Autobiographical Notes

School Studies

Between 1880 and 1884 Sri Aurobindo attended the grammar school at Manchester.

I never went to the Manchester Grammar school, never even stepped inside it. It was my two brothers who studied there. I was taught privately by the Drewetts. Mr Drewett who was a scholar in Latin (he had been a Senior Classic at Oxford)¹ taught me that language (but not Greek, which I began at Saint Paul's, London), and English History etc.; Mṛṣ Drewett taught me French, Geography and Arithmetic. No Science; it was not in fashion at that time.

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Aurobindo studied in the Manchester Grammar School for a period of about five years.... The Head Master of St. Paul's from the first entertained a very high opinion of Aurobindo's character and attainments.

[First sentence altered to:] Aurobindo studied at home, learning Latin, French and other subjects from Mr and Mṛṣ Drewett.

Sri Aurobindo never went to Manchester Grammar School, it was his two brothers who went there. He himself studied privately with Mr and Mrs Drewett. Mr Drewett was a very fine classical scholar and taught him Latin and grounded him so firmly that the Head Master of St. Paul's after teaching him personally the elements of Greek which he had not yet begun to learn, put him at once from the lower into the higher school. There was no admiration expressed about his character.

[Another version:] Sri Aurobindo never went to Manchester Grammar School. His two brothers studied there, but he himself was educated privately by Mr and Mrs Drewett. Drewett was an accomplished Latin scholar; he did not teach him Greek, but grounded him so well in Latin that the headmaster of St. Paul's school took up Aurobindo himself to ground him in Greek and then pushed him rapidly into the higher classes of the school.

[At St. Paul's Aurobindo made the discovery of Homer.]

The Head Master only taught him the elements of Greek grammar and then pushed him up into the Upper School.