‘The college of God’s gift’

The only man from Dulwich College I have ever known, or met, was a master at my school, M. H. Bushby. A distinguished cricketer at Dulwich, he went on to captain Cambridge. Here he is described, in later life, as a ‘much respected and much loved housemaster’, so my attitude to Dulwich has always been entirely favourable, though all I knew of it was its vague outline on the edge of the South Circular road, a distant palazzo surrounded by extensive playing fields.

This monumental volume, beautifully produced by the college, leaves nothing out. Old boys of Dulwich are known as Old Alleynians because of its founder in 1619, Edward Alleyn, who played all those ‘over-reaching’ heroes in Marlowe’s plays. Alleyn’s presence on the stage might even have prompted Marlowe to write these parts. It was Alleyn who first declaimed, ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships …?’ Some say that a vision of the devil in this play so frightened him that he resolved to abandon his rakish past and devote the rest of his life to helping the poor. He retired at his peak at the age of 31.

The best actors of the time made fortunes, through investment in theatres, land and property. Alleyn concentrated on buying up land south of the Thames, particularly around the hamlet of Dulwich. A college was built, and the ‘Poor Scholars’ were taught by some Fellows (masters) who were meant to be graduates, but rarely were. Their salary was so poor that few stayed for long. Most of them were lazy, and despised the ‘Poor Scholars’. Alleyn had set his heart on creating another Winchester, an education based on the classics, but no Greek was ever taught, and little Latin.