Champion magazine’s Dessin de Boivent Duffar imagined the Dominie’s reaction
The Clark family moved to Berwickshire in 1942 and for Winter Term 1949 sent the future world champion to exclusive boarding school Loretto. In 1965 his teacher: “As always top at running, winner at cricket and hockey but behind in English and Maths”. In JIM CLARK, Tribute to a Champion Eric Dymock quotes the late Bill Cormie, Clark’s room-mate at Loretto. “Jim was very self-sufficient. He had few close or special friends. He was quite taciturn but we shared an interest in cars. When he came back after half-term and said he’d been driving at 90mph we didn’t believe him. He was only 14.”
Teenage Clark enjoyed music and went with family to classical concerts in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall. His sister Betty (below with the Golden Helmet in the Jim Clark Museum, Duns) recalled Alexander Borodin’s epic Prince Igor, with its resounding Polovtsian Dances among his favourites. A member of Loretto School choir, he took part in a performance of the St Matthew Passion and surprised his mother by singing solo on Sunday in Chapel.
In 1964 on BBC radio Desert Island Discs with Roy Plomley, Clark’s choice of records ranged from the mellifluous Glasgow Orpheus Choir through Chris Barber’s Whistlin’ Rufus, Billy J Kramer to Jimmy Shand’s Scottish Dance Band. Andy Stewart’s Muckin’ o’ Geordie’s Byre reminding him of the farm and Peggy Lee singing The Party’s Over. He also elected for humourist Gerard Hoffnung’s famous address to the Oxford Union, and Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze, which the school organist at Loretto played after evening service.
Loretto School’s ochre-washed walls in Jim Clark’s time with his father’s Alvis Speed Twenty. Painting by WK Henderson commissioned for Eric Dymock’s book.
Founded 1827 Loretto School, near Musselburgh a fishing port on the Scottish east coast, was a profound influence on Clark. Strict, like the Duke of Edinburgh’s Gordonstoun, it aimed at character-building and good citizenship. Conforming to well-established rules was essential. Cold baths and 10-minute jogs were mandatory. Loretto’s: “Spartan nactus es: hanc exorna” means literally “You have achieved Sparta: adorn this”, but also translates as “You have acquired the privilege of living like a Spartan: show by your example that you have something worth having.”
Loretto’s buildings included Pinkie House near the scene of a battle the Scots lost against Henry VIII in 1547. There was again bloodshed at Prestonpans in 1745 with casualties were taken to Pinkie House; bloodstains remained in The Long Gallery. Prince Charles Edward Stuartt spent two nights in a room once occupied by a young King Charles I before entering Edinburgh.
