Cricket Witness No 6 - His Captain's Hand on His Shoulder Smote

19 The Origin; Tom Brown’s Schooldays into increasing moral turpitude, before dying at a young age, fallen from grace but full of repentance, in the loving family home from which he hailed. The book proved highly popular, especially as a Sunday School prize. It had the unintended consequence of reviving from lengthy dormancy to heavy temporary usage a rather splendid forename, although the indignant Eric Blair was sufficiently irked by its connections with so piestic a book as to adopt the pen-name of George Orwell. Eric remained a staple of schoolboy and girl literature until deep into the 20 th century. My own copy was published in 1905. It was presented as a school prize in 1907 to one Eric Peabody for ‘proficiency and conduct’. The preface, written in 1889 and taken from the 24 th edition, is the one that includes Farrar’s uncompromising statement that his novel ‘was written with but one single object – the vivid inculcation of inward purity and moral purpose’. The front cover of my copy shows a schoolboy standing at the wicket but this is slightly misleading, for the book itself does not feature organised sport. Farrar, like Thomas Arnold, was not an enthusiast of Athleticism. However, for long decades Eric and Roslyn School were read about by millions. Boyhood at large and sport were, therefore, not on Thomas Arnold’s agenda. The practical effect of Dr Arnold’s stressful battle with the young sons of well-to-do parents was his lead in sanitising the public school system. One may scarcely exaggerate the brutish chaos of such schools prior to his reign nor, in consequence, the triumph of his labours. Thomas Arnold’s reforms were opportune, for they came at a time when the newly enriched class of industrial owners were seeking to educate their sons. They did so much to the disgust of John Bright and Richard Cobden, leaders of the Anti-Corn Law League and builders of Manchester’s Free Trade Hall. Richard Cobden, believed that international free trade would lead to international peace and that the great industrial townships, like the Renaissance cities of old, would become Manchester, ‘the Venice of the North’ – beacons of civilised splendour and progress.