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Cyril Argentine
Alington, 59, headmaster of Eton since 1916. Tall, personable, he is an
Oxonian, onetime (1908-16) headmaster of Shrewsbury School, chaplain
since 1921 to King George V. To carry on at Eton he refused the
deanship of Canterbury Cathedral. (But his salary of more than £5,000
is greater than a dean's living.) His students admire his strong face
and square shoulders (he played football at Marlborough). His fine,
sonorous voice commands their rapt attention at every Leaving Address.
Like most British schoolmen, Head Beak Alington is a versatile but
chiefly intramural scholar. England knows well his "jolly good
remarks" on all subjects. Samples: "I believe our taste in
some matters is not as good as ihat of other nations, for example our
homes, which are exceedingly ugly. . . . No class of Englishmen have a
monopoly on any virtue or vice. . . . Women are frauds because they
pretend to be the artistic sex, which is untrue, since there are no
really great feminine poets and artists, while women musicians spend
their time playing and singing music written by men. . . . Education
exists to prevent people from being vulgar, stupid and ignorant."
On one occasion, lecturing to his students, he proved
irrefutably that the Almighty is an Old Etonian. When Douglas
Fairbanks & Mary Pickford visited England in 1923 and expressed a
desire to visit Eton, Dr. Alington said: "Pickford? Fairbanks? Who
are they?" Dr. Alington says that by his bedside is a volume of
the mystery stories of Valentine Williams, a writer much admired in
Britain. Also he reads, as most knowing Britishers do, the ghost
stories of his colleague Montague Rhodes ("Monty") James,
Provost of Eton. The administrative and business affairs of Eton are
in the hands of Ghost Story Writer James, who is furthermore a
world-famed authority on early British stained glass and ancient
manuscripts. Eton is the most individual and matured of British
schools. But even here is that insuperable tradition which aims today
as it did when Percy Bysshe Shelley was at Eton to stamp every boy with
the mark of the British game-playing gentleman. Games begin in the
Autumn Term with footer and soccer.— Hardy youngsters may join the
Eton Beagles and hunt hares on foot—a sport which last February the
British League for the Prohibition of Cruel Sports protested (TIME.
Feb. 9). Everyone at Eton looks forward to St. Andrew's Day (Nov. 30)
when the famed Wall Game takes place between teams representing Eton's
70 scholarship students, the Collegers (called "Tugs" from
their traditional toga-like garments of black broadcloth) and the
Oppidans (the rest of the students). The Wall Game is played with a
football the size of a grapefruit against a long wall. Object is to
dribble the ball down the wall and send it through a goal. This is
almost impossible under the complicated rules; only three goals have
been scored in the last century. The game lasts an hour, and since it
is unlikely that any score will be made, the winner is decided
according to the number of "shies" (throws) made at the goal. As a
spectacle, the Wall Game offers little but the sight of numerous brawny
youths scrambling in a pile against the Wall and accomplishing,
apparently, nothing but the destruction of each other's clothes and
complexions.
