War on Waugh

War on Waughs.

The other day I read that one of    reasons that the great and wonderfully snobbish novelist Evelyn Waugh had chips(many delightful ) on both shoulders was because he went to the lesser Lancing College rather than where his brother and father went , the more prestigious Sherborne College.

And the reason? Older brother Alec at one time more famous, despite winning honours in the form room ,parade ground and the playing  field,(see link)in many ways being an exemplary student,had been expelled before his last  year for having too close a relationship with another,younger boy. Aahh. These foolish things. This was 1915. Fifty years later at my lesser public school if boys had been expelled for such behaviour our numbers would have been severely depleted. Kiddy fiddling was not just for the teachers.

But for precocious Alec worse as far as the school was to come. Aided by his publisher father aged 18 just as he was off to the trenches he published Loom of Youth. He called this “his love letter to Sherborne”. It dealt with the bullying, love affairs among teenage boys shut away for eight months a year and the anti intellectualism which was prevalent in such schools. Despite name changes the book was obviously based on Waugh’s time at Sherborne.

Many felt the book was a brilliant and highly amusing account of public school life. It was a best seller and  the literary establishment Sassoon,Graves,Bennett,Maugham,Wells lined up for autographs. But Sherborne was not amused   .  The school felt  the book showed cynicism and depravity.  And the characters were too well drawn to be disguised. The cat was out the bag.Both Alec and his father were thrown out of the Old Shirburnian Society. What was a man without an old school tie? Well in Alec Waugh’s case a best selling author.

In our time Sherborne masters have been found guilty of  having too close relation with the  boys. In l933 the OS Society decided that the Waughs could wear the tie again. Alec sent his two boys to the school. He donated all the papers relating to Loom of Youth to the school. And poor Evelyn always the less loved of the two brothers had to put up with the humiliation of going to Lancing.  And being brilliant.

http://oldshirburnian.org.uk/alec-waughs-sherborne-photograph-album/