The Hill: A Romance of Friendship

by Horace Annesley Vachell, Percy Wadham (Illustrator)

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Genres: Fiction, Boarding School, Coming Of Age, Young Adult

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1905

About the author

Horace Annesley Vachell was a prolific English writer of novels, plays, short stories, essays and autobiographical works.

Vachell was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst. After a short period in the Rifle Brigade, he went to California where he became partner in a land company and married Lydie Phillips, his partner's daughter. His wife died in 1895 after the birth of their second child. He is said to have introduced the game of polo to Southern California.

After 17 years abroad, by 1900 Vachell was back in England and went on to write over 50 volumes of fiction including a popular school story, The Hill (1905), which gives an idealised view of life at Harrow and of the friendship between two boys. He also wrote 14 plays, the most successful of which in his lifetime was Quinneys (1914), made into a film in 1927. Another play, The Case of Lady Camber (1915), was the basis for Hitchcock's film Lord Camber's Ladies (1932). His last autobiographical book, More from Methuselah (1951), was published in the year of his 90th birthday.

Although some fiction, like the stories in Bunch Grass (1912), is set in American ranching country, much of his writing concerns a comfortably prosperous English way of life which was echoed in his beautiful old house near Bath and his old-fashioned, distinguished appearance and manner. While he was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and compared at his best with Galsworthy, he has never been considered a major writer.

Reviews

[ALEARDO ZANGHELLINI · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh Dear. To say this book hasn’t aged well is an understatement. Pompous writing style, children addressing each other like middle-aged men (‘old chap’), thoroughly invested in the establishment, worshipping the middle-aged men who make up that establishment, fixated on blood and breeding, dreaming of becoming prime ministers, glorifying war, immolating themselves for empire... Enough to make me cringe 70% of the time. One can only hope that this is simply an adult writer projecting his desires onto his young characters, rather than a faithful representation of public school children in Edwardian times. Did I mention the cricket? Page upon soporiferous page devoted to description of matches!

I sought this out because of my interest in proto-gay fiction (I learnt that Prime Stevenson considered the Hill a homosexual novel). But take it from me, John obsessing (entirely platonically, incidentally) over Desmond is hardly sufficient compensation for putting yourself through the misery of stomaching all that is wrong with this...

[Snufkin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The school story has changed quite a bit over the time, from Tom Brown’s Schooldays to Harry Potter. It can be done extremely well but also so so badly and while as a rule I enjoy a good school story, there are quite a number of ones that I wouldn’t touch unless I was forced to starting with the mentioned Tom Brown. Personally I’m not interested in school stories published before The Harrovians and The Loom of Youth, which opened a new era in the genre with stories that had a more realistic view on boys, teachers and the system. But I wanted to read The Hill for its one of the most homoerotic friendships and in this regard the book delivered what it had promised. And yes, it was, as I had anticipated, an appallingly sentimental view on the public school. I’ve read somewhere that about the term “permanent adolescence” which refers to the idea that for many boys their days as public school students represent the time when they had the most power and success. That unique public school experience outshines everything else in their lives and they can’t move on. And The Hill gives exactly those vibes. I don’t even think that it’s one of those propagandistic school stories, well maybe partially. But mostly it feels like the author genuinely sees his schooldays and the public school as sacred. He sees his schooldays and therefore the institution of public school through a thick mist of sentiment. Of course I rolled my eyes at pathos and sentiment and the chapter about a match between Harrow and Eton was especially ridiculous with Old Boys, grown men occupying important positions in government, showing such ardour and taking all of it so seriously that even impending war in that moment was of no real importance.

But I had expected sentiment and pathos, though admittedly not in such profusion. And I got my promised homoerotic friendship. So I should’ve enjoyed The Hill just fine if not for it’s extreme snobbery. The story exalts aristocracy, constantly talks about importance of “breeding” and explains all of the shortcomings of Scaife’s character by his low birth. I was furious.

Still, the fact that Scaife wasn’t expelled, Desmond’s death and an unexpected conversation (even if just in passing) about glorification of war somewhat saved the story for me.

[Surreysmum · Rating 2 out of 5]

[These notes were made in 1987. I read the 1908 edition:]. I picked this up out of curiosity, because, in one of W.H. Auden's letters, he mentions reading and re-reading it to the point where he almost has it by heart. This is in middle age, but I suspect this school-story (about Harrow) with the subtitle "A Romance of Friendship" may have been one of those disproportionately formative books read in early adolescence for Auden. The story is somewhat along the lines of Tom Brown - it follows the progress of a single, impressionable boy through influences, fairly unsubtly divided between good and evil, represented by the other boys with whom he comes in contact. The nicknames the boys give each other are highly significant - hence "Demon" for the villain figure, "Fluff" for the weakling, "Caesar" for the idol-cum-friend, and "Jonathan" for the friendship-possessed protagonist. The evils into which "Demon" falls (and attempts to drag "Caesar") are not bullying and sex, but alcohol and bridge. "Jonathan" sets out to save his friend, but does not know whether his aim has been accomplished until he receives a posthumous letter ("Caesar" having perished gloriously in the Boer War shortly after leaving school.) The more I try to set them down plainly, the more repugnant the ethical bases of this story become - its glorification of physical strength; the snobbery on every page (the "Demon's" failure to react properly to situations is, it is more than implied, due to the fact that his father is self-educated). The Hill of the title is the hill on which Harrow stands, and, later, the hill upon which "Caesar" accomplishes his self-immolation. They are meant to be glorious symbols - alas, for me, they are symbols of all that is/was wrong about British Imperialism. Even the occasional flashes of real feeling in the book cannot make up for this.

[justsomeguy]

I'm rather curious about Vachell's motivations for writing this book. If it had been written in the U.S. in the 1900s, maybe by Owen Johnson and set at Lawrenceville, the hero of the story would have been the villian (Scaife), and the main character would probably have been an object of ridicule. Although a Harrow boy, Vachell lived for many years in the U.S. He had a ranch in California, and married an American girl and moved back to England only after she died. In a book of memoirs, he describes his life in America and the American Character in (what I interpret to be) mildly positive terms. It appeared to me that he appreciated, at least at some level, the American concepts of self reliance, of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, and impudence in the face of established authority. So, my understanding of his purpose in writing an encomium on the Victorian British Way of Life, with its strict morality and class consciousness, would benefit from some explanation.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

My husband bought this for me as a gift. We very much enjoyed the show about Harrow. This book, set in the late 1890s is in many ways timeless. If you can get through all the school lingo and cricket matches, there lies a sweet story of friendship. High school friendships haven’t changed much in the last 100 years.

[Shaun Hately · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating book - a school story set at one of the real 'Public Schools' of England. Assuming it's accurate (given the author attended the school in the period he is writing about) that makes it special to me.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very innocent and heartfelt.

[Martin Sykala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Obtained the 2nd edition of this book and found it a good read of life in the Victorian times at Harrow. A takes of a close bond between friends.

[Ella · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s not David Blaize. And also it’s kind of unbearably snobby.

[Toastsan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe the real romance was the friends we made along the way.
10/10 would read again.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was written over a hundred years ago, before the huge social class-altering watershed of the Great War and the changes that eventually followed, so it is tricky to accurately interpret the ethos of this short novel about public schoolboy friendships, duty, and life’s moral dilemmas. I see some reviewers seem to consider it has a clear homosexual context which seems to me to misread the place and time.
The subject of moral failing is treated in a basically black and white way, but this is in keeping with the view that a fourteen or fifteen year-old might legitimately have. The writing sometimes is too autobiographical in that the writer’s voice takes over from the young hero’s and in places needs tightening. Nevertheless it does demonstrate a facility with the language that would surely develop and it will be interesting to see much more mature work. He wrote over fifty novels and over a dozen plays so there should be enough to evaluate.
I would guess a young modern schoolboy would find the subjects and treatment so old-fashioned that ‘boring’ might be their evaluation. Unless they are attending Harrow of course.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a weakness for novels and films about British boys' schools circa 1900. This is a fictionalized account of life at Harrow and of the friendship that develops between two particular boys. Since this is a 1905 publication, there's a certain archaic feel in word usage (e.g., a 'crack house' back then was a good thing) and in style (some comments are directed to the reader). Despite my sketchy research on cricket, one chapter -- a blow-by-blow of a cricket match -- left me entirely mystified. But other than the specialized vocabulary of the time and place, the writing is clear and reads easily.

[My initial interest in films about turn-of-the-century English boys' schools ended up spurring my interest in the history and aftereffects of World War I, since a huge percentage of Britain's young men were sacrificed to that cause.]