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Athleticism in the
Victorian and Edwardian
public school
SPORT IN THE GLOBAL SOCIETY
General Editor: J. A. Mangan
The interest in sports studies around the world is growing and will continue to do so.
This unique series combines aspects of the expanding study of sport in theglobalsociety,
providing comprehensiveness and comparison under one editorial umbrella. It is
particularly timely, with studies in the cultural, economic, ethnographic, geographical,
political, social, anthropological, sociological and aesthetic elements of sport
proliferating in institutions of higher education.
Eric Hobsbawm once called sport one of the most significant practices of the late
nineteenth century. Its significance was even more marked in the late twentieth century
and will continue to grow in importance into the new millennium as the world develops
into a 'global village' sharing the English language, technology and sport.
ATHLETICISM IN THE
VICTORIAN AND
EDWARDIAN
PUBLIC SCHOOL
THE EMERGENCE AND
CONSOLIDATION OF
AN EDUCATIONAL IDEOLOGY
J. A. MANGAN
University of Strathclyde
~ ~~o~;~;n~~~up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published in 1981 by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, Cambridge
This edition published in 2000 in Great Britain by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park,
Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and in the United States of America by
Routledge
270 Madison Ave,
New York, NY 10016
Transferred to Digital Printing 2006
Website: www.routledge.com
Copyright © 2000 J.A. Mangan
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Mangan,]. A. Games Anthony), 1939-
Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian public school :
the emergence and consolidation of an educational ideology.
- 3rd ed. - (Sport in the global society; no. 13)
1. School sports - England - History - 19th century 2. School
sports - England - History - 20th century 3. Public schools,
Endowed (Great Britain) - History
I. Title
796' .071242
ISBN 0-7146-8043-5 (paper)
ISSN 1368-9789
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mangan,].A.
Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian public school : the emergence and
consolidation of an educational ideology / J.A. Mangan.
p. em. - (Sport in the global society; 13)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-7146-8043-5 (pbk)
1. Endowed public schools (Great Britain)-History-19th century. 2. Education-Aims
and objectives-Great Britain. 3. Athletics-Great Britain-History-Sources. 4. School
sports-Great Britain-History-Sources. 5. Endowed public schools (Great
Britain-History-20th century. I. Title. II. Cass series-sport in the global society; 13.
LA631.7 .M36 2000
373.2'22-dc21
00-031616
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint
but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent
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Contents
List of illustrations page IX
List of tables Xl
Acknowledgements XIII
Foreword by Sheldon Rothblatt XVII
Introduction by Jeffrey Richards XXI
Regression and Progression: Introduction to the New Edition
by J.A. Mangan xxvii
Prologue 1
PART I: THE GROWTH OF THE IDEOLOGY
1 Reformation, indifference and liberty 13
2 Licence, antidote and emulation 22
3 Idealism, idealists and rejection 43
4 Compulsion, conformity and allegiance 68
PART II: THE FORCES OF IDEOLOGICAL
CONSOLIDATION
5 Conspicuous resources, anti-intellectualism and
sporting pedagogues 99
6 Oxbridge fashions, complacent parents and
imperialism 122
7 Fez, 'blood' and hunting crop: the symbols and
rituals of a Spartan culture 141
8 Play up and play the game: the rhetoric of cohesion,
identity, patriotism and morality 179
Epilogue
VII
207
VIII Contents
APPENDICES
I Historical documents of special significance in the
evolution of athleticism 223
II Historical documents dealing with various aspects of
the economics of athleticism 231
III The school magazine: 243
(a) The school magazine as a primary source
(b) A page and correspondence analysis of the school
magazines 1866-1966
IV Some nineteenth- and twentieth-century timetables in
relation to games 251
V Captains of school, games and academic awards 253
VI 'Poets' of athleticism 255
VII Salaries of assistant masters at Harrow in 1874 265
VIII Jesus College, Cambridge: educational background of
entrants in the nineteenth century 267
Notes 268
Bibliography 309
Index 337
Illustrations
1 'Stonyhurst College: cheering the flag', from an page 25
etching by W]. Allingham (Parker Gallery, London)
2 G. E. L. Cotton, from S. Cotton, A Memoir of G. E. L.
Cotton D.D. (1871), frontispiece 26
3 Hely Hutchinson Almond, from R. ]. Mackenzie,
Almond of Loretto (1905), frontispiece 51
4 Loretto dress 1901, from R.]. Mackenzie, Almond of
Loretto (1905), facing p. 91 52
5-10 Punch's pictorial history of athleticism, from
Punch,vol. 65, p. 94, vol. 93, p. 123, vol. 97, p. 165, vol.
106, p. 155, vol. 99, p. 141, vol. 113, p. 6 (Cambridge
University Library) 90-1
11 Edward Bowen, from W E. Bowen, Edward Bowen
(1902), frontispiece 117
12 G. M. Carey, from the photographic album of C. A. F.
Radford (Sherborne School Archives) 117
13 Edward Bowen and a celebration tea at the Grove,
Harrow, circa 1895, from WE. Bowen, Edward Bowen
(1902),facingp.216 118
14 A. H. Beesly and his house cricket team circa 1874,
from the Photographic Collection, Marlborough
College (Marlborough College Archives) 118
15-18 The evolution of dress, Harrow eleven 1863-1912,
from A. C. M. Croome (ed.), Fifty years of Sport at
Oxford, Cambridge and the Great Public Schools, vol. 2,
(1922), facing pp. 136, 157, 175 and 220 166-7
19 Rugby versus Marlborough match card,]uly 1908,
from the Photographic Collection, Marlborough
College (Marlborough College Archives) 209
20 F. W Farrar, headmaster of Marlborough 1871-76,
IX
x Illustrations
from Barrand, Men and Women of the Day, vol. 1 (1888)
(National Portrait Gallery) 210
21 G. C. Bell, headmaster of Marlborough, 1876-1903,
from the Photographic Collection, Marlborough
College (Marlborough College Archives) 210
22 E Fletcher, headmaster ofMarlborough 1903-11, from
the Photographic Collection, Marlborough College
(Marlborough College Archives) 210
23 G. C. Turner, headmaster of Marlborough 1926-39,
from the Photographic Collection, Marlborough
College (Marlborough College Archives) 210
Tables
Approximate games acreage owned or leased and page 71
used for major games in 1845 and 1900
II Marlborough Games Committee: statement of
accounts for summer term 1893 72
III Commencement of regular recording of matches,
championships and teams 73
IV An analysis of the pages and correspondence in the
Marlburian 1866-1966 92
V Uppingham School games accounts: growth of
expenditure 104-5
VI First sports meetings between Oxford and Cambridge
1825-1925 125
VII Public attendance at the Eton versus Harrow matches
at Lord's 1871-1972 145
Xl
Acknowledgements
The debts accumulated in the writing of this book are many. In the
first place, without the generous permission of the headmasters of
the survey schools to make use of their archives and meet staff, it
would not have been possible. I greatly appreciate, therefore, the
interest and co-operation ofMr B. M. S. Hoban (Harrow), Mr I. D.
S. Beer (Lancing), Mr R. B. Bruce-Lockhart (Loretto), Mr Roger
Ellis (Marlborough), Rev. M. Bossy, SJ (Stonyhurst) and Rev. J. C.
Royds (Uppingham). In addition, Mr Ellis was instrumental in
opening doors to other sources ofmaterial, notably the Headmasters'
Conference and Mr Bruce-Lockhart's reflections on his years in the
public school system were a most helpful contribution to my efforts
to achieve a balanced perspective.
Thanks are due inmore subtle efforts of late Victorian and Edwardian society to
inculcate a martial masculinity in its middle-class youth. To dismiss
the causes and the existence of late Victorian and Edwardian
militarism without adequate consideration of, and careful reflection
on the literature which reveals and analyses the extensive efforts
Introduction to the New Edition xli
made to promote this militarism, compounds this failure;" Once
again, sadly, confident assertion without careful scholarship leaves
much to be desired.
Most unfortunately, the same author shows an equal lack of
appreciation of the relationships between society, militarism,
education and the elementary school in theVictorian and Edwardian
eras. It was far more complicated than he suggests." Again the issue
seems to be a lack of awareness of significant sources."
Some time ago JuanJ. Linz pointed the way forward. Speculating
on why the participants in the Second World War did not feel the
same way about their war service as those of the First World War, he
reflected that the difference might be explained by the fact that 'the
first one followed more than forty years of peace, decades in which
the educational systems from primary school to university built up
the feeling of national identity and romanticised the struggles that
had contributed to nation building.l'" Indeed, it might.
Here is the crux of the matter. This is precisely the point Geoffrey
Best makes about British society, the public schools and militarism
in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. He remarks that the
Victorians had a 'predilection for playing at soldiers, to which they
seem to have been as addicted as any of their continental
counterparts' ;" and he adds this telling point: 'In considering 'the
prevalence of military sentiment or ideals' in Britain, we must not
be misled by the pacific appearance ofBritishVictorian history and,
in particular, by the celebrated fact that Britain was engaged in only
one European war between 1815 and 1914.'97 Best has expressed
satisfaction that there is now a desire 'to put back in to history the
whole "military dimension" of war-readiness and war-conduct.'?"
Michael Howard, the distinguished military historian, has put it
another way: 'to abstract war from the environment in which it is
fought ... is to ignore a dimension essential to the understanding,
not simply of the wars themselves but of the societies that fought
them."? This remark echoes that ofJ. R. Hale, equally distinguished
on military matters: 'a good soldier is the product of his whole
environment not just a military academy.'I'"
Howard, significantly, also had this to say about the Europe of the
late nineteenth century: 'European society was militarised to a very
remarkable degree.War was ... considered a matter ... [for] the people
as a whole'l'" and he added, , ... the Nation could only measure its
worth and power against other Nations.T" He further suggested that it
was increasingly difficult for those at the time to avoid the conclusion,
xlii Introduction to the New Edition
that the Nation's 'highest destiny was War'103 and a growing number of
thinkers at the turn of the century made no attempt to do so. These
numbers, most certainly; included thinkers from Britain.104 And Howard
added for good measure that this fact' does something to explain the
most remarkable phenomena of 1914 - the excited crowds filling the
boulevards of every major European city [and] the British volunteers
flocking to the recruiting booths so as to get to France before the fun
was over'. 105 Some fifteen years after Howard wrote those words, at least
one sports historian clearly has still some way to go in the study ofwar
within 'the framework ofeconomic, social and [emphasis added] cultural
history ... [as] part ofa totality ofhuman experience, the parts ofwhich
can only be understood in relation to one another', 106 to achieve a full
understanding of the relationship ofwar to the public school playing
field. To pick up on the earlier metaphor, a deep dive rather than a
shallow plunge is required.
Apropos the relationship between culture and war Kristin L.
Hoganson has recently made the point rather well in Fightingfor
American Manhood that,
In trying to understand why the United States went to war at the turn of
the century, it is tempting to overlook the cultural frameworks that shaped
contemporaries' outlooks and instead to focus on precipitating incidents,
political and diplomatic wranglings, closed-door meetings, and the like. But
to focus exclusively on immediate causes is to skim the surface of the past ...
To fully understand the descent into war, we need to understand how
contemporaries viewed the precipitation in incidents, what seemed to be at
stake in their diplomatic and political wranglings, and what assumptions they
brought to their high-level meetings - and to do that, we need to understand
something of their culture.r" (emphasis added)
Hoganson's impressive study 'is based on the premise that the
conduct of foreign policy does not occur in a vacuum, [and] that
political decision-makers are shaped by their surrounding
cultures";'!" and thus Hoganson concentrates on political culture but
even more precisely, on gender convictions as the cultural roots of
both the Spanish American and Philippine American Wars.
What Hoganson does usefully for American cultural history,
Geoffrey Best, as noted briefly above, does equally usefully for
British cultural history when he refers to the fact that militaristic
writers 'commonly hold the noblest death to be that achieved in
fighting for the fatherland' and that something along these lines 'is
certainly apparent in the public school ethos'l'" of the late Victorian
and Edwardian era. Careful consideration of such ideas about war
learnt in the schools and in society, he suggests, could well lead tolarge measure to the late Gerald Murray,
formerly librarian and archivist of Marlborough College, whose
considerable enthusiasm for this project, remarkable energy and
great kindness produced a stream of letters, papers, suggestions and
contacts without abatement over five years - all of which proved
invaluable. lowe a special debt to him.
The issues of this inquiry were discussed with a large number of
assistant masters and housemasters who all gave freely of their time
to assess the past and the present. In particular I would like to thank
Mr Raymond Venables, Mr James Morwood and Mr A. L. Warr of
Harrow; Mr B. W T. Handford, Mr R. M. Reeve and Mr A. H. P.
Beater of Lancing; Mr Peter Wood and Mr E. C. Barclay-Smith of
Loretto; Mr E. G. H. Kempson, Mr Michael Preston and Mr Michael
Birley of Marlborough; Father F. J. Turner, Mr B. Fitzgerald and
Colonel A. P. F. Shaw of Stonyhurst; Mr T. B. Belk, Mr B. Matthews
and Dr M. Tozer of Uppingham. Others, rather too numerous to
mention here, are thanked most sincerely. From all I gained
insights.
XIII
XIV Acknowledgements
I am obliged also to the retired headmasters, staff and old boys
who wrote to me, often at great length, of their school experiences.
My use of their material in text and note is, I hope, a satisfactory
tribute to its value. Sadly it is not possible to thank in person the
late G.A. N. Lowndes, author of that model ofeducational scholarship,
The Silent Social Revolution. I will remember with great pleasure his
skill in recalling his Marlborough schooldays and in setting them in
the wider context of a changing society, one June morning in his
delightful house overlooking the Green in Marlborough.
Several distinguished scholars of various aspects of the English
public schools - Professor Geoffrey Best, Professor J. de S. Honey,
Professor P. C. McIntosh, Dr T.W Bamford and Mr Patrick Scott ­
offered general advice and encouragement. Their kindness is
gratefully recorded as is the support and encouragement given by
two colleagues, Dr H. Hutchinson of Glasgow University of Mr W
Marker ofJordanhill College.
I must also express my gratitude to those librarians in schools,
colleges, universities and public libraries who so efficiently located
and procured even the most obscure sermon. I am more than
grateful to Mrs Jean Robertso.n of Glasgow University Library for
her skilful assistance, to Mr Stanley Gillam of the London Library
for his permission to read the manuscript autobiography ofJohn
Addington Symonds and to Dr C.J.Wright of the British Museum
Department of Manuscripts for a stimulating discussion on the
literature of athleticism as well as for more orthodox assistance in
locating material. I should like to thank also the staffs of the library
of the Department ofEducation and Science, the National Library
of Scotland, the Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Hamilton Public
Library and the Lanarkshire Reference Library for help at various
times.
The archivists of the Record Offices of many of the English
counties obligingly investigated their archives for material on the
public schools and several notified me of interesting and useful items
in their possession.The school papers and correspondence provided
by Miss A. Green of Berkshire, Mr Brian Smith of Gloucestershire
and Mr B. C. Jones of Cumbria have been especially useful. In
addition, the archives of the Headmasters' Conference and the
Society ofJesus were opened to me by Mr R. St J. Pitts-Tucker and
Rev. F. Edwards, SJ respectively. Mr Stephen Green, the curator of
the MCC supplied valuable statistics on public school cricket. I am
indebted to them all for their courteous attention.
Acknowledgements xv
In addition, to those already mentioned, I should like to thank
the following for permission to use material: Professor Margaret
Sutherland, editor of the British Journal of Educational Studies, for
allowing the inclusion of an early article of mine in the chapter on
the literature of athleticism; Mr T. D. G. Sotheron-Estcourt for the
Harrow papers of T. H. S. Sotheron; the Editor of Punch for various
cartoons and verses; the National Portrait Gallery for the photograph
of Frederick William Farrar; Sherborne School for the photograph
of G. M. Carey and the Parker Gallery for the print of Stonyhurst
College.
Two acknowledgements remain. When teaching commitments
clashed exhaustingly with the demands of research Dr T. R. Bone,
the principal, and the governors ofJordanhil1 granted me a period
of study leave. It was an act of considerable generosity and lowe
them much. Finally, the most profound thanks of all are to my wife.
Her interest and support have been so wholehearted that her effort
on my behalf can only be described as a labour of love.
Foreword
Sheldon Rothblatt
It hardly needs stating that the English public school has a
phenomenal history. Arguably (it has been several times suggested),
the public school was far more important as an educational
institution in the Victorian century than universities, now so much
at centre stage. The model went north to Scotland, over the seas to
colonies (where, as J. A. Mangan once pointed out, it encountered
unexpected and humorous adjustment problems, especially in India)
and to the United States, although modified in the translation to
suit a merchant and professional rather than aristocratic elite. Still,
Groton, Exeter, Putney and Lawrenceville would recognise elements
of a familiar heritage. The public school has survived not only into
but through the twentieth century, despite the heavy opposition and
dislike of Labour governments. It continues to incur the same
criticisms of exclusivity and social snobbery even though it recruits
more broadly than in earlier times and sets national academic and
intellectual standards for schooling. But there is no need to engage
in special pleading in a foreword such as this, merely to mention
the ongoing appeal of the public school, its meritocratic features
and its unrivalled place at the top of the secondary school structure,
particularly since the abolition of state-supported grammar schools
more or less two decades ago.
The rise of the public school generally attributed to the
eighteenth century, the spread of the public school generally
attributed to the nineteenth century, its tenacious longevity and
history as an elite institution from which important political, social
and business, not to mention academic leaders have been drawn,
have naturally attracted the attention of many different kinds of
supporters and critics. The public school, particularly the public
boarding school as a 'total institution' , is newsworthy; and historians
and other kinds of academic moths flutter about the candles. Often
XVII
XVIII Foreword
enough their own investigations of the schools' mysteries,
networking advantages and idiosyncratic masters are as ideologically
inspired as the observations of politicians and journalists or literary
critics and writers. Given the continuing British preoccupation with
class relations, so often repetitious and unenlightening from a
transatlantic perspective, this is hardly surprising.
A number of significant historical works, often if not invariably
exhibiting ideological, defensive or reformist tendencies, appeared
in a particular burst of interest in the 1960s and 1970s, spilling over
into the 1980s. Not since Edward C. Mack of Columbia University
produced his extraordinary studies of the English public schools in
the 1930s had there been work so interesting. Some of the more
prominent names of the post-war period are David Newsome on
the transformation of the mentality of the schools, the shift from
what he called 'godliness and good learning' to muscularity and
philistinism; Brian Simon, who provided a brisk Marxist narration
with no wrinkles; Samuel Bamford, steady and informative; J. R.
de S. Honey, who described the coming of a 'system' of public
schooling; and a curious, insightful and also perverse account by
John Chandos, strong where it could have beenweak and weak
where it could have been strong. There are others. Rupert
Wilkinson offered an analysis ofhow schools create leaders, focusing
on Winchester but also writing about other national educational
systems (China foremost, whose mandarin traditions long afforded
parallels). The doyen of Victorian scholars of his day, George Kitson
Clark, was also attracted to the public schools as part of a general
realignment of classes in the nineteenth century. Lord Annan wrote
stimulatingly about his sometime headmaster at Stowe, one of the
last of the public schools to be founded. Articles on the public school
novel, a genre that accompanied and publicised the spread of the
Victorian schools, continued to appear. More than two decades of
publications produced an unusually fine historiographical record,
rescuing the history of the schools from the doldrums of
unimaginative soundings.
Enter Mangan. When it seemed that all had been said, with the
non-specialist left to sift through much partisan material, he
surprised and delighted students of the history ofEnglish education
- indeed, students of the socialisation process itself and of the
intricate relations between schooling and culture - with a number
of departures from the accumulated repertory. To be sure, he did
not scorn his predecessors and contemporaries. He listened and
Foreword XIX
borrowed but always tested the material against the archives. He also
recognised more fully than predecessors that while the English
public school, some hundred or more by the Edwardian period,
was indeed a type, and getting that right was necessary, the type also
admitted of numerous pertinent variations that taken together
rendered judgements about the history of the schools, and their
actual functioning, far more elusive than customarily depicted.Those
who wanted to condemn the schools were still free to do so. Scenes
of sadistic headmasters were still possible. Those who wanted to
defend the schools were not prevented from wading in. The virtues
were intact. But if historical accuracy and fairness were to be
accorded priority, the complexity of the institution had to be
admitted. Mangan enriched the subject. He did so by concentrating
on what was perhaps the most striking feature of the evolving public
school, the emphasis on and importance attributed to competitive
team sports.
A central question of all exceptional historical work is how to
conceive and describe the ways in which new values and new
arrangements for living and bringing meaning into life enter into
and inform everyday social and institutional arrangements. This
Mangan achieved superbly, combining an eye for the apt and even
colourful moment with conceptual understandings drawn from
sociology (the sociological process) and anthropology (the use of
ritual and symbol). Noone had quite done this before, or done it
so consistently, although Newsome and Chandos had informally
entered the territory. The subject cried out for new approaches.The
result was a breakthrough in depicting the development of the
public schools and their histories down to our own time. Since then
Mangan has gone on to become one of the leading - perhaps the
leading - scholar, certainly a leader of scholars, in developing,
reformulating and extending the comparative dimensions of sports
in relation to society and culture in a highly international
perspective.
When I reviewed the 1981 edition ofAthleticism in theVictorian and
Edwardian Public School for the American Historical Review (june 1982),
I listed the book's main historical distinctions as five in number. The
first was a clear causal analysis of the reasons behind the introduction
of games. Sometimes the origins lay in social regulation, sometimes
in health, sometimes to promote school identity and loyalty. The
second contribution was to contest the common belief that games
came from below as it were, from the boys. They were often imposed,
xx Foreword
and sometimes severely imposed, from above, by the masters. The third
finding was to point out how much authority shifted as a consequence
of games from headmasters to housemasters, the latter frequently
imprisoning the former. This opened up a new understanding ofhow
authority operates in certain school settings, nominal power at the
top at war with custom and practice.
A fascinating fourth point was to explicate how difficult was the
process of turning schools into cheering squads for cricket and
rugger stars. Boys and even some beaks resisted. Historians had
simply assumed that the path to athleticism was a natural and logical
consequence of certain presuppositions about the EnglishVictorian
and Edwardian gentleman as an ideal type, brave but shallow. John
Henry Newman had said as much. Yet life is never smooth, and
Mangan explained how rough the way could be. And a fifth point
noted by me as seminal was Mangan's correction of the common
view that newer institutions, eager for recognition, took the lead in
promoting games. They did not. The older institutions set the pace.
This conclusion upset conventional sentiments about the torpor of
established institutions and where the dynamical impulses in
education can appear. Elite institutions have an astonishing
propensity to renew themselves (unless subject to government
intervention). That is certainly the story of American higher
education. Vide the history of Ivy League, the story ofwomen's liberal
arts colleges, the downs but ups of great state-supported universities.
I see no reason to alter the list. But another look reveals how much
more could have been said were book review editors more generous
with space. Mangan's depiction of youthfulness, deferred maturity
and prolonged adolescence is very fine. His portraits of masters are
astutely drawn - he really knows them. His range is comprehensive
(its principles clearly stated in the book's Prologue), the nature of an
ideology and its variants are well laid out, and the material is fresh
and alert. The Mangan prose is witty, spirited and robust - a trademark
ofhis writing in general.And a final ifnot a last word is that Athleticism
is a work of good sense. Mangan came not to bury nor to praise the
public schools but to explain what they were doing and how they
did it, intentionally and unintentionally. That is the book's apologia.
We can thank all parties for reissuing a classic.
SHELDON ROTHBLATT
University of California, Berkeley,
and Royal Institute ofTechnology, Stockholm
Introduction
Jeffrey Richards
When Sir Henry Rider Haggard dedicated that grand romance Allan
Quatermain to his son Jock, he wrote that he did so 'In the hope
that in days to come, he and many other boys, whom I shall never
know, may in the acts and thoughts of Allan Quatermain and his
companions, find something to help him and them to reach what
with Sir Henry Curtis I hold to be the highest rank whereto we can
attain - the state and dignity of an English gentleman.' It was a
statement of a commonly agreed ideal. But now a century later the
gentleman is a species not just endangered but verging on
extinction. For the code which sustained him and according to which
he regulated his life has gone so decisively out of fashion that it is
a subject only of mockery and derision. The description
'gentlemanly' carries nowadays the connotation 'quaintly old
fashioned' .Two world wars and consequent dramatic social changes
have between them effectively seen off the gentlemanly ethic. It is
therefore, like all dead ideologies, a fit subject for historians. Pre­
eminent among the crop of books seeking to explain the content
and the appeal of the gentlemanly code in all its aspects is J. A.
Mangan's Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School,
subtitled 'The Emergence and Consolidation of an Educational
Ideology' . First published in 1981, it has now established itself as a
classic work for the light it throws on that set of attitudes and ideas
that shaped our national outlook and determined our national
response to events fornearly one hundred years.
The public schools were an integral part of the nineteenth-century
revival of chivalry, an ideal embraced by political movements as
diverse as 'Young England' and Christian Socialism, propagated by
youth organisations like the Boy Scouts and the Church Lads
brigade, taught in schools both public and state, and dramatised in
literature both factual and fictional. The extent to which the chivalric
XXI
XXII Introduction
ideal had formed the outlook and influenced the behaviour of
generations of Englishmen can be seen in two of the most sombre
but celebrated events of 1912 - the gallant deaths of Captain Robert
Falcon Scott and his companions in the frozen wastes ofAntarctica
- 'We have been to the Pole,' wrote Scott, 'and we shall die like
gentlemen' - and in the actions of those gentlemen passengers who
with enviable sang-froid climbed into full evening dress before
going down with the Titanic.
Such actions were the end product ofa process essentially initiated
by another Scott - Sir Walter Scott. Interest in matters medieval and
chivalric had revived as part of the whole Romantic reaction to the
measured, passionless classicism of the eighteenth century. Scott
filtered extensive historical research through his romantic
imagination to produce in poems and novels like Ivanhoe and The
Talisman a stylised and idealised chivalric world. The medieval
revival which these works triggered had enormous ramifications.
At one dotty extreme there was the staging offull-scale tournaments
and the building of elaborate and fantastical imitation Gothic castles.
In the arts, there was a massive revival of interest in the cycle of
stories about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Their
potent mythic appeal and richly allusive imagery flow through pre....
Raphaelite painting, the poetry ofTennyson and Matthew Arnold
and the countless editions, adaptations and illustrations of Malory.
But in the practical field, there was also the elaboration of a code
of behaviour for life - the reformulation of the image of the
gentleman as the idealised medieval knight, embodiment of the
virtues of bravery, loyalty, courtesy, generosity, modesty, purity and
compassion and endowed with an indelible sense of noblesse oblige
towards women, children and social inferiors. It was the now
forgotten Kenelm Digby in the now unread The Broadstone ofHonour
(first published in 1822) who made the idealised medieval chivalry
of Scott a living and meaningful code of life for the gentlemen of
his own day. The basic ideas of Digby - that character is more
important than intellect, that the training of the body in athletic
exercise is vital to the inculcation of character, that moneymaking
is squalid and that there was a natural affinity between gentlemen
and the lower classes - formed dominant strands in our national
ideology for nearly a century. The legacy of this ideology is with us
still in for instance the lack of esteem with which wealth-generating
industry is held and the generalised suspicion of intellectuals who
are seen to be 'too clever by half'.
Introduction XXIII
By the middle of the nineteenth century the language and
imagery of chivalry had been so far absorbed into the fabric of
Victorian life and thought that it was automatic to see the gentleman
exclusively in terms of the latter-day version of the paladin of
medieval chivalry. It was deliberately promoted by key figures of
the age in order to produce a ruling elite both for the nation and
the expanding Empire who would be inspired by noble and selfless
values.
But of course far more crucial even than transforming the views
of adults was informing the views of children - and this is where
the public schools came in. Although Dr Thomas Arnold, who is
still regarded as the father of the reformed public school system,
took no interest in games and thought chivalry evil and reactionary,
the public schools soon became the greatest repositories of chivalric
teaching.
The reality of Dr Arnold's view got lost in the mythic image
created by the enormously influential Tom Brown's Schooldays, in
which Thomas Hughes mingled his boyhood memories of Rugby
and the Doctor with the philosophy of'muscular Christianity' which
he had embraced since leaving Rugby and which had much in
common with Kenelm Digby's precepts. The primacy of character
over intellect and the necessity for a healthy mind in a healthy body
are epitomised by Tom Brown, whose father Squire Brown sent him
to Rugby to be turned into 'a brave, helpful, truth-telling
Englishman and a gentleman and a Christian'.
Organised games became an integral part of the training of the
character of successive generations ofTom Browns, turning them
into young knights and gentlemen. As Sir Robert Baden-Powell told
his Scouts in 1908: 'Football was a grand game for developing a lad
physically and also morally, for he learned to play with good temper
and unselfishness, to play in his place and "play the game" and these
are the best of training for any game of life.' Here are all the
metaphors to which sport gave rise in defining the behaviour proper
to a gentleman - 'Being a Good Sport', 'Keeping a Straight Bat',
'Fair Play' and above all 'Playing the Game'. It was Sir Henry
Newbolt who gave this idea its most celebrated expression in his
poem Vitai Lampada, learned by heart by generations of boys:
And it's not for the sake of the ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote,
Play up, play up, and play the Game.
XXIV Introduction
The poem is hackneyed now, the sentiment derided. But it cannot
be stressed too strongly that it enshrines a concept that countless
men and boys lived and died by.
It is the development of this aspect of the gentleman's training ­
the cult of athleticism - that is Professor Mangan's subject. His book
is awesomely scholarly and meticulously documented. But for all
his scholarly rigour and laudably reiterated horror of
oversimplification, Mangan reveals a plumed helmet beneath the
mortar board when he talks of his book as 'an attempt to break a
lance in the interests of accuracy', unmistakable echoes of that
chivalric cavalcade that now gallops ghostly through the pages of
history.
The concepts of gentleman and sportsman became
interchangeable through the cult ofathleticism and chivalric imagery
was transferred readily to the football and cricket fields. But as
Mangan confirms, it was not Rugby's Dr Arnold but a coterie of
celebrated mid-Victorian headmasters like Vaughan of Harrow,
Cotton of Marlborough and Thring of Uppingham who promoted
games at school. Organised games were introduced in part to
counteract the effect of less wholesome leisure activities of public
schoolboys such as stone-throwing, poaching, birdsnesting and at
Marlborough, beating frogs to death. But also, against a general
background of vandalism and indiscipline, it was a potent means of
social control and character forming.
By the end of the century, games were compulsory and
athleticism dominant. As a corollary anti-intellectualism was rife and
intellectuals came to be seen as essentially unmanly. As one
commentator wrote in 1872: 'A nation of effeminate, enfeebled
bookworms scarcely forms the most effective bulwark of a nation's
liberties'; though in fact these poor despised creatures of culture
and intellect were just as indispensable to the nation to guard its
soul as the gentleman sportsmen were to defend its heart.
Mangan scrupulously analyses the structure of symbolism and
ritual that sustained the games-playing ideology - the prestigious
old boys matches and the house matches, the sporting housemasters
and even more the schoolboy sports heroes - the 'bloods' - who
provided role models. There was the system of colours and of
costume, tasselled caps, sashes, scarves and flamboyant blazers - the
Uppingham XV even carried riding crops - dress and privilege
gradings as stratified, formalised, detailed and intricate as those of
the ByzantineImperial court in its heyday. The loyalty inculcated,
Introduction xxv
the aspirations fostered and the role models provided remained with
many boys forever.
Then there were the school songs, chanted ritually, and
characterised by Mangan as a 'unique mixture of emotionalism,
innocence, myopia and rigidity'. He singles out as the particular
virtues promoted: loyalty, masculinity, patriotism and decency. The
morality of ,Playing the Game' was synonymous with that of the
chivalric knight - magnanimity in victory, dignity in defeat, hatred
of injustice, decency and modesty in all things. Both foreign and
domestic commentators identified athleticism as so central to the
national ideology that many were prepared to attribute the
nineteenth-century pre-eminence of the British Empire to that
games-playing code.
It is no coincidence that many of the sports-promoting
headmasters were great enthusiasts for the Empire. The rise of the
Empire put a premium on authority, discipline, team spirit and
physical hardihood and the public schools became in the words of
E. C. Mack 'a mint for the coining ofEmpire builders'.The doctrine
of Imperialism as developed by the late Victorian imperial
visionaries was in one sense but chivalry writ large, with the British
as the elect, bringing to the underprivileged peoples of the world
fair play and good government. The philosopher George Santayana
merely confirmed the closeness of school and Empire when he
declared: 'Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had
such a sweet, just, boyish master.'
The climacteric of all this chivalry and sportsmanship was
provided by the Great War. It was in a sense the inevitable, tragic
fulfilment of the nineteenth century's heroic ideal. So often had the
poetry equated war with sport, so deeply had a generation been
inculcated with the ideals ofphysical preparedness, duty and honour,
and so potent was the image of the glorious death of the 'Happy
Warrior' that the declaration of war against the ogre Germany in
defence of 'gallant little Belgium' was greeted with jubilation and
exhilarated young men flocked to the colours in their thousands. It
comes as no surprise in this context to learn that at the Somme in
1916 Captain W P. Nevill produced a football and he and his
company of the East Surreys dribbled it into battle, where most of
them were killed. 'True to the land that bore them, the Surreys play
the game' said a commemorative poem. But the golden generation
ofyoung knights perished in the trenches and the hell of no-man's
land and with them the heart went out of the chivalric ideal. For
XXVI Introduction
the reality of war had turned out to be not noble or glorious. It
was mud and blood and gas and gangrene.
Unlike some histories of the chivalric revival, Mangan has sought
neither to denigrate nor disparage his subject. Like the good
historian he is, he has sought to assess the relative strengths and
weaknesses. He is quite clear and quite right about the failings of
the gentlemanly code, the dangers of snobbism and philistinism, of
rigidity and lack of imagination. But in the end Mangan concludes
that 'there is something essentially noble about playing the game
for its own sake, not taking unfair advantage, abiding by the rules,
subordination of self in order to render the best service as a member
of a team'. It is a courageous and timely revaluation following the
long period of unchallenged supremacy enjoyed by 'Lytton
Stracheyism', that alternative code of cynicism, self-interest and
irreverence that was the sworn enemy and eventual supplanter of
chivalry. For quite simply a healthy society needs something ofboth
philosophies - but in balance and in proportion.
JEFFREY RICHARDS
Professor of Cultural History
Lancaster University
Regression and Progression:
Introduction to the N ew Edition
J. A.Mangan
When Athleticism was originally published by Cambridge University
Press in the early 1980s, Professor G. R. Batho wrote generously,
'the story is told succinctly in some seventy thousand words but with
grace and with constant critical insight, so that many accepted
judgements are revised".' It seemed that a revisionist corner had
been turned. Mordicant and unsubstantiated mythologies
confidently asserted, had been laid to rest: Thomas Arnold, for
example, had absolutely nothing to do with the rise of athleticism.
It was a cause of not a little dismay, therefore, that within not much
more than a decade, once again, with equal confidence
unsubstantiated myths were being aired. In a general historical
su.rvey of the sport of the British, one historian from the 'sports
history' school, Richard Holt, argued confidently without so much
as a single supporting footnote, of the Victorian public school system,
that
By teaching boys how to lose well and how to win with dignity, the wider
competitive principle was strengthened. For to succeed in any competition
- sporting, academic, or economic - the odds were very much that you would
lose before you would win. It was vital that boys should not be discouraged by
initial set-backs and that they should persevere until success finally came. 2 (emphasis
added)
Unfortunately, this statement is superficial 'sports history'; and
regrettably, it is also casual cultural history. Even the most cursory
reading ofJohn Chandos' Boys Together' dealing inter alia with the
violence and vice of the public school system prior to 1860, would
reveal how totally inadequate it is as a description of the first half
of the Victorian age. Overlooking the fact that the quotation
implicitly if rather romantically, refers to the concept of'fair play' , a
pragmatic phenomenon of the lateVictorian period and after, which
owed its genesis in large measure to the need to control pupil
XXVll
XXVIII Introduction to the New Edition
hooliganism," and overlooking the further fact that the public schools
were concerned as much with the 'corporate principle' as the
'competitive principle' and more interested in the group than the
individual, it is a far from adequate summary of public school life
of even this later period.
Not too put too fine a gloss on it while not for all, for too many,
on and off playing fields, the public school experience was nasty,
brutish and not short enough: a world ofdiscouragement rather than
encouragement, failure rather than success, humiliation rather than
dignity! By the late Victorian period, it was, too frequently, a
polarised world of encouraged 'hearties' and discouraged 'aesthetes',
elevated 'bloods' and diminished 'remnants', supported athletes and
neglected others.
This too frequent state of affairs is shockingly and revealingly
illustrated by Eton at the turn of the century. According to the
historian Esme Wingfield-Stratford, an Etonian schoolboy at the
time, an unwritten law of anarchy prevailed there. Life was an
anarchic lottery. Every house was a law unto itself - boys' law not
masters' law. Existence could be 'an active inferno of sadism or an
easy-going haven of peace," The athletic reputation of the house
more often than not was the key. In those with a high athletic
reputation life was proportionately tough - 'just as it was in Sparta,
among Grecian cities, where flogging was woven with the holiest
zeal into the pattern ofeducation," The houses ofathletic luminaries,
advised Wingfield-Stratford, were to be avoided like the plague! Of
course, in the atmosphere of the time, these were far from few and
far between. Edmond Warre, the Muscular Christian headmaster,
was condemned by Wingfield-Stratford for averting his eyes 'from
the sadistic orgies that were part of the regular routine of the houses
under his suzerainty."
In 1945 looking back on his Etonian fin de siecle school days
Wingfield-Stratford wrote, that those houses 'most prolific of the
only sort of distinction that any Eton Oppidan would have dreamed
of coveting' , namely athletic distinction but also other houses, 'came
as nearly as anything English could to anticipating those forcing­houses of virile toughness ... so essential a part of the Fascist and
Nazi educational technique. Flogging there, and the endurance ojflogging,
were as much aform ofathletics as compulsory football' (emphasis added).
There was no particular sense of shame involved and hardly any of
justice or responsibility. The upper boys quite frankly enjoyed
beating the lower ones and were proud of whatever skill they
Introduction to the New Edition XXIX
possessed in doing it so as to inflict the maximum pain. The appetite
naturally grew by what it fed on. Any, or no excuse was considered
good enough for the command 'bend over!" And housemasters
could be just as bad." Eton, incidentally, was far from atypical. 10
The statement from Sport and the British then is misconceived
mythology. The evidence for this is easily available and simply
overwhelming. It is as well to recall the recent mordacious words
ofJeremy Potter: 'Complaints of life-long traumas resulting from
the restrictive routines of philistine institutions have been loudly
voiced by generations of aesthetes and intellectuals who have
suffered from the unwelcome pressures of the communal life at their
boarding schools.'ll Earlier, there was Edward Carpenter's
convincing culinary metaphor about the public schoolboy as '''well
pounded into shape, kneaded and baked" for the "upper crust'" .12
It is as well to recall also that in the late Victorian public school system
there was not over-much concern with academic or economic
competition, as circumstances at Radley to be considered shortly,
clearly reveal. And Radley was far from being atypical. It is as well
too, to recall David Cannadine:' ... all historians to some extent
project the preoccupations of their own day on to the past that they
study. In one guise, they are the lords of time; in another, they are,
like everyone else, the prisoners of time,":' The mentors and mantras
of modern guidance and counselling are now all the rage!
Peter Beck, a historian, recently responsible for scrutinizing the
work of historians of various persuasions, inclinations and talents,
has written pleasingly of the sports historian with absolute
justification: 'a large number of sports history monographs, chapters
and articles merit comparison with those found in any other field
of history' .14 However, he has also written that 'there are [still] too
many weakly researched studies' .15 Such castigations are easily
earned by careless, if confident, assertions about the Victorian public
school - so important as the matrix of so much later global sport.
Apropos of all this, Joachim Riihl, with a generosity matching
that of G. R. Batho, wrote of Athleticism some time after its original
appearance, that it set out 'to study a subject which is crucial to an
understanding of the public school system as a whole ... [nowhere]
do we have a similar treatment of such depth, balance and
impartiality' .16 What is disturbing about the generalization from Sport
and the British is the lack of'depth, balance and impartiality'.Where
is the evidence for such a therapeutic view of playing field
competition? Where is there a solid appreciation of the real nature
xxx Introduction to the New Edition
of these schools? Where is there a sensitive recognition of the
institutional complexities born of competing ideologies and their
consequences? Where is there a subtle understanding of both the
coexistence of, and the confrontation between, Muscular
Christianity and Social Darwinism? Where is there a careful
consideration of conflict and congruence between period rhetoric
and reality? Above all, where is the scholarship that should underpin
such an assertion?
It is reassuring to discover, with regard to the Victorian and later
public school system, that since 1981, the year in which Athleticism
was first published, while one sports historian has provided a casual
mythological construction, one popular historian has preferred a
careful historical reconstruction. Christopher Hibbert's No Ordinary
Place: Radley College and the Public School System 1847-1997 is a model
of a school history: beautifully written, deeply researched,
marvellously evocative.
In the late 1890s athleticism was rampant at Radley. Hibbert
paints Radley into the general cultural canvas of the time, in his
discussion of the 'Radley disease known as "Bloodism" '17 which
lasted, slowly declining in influence, from the 1880s to the 1930s.
Throughout this period the apolaustic 'bloods' (favoured games
players) as elsewhere in the public school system, retained a special
place in school life, and even as late as the 1930s the Warden of
Radley (W H. Ferguson, 1925-1937) 'had to acknowledge his failure
in stamping out the excessive distinctions accorded them in many
... respects' .18 Nevertheless, as Hibbert remarks, excess was not as
bad as earlier in the century when, for example, at Charterhouse,
as at many other public schools, the 'bloods' of the Elevens ruled
the school, dictated school custom and celebrated their hieratic status
with complete confidence.
o h, we are the bloods of the place.
We shine with superior grace
At the goal or the wicket, at footer or cricket,
And nothing our pride can efface.
The worms of the Sixth we despise ...
We count them as dirt in our eyes."
But it was not all that much better! The 'bloods' days at Radley were
numbered, however, when on 13 July, 1933, one of the masters, A.
K. Boyd, read a paper to sympathetic members of the Common
Room in which he set out what he took to be the school's problems
and proposed possible remedies. He was critical of the middle-aged
Introduction to the New Edition XXXI
product ofRadley: 'agreeable, tolerant, kindly, pleasant to have about
the house, ... a slave to good form and like most public school boys
a Philistine and frequently a snob', adding that lacking aggressive
ambition, he was 'permeated by the country-house spirit which was
breathed over Radleians'. 20 Such men were guilty, Boyd claimed,
of an unhealthy complacency, were strangely class-conscious and
certainly short on distinction in later life. Boyd was clear in his own
mind as to the reasons for such shortcomings. The main reason, in
his view, why Radley was not a first-class school was 'its ingrained
tradition not of idleness but of denigration of intellectual
development'. There was 'a complete absence of intellectual pride,
intellectual ambition, and any scheme of intellectual values
whatever' .21
In passing, it should be noted, incidentally, that there is little
evidence at late Victorian, and, as Boyd makes very clear, later Radley,
of any great institutional concern with the encouragement of
perseverance in classrooms in the interests of creating an individual
competitive spirit! And Radley was not atypical. 22
Boyd proposed as remedies for institutional anti-intellectualism:
a raised entry standard and the introduction of a weekly report on
individual industry and motivation. Since it was clearly an obstacle
to such reforms, he reserved his condemnatory final comments for
the 'overwhelming prestige attached by authority to games'.23Those
responsible for this state of affairs, in Boyd's opinion, were the
Council (the School Governors), most of whom were ill-qualified
to serve on 'any educational authority' and 'far too ready to perpetrate
all that was worst in the 'Christian and gentleman' tradition', 24 the
Radleian parents who assisted in the perpetration of ' the same,
complacent hopelessly unintellectual tradition'F' and certain Radley
masters 'who had absorbed the lotus which "grows so beautifully
on Radley soil" '.26 Boyd castigated the rewards of 'prestige,
authority, privileges, sartorial distinctions and remission of work'
available to 'boys with little other than athletic prowess to
recommend them";" In a belated rappel a l'ordre, the Warden
responded with various reforms including the attempted abolition
of the 'bloods'. 28 Nevertheless, for some time yet this attempt by
the Warden seemed to be no more than simplybaying at the moon.
Athleticism, as elsewhere, remained alive and well, if ageing, at
Radley for most of the first half of the twentieth century.
Jeremy Potter's Headmaster: The Life ofJohn Percival, RadicalAutocrat
published in 1998, is lightweight in both erudition and elegance in
XXXII Introduction to the New Edition
comparison with Hibbert's No Ordinary Place. Happily, however,
Potter does make an effort, albeit limited, to underpin assertion with
evidence in his consideration of this famous late Victorian
headmaster.
John Percival, long-serving headmaster of Clifton College from
1862 to 1879, like Edward Thring at Uppingham, attempted to
combine work and play harmoniously and to avoid any division in
the school between intellectuals and athletes.i" Percival certainly
believed in games: 'Games were the cement that bound his state
together. Games maintained the moral health of the individual.P"
However, the Cliftonian ideal was the whole boy. As Potter remarks:
'Every boy was under pressure to compose ... hexameters and open
the innings; to master scientific principles and be a stalwart second­
row forward.P' It was an idealism doomed to failure. The School's
'sporting heroes were duly worshipped', 32 and the intellectuals
reviled. Potter idiosyncratically ascribes this to the fact that
Gloucestershire and Somerset were sporting counties. He shows
little understanding of the purpose, power or prevalence of the
period ideology of athleticism and its impact on the public school
system, or for that matter, of the role of the house and housemaster
in manufacturing heroes out of hooligans, conformity out of
individualism and order out ofanarchy. He notes, without comment,
that housemasters such as 'Dorkyns and Brown were responsible
for much of the significance attached to games.l" He takes the matter
no further. He leaves it hanging in the air.The opportunity to explain
what he is writing about rather than simply write about it, is lost."
Nevertheless, what is clear from his bland consideration is that
athleticism defeated Percival as it defeated others.:"
Potter records of the worship of the 'bloods': 'All this was too
much for Percival. Before he left, he went on record with a warning
that the physical side of school life had been taken too far. "I, of
course, very distinctly recognise the great value of organised games
to a school," he said in a speech at the Headmasters' Conference in
1873, but "my own feeling is that they engross a great deal too much
of the average boy's energy at school" .'36 Indeed, Percival went much
further, deprecating the boys' preoccupation with games and the
consequent deleterious impact on their studies: 'It is not so much
the amount of time ordinarily given to school games, as the amount
of talk which follows upon the time and the impression the games
make on the boys' minds, which are absolutely ruinous, so far as
many boys are concerned, to intellectual development.t" Percival,
Introduction to the New Edition XXXIII
like Thring, was defeated by philistine old boys, housemasters,
parents and pupils - and the general ethos of the system.
A little later, a revealing indication of the general philistine impact
and the curious attraction of athleticism, is to be found in the Report
of the Inaugural Conference of Catholic Colleges upon Secondary Education
in 1896.38 M. E. Sadler;" a period educational guru, was invited to
attend the second day of the two-day conference held at the
Archbishop's House, Westminster, 40 to offer his advice on the way
forward for the foremost Catholic secondary schools. Sadler was far
from happy with the Protestant public schools: 'There was one
exceptional influence on Secondary Schools.The great attention paid
to athletic sports which made young and athletic masters much
sought after, while at the same time there was a great danger in the
general excess of interest in athletics."! In Sadler's view, arguably
standards of attainment had been lowered owing to this exaggerated
interest. However, he did not get things all his own way.The Jesuit,
Father Galton of Beaumont College, possibly irritated by this
heretical pejorist and perhaps with his more illustrious, games­
playing sister college, Stonyhurst in mind," asked no doubt politely
but certainly pointedly, 'whether English schools were not better
than German ones in training men, on account of their athleticsj"
Sadler, possibly nonplussed in turn by this stalwart Catholic defence
of the non-Catholic public school version of the Protestant ethic,
conceded that that was indeed the case and 'felt to be so in
Germany' ,44 and for this reason English games were being adopted
there. Nevertheless, contrary and obstinate, he held fast to his critical
view of the games ethos. It comprised 'a grave danger' as it fostered
a wrong ideal of life." He clearly did not convince everyone at the
Conference!
Quite astonishingly, but interestingly in the light of Hibbert's
excellent book, this ethos is studiously ignored by Tony Money, a
Radley archivist of many years, in his coffee-table production
containing wonderful pictures, an anodyne narrative and a 'stiff
upper lip' approach to the purposes of the 'diversions' he portrays
so well and considers so inadequately in his Manly and Muscular
Diversions: Public Schools and the Nineteenth-Century Sporting Revival
published in 1998. He has achieved a remarkable feat in writing
about this 'sporting revival' without a single mention in the text,
notes or index ofT.W. Bamford,John Chandos,John Honey, Peter
McIntosh, David Newsome and above all, E. C. Mack, and indeed,
any well-known present-day analyst of the nineteenth- and
XXXIV Introduction to the New Edition
twentieth-century public school! Is this interpretative luddism an
attempt at a revival of nineteenth-century public school
philistinism? With his predilection for wholly ignoring the
authorities of recent decades, it is hardly surprising he perpetuates
hoary mythologies stating that 'Sportsmanship was ... a product of
the 19th century Christian gentleman ideal of Dr. Arnold' ,46 while
his treatment of amateurism is partisan, incomplete and inadequate.
His brief consideration of the 'Amateur ethos' eschews any comment
on elements of snobbery, exclusion and self-interest, again revealing
a reluctance to read around and reflect upon the issue adequately."
This is antiquarianism reborn; narrow, limited and idiosyncratic. A
paucity of informed sources and as a consequence, a narrow
concentration on idealism rather than a broad appreciation of realism
also characterises Mark Girouard in his consideration of the public
school of the second half of the nineteenth century, with his orphean
obsession with 'Victorian Knights', 48 virtue and the upper classes
in, for example, Victorian Values edited by T. C. Smout in 1992. It is
surely time it was appreciated in such quarters that the code learned
at the public schools" was as much Darwinian as Chivalricl'"
An interesting discussion of athleticism in the public school
system is contained in the two-part article on Etonian 'Socratism'
by Clive Dewey published in The InternationalJournal of the History
of Sport in 1995.51Dewey states quite correctly that athleticism, 'the
cult of athletics' as he calls it, has become 'one of the great
explanatory devices of the late-Victorian historian',52 and repeats
the important point raised earlier in Athleticism that 'the value of an
idea in history lies in discovering the limits ofits validity. Not proving
it wrong, nor proving it right;just working out how far it fits.'53 There
is still much work to be done before a comprehensive record of the
movement and its 'fit' is available. One aspect of the movement
currently under consideration by J. A. Mangan and Colm Hickley
involves the hitherto unexamined existence of'adapted athleticism'
in the elementary schools of Britain and Empire. The first article
on this topic was published in The European Sports History Review of
1999,54 and the second will appear in theforthcoming Sport in
Australasian Society: Past and Present. 55
In the case of Eton, Dewey, of course, offers a single case study
of the most marginal resistance. In the Edwardian era' ... the desire
to excel at sport became the organizing obsession of the boys' lives.
They longed to collect colours: to have enough caps and scarves and
stockings to ring the changes "with becoming modesty and
Introduction to the New Edition xxxv
insouciance" .'56 Even at Eton, with arguably a stronger tradition of
diversity than virtually any other major public school of the period,
it was only 'a small band of subversives [which] persisted in
disseminating Socratic values' .57 The limited extent of opposition,
in the face of'the immense premium placed on athletic prowess', 58
reveals the power of the ideology at this pre-eminent public school.
Nevertheless, Dewey adds to earlier subtlety of evidence and
interpretation. His well-argued and attractively written articles are
a valuable contribution to the study of the ideology. In the last
analysis, of course, what Dewey reveals is a small coterie of
intellectuals battling heroically against games mania, philistinism and
anti-intellectualism. And what is never clear from his two articles is
how many boys 'the Socratic teachers' actually reached and
influenced. Certainly intellectualism was neverat a premium. Here
is the heart of the matter.
At one point in his discussion Dewey states that: 'Three or four
times a term, the school assembled to see prodigies of learning
receive their prizes and hear sixth-formers recite extracts from the
great monuments ofEnglish literature. But the very custom in which
they declaimed their "speeches" - black breeches and silk stockings,
the court dress of George III - proclaimed their obsolescence. The
only things that mattered, after the advent of the cult of athletics,
were colours and CUpS.'59 However this is not quite true. In his
summary, Dewey himself notes:
A steady stream of subversive intellectuals flowed out of the Socratics' houses,
into the heart of the Establishment. They clawed their way into cabinets of
every political persuasion: Rosebery, Balfour, N orthcote, Curzon, Dalton. They
popped up at court, as advisers to the sovereigns: Lord Esher. They drove the
Church of England in new directions, whether they were Christian Socialists
or Anglo-Catholics: Canon Scott-Holland, Lord Halifax. They revolutionised
academic disciplines: Maynard Keynes. They wrote plays and novels and
reviews: Maurice Baring, Cyril Connolly, Shane Leslie, Percy Lubbock,
Desmond MacCarthy, Anthony Powell. They formed famous coteries: the
Souls, Bloomsbury, Horizon.r''
and, he quite correctly concludes:
As the loss of empire robbed the games ethic of its raison d' etre and
compulsory sport disappeared from sixth form curricula, Socratic values
became the working ideology of a generation. We are all into 'love, truth and
beauty'; or to be more accurate, everyone under the age of thirty is into
relationships, therapy and fashion. It is possible that the Socratic teachers
represented a strain in English culture which is more enduring, more influential,
than the monster they set out to slay.61
XXXVI Introduction to the New Edition
This observation echoes the point made in Athleticism with reference
to the Marlborough 'Hereticks':
At Marlborough the defiant and posturing 'high aesthetic band' celebrated
their daring irregularity with the publication of a controversial magazine, The
Heretick. It was largely taken up with a predictable attack on the Victorian
values of virile masculinity. Its cover portrayed a cropped-haired, square-jawed,
wide-shouldered athlete, squatting on a large rugby ball, surrounded by
mischievous and taunting pixies. [Anthony Blunt, John Betjeman, Louis
MacNeice and others]. Below was the caption 'Upon Philistia I will triumph'
- an entirely accurate prognostication.F
Perhaps it should not go unnoticed that a recent article in The
European Sports History Review by J. A. Mangan and Callum
McKenzie adds a further dimension to Dewey's inquiries. In it the
point is made that 'Bloodism' (the product of athleticism), 'Loderism'
(fieldsports enthusiasm) and 'Socraticism' (Dewey's interest) were
all, in their different ways, manifestations of training in masculinity
at Eton in the lateVictorian and Edwardian eras.v'
Hibbert, Potter and Dewey, ifnot Money, add valuable information
to that already made available in Athleticism regarding the dominance
of the ideology in the public schools from approximately 1880 to
1940. Ofcourse, in some places this dominance seems to have existed
earlier and to have ended later." All three writers demonstrate that
there are still rich 'veins' to be tapped in the archives of many public
schools and much more to learn about the nature, variety and
complexity of this extraordinary, powerful, essentially middle-class
educational movement which has exerted such a direct and indirect
influence on both modern society and modern sport - itself now a
contemporary global phenomenon of extraordinary influence,
politically, economically, culturally and emotionally.
One of the most interesting outcomes of the publication of
Athleticism has been the interest it has aroused in Colm Hickey, a
London schoolteacher, who has undertaken, successfully, to show
that it permeated at least some teacher training colleges and
elementary schools.P" Thus, a valuable piece in the 'athleticism'
jigsaw is being put in place and the early thoughts ofPeter McIntosh,
surely one of the most refulgent and in some quarters inexcusably
neglected, of the British pioneers of'sports history',66 on this matter,
are amplified and, in part, corrected by Hickey and others.t" As
Mangan and Hickey, mentioned earlier, remark:
McIntosh paints a bleak picture of games provision in elementary schools in
the early twentieth century [giving] the clear impression that at this time
Introduction to the New Edition XXXV!!
physical education in the shape of games was a virtually non-existent ... that
the schools had very poor facilities and that games were seen by the Board
as either unnecessary or unsuitable for elementary school children ... [In fact],
non-existence was not necessarily the case. For one thing playgrounds were
not park playing fields! The absence of games has been exaggerated both
prior to and after 1900.68
Another who takes a similar position to McIntosh, albeit in
somewhat modified form, is Stephen Humphries, who 'maintains
that the state elementary schooling system ... was not designed to
impart literacy, skills and knowledge as ends in themselves. Instead
learning was conceived as a means to an end - it made the pupil
more amenable to a socialisation process, through which his ...
character and future lifestyle might be shaped'.69 In short, Humphries
endorses the classic thesis: education for social control. He does
concede wisely that games were introduced into elementary schools
after 1906 but argues that: 'the inclusion of games and sports in the
school curriculum was justified in terms of their encouragement
of a corporate spirit and their development of the physical strength
and moral fibre of working class youth - thus contributing to
imperial success and stability'.70 With the proletariat controlled in
the metropolis, the natives were to be controlled in the colonies ­
and the elementary schools were to be part of the process.
While there is some truth in this, it is hardly the whole truth. In
fact, it is something of a simplification. In reality, elementary school
team games, as in the public schools, had a multiplicity of functions,
including control, pleasure, recreation and fitness, but undoubtedly
the foremost purpose was moral. One stimulus to this state of affairs
was the presence of public school educated staff in the training
colleges, often in the most senior positions, 'who brought their
education precepts and practices to these institutions and widened
their pedagogical rationale and activities'.71
In addition, the Cross Commission of 1888, which was
concerned with the teacher training colleges, lent its weight - both
directly and indirectly - to their espousal of athleticism with the
result that the ideology existed in, was promulgated in, and was
absorbed by the elementary school." Of course, it must be made
clear that the ideology encountered substantial difficulties in the
elementary school system and had nothing like the impact it had in
the public school system since headmasters had less freedom,
facilities were far poorer and pupils went home in the afiernoou."
It must be appreciated also that, in contrast to the public school boy,
xxxviii Introduction to the New Edition
the elementary school boy wrote very few published reminiscences,
biographies and autobiographies so that a detailed record of events
in these schools is exceptionally hard, and probably impossible, to
obtain.
Nonetheless, in schools like Rosendale Road Board School,
Lambeth after 1900 underJohn Goddard Timms and Oldridge Road
Board School, Balham under W.J.Wilson prior to 1900, a variation
on public school athleticism with, incidentally, its own jocular and
execrable rhetoric of cohesion, patriotism and enthusiasm,
flourished. 74
N ever mind the half back line
The Roses [Rosendale] beat them every time
Give the ball a swing
Right over to the wing
Roses, Roses, Roses on the ba-a-ll"
Other schoolmasters like George Sharples were not single but
multiple diffusionists of adapted athleticism throughout the
elementary school system. Sharples, who was trained at St. John's
Teacher Training College, Battersea, was, in sequence, in 1876
headmaster ofAll Saints' Church School, Bolton, in 1879 headmaster
of Pikes Lane, Bolton, in 1883 headmaster of Spring Grove Board
School, Huddersfield, in 1888 headmaster of Leeds Central Higher
Grade Board School and finally headmaster of Waterloo Board
School, Manchester: 'He spread the ideals of athleticism widely as
a "roving" headmaster.I"
In summary then, athleticism of a kind gradually developed in at
least some of the elementary schools ofEngland from 1870 onwards.
Of course, the point must be laboured once more that athleticism
in these schools was not the athleticism of the public schools. The
ideology, of necessity, was adapted. The reasons for this have been
well rehearsed and do not require lengthy repetition. In particular,
lack of time and lack of facilities, among other things, posed
problems which were only partially overcome. Nevertheless, when
games were proscribed by legislation in school time, for a variety
of reasons but with moral education firmly in mind, schools played
them after school or on Saturday mornings - a legacy still extant
today - and if schools lacked their own playing fields, and most did,
often they simply took to the nearest park. 77
In the transmission of athleticism from private secondary school
to public elementary state school, one bridge was the 'Oxbridge'
College and the Teacher Training College. In an article entitled
Introduction to the New Edition XXXIX
'Athleticism in the Service of the Proletariat: Preparation for the
Elementary School and the Extension of Middle-Class Manliness'
by J. A. Mangan and Colm Hickey;" the hitherto unconsidered role
of 'Oxbridge' educated Principals and Tutors of the post 1888
London teacher training colleges in the assimilation of athleticism,
is examined closely. In the wake of the 1888 Cross Commission
inquiry into the teacher training colleges and its observation that
the value of games playing was insufficiently understood, public
school and ancient university trained staff were appointed to senior
positions in the colleges and athleticism took root: As Mangan and
Hickey state: 'In 1888, with the publication of the Report of the
Cross Commission it was clear that the teacher training colleges of
England and Wales had been subjected to a thorough examination
and had been found wanting. One significant omission from their
educational provision was the absence of any conversion to the
playing of team games ... Within a generation ... athleticism was to
dominate college life."? Mangan and Hickey comment further that
when it was discovered by the Commission that the colleges'
'curriculum did not match up to mainstream middle-class
educational philosophies, a new set of institutional educational
priorities inspired by the movement were demanded, and
implemented by new "Oxbridge" educated Principals who now
introduced athleticism into the colleges.t'"
Two additional points associated with the English training college
should be made. First, 'it was responsible for gradually promoting
a new masculinity, a masculinity of the games field in the elementary
school"" and second, 'What this process amounted to, at one level,
was the extension of a model of middle-class masculinity to the late
Victorian and Edwardian teacher training college which served the
working-class elementary school.l'"
Finally, it should also be appreciated that 'IfEuropean masculinity
is to be understood in its full complexity, and the making of
European masculinity is to be considered in all its manifestations,
then it is certainly time teacher training colleges and their
equivalents throughout Europe, came into the reckoning. These
institutions from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards,
through the teachers they trained had an influence on the gender
expectations, attitudes and behaviour of working-class children if
for no other reason than the fact that these children were a captive
audience of much of their childhood.?"
Since Athleticism was published perhaps one of the most intriguing
xl Introduction to the New Edition
aspects of the 'games cult', the relationship between the gamesfield
and the battlefield, has received ever-increasing attention." However,
here too, regrettably mythologies based again on assertion rather
than evidence and unfortunately perpetuated by the sports historian,
are to be encountered. Distinguished historians, among them,
Geoffrey Best, Jeffrey Richards, John MacKenzie, and indeed
others.i" have provided evidence, in some cases extensive evidence,
of an intense indoctrination, predominantly if not exclusively, into
militaristic manliness of the young of the middle and upper middle
classes in late Victorian sociery't" and one cultural historian has
closely linked playing-field and battlefield, militarism, patriotism
and imperialism." In contrast, this concern for evidence, regrettably,
has not been true of the sports historian. Richard Holt, in particular,
it seems, has chosen to ignore much available evidence, 'trawling a
shallow catch of sources instead ofhauling out a deep catch ofbooks
and articles" with a consequent inadequate understanding of not
only the nature of the late Victorian and Edwardian public school
but of the relationship between the culture of the public school,
the wider 'high culture' of society and militarism in the era of the
New Imperialism.
As early as 1976 Anne Summers provided a subtlety of approach
that unwittingly but harshly, exposes this later inadequacy. Militarism
in Britain, she explained, was utterly different from Continental
militarism: 'militarism was, perhaps, an integral part of the liberal
political culture of the country; it was also integral to much of
Anglican and Nonconformist Christianity. For these reasons it
became a popular cause, and a peculiarly British one.?" She added
devastatingly that the conventional wisdom of centuries posing as a
self-evident truth, namely that 'the British were a seafaring race with
a sturdy independent dislike of standing armies' had inhibited
historians 'from investigating the scope and characteristics ofBritish
militarism'v?" Clearly it still does!
A narrow concern with the presence and absence of national
conscription and the institutionalisation of gymnastics clubs
elsewhere, as strongly indicative of the presence or absence of
militarism simply will not do.?' It is to fail wholly to comprehend
the