Hundreds of copies of it, much thumb-marked, were found littering his bunk."īut the magic of the speech comes after Barrie has built his credentials as an investigator, as he describes the fateful return to Eton by a man who loved his school dearly. And that "after the fatal affair" with Peter Pan, "a search made in the cabin of his floating hulks brought to light that throughout the years of his piracy he had been a faithful subscriber the Eton Chronicle. Balliol being a college of Oxford, and the one that Hook purportedly attended.īarrie's inquiry unearths books Hook withdrew from the library while at Oxford, "all of them, oddly enough, poetry, and mostly of the lake school " and a curious medical record indicating that Hook, when hurt on the football pitch, had 'bled yellow. "We should not even know that he had been an Etonian but for the statement 'Eton and Balliol' in a work that is probably unreliable," he told his young audience, referring to his own writing. The lecture is here and it is magnificent.īarrie takes the tone of an investigative reporter or prosecutor-judge, dutifully presenting the facts he has found. The prompt, as given by the provost a month prior, was to refute the statement: "James Hook, the pirate captain, was a great Etonian, but not a good one." In 1927, more than two decades after the story was put to page, Barrie was invited to Eton to give a lecture.
Indeed, Hook's dying words in the play are " Floreat Etona": "May Eton flourish," the school's crested motto. From Eton we can make sense of Hook's reverence for good form his "distinguished slouch " and, Barrie wrote, the fact that "e was never more sinister than when he was at his most polite, which is probably the truest test of breeding." Yes, James Hook, or Jas., as he is now known to have referred to himself, was an old Etonian, and a Pop at that. And its traditions and arcane wall game, an amalgamation of rugby and soccer played against a brick wall and found nowhere else in the world, make it is as close to Hogwarts as mortals and Muggles will likely find. The name, for many Brits, is synonymous with privilege.
#Captin hook pin 1959 code#
Hook's Eton, with its tailcoat dress code and five hundred years of blue-blood lineage, is an intriguing place. Barrie descried as "cadaverous and blackavised, his hair dressed in long curls which look like black candles about to melt." A man whose real name, if revealed, would "set the country in a blaze." Amid the digital wandering, I made an unexpected discovery: Eton-the world's most esteemed high school-is not only the alma mater of Prince William and Prince Harry of Prime Minister David Cameron and 18 of his predecessors but also of Captain James Hook, commander of the Jolly Roger.Ī pirate whom J.M.
This year, I found myself digging into the notes and bits that surround my favorite Christmas story, Peter Pan, which was staged in London each December early in the 20th century. Then, quite often, to the memories of one's childhood.
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