The Clifton Of Henry Newbolt

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 393, 29 June 1928, Page 14

The Clifton Of Henry Newbolt

IWrillen for The San.l SIR HENRY NEWBOLT may be acclaimed as the apostle of the public school spirit; yet he does pot hail from one of those three great foundations—Eton, Harrow or Winchester —to which pride of place is usually conceded. I suppose that nearly every great school has had its novelist; Rugby lias Hughes, Eton has Shane Leslie, Harrow Vachell. E. F. Benson has celebrated Marlborough in "David Blaize.” Alec Waugh incurred the wrath of old Sherbourne boys V hen he wrote “The Loom of Youth.” It is possible that Henry Newbolt’s novel of Clifton and Oxford is not so ■well known as Compton Mackenzie's saga of Saint Paul’s and Oxford, or Kipling’s Stalkey. He has won such a name as poet and historian that ■ The Twymans” may have been overlooked, as one might overlook a holiday task. It is very evident that Newbolt wrote this book for his own delectation, and the effect upon the reader is a sense of assisting at a meditation lather than of reading a novel. "The Twymans” is primarily a study in opposing influences. Percival Twyman loses his father while still a child, and his mother seeks the counsel of two uncles who represent the two opposing influences, scientific and romantic. The boy is sent to a preparatory school in Somersetshire, afterwards to Clifton, wnich the novelist disguises nnder the name of Downton.

The section of the book which deals with this great West Country school is written in a manner which suggests a wonderful verity of impression. In place of the sentimentality of a Vachell or the Zola-esque realism of a Waugh, there Is a quiet delight in remembered impressions of seemliness and order. Sir Henry Newbolt has the knack of writing about obvious things in a manner which induces that pleasant little shock of discovery produced by all good writing. It is no easy matter to describe a playing field with the thought of all the great exemplars, from Gray downwards, before one. Here is Percival Twyman’s remembered first impression ot the cricket field at Downton: hast of all came the drive from the station to the school. It was at first uninteresting, hut presently the drowsy-paced cab emerged from the terrace into the glare of a wide white road which at first descended by a gentle slope. On the left side stood a row of substantial houses, taking the sun comfortably on ths'ir backs among lilacs and laburnums; on the right was a long range of black paling with a guard of netting above it, and behind both a line of young lime trees. Even now-, while the leaves still hid the view from him, Percival heard again and again the sweet crack of bat on ball; then, as he drew level and looked between the trees, he saw that which took his breath with an entirely new delight. In the distance were buildings—large and stately they seemed, but he hardly thought of them—in front lay a wide green sward, level as a lawn, flooded with low sunlight, and covered in every direction with a multitude of white figures, standing, running, walking, throwing, batting—in every attitude that can express the energy or the expectancy of youth. One might advance this passage as an instance of the art which conceals art. It is the writing of one with no public to capture, and no literary school to found. Newbolt's verse has become so redolent of the competition child and the school break-up that its merits are in danger of becoming obscured. For sheer poignancy there can be few things in English poetry to equal "He Fell among Thieves”: In one verse Newbolt has crystallised Percival’s impression of the playing fields, described with such leisured delight In the Twymans: He saw the School Close, sunny and green. The runner beside him, the stand by the parapet wall, The distant tape, the crowd roarina between. His own name over all. And then there is. of course, the hackneyed "Vital Lampada,” with its echo of Carlyle’s "Everlasting Yea”— “Play up. play up, and play the game.” It is well to remind ourselves that once ♦his was a new poem, and that Newbolt wrote It. C. R. ALLEN. Dunedin.