• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

REAPPRAISING MR WAY 67 College he had just published a fresh, verse translation of Homer's immortal Odyssey. In his later twenties he had taken a position teaching classics at another Wesleyan school, the 'Collegiate Institution' at Taunton, and then in the year when his odes of Horace appeared, he was appointed to the post of 'vice headmaster' at his old school, Kingswood. It was in his fifth year there that Way discussed with the delegation from Wesley College, Melbourne, the possibility of making a move to the southern hemi­ sphere; and shortly after the end ofthe academic year, in the English summer of 1881, he boarded a ship to Australia. Accompanying him was his young wife Rubena and their daughter, little Dolly—known affectionately to the boys of Kingswood (so it was said) as Maid Marian.' Way was himself a youthful thirty-six when he came to Wesley. Kingswood stood apart from the greater public schools of England, partly because of its religious nonconformist foundations. In the period when Arthur Way was at school, the doors ofthe universities at Oxford and Cambridge remained barred to him as a non-Anglican. Not until 1871 was it possible for Methodists to pursue their studies there. The alternative path to the University of London was a familiar one to Methodists. Consequently his experience of English public schools was particular to Kingswood, which was less socially exclusive, more academic and less worldly than schools such as Rugby, Harrow, Eton and Winchester. Although acknowledging that Kingswood retained a special place in his heart. Way was not intent on replicating Kingswood at Wesley College, Melbourne. At a speech he made in 1882, he alluded to 'certain unnecessary hardships which had to be undergone in his own school-days', and added that 'he was glad to observe that schoolboys here were spared them'.' For eleven years Way was head of Wesley College. It was a longer reign than that of any headmaster excepting Adamson, Prest and Coates. And for all of those eleven years there was a constant tension between what Arthur Way would have liked to have done and what he could in fact achieve. This was Melbourne in the famous land boom ofthe 1880s, a decade of general prosperity, which has been justly characterised as one of greed, display, ostentatious wealth and folly. The professions, such as medicine and law—at other times a certain way to status and income—were for a time avoided by Arthur S. Way, MA, scholar the ambitious, who saw more rapid fortunes to be made in banking, business and real and headmaster 1882-1892: 'Though a faithful disciplinarian, estate. Mr Way wanted to teach Greek and Latin; the parents—particularly the he IS said to have the happy fathers—thought dead languages useless, and cried out for commerce. Mr Way wanted art of gaining the affections to get the boys to start at the school as early as possible, so that they could benefit from of his pupils.' a progression and consistency in their studies; the fathers preferred to keep them, free of charge, at the state schools as long as possible, with a finishing touch at a public school. Mr Way wanted to have the boys stay on (as Irving and Andrew had wanted) to polish their education after passing matriculation; the fathers wanted them off on their careers. Mr Way wanted the boys to participate in the wider life ofthe college, in sports and cadets; the boys often had different ideas. And so Arthur Way represented one side of a debate which has never ended, about the purpose of schools and educadon. Who in Melbourne was listening in the 1880s? 'A lad who can just pass matriculation is just a schoolboy; he who has continued his stud­ ies for a year or two more is a student'. This was just one of his sayings. A vocation, a .

Load more

  1

Copy Link