Why was the Steward Unjust?

It all began at Miss Martley's. Well, the official name was Gateways Kindergarten but by 1950 we were rapidly forgetting about anything with a Germanic connotation and the eponymous title for a friendly junior school just seemed more appropriate. Miss M herself was round faced with medium grey hair culminating in a substantial bun; kindly and uncomplicated but not overendowed with a deep belly laugh, she would not have been in the forefront of those joining Michael McIntyre on stage for  Live at the Apollo. She was assisted by Miss Audrey, a bustling second string who looked after the youngest members and played some part in the catering operation of the school. The final member of the trio was (very) old Mrs Martley, with cropped white hair and invariably dressed in black, as austere as St Cuthbert in his cave on Lindisfarne and she taught us French. Actually, I was glad to start French at four [ years old, that is, not o'clock ] as, with a frailty in language learning, it was always going to take me twelve years to make it to an extremely modest grade in old fashioned French 'O' Level.

Sensing a digression approaching, I wonder what we think of the French anyway; is it worth learning their language? Many of us are attracted to their wine and some to their bread even more so, while a minority, of whom I am the undeclared leader, find all that garlic and grease absolutely ghastly. They are an interesting nation of contradictions: hating the concept of monarchy but relishing an over-mighty dictator; viz Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles De Gaulle  --  big egos, big hooters and substantial appetites in all areas. The plumbing in some of their villas verges on the diabolical but their palaces and chateaux reign supreme. Even here there were contradictions; the state rooms and gardens at Versailles were gloriously grand, while to describe the normal accommodation as bog standard would be to give it a very real and living accuracy. What to wear was always a problem. The Duc de Saint-Simon tells us that at one Christmas in the late seventeenth century the wine froze in the glasses at the King's table, while in summer, with scant regard for any appreciation of sanitation, members of the nobility were rammed into their squalid garret cubicles on top of one another, although in a number of cases this was a result of personal predilection rather than necessity. The French have always rather fancied themselves at the amorous bit.

In any event the comings and goings at the court of the Roi Soleil were not the staple educational diet at Miss Martley's but what did I learn there before the age of eight? I picked up the practice of reading fairly fluently, writing legibly [ a skill long since departed ] and listening attentively. I learnt mathematical tables and, without realising it, the beauty of the sound of poetry and the specialness of country life  --  in fiction anyway. From Benjamin Bunny to Thomas Hardy is only a small step or, more prosaically, how otherwise could I have spent sixty or so years yearning for the next instalment of The Archers?

Finally I learnt, to my profound shame, how to be unpleasant to my fellow creatures. Forty years on from Miss Martley's a young lady at Gordonstoun, Henrietta, took some pleasure in telling me her mother had a friend whom I had tied  at age seven to the trunk of a tree by her hair. Oh dear; this set a pattern of vile behaviour that was to go on for some years. However, when I eventually reformed [ which I hope I did ], I was greatly helped in assessing the character and behaviour of others  --  the young, I mean  --  as none, literally not one, of them ever matched the unpleasantness which I remembered in my younger self.

Shortly before my eighth birthday I was moved on to Stoke House Preparatory School where I had lived all my life as it was my parents' fiefdom. I already knew the lie of the land and how to throw my not inconsiderable weight around. Two years previously, at age five and in no way yet a member of the school, I had taken myself to the venue of the junior cricket game in anticipation of my father appearing to supervise the practice of the greatest of sports. Apparently he arrived to find me organising the assembled boys with the instruction ' My father likes you standing in a line '. How unbearably precocious but I suspect that even then I preferred the ordered life.

Once a full member of the school, I did not behave well. When an application of the cane was necessary, my father delegated this task to JTC Quinn, a nice man of the old school but reasonably adept at administering that sort of punishment. I was an appalling physical coward and danced around the room hollering pathetically. Thank goodness we have devised more civilised sanctions for influencing wayward youth but we should not necessarily now condemn some very fine educators of another age and in a totally different environment having recourse to stick, slipper or strap. If Rhodes must fall, I hope a legion of wonderful twentieth century Heads do not have to go with him. As I sense digression number two coming on, I recently heard an interesting observation by the journalist, Matthew Syed. Discussing the condemnation of folk in history who were responsible for deeds acceptable in their day but not in the modern age, he asked us to consider a plausible situation in fifty years' time where the eating of meat had passed into oblivion, for either practical or moral reasons. In that day of reckoning carnivores of previous eras, including our own, will be damned, all our statues will be felled and our memories fit only for the fires of hell. Our vegan friends can look forward to the day when they, probably rightly, will have inherited the earth.

Our lessons at Stoke House were systematic and uncomplicated. Life was full of Form Orders and I was OK as I seemed to come fairly high in these but even then I was conscious that some boys [ very much the male only environment then ] always came at the lower end of the scale. Thank goodness for achievement being measured more in relation to individual ability nowadays. The school had interesting features: a museum; an annual exhibition of pupils' practical work; a Fives court; mini-gardens for all to cultivate; staff plays written by the Headmaster; conjuring shows with a seemingly Victorian magician, Ernest Sewell. There was an emphasis on quiet, conservative Christianity; we learnt to appreciate the Prayer Book of 1662 and the unmistakably beautiful prose of the King James Bible.

My father, when blind for over twenty years in later life, resuscitated a scheme of bible reading for children, ' Search the Scriptures ', and had a friend, John Coplestone who gallantly read the whole book to him  --  Genesis to Revelation  --  twice! As time passed I remembered particularly two of my father's favourite pieces of advice, oft repeated in measured, deliberate tones: ' Never give a message to  --  or take a message from  --  a small boy ' and, particularly as term reached its final frenetic stages ' Keep things as normal as possible for as long as possible '. He was a wiser Headmaster than I was ever going to be.

[ Digression three ]
A, ab, absque, coram, de,
Palam, clam, cum, ex and e.
Sine, tenus. pro and prae;
Add super, subter, sub and in,
When state not motion 'tis they mean.

You will of course recognise these as the Latin prepositions that are followed by the ablative case and here are the verbs whose objects go into the dative rather than the accusative:

A dative put, remember pray
After envy, spare, obey,
Believe, command, persuade, to these
Add pardon, succour and displease;
And vacare to have leisure
And placere to give pleasure,
Heal, favour, hurt, resist
And indulgere.

All very similar to DRAPERS VAN MMT 13  --  the initial letters of the French verbs which take Etre rather than Avoir as an auxiliary when used in the passe compose form or whatever.

And then there is Latin verse. It is now difficult to remember, or even imagine, a time only sixty years ago when there was, in independent schools, a Latin Verse paper in the Common Entrance [ 13 plus ] exam as a standard for almost all pupils. Scansion; word ordering plus scansion; translation plus scansion; it was all there and in the background, in amongst the pentameters and hexameters, we had to remember this example of an elegiac couplet:

Down in a deep, dark dell sat an old cow munching a beanstalk;
Out of her mouth came forth yesterday's dinner and tea.

[ With profound apologies throughout the aforegoing for a lack of accents, acute and circumflex, caesuras and breathing marks ].

What a lot of tosh, I hear you say and you are absolutely right because once it's in the memory, engraved on the brain, you cannot get rid of this stuff. Not until the ferryman Charon, preparing to row you across the River Styx, looks under your tongue to discover the correct coinage, does all this unwanted information disappear and then it is too late. Too late for what? To late to clear space in one's mental fridge and stock it with new things, the mysteries of modern technology and an appreciation of the breeding habits of the lesser spotted Guatamalan wombat.

In any case it was all of the essence at my next educational staging post, Dorset House Prep School in Littlehampton, a Sussex seaside town not far from Bognor. By way of digression four, I was surprised recently to hear Evan Davis, host of the PM programme on Radio 4, discussing Bognor with the local Marketing Officer and neither of them knowing the origin of the Regis part of the town's title. I wrote explaining that George V in the early days of his reign, following a serious illness had gone to Bognor to recuperate and subsequently endorsed the town with a regal stamp of approval. In 1936 the same King George, now an old man, was extremely unwell. One of his attendants, in an attempt to cheer him up, innocently asked if he would like to visit Bognor again once he had recovered. The King, not overkeen on the town anyway, raised himself in his sick bed to utter the immortal words ' Bugger Bognor ' and promptly died. Somewhat to my surprise I received an appreciative reply from Mr Davis.

My parents, busy in school themselves, wanted to restrict the distance from their home in Seaford to thirty five miles for schools for my sister, Dickie, and myself and hoped to find two suitable schools close to each other. She went to Rosemead in East Street, Littlehampton, and I went next door to Dorset House. I do not believe that in the next four years we exchanged more than four sentences through or over the hedge that divided us.

And who were the Dramatis Personae at this august establishment in 1956?

Bertie Sims: Headmaster; joined the school in 1922; suffered from gout and was ferociously short-tempered as a result [ but the vandal Pyper deserved all the wrath he incurred ]; taught languages from a cramming book, French in Three Months Without a Master; committed to the school and presumably to his cold as ice, silent spouse and his thirty something daughter ......

Rosemary: very black hair and very red lips; strongly desirous of finding a husband, which is why Bertie hung on so long, employing potential husbands who sadly expressed no interest. She wore an overcoat even in the heat of summer and came alive at Gilbert and Sullivan time.

John Crathorne: A breath of fresh air who arrived, aged 30 plus, as Assistant Head in my final year. Charming wife Pru [ former girl friend of athlete Chris Chattaway ]. They were top people and he would have been a superb Head but later was badly treated by the school. Still alive at 90 plus.

RPS Walker: Ex-colonial type [ business / education not military ]; always had a bubble of dribble on the bowl of his curvy pipe; good conventional classics teacher; I enjoyed his Latin, especially oratio obliqua [ I liked working from the known to the unknown ]; I never mastered Greek and felt obliged to employ non-public school methods in examinations [ which of course means methods that were highly prevalent in public schools at the time ]. He talked a lot about Q [ Sir Arthur Quiller Couch ] and taught Shakespeare to us 12 year olds in the original  --  Macbeth, Henry V and The Merchant of Venice  --  a lifelong gift, bless you; he referred to the loo as The Hills of the Chankley Bore [ The Jumblies by Edward Lear ].

Digression five --  It has always seemed to me that one of the drawbacks of modern information technology is that one is tempted to deprive oneself the stimulation of accumulating useless facts over a lifetime by hitting the keyboard and bringing up all the information instantly. Alternative names for the lavatory is a good example of this. I was born into a home where the loo was called the veniam, which of course I accepted and used for a long time before realising that this was not a universal term. When I arrived aged thirteen at Winchester College, if one needed to use the facilities in lessons and the like, you had to take half a sheet of a piece of paper known as ' John Des ' and write along one side of it Veniam exeundi petit, or He seeks permission to go out  --  so obvious really.

In fact at Winchester the lavatorial instrument itself was its direct Latin translation: Foricas. These facilities bore a strong similarity to those you will find in excavated Pompeii, very public usage without doors and plenty of opportunity to chat. If you were particularly unlucky a man called Bishop would come and slosh Jeyes Fluid around your feet while you were enthroned.

At Ladycross Prep School in Seaford pupils wishing to relieve themselves had to ask if they could cross the yard, presumably for some sound historical reason. If they needed a longer, more substantial visit, they had to ask ' Please may I cross the yard backwards?

Raymond North Hutchinson ends the digression: South African; excellent Maths teacher, wart on nose; carried a carved stick, called the Dene but no hint of fascism about him; later a popular Head of the school.

Ian Ewer: A brief stay by a really nice man; a natural refuge when I was antagonised, probably deservedly by my fellows and lost control.

George Gryles Footner: Very tall; jangled money in his pockets; told unbelievably long shaggy dog stories. When I arrived later at Winchester College, we had to learn ' Notions ', ie the school's own language and traditions; I discovered that Footner and Merryman were two constipated sparrows on St Michael's Church. I never established the rationale behind this but it was the same Footner.

John Norbury: A dashing sports car driver of mature years; a patch over one eye; I later taught with him at St Wilfrid's School.

John Davidson: Tall and stooping; Coached me [ effectively ] for Winchester Entrance; went to help[ unsuccessfully ] a man as he threw himself off Telscombe Cliffs near Brighton.

Mr Pratt: A very nice, very old man; I have no idea what he did but he knew a lot about cricket.

Cecil Wentworth Fawkes:  A direct descendant of Guy F and held the unusual distinction of being one of a very few who fought as a soldier right through both World Wars without incurring a scratch. A truly lovely man; an old fashioned teacher of History and Scripture [ RS ]; gentle but monstrously taunted at times to the point of temper loss. Twice a week before breakfast he took the whole school for a session on British Kings and Queens, known as ' Kings and Dates and Fawkey Baits '. As a party piece, by the time I left I could recite the Kings and Queens of England with their dates backwards!

And what did I learn from the Dorset House experience?

I remember talking, with surprising maturity in retrospect, with John Crathorne about South African politics and asking what he thought of the Anti-Apartheid movement. He persuaded me that it was preferable to start by proposing what is good and right, seeing things positively, rather than concentrating purely on the negative.

I learnt that I enjoyed sport in its many forms; that I had a little talent for running but that I would always be a spectator at cricket. I tried sailing at Chichester with a friend, Charles Martell [ who went on to develop a cheese called Stinky Bishop ] but it was not for me [ profoundest apologies to Kurt Hahn ]. I arrived at DH soon after a successful production of The Pirates of Penzance. I waited eagerly for two years and helped with HMS Pinafore as a junior assistant. In my final year I was thrilled to make the chorus for The Gondoliers. At an early rehearsal a halt was called to the proceedings so that the identity of him who could not sing in tune could be established. Required to sing solo, my inadequacies were quickly uncovered; I was hopelessly out of tune. Ignominy and humiliation followed as I was rapidly and rather crudely dispatched. It took a long time to reacquire an appetite for public performance.

I learnt to tolerate extremely indifferent food. I had grown up in a school in a time of rationing but the Dorset House diet was something else. Mince was interesting but tolerable as was lumpy porridge but glutinous sago and tapioca or a tiny piece of banana swimming in a sea of watered down custard had some of us reaching or at least reaching for our handkerchiefs to secrete the weird substances away. I have since then always appreciated white bread and jam   --  so safe and so palatable.

Being wicked could be fun. Scaling the sharply pointed corrugated metal fence at the end of the playing field was dodgy but the paradise of a sweet shop lay not far beyond. In our dark blue mackintoshes and our light blue caps, we trudged the streets in crocodile formation when we couldn't get on to the playing fields. Fortunately the walk took us past the local cinema which offered a chewing gum machine on its external wall. The operation required military precision. Boy one put the money in the slot; his immediate follower turned the silver dial; the third in line removed the resulting small packet of highly illegal elixir. In our last term we feasted in the dormitory at night; the difference being that [ at age 12 ] we consumed beer from cans [ the can being a relatively new commercial development ]. These I had obtained from Findlater's, the off-licence in Seaford under the pretence that they were for my father. We didn't really like the beer, any more than the first wandering into cigarettes the year before, when at age 11 I purchased a packet of Craven A from Lopez, a confectioner in Ballantrae, Ayrshire. A good friend, Jumbo Edwards, later appropriately a wine expert, and I buried the empty cans under the floorboards, intending to return, probably about now to reclaim them but the building sadly survived for only a few more years.

Getting young people to be quiet or silent can of course be achieved with threats and vigilance but it is really hard work. I learnt to give them an alternative. Christopher [ CJ ] Carline was a twelve year old boy responsible for the good conduct of fifteen ten year olds in a dormitory, including the business of peace after lights out. Our energy levels were still high but Carline decided with rare inspiration that reading good literature to us improved everyone's prospects of everything. A chapter a night of The Hound of the Baskervilles kept us in perfectly peaceful order with something, though not strictly legal, we all keenly anticipated. After that I read all the Sherlock Holmes stories.

I was destined to prefer factual reading to novels, with which I often struggled, although I was content in the occasional peace of the school library, which was also the dining room, which was also a classroom, among the old staples by Buchan and Henty. In lighter vein were the works of Captain WE Johns, writing about wartime exploits. We enjoyed the juxtaposition on the shelves of Biggles Does It Again and, next to this, Gimlet Mops Up !

I had not been accustomed to a life governed by bells and I am not sure I approved of the complex system and intricate machinery that governed our lives in this regard. I suspect I should have done away with bells in schools later in life when I had the responsibility for such things. As his first action on becoming Principal of Brockenhurst FE College in the 1980s, my brother-in-law silenced all bells; how brave and how sensible.

One of the most lasting pieces of advice I received at Dorset House came from a friend by the name of Lamdin. One day at tea I was pontificating about this and that like some great guru, the natural centre of attention. He cut me down to size with the rapier like suggestion that I should stop looking around for approval and applause whenever I spoke. I fear I was not always successful in following this advice.

The secret of success in this school  --  as in most organisations  --  was the range of characters [ although we were all white, male and middle class ] appreciating each other, our talents and our shortcomings, getting on well with everyone in a positive sense  --  and no exceptions  --  an important exercise in developing mutual respect.

It is so important is school,
A haven for scholar and fool;
The first learns to work,
The second to twerk,
While each to the other seems cool.

We had a neighbouring prep school in Littlehampton, named Furzedown, very much the local rival for sports fixtures. In my latter years Furzedown boasted a young man named Stuart [ all surnames of course in those days ], a giant of a boy and to us both an enemy and a source of reverence as well as fear. Stuart was colossal, as tall as Goliath and as strong as Samson. He ran brutally through our 1st XV to score countless tries; he slogged sixes on the cricket field with unprecedented abandon; he drilled goals in football like Stanley Matthews. Stuart was a boy made God and we worshipped him but never openly of course.

Then one summer's day it happened. The news came down the rumour machine. Stewart was due to move on to his next school, doubtless to gain immediate recognition as an unconquerable deity but  --  horror of horrors  --  he had failed the Common Entrance Exam, a test taken by 13 year old boys to qualify for their next school. We were incredulous, flabbergasted. How could it possibly be that this unassailable giant had been  brought down by a conventional educational exercise? Stewart had been laid low; Stewart was mortal; the mighty really had fallen.

At about the same time we at Dorset House were having a pre-breakfast assembly with Bertie Sims, Headmaster formidable. He did the Bible thing at these gatherings: a story usually read by himself, followed by a word of explanation, then a penetrating, terrifying question or two, fired at the assembled multitude to ensure that we had grasped the scriptural essence.

We were doing the teachings of Jesus Christ and on this morning it was the turn of the parable of the unjust steward, a really complex story, with the comprehension of which I still struggle. The wealthy gentleman's personal manager doesn't do his stuff and gets the sack  but, before he leaves his employment, he goes around remitting his employer's debts at 50% of their value. Whether the ' unjust ' steward should be congratulated or condemned remains a mystery today just as I am sure it must have been to the good folk of Galilee twenty centuries ago but the Headmaster thought he had nailed it for us so concluded his precis by asking ' And why was the steward unjust? '

Somewhat unfortunately the target of this question was Rowbotham, a charming young man who spent his entire life engaged in distant daydreaming. All he wanted was to be an actor and follow in the footsteps of his father, whose stage name was Bill Owen and who was to play the central role of the scruffy Compo in the very long running series  Last of the Summer Wine.

Because of his dramatic imaginings, Rowbotham was slow to respond to Bertie Sims's strident question and one could see him just gradually realising ' Oh gosh, this one's for me ' and trying to dredge up the answer from somewhere but the Headmaster was in no mood to be waiting around; the demand was repeated in thunderous tones, accompanied by the most menacing of scowls ' Rowbotham, why was the steward unjust? '

By now Rowbotham was right on it. He was concentrating; he was alert; he was relieved and proud that he knew the answer. Indeed, bearing in mind the demise of the mighty Stuart at Furzedown , it was quite a straightforward question. Across the serried ranks of nineteenth century desks, heavily marked by generations of juvenile carving and through the morning haze of various boyish odours, Rowbotham looked Bertie Sims in the eye and confidently gave his certain reply: ' Oh sir, because he failed Common Entrance '.

At a stroke the intricate theological New Testament philosophising of two thousand years was stood on its head and the gospels were given a whole new vision of significance. And by the time Bertie Sims had finished with Rowbotham, we were very late to breakfast.

1st September 2019