Those games
John Grigg
Eton Days Photographs by Nicholas Barlow, text by Oliver Van Oss (Lund Humphries £5.95) There have been many books about Eton and no doubt there will be many more. This is one primarily for old Etonians, because it takes a good deal about the school for granted and provides no glossary of esoteric Eton terms. But it is not necessary to be an Etonian to appreciate the outstanding quality of Nicholas Barlow's pictures, or the profound knowledge and wisdom beneath the easy flow of Oliver Van Oss's commentary.
The book is divided into nine sections, of which the first is on —M" Tutors'—that is, the twenty-five houses which make up the school, as distinct from College. This is a subject on which Mr Van Oss is particularly well qualified to write, because he was an Eton housemaster of genius (as 1 and many others can testify). He says of "M" Tutor' that 'whatever he is will rub off on the boys in his charge and will to some extent, often lastingly, shape their attitudes to the world into which they are growing up.' Quite so, but unfortunately he may—as Mr Van Oss admits—be almost any sort of man, 'kindly or a tartar, a scholar, artistic, or just terribly keen . . . embarrassingly shy or [he] may bulldoze his way into one's secret thoughts
. aloof or altogether too interfering, set impossible standards or be much too easygoing.' Granted the importance of the housemaster, sending a boy to Eton is, therefore, a shot in the dark.
Though we are told that by far the greater part of the Eton day is spent on work, the book's section on work is less than half as long as the one on games. The reason may be that sport is more photogenic than study, or it may be that Etonians continue to set more store by athletic than by intellectual prowess. Of the special Eton games only one—Fives —has established any position in the outside world. Rugby's success has rightly eluded the Field Game, though Mr Van Oss is eloquent about this, as he is even about the incredibly boring Wall Game (which most Etonians are lucky not to have to play).
Whatever may be said about Eton as a place of learning and training for life, its intense visual beauty is not to be denied. Mr Van Oss writes as the aesthete he is of College Chapel, the Cloisters and the 'blue radiance, almost pure aquamarine,' which in School Yard, on a frosty evening in January an hour before sundown, 'seems to rise into the air off the flinty cobbles.' He also wishes that someone had commissioned Raoul Dufy to paint a picture of Absence (roll-call) in School Yard on the Fourth of June, and Mr Barlow's photograph No. 141 shows just what he means.
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