D. Ray Smith
Carolyn Krause concludes a two-part sequence on rugby historical past with an summary of the life, novels and imaginative and prescient of Thomas Hughes, the British lawyer and politician who based a utopian group on the Cumberland Plateau in japanese Tennessee. This text relies largely on the attitude of Fred Bailey, professor of historical past at Abilene Christian College and printed creator of articles and books; teaches programs on Queen Victoria's England on the Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Studying, or ORICL, on the Roane State Neighborhood Faculty campus in Oak Ridge. He just lately gave an ORICL lecture on the historical past of rugby and the story of its well-known founder and his childhood mentor.
On Saturday, October 7, Historic Rugby (1331 Rugby Parkway, Rugby, Tennessee) will host its annual Founders Day honoring Thomas Hughes and honoring “another person in latest historical past who has been instrumental in driving Historic Rugby and Hughes' now-famous village into the current and the longer term.” The occasion will characteristic on-site artists and craftspeople, meals at The Canteen and a live performance by the Rugby Cornet Band.
Go to www.historicrugby.org for info on upcoming occasions. Benefit from the conclusion of Carolyn's Rugby story.
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The utopian group of Rugby, Tennessee, based by Thomas Hughes, an English lawyer, decide, and politician finest identified for his youngsters's novel “Tom Brown's College Days” (1857), mirrored Hughes' values and imaginative and prescient. In accordance with Fred Bailey in his latest ORICL lecture on rugby: “One quantity that’s all the time on show within the Thomas Hughes Public Library at Rugby, which is reverse the chapel, is a youngsters's ebook that Hughes wrote known as 'Tom Brown's College Days'.” It was an unimaginable little ebook for its affect. US President Theodore Roosevelt learn it as a boy and mentioned each boy ought to learn it.
Bailey mentioned Hughes' first youngsters's novel “just isn’t as well-known to most individuals right now as Nineteenth-century youngsters's novels like Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland' or Mark Twain's 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.' If I needed to argue which one was essentially the most unimaginable and influential of all of the books written by Englishmen and Individuals within the Nineteenth century, I'd put Hughes's youngsters's ebook within the high 5.”
Hughes, who attended Rugby College in England from 1834 to 1842, based mostly his youngsters's novel on his adventures there, together with defeating and later triumphing over the bully Flashman, with the assistance of his extra skilled classmate Harry “Scud” East and a comical boy named Diggs. Tom Brown, modeled after the creator's brother George, was then requested to befriend and defend George Arthur, a fragile, delicate and good boy. The spotlight of Tom's college profession was a profitable cricket match based mostly on the creator's personal experiences.
The actual determine influencing Tom Brown was the schoolmaster Thomas Arnold (1795-1842), who influenced Thomas Hughes. Tom Brown engaged in combating to defeat a bully and used his athleticism to excel at cricket, rugby and different sports activities in school. In accordance with Wikipedia, as headmaster of Rugby College from 1828 to 1841, Arnold “launched a number of reforms which had been broadly copied by different well-known public faculties. His reforms redefined the requirements of masculinity and success.”
In accordance with Bailey, Arnold emphasised the significance of ethical and mental improvement within the training of boys, however to cut back combating between boys, he inspired sports activities akin to cricket and rugby, a sport invented in 1823 on the college.
“Arnold got here up with the concept that sports activities and different bodily exercise ought to be very a lot part of being an informed man,” Bailey mentioned. “The apostle Paul mentioned that 'your physique is the temple of your spirit,' so Arnold believed there was a religious facet to bodily exercise.”
Baron de Coubertin, a French educator and historian referred to as the daddy of the fashionable Olympic Video games, grew to become lively in selling the introduction of sports activities in French faculties after visiting a rugby college in 1886 and studying in regards to the late Thomas Arnold. De Coubertin thought of Arnold “the daddy of organized sports activities, whom he admired whereas attending English public faculties” and the explanation so many colleges have enjoying fields.
In accordance with Wikipedia: ” Arnold's tomb within the college chapel, he recalled that he all of a sudden felt as if he had been taking a look at 'the very basis stone of the British Empire.' Coubertin is assumed to have exaggerated the significance of sport to Thomas Arnold, whom he thought of “one of many founders of athletic chivalry”. The character-forming affect of sport which so impressed Coubertin most likely has its origins in Hughes's novel 'Tom Brown's College Days'.”
Sports activities and bodily exercise had been so necessary to Hughes that he ensured the residents of Rugby, Tennessee had many leisure alternatives. In accordance with the Historic Rugby web site: “Garden tennis courts had been typically laid out and used. Colonists and guests loved rugby, soccer, horse driving, croquet and swimming within the clear flowing rivers surrounding the city.
Hughes embraced Christian socialism and muscular Christianity, largely resulting from his spiritual training and bodily actions at Rugby College. Christian socialism (known as the “social gospel motion” in the USA) views capitalism as rooted within the sin of greed and as the reason for social inequality, poverty, illiteracy, and warmongering. Like Arnold, Hughes wished faith to make a distinction by enhancing society through the period of industrialization and urbanization.
This spiritual and political philosophy allowed the British folks beneath Queen Victoria to justify “controlling one quarter of the world as a result of they believed they had been doing good by spreading the glory of English Christian civilization all through the world,” Bailey mentioned. “Arnold's spiritual ethos grew to become the faith of empire; England, which carved up Africa, which flooded India and the Far East, and which aimed to dominate world commerce by constructing a canal via the Isthmus of Panama.”
In the identical yr that Hughes based Rugby, he printed a sequel, “Tom Brown and Oxford”, which used the time period muscular Christianity. Originating in England within the mid-Nineteenth century, this philosophical motion valued patriotic obligation, self-discipline, self-sacrifice, manliness, and the ethical and bodily fantastic thing about athletics. Hughes's ebook, Bailey, said that “the physique of man is given to be educated, subdued, after which used to guard the weak, to advance all simply causes, and to subdue the earth which God has given to youngsters. males.”
In accordance with Bailey, the Younger Males's Christian Affiliation (YMCA) was an necessary outgrowth of Christian Socialism in England and the same Social Gospel motion in America, which emphasised dwelling Jesus' instructing to “love your neighbor” reasonably than dwelling by religion alone within the Christian faith. doctrines and sacraments. Based in London in 1844 by George Williams, the primary YMCA was initially supposed as a refuge for younger males searching for an escape from road hazards akin to playing, ingesting and prostitution. Williams additionally sought to draw younger males like himself who had been wanting to work collectively to unravel social issues.
The primary YMCA in the USA, which opened in late 1851 in Boston, was based by Captain Thomas Valentine Sullivan, an American sailor and missionary. Bailey mentioned that along with the YMCA, different American outgrowths of the social gospel motion had been the mainline American denominations that had social agendas (such because the United Methodist and United Presbyterian church buildings), the Nationwide Council of Church buildings, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Whereas the game of rugby was invented and performed at England's Rugby College, which had a robust Christian affect within the Nineteenth century, American basketball additionally had roots associated to Christianity. It was designed within the winter of 1891-1892 by James A. Naismith, an teacher on the YMCA Coaching College in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Thomas Hughes, the founding father of Rugby, Tennessee, and a standout athlete at England's Rugby College, would most likely really feel proper at dwelling in twenty first century East Tennessee. This Bible Belt area gives social companies via church buildings and non-profit service organizations. And its followers faithfully comply with the College of Tennessee and different college groups that play soccer, basketball, soccer, tennis and even rugby.
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I hope you loved Carolyn's rugby tales. It’s the most attention-grabbing place to go to. I had the pleasure of being invited to talk there a number of years in the past on the historical past of Oak Ridge, and Fanny and I spent the evening on the historic home in Newbury. What a beautiful expertise. There are additionally a number of trails close by and the library is wonderful, as are the eating places. Rugby is a very nice place to go to.
D. Ray Smith is the Oak Ridge Metropolis Historian and his “Traditionally Talking” column seems weekly in The Oak Ridger.