No . 130 The Trusty Servant
Here at Winchester , Moberly put up buildings over a stream of the delightful Itchen – good for drainage , he thought – but brilliant for cholera and typhoid too . His half-friend the Bishop called for a day of prayer and humiliation for the removal of the pestilence but it wasn ’ t sufficient to prevent the loss of several pupils . The new Commoners , school historian Adams tells us , was ‘ repeatedly visited by epidemics ’ and in the hot June of 1846 , the mischief culminated in an outbreak of fever , ‘ which prostrated half the inmates ’, and , in Adams ’ s delightful euphemism for a financial and reputational crisis with many pupils being withdrawn , ‘ so alarmed parents that a sensible and immediate diminution took place in numbers .’ ‘ Terrible illness in the school ,’ Moberly recorded grimly in his diary . Soon afterwards one of his children became a victim .
When two months ago a bright boy wrote to me talking about the unprecedented mental suffering his generation were experiencing as a result of COVID , I looked at Moberly ’ s bookshelves quizzically . Those mighty Victorians – how the devil did they display all that energy and absorb all that suffering whilst in addition seeming to manage without difficulty families of ten or more ? Moberly begat no fewer than 15 : the school still possesses the lyingin couch on which the elegant and Italianate Mary Moberly annually recovered .
Well , the Victorians had servants – and nannies , and governesses , and trains that ran on time , and post that got delivered , and gripe water that shut up crying babies ( containing an opiate which didn ’ t seem to do much lasting harm ). These were the people , of course , who effectively developed , for good reason , the boarding school . Might history have some lessons we can re-learn ?
Impending war tax ; social unrest ; rearrangement of hierarchies ; global pandemic : are we in 2020 or 1920 ? Or even in 1870 , with boarding approaching its zenith , and not solely because of expansion of the railway network ? The experiences of the last two terms at Winchester have been opening many eyes backwards .
Winchester College , under the serendipitously expert epidemiological direction of Undermaster John Cullerne , spent the first fortnight of this term in house bubbles , with lessons delivered remotely . A testing machine proved worth its weight in aluminium . Strict conditions have governed exeats . No one has ventured into town . Parents and pupils have willingly embraced a logical and compelling rigour , in an impressive coalition of the willing .
We have thus managed for half a term total continuity of education . Of course , it will not last . But in the meantime the effects have been interesting and unequivocally Victorian . Some Victorian mores may be susceptible to question , but many of the original principles of boarding contain common-sensical messages of family , community and hope .
Boarding is safer in current times because it involves less travel . It is generally located in safer places : not for nothing those ranging hilly backdrops of Northumbria , the bracing chalky downlands of the South-East , or the cornucopia of educational institutions along the Thames Valley , mildly bracing in their gentle south-westerlies . Hence , in these COVID-affected times , contrary to market expectation , the revived interest we are currently seeing in boarding .
Boarding has everything you need : the sport facilities , the drama facilities and all the other extracurricular add-ons , without the need to travel or move beyond your community . It ’ s noticeable that problems of mental health and safeguarding have actually been diminishing rather than growing this term .
House spirit has never been better . Adversity has stimulated communities which have had to learn to rely on themselves . Relationships have had more investment , more time . Older boys feel all the more responsible for bringing younger boys up . The focus has not been on friends elsewhere on the campus , still less on a shopping trip to town . For an initial two weeks , sport had to be intra-house not inter-house , so seniors have taught and coached juniors and everyone has mucked in together . The relationships have had a distinctly sibling character .
It surely worked that way in many a Victorian family of 12 children or more . ‘ Why , indeed , Sir — ha ! ha ! — he may be said to have educated himself ,’ John Dickens famously commented on his rather talented son . The benefits have been wonderful to see . In lockdown , houses have become even happier families .
That said , those first two weeks were otherwise pretty miserable . Teaching on-screen is not much fun . Everyone is reduced to an icon or an avatar , or a postage stamp of an image on your screen . You can ’ t gradate the human reactions , you can ’ t generate the humour or cut and thrust , and you can ’ t get the diversity of personal experience . We hear much about the revolution in digital learning which the period of lockdown will cause . But the reverse is true also : learning online has made us all the more conscious of the value of learning in person . O slavish New World , that might develop such robots in it !
And that is the final point . Boarding has shown the value of what I ’ ll call the new socialism , a joyfulness ,
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