Geoffrey Hugh Alington MA

• Matriculated: 1907

• Born: 3 December 1888

• Died: 9 August 1916

• Regiment: Royal Sussex Regiment

• Grave/Memorial: Bouzincourt Communal Cemetery (Extension): II.F.8

Family background

b. 3 December 1888 at 107, Banbury Road, Oxford, as the eldest son (of four boys) of the Reverend Edward Hugh Alington, MA (1857–1938) and Margaret Alington (née MacLaren) (1859–1938) (m. 1885). At the time of the 1891 Census, the family was living at 104, Banbury Road, Oxford, with six boarders (five servants); at the time of the 1901 Census the family was living at “Mayfield”, St Giles, Oxford, with 11 boarders (five servants); and at the time of the 1911 Census the family was still living at the same address which was now given as “Mayfield”, Summertown, Oxford, with 13 boarders (four servants).

 

Parents and antecedents

The Alingtons are an ancient Cambridgeshire family and particularly associated with the village of Horseheath, a few miles south-east of Cambridge, where several of the family are buried. One of them was killed at the Battle of Bosworth (22 August 1485), the final battle of the Wars of the Roses, and the family came into particular prominence under the Stuarts. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many of them became clerics.

The Reverend John Alington (1801–83), Alington’s grandfather, was a Demy (Scholar) at Magdalen from 1818 to 1825. He was awarded a BA in 1822 and an MA in 1825, and from 1825 to 1835 he was a Fellow of Magdalen, during which time he acted as Senior Dean of Arts (1828–29) and one of the Bursars (1830). From 1832 to 1834 he was Rector of Croxby, near Caistor, Lincolnshire, a parish of 140 souls and with a gross income of £329 p.a. that was in the gift of Magdalen, and in 1834 he became Rector of Candlebury, a parish of 235 souls in the same diocese that was also in the gift of Magdalen and paid a gross stipend of £206 p.a. By 1861 he was the Vicar of Luddington, yet another Lincolnshire parish.

Alington’s father was the seventh son of the Reverend John Alington and a first-rate cricketer, footballer and athlete, both at school (Uppingham and Westminster, where he became the School’s Captain in 1875/76) and at Oxford, where he played cricket and football for Hertford College throughout his time there. He also had a Blue in football and played against Cambridge twice – in 1876/77 and 1877/78. His elder brother Gervase O’Bryen (also O’Brien) Alington (1851–1929) studied at Queen’s College, Oxford, and became an assistant master in a preparatory school in Torquay. He described himself later as an artist/painter, but there is no record of his works. He was the father of Edward Hugh’s cousin (Gervase) Winford (Stovin) Alington, killed in action on 9 November 1918 during the liberation of Tournai in northern France.

After reading Classics at Hertford College, Oxford, from 1876 to 1880 (BA 1880; MA 1883), Alington’s father, whose nickname was “Bear”, became an assistant master at Summer Fields, North Oxford, but left to become ordained (deacon 1884; priest 1885). In 1885 he married the third daughter (third child) of Archibald and Gertrude Maclaren (see below), and served a curacy at St Mark’s, Leicester (1884–87). In 1896, on the death of Gertrude MacLaren (who had started Summer Fields) he came back to the school as an assistant master, but this time with special responsibility for games and for Mayfield, the senior boarding house. He was also the right-hand man of the Headmaster, the Reverend Dr Charles Eccles Edmond Williams (1851–1941), who was also his brother-in-law, having married the second daughter of Archibald and Gertrude Maclaren in 1879. In 1918, Alington’s father succeeded Dr Williams as Headmaster of Summer Fields and held the post until his retirement in 1927.

Alington’s maternal grandmother, Gertrude Isobel Frances MacLaren (1833–96), was the daughter of David Alphonso Talboys (1790–1840), originally a bookseller in Bedford who moved to Oxford. Here he formed a partnership with the University bookseller, James Luff Wheeler (1797–1862), and began to publish the Oxford English Classics series. David Alphonso was a scholar and became active in the life of the city – serving as Councillor and Sheriff. Gertrude, too, was a classical scholar, and established Summer Fields Preparatory School on a 70-acre site in North Oxford, where it still exists today (cf. A.J.B. Hudson, G.W.S. Alington, A.M.F.W. Porter, E.G.R. Romanes, T.Z.D. Babington). The ethos of the school, whose motto was “mens sana in corpore sano”, combined traditional Christian virtues with a belief in the supreme importance of physical fitness. In this respect, Gertrude was following the precepts of her husband (m. 1851), Archibald MacLaren (c.1819–1884), a former medical student and physiologist, who became Oxford University’s fencing coach and one of the principal recognized authorities on the science of physical education.

In 1858, MacLaren set up a private gymnasium at the corner of Bear Lane that was frequented by William Morris (1834–96) and Edward Burne Jones (1833–98) during their time in Oxford as undergraduates. It was designed by the Gothic Revival architect William Wilkinson (1819–1901), who had moved to Oxford in 1856 where he designed many buildings, including the Randolph Hotel (1864) and several police stations in Oxfordshire for the newly established Police Force.

 

 

In 1860, the British Government asked him to develop a new system of physical training for the Army that was formally adopted two years later, and for several years MacLaren was asked to oversee the construction of gymnasia at such large military depots as the Curragh, Dublin, Chatham, Woolwich, Sandhurst inter al. His system, set out in such publications as A System of Physical Education, Theoretical and Practical (1869, 2^nd (enlarged) edn 1874 (London: Macmillan and Co.), 3^rd (revised) edn 1895), Training in Theory and Practice (London, 1866, supplemented by diagrams and tables and an appendix by the Revd Thomas Henry Toovey Hopkins (1831–85), Fellow of Magdalen 1856–85), and National Systems of Bodily Exercise (published in MacMillan’s Magazine, 7 (November 1862–April 1863), pp. 277–86), was based on scientific principles and the clear distinction between recreational and educational exercise. During the second half of the nineteenth century his system was adopted by most of Britain’s Public Schools, where it was the prevailing philosophy until the mid-twentieth century. MacLaren’s obituary in The Lancet (cited at length in The Oxford Magazine a few days later) said:

By his Gymnasium at Oxford he has promoted in an extraordinary degree the health and vigour of the young men of the better classes, while by his excellent athletic code for the army, and by his influence with successive War Ministers, he has aided largely in introducing that admirable athletic training which is transforming the stiff, slow-moving grenadier of old times into the vigorous, rapid, and enduring soldier of modern days.

It then continued that the above military services,

great as they are, are the least of his merits; he has written on his subject largely, and has written so well and so sensibly, without exaggeration and without clap-trap, that he has succeeded in gradually bringing the whole nation to consider the important subject of physical training. Himself a physiologist and conversant with the scientific part of his subject, he has been more able to set forth principles and to convince by reason than his predecessors, and his influence has been so much the wider, and will be so much the more enduring.

MacLaren also wrote a book of moral poems, based on fairy-tales, entitled The Fairy Family: A Series of Ballads and Metrical Tales Illustrating the Fairy Faith of Europe (1857), for which Burne-Jones produced a set of illustrations and which was well received in literary circles.

 

 

Archibald and Gertrude MacLaren had five children, two of whom died in infancy:

(1) Gertrude Elizabeth (1852–4);

(2) Mabel (1854–1951), later Williams after her marriage (1879) to the Reverend Dr Charles Eccles Edmond Williams (1851–1941); three children;

(3) Margaret (1859–1938), later Alington after her marriage (1885) to the Reverend Edward Hugh Alington, MA (1857–1938); four sons;

(4) Alexander Mitchell Archibald (b. and d. 1856);

(5) John Wallace Hozier (b. 1861, d. 1915 in Tenerife); married (1891) Ethel Calvert Evers (1869–1948).

Charles Williams became an assistant master at Summer Fields in 1873 and was ordained in 1875. He remained at Summer Fields until he retired, having been Headmaster from 1877 until his retirement in 1918. An obituarist said that during his time as Headmaster,

the school was extraordinarily successful in turning out boys of reputation and character for the public schools and the Navy. [… He] possessed an almost uncanny flair for steeping his boys’ minds in love for the classics and humanities; and his vigorous teaching and inspiration was shown in the long list of scholarships won at the public schools. At Eton alone over 240 were won in 50 years. Possibly the years between 1890 and 1900 produced the highest standard of classical scholarships ever reached at Summer Fields, when its boys gained first place at Eton nine times in those years and the second four times; and the first place twice at Winchester. Such honours in the intellectual life, however, he by no means considered the most important results of the school’s training; and he was equally delighted with the long list of athletes, cricketers, and footballers whose names did honour to the school. […] He was often heard to remark that the proudest moment of his life was just before the last War, when in one year four Old Summer Fieldians won their places in the Eton Eight while another was ninth man.

The Williams’s second son, Hilary Evelyn Eccles (1892–1915), was killed in action at Loos on 30 September 1915 while serving as a Second Lieutenant in the 11^th (Service) Battalion, the Rifle Brigade.

John Wallace Hozier studied Classics at Magdalen from 1880 to 1884 (BA 1985; MA 1887) and became the Classics master at Summer Fields Preparatory School. He left £25,000.

 

Siblings and their families

Brother of:

(1) John Marmaduke (“Jack”) (1890–1959);

(2) Adrian Richard (1895–1958); married (1928) Lucy Bailey or Wilson (c.1877–1957);

(3) Argentine Francis (“Bobs”) (1898–1977); married first (1923) Gillian M. Tanner (1900–58), one son, two daughters; then (1959) Jean Natalie Charlotte Lindsay (1909–2000).

In 1911, John Marmaduke, who had psychological problems, was an undergraduate at Oxford, and during World War One he served as a Private in the Labour Corps. This unit was established in February 1916 after the passing of the Military Service Act in January in order to employ men of alien birth or origin, German prisoners of war, conscientious objectors and men who, for medical reasons, could not serve in the trenches.

Adrian Richard was the only one of the four brothers to attend Summer Fields as a pupil (1904–08), and in 1933 he published a novel, Chaytor’s, that was based on his experiences there. He disembarked in France on 26 December 1915 and rose to the rank of Captain in the 6^th (Service) Battalion, The Duke of Edinburgh’s (Wiltshire) Regiment, a Pioneer Battalion that combined infantry and engineers. After being wounded, he served as a cipher officer to the Supreme War Council before coming up to Magdalen in 1919. He wrote novels, his two best-known works are Sanity Island (1941), a comic satire on political extremism – mainly of the left-wing variety – and the farcical aspects of re-armament, and His Excellency (1951). The former novel involved a thinly veiled version of Britain and the latter novel, which was based on the play by Dorothy and Campbell Christie (1896–1990 and 1893–1963) and set on a fictitious, British-ruled Mediterranean island, repeats the earlier one. In 1952 it was made into an Ealing Comedy of the same name, starring Eric Portman (1901–69).

Argentine Francis was gazetted Second Lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards on 26 September 1917 and promoted Lieutenant on 26 March 1919 (London Gazette, no. 30,352, 26 October 1917, p. 11,026; no. 31298, 15 April 1919, p. 5,001). He landed in France in summer/autumn 1918, i.e. just before the war ended, but did not resign his commission until 1 April 1920, by which time he was reading History at Magdalen. He graduated in 1921, became an assistant master at Summer Fields in 1922, and took over from his father as Headmaster there until 1937, when he left to become a schools inspector. At this point, after nearly three-quarters of a century, the School passed out of the hands of the MacLaren, Williams and Alington families. In the 1930s, under the pen-name Hugh Talbot, he began publishing works of light fiction, which included at least one work of detective fiction (The Amazing Test Match Crime, 1939). His son read Physiology at Magdalen from 1951 to 1955.

As mentioned above, Geoffrey Hugh was a cousin of G.W.S Alington and he was also a cousin of the Reverend (later Right Reverend, DD) Cyril Argentine Alington (1872–1955), a prominent cleric, educationalist and classical scholar who was elected Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, in 1896. Although he was ordained priest in 1901, Cyril Argentine began his career as an assistant master at Marlborough College from 1896 to 1899, then moved to Eton until 1908, when he became the Headmaster of Shrewsbury and was responsible for the appointment of E.H.L. Southwell as an assistant master there. In 1917 he returned to Eton as Headmaster and stayed there until 1933, when he was made Dean of Durham (until 1951). From 1921 to 1933 he was Chaplain to King George V. In World War Two his youngest son, Patrick Cyril Waynflete Alington (1920–43), was killed in action at Salerno, aged 23, while serving as a Captain in the 6^th Battalion of the Grenadier Guards: he is buried in Salerno War Cemetery, Grave III.A.47. Cyril Alington was also a prolific author, with 68 entries in the Bodleian catalogue. Between 1922 and 1954 he published at least 15 works of fiction and between 1914 and 1954 he published at least 31 others on a variety of topics and in a variety of genres (including witty light verse).

 

Education and professional life

Alington attended Hillside Preparatory School, West Malvern, Worcestershire, from c.1895 to 1898, then from 1898 to 1903 Horris Hill Preparatory School, Hampshire (founded 1888; also known as Mr Evans’s Preparatory School; cf. M.K. Mackenzie, G. Bonham-Carter, P.A. Tillard, R.H. Hine-Haycock, H.F. Yeatman). He finally went to Marlborough College from 1903 to 1907, where he was a Foundation Scholar. He matriculated at Magdalen as a Commoner on 15 October 1907, having been exempted from Responsions. Nevertheless, Alington was a very weak student, making one wonder why he was admitted to Magdalen at all, let alone to read such a difficult course as Classics, and his Tutors consistently described him as such, going so far as to rate him as the “weakest man reading” (i.e. taking this particular course). In March 1908, despite growing doubts about his capacities, one of his Tutors charitably said that he “should go on” with the course, but two months later, the more hard-headed Christopher Cookson bluntly said that he “should give up”. Alington sat the First Public Examination in the Trinity Term of 1908 but was not awarded even a 4^th class degree, and when he re-sat the exam in October 1908, someone described him as “Choked off from honours” and asked “What is he doing?”. But this time Alington somehow managed to get through, and so, even though he was “doing no good”, appeared to have “no energy”, and attracted the rare termly evaluation of a γ, he was allowed to drop his sights and read for a Pass Degree between Trinity Term 1909 and Trinity Term 1910 (Groups A1 [Greek and/or Latin Literature/Philosophy], B1 [English History], and B3 [Elements of Political Economy]). Even so, in May 1909 his Tutors expected him to fail B1 and seem to have been surprised when, in June 1909, he passed. In the Hilary Term of 1910 he was bitten by the acting bug – “O.U.D.S.” – and attended only six out of 15 classes and tutorials, and after another term of “masterly inactivity”, he managed to pass A1. He took his BA on 2 August 1910 and his MA in 1914. In 1914, he played for the Oxfordshire Hockey XI.

 

 

After graduating, Alington, like his father and youngest brother, became a teacher at Summer Fields from 1910 to 1912 before spending two years at its daughter foundation, Summer Fields St Leonards, in Sussex. He adored schoolmastering and involved himself in all aspects of the school, notably cricket and amateur dramatics, and he wrote plays for the pupils, three of which were published by G. Bell and Sons Ltd in 1914. He also played hockey for Oxfordshire.

 

 

War service

Alington was 5 foot 10 inches tall and commissioned Second Lieutenant in the 5^th (Cinque Ports) Battalion (Territorial Forces), Royal Sussex Regiment, on 10 April 1915. He landed in France on 15 November 1915 and joined his Battalion on 6 December 1915, when it was looking after 12 miles of trenches near Sailly-au-Bois, eight miles north-west of Albert. The Battalion had arrived in France in early 1915 and since 20 August 1915 it had been the Pioneer Battalion of the 48^th (South Midland) Division (Territorial Forces), which included E.V.D. Birchall’s 1^st Bucks Battalion of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. Alington’s Battalion stayed in this area until 6 January 1916 when it was sent to build casemates at St Léger-lès-Authie, about four miles to the west, for three weeks or so. From 1 February to 5 May 1916 it was back near Sailly-au-Bois, and from 28 April to 5 May, Alington was granted home leave.

The Battalion then spent three weeks at Hem before returning to Sailly-au-Bois and remained there throughout June during the build-up to the Battle of the Somme (11 July–18 November 1916). The work was very heavy because the rain soaked into the soil; the men worked 10–14 hours a day; they got wet through but had no time to dry off properly; and most of the time they were under fire. On 1 July the Battalion was at Mailly-Maillet, three miles south of Sailly-au-Bois, as part of Corps Reserve, and on the following day it was detailed to join the attack on the German front-line trenches between Beaumont Hamel and the River Aisne, which the 29^th Division had failed to take on 1 July. But the attack was called off at the last minute. Between 3 July, when Alington was made OC (Officer Commanding) ‘B’ Company, and 15 July, the Battalion was back at Sailly-au-Bois cleaning up the trenches and improving lateral communication between 144^th and 145^th Brigade. From 16 to 28 July the Battalion was working in Bouzincourt, Albert, and Aveluy, i.e. on the same side of the Albert–Bapaume road as Birchall’s Battalion but a few miles further to the west. After the action at Pozières in which Birchall was seriously wounded, Alington’s Battalion rested from 29 July to 3 August at Domqueur, ten miles east of Abbeville and well to the west of the front line. But on 9 August 1916, just after beginning a three-week stint in the trenches at Aveluy Wood, a mile to the north of Albert, Alington was killed in action by a shell, aged 27. He had just returned from the trenches and settled his men in their billets, when the shell burst in front of the chair where he was sitting.

 

 

In May 1916, Alington had helped found the Cinque Ports Gazette, the Battalion magazine, of which only three issues appeared. In the third issue, the editor included an obituary of Alington:

No officer in the Battalion was more liked or respected. The soul of good humour, many were the times when his cheeriness had helped to chase gloom away. […] He took the keenest interest in his men, and on many occasions arranged concerts or got up cricket and football matches in which he showed the same qualities which made him so successful an officer.

A friend and brother officer, who would join the staff of Summer Fields after the war, later recorded that Alington loathed war and confirmed that he had an excellent rapport with the men, whilst another source tells us that while in the trenches, he amused himself by composing Latin proses and sending them back for the boys to do. He is buried in Bouzincourt Communal Cemetery (Extension), Grave II.F.8; it is inscribed “Thy Son Liveth” – the title of a book written by the American children’s writer Grace Duffie Boylan (1861–1935) and first published anonymously by Little, Brown and Co., Boston, in 1918. The book’s subtitle was “Messages from a Soldier to his Mother”, and it purportedly sets forth what her son “Bob” said to her about death using Morse code and automatic writing following his death in action near Lens as a member of the US Engineer Corps. Although the book went into several printings and was read by many people – it is now available on-line – Mrs Boylan decided to print it anonymously in case her parents laughed at her. Allington is commemorated in the Memorial Hall, Marlborough College. He left £1,327 15s.

 

 

Bibliography

For the books and archives referred to here in short form, refer to the Slow Dusk Bibliography and Archival Sources.

 

Special acknowledgements:

 *Peter C. McIntosh, ‘MacLaren, Archibald (1819?–1884)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 35 (2004), p. 722.

*Nicholas Aldridge, Time to Spare?: A History of Summer Fields (Oxford: Talboys, 1989), pp. 48, 103

*–– G.B.: Master, Monster or Myth (Ilfracombe: Arthur H. Stockwell, 2008), pp. 37–9, 45, 47.

 

Printed sources:

Archibald Maclaren, of the Gymnasium, Oxford, ‘National Systems of Bodily Exercise’, Macmillan’s Magazine, 7 (February 1863), pp. 277–86.

[Anon.], ‘Archibald Maclaren’ [obituary], The Oxford Magazine, 2, no. 62 (27 February 1884), p. 114.

[Anon.], ‘Second Lieutenant Geoffrey Hugh Alington’ [obituary], The Times, no. 41,247 (16 August 1916), p. 9.

[Anon.], ‘The Rev. E.H. Alington’ [obituary], The Times, no. 48,098 (13 September 1938), p. 17.

[Anon.], ‘Rev. Dr. C.E. Williams’ [obituary], The Times, no. 48,879 (20 March 1941), p. 7.

[Anon.], ‘Mr. Adrian Alington [obituary]’, The Times, no. 54,298 (3 November 1958), p. 12.

Leinster-Mackay (1984), pp. 107, 113–16, 125–6, 139, 146–7.

 

Archival sources:

MCA: F29/1/MS5/5 (Notebook containing comments by H.W. Greene et al. on student progress [1895–1911]), p. 89.

MCA: Ms. 876 (III), vol. 1.

OUA: UR 2/1/62.

WO95/2751.

WO374/898.

 

On-line sources:

Wikipedia, ‘Cyril Argentine Alington’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Alington (accessed 11 July 2018).