In the Spring of 1951 the Tate had an exhibition. This is how top-notch art dealer Geoffrey Agnew described it.
The fifty-two portraits in this exhibition have been chosen from the much larger collection which hangs in the Provost’s Lodge at Eton. All date from the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. All portray boys or young men shortly after leaving Eton. Many of them were included in the exhibition held at Eton in 1891 to commemorate the four hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the College. In origin, in subject, in historic interest and in artistic excellence they form a unique collection.
They owe their origin to the custom at Eton, first recorded in the seventeenth century, by which the headmaster presented books ‘to all young gentlemen who took their leave of him handsomely’. Handsomely seems to have implied the present of some £10 or £15 (noblemen paid double) slipped unostentatiously on to the headmaster’s desk when taking final leave.
It was to a headmaster, Dr. Barnard, who reigned from 1754 to 1765, that the idea occurred of asking for a portrait instead of a leaving fee from his more distinguished pupils.
It was Dr. Barnard who commissioned the earliest portrait shown here, that of Henry Howard by Allan Ramsay, as well as the portraits by Reynolds of John Darner, of the Duke of Gordon and of Charles James Fox.
The custom of headmasters presenting books continues and I have Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Grey. Some boys still present portraits; Eton has 20th century pictures by Derek Hill, Paul Brason and Andrew Festing. However, the custom had become more demotic when I was a pupil. “Leavers” gave photographs to their friends.
It is sub-optimal to walk along the towpath to Richmond at weekends. The towpath is a melee of joggers, cyclists, buggy pushers, walkers, telephoners and gossipers. Yesterday they were augmented by Marathon runners. You will not criticise me for rewarding myself with a pint at The White Cross by Richmond Bridge. The young barmen had a fashionable haircut – short back and sides but longer on top. This must be a boon to barbers. When I was their age it was fashionable to eschew visits to Thomas, the Court Hairdresser, on the High Street. It made a nonsense of the phrase Eton Crop.
While I was truffling around in the muniment room looking for something I never found I came across some Leavers I was given so you can judge for yourself.
Dear B.B.,
May your friends resurrect the use of Christy in our interactions with you? I am most jealous of the other description of you or did he call all his friends “Beautiful”?
Does the practice at your school of swapping photos encourage a touch of narcissism?
J
Christy O’Connor rose to fame as a golfer in the 1950s and my mother worried that I might be called Christy. Out of respect for my mother will you please desist from calling me Christy, Christophe is an acceptable abbreviation used by close friends but if you do I will call you Jack. Some of my Leavers were taken by Hills and Saunders, still operating in Eton High Street, and some are home-made stuck onto cardboard. The latter prick the pomposity of the former.
The eye did leap to that “Christy” (and the comparatively louche photo of its inscriber).
What a panoply of period hair (and one remarkable set of eyebrows)!
You’ve set me off reminiscing . . . though we did not exchange portraits, at my school in Texas, I was given an Oxford dictionary in a single volume, and something edifying about drawing on the right side of the brain. My academic advisor also gave me a single volume from the Cambridge Ancient Greek series (I can’t remember which). I wonder if the book custom was copied from your school — or was “a copy of a copy of a copy.”
By the way, I was relieved to discover, on clicking through from the e-mail, that the post had nothing to do with Brexit.
‘Beautiful Bellew’ has a sort of mellifluous ring to it, though the author has fully emulated his (wholly appropriate) Christian name as the patron saint of travellers.
Perhaps rummaging through ones personal effects may coerce the author to communicate another episode of his, rather neglected, family history.