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Winchester College in fiction

Henry Esmond, Old Wykehamist, protagonist of a book by William Makepeace Thackeray, being knighted by Beatrix, with whom he is in love, but fails to marry. Painting by Augustus Leopold Egg, 1857

Winchester College appears in fiction both as a school and as fictional Old Wykehamists, people who had been to the school. At least 50 fictional Old Wykehamists have appeared in novels, sometimes following the stereotype of the dull civil servant, though in fact relatively few real Wykehamists choose that profession. The school is further represented indirectly by the writings of Old Wykehamists on other topics.

The school in fiction

Poetry

Amy Audrey Locke's 1912 In Praise of Winchester offers an anthology of over 100 pages of prose and verse about Winchester College.[1] The poets represented in the book include the Old Wykehamists John Crommelin-Brown, Lord Alfred Douglas, Robert Ensor, A. P. Herbert, George Huddesford, Lionel Johnson, William Lipscomb, Robert Seton-Watson, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, Thomas Warton, and William Whitehead. Others in the collection include the biographer and suffragist Lady Laura Ridding, wife of one of the school's headmasters, George Ridding.[1]

Huddesford edited an anthology of poetry by fellow Old Wykehamists called Wiccamical Chaplet, dedicated to the finance minister Henry Addington.[2][3] Some of the poems are in Latin, including the school song, "Domum", subtitled by Huddesford "Carmen Wiccamicum" ("The Winchester College Song").[4] One of the poems, "On a Threat to Destroy the Tree at Winchester", alludes to "Domum", as indicated in its subtitle, "Round which [tree] the Scholars, on Breaking up [at end of term], sing their celebrated Song, called 'Dulce Domum'."[5] Locke provides a verse translation along with the Latin version, and "A Domum Legend" which gives an alternative version of how the school song came into existence.[6]

Prose

A former headmaster of Winchester College, James Sabben-Clare, comments that the school itself has been "largely spared the full fictional treatment".[7] E. H. Lacon-Watson's 1935 book In the Days of His Youth however portrays the school in the 19th century under the headmastership of George Ridding, "thinly disguised as Dr. Spedding".[7]

Old Wykehamists in fiction

Sabben-Clare discusses how Wykehamists appear in fiction. He notes that James Bond's chaperon, Captain Paul Sender is just one of at least 50 Old Wykehamists in fiction, a dull civil servant, "overcrammed and underloved at Winchester".[7] Sabben-Clare states that despite the stereotype of Wykehamists becoming Civil Servants, between 1820 and 1922 only around 7% of Wykehamists went into the Civil Service, and by 1981 the number had fallen to about 2%.[8] On the other hand, Sabben-Clare writes, Wykehamists have always been drawn to law, with about ten entrants to the profession each year. He find it surprising that so few Wykehamist lawyers are found in fiction: he mentions Monsarrat's John Morell and Charles Morgan's Gaskony.[9]

References

  1. ^ a b Locke 1912, pp. 145–285.
  2. ^ "Huddesford, George" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  3. ^ Huddesford 1804, p. iii.
  4. ^ Huddesford 1804, p. 224.
  5. ^ Huddesford 1804, p. 198.
  6. ^ Locke 1912, pp. 199–202.
  7. ^ a b c d e Sabben-Clare 1981, p. 177.
  8. ^ a b c d e f Sabben-Clare 1981, p. 178.
  9. ^ a b c d e f Sabben-Clare 1981, p. 180.
  10. ^ Leys, Colin (15 June 2012). "The Dissolution of the Mandarins: the sell-off of the British state". Open Democracy. Retrieved 6 November 2022.
  11. ^ Sabben-Clare 1981, pp. 177, 180.
  12. ^ a b c d e f Sabben-Clare 1981, p. 182.
  13. ^ Lanchester, John (3 March 1988). "Catch 28". London Review of Books. 10 (5).
  14. ^ Blount, Trevor (May 1965). "Poor Jo, Education, and The Problem of Juvenile Delinquency in Dickens' "Bleak House"". Modern Philology. 62 (4): 325–339. doi:10.1086/389707. JSTOR 436367. S2CID 162344958.
  15. ^ Tegner, W. (June 2006). "All from the Same Place?". The Trusty Servant. 101. Winchester College: 5. Archived from the original on 6 February 2015. Retrieved 19 June 2015.
  16. ^ "The Holmes Inheritance". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 6 November 2022.
  17. ^ Sabben-Clare 1981, p. 186.
  18. ^ French, Philip (28 August 2011). "One Day – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 November 2022.
  19. ^ a b c d Sabben-Clare 1981, p. 187.
  20. ^ Le Carré, John (1995). "7". Our Game. Random House. ISBN 978-0-6794-4302-5.
  21. ^ Donaldson, Frances. P G Wodehouse, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1982
  22. ^ Obituary of Lucas D'Oyly Carte, The Times, 22 January 1907, p. 12

Sources