Sunday, June 27, 2021
You'll Get Like the Later Romans
G.M. Trevelyan (1876-1952), An Autobiography & Other Essays (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1949), pp. 10-11:
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My own house master was Edward Bowen himself, my father's old Trinity friend, author of the first and most famous group of Harrow songs, an eccentric genius with a gift for stirring up the latent spark of intellect in a boy by his own welling eagerness and fun. He was a great walker and battle-field hunter, and I owed my love of walking and of battle-fields, partly at least, to emulation of him. I remember his saying to me, 'O boy, you can never walk less than 25 miles on an off day!' He was the first of the very few who have walked the eighty miles from Cambridge to Oxford in the twenty-four hours. He was a bachelor of somewhat ascetic habits: he once said to me, some years after I had left the school, 'O boy, you oughn't to have a hot bath twice a week; you’ll get like the later Romans, boy.'On Edward Bowen (1836-1901) see W.E. Bowen, Edward Bowen: A Memoir (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1902), and J.A. Mangan, "Philathlete Extraordinary: A Portrait of the Victorian Moralist Edward Bowen," Journal of Sport History 9.3 (Winter, 1982) 23-40.
