LITMIR.BIZ

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He was prebendery of Geashill, Co. Offaly, 1914-23, and Archdeacon of Kildare 1923-44.

30 Aunt Minnie was the wife of Albert’s brother, William Lewis (1859-1946). See The Lewis Family in the Biographical Appendix.

31 William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597).

32 Noel Herbert Stone (1895-1918) was at Malvern 1910-14. After training at Sandhurst he joined the Worcestershire Regiment and was promoted to captain in 1917. He fought in France and was killed in action near Amiens on 27 April 1918.

33 ‘The Old Boy’ or ‘The Oldish’ was George Gordon Fraser (1870-1958), the headmaster’s assistant in the management of School House. He entered the College as a day boy in 1879 and remained until 1885. On leaving there he went to London University where he obtained a degree in 1889. In 1895 he became an assistant master at Lord William’s School, Thame, and in 1895 he went in the same capacity to Forest School. In 1901 he was appointed an assistant master at Malvern, and in 1917 he became house master of No. 9 House, which position he held until 1927.

34 Stopford Brooke Ludlow Jacks, JP, FRSA (1894-1988), son of Professor L.P. Jacks, entered School House in 1910 and left in 1915. During the war he served with the artillery, became a major, and won the Military Cross. He took a Diploma in Economics in 1920 from Balliol College, Oxford, and became a director of Messrs. Greg and Co., cotton spinners, Manchester. He served as a governor of the Royal College of Arts, chairman of HM Prisons for Women, president of the Prestbury Petty Sessions, and a governor of Malvern College.

35 Mirabile dictu, ‘Wonderful to relate’.

36 Warnie was preparing to take the entrance examinations (25 November-2 December) for Woolwich and the Royal Military College at Sandhurst.

37 Armas Järnefelt, Praeludium (1904).

38 Jack already had the last two parts of Wagner’s Ring cycle, Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods, translated by Margaret Armour, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham (1911). For Christmas his father gave him the volume containing the first two parts, The Rhinegold & The Valkyrie (1910).

39 ‘Christmas will be here almost immediately,’ Albert wrote to Warnie on 9 November 1913, ‘and amongst other questions that must be decided is the all important one–are we to have a dance or not? No doubt our friends expect it. To me of course the thing is an expensive nuisance. But I don’t want you and Jacks to drop out of things here’ (LP IV: 99). ‘No dance!!’ replied Warnie on 10 October (LP IV: 101). Jack hated dancing, and years later he wrote in SBJ III: ‘It was the custom of the neighbourhood to give parties which were really dances for adults but to which, none the less, mere schoolboys and schoolgirls were asked…To me these dances were a torment…How a small boy who can neither flirt nor drink should be expected to enjoy prancing about on a polished floor till the small hours of the morning, is beyond my conception.’

40 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Locksley Hall (1842), In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850).

41 Reginald Philip Simon Waley (1897-1951) was a member of School House 1911-15. On leaving Malvern he served as a 2nd lieutenant in the Royal West Kent Regiment. In 1923 he went to work on the Stock Exchange.

42 Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome,‘Horatius’, LXVI, 6.

43 Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, I, iii, 15.

44 Mr Peacocke, the rector, gave his last sermon at St Mark’s on 30 November. Remembering Thomas Hamilton’s farewell sermon from the same pulpit, Albert wrote to Warnie on 30 November saying that Mr Peacocke’s sermon was ‘an extraordinarily poor performance even for him. I remember an old man some thirteen years ago preaching a farewell sermon from the same place, and I have never been more deeply touched by spoken words in my life’ (LP IV: 110).

       1914

      The year began with anxiety about the entrance examination to Sandhurst that Warnie had taken in November. But more than that was at stake. Albert was worried about what his son could do with his life, and this had been a question he put to Mr Kirkpatrick more than once. After tutoring him for four months, in preparation for Sandhurst, Mr Kirkpatrick wrote to Albert on 18 December 1913, saying:

      You ask me as to his abilities. They seem to be good enough. But observe, a question of that nature cannot be answered in the abstract, for the will power, the moral element is involved. You never know what you can do until you try, and very few try unless they have to. Warren had a nice easy time, but no more so than the other fellows he associated with, many of whom were so well off that it did not matter from the economic point of view if they ever did anything or not. Years of association with such boys must have an effect in modifying the outlook. I do not see anything wrong with Warren apart from this slack, easy going quality. He has been blessed by Nature with two of her best gifts–good health and good nature. But it is too late now to make him interested in knowledge. The day for that has gone by. What he needs now is to be at work of some kind, and as soon as possible. I trust there can be little doubt of his passing, and if so, he should go to Sandhurst at once. The life may not be too strenuous, but it will be strenuous enough for him. The mere fact that he has set his mind on it is most important, and I think the army is now no bed of ease. Is he adapted for the life and will he succeed? These are questions very hard to answer. He does not want to go into any business, and dislikes exertion, drudgery, push and all the rest of it. He will probably discover that he cannot escape these things, even in the army. I should like to see a little more ambition in his composition–that is the main defect; but something of the kind may come in time. I have warned him that his present ideas may not be his ideas when he is a little older–a hard saying for a boy of course. (LP IV: 118-19)

       On 9 January the Civil Service Commissioners published the results of the November examinations, and the Lewises were elated to learn that Warnie passed 21st out of 201 successful candidates for Sandhurst. The first 25 candidates were awarded ‘Prize Cadetships’ which secured them admission to the College at half fees, and a grant of £50 on obtaining a commission. On 3 February Warnie and Jack crossed, Warnie to the Royal Military College, Camberley, Surrey, for the first time, and Jack back to Malvern.

       TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 130-1):

      Gt. Malvern,

      Sunday. 7th Feb. [1914]

      My dear P.,

      Thanks for the cutting which has been read with great interest. In addition to the natural unpleasantness of crossing on a bad night, I am annoyed at having broken my record, as I was sea sick on Tuesday for

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