Et Cetera

St Paul’s has always proved to be fertile ground for writers. Vivid memories of schooldays have spilled out across the literary spectrum from novels, autobiographies, memoirs and anthologies. Here are some examples from Paulines who were at School in the first half of the 20th Century.

The Dulford Match His time at School is thinly disguised in Compton Mackenzie’s (18941900) third novel Sinister Street. St Paul’s is St James’. High Master Walker is Dr Brownjohn. Mr Elam is the eccentric Mr Neech.

Sir Edward Montague Compton Mackenzie lived a very long life of 90 years. He needed to; he needed the time to write (or rather have published) 113 titles including a Scottish historical odyssey of almost a million words and an autobiography that runs to ten volumes.

During the First World War Mackenzie served with British Intelligence as a spy in the Mediterranean, later and inevitably publishing four books about his experiences. He loved it “as a boy enjoys playing pirates”. His most famous book is probably Whisky Galore, published in 1947 and turned into a classic film. It fictionalises real events that had taken place in 1941 when a cargo vessel bound for the United States with a load including 28,000 cases of scotch whisky had run aground on Eriskay: an island visible from Mackenzie’s then Barra home. Sinister Street caused a stir. Henry James thought it was the most remarkable book written by a young author in his lifetime. The novelist Ford Madox Ford enigmatically described Sinister Street as ‘possibly a work of real genius’ while Eton’s headmaster wrote to The Times outraged by its allusions to teenage sexual urges.

“Cutty Jackson, the School back, had fielded it miraculously. He was going to punt. “Kick!” yelled the despairing spectators. And Jackson, right under the disappointed groans of the Dulford forwards whose muscles cracked with the effort to fetch him down, kicked the ball high, high into the silvery November air.”

At half-time he called for a double brandy Brother O’Mine was published in 1921. It was the first of more than thirty ‘school’ novels by Hylton Cleaver (1905-08). It established a theme that can also be seen in the likes of The Harley First XV and Caught in the Slips of a belief in the need for integrity and honour in all things. Bullies always lose out and practical jokes are only played on masters who deserve them. In a letter to The Pauline in 1920 Cleaver wrote that despite being “marred by chronic asthma, acute short-sightedness, ugliness and a deplorable stammer”, his time at School was “extraordinarily happy”.

His 1961 obituary in The Times suggests he lived to his own code, “he played his last game of rugby football at the approximate age of fifty; at half-time he called for a double brandy to augment the meagre slice of lemon that sufficed for his teammates, and it was taken out to him under escort on a tray”. St Paul’s is a very fine school Arthur Calder-Marshall (1920-27) contributed a chapter on St Paul’s to Graham Greene’s 1934 collection of writers’ school reminiscences The Old School.

Calder-Marshall wrote novels, film scripts and biographies. His range was wide from a biography of Father Ignatius (Joseph Leycester Lyne (1847-52)) to saucy seaside postcards. More Frank than Buchman, his chapter in The Old School is mostly about the Christian Union. It does not always describe a happy time, but CalderMarshall ended the chapter with “St Paul’s is a very fine school”.

Below is an extract from his first Christian Union/Pi-squash meeting.

“Then an overgrown fellow came in called Erb. Except for a dog collar he was dressed like an ordinary man…. Then Erb read a bit I knew out of the Bible and said it meant that we must play hard. He said he thought Christ would have played hard for His school”.

La Tour’s first Preces In 1961, Ernest Raymond’s (1901-04) Mr Olim was published. After St Paul’s, Raymond read Theology at Durham University and in 1914 was ordained. He served as a chaplain at Gallipoli, in the Sinai, France, Mesopotamia, Persia and Russia. He resigned Holy Orders in 1923 when he had the first of nearly fifty novels published. George Orwell praised Raymond as a “naturalist novelist”.

Mr Olim is the story of Davey La Tour’s (Raymond’s) time at St Erkenwald’s (St Paul’s) being taught by Mr Olim (Elam) when Dr Hodder (Walker) was High Master.

“Dr Hodder, over seventy on that morning, was probably the last of those nineteenth-century headmasters who held it their business to be formidable to the point of terror…. probably the most famous headmaster in England.

Over our crowded heads he boomed. “Oremus.” Never, I am still persuaded, was there a voice so deep, so reverberating, so shaking. “Oremus” might mean “Let us pray”, but on his thundering voice it meant, “Pray.” We prayed.”

The end of the “Prickly Pear” Oliver Sacks (1946-51) in Uncle Tungsten; Memories of a Chemical Boyhood writes of his large sciencesteeped family, his friendships with Eric Korn (1946-52) and Jonathan Miller (1947-53) and the inspirational teaching of Sid Pask (Biology Department 1928-66).

With Miller and Korn, he had established “a smudgy, purple-inked mimeographed journal, the Prickly Pear”. The High Master at the time, RL James (1946-53) closed it down. “Sacks, you’re dissolved.” “But why, sir?” I asked. “What are your reasons?” “I don’t have to give them to you, Sacks. I don’t have to have reasons. You can go now, Sacks. You don’t exist.” St Paul’s was considered academically the better school In 1947, Erik Jensen (1947-50) came to St Paul’s as a Foundation Scholar. While at School for the scholarship examinations he witnessed a match where one fencer in a brilliant manoeuvre disarmed his opponent then bowed to present him the recovered weapon with an elegant gesture – the very model of chivalry. Erik of course took up fencing. He also stroked the 4th Eight, was president of the Milton Society, starred as Mrs Malaprop in The Rivals, won art and reading prizes while being an academic star.

At his father’s insistence Erik went first as an undergraduate to the University of Copenhagen and, via a Harvard scholarship, he matriculated at Worcester College, Oxford having been underwritten by High Master RL James. There followed a varied and successful diplomatic career described along with his St Paul’s days in ALIEN ALOFT: unravelling identity in the pursuit of peace.

“Leakey (Headmaster of Dulwich Prep) withdrew my name from the Westminster exam; St Paul’s was considered academically the better school, and predominantly for day boys, which my parents preferred…. St Paul’s differed from the other great British public schools by not being principally a boarding school; in everything else it conformed”. I've never seen anyone use algebra since I left school Simon Bishop (1962-65) celebrated the life and writings of Eric Newby (1933-36) in the Autumn 2020 Atrium writing, “it is an unusual man who wins an MC with the Special Boat Service and has a lifelong subscription to Vogue.”

In A Traveller’s Life Newby remembers most the risks attached to wearing the school uniform in the street, describing the striped trousers and stiff collar as “ludicrous”. He entertains, often describing life as if telling a story at a louche dinner party. The tale of a scout patrol is typical; “On one occasion, when there was a danger of our losing one of the outdoor games known as ‘wide games’…. a member of my patrol whose family owned a large limousine in which he used to arrive at wherever was the meeting place, summoned the chauffeur, who was parked round the corner, and six scouts whirred away in it to certain victory.”

Newby was taken out of School aged 15, when his father anticipated he would fail the school certificate. “I was quite good at other things, but I was never any good at mathematics,” Eric explained later. “‘Let x be’ and all that. Let x be what? I’ve never seen anyone use algebra since I left school.” After two years at an advertising agency, Eric ran away to sea as described in The Last Grain Race and then moved on to love and war, the Hindu Kush and so much more. 