Comment by aebtebeten | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aebtebeten | Hacker News Reader

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The popular image of Sparta seems to have changed. When I grew up, west of the Curtain during the Cold War, the propaganda was 1st World ~= Athens, 2nd World ~= Sparta (and I suppose 3rd World would have been their various client states, which is apt in its own way). On the other hand, during the days of Empire, it seems the Brits had been stanning Sparta:

Underfeeding (with resultant theft[1]) is something Orwell recalled about his time at St. Cyprian's.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23825457

> "The food was not only bad, it was also insufficient. Never before or since have I seen butter or jam scraped on bread so thinly. I do not think I can be imagining the fact that we were underfed, when I remember the lengths we would go in order to steal food."

The Krypteia were also present:

> "The Sixth Form was a group of older boys who were selected as having 'character' and were empowered to beat smaller boys."

> "There was a boy named Johnny Hale who for some months oppressed me horribly. He was a big, powerful, coarsely handsome boy with a very red face and curly black hair, who was forever twisting somebody's arm, wringing somebody's ear, flogging somebody with a riding-crop (he was a member of the Sixth Form), or performing prodigies of activity on the football field. Flip loved him (hence the fact he was habitually called by his Christian name) and Sambo commended him as a boy who 'had character' and 'could keep order'. He was followed about by a group of toadies who nicknamed him Strong Man."

Is it any wonder Orwell would go on to write an infamous dystopia?

[1] It's unclear if his boarding school expected students to supplement their diet from private funds. Orwell mentions other schools where this was explicit, and he was at St. Cyprian's on half-price scholarship. For adults, the posher cavalry regiments made sure their mess dues alone were above official pay rates, to keep out professional soldiers. We know there are instances of people in the british army refusing promotions because they couldn't have afforded one. (Was the glass ceiling the Empire's way to get around the Peter Principle? How many militaries have had "mustangs"?)

1984 can almost be read not as a story about some future or present dystopia, but as fear as organizing principle of society/groups. Huddling is what we seem to do best at our worst.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Such,_Such_Were_the_Joys

> Reaction from Contemporaries

> Of his contemporaries, Cecil Beaton wrote of the piece "It is hilariously funny, but it is exaggerated".[22] Connolly, on reviewing Stansky & Abraham's interpretation, wrote "I was at first enchanted as by anything which recalls one's youth but when I went to verify some references from my old reports and letters I was nearly sick... In the case of St Cyprian's and the Wilkes whom I had so blithely mocked I feel an emotional disturbance... The Wilkeses were true friends and I had caricatured their mannerisms (developed as a kind of ritual square-bashing for dealing with generations of boys) and read mercenary motives into much that was just enthusiasm."[32] Walter Christie and Henry Longhurst went further and wrote their own sympathetic accounts of the school in response to Orwell's and voiced their appreciation for the formidable Mrs Wilkes.[33][34] Robert Pearce, researching the papers of another former pupil,[35] made a comprehensive study from the perspective of the school, investigating school records and other pupils' accounts. While some features were universal features of prep school life, he concluded that Orwell's depiction bore little relation to reality and that Orwell's defamatory allegations were unsupportable.[15] Davison writes "If one is looking for a factual account for life at St Cyprian's, this is not the place to seek it."[36]

> On Orwell's claimed state of misery, Jacintha Buddicom, who knew him well at the time, also raised a strong challenge. She wrote "I can guarantee that the 'I' of "Such, Such were the Joys" is quite unrecognisable as Eric as we knew him then", and "He was a philosophical boy, with varied interests and a sense of humour—which he was inclined to indulge when referring to St Cyprian's in the holidays."[23]

Thanks for the viewpoint from the other side. Since I have very little interest in St. Cyprian's reputation, but some interest in what lay behind 1984, this makes me even more inspired to write one of Syme's war stories, related to his new Miniplen colleagues about the odd personalities back in his old office at Minitru.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24243240

(if we already suspect his author's narration, I have even more reason to believe Smith may be a less-than-reliable narrator.)

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