Lift Up Your Hearts

Playing Rugby on Saturday afternoons and public school sport generally is an assertion of a theological principle. For the Greeks - especially after Plato - the body is merely the prison of the soul. Jews and Christians understand body and soul to be united in forming the whole person. The doctrine of the Incarnation, that God became Man, that the Word became Flesh, is the most audacious assertion of this. Resurrection therefore involves the body. Not in a resuscitation such as the ancient Egyptians hoped for by preserving the remains, but a glorification, in which the vigour of youth, the wisdom of age, the innocence of childhood, the strength of adulthood, the power of health and the vulnerability of the infant and the infirm are all brought together at last so that, no longer spread out in time, I can be whole and complete.

Thomas Arnold, the great reforming Headmaster of Rugby, understood this and set out to educate and train not merely the minds, but also the bodies of the children in his care. So organized school sport was born. Haileybury's first Master, AG Butler, had worked with Arnold and was a friend of his, and Haileybury always asserted this outworking of the doctrine of the Incarnation - that schools should play sport.

In a paper read to the Anglo - Catholic Congress of 1927, Neville Coghill (Tr 1913), later to put Chaucer into fine modern English, quoted William Blake in an arresting line:

"The Body is that part of the soul which is perceived through the five senses."

Looks Familiar?

I went recently to a meeting at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster, just round the corner from Church House.

The Building is the same shape as Hall but the same purpose as Chapel and shares many architectural details with both. It is by Sir Herbert Baker who designed Hall and remodeled the Chapel.

Haileyburia

An obituary of Alison Stephens (Aby & Ha 1986) has appeared in the Guardian. A friend who is not a Haileyburian asks whether this is the first obituary in a national newspaper of a female OH.

Hirsute Growth

The Haileybury Buildings by Wlfrid Blunt is a source of wondrous pleasure. This paragraph, introducing an architectural discussion of the Bradby Hall is a gem.

This is in fact the staff in 1875. Bradby (with vast beard) sits third from the left. Butler is second from the left. Dundreary Whiskers are worn by Rev H Walford, third from the left in the back row.

"A photograph of the staff, taken in 1872 and preserved in the Library, is a fine field of study for those interested in hirsute growth. There may be found the Dundreary whisker, the Mutton chop, the trimmed beard, and finally the untamed natural variety rioting with a luxuriance which would be the envy of an Athos monk: and in the centre, King beaver par excellence as it were, we see the majestic figure of Dr. Bradby. It was an age of great beards and great Headmasters. Yet great though they were, they knew how to unbend; for is it not recorded of Mr. Butler that watching a rugger match on one occasion a light suddenly gleamed in his eye and his nostrils dilated like those of a war horse scenting battle, that he flung of his mortarboard, gown and coat even, and in an immaculate shirt and a pair of pillar-box red brace hurled himself into the scrum? And was not the sedate Dr. Bradby seen to fling his top-hat sky-high after the miraculous victory over Wellington in 1872; did he not watch his august spouse tobogganing with the boys in full term-time in the Quad itself, balanced precariously on something suspiciously like a common teatray?"