Winchester College in fiction

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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[edit]

Poetry[edit]

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[edit]

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[edit]

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]

Fictional Wykehamists
Character Author Work Date Notes and quotes
Antrobus Lawrence Durrell Esprit de Corps 1957 Sabben-Clare calls Antrobus "portentous and serious minded", and wonders if Durrell knew of Sir Reginald Antrobus, Crown Agent for the Colonies 1909–1918.[8]
Sir Humphrey Appleby Antony Jay
Jonathan Lynn		 Yes Minister TV series 1980–1984 Sir Humphrey Appleby (Winchester, Balliol, GCB, KBE, MVO, MA Oxon)[10]
The Revd. Francis Arabin Anthony Trollope Barchester Towers 1857 "He was the younger son of a country gentleman of small fortune in the north of England. At an early age he went to Winchester, and was intended by his father for New College;" (Barchester Towers, Chapter 20, "Mr Arabin"). "The agreeable and cultivated vicar of St. Ewold, formerly professor of poetry at Oxford, who ends up as Dean of Barchester"[9]
James Arrowby Iris Murdoch The Sea, The Sea 1978 "a scholar with a gift for languages and mathematics as well as winning history prizes, a poet, traveller, connoisseur, a Buddhist convert, a mystic with apparently supernatural powers".[11] Sabben-Clare suggests Arrowby might be based on the SOE officer Frank Thompson.[12]
Edward Ashburnham Ford Madox Ford The Good Soldier 1915 "It is odd how a boy can have his virgin intelligence untouched in this world. That was partly due to the careful handling of his mother, partly to the fact that the house to which he went at Winchester had a particularly pure tone and partly to Edward's own peculiar aversion from anything like coarse language or gross stories." (The Good Soldier, Part 3, Chapter 3)
William Beckwith
and Charles Nantwich		 Alan Hollinghurst The Swimming Pool Library 1988 "The diaries chronicle Nantwich’s education (Winchester and Oxford – just like Will)"[13]
Captain Edward Bentinck-Boyle Brian Degas Colditz
TV series		 1972–1974 Played by Neil Stacy. He catches out a German planted among the prisoners who claimed to be an Old Wykehamist but didn't know his "Notions".
George Bertram Anthony Trollope The Bertrams 1859 "a commoner", "stood forth to spout out the Latin hexameters, and to receive the golden medal" (page 12)
Lord Bognor Harold Nicolson Some People 1927 "a bigger version" of Paul Sender, well-dressed but "soulless, bland, removed from reality"[8]
Brookfields Pamela Frankau The Willow Cabin 1949 "scholar-aesthete"[12]
Richard Carstone Charles Dickens Bleak House 1852–1853 Carstone is "not helped by an allegedly inappropriate, non-vocational Wykehamist education"[14]
Collins Evelyn Waugh Brideshead Revisited 1945 "scholar-aesthete",[12], art historian,[12] "an embryo don ... a man of solid reading and childlike humour." In the television series, Charles Ryder is shown wearing an Old Wykehamist tie.
Josiah Crawley Anthony Trollope Framley Parsonage
The Last Chronicle of Barset		 1861 Not explicitly mentioned as a Wykehamist, but Francis Arabin refers to Crawley having been "at school and at college" with him.
Christopher Dysart Somerville and Ross The Real Charlotte 1894 "although the occasional glimpses vouchsafed of him during his Winchester and Oxford career were as discouraging as they were brief" (The Real Charlotte, Chapter 8)
Errol Lawrence Durrell Mountolive 1958 "diligent but dull, 'goat-like' Head of Chancery" in the Foreign Office[8]
Colonel Henry Esmond, Viscount Castlewood William Makepeace Thackeray The History of Henry Esmond 1852 "a lively buccaneering spirit" whose year at "'the famous college'" had "passing little effect"[9]
Basil Fawlty John Cleese Fawlty Towers TV series 1975–1979 Basil wears an OW tie[15]
Gaskony Charles Langbridge Morgan The Judge's Story 1947 "the retired judge"[9]
Sinclair Hammond P. G. Wodehouse Bill the Conqueror 1924 "at one of the large English schools – possibly Winchester. Hammond was at Winchester." (Bill the Conqueror, page 225)
Peter Hithersay Nicholas Shakespeare "Snowleg" 2004 "Peter sat in Mugging Hall waiting to hear his name. 'Liptrot?' 'Sum.' ... he drew the tangerine curtain of his 'toyes', the wooden stall ... that encompassed his private world away from home ... it was compulsory to wear a 'strat', a straw boater bought at phenomenal expense from Gieves & Hawkes [in Kingsgate Street] ... Peter would wander beside the Itchen" (Snowleg, Chapter 1)
Mycroft Holmes and Sebastian Holmes Brian Freemantle The Holmes Inheritance 2004 Sherlock Holmes's brother and son, respectively. Sebastian sends reports to his father in a code based on Notions.[16]
"I" (AKA Marwood) Bruce Robinson Withnail and I 1987 Identified as having gone to "The other place", by Withnail to Uncle Monty, who says "Ah, a Wykehamist".
Alroy Keir W. Somerset Maugham Cakes and Ale 1930 "Roy started with certain advantages. He was the only son of a civil servant who after being Colonial Secretary for many years in Hong-Kong ended his career as Governor of Jamaica. When you looked up Alroy Kear in the serried pages of Who’s Who you saw o.s. of Sir Raymond Kear, K.C.M.G., K.C.V.O. q.v. and of Emily, y.d. of the late Major General Percy Camperdown, Indian Army. He was educated at Winchester and at New College, Oxford" (Cakes and Ale, Chapter 1)
A. V. Laider Max Beerbohm Seven Men (and two others) 1919 Possibly: he says "I was at Winchester with Blake", but the point of the story is that he was a pathological liar.
The Labour MP Robert Harling The Enormous Shadow 1955 In line with "the myth of the [Old Wykehamist as a] socialist politician"[8]
Mr Lamplough Dorothy L. Sayers In the Teeth of the Evidence 1939 A dentist in one of the Lord Peter Wimsey stories[17]
Hamo Langmuir Angus Wilson As If By Magic 1973 "scholar-aesthete",[12] "brilliant but unstable plant-geneticist"[12]
Dexter Mayhew One Day David Nicholls 2009 novel, 2011 film "covers some 16 years in the life of Emma Morley (Anne Hathaway), a working-class bluestocking educated at a Yorkshire comprehensive, and Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess), a handsome upper-middle-class Wykehamist"[18]
General Melchett Richard Curtis
Ben Elton		 Blackadder Goes Forth 1989 Portrayed by Stephen Fry
Merlyn T. H. White The Sword in the Stone 1938 gold medal for being "the best scholar at Winchester". Republished in the 1958 The Once and Future King[19]
Michael Mont John Galsworthy The Forsyte Saga 1922 Suspected of being "a sort of socialist"[8]
John Morrell Nicholas Monsarrat The Cruel Sea 1951 A barrister before joining the Royal Navy; "a living reproof to the solecism of displaying emotion"[9]
Edgar Naylor Cyril Connolly The Rock Pool 1936 "and in places where no Wykehamist, no New Collegeman, no stockbroker, no Naylor had ever previously trod." (The Rock Pool)
Odoreida Stephen Potter Lifemanship books 1950–1970 "The intellectual prowess of the Wykehamist is one of his most widely recognized attributes ... G. Odoreida, one of Stephen Potter's most celebrated Lifemen"[19]
Pappenhacker Evelyn Waugh Scoop 1938 "'the cleverest man in Fleet Street', who liked playing with a toy train which he would address in Latin Alcaics"[19]
The spy Larry Pettifer and his controller Tim Cranmer John le Carré Our Game 1995 The ambiguous title denotes both espionage and "Winchester Football, a game so arcane that even experienced players may not know all the rules". [Cranmer, when a boy:] "‘I’ll give you one chance,’ I say expansively. ‘What is the Notion for Winchester Football?’ It is the easiest test I can think of in the entire school vernacular, a gift. ‘Jew-baiting’, he [Pettifer] replies. So I have no alternative but to beat him, when all he needed to say was Our Game."[20]
Peregrine Pickle Tobias Smollett The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle 1751 "Before he had been a full year at Winchester, he had signallized himself in so many achievements, in defiance to the laws and regulations of the place, that he was looked upon with admiration, and actually chosen dux, or leader, by a large body of his contemporaries." (Chapter 16)[7]
Psmith P. G. Wodehouse The Lost Lambs
Psmith in the City
Psmith, Journalist
Leave It to Psmith		 1909–1923 Wodehouse said he based Psmith on Rupert D'Oyly Carte, a school acquaintance of a cousin of Wodehouse. Rupert's daughter, Bridget D'Oyly Carte, however, said that the Wykehamist schoolboy was not her father but his elder brother Lucas.[21][22]
Mr Ramsey Tobias Wolff Old School 2003 "Mr. Ramsey had once told us about a riot of boys at his old school, Winchester, back in 1793, that finally had to be put down by a regiment of dragoons." (Chapter 6, "The Forked Tongue", page 103)
Captain Paul Sender Ian Fleming The Living Daylights 1966 "a lean, tense man in his early forties ... [in] the uniform of his profession – well-cut, well-used light-weight tweeds in a dark green herringbone, a soft white silk shirt and an old school tie – in his case, Wykehamist. At the sight of the tie ... Bond's spirits, already low, sank another degree. He knew the type: backbone of the Civil Service, overcrammed and underloved at Winchester, a good Second in P.P.E. at Oxford; the war, staff jobs he would have done meticulously ..."[7]
George Souldern John Buchan The Runagates Club 1928 "double First and University prizewinner"[19]
Dr Spacely-Trellis Peter Simple 1957 onwards The go-ahead bishop of Bevindon
Rupert Willem von Starnberg ("Bill") George MacDonald Fraser Flashman and the Tiger
("The Road to Charing Cross")		 1999 "'Tee jay?' I croaked, and he laughed. 'Aye ... guide, philosopher, and friend - showin' the new bugs the ropes. What did you call 'em at Rugby? I'm a Wykehamist, you know - and that was your doin', believe it or not!'"
Sir Derek Underhill
and Freddie Rooke		 P. G. Wodehouse Jill the Reckless 1920 "Freddie looked at him as a timid young squire might have gazed upon St. George when the latter set out to do battle with the dragon. He was of the amiable type which makes heroes of its friends. In the old days when he had fagged for him at Winchester he had thought Derek the most wonderful person in the world, and this view he still retained." (Jill the Reckless, Chapter 1)
Revd. John Wentworth Elizabeth Goudge The Rosemary Tree 1956 "nice but ineffectual"[9]
Arthur Wilkinson Anthony Trollope The Bertrams 1859 "as he thought Winchester good for his own son, he naturally thought the same school good for Sir Lionel's son. But Bertram was entered as a commoner, whereas Wilkinson was in the college" (The Bertrams, page 12)

References[edit]

  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[edit]

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