Sunday 10 October 2010

We cheer for an Eton crew


It was father’s birthday yesterday, his fiftieth, a significant milestone, so he says. We had a gathering at a place we have in Surrey, an old sprawling farmhouse that once belonged to my grandparents, enough room for my parents set, and enough room for some of my own set! It’s a lovely location, right in the heart of the county, with Annette, my horse, liveried in nearby stables.

Some of father’s friends from his Eton days were there, people with whom he has kept close contact over the years. He used to tell me that the friendships made at school are often the most lasting and the most meaningful in life, something I dismissed at the time; something I dismiss no longer. It would be depressing to think that schooldays are the best days and all the rest is anti-climax; but they are some of the best days.

I would have gone to Eton if I had been a boy, as father did and as his father did. I once talked to my grandfather about a certain Eric Blair, one of the more distinguished scholars, though he was singularly unimpressed by any Eton man who embraced left-wing politics, not just that but one who subsequently abandoned his post in the Imperial Police! I have to say I’m rather glad he did.

The Eton song is Carmen Etonense, always sung in Latin, though most people wrongly assume that it’s the Boating Song. Since the latter is favoured by my father and was favoured by my grandfather I offer it here as a birthday tribute and as a memorial.

Jolly boating weather,
And a hay harvest breeze,
Blade on the feather,
Shade off the trees,
Swing swing together,
With your bodies between your knees,
Swing swing together,
With your bodies between your knees.

Rugby may be more clever,
Harrow may make more row,
But we'll row for ever,
Steady from stroke to bow,
And nothing in life shall sever,
The chain that is round us now,
And nothing in life shall sever,
The chain that is round us now.

Others will fill our places,
Dressed in the old light blue,
We'll recollect our races,
We'll to the flag be true,
And youth will be still in our faces,
When we cheer for an Eton crew,
And youth will be still in our faces,
When we cheer for an Eton crew.

Twenty years hence this weather,
May tempt us from office stools,
We may be slow on the feather,
And seem to the boys old fools,
But we'll still swing together,
And swear by the best of schools,
But we'll still swing together,
And swear by the best of schools.


13 comments:

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  2. Thanks, Adam; that's very kind of you. As far as dear Eric is concerned, yes, he was a crucial man in so many ways, one of the great champions of good English prose. As an essayist he is for me in the same class as Bacon, Montaigne, Swift, Hazlitt and Lamb.

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  5. Shakespeare didn't champion English prose; he created it!

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  8. While I've no animus against any public school, I don't think the British obsession with them has been particularly benign. Indeed, I think the values and ideas inculcated by them may have played a significant part in the destruction of the British Empire.

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  9. But is Wellington not alleged to have said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton? :-)

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  10. Yes. but without the Old Boy network England could have defeated Napoleon ten years earlier :-)

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  11. All Old Boys are equal but some are more equal than others. :-)

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  12. Could Wellington have won a decisive victory at waterloo without Blucher ?

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  13. Anthony, Napoleon was in retreat before the Prussians arrived in any numbers. But their arrival helped turn a defeat into a rout.

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