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Drinking beer was an accepted practice at Rugby school.168 Drinking occurred from a young age and it was customary to drink at meal times. Boys dropped nonchalant lines about their beer drinking to parents. It is most likely that such reports under represent the degree of drinking. In the months after Tom Wills left Rugby school, the Evans House archives reveal an insight into the acceptance of drinking by the boys and how this was sanctioned by the House Master, Charles Evans:

163

Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians (London: Faber and Faber, 1971), p. 299 does mention Rugby School but gives no details as to how long such a practice may have lasted there. The implication is that such practices were widespread.

164

Letters of Tom Burn, p. 77.

165

There were few references to the quality of water in the archival or secondary sources obtained at Rugby School. It is clear that water was consumed to some degree. Harrison, Drink and the Victorians, pp. 207-8 cites the temperance reformer T. H. Green as having drunk only water during his time at Rugby school. The school archivist, Rusty Maclean, also indicated that water was pumped from a well in the Old Quad at Rugby School (personal communication). There were also numerous archival references to the drinking of tea and coffee.

166

References to beer are in boys’ letters home, schoolboy articles, school histories and fictional accounts of life at school.

167

See, Letters of Tom Burn, 16 March 1850, who to his sister, wrote, ‘… took a dose of Castor Oil which has done me a great deal of good. The Housekeeper has it so I can get some whenever I like, I took it in some sherry wine cold not warm …’ and on 23 September 1848, to his sister, ‘… I was invited to a very grand breakfast … with a good many other boys, this morning, they had hot game and other things, and desert [sic] and Champagne, a very odd way of having a breakfast …’

168

Butler, The Three Friends,p. 19. There were casual references throughout the boys’ writings, for example, The New Rugbeian. 1858-1861, vol. II, no. VI, April 1860, p. 197, the editors of the New Rugbeian were drinking beer while writing, ‘… jug of good editorial beer’. There was no sense that this information needed to be hidden. See, The New Rugbeian, November 1859, vol. ii, pp. 36, 40. Hughes,

Tom Brown’s Schooldays, p. 200, comments about petite curly headed boys being corrupted by older boys and taught to drink; p. 204 mentions that Tom Brown was thinking of bottled beer; pp. 220-2: ‘[Tom] ... he dived into his cupboard, and hauled out an old knuckle-bone of ham, and two or three bottles of beer, together with the solemn pewter only used … bread and cheese … [then East says to Tom]… “What a stunning tap, Tom! You are a wunner for bottling the swipes.”’; pp. 256-8, Tom after his fight with the slogger ‘… filled him a tumbler of bottled-beer, and he ate and drank, listening to the pleasant talk ...’

After the news had come of the taking of Sebastopol, the Fellows made a bonfire in the yard, and, proceeding to burn the boxes … they were stopped by the Sixth, on which an extraordinary melee ensued, the Sixth defending, and the rest assaulting the studies – Mr Evans concluded the proceedings with wine all round.169

The rules that governed drinking at Rugby in the 1850s are less clear.170 To some extent the house staff monitored beer drinking. These staff tended to the boys and looked after the day to day running of the house. They were local townsfolk. It was the house staff who procured and distributed the beer to the boys. House rules, both formal and informal, provided limits to alcohol use. Certain restrictions seem clear. Drunkenness as distinct from drinking alcohol was not sanctioned. It could lead to expulsion from the school. It was not clear from the archives how often such expulsions took place but undoubtedly they did not reflect the extent of drunkenness. Greater liberality was shown towards more senior pupils. Students of the sixth were treated more generously. Praeposters were expected to provide guidance to the younger students in all matters including alcohol consumption. A fondness for drink and a Praeposter class not immune to corruption, conspired to ignore the governing rules.

Given the semi-independent manner in which boys lived and the secretive manner in which they often drank beer outside of meal times, for serious consequences to occur, a boy found drunk would have to be found out by another boy or house servant willing to pursue the matter. The boys’ writings suggest that attitudes amongst boys varied to their tolerance of drinking. There were clear injunctions that spirituous liquors were not to be drunk by boys.171

Although Arnold died from a myocardial infarction in 1842, his views on drinking lingered during the 1850s. Arnold had established that certain public houses and the roads that led to them were off limits to the boys. The sixth form had opposed

169

Ye Annals of Evans House. Evans House was the house where Tom Wills lived at Rugby. Charles Evans was housemaster and Tom Wills’ personal tutor.

170

The exact strictures about alcohol are mentioned in various references and probably varied slightly from house to house; as well as between headmasters; not to mention individual praeposters.

171

These were clearly articulated in Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays. See the last chapter in preparation for the climactic cricket match in which Tom Brown met the Headmaster Dr Arnold prior to playing the Marylebone cricket team. There was also the remark from young Brooke earlier to new boys that they should stick to beer, pp. 110-1. While such allusions are fictitious it is quite likely that Tom Hughes modelled much of his description upon personal experiences.

this tightening and fell into line only after one of them was expelled after illegal drinking.172 Arnold seemed torn between the necessity of allowing drinking while his logical instincts concluded that such licence must lead to alcohol abuse and idleness. In Arnold’s mind, drunkenness was wedded to ‘sensual wickedness’.173

Rouse reflected upon a secret drinking society formed by the senior boys. It was called ‘The Cocktail Club’. Boys saved their beer from supper. To this they added more beer saved by the fags which was then mixed with spirits, heated and drunk. The Club existed up until Tait’s headmastership. Over the Christmas period in 1845 it was banished with some members expelled from the school.174

The prefect and house system perhaps allowed some drunkenness to remain hidden within the confines of the houses. It is unclear how aware were Masters of the extent of drunkenness. Drinking was not regarded as a free for all by the boys. In their personal letters, some boys recalled drunkenness with moral horror. Charles Kemp, a contemporary of Wills in Evans House wrote:

I regret to inform you of a most disgusting case of drunkenness that happened in our house yesterday. I chanced to be a witness of the awful spectacle and I don’t think I shall easily forget it. Goulburn [Headmaster] came up to the house last night and has decreed that both the offenders shall leave on Tuesday, and I hope and trust it will be carried out.175

The poet Arthur H. Clough in 1834 wrote despairingly:

… but even here at Rugby, the best of all public schools, which are the best kind of schools, even here there is a vast deal of bad. It was but a few nights ago that a little fellow, not more than thirteen at the very most, was quite drunk, and that for the second time in the last year.176

172

‘A new boy’s letters from Rugby’, Pamphlets of Rugby IV, 7 September 1839. Five Preposters, that is, Sixth Form fellows ‘have been sent away, or at least are going to leave at Lawrence Sheriff (ie. Founder’s day, October ) for being drunk and kicking up a row at a calling over …’

173

Bamford, Arnold on Education, pp. 86-7.

174

The School House Fasti were cited by Rouse as evidence for ‘The Cocktail Club’. It is also mentioned by Hughes in Tom Brown’s Schooldays. See, Rouse, A History of Rugby School, pp. 273-4. For more on Tait, see Hope Simpson, Rugby before Arnold, pp. 10-22. There are numerous brief and accessible biographical pieces on Tait on the internet, for example, http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/A/Archibald-Campbell-Tait.htm

175

Charles E. Kemp to his mother, 19 March 1854. Charles Eamer Kemp entered Rugby school at fourteen years of age.

176

A. H. Clough, Letters and Remains of Arthur Hugh Clough (London: Spottiswoode and Co., 1865), Clough to his brother, 13 October 1834.

Some schoolhouses procured beer through local beer houses. Though not entirely clear in the literature of the time, it seems that brewing occurred within houses. To what extent this was an activity of the boys or house staff is unclear. Tom Brown in Tom Brown’s Schooldays bottled his own beer which, he hid in his room. Bottling one’s own beer was common and called ‘bottling the Swipes’.177

The quality of house beer was regarded as lamentable. Tom Burn in 1848 wrote to his sister to reassure her that the beer was treated to avoid cholera, ‘Mrs J Townsend’s beer is very clear and she says they always boil it a good deal and put a little salt in it’.178 The boys sneered at its putrid brew in their journals. Writing three years after Wills left England, one boy wrote:

Then the beer was such a very odd substance, you could only drink it if you were very thirsty, and swallowed it down without tasting it much. I don’t think the master of the house saved much though, by giving us bad beer, because we used to avenge ourselves on it by hurling it down the sink, so that if we couldn’t drink it, nobody else should.179

The few letters between Wills and his family while at Rugby school make no mention of alcohol. That he was exposed to drinking is undoubted. The institutional acceptance of beer as a source of hydration and its role in the rights of initiation and in sport saw to that. While not conclusive proof regarding Wills, it is impressive circumstantial evidence for his exposure to and consumption of alcohol at the school.

177

‘Bottling the Swipes’, comment by Rev. S. D. Sandes, Pamphlets of Rugby IV, pp. 18-9. ‘… authorized School House supper consisted of stony Double Gloucester cheese and beer so bad that it was known by us colloquially as “Sudden Death” – (but) exhilarating life-giving ale as good as the best Scotch ale can be made out of “Sudden Death”, only try it for curiosity. No one knows the recipe but a schoolboy. Get an ordinary wine bottle, put a funnel into it. Into the funnel put a dessert-spoonful of powdered rice, the same of brown sugar (Demara granulated is the best), half a salt-spoon of powdered ginger, and finally, two raisins. Wire down the cork well. In about three days the raisins will rise to the top, I can’t say why. It is a mystery. That shews the ale is fit to drink. If kept too long (schoolboys do not keep it too long), it will burst the bottle, (the fermentation from the rice being so strong). This “improved Sudden Death” was kept in a “mysterious panel in the Study Wall”, the secret of which was a hand-me- down from one tenant of each study to his successor’.

178

School Letters of Tom Burn, p. 78. Burn was in Cotton House. The 1851 census reveals that this house had a family specifically designated to it, at a nearby address where the head of the household was a Mr Townsend, Beer House Keeper. See Census, Temple Reading Room, Rugby School.

179

‘House Sketches’, The New Rugbeian, vol. II., no. II, November 1859, p. 39. Another example is D. B. Maclaren ‘I like everything here except the beer which is frightful. So you think I might have porter in bottles?’ in Hope Simpson, Rugby since Arnold, p. 35.