MICHAELHOUSE: 1969 MICHAELHOUSE 1896-1968 A. M. BARRETT, b.a. (natal), m.a. (cantab) MICHAELHOUSE OLD BOYS CLUB, 1969 Printed in South Africa by The Natal Witness (Pty) Ltd., Pietermaritzburg, Natal. CONTENTS Chapter Page Foreword v Acknowledgements vii I. A Precursor of Michaelhouse .... I 2. Todd: Private Venture or Diocesan School • 9 3- Todd: Migration and Departure • 23 4- Hugh-Jones: Promise and Crisis • 33 5* Brown: Peace and War . 47 6. Pascoe: Consolidation • 63 7- Bushell: Vitality and Change .... • 79 8. Currey: Planned Development • 95 9- Snell: Creative Vigour amid War's Disruption • 115 IO. Morgan: Cool Consolidation .... • *49 ii. Norwood: Zestful Choices .... 165 12. The Old Boys • 183 *3- The Threads . 202 Appendix i Roll of Honour .... 214 2 Military Honours . 216 3 Scholarships .... 218 4 Staff . 2l9 Index . 222 iii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Michaelhouse: 1969 FRONTISPIECE Facing Page Canon James Cameron Todd .... 8 Board Chairmen 9 Michaelhouse: Loop Street 22 Migration Group 22 Balgowan: 1902 23 Balgowan: 1964 23 Canon Edward Bertram Hugh Jones 32 Science Laboratories 33 Anthony William Scudamore Brown 46 Quad Ceremonies 47 Eldred Pascoe 62 Sport 63 Warin Foster Bushell 78 Staff from the First Twenty Years 79 The School: 1912 86 War Memorial Hall: 1928 86 The School: 1932 87 The School: 1936 87 Ronald Fairbridge Currey 94 The Chapel 95 Leisure 104 Staff from the Twenties 105 Frederick Rowlandson Snell 114 Creative Arts 115 Rose Window 132 Sanctuary Windows 133 Clement Yorke Morgan 148 From the Thirties Onwards 149 Robert Thomas Stanley Norwood 164 Indoors and Outdoors 165 School Badges 182 Teams 183 Hugh Brown Memorial Gates .... Rex Frampton Pennington (with acknowledgements to the Cape Argus) . 203 FOREWORD FOR me it has been a great privilege and pleasure to write this brief for eword to the history of Michaelhouse. To have worked with seven of her ni ne Rectors and to have produced the tenth has been a unique experience. T his justifies me in paying a warm tribute to the author Tony Barrett for his inspired work. A successful historian has to project himself into the past and recreate a forgotten stage and players so well that his readers will feel they are sharing with live characters their pioneer work. I am only one of hundreds who will agree that Tony's task has been well and t ruly done. When 'Bok' passed away at his beloved Philpotts in Sussex in i960, the Committee of the Old Boys' Club resolved at once that the story of Mich aelhouse should be associated with a memorial to Charles Walton Hannah. The Board of Governors readily co-operated. This splendid account of t he establishment and growth of our great school has resulted, recording for posterity the struggles of the early days under our founder Canon James Cameron Todd. His triumphant migration to Balgowan assisted by Ha nnah and many others makes fascinating reading. I rejoice that at last, seventy-three years after our founder began his work in three cottages in Loop Street, Pietermaritzburg, a worthy record of the school's prog ress is available. Ken Pennington ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Except for the chapters on Morgan and Norwood, this book is based on a th esis presented in part fulfilment of the requirements of the M.Ed. Degree of the University of Natal. The curious will find in the thesis a detail ed bibliography: the purpose of this note is simply to indicate the main sources and to record my thanks to some of the very many people who contr ibuted to this chronicle. From the first, under the editorship of Dobree, S. Michael's Chronicle wa s intended not simply for contemporaries but as a record for posterity. I t was from this record that I drew most of the information about the acti vities at the school. But the Chronicle can rarely survey more than the s urface. The Board Minutes and Rectors' Reports, which the Board of Govern ors kindly placed at my disposal, a few old Letter Books and the Minutes of the Old Boys' Club often probe deeper and at least look at the school from a standpoint different from the staff and boys who contributed to th e Chronicle. To set the story in some perspective, I had the advantage of a number of other histories of schools, particularly: R. F. Currey St Andrew's Coll ege, Grahamstown 1855-1955 (Blackwell, 1955); A. F. Hattersley Hilton Po rtrait (Shuter and Shooter, 1943); H. D. Jennings The D.H.S. Story 1866- 1966 (D.H.S. and Old Boys' Memorial Trust, 1966); R. W. Kent College 186 3-1963; and D. McIntyre The Diocesan College, Ronde-bosch, South Africa: A Century of Bishop's (Juta, 1950). Reports of the Director of Educatio n for Natal and, especially for the story of Bishop's (Pietermaritzburg) , the contemporary press (The Natal Witness and The Times of Natal) gave an official and a public view of schooling in Natal. Local records are necessarily silent on the lives of the earlier Rectors before they came to Natal. I am therefore particularly grateful to a nu mber of men who helped to fill in some gaps, notably: Lord Todd, Master of Christ's College (Todd's College); the Librarian of the College of St Mark and St John as well as Professor M. Hugh-Jones for information abo ut Hugh-Jones; the authorities of Caius College, Uppingham and Glenalmon d and Mr A. W. Brown (Brown's nephew) for Brown's earlier career; and th e authorities of Jesus College and vii Uppingham and Mrs E. Martin (Pascoe's niece) for information about Pascoe . It was singularly difficult to obtain biographical information about To dd until my brother, M. M. Barrett, visited his grave-to find the date of his birth! The verger chanced to mention Todd's daughters and a happy co ntact was thus established with Mrs J. Howard and Mrs M. Champion, who pr ovided the information about their father's life after he left Natal. One of the many pleasures of writing the story of Michaelhouse, indeed, was from establishing and re-establishing contact with the men (and wo men) associated with the school in one way or another. To have the fran k and generous reminiscences and comments of four Rectors-W. F. Bushell , R. F. Currey, F.R. Snell and R.T. S. Norwood -was invaluable; to meet Bushell for the first time and to renew acquaintance with Currey and S nell and to talk to Norwood were extra pleasures. K. M. Pennington was most generous in putting his unrivalled knowledge of the school at my d isposal. Old Boys, I discovered, do not rush forward with reminiscences of the best years of their lives, but some from every generation from C. F. Moor onwards responded warmly to my requests for information and, though they will only rarely recognise their contribution, without the m I could not have attempted to convey the flavour of the school. I am most grateful to the Old Boys' Club for sponsoring this project and to the Board for supporting it; and especially to the Old Boys' committee , under the chairmanship of George Boyes, for their patience and to the m embers who helped to prepare the work for publication. Finally, for advic e and help throughout the enterprise, both the Club and I are greatly ind ebted to Messrs Shuter and Shooter, who placed their professional skill a t our disposal. A. M. Barrett Pietermaritzburg. December, 1968. CHAPTER ONE A Precursor of Michaelhouse 'THE two years at th' academy'ud ha' done well enough, if I'd meant to mak e a miller and farmer of him, but he's had a fine sight more schoolin' nor I ever got. But I should like Tom to be a bit of a scholard, so as he might be up to the tricks o' these fellows as talk fine and write with a flourish.' And so Tom Tulliver was sent to be educated by a clergyman with the magic formula "M.A.Oxon" after his name. When The Mill on the Floss was published (i860) there were many respecta ble millers and farmers in England who would have shared Mr Tulliver's o pinion: schooling was not something accepted as part of the natural orde r of things but a possibility to be debated (if it was considered at all ) in a serious family conclave. In the very next year, the Newcastle Com mission reported on the state of education in England. It indicated that large numbers did not attend school at all and that most attended for n o more than four years. Of a total of just over two-and-a-half million p upils, only thirty-five thousand were reckoned to be in public and endow ed grammar schools; and, as a subsequent report showed (The Taunton Comm ission, 1868), many of these offered little more than an elementary educ ation. Education was nevertheless a lively issue. Elementary education w as provided for the bulk of the children, chiefly by the Anglican 'Natio nal' schools, and the famous Act of 1870 provided for local boards to ma ke education compulsory. Moreover, efforts were being made to broaden th e curriculum, both in elementary schools-where the three Rs predominated and the fourth (Religion) aroused controversy-and in grammar and public schools. The Clarendon Commission drew attention to the narrowly interp reted classical education which meant that 'much (time) is absolutely th rown 2 HISTORY OF MICHAELHOUSE away' and boys left at the age of 19 unable to write correct English; and public schools-those not receiving state aid or being run for private prof it-were not only being reformed through the influence of men like Arnold o f Rugby and Thring of Uppingham but were also proliferating to cater for t he needs of the rising middle class.