It was a wonderful occasion at which Brian Rees, Headmaster of Charterhouse from 1973 to 1981, was invited to be the guest speaker. He has very kindly allowed his words to be incorporated onto the website.
It begins:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
“Here I stand, the least of Thine within thy Temple, Lord”. Thus began a speech at the Cambridge Union in the early nineteen fifties by a comedian of my formative years, Mr Gillie Potter, who then added to the suitably hushed audience:” Which shows that, if you cannot find a relevant Biblical quotation to launch your speech, you can always make one up!” A more mundane and familiar opening: “Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking----“ would be more appropriate as I make few speeches in recent years compared with the days when, having been Headmaster of three schools, speechmaking was a constant task: Prep School Prize days, Old Boy Dinners, Appeal Meetings, an unremitting flow of hot air, no doubt pointing to the first signs of global warming.
But if one is to return to the genre, and Old Saunderites Dinner is a highly suitable occasion and I thank you warmly, Giles, David, the Committee, and the Chairman of the OC Club for your invitation to my wife and myself tonight. My first days on arriving at Charterhouse in 1973 were spent living in Saunderites, thanks to the hospitality of Colin Davies, as the Headmaster’s House was still in the hands of the builders and not fit for occupation. This has happened to me three times: no headmaster’s house is ever ready on the date at which he arrives. There have been three periods in my life when I have been , while starting a new job, climbing over piles of furniture and burrowing under dust sheets to search for filing cabinets, lessons, and correspondence in order to keep the show on the road.
But links with Saunderites went back much further than 1973 as my wife, Julia, had grown up in the very same rooms in which we were staying, the Birley family having been in charge of the House as well as the School. This may have been partly because of wartime shortages of Staff, but much more because my father-in-law, having been appointed at a young age, had always felt himself somewhat handicapped through not having been a Housemaster himself. (Housemasters are always very good at making pointed observations on the theme that their burdens are considerably greater than the Headmasters’---and this is in some ways very true---and so he seized the opportunity of a vacancy to move into the House which had been historically linked to the Headmasterhip. The experience was even more valuable as it was in war-time, with air raids, and V1s and V2s over the South of England , and the famous crater in Founder’s Court over which there were heated disputes with tape measures and protractors as to whether it was a Saunderites or a Gownboys bomb. There was food rationing and shortages. Those older members present who have heard my father-in-law speaking must have heard very often the story of how the boys, greeted for the first time with bananas, dutifully passed all the skins up to the top of the table as they had been wont to do with orange skins for a species of marmalade!. And when Jim Prior kept a pig, which eventually met its fate as the “great provider”, the local food inspector descended to work out exactly how many meat coupons would have to be surrendered to match the various cuts of pork, and angry telephone exchanges with the Ministry culminating in the final thrust “Oh! Alright I will grant you the snout!”
As a small but loving child, Julia carved her mother’s initials, as a token of affection, on the wooden fender around the fireplace in the Saunderites drawing room, with a hot poker. Her parents who had strong views about family discipline, did not react as fondly as she expected and for many weeks her pocket money was curtailed to pay for repairs. She was highly incensed when we came into Colin Davies’s Drawing –room three decades later and she found the initials still there.
Although no longer Housemaster I did nevertheless retain a link with the building as I retained that large Study within its walls, with the entry under an imposing portal and its links with former grand incumbents, some especially daunting like Sir Frank Fletcher. I wonder if the story is true that one day out for his constitutional he came upon some parents asking the way to the Headmaster’s Study. “It is there on the corner of that building” he vouchsafed with a wave of the hand and then continuing on his way “But I do not think you will find him in!” An approach that does not chime in with the public relations skills which are expected today.
Less daunting, of course, was his predecessor, Dr Rendall, whose rule was always said to have been “Live always on the mountain tops”. As Oliver Van Oss commented “Well, he certainly lived there more than most of us!” Dr Rendall is said to have come across a boy locked up during a sunny afternoon, writing out some classical lines as a punishment, and congratulating him on his preference for books rather than running about out of doors. Unfortunately, he decided to carve his guiding theme “Live always on the mountain tops” in large letters over his Study mantelpiece, and the Greek alphabet tiresomely obtruding a kind of W as a vowel sound, the letters WC stand forth boldly above the Headmaster’s fireplace, a feature that sometimes puzzled visitors, not a little.
I have mentioned 1973. It was a Year of significance; the year of an Arab Israeli War, Saudi Arabian decisions to limit oil supplies and some global financial turmoil, It was a year which saw the ending of the War in Vietnam and the beginnings of the Watergate crisis; the year in which General Pinochet seized power in Chile; but let us get down to important matters: it was the Year in which the Grand Scheme of moving from the Old Houses at Charterhouse to the New began to take effect. It did not directly affect Saunderites of course, but it did profoundly alter the axis of school life and drew the whole community within one curtilage. I can take no credit for the conception but its implementation lay at my door. The first House which had to move was Daviesites and the Housemaster showed as much inclination to be dislodged at the Russians at Sebastapol. He was eventually ordered forth and thereafter for about two years at intervals there would be a steady procession of students wending their way across the grounds, cluching table lamps, radios, wall posters and soft furnishings. It was scarcely a moment too soon. Blocks of plaster had begun to fall on the breakfast tables in Bodeites; the old Lockites and Weekites were hardly fit to be shown to prospective parents clutching their copies of the “Qbserver”’s “TEN QUESTIONS to ask your child’s school.”
One could understand why Saunderites and its neighbours had enjoyed a certain feeling of superiority over their colleagues beyond the gates. For a time the pendulum swung the other way and there were even some parents so lost to all sense of priorities that they would stipulate only a ‘New’ House. I think something was done to improve studies in the ‘Old’ Houses and they most definitely held the advantage of location, without long walks several times a day to school activities. Anyhow Houses progress and compete on Darwinian principles, rather than through bricks and mortar!
But one could not stand still in those days. There was considerable competition between the major public schools and family tradition was no longer the sole factor of choice. The move to the new Houses had barely been completed when plans had to be made to facilities that were conspicuously lacking and a major Appeal for three projects had to be launched. First, came the plan for financing a technical centre for crafts, engineering and the new Design and Technology Courses, something to replace the old wooden huts, now, I suppose, long forgotten, which were highly hazardous to fire and flame, whirling machinery and with no concessions to health or safety. The John Derry building was named after the Carthusian whom I am sure you know was the test pilot who broke the Sound Barrier. The Old Music Schools had long been swamped by the huge increase in the standards and scope of School music, Bill Llewellyn, the Director, had been at one moment obliged to take tutorials in his camper-van. There was, of course, only one name that could be given to a Music Centre at Charterhouse, but even so the masons who carved ‘Vaughan Williams” on the foundation stone carved it incorrectly and it had to be returned for alterations after it had been “well and truly laid”.
The third element in the Appeal , a proper theatre, was a much favoured concept, not only because drama had long since ceased to be despised activity in public schools, but in our case, by the number of accidents suffered by boys working on the high scaffolding which had to be regularly put up and taken down for productions. It was, I think, John Daukes who suggested the name of Ben Travers for the new theatre. It seemed to be conjured up from the mists of time; the author of plays I remember my parents talking about, but not seen on the stage for many years. He was in fact a lively 90 year old, just about to have a revival with plays performed at the National Theatre and a new play in the West End. Despite his years he fizzed with vitality and his delight in the idea of a ‘Ben Travers’ Theatre was touching to behold. Since he referred to his old Housemaster (Daviesites) as “Torquemada” and remembered the food in his house as being almost non-existent except through nefarious dealings with the butler, his unalloyed pleasure was heartening. He did not live to see the very fine and well equipped theatre completed, but he did visit the chosen site and some of us sill recall vividly this small figure calling on the spirit of Aristophanes to descend on the place and bring down wit and humour to do their civilising work.
Old Boy and Girl gatherings are very much occasions for reminiscence, mostly of particular moments and episodes, forgetting that it is the hour upon hour teaching, the slow incremental learning, the usually benevolent organising of Second Masters and Heads of Departments of time-tables and recources, and the day to day effects of exposure to fine buildings and surroundings that build up a school career. However, a few random recollections culled from memory rather than the record books spring to mind: in my first Quarter a football match was billed as Charterhouse versus Chelsea, and lightly skipping over the centuries and –let’s face it- the hard facts, it was announced as a Match between two F.A. Cup Winners. Then as a previous tour had produced some involvement with the Luxembourg police, and the Headmaster’s presence was deemed necessary for good order and discipline, came a football tour of Jamaica, where we stayed in the same hotel, possibly one of us in the same room, which became a crime scene when the Pakistani cricket coach was found dead so very recently. Leaping from the first year to the last I remember an “Annus Mirabilis” of the Old Carthusians, with successes in the Arthur Dunn, the Halford Hewitt and the Cricketer Cups, the final match of the last finished off by a hit for six out of the grounds of Chelsea Hospital in the direction of Sloane Sqare, which earned for the team and the undeserving Headmaster a visit to the Moet et Chandon cellars in Champagne. I remember the Fiftieth Anniversay of the Memorial Chapel, and visits by two Archbishops of Canterbury, Ramsay and Coggan, as well as a remarkable sermon by the eccentric Canon James Bentley, in great detail about the inspirations in the Chapel’s design. I remember a long battle to preserve the pipe organ and fend off an electronic organ in Chapel, and then a team of ‘Geordies’ who worked high up in the rafters and the roof during Services so that Bill Llewellyn worked the tune of the Blaydon Races into the closing voluntary. On another occasion after a very long and heavy sermon he olayed “He that can endure to the end” from Mendelssohn’s “Elijah”.
(I recollect some of the more bizarre applicants for the first Composer in Residence including one who appeared to have written a Concerto for Tubular Steel Scaffolding. I remember the large scale production of the opera “King of Macedon” with a quite unknown Leslie Garrett in he cast, and the British Film Premiere of “Death on the Nile” shown in Hall simultaneously with its West End projection.
I remember taking the Shooting Team to Bisley, no-one else being available, and some Private-“stupid boy” Pike losing his rifle, almost a capital offence in the days of the I.R.A. and a rather elderly Old Carthusian Officer pouring vials of wrath on my head and then –suddenly discovering I was the Headmaster- crumpling like a boy who had been caught firing at Frank Fletcher with a pea-shooter. I remember a time when during one of the Holiday Summer Schools a couple attending a Course that the Hodsgonites private side was a part of the student accommodation and went to bed in Mr and Mrs Aitken’s bedroom. For younger listeners the incident may be more fully appreciated by adding that the Rev. Bill Aitken was a housemaster carved from the same Presbyterian rock as our Prime Minister. His understandably irate complaint was delightfully answered by Harry Foot the Bursar by a letter which began “Dear Bill—I am at a loss to understand this strange variation on the Goldilocks story------“ )
I remember sitting next to Peter May at a dinner and no other Public School could have provided that experience, and thinking that my father who was a passionate follower of cricket who went to every Test Match he could and ever lamented my failure to achieve anything cricket-wise, would have given everything he possessed to have been in my place.
I am told that it is the Public Schools that keep alive the demanding subjects such as the Sciences, Modern Languages and Higher Maths and without their contribution such subjects and the University departments they supply would be in a poorer state, even so such subjects are vital for the future of Great Britain with great output of scientists and engineers on the other side of the world. Surely then, our Government, instead of harassing the Public Schools and arguing about ways of reducing their charitable status should be pouring money into them, subsidizing our Sixth Forms and scholarships and heaping honours and rewards on all who strive therein.
Just over 40 years ago when I first joined the Headmasters’ Conference the general talk in Press and Politics was all about Abolition, Royal Commissions to shake up their entire being and status and entry systems; talk of schools such as Charterhouse buying up land in lreland or somewhere to redeploy. Thankfully, in the face of every kind of negative trend the Schools have kept afloat and prospered greatly. Their survival has, I am sure, been helped in a large measure by Associations such as this gathering this evening and the interest, not to say the vigilance of schools’ alumni which has kept them progressing and competing
---and so with those thoughts and very good wishes to the Old Saunderites and similar institutions may I ask you to rise and drink a toast to THE OLD SAUNDERITES.