ABSTRACT
True Manliness owed its realisation to a generation of great headmasters. The foremost – Edward White Benson, Frederick Temple, Frederic Farrar and Edward Thring – had much in common: Christian upbringing, love of Nature, delight in chivalry and study of Plato and Thucydides at school. At university they came under the spell of Platonic-Romanticism, experienced its Christian Socialist mission, and took Holy Orders. Thomas Arnold, at Rugby School a decade earlier, had combined the academic responsibility of a headmaster with the pastoral care of a school chaplain. These men built on Arnold’s foundation: education had a mission. Their model was the ideal of true manliness.
