May 1951

May. Festival of Britain.  Mr Droun, Mr Talbot and Mr Alpe. Memories of Forest School, Walthamstow, and culture of beating. Miss Dunwoodie. Visit to South Bank exhibition.

Tuesday, May 1

Nora has got a juicy case of a Weisskop boy who attacks his parents, and when he does so they go out a buy him a pineapple to show they still love him. Mrs Weisskop very garrulous on the phone and spent nearly half an hour on it while I was waiting to wash up!

Wednesday, May 2^nd

              Sports Day – very easy because Maggie Hunter to give away prizes, so didn’t bother much ! It went off very well. The house athletic cup, in honour of a boy who drowned in the East in 1944, presented for the first time, a terrific struggle between Hambleden and Valpy [and the latter] won by half a point.

              But really when you see the parents in a mass you wonder how they have managed to produce comparatively normal children, or, in some cases, why such unattractive individuals have managed to reproduce at all.

Thursday, May 3rd, Ascension Day

              Large numbers went to church, but the remainder to play cricket, much to Mary Clayden’s disgust. Festival of Britain opened this week with service at St Paul’s and concerts in new Festival Hall. Asked by M. C. if children could listen as an ”historic occasion”. Said no, if they wanted to listen they could do so on the 9.15 news.

Tuesday, May 8th

              Took young Mr Droun, Mr Talbot and Mr Alpe over to see Swan Lake at Oxford as a treat for their part in play. They were much excited as only one had seen a ballet – on television. I gave them supper at 5 o’clock and they arrived in their best blue serge suits with their school uniforms in brown paper. They were much impressed. Swan Lake a good ballet to start with I felt, and very beautiful.

Friday, May 11th

              Whitsun holiday started. Went to Snaresbrook by tube from Oxford Circus, only 1s 2d and very clean and convenient. Then I walked up to Forest School. I had last been there in 1921. Great blocks of flats had been built quite near, but the immediate appearance was just the same. I found Dusty Miller (Keble 1919 – 21) teaching some boys in Ralph’s old long, low study. At first he did not recognise me, but when he did he sent the boys away and we chatted  for an hour about the school and then he took me round the old and new buildings. A bomb had destroyed the pavilion, tuck shop and manor house, but in their place a new junior school, masters’ flats and changing rooms had been built. The old buildings were worse than I had imagined, ramshackle to a degree. In the Upper Library, which now contained some book stacks, I found my name among the list of King’s Scholars for 1917. Many improvements have been carried out, but the greatest improvement was the levelling up with bomb rubble of the Park, which has now been made into a 17 acre playing field. When we returned Dusty gave me a glass of sherry and then we went into lunch in the hall (bangers, macaroni, rhubarb, coffee!). This contained an academy portrait of that nasty old man R. C. Guy [The Rev. Ralph Courtney Guy] He boasted he beat at least six boys a week till he left to become chaplain and when he died he had made £80,000 out of the place. Heard something about old Crosse [Canon Crosse, Rector of St Mary's, Henley] as Dusty worked under him at Ardingley. He and Ralph were a pair, though perhaps Ralph was the biggest crook.

              In my day the school was 160, now it has 340 boys, mostly day boys. Walking round the corridors, the big school, the fantastic monitors’ « studies », I wondered if I were dreaming. Was I the same person at all as the very timid boy who came here at the age of nine  and left in the Sixth at 17, winning all the prizes, but thoroughly despised by Ralph for my lack of interest in games? Here I was sitting drinking coffee in the terrifying study where Ralph performed his flogging and there in the corner was the door at which I listened fascinated and excited by the sound of the strokes, the sobs of the victims and Ralph’s staccato cries of « Bear it ! Bear’ it ! » Yes, he was a crook all right !

              Now it has the status of a public school, but I am glad Hilary is not there. I did not think a lot of the boys, the classrooms were bad, and the masters looked a rather unpleasant collection, including some very dubious clergymen.              

At 1.30 I went off by trolley bus to the Baker’s Arms and so to Hoe Street Station. It was all as a I remembered it, the Bank House, 278, had not been blitzed as I had been told, but our house over the bank, my home for 20 years, had been turned into solicitors’ offices. There was still one of the girl clerks Father got in 1916 there, now a middle aged woman, and she recognised me as I came forward and took me into a small room where we sat opposite each other at a table and chatted. She said how much I resembled my father.

              Coming back after 30 years I was immensely impressed by how much improved the people themselves were – smart, clean and better fed, better dressed, more prosperous in every way. A credit to the Labour movement and to me a very striking one indeed.

              [From an autobiography by the diarist : In May, 1909, I went to Forest School, known to the local errand boys as Guy’s College. At this time it was the property of the Guy family, and one of the numerous sons of old Dr. Guy, the Rev. Ralph Courtney Guy, was running it. He was a stocky little man with bandy legs, extremely ugly, and with a hideous grin. Although he was a classical scholar of Hertford College, Oxford, his chief asset as a school master was a double blue for cricket and association football. The school drew its pupils partly from its reputation for games and partly because Ralph (as he was known) was successful in knocking some kind of manners into the sons of local shopkeepers and businessmen. Most of the school were boarders and day boys were regarded as inferior in every way. My parents sent me there because it was socially superior to the local grammar school ; the only other alternative, apart from a boarding school, which they could not afford, was a train journey to the city to the Merchant Taylors’ School.

The school was a peculiar mixture. The buildings consisted of three or four old houses knocked into one, a rabbit warren of passages and classrooms all on different levels and ill adapted to teaching. On the other hand, Ralph had inherited various ideas, from the reformed Uppingham of  Thring, I imagine. There was a gym, a carpenter’s shop (this was an extra), a swimming bath, a school chapel and choir, a music master and a drawing master. There was also an O.T.C. (Officer Cadet Corps) and a drill sergeant. We did drill in the lower school every day. The playing field was pleasant with its surrounding elms. There was a pavilion and behind it a grub shop. The school had a dining hall with kitchens beneath.
              Ralph was a mixture of ”sound” churchmanship,  Scripture, catechism, saint’s day services – ”We do not know much about St Barnabus” – confirmation classes, morning and evening chapel, and shouting, banging, bullying and caning. As far as the bellowing went, he was impartial, for he bawled at all the boys, the carpenter, the butler, the waiters, the staff and his wife, a faded and frightened creature known as Minnie.

              One of the chief topics of conversation in the lower and middle school was ”bumming” (i.e., the floggings Ralph administered). The Third form was particularly favoured, for it had a communicating door to the study and one could hear and count the strokes through it. Bolder spirits waited in the passage outside and if Ralph came out, as he sometimes did, asked for a copy of a book of private prayers to account for their presence ! The first flogging occurred a few days after my arrival; the victim, Wasey secundus, sat next me in form sobbing and weeping after his return. When lessons were over we repaired to the water closets to inspect his buttocks. We were aged nine! The prefects also beat in the changing room; to listen to them at work one went to the day boys’ cloak room. Everyone was interested in beating; we small boys beat one another and challenged each other to feats of endurance. There was naturally a great deal of bullying.

              Games were compulsory. Football as a small boy I liked and fives I played to a certain extent, but cricket bored me. The sergeant taught swimming by throwing you in at the deep end in a belt on the end of a pole. He allowed you to go well down to the bottom before he hauled you to the surface gasping. It was not encouraging for nervous boys!

              I started Latin in May, 1909 with «the sailor has a table ». The teaching was poor and for the next two years I understood little of what it was about. My parents, alarmed by my bad reports, got me some coaching by the second master at the Monaux Grammar School. He was an excellent teacher and by the time I returned to school  I had learnt a great deal from him. When I was in the lower shell (third form) I began German, but while playing football one afternoon I was knocked over and got concussion. I was in bed for a week after this and Ralph called on my parents. My Uncle Sam had for some time advised my doing Greek, which was the alternative to German, and they took the opportunity of Ralph’s visit to make the change. I now began to go ahead in my work and was soon marked out as one of the best classicists in the school (not a very high distinction perhaps). French I could never understand and I went up to Oxford quite unable to read simple French fluently or speak it at all. I never regretted the time I spent on learning Greek for it enabled me to read a part of The Odyssey and while I was in my last year at school some Thucydides and The Apology of Plato. On the other hand I am perpetually ashamed that I cannot speak or understand a single European language other than my own.

             

Wednesday, May 14th

              The coldest winter for 35 years. In the afternoon went over to Knowl Hill to see B. L. Clarke, the vicar, ex-Leatherhead, but though he gave us an excellent tea, he proved to be an ecclesiastical bore. I remember him covered with black curls; now head almost completely bald as well as a bore.

              Phyllis came over on Sunday in a jeep (borrowed from some Americans). Very acid because I had refused to be godfather to James. Phyllis does not like being crossed. She has been accustomed to having her way for too long.

Tuesday, May 15th

              Went over to Horsell Vicarage, near Woking, to see my old master at Forest School, F. A. Woodward; found him in bed after a foot operation. Now 65, sixteen years ago he married a young Irish vet 25 years younger than himself and has four children, Rachel, Robert, Helen and William. He has certainly done well for himself over his wife, whom I liked very much. The rectory was in character – masses of books, papers, a huge desk, broken down furniture, Woodward had retained many of his bachelor habits and was still a great supporter of public schools, esp. Lancing. His bedroom was hung with school and college groups. His little girl, 7 ½, said a Latin collect before the shepherds’ pie and rhubarb !

Wednesday, May 16th

              Went over to the Long Grasses. Went down to the lovely barn. My name remained in charcoal, but Mary’s had been rubbed out, so on a brick inside one of the great doors incised them again with a flint.             

Thursday, May 17th

              Very cold. Tom lit one of the boilers again. Went over to Culham College to a meeting of headmasters. The college had no heating and was impossible in every way. Had gone to the meeting all primed to be original and amusing on the selection of teachers, but I might have saved myself the trouble! The publicity about teachers’ salaries has proved too effective, the entry to men’s training colleges has fallen to 67% of last year’s entry and it is a case of « highways and hedges to compel them to come in”.

Friday, May 18th

              A full day, first a film on castles for the second forms, then a preview of candidates for French ; then interviewing candidates in library with committee. Got the D.S. candidate, Margaret Dunwoodie, once at Bp. Blackall’s with Molly and Con. The alternative was a woman we were warned off by H.M. (got on quite well but not very well with staff).

Tuesday, May 22nd

              Listened at 10 p.m. to that grand old man Bertie Russel on the conflicts of man with nature, man with man, and man with himself – as fresh and jaunty as a forty year old instead of an octogenarian.

Saturday, May 26th

              This second Chinese lunge has been defeated and we are counter attacking before they can regain their balance. The regime of Mao in China itself grows more and more savage and blood thirsty.

Monday, May 28th

         W.E.A. reading of The Lady’s Not For Burning. This proved tough going, as I had feared it would. We had a very slow and heavy hero, but some of the minor characters (of whom I was one!) were adequate, I thought.

Wednesday, May 30th

              A hundred years ago my grand mother, Isabella Law (became Atkins in 1852) and her sister Jane Law came over from Northern Ireland to see the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. This afternoon Mary and I left Reading station at 1.58 for Waterloo to visit the South Bank exhibition. The weather was cold but with some sun.              

              We entered by a specially built bridge from the station, from the platform of which you looked down on a broad axis to the fountains along the river. My first impression was of grey paving stones, absence of trees and crowds of children, and I was a little disappointed, but this was only momentary. We walked down to the fountains past the Sea and Ships to the Nelson Pier, then round the Dome of Discovery (outside !), past Power and Production, and back to the Fairway Cafe, where we had tea under an umbrella outside, a good pot but rather inelegant bread and butter and four cakes, which cost us half a crown each. Fortified (somewhat) by tea, we did the Land, Nature Scene and Country of Britain.

              The Dome of Discovery next, a great metal mushroom anchored on gill-like divisions by cables and girders. The gill fins provided nice little shelters, and there was no lack of elegant metal chairs with plastic seats throughout. Mary was anxious to see the Polar section, but it was a mistake, the Dome too vast and technical and scientific for me, and I quickly became discouraged. After this ordeal we sat for a bit to rest our feet and then  tried the Lion and the Unicorn; the lion realism and strength, the unicorn fantasy and imagination. It was one of the most satisfactory and delightful pavilions from the architectural point of view, light and gay and imaginative, and after the Dome provided welcome relief. Another sit by a lake with ducks and plastic water lilies and then  we queued to go up a glass and steal tower with a lift. From here we got a good view of river and St Paul’s, but the view south was sordid enough. By now it was nearly seven and we set off to find a restaurant. We ended up at The Regatta where we got a very nice meal for 7s 6d each. We visited Health and the People of Britain, an excellent historical layout, which I enjoyed enormously.A cup of coffee and a cake in a rather inefficient cafeteria brought us to10.45 and time for our train.

              Night is the time to see the exhibition, for floodlighting and illuminations and the transparency of the construction itself give an impression of delicacy, gaiety and good taste. The downstream pavilions are dominated by the Shot Tower with its lighthouse beam; the upstream pavilions by the the slender needle of the Skylon. Perhaps future generations may see this as the most significant object of the exhibition, for men’s feet are indeed set on a staircase leading to the stars, to which this leads an arrowhead of light

Thursday, May 31st

              Today I jotted down the cost as follows : My fare 7.4.

Petrol and garage 10 .0. Entrance (2) 8.0. Guide 2.6.  Tea (2) 5.0. Dinner (2) 16.0. Drinks 1.9. coffee 1.6. Total £2 – 12 – 6.