Winchester College appears in fiction both as a school and as fictional Old Wykehamists, people who had been to the school. At least 50 fictional Old Wykehamists have appeared in novels, sometimes following the stereotype of the dull civil servant, though in fact relatively few real Wykehamists choose that profession. The school is further represented indirectly by the writings of Old Wykehamists on other topics.
Huddesford edited an anthology of poetry by fellow Old Wykehamists called Wiccamical Chaplet, dedicated to the finance minister Henry Addington.[2][3] Some of the poems are in Latin, including the school song, "Domum", subtitled by Huddesford "Carmen Wiccamicum" ("The Winchester College Song").[4] One of the poems, "On a Threat to Destroy the Tree at Winchester", alludes to "Domum", as indicated in its subtitle, "Round which [tree] the Scholars, on Breaking up [at end of term], sing their celebrated Song, called 'Dulce Domum'."[5] Locke provides a verse translation along with the Latin version, and "A Domum Legend" which gives an alternative version of how the school song came into existence.[6]
Prose
A former headmaster of Winchester College, James Sabben-Clare, comments that the school itself has been "largely spared the full fictional treatment".[7] E. H. Lacon-Watson's 1935 book In the Days of His Youth however portrays the school in the 19th century under the headmastership of George Ridding, "thinly disguised as Dr. Spedding".[7]
Old Wykehamists in fiction
Sabben-Clare discusses how Wykehamists appear in fiction. He notes that James Bond's chaperon, Captain Paul Sender is just one of at least 50 Old Wykehamists in fiction, a dull civil servant, "overcrammed and underloved at Winchester".[7] Sabben-Clare states that despite the stereotype of Wykehamists becoming Civil Servants, between 1820 and 1922 only around 7% of Wykehamists went into the Civil Service, and by 1981 the number had fallen to about 2%.[8] On the other hand, Sabben-Clare writes, Wykehamists have always been drawn to law, with about ten entrants to the profession each year. He find it surprising that so few Wykehamist lawyers are found in fiction: he mentions Monsarrat's John Morell and Charles Morgan's Gaskony.[9]
Sabben-Clare calls Antrobus "portentous and serious minded", and wonders if Durrell knew of Sir Reginald Antrobus, Crown Agent for the Colonies 1909–1918.[8]
"He was the younger son of a country gentleman of small fortune in the north of England. At an early age he went to Winchester, and was intended by his father for New College;" (Barchester Towers, Chapter 20, "Mr Arabin"). "The agreeable and cultivated vicar of St. Ewold, formerly professor of poetry at Oxford, who ends up as Dean of Barchester"[9]
"a scholar with a gift for languages and mathematics as well as winning history prizes, a poet, traveller, connoisseur, a Buddhist convert, a mystic with apparently supernatural powers".[11] Sabben-Clare suggests Arrowby might be based on the SOE officer Frank Thompson.[12]
"It is odd how a boy can have his virgin intelligence untouched in this world. That was partly due to the careful handling of his mother, partly to the fact that the house to which he went at Winchester had a particularly pure tone and partly to Edward's own peculiar aversion from anything like coarse language or gross stories." (The Good Soldier, Part 3, Chapter 3)
"scholar-aesthete",[12] art historian,[12] "an embryo don ... a man of solid reading and childlike humour." In the television series, Charles Ryder is shown wearing an Old Wykehamist tie.
"although the occasional glimpses vouchsafed of him during his Winchester and Oxford career were as discouraging as they were brief" (The Real Charlotte, Chapter 8)
"Peter sat in Mugging Hall waiting to hear his name. 'Liptrot?' 'Sum.' ... he drew the tangerine curtain of his 'toyes', the wooden stall ... that encompassed his private world away from home ... it was compulsory to wear a 'strat', a straw boater bought at phenomenal expense from Gieves & Hawkes [in Kingsgate Street] ... Peter would wander beside the Itchen" (Snowleg, Chapter 1)
"Roy started with certain advantages. He was the only son of a civil servant who after being Colonial Secretary for many years in Hong-Kong ended his career as Governor of Jamaica. When you looked up Alroy Kear in the serried pages of Who’s Who you saw o.s. of Sir Raymond Kear, K.C.M.G., K.C.V.O. q.v. and of Emily, y.d. of the late Major General Percy Camperdown, Indian Army. He was educated at Winchester and at New College, Oxford" (Cakes and Ale, Chapter 1)
"covers some 16 years in the life of Emma Morley (Anne Hathaway), a working-class bluestocking educated at a Yorkshire comprehensive, and Dexter Mayhew (Jim Sturgess), a handsome upper-middle-class Wykehamist"[18]
"The intellectual prowess of the Wykehamist is one of his most widely recognized attributes ... G. Odoreida, one of Stephen Potter's most celebrated Lifemen"[19]
The ambiguous title denotes both espionage and "Winchester Football, a game so arcane that even experienced players may not know all the rules". [Cranmer, when a boy:] "‘I’ll give you one chance,’ I say expansively. ‘What is the Notion for Winchester Football?’ It is the easiest test I can think of in the entire school vernacular, a gift. ‘Jew-baiting’, he [Pettifer] replies. So I have no alternative but to beat him, when all he needed to say was Our Game."[20]
"Before he had been a full year at Winchester, he had signallized himself in so many achievements, in defiance to the laws and regulations of the place, that he was looked upon with admiration, and actually chosen dux, or leader, by a large body of his contemporaries." (Chapter 16)[7]
Wodehouse said he based Psmith on Rupert D'Oyly Carte, a school acquaintance of a cousin of Wodehouse. Rupert's daughter, Bridget D'Oyly Carte, however, said that the Wykehamist schoolboy was not her father but his elder brother Lucas.[21][22]
"Mr. Ramsey had once told us about a riot of boys at his old school, Winchester, back in 1793, that finally had to be put down by a regiment of dragoons." (Chapter 6, "The Forked Tongue", page 103)
"a lean, tense man in his early forties ... [in] the uniform of his profession – well-cut, well-used light-weight tweeds in a dark green herringbone, a soft white silk shirt and an old school tie – in his case, Wykehamist. At the sight of the tie ... Bond's spirits, already low, sank another degree. He knew the type: backbone of the Civil Service, overcrammed and underloved at Winchester, a good Second in P.P.E. at Oxford; the war, staff jobs he would have done meticulously ..."[7]
"'Tee jay?' I croaked, and he laughed. 'Aye ... guide, philosopher, and friend - showin' the new bugs the ropes. What did you call 'em at Rugby? I'm a Wykehamist, you know - and that was your doin', believe it or not!'"
"Freddie looked at him as a timid young squire might have gazed upon St. George when the latter set out to do battle with the dragon. He was of the amiable type which makes heroes of its friends. In the old days when he had fagged for him at Winchester he had thought Derek the most wonderful person in the world, and this view he still retained." (Jill the Reckless, Chapter 1)
"as he thought Winchester good for his own son, he naturally thought the same school good for Sir Lionel's son. But Bertram was entered as a commoner, whereas Wilkinson was in the college" (The Bertrams, page 12)
^Blount, Trevor (May 1965). "Poor Jo, Education, and The Problem of Juvenile Delinquency in Dickens' "Bleak House"". Modern Philology. 62 (4): 325–339. doi:10.1086/389707. JSTOR436367. S2CID162344958.
^Tegner, W. (June 2006). "All from the Same Place?". The Trusty Servant. 101. Winchester College: 5. Archived from the original on 6 February 2015. Retrieved 19 June 2015.
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