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

22 The Origin; Tom Brown’s Schooldays The roster of reformingheadmasters includes EdwardThring of Uppingham, EW Benson of Wellington, HH Almond of Loretto, John Perceval of Clifton and CJ Vaughan of Harrow. Each of them leaned onDr Arnold’s precept of ‘Godliness and good learning’. Each of them, after the manner of Thomas Hughes, had the aim of creating and sustaining a social as well as a religious community. These were the teachers who introduced the concept of a kind of school patriotism through the insistence on an homogeneous life-style. This was the point where the standardised uniform, one which identified a boy as neatly as any regimental insignia in the armed forces, became common. School magazines were written and school songs heartily sung, often with sporting allusions; ‘God give us bases to guard and beleaguer; fights for the fearless and goals for the eager’ is a stanza from the Harrow anthem, composed by Edmund Bowen. As well as compulsory chapel, there would be compulsory games, including cricket as the ideal summer sport. This was a major step forwards in flexing the muscles of Christianity. Games became, it has been said, ‘compulsory, organised and eulogised.’ Eton made compulsory games ‘the infallible prescription’. HH Almond’s priorities are noteworthy for their sequence: ‘character; physique; intelligence; manners; information’. Edward Thring, who, at Uppingham, had built the first public school gymnasium, rejoiced in the pupil who was ‘a fool in the form’ but could manage a decent ‘hit to leg’. Where Thomas Arnold had sought to turn Rugby into something like amonastery or, if not that extreme, a youthful version of an idealisedOxbridge college of sheltered learning and celibacy, his apostles, while never forgetting his fierce and single-minded example, constructed schools that more resembled military depots, with the inclusion of cadet training often part of the contract. It would not be pressing the analogy too far to recall what George Bernard Shaw said about Christianity; that it had never been practised; rather had Paulism replaced it. ‘Fight the good fight’; ‘run the straight race’; certainly the teachings and interpretations