Rugby, Tennessee, and Thomas Hughes of Uffington, Oxfordshire, England: Southern Literary Tour, Part Two: #1

Rugby is a tiny village on the Cumberland Plateau to the north-east of Tennessee. The settlement there was begun in 1880 by Thomas Hughes, better known for his book Tom Brown's Schooldays, which is set in the English town of Rugby in Warwickshire, where Hughes went to the private school of the same name.

Hughes's idea was to build a kind of utopia. In Victorian England, the practice of primogeniture meant that the first born son inherited his father's whole estate, leaving upper middle-class sons born after this with very few respectable professional opportunities. Therefore, Hughes conceived this agricultural community based on the principles of Muscular Christianity, in which much importance was given to sport.

The colony was beset by many difficulties - typhoid, land title disputes, maladminisration, and poor soil among them - and by 1887, following the deaths of several prominent members, most of the colony's original members had left. Hughes himself had spent very little time in Rugby, although his mother Margaret lived there.

Inside the school is a brief history, of which this is the relevant part:

'The first building on this site was a three-storey community building erected by Rugby's Board of Aid to Land Ownership [from whom Hughes bought the land and retained the name] in 1880. The first floor functioned as a school, the second floor housed a multi-denominational room, and the third floor was used as a meeting space for clubs like the Masonic Lodge and the Odd Fellows. This community building burned in 1906.

A number of Hughes's books on display in the school.

As the sign on the door says, this library was built on 5 October 1882.

It contains 7000 books .

Kingstone Lisle was designed for Thomas Hughes to live in, although he used it very little.

Christ Church Episcopal, 1887.

The chancel windows, the left one of which is dedicated to Margaret E. Hughes (1797-1887).

And finally, Rugby Printing Works.

We had originally planned to spend the night at historic Newbury House in the village, but unfortunately had to press on further with our tour.In 1907, the Morgan County School Board built the current building on the same foundation. Classes were held for all grades on the first floor, and the second floor held a cafeteria.'

Thomas Hughes and Kingston Lisle, Oxfordshire, and the Blowing Stone

The pub The Blowing Stone, with its inn sign of a stone with several holes set against a background of the famous white horse, obviously hides a story or two.

L. V. Grinsell's leaflet The Blowing Stone attempts to unravel some of this mystery, and he is of course right to virtually dismiss the myth that it was used by Alfred the Great to summon his men to fight the Danes: the sound made through blowing into it was thought to be heard for many miles around.

Nevertheless, the blowing stone has acquired a piece of immortality for itself. It once stood in front of a different pub called The Blowing Stone, toward the bottom of Blowingstone Hill, and this lump of sarsen stone is mentioned in Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays:

'At the bottom [of the hill] there is a pleasant public [house], whereat we must really take a modest quencher, for the down here is a provocative of thirst. So we pull up under an old oak which stands before the door.

"What is the name of your hill, landlord?"

"Blawing Stwun Hill, sir, to be sure."

"And of your house? I can't make out the sign."

"Blawing Stwun, sir," says the landlord, pouring out his old ale from a Toby-Philpot jug, with a melodious crash, into the long-necked glass.

"What queer names!" say we, sighing at the end of our draught, and holding out the glass to be replenished.

"Be'an't queer at all, as I can see, sir," says mine host, handing back our glass, "seeing as this here is the Blawing Stwun his self," putting his hand on a square lump of stone some three feet and a half high, perforated with two or three queer holes, like petrified antediluvian rat-holes, which lies there close under the oak, under our very nose. We are more than ever puzzled, and drink our second glass of ale wondering what will come next. "Like to hear un, sir?" says mine host, setting down Toby Philpot on the tray, and resting both hands on the "Stwun." We are ready for anything; and he, without waiting for a reply, applies his mouth to one of the rat-holes. Something must come of it, if he doesn't burst. Good heavens! I hope he has no apoplectic tendencies. Yes, here it comes, sure enough, a grewsome sound between a moan and a roar, and spreads itself away over the valley, and up the hillside, and into the woods at the back of the house - a ghost-like, awful voice. "Um do say, sir," says mine host rising purple-faced, while the moan is still coming out of the "Stwun," "as they used in old times to warn the country-side, by blawing the stwun when the enemy was acomin' - and as how folks could make un heered them for seven mile round; leastways, so I've heered Lawyer Smith say, and he knows a smart sight about them old times." We can hardly swallow Lawyer Smith's seven miles; but could the blowing of the stone have been a summons, a sort of sending the fiery cross round the neighbourhood in the old times? What old times? Who knows? We pay for our beer, and are thankful.

"And what's the name of the village just below, landlord?"

"Kingstone Lisle*, sir."'

The village (without an 'e') is about a half mile from the stone, which seems to attract a number of people: when I visited earlier today, there was a party of schoolchildren there, one of whom tried blowing into the stone and only succeeded in what his guardian called 'making rude noises'. Grinsell explains that to make a successful noise, all that need be done is to cover the hole entirely with the mouth and simply blow.

I didn't bother trying.

Kingston Lisle is also the name of the house Hughes built in his experimental school project in Rugby, eastern Tennessee, more of which I shall mention when I go there next month.

 This fascinating photo shows the blowing stone in about 1910, and was sent to me yesterday by George Zepp, of Rugby, Tennessee. Many thanks, George!

Thomas Hughes at Uffington, Oxfordshire

Thomas Hughes (1822-96) was born in Uffington, Oxfordshire, where he spent his first ten years. His famous novel Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857) is semi-autobiographical in that it introduces many elements of his younger years in Uffington, and his later youthful years at Rugby School.

Interestingly, Hughes did not intend the book to be a good read, as he makes clear in his Preface to the sixth edition. His aim is didactic:

'Several persons, for whose judgment I have the highest respect, while saying very kind things about this book, have added, that the great fault of it is, "too much preaching;" but they hope I shall amend in this matter should I ever write again. Now this I most distinctly decline to do. Why, my whole object in writing at all was to get the chance of preaching! When a man comes to my time of life and has his bread to make, and very little time to spare, is it likely that he will spend almost the whole of his yearly vacation in writing a story just to amuse people? I think not. At any rate, I wouldn't do so myself.'

In Tom Brown's Schooldays, Hughes particularly criticizes bullying, and the fagging system, present in public (meaning private!) schools.

'Our village was blessed amongst other things with a well-endowed school. The building stood by itself, apart from the master's house, on an angle of ground where three roads - an old gray stone building with a steep roof and mullioned windows.'

Tom Brown's School Museum next to the parish church is understandably mainly dedicated to Thomas Hughes, although there is also a large amount of information there about the general history of Uffington.

The school orders.

Once a village shop, Benjy's Cottage is named after the character in Tom Brown's Schooldays:

'But old Benjy was young master's real delight and refuge. He was a youth by the side of Noah, scarce seventy years old - a cheery, humorous, kind-hearted old man, full of sixty years of Vale [of the White Horse] gossip, and of all sorts of helpful ways for young and old, but above all for children. It was he who bent the first pin with which Tom extracted his first stickleback out of "Pebbly Brook," the little stream which ran through the village. The first stickleback was a splendid fellow, with fabulous red and blue gills. Tom kept him in a small basin till the day of his death, and became a fisherman from that day.'

The parish church of St Mary's, more familiarly known as 'The cathedral in the Vale', is where Thomas Hughes's grandfather was the vicar.

John Betjeman (1906-84) has a way of imposing his presence in many places, and he spent eleven years in Uffington - from 1934 to 1945 - as a tenant at Gerrards Farm. Betjeman had recently married Penelope Chetwode, and the couple soon became prominent features in the village, with John being the People's Warden of the church, and Penelope a keen director of plays. As the landlord John Wheeler wanted the farm for his son in 1945, the Betjeman family then moved to Farnborough in Berkshire.