but rather

So, the principal assumption, which totally shapes the way Christians perceive the reality of human life on this small

has evolved out of the most primitive of living cells through a long process of phenomena emerging at successive

planet, is that all this truly happened in space and time, and this is the right framework within which the role of human

levels of complexity. This is what a materialist has come to accept as a proven and coherent theory. If this is the logical

living is to be played out. In the course of the Church’s lengthy history, many accretions have been added to the

conclusion from the materialist assumption, and the assumption is now taken for granted, the materialist should be

essential, core statement of belief, some faithful to the original communication, and many erroneous. The latter have,

prepared to live consistently with all the rational consequences of the belief, as should Christian theists with their

undoubtedly, damaged the purity of faith and caused the watching world to walk away in disgust.

beliefs. Both sets of assumptions are founded on hypothetical-deductive theories, warranted by different types

The second major assumption carries the name of materialism.6 It has appeared under a number of different names

of evidence, but ultimately guaranteed by extra-scientific presuppositions. To a certain extent, both a theist and a

and in a variety of assorted forms. They are all linked together with one overriding core conviction: all that humans

materialist confirms as a belief what he or she has already assumed. Freud acknowledged this reality:

can possibly know about themselves and the entire environment in which they live is limited to what can be assessed

“people are seldom impartial where ultimate things, the great problems of science and life, are concerned. Each of us

by the senses or derived, by deduction, from what they are capable of perceiving and conceiving. Anything knowable,

is governed in such cases by deep-rooted internal prejudices, into whose hands our speculation unwittingly plays.”

beyond the world of the material, belongs to a world of make-believe, for it is not open to observation or investigation.

Is there any possibility that these great debates about ultimate things can ever be settled? ...Keith Ward9 argues that, as an explanation of human experience in the universe, materialism as an alternative to theism is deficient in

3 The Book of Isaiah 57:15.

4 Isaiah 52:7.

5 Isaiah 49:6.

6 Some might have expected the alternative assumption to have come with the name of humanism. This, however, would be incorrect for two reasons. Firstly, humanism has its own distinct Christian interpretation, as Jacques Maritain has showed (True Humanism), and therefore cannot be expropriated as a definition by one particular philosophy.

Secondly, materialism denotes the specific alternative to theism, in that it proposes a radically different, restricted ontology.

56

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

7 Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Gay Science, in Pearson, Keith and Large, Duncan, The Nietzsche Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, 224.

8 Nietzsche, Genealogy, in The Nietzsche Reader, 17.

9 Ward, Keith, The God Conclusion: God and the Western Philosophical Tradition (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2009); see, chapter 11, ‘Materialism and its Discontents’.

57

SIMON SEBAG-MONTEFIORE its ability to explain a number of ultimate questions: the final basis of matter, consciousness, moral sensibility, the

Simon Sebag-Montefiore (The Knoll 1978³) has written numerous books about history, including Young Stalin; Stalin:

universal longing for a sense of purpose, the commitment to rational thinking and the existence of the universe. These

The Court of the Red Tsar; Catherine the Great and Potemkin; Titans of History; and Jerusalem: The Biography.

are precisely the questions, and there are others (such as aesthetic appreciation and the intrinsic dignity of human

Jerusalem was the winner of the Wenjin Book Prize.

beings), can only be answered when the means of arriving at truth are properly recognised.

It is curious, however, that a theistic world-view (rejected by metaphysical naturalism) gives a perfectly adequate, rational explanation of each one of these questions. It is, perhaps, not surprising that some atheists are prepared to concede that, although in their opinion theism is false, human beings nevertheless function better on the supposition that it is true. This, of course, though not a demonstration of its truth, may be a reliable indication.

FROM JERUSALEM PONTIUS PILATE: THE TRIAL OF JESUS The Roman prefect, guarded by his auxiliary troops and watched by a tense crowd, held court on the Praetorium, the raised platform outside Herod’s Citadel, the Roman headquarters near today’s Jaffa Gate. Pontius Pilate was an aggressive, tactless martinet out of his depth in Judaea. He was already loathed in Jerusalem, notorious for his ‘venality, violence, theft, assaults, abuse, endless executions and savage ferocity’. Even one of the Herodian princes called him ‘vindictive with a furious temper’.

He had already outraged the Jews by ordering his troops to march into Jerusalem displaying their shields with images of the emperor. Herod Antipas led delegations requesting their removal. Always ‘inflexible and cruel’, Pilate refused.

When more Jews protested, he unleashed his guards, but the delegates lay on the ground and bared their necks. Pilate then removed the offending images. More recently he had killed the Galilean rebels ‘whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices’.

‘Art thou the King of the Jews?’ Pilate asked Jesus. After all, Jesus’ followers had acclaimed him king when he entered Jerusalem. But he answered, ‘Thou sayest it,’ and refused to add anything more. But Pilate did learn he was a Galilean.

‘As soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod’s jurisdiction’, Pilate sent his prisoner to Herod Antipas as a courtesy to the ruler of Galilee, who had a special interest in Jesus. It was a short walk to Antipas’ palace. Herod Antipas, says Luke, ‘was exceeding glad’ for he had wanted to meet John the Baptist’s successor for a long time ‘and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by him’. But Jesus so despised the ‘fox’, killer of John, that he did not even deign to speak to him.

Antipas played with Jesus, asking him to perform his tricks, presented him with a royal robe and called him ‘king’. The tetrarch was hardly likely to try to save John the Baptist’s successor, but he appreciated the opportunity to interview him. Pilate and Antipas had long been enemies but now they ‘made friends together’. Nonetheless, Jesus was a Roman problem. Herod Antipas sent him back to the Praetorium. There, Pilate tried Jesus, two so-called thieves and Barabbas, who, says Mark, ‘lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him’. This suggests that a handful of rebels, who perhaps included the two ‘thieves’, were being tried with Jesus.

Pilate toyed with releasing one of these prisoners. Some of the crowd called for Barabbas. According to the Gospels, Barabbas was released. The story sounds unlikely: the Romans usually executed murderous rebels. Jesus was

© KIRK

sentenced to crucifixion while, according to Matthew, Pilate ‘took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person’.

‘His blood be upon us and our children,’ replied the crowd.

Far from being a mealy-mouthed vacillator, the violent and obstinate Pilate had never previously felt the need to wash his hands before his blood-letting. In an earlier dispute with the Jews, he had sent his troops in civilian disguise among a peaceful Jerusalem crowd; at Pilate’s signal, they had drawn their swords and cleared the streets, killing many. Now Pilate, already faced with the Barabbas rebellion that week, clearly feared any resurgence of the ‘kings’ and ‘pseudoprophets’ who had plagued Judaea since Herod’s death. Jesus was inflammatory in his oblique way, and he was undoubtedly popular. Even many years later, Josephus, himself a Pharisee, described Jesus as a wise teacher.

The traditional account of the sentencing therefore does not ring true. The Gospels claim that the priests insisted they did not have the authority to pass death sentences, but it is far from clear that this is true. The high priest, writes Josephus, ‘will adjudicate in cases of dispute, punish those convicted of crime’. The Gospels, written or amended after the destruction of the Temple in 70, blamed the Jews and acquitted the Romans, keen to show loyalty to the empire.

Yet the charges against Jesus, and the punishment itself, tell their own story: this was a Roman operation.

58

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

59

SCIENCE Jesus, like most crucifixion victims, was scourged with a leather whip tipped with either bone or metal, a torment so savage that it often killed the victim. Wearing a placard reading ‘KING OF THE JEWS’ prepared by the Roman soldiers, many of them Syrian-Greek auxiliaries, and bleeding heavily after his flagellation, Jesus was led away, on what was probably the morning of 14th of Nisan or Friday 3 April 33. Along with the other two victims, he carried the patibulum, crossbar, for his own crucifixion, out of the Citadel prison and through the streets of the Upper City. His followers persuaded a certain Simon of Cyrene to help bear the crossbar while his women admirers lamented. ‘Daughters of Jerusalem,’ he said, ‘weep not for me but weep for yourselves and your children,’ because the Apocalypse was imminent – ‘the days are coming’.

Jesus left Jerusalem for the last time, turning left through the Gennath (Gardens) Gate into an area of hilly gardens, rock-cut tombs and Jerusalem’s execution hill, the aptly named Place of the Skull: Golgotha.

60

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

61

JOSEPH BANKS Sir Joseph Banks (Harrow 1753) kept a journal during his voyage on board HMS Endeavour (1768–71) during Captain

musquet was fird over them, the Effect of which was that the Youngest of the two dropd a bundle of lances on the

James Cook’s first great voyage of discovery. His journal is a fascinating account of the journey and his discoveries,

rock at the instant in which he heard the report; he however snatchd them up again and both renewd their threats and

revealing the thoughts and values of this 18th-century explorer, coloniser and biologist. He was president of the

opposition. A Musquet loaded with small shot was now fird at the Eldest of the two who was about 40 yards from the

Royal Society.

boat; it struck him on the legs but he minded it very little so another was immediately fird at him; on this he ran up to the house about 100 yards distant and soon returnd with a sheild. In the mean time we had landed on the rock. He

FROM THE ENDEAVOUR JOURNAL OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS 1770 April 28. Botany Bay reached The land this morn appeard Cliffy and barren without wood. An opening appearing like a harbour was seen and we stood directly in for it. A small smoak arising from a very barren place directed our glasses that way and we soon saw about 10 people, who on our approach left the fire and retird to a little emminence where they could conveniently see the ship; soon after this two Canoes carrying 2 men each landed on the beach under them, the men hauld up their boats and went to their fellows upon the hill. Our boat which had been sent ahead to sound now aproachd the place and they all retird higher up on the hill; we saw however that at the beach or landing place one man at least was hid among some rocks who never that we could see left that place. Our boat proceeded along shore and the Indians

immediately threw a lance at us and the young man another which fell among the thickest of us but hurt nobody; 2 more musquets with small shot were then fird at them on which the Eldest threw one more lance and then ran away as did the other. We went up to the houses, in one of which we found the children hid behind the sheild and a peice of bark in one of the houses. We were conscious from the distance the people had been from us when we fird that the shot could have done them no material harm; we therefore resolvd to leave the children on the spot without even opening their shelter. We therefore threw into the house to them some beads, ribbands, cloths etc. as presents and went away. We however thought it no improper measure to take away with us all the lances which we could find about the houses, amounting in number to forty or fifty. They were of various lenghs, from 15 to 6 feet in length; both those which were thrown at us and all we found except one had 4 prongs headed with very sharp fish bones, which were besmeard with a greenish colourd gum that at first gave me some suspicions of Poison.

followd her at a distance. When she came back the officer who was in her told me that in a cove a little within the

The people were blacker than any we have seen in the Voyage tho by no means negroes; their beards were thick and

harbour they came down to the beach and invited our people to land by many signs and word[s] which he did not at

bushy and they seemd to have a redundancy of hair upon those parts of the body where it commonly grows; the hair

all understand; all however were armd with long pikes and a wooden weapon made something like a short scymetar.

of their heads was bushy and thick but by no means wooley like that of a Negro; they were of a common size, lean and

During this time a few of the Indians who had not followd the boat remaind on the rocks opposite the ship, threatning and menacing with their pikes and swords – two in particular who were painted with white, their faces seemingly only dusted over with it, their bodies painted with broad strokes drawn over their breasts and backs resembling much a soldiers cross belts, and their legs and thighs also with such like broad strokes drawn round them which imitated broad garters or bracelets. Each of these held in his hand a wooden weapon about 2½ feet long, in shape much resembling a scymeter; the blades of these lookd whitish and some though[t] shining insomuch that they were almost of opinion that they were made of some kind of metal, but myself thought they were no more than wood smeard over

seemd active and nimble; their voices were coarse and strong. Upon examining the lances we had taken from them we found that the very most of them had been usd in striking fish, at least we concluded so from sea weed which was found stuck in among the four prongs. – Having taken the resolution before mentiond we returnd to the ship in order to get rid of our load of lances, and having done that went to that place at the mouth of the harbour where we had seen the people in the morn; here however we found nobody.--At night many moving lights were seen in different parts of the bay such as we had been usd to see at the Islands; from hence we supposd that the people here strike fish in the same manner.

with the same white pigment with which they paint their bodies. These two seemd to talk earnestly together, at times brandishing their crooked weapons at us as in token of defiance.

By noon we were within the mouth of the inlet which appeard to be very good. Under the South head of it were four small canoes; in each of these was one man who held in his hand a long pole with which he struck fish, venturing with his little imbarkation almost into the surf. These people seemd to be totaly engag’d in what they were about: the ship passd within a quarter of a mile of them and yet they scarce lifted their eyes from their employment; I was almost inclind to think that attentive to their business and deafned by the noise of the surf they neither saw nor heard her go past them. At 1 we came to an anchor abreast of a small village consisting of about 6 or 8 houses. Soon after this an old woman followd by three children came out of the wood; she carried several peice[s] of stick and the children also had their little burthens; when she came to the houses 3 more younger children came out of one of them to meet her. She often lookd at the ship but expressd neither surprize nor concern. Soon after this she lighted a fire and the four Canoes came in from fishing; the people landed, hauld up their boats and began to dress their dinner to all appearance totaly unmovd at us, tho we were within a little more than ½ a mile of them. Of all these people we had seen so distinctly through our glasses we had not been able to observe the least signs of Cloathing: myself to the best of my judgement plainly discernd that the woman did not copy our mother Eve even in the fig leaf.

After dinner the boats were mann’d and we set out from the ship intending to land at the place where we saw these people, hoping that as they regarded the ships coming in to the bay so little they would as little regard our landing.

We were in this however mistaken, for as soon as we aproachd the rocks two of the men came down upon them, each armd with a lance of about 10 feet long and a short stick which he seemd to handle as if it was a machine to throw the lance. They calld to us very loud in a harsh sounding Language of which neither us or Tupia understood a word, shaking their lances and menacing, in all appearance resolvd to dispute our landing to the utmost tho they were but two and we 30 or 40 at least. In this manner we parleyd with them for about a quarter of an hour, they waving to us to be gone, we again signing that we wanted water and that we meant them no harm. They remaind resolute so a 62

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

63

JOHN WILLIAM STRUTT, 3RD BARON RAYLEIGH

NICHOLAS PATRICK

Lord Rayleigh (West Acre 1857¹) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1912 ‘for his investigations of the densities

Nicholas Patrick (Newlands 1978¹) is an engineer and a former NASA astronaut. His flight on the 2006 Discovery STS-

of the most important gases and for his discovery of argon in connection with these studies’. This extract from his

116 mission made him the fourth person from the United Kingdom to go into space.

Nobel Lecture, ‘The density of gases in the air and the discovery of argon’, provides evidence of his excellent scientific practice, by which he confirmed results by using different methods. He explores the different methods, expressing the importance of enhancing rather than hiding discrepancies, magnifying lack of understanding and investigating further.

FROM HIS SPEECH AT CHURCHILL SONGS, ROYAL ALBERT HALL, LONDON, 2012

This, he believed, was the way to make progress. Indeed, it was by pursuing this discrepancy that he discovered argon.

Your Royal Highnesses, Lady Soames, my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. It is a great honour to be here tonight, and to have the chance to share some of the inspiration behind my boyhood dream of flying in space, and some of the

FROM HIS NOBEL LECTURE ‘THE DENSITY OF GASES IN THE AIR AND THE DISCOVERY OF ARGON’, DECEMBER 12, 1904 Turning my attention to nitrogen, I made a series of determinations, using a method of preparation devised originally

by Harcourt, and recommended to me by Ramsay. Air bubbled through liquid ammonia is passed through a tube containing copper at a red heat where the oxygen of the air is consumed by the hydrogen of the ammonia, the excess

experiences that I have had along the way.

Thirty-five years ago, as a new boy in Newlands, I first opened a Harrow songbook. Like the boys around me in Speech Room, I sang Forty Years On; and like them I had no idea how it would feel to look back on those years. But I was lucky enough – even then to have some idea of how I would like to fill those years: an idea that involved engineering, flying, maybe working for NASA, and perhaps eventually flying in space.

of the ammonia being subsequently removed with sulphuric acid. In this case the copper serves merely to increase the

After Harrow, I read Engineering at Cambridge, and learned to fly with the Royal Air Force (whose motto is

surface and to act as an indicator. As long as it remains bright, we have security that the ammonia has done its work.

appropriately enough Per Ardua ad Astra). After a brief stint in industry, I went to MIT to work on a doctorate in

Having obtained a series of concordant observations on gas thus prepared I was at first disposed to consider the work on nitrogen as finished. Afterwards, however, I reflected that the method which I had used was not that of Regnault and that in any case it was desirable to multiply methods, so that I fell back upon the more orthodox procedure according to which, ammonia being dispensed with, air passes directly over red hot copper. Again a series in good

Engineering, and then to Boeing, before joining NASA in 1998 as a Mission specialist. Throughout this time, I kept up my flying, becoming a flight instructor, and eventually learning to fly helicopters. And so it was that two and a half years ago, on my second space flight, I found myself suited up, opening the hatch, and stepping outside into the blackness of space.

agreement with itself resulted, but to my surprise and disgust the densities obtained by the two methods differed

I was a crew member on the Space Shuttle Endeavour for its penultimate mission. We were docked to the

by a thousandth part – a difference small in itself but entirely beyond the experimental errors. The ammonia method

International Space Station, 250 miles up, moving at over 17,000 mph, and therefore orbiting the earth every 90

gave the smaller density, and the question arose whether the difference could be attributed to recognized impurities.

minutes. Our two-week mission was to finish the construction of the space station by adding a life-support module,

Somewhat prolonged inquiry having answered this question in the negative, I was rather at a loss how to proceed. It

and a magnificent set of windows. On one particular morning, during a spacewalk, I was hanging weightless from the

is a good rule in experimental work to seek to magnify a discrepancy when it first presents itself, rather than to follow

bottom of the station. Connected only by a thin wire tether, I was holding on to a handrail with just the tips of the

the natural instinct of trying to get quit of it. What was the difference between the two kinds of nitrogen? The one was

fingers of one hand as I waited for Mission Control to shut off the power to some cables, before I could work on them.

wholly derived from air; the other partially, to the extent of about one-fifth part, from ammonia. The most promising

So I had a few unexpected moments of idle time 0 something it’s very hard to find in a mission that’s pre-planned to

course for magnifying the discrepancy appeared to be the substitution of oxygen for air in the ammonia method, so

the minute, let alone during a spacewalk. Oddly, I was very comfortable in those surroundings, so I was able to enjoy

that all the nitrogen should in that case be derived from ammonia. Success was at once attained, the nitrogen from

the moment, and take in the view. As luck would have it, we were flying eastward over southern England, just after

the ammonia being now 1/200 part lighter than that from air, a difference upon which it was possible to work with

dawn on that February morning. As I looked down on London, and found Harrow, I thought of the start of a typical

satisfaction. Among the explanations which suggested themselves were the presence of a gas heavier than nitrogen

day at school …. and I remembered trudging across the Hill to breakfast, scarf high to keep out the cold wind.

in the air, or (what was at first rather favoured by chemical friends) the existence in the ammonia-prepared gas of

When I think back to that spacewalk now, I realise that I was also looking down on one of the birthplaces of space

nitrogen in a dissociated state. Since such dissociated nitrogen would probably be unstable, the experiment was tried

flight: that short span between the Continent and London, a route travelled in the later days of World War Il by the

of keeping a sample for eight months, but the density was found to be unaltered. On the supposition that the air-

infamous and ingenious V-2 rocket.

derived gas was heavier than the “chemical” nitrogen on account of the existence in the atmosphere of an unknown ingredient, the next step was the isolation of this ingredient by absorption of nitrogen. This was a task of considerable difficulty; and it was undertaken by Ramsay and myself working at first independently but afterwards in concert. Two

The man responsible for the V-2, Werner von Braun was – among other things – a man of extraordinary vision: capable of seeing that which didn’t yet exist – that which many thought impossible – and making it a reality.

methods were available – the first that by which Cavendish had originally established the identity of the principal

When the builders of the V-2 were defeated, von Braun was taken to America, where he went on to become the chief

component of the atmosphere with the nitrogen of nitre and consisting in the oxidation of the nitrogen under the

designer of the Saturn V rocket that lifted Apollo astronauts to the moon. It is in no small part thanks to his vision that

influence of electric sparks with absorption of the acid compounds by alkali; the other method was to absorb the

we are able to fly into space today, and in no small part thanks to Winston Churchill that von Braun applied his skills to

nitrogen by means of magnesium at a full red heat. In both these ways a gas was isolated of amount equal to about

the more peaceful purpose of manned spaceflight.

one per cent of the atmosphere by volume and having a density about half as great again as that of nitrogen. From the manner of its preparation it was proved to be non-oxidizable and to refuse absorption by magnesium at a red heat, and further varied attempts to induce chemical combination were without result. On this account the name argon was given to it. The most remarkable feature of the gas was the ratio of its specific heats, which proved to be the highest possible, viz. 1.67, indicating that sensibly the whole of the energy of molecular motion is translational.

Argon must not be deemed rare. A large hall may easily contain a greater weight of it than a man can carry.

On this side of the channel, we had our own space visionary, no less involved in the war effort: Arthur C. Clarke. As the inventor of the communications satellite, his influence on all our lives has been enormous. As an author and futurist, his influence on my dreams – and those of many scientists and engineers I know – was also significant. Through stories like The City and the Stars and The Sentinel (which later became the film 2001: A Space Odyssey), I was exposed not just to the idea of space flight as routine, but to the romance of space exploration.

Before I flew, I wrote to Clarke, to thank him for the ideas he had unknowingly given me, and to invite him to the launch. In our exchange, I learned that he had introduced von Braun to scuba diving, on the grounds that von Braun needed to experience something of the weightlessness to which he was subjecting astronauts. Now, astronauts spend

64

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

65

hundreds of hours underwater, practising spacewalks in simulated weightlessness. It’s great training, but on a technical

Eventually I realised that my biggest surprise was that there were no big surprises! My commander was disappointed

note, while a suit can be made to float in a pool, the person inside the suit is still being pulled down by gravity, making

with this answer, but I don’t think he should have been. There were no big surprises because I was very well prepared

the suit quite uncomfortable. In space I found that I floated inside the suit, which was a pleasant change.

for the strange experience of being in space. First, as I’ve mentioned, I grew up in a world full of images taken by earlier astronauts. Second, I ‘d been training like most astronauts of my era for about eight years for the flight. But,

PREPARATION

most importantly I believe, I had had a really solid grounding in science – particularly physics – during my teenage years at Harrow. For this I must thank my parents, for choosing Harrow, and the beaks of my day for their tireless work

My journey into space didn’t start at Harrow, although no place has played a more significant role in my preparation.

and enthusiasm.

It started when I was five, when my fåmily and I (and 500 million others) watched Neil Armstrong take his first steps

You can do extraordinary things – break the sound barrier, live underwater (as I’ve done for 20 days during my

on the Moon. This achievement would have been considered impossible by most just a few years earlier, but it was

training), launch into space, or hang from the bottom of an orbiting space station – if you are able to ignore your gut

something that my generation grew up with as a historical fact. Proof of the science-fiction writer’s theory that

feeling about a situation and instead trust your understanding of physics. And, of course, if you have faith in the work

humans are capable of leaving their Earthly cradle. And I wanted to be a part of it.

of the thousands of people who helped put you there.

It is often said that the most important things are learned when you’re young. For engineers and scientists, I think this

In fact, I didn’t spend much time worrying about safety during my flights, even though I can remember to the inch

means in your teen years. Indeed, most of the physics I have used in my professional career, I learned at Harrow from

where I was when I learned of Challenger’s fate, or when I lost seven friends and colleagues on Colombia. There just

Mr Bagnall and Mr Crofts, in the classroom, in the shooting range, and on school ski trips. In maths, Mr Vargas taught

isn’t time. What I did worry about was making mistakes. As important as preparation is, the correct execution of your

us the trigonometry aide-memoire: ‘Old Harrovians Are Hairy Old Apes’. I still use it often in my work! (If you don’t

tasks is critical. So it’s no surprise that the astronaut’s prayer – appropriately translated for this occasion – is: “Lord,

remember the reference, I’m sure Mr Vargas – who’s here this evening – will be happy to remind you!). The engineering

please don’t let me mess up.”

I learned at Cambridge and at MIT, I actually use less frequently.

Boarding school is good preparation for spaceflight in other ways: you learn the importance of teamwork, you learn to live in close quarters with people from many cultures, and you learn to live on a tight schedule. In my day, we would have said that school food was also good preparation for space but now that I’ve eaten NASA’s rehydrated freezedried shrimp cocktail, I look back on it rather more fondly. Today’s school food is – sadly – far too good to provide this kind of training!

THE FUTURE I was lucky enough to fly on the shuttle twice before the program ended last year, with each of the three remaining shuttles retired to a different corner of the States. It was a fairly sad event for the men and women of NASA, made more so by the fact that there is still no home-grown replacement ready to take crews to and from the Space Station.

For now, the only option is to travel on a Russian spacecraft from Kazakhstan. But we should take heart: when the

When you look around the Old Schools and Speech Room you are surrounded by reminders that so many of the

Apollo program ended in the early 1970s, it generated a diaspora of scientists, engineers and technicians, each

great explorers, thinkers, and leaders of the past received the same education as you. This too helped give me the

with skills new to industry. For decades, they could be found scattered throughout high-tech businesses in the US

confidence to follow my path.

and elsewhere.

When I arrived at NASA, a seasoned astronaut who had just learned of my background said; “You went to an English

The shuttle program is producing a similar diaspora. Many of us have moved into the blossoming commercial space

boarding school? You’ll be perfect for a trip to Mars – a trip of two and a half years.” So, when I met my wife, I felt

flight industry, where a dozen companies are vying to provide inexpensive access to space, not just for governments,

the need to warn her that if I were offered a place on a flight to Mars – which seemed a real possibility in the late 90s

but for ordinary people. Others have moved into energy, aviation and manufacturing; taking with them the hard-

– I would want to go. She agreed and I, in turn, agreed to give up motorcycling. As you get older, it becomes more

learned lessons of manned spaceflight.

important not to take unnecessary risks!

Since my flights, I have spent a lot of time talking about my experiences in space. And I’ve been asked a lot of questions, ranging from the sublime “Did it change your view of creation?” (the answer is no), to the prosaic “How do you eat in space?” (the answer is “carefully”), to the frankly embarrassing! I’ve really enjoyed these questions – especially the ones children ask about aliens (l tell them I’ve never seen aliens, which many of their parents believe is just the answer the US government requires us to give!). But one of the most thought-provoking questions was

As an Englishman living in the States, I’ve learned that you can reach almost all audiences by quoting either Churchill or Monty Python. To quote Churchill now: Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

one my shuttle commander asked me during my first mission. It was “Now that you’re in space, what’s your biggest

Churchill wasn’t talking about spaceflight, but he may as well have been. In the 55 years since Sputnik marked the

surprise?” I had to think for a moment.

dawn of the space age, we have made enormous strides towards the stars, but we’re still just at the beginning of the

I thought about the view, which is unforgettable, and constantly changing as you fly around the planet at five miles a second. During the day, you can look down on the golden deserts of the Middle East, the green canopy of the

path. The human race needs to leave its cradle and climb out into the solar system. More than anything because it’s in our nature to explore.

Amazon, and the red continent of Australia. At night, you can recognise individual cities from the patterns of their major roads, or the shapes of their rivers – the Thames is instantly recognisable. Of course, you’re moving so quickly that if you reach around for a camera to photograph something, it’s gone by the time you turn back.

CLOSING Harrovians are used to looking decades or centuries into the past in their history classes, millennia for those who

I thought about the sensation of floating, like scuba diving in air, and about what weightlessness does to everything

study Latin or Greek, and millions in Biology. All of those time scales are interesting and useful but, to me, none is

you take for granted if you drop something it floats away soundlessly, perhaps not to reappear for days! I thought

more thought-provoking than the timescale on which the universe has evolved. With Harrow’s new Rayleigh telescope,

about the challenge of getting dressed in space, and the way that tapping your foot on the floor after a few days of

opened just yesterday evening, they will be able to look so far into the universe that they will be seeing light generated

weightlessness leads to an unexpected feeling of pins and needles, as though your feet just don’t want to be used

nearly 2.5 billion years ago. So I’m confident that the School will keep up the great work of preparing Harrovians to be

anymore And I thought about how food floats around in your stomach, leading to the occasional, uncomfortable

the well-rounded citizens the world so needs: linguists, scientists, historians, explorers, as well as the occasional prime

sensation of extreme fullness.

minister and astronaut.

66

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

67

HARROW SCHOOL I would encourage Harrovians to choose subjects and activities you love, pursue them with passion, and see where they lead. While I always listened to the advice I was given, I didn’t always take it. For example, I chose a set of A levels many thought would limit my academic career: Engineering instead of the second Maths, but it was what I loved studying, and my teachers and I somehow made it work. I would also encourage Harrovians to imagine not just where your interests and passions might lead you in your careers, but where they might help you lead others.

Parents, encourage your children to follow their dreams, however terrifying they may occasionally seem. My parents wanted me to sing. I wanted to fly. Somehow my mother endured thousands of hours of my flying, probably by turning a blind eye, only to have the NASA commentator at my first launch describe exactly how many tons of TNT my crew and I were sitting on top of.

Each day on orbit starts with a wake-up call from Mission Control – a radio call in which they play a piece of music chosen by one of the crew. For my flight on Endeavour, I chose Forty Years On, in part because it reminded me of Harrow, and in part to inspire the current generation of Harrovians to think about where they might be 20, and 30, and 40 years on.

Since leaving Harrow, I have travelled 11 million miles during over 400 orbits of Earth. But one day I hope, somebody else from Harrow – perhaps someone here today in the Royal Albert Hall – will travel much, much further. Perhaps as far as Mars, or one of Jupiter’s moons. Perhaps to the nearest star. And I’m sure they’ll take Forty Years On with them too.

Thank you.

68

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

69

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL Horace Annesley Vachell (Small Houses and Moretons 18763) spent a short period in the Rifle Brigade before becoming

John’s mind had to speculate vaguely whether or not Desmond knew the nature of the tight place – tight was such a

a writer. He produced over 50 volumes of fiction, including a popular school story, The Hill: A Romance of Friendship,

very descriptive adjective – out of which he had pulled Scaife. Then he said nervously—

which gives an idealised view of the life at the School and of the friendship between two boys.

“I don’t like him because – because he likes – you.”

“Likes me? What a rum ‘un you are, Verney! Why shouldn’t he like me?”

FROM THE HILL: A ROMANCE OF FRIENDSHIP CHAPTER FIVE: FELLOWSHIP “Fellowship is Heaven, and the lack of it is Hell.”

“Because,” said John, boldly meeting the emergency with the conviction that he had burnt his ships, and must advance without fear, “because he’s not half good enough for you.”

Desmond burst out laughing; the clear, ringing laugh of his father, which had often allayed an incipient mutiny below

John was squelching through the mud, wondering whether his nose was broken or not, when Lawrence touched

the gangway, and charmed aside the impending disaster of a snatch-division. And it is on one’s own side in the House

his shoulder.

of Commons that good temper tells pre-eminently.

“Never mind, Verney,” he said cheerily; “the Manor will be cock-house at Torpids next year, and I venture to prophesy

“Not good enough for me!” he repeated. “Thanks awfully. Evidently you have a high opinion of – me.”

that you’ll be Captain.”

“Oh, thanks, Lawrence,” said John.

“Yes,” said John.

The quiet monosyllable, so soberly, so seriously uttered, challenged Desmond’s attention. He stared for a moment

But, much as he appreciated this tribute from the great man, and much as it served to mitigate the pangs of defeat,

at John’s face – not an attractive object. Blood and mud disfigured it. But the grey eyes met the blue unwaveringly.

a yet happier stroke of fortune was about to befall him. Desmond, who always walked up from the football field with

Desmond flushed.

Scaife, conferred upon John the honour of his company.

“Where’s Scaife?” said John.

“The Demon is demoniac,” said Desmond. “He’s lost his hair, and he blames me. Well, I did my best, and so did he, and there’s no more to be said. It’s a bore that we shall be too old to play next year. I told the Demon that if we had to be beaten, I would sooner take a licking from Damer’s than any other house; and he told me that he believed I wanted ‘em to win. When a fellow’s in that sort of blind rage, I call him dotty, don’t you?”

“You’ve stuck me on a sort of pedestal.” His tone was as serious as John’s.

“Yes,” said John.

They were opposite the Music Schools. The other Manorites had run on. For the moment they stood alone, ten thousand leagues from Harrow, alone in those sublimated spaces where soul meets soul unfettered by flesh.

Afterwards, not then, John knew that this was so. He met the real Desmond for the first time, and Desmond met the real John in a thoroughfare other than that which leads to the Manor, other than that which leads to any house built by

“Yes,” said John.

human hands, upon the shining highway of Heaven.

“You played jolly well, Verney; I expect Lawrence told you so.”

Shall we try to set down Desmond’s feelings at this crisis? Till now, his life had run gaily through fragrant gardens, so

“He did say something decent,” John replied.

The Caterpillar joined them as they were passing through the stile. “We should have won,” he said deliberately, “if the Demon hadn’t behaved like a rank outsider.”

“Scaife is my pal,” said Desmond, hotly.

The Caterpillar shrugged his shoulders, and held high his well-cut, aquiline nose, as he murmured–

to speak: pleasaunces full of flowers, of sweet-smelling herbs, of stately trees, a paradise indeed from which the ugly, the crude, the harmful had been rigorously excluded. Happy the boy who has such a home as was allotted to Harry Desmond! And from it, ever since he could remember, he had received tender love, absolute trust, the traditions of a great family whose name was part of English history, an exquisite refinement, and with these, the gratification of all reasonable desires. And this magnificent upbringing shone out of his radiant face, the inexpressible charm of youth unspotted – white. Scaife’s upbringing, of which you shall know more presently, had been far different, and yet he, the cynic and the unclean, recognized the God in Harry Desmond. He had not, for instance, told Desmond of the nature of

“One doesn’t pretend to be a Christian, but as a gentleman one accepts a bit of bad luck without gnashing one’s teeth.

that “tight” place; he had kept a guard over his tongue; he had interposed his own strong will between his friend and

What? That Spartan boy with the fox was a well bred ‘un, you can take my word for it. Scaife isn’t.”

such attention as a boy of Desmond’s attractiveness might provoke from Lovell senior and the like. It is true that Scaife

The Caterpillar joined another pair of boys before Desmond could reply. John looked uncomfortable. Then Desmond burst out with Irish vehemence– “Egerton is always jawing about breeding. It’s rather snobbish. I don’t think the worse of Scaife because his grandfather carried a hod. The Egertons have been living at Mount Egerton ever since they left Mount Ararat, but what have they done? And he ought to make allowances for the old Demon. He was simply mad keen to win this match, and he has a temper. You like him, Verney, don’t you?”

John hesitated, realizing that to speak the truth would offend the one fellow in the school whom he wished to please and conciliate. Then he blurted out— “No – I don’t.”

was well aware that without these precautions he would have lost his friend; none the less, above and beyond this consciousness hovered the higher, more subtle intuition that the good in Desmond was something not lightly to be tampered with, something awe-inspiring; the more so because, poor fellow! he had never encountered it before.

Desmond stood still, with his eyes upon John’s discoloured face. Not the least of Cæsar’s charms was his lack of self-consciousness. Now, for the first time, he tried to see himself as John saw him – on a pedestal. And so strong was John’s ideal that in a sense Desmond did catch a glimpse of himself as John saw him. And then followed a rapid comparison, first between the real and the ideal, and secondly between himself and Scaife. His face broke into a smile.

“Why, Verney,” he exclaimed, “you mustn’t turn me into a sort of Golden Calf. And as for Scaife not being good enough for me, why, he’s miles ahead of me in everything. He’s cleverer, better at games, ten thousand times better looking, and one day he’ll be a big power, and I shall always be a poor man. Why, I – I don’t mind telling you that I used to keep

“You don’t?” Desmond’s frank, blue eyes, Irish eyes, deeply blue, with black lashes encircling them, betrayed

out of Scaife’s way, although he was always awfully civil to me, because he has so much and I so little.”

amazement and curiosity – so John thought – rather than anger. “You don’t?” he continued. “Why not? The old Demon

“He’s not half good enough for you,” repeated John, with the Verney obstinacy. Unwittingly he slightly emphasized

likes you; he says you got him out of a tight place. Why don’t you like him, Verney?”

70

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

the “good.”

71

AUGUSTUS HARE “Good? Do you mean ‘pi’? He’s not that, thank the Lord!”

This made John laugh, and Desmond joined in. Now they were Harrow boys again, within measurable distance of the Yard, although still in the shadow of the Spire. The Demon described as “pi” tickled their ribs.

Augustus Hare (The Grove 18473) left Harrow after just one year because of ill health. He became an artist and an author, with his books ranging from biographies and memoirs to historical accounts of various countries and cities, for example Walks in Rome and Walks in London. This extract is taken from his autobiography, published in 1900.

“You must learn to like the Demon,” Desmond continued, as they moved on. Then, as John said nothing, he added quickly, “He and I have made up our minds not to try for remove this term. You see, next term is the jolliest term of the year – cricket and ‘Ducker’ and Lord’s. And we shall know the form’s swat thoroughly, and have time to enjoy ourselves. You’ll be with us. Your remove is a ‘cert’ – eh?”

John beamed. He had made certain that Cæsar would be in the Third Fifth next term and hopelessly out of reach.

FROM THE STORY OF MY LIFE That I got on tolerably well at Harrow, even with my “armour” on, is a proof that I never was ill-treated there. I have often, however, with Lord Eustace Cecil (who was at Harrow with me), recalled since how terrible the bullying was in our time – of the constant cruelty at “Harris’s,” where the little boys were always made to come down and box in the evening for the delectation of the fifth form:- of how little boys were constantly sent in the evening to Famish’s – halfway to the cricket-ground, to bring back porter under their greatcoats, certain to be flogged by the head-master if they were caught, and to be “wapped” by the sixth form boys if they did not go, and infinitely preferring the former:of how, if the boys did not “keep up” at football, they were made to cut large thorn sticks out of the hedges, and flogged with them till the blood poured down outside their jerseys. Indeed, what with fagging and bullying, servility was as much inculcated at Harrow in those days as if it was likely to be a desirable acquirement in after life.

I may truly say that I never learnt anything useful at Harrow, and had little chance of learning anything. Hours and hours were wasted daily on useless Latin verses with sickening monotony. A boy’s school education at this time, except in the highest forms, was hopelessly inane.

In some ways, however, this “quarter” at Harrow was much pleasanter than the preceding ones. I had a more established place in the school, and was on more friendly terms with all the boys in my own house; also, with my “armour,” the hated racket-fagging was an impossibility. I had many scrambles about the country with Buller in search of eggs and flowers, which we painted afterwards most carefully and perseveringly; and, assisted by Buller, I got up a sort of private theatricals on a very primitive scale, turning Grimm’s fairy stories into little plays, which were exceedingly popular with the house, but strictly forbidden by the tutor, Mr. Simpkinson or “Simmy.” Thus I was constantly in hot water about them. One day when we had got up a magnificent scene, in which I, as “Snowdrop,” lay locked in a magic sleep in an imaginary cave, watched by dwarfs and fairies, Simmy came in and stood quietly amongst the spectators, and I was suddenly awakened from my trance by the sauve qui peut which followed the discovery. Great punishments were the result. Yet, not long after, we could not resist a play on a grander scale – something about the “Fairy Tilburina” out of the “Man in the Moon,” for which we learnt our parts and had regular dresses made. It was to take place in the fifth form room on the ground-floor between the two divisions of the house, and just as Tilburina (Buller) was descending one staircase in full bridal attire, followed by her bridesmaids, of whom I was one, Simmy himself suddenly appeared on the opposite staircase and caught us.

These enormities now made my monthly “reports,” when they were sent home, anything but favourable; but I believe my mother was intensely diverted by them: I am sure that the Stanleys were. A worse crime, however, was our passion for cooking, in which we became exceedingly expert. Very soon after a tremendous punishment for having been caught for the second time frying potato chips, we formed the audacious project of cooking a hare! The hare was bought, and the dreadful inside was disposed of with much the same difficulty and secrecy, and in much the same manner, in which the Richmond murderess disposed of her victims; but we had never calculated how long the creature would take to roast even with a good fire, much more by our wretched embers: and long before it was accomplished, Mrs. Collins, the matron, was down upon us, and we and the hare were taken into ignominious custody.

Another great amusement was making sulphur casts and electrotypes, and we really made some very good ones.

My great love for anything of historic romance, however, rendered the Louis Philippe revolution the overwhelming interest of this quarter, and put everything else into the shade. In the preceding autumn the murder of the Duchesse de Praslin had occupied every one, and we boys used to lie on the floor for hours poring over the horrible map of the murder-room which appeared in the “Illustrated,” in which all the pools of blood were indicated. But that was nothing to the enthusiastic interest over the sack of the Tuileries and the escape of the Royal Family: I have never known anything like it in after life.

72

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

73

ARNOLD LUNN I have often heard since much of the immoralities of a public-school life, but I can truly say that when I was there,

Arnold Lunn’s (The Knoll 19023) novel The Harrovians is one of the first critical accounts of public-school rules and

I saw nothing of them. A very few boys, however, can change the whole character of a school, especially in a wrong

traditions. Based on the diary Lunn kept during his time at Harrow in the early 1900s, the novel helped to spark the

direction. “A little worm-wood can pollute a hive of honey,” was one of the wise sayings of Pius II. I do not think that

necessary reform to the public-school system.

my morals were a bit the worse for Harrow, but from what I have heard since of all that went on there even in my time, I can only conclude it was because – at that time certainly – “je n’avais pas le goût du peché,” as I once read in a French novel.

At Easter, 1848, I left Harrow for the holidays, little imagining that I should never return there. I should have been very sorry had I known it. On the whole, the pleasurable “adventures” of a public-school life had always outweighed its disagreeables; though I was never in strong enough health for any real benefit or enjoyment.

FROM THE HARROVIANS CHAPTER IV: ONE MORE LESSONS IN BUSHIDO “I suppose,” said Manson, in an hour when work was technically prepared, “that they paid the blighter who wrote this tosh.”

“What tosh?” asked Peter.

“Oh, an article in this mag – ‘The Public School Spirit.’ It’s by a chap called Handleby.”

“Usual bilge?” asked Kendal, without much interest.

“Oh yes; stale old tosh. I’ll give you the snappier extracts.”

Manson proceeded to deliver Mr Handleby’s sounding periods with affected eloquence. “‘Critics complain that education and the more serious efforts of life are neglected; that a boy is discussing averages while his German brother is interested in Shakespeare. We reply that the Public Schools aim at something higher than culture. They build up character and turn out manly, clean-living men that are the rock of the empire.’”

“Such as Caysley, I suppose,” put in Kendal from the floor.

“Well, so long as they turn out clean-livers let ‘em rip.”

Manson proceeded undisturbed. “‘They teach boys something which is more important than the classics. They teach them to play the game.’”

Kendal shouted with wrath, “Chuck it away! A man who uses a tag which one’s aunts are beginning to understand should be shot.”

“Oh, give him a chance, said Parry testily. Parry was touched by the article. “‘It does not so much matter what a man knows. It is what he is that signifies.’”

“Precisely,” interjected the irrepressible Kendal; “don’t matter him taking five years to reach the upper school if he’s a clean-living manly Empire-builder like Cadby.”

MORE LESSONS IN BUSHIDO (PART III) A House match between two teams, either of which may ultimately be the Cock House, is a stirring spectacle. The emotions stirred in the spectators are simple and primitive, for the love of watching a close fight is as old and enduring as man. There you see the passion for House as its finest. A boy may hate his House, and long to leave it, yet in the heat of a close contest he will forget everything save that he is a unit in a society represented by eleven good men and true, and that a rival House must be humbled in the dust. It is the triumph of the social as against the individual spirit.

It was tolerably obvious that either Lee’s or Jones’ must be Cock House, and it was unfortunate that they should meet in the first round. Jones’ had five flannels, Lee’s only one, Cayley. Jones’ were the heavier man by man, yet in the scratch matches “Seconders” Lee’s had been undefeated, and had drawn with Jones’. Lee’s always played with desperate vigour, for Cayley had put the fear of God in every member of the team. Their power as an eleven was not a little due to one vigorous personality.

There is no code which gives such little opportunity for finesse and tactics as the Harrow game. The complicated system of passing at Soccer is unknown. The centre, assisted by the wings, follow up in a solid body, and try to capture the ball when the leader loses it. When near the opponents’ base the leader tries to turn it round and gently kick the

74

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

75

ball into the hands of one of his followers. This is not easy when heckled by the other side. If he succeeds the catcher cries “yards,” and is allowed a free kick. There are three backs. Of these, one will always be just behind the centres, and as the ball flies from wing to wing, the backs on the wings will exchange places – one will follow just behind the scrum, the other will go back somewhere near the base, and the centre back will as a rule occupy a position between the two.

The match was played on the Sixth Form ground. A strong breeze was blowing down the hill. The ground was dry and fast. As teams change sides after every base, and not at half-time unless no point was being scored, it was of paramount importance to win the toss. Bending neglected this elementary duty.

FROM CHAPTER XVII: SOLLEN HABEN Peter and Lipton were watching a Cricket match. In four more days Harrow life would close for Peter. He was feeling mildly pensive.

“Yes, it’s dashed nearly over. I’m sorry. Far sorrier than I ever expected to be.”

“Most people are,” said Lipton. “I sometimes wonder why. Of course one can understand a man not liking to leave. But it’s more than that.”

“Yes, it’s puzzled me too. Of course one can understand it in many cases. There’s Nest, for instance. He’ll never be such a blood again. He hasn’t any brains. He couldn’t even struggle into the upper school, but he’s a mighty man here.

Rather a pity, I think, that life should reach its highest point at nineteen. This ought only to be the beginning. Well, you can understand him not wanting to leave. But it’s the rank and file that puzzle one, even boys who never got their privs.”

“O, I dunno,” said Lipton. “One gets fond of the place somehow.”

“Yes, one does. In spite of having the fact rammed down one’s throat in every sermon and every Old Chaw dinner. But I’ve been pretty miserable here when I was a kid.”

“Oh, well, most people would have been in the old days.”

“That’s true enough,” said Peter. “I don’t reckon the small men are unhappy now. Do you?”

“No, they have a jolly sight too good a time. I cobbed young Mandie talking in the passage only yesterday. Told him I’d send him up for a whopping if he did it again.”

“Oh well, that’s easily stopped. After all, the important thing is that they should more or less enjoy life. I never did hold much to the ‘knocking the nonsense out of ‘em’ theory. I remember I used to have nightmares about going back to school when I was a kid. Quite spoiled the hols. Lord, how the old House has changed!”

76

HARROW SCHOOL 450 ANTHOLOGY

HARROW SCHOOL 5 High Street Harrow on the Hill Middlesex HA1 3HP +44 (0)20 8872 8000 harrow@harrowschool.org.uk Harrowschool.org.uk

1

4