Fans of George Orwell may recall his description, in “Such, Such Were the Joys,” of his disagreeable course of study at Crossgates (real name St. Cyprian’s), the prep school Eric Blair attended as a boy. As a scholarship student, Blair’s principal job at Crossgates was to win admission to a fancy public school like Eton, thus increasing the value of his prep school to prospective students’ parents. To this end the school masters crammed him full of essay topics and cultural “facts” likely to appear on his entrance exams. Whether this differs greatly from modern American college prep I leave as a question for my readers.
Battle of Tewkesbury, by Antony Stanley
Like other students, Blair/Orwell learned the value of mnemonic devices to aid recall, particularly in his dreary history classes. The most baroque of these devices, “A Black Negress Was My Aunt; There’s Her House Behind The Barn,” tracked the first letters of each of the major battles of the famously complex Wars of the Roses. (“Major battles” from the examiners’ point of view, at least.) Having recently had cause to consider the Wars of the Roses - I was reading a biography of Henry VI - and of Orwell's anecdote, I decided finally to decode this complicated aide-memoire, viz:
(Saint) Albans
Blore Heath
Northampton
Wakefield
Mortimer’s Cross
(Saint) Albans, again
Towton
Hedgeley Moor
Hexham
Barnet
Tewkesbury (see above)
Bosworth Field
This tells one nothing about the battles themselves, of course, nor does it tell one anything useful except that the reciter had enough spare time to memorize an obscure historical catechism. I use the word “catechism” advisedly. Entrance exams were probably a relic of an earlier era when elite schools were intended primarily to train young men for the clergy. For them, orthodoxy mattered far more than critical thinking. Eric Blair survived his exams but, not the sort of boy one would call “clerical,” spent most of his time at Eton lazing about and trying to forget where his aunt lived.
