“TOM BROWN" DEAD.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 69, 14 November 1912, Page 6

“TOM BROWN " DEAD.

FAMOUS SCHOOL HERO

GREAT FIGHT RECALLED

Loudon, October 2. At tire age of 88, the Rev. Augustus Orlebar, for 54 years vicar of Willington, Beds, and the original Tom Brown'in “Tom Brown’s'Schooldays,” passed away on Monday afternoon. It is not claimed that Mr Orlebar represented Tom Brown in any other respect save that of 'the opponent of “Slogger Williams” in the Homeric combat which took place behind the school chapel, but he was also the Rugby boy who caught out the redoubtable batsman in the match with the Marylebono Club, as narrated in the same tale. Thomas Hughes, afterwards Queen’s Counsel and County Court judge, the author of the story, was captain of the eleven when he put Orlebar into the team, and Orlebar himself was captain when Dr Arnold, the famous headmaster, died in 1842.

Augustus Orlebar entered Rugby School at the age of 14, in 1838, and was put into the lowest form. Dr Arnold was then headmaster. Under Ins region;, the boys of Rugby shared the somewhat Spartan conditions of life which were common in the public schools of that era. Only last year Mr Orlebar was recorded as saying, “No man who was at Rugby in my day knows what it is to feel cold. ( A. lire at cao.li end of the long corridor was all the heat provided for the studies that lay between, and early rollcall by candlelight in winter was a fitting preparation for an Arctic journey. At first boys used to swoon, before they got used to it.” Mr Orlebar clearly recalled bis fight with “Slogger Williams.” The original of the baiter combatant is the Rev. Bnlkeley Owen Jones, Chancellor of the diocese of St. Asaph and a Justice of the Peace for Denbighshire, who is living in retirement at West. Barnhain, near Bognor. Like Orlebar,. be went to Oxford, and the two took Holy Orders in the same year. The severity of the contest between the boys was reminiscent of the old days of the “Ring.” When it bad been in progress for some minutes, we are told by the novelist that: “Tom’s face begins to look very one-sided. There are queer little bumps on bis forehead, and his month is slightly bleeding. . . . Williams is only slightly marked in the face, hut by the nervous movement of his elbows you can see that Tom’s body blows are telling.” According to tire story, Tom Brown’s antagonist was thrice scientifically thrown, and the Doctor arrived on the

■scene at the moment when Williams.

in spite of the terrific punishment 1 he had himself inflicted, Svas all but beaten. Mr Orlebar declared that neither boy won the fight because Dr. Arnold stopped it. Both these boys became afterwards close friends. Thomas Hughes, the author of “Tom Brown’s Schooldays,” died at Brighton in 1896, at the age of 74. At Bughy School, to which uh(j>;- went >m 1834, he rose to the sixth form, and there came in close contact with Dr Arnold, whom he idolised. It was in 1857 that he published his world-fam-ous story “by an old Boy.” It has probably enjoyed greater popularity than any other story of school life. The boy who in the main, as apart irom isolated episodes, furnished the concept of Tom Brown, was tne author’s brother, George, of whom he wrote a memoir. The little hoy Arthur, who wept in the fives-court while the fight was going on, had his original in Dean Stanley, who, it may he recalled, 'wrote the life of Arnold.— London correspondent.