masters did, too, despite his unattractive adolescent stunts. This was unusual. Bertie Cranworth, who was an important friend to Denys in the African years, noted, “The headmaster used to…consult Denys on matters concerning the conduct and wellbeing of the school, and it is even a fact that during his last summer he [Denys] gave a supper party on a houseboat on the river, naturally contrary to every known rule, and that more than one master actually accepted and enjoyed his hospitality.” The head asked him to stay on for an extra year in the hope that he would bring on the younger boys. Although it was customary for pupils to remain until their nineteenth birthday, permission to stay on much beyond that was rarely granted. But Denys was a special case. Twenty-five years later, when news reached England that he had been killed, an anonymous contributor wrote an obituary in the school magazine. “Denys was a great figure,” it read, “not only to Masters and Boys, but to the Eton population at large, human and animal…Autocrat and democrat, an adored tyrant.” Acknowledging his sporting excellence, the obituarist went on to note that “athletics were never his preoccupation or his ambition; they were taken in his stride: his real Eton life was in his friends, his mock antipathies, his laughter and his jokes, his catchwords (‘Not a fool at all of course’) and his escapades. And underneath it all, one always knew there was something fine and spacious. How else could he have dominated the school as few boys can ever have dominated it, before or since?” The piece concluded on a poignant note: “It is many years since we have had to do without him, and to think of him happily as going his gay and gallant way in wider and sunnier spaces than we can enjoy. And we must just go on thinking of him like that.”
Overwhelming social success can have a deleterious effect on character. In Denys it promoted the sense, already present, that there was no need for effort. Others learned to disguise ambition at Eton. In Denys’s case, Eton destroyed ambition. He did not leave until he was nineteen and a half. It was the only place he stayed too long.
IN MAY OF 1904, the Avunculus Hector dropped dead of heart failure on the doorstep of his Pall Mall house as he returned from his morning run around Hyde Park. He was forty-eight. The night before the funeral, Toby, Denys, and their father stayed with the bombazined Edith at the Cedars. “It is very nice having Henry and the boys till Thursday night, when they have to go back to Eton,” she wrote to Muriel. “Denys is over 6 foot now and a wonderfully good looking boy…. I do hope they won’t be spoilt—but it is bad for boys to be so good looking.”
Uncle Harold left his entire estate—later valued at £18,998—to a settler’s wife in Australia. Nobody in the family had ever heard of this woman. But she had predeceased him, as had his eldest brother, Murray, so Henry got it all—including the Harlech estate. The Winchilseas were already sharing the Plas with Harold: they had been visiting regularly for years, and in 1902 Henry had shifted the family permanently to Wales. Harold’s death consolidated their position. The earl and the countess naturally adopted their usual feudal role. Nan took the children to visit the sick in candlelit cottages that smelled of onion resin and herb poultices. When they had tea on the back lawn and children peeped from the gardens of the narrow houses of Tryfar Terrace, she sent a footman over with a plate of cakes and fruit. The new countess was admired by the people of Harlech. Henry was considered austere, but he was a decent landlord, and that was the most important thing. As for the children, Toby and Denys became famous, singing comic duets at concerts and gallantly stepping in to read the lesson at St. Tanwg’s when the vicar had a sore throat. But it was Denys who won all hearts. Elsie Williams, a young servant at the Plas,
Overwhelming social success can have a deleterious effect on character. In Denys it promoted the sense, already present, that there was no need for effort. Others learned to disguise ambition at Eton. In Denys’s case, Eton destroyed ambition. He did not leave until he was nineteen and a half. It was the only place he stayed too long.
IN MAY OF 1904, the Avunculus Hector dropped dead of heart failure on the doorstep of his Pall Mall house as he returned from his morning run around Hyde Park. He was forty-eight. The night before the funeral, Toby, Denys, and their father stayed with the bombazined Edith at the Cedars. “It is very nice having Henry and the boys till Thursday night, when they have to go back to Eton,” she wrote to Muriel. “Denys is over 6 foot now and a wonderfully good looking boy…. I do hope they won’t be spoilt—but it is bad for boys to be so good looking.”
Uncle Harold left his entire estate—later valued at £18,998—to a settler’s wife in Australia. Nobody in the family had ever heard of this woman. But she had predeceased him, as had his eldest brother, Murray, so Henry got it all—including the Harlech estate. The Winchilseas were already sharing the Plas with Harold: they had been visiting regularly for years, and in 1902 Henry had shifted the family permanently to Wales. Harold’s death consolidated their position. The earl and the countess naturally adopted their usual feudal role. Nan took the children to visit the sick in candlelit cottages that smelled of onion resin and herb poultices. When they had tea on the back lawn and children peeped from the gardens of the narrow houses of Tryfar Terrace, she sent a footman over with a plate of cakes and fruit. The new countess was admired by the people of Harlech. Henry was considered austere, but he was a decent landlord, and that was the most important thing. As for the children, Toby and Denys became famous, singing comic duets at concerts and gallantly stepping in to read the lesson at St. Tanwg’s when the vicar had a sore throat. But it was Denys who won all hearts. Elsie Williams, a young servant at the Plas,
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