Kennedy's Death - Where was I? 40 Years on at Harrow

What an anniversary for us old farts! Where were you when you heard the news of Kennedy's death?

I was a new boy at Harrow school in my room in the Grove which I shared with Gee (I can't remember his first name as we never used them when I was at school. I was doing maths prep (Homework for the initiated)

The Grove

But this evening it's not Kennedy that I am remembering. It is my wonderful school - Harrow.

The Old School

The school song is called "40 years on". Just so happens it is 40 years on for me. It is 40 years since Rattray burst into our room at the top of the Grove yelling "Kennedy is dead". My mind is back when I was 13 and new and knew so little of this complex world that was Harrow. Full of tradition and of special language and ideas that only the initiated could know. It was a frightening time of initiation into the world of men.

40 years is a long time. I do feel so old this evening. I feel so much that my life is well into the second act and that the third act will come soon.

The song, and many other school songs at Harrow are cleverly designed to pull at the heart later in life. The essence of the song is that it is about remembering when you are old the wonders of being young. The heart definitely grows fonder. Churchill hated his time at Harrow where he was bullied and deemed a failure. But in his old age, he would regularly come down and cry as we sang songs to him. It is his death that I recall more than Kennedy's. Boys from the school were part of the honour guard. I can again see the mass of seamen, before and aft, with white sailor hats and white gaiters, swaying up the road as they pulled the gun carriage with his coffin up Ludgate Hill.

Harrow was a magic place. My bed was a straw mattress on a piece of canvas roped to a frame that swung up in the day into a wooden box. Winston's name was carved into it. Boys lived in houses with about 70 other boys. Hygiene was rudimentary. The "Rears", lavatories, had no locks on and you had to hang your 'bluer' ( blazer) on the door to note that you were inside. An open invitation to your so called friends to throw water into the stall with you. "Toshes", baths to you, had to be shared. What a fright it was as a new boy to get into these huge baths with an 18 year old man! But we all developed a great fondness for communal bathing and hours would be spent discussing the events of the day and the world as the stream rose about us. If the Tosh grew cold one boy would put his feet at the tap end and spring back like a piston and push most of the water onto the zinc floor leaving room for the Tosh to be filed once again with hot water. Something you couldn't do at home.

Fagging was a critical part of this world - no not what you think! Fagging was a form of slavery for the younger boys who were attached as servants to the "Privs", house prefects. Harrow occupies many miles in North London. There were no phones then that were accessible to boys. The senior boys ran the school. Beaks, masters, only taught and did cool things such as coach games, direct plays, give dinner parties, take us to London to see shows and so on. Beaks were our social equals and most of us became close friends. How unlike a conventional school! Because the boys ran the school all the messages were run by boys. Also each Priv had all his own personal needs such as tidying his room, cleaning his shoes, corps equipment and and so on done by his fags. If you were "On Boy" you were exempt from boy calls. On Boys were on duty that day for their fag master. if you were just a regular fag you had to keep your ear open. Any Priv would come out to a landing in the house and yell "Boy Boy Boy!' you ran like hell and ended in aline. the last boy got the job.

As a new boy you had to share a room. My first roommate was Gee. A nice chap but we never became close. After 1 1/2 years you got your own room. Really a cell but your own. Sport was incredibly important. especially between the houses. Inter school stuff was ok but you would do anything for your house. We were very tight. So many of our songs were about sport. Sport was a metaphor for life. All about fellowship and struggle.

We sang a lot. There are lots of Harrow songs. The official school song - 40 years on can be heard here

What I have never understood is that many girls schools, including my mother's, Compton, have taken it as their own When you hear the chorus you will know what I mean.

My favourite song though is "500 Faces". This is sung as a solo by a new boy with the school coming in in chorus. It is a tear jerker of the first order and now I am so old, would break me up if I were to hear it for real now. The occasion is School songs. All the school is present and the new boy stands at 13 alone. He is the true reality of being new in a complex society that will not make it easy for him to join.

Imagine then a nervous 13 year old treble voice singing the verse and 700 voices rumbling the chorus.

Here is Speech Room where if you were that new boy you would be on your own.

"Five hundred faces and all so strange. Life in front of me - home behind. I feel like a waif before the wind - Tossed in an ocean of shock and change."

Then the school comes in very quietly but with that power that only 700 voices can bring.

"Yet the the time may come as the years go by, when your heart will thrill at the thought of the Hill (Harrow is on top of a hill) And the day that you came so strange and shy. And the day that you came so strange and shy" So true and this is just how I am feeling tonight

There are several verses but I hope you get the sense of it all? It's all foreshadowing the power of memory and the longing in later life to recapture if only for a moment our youth

Here is the lyric of the first verse of 40 years on and its chorus

Forty years on, when afar and asunder Parted are those who are singing today, When you look back, and forgetfully wonder What you were like in your work and your play, Then, it may be, there will often come o'er you, Glimpses of notes like the catch of a song - Visions of boyhood shall float them before you, Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along,

Chorus

Follow up! Follow up! Follow up! Follow up! Follow up!
Till the field ring again and again,
With the tramp of the twenty-two men.
Follow up! Follow up!