Winchester College Publication Treausry: Collections Bulletin 2019-2020 | Page 11

ered
influence, Monty
, left few personal
rom his energy and
rs, personal papers,
e generally escaped
ts were prodigious at
ined his uncle’s House
athlete. He recollects
pril 1881, when I won
ship, the Neeld Medal
all five events in the
long jump I won two
feet, the Cricket Ball
yards: I also won the
igh Jump”. “I mention
ins, perhaps with logic
use they have added
easure among the Lake
ed as the “debacle” of
holarship to Trinity
did not for long hold
ird year I was placed
er men in the First
Class in Part 1 of the
r A Cook of King’s, a
told me twice that in
gave me full marks,
done before or since.”
sis on Plato, but left it
else would obtain the
heremissinof,
ontague Rendall,
Montague Rendall, 1924 (4/8/126)
impending Trinity Fellowship. In the event
the rival did not apply. “This proved a
cardinal point in my career; but I do not
think I regret it. I was approached with
regard to the Tutorial Fellowship in another,
an important, College: but I had no desire
to stay longer in Cambridge.”
Why the change to the world of schools?
“Four out of the first five of us became
School Masters,” Rendall explains: “the gist
of the matter is that we were following the
real bias of our nature and tradition of our
family.” This is perhaps not entirely so, for
elsewhere in his writing Rendall stresses the
importance to him of his father’s
Oxfordshire parish, his upbringing in the
rectory (“now no longer a rectory but
inhabited by a lady with 22 puppies”), and
his parents’ deep religious faith. But the
churchmanship Rendall himself espouses is
described by him as “propriety without
colour,” intended primarily to mean without
ecclesiological extreme (“a central position”
as he puts it elsewhere), but also suggesting
conformity rather than enthusiasm. Firth
argues that Rendall never married because
he could never find a woman he could
admire as much as his mother—which
perhaps sits oddly, or even explains, the fact
that every woman mentioned in this
fragment is preceded by an adjective
descriptive of her looks. The exception—a
Wagnerian soprano—more than confirms
the rule. Rendall found schools irresistible,
for he could not himself replicate the
environment he most revered. Tristan
would always steer clear of Isolde.
Schools also provided Rendall with
the reassurance of known context.
Rendall seems frequently to assert
his achievements in an attempt
to confirm his sense of himself
as successful yet precarious
insider. The issue begins,