Lift Up Your Hearts

The news this week has been full of the sorry business at S Paul's Cathedral. That our economic system brings great benefit is true, as is the fact of terrible inequalities. Yesterday evening the Bishop collated and  I inducted the new vicar of S Paul's church in north Tottenham, serving the Northumberland Park ward where youth unemployment is higher than nearly anywhere else in the country. It is less than sixteen miles from Haileybury.

Writing in 1908 Lionel Milford (L 1867; Staff 1879 - 1919) quoted a speech made by Thomas Hughes in Big School in 1880. Hughes was the author of Tom Brown's Schooldays, and was a friend of Dr Bradby's. Hughes sent his own sons to Haileybury. After making mention of the upheavals in Europe in 1848, Hughes went on:

England has come grandly through that shaking of the nations. But, by all the signs of the time, another great crisis is upon us in these days. How will our country come through it? For myself, I am more and more convinced that that question must be answered in these great Schools. If they are sending out a constant stream of young men, not only of high intelligence because that goes without saying but simple in habits, strong in principle, who have learned that lesson, so hard to learn in this luxurious and self-indulgent time, to say the words 'No' and 'I can't afford,' then I have little fear of our country losing her great place among the nations. If, on the other hand, they are sending out a stream of young men of many wants, hungry for enjoyment of all kinds, greedy of change, without simplicity, without true manliness, then indeed, for my part, I have little hope that the sceptre will not pass as so many say it is already passing from English hands. On which side is Haileybury going to stand ? I hope and believe it will be on that which she has held so staunchly hitherto, during her short life of eighteen years. And how is it to be done ? How is this ground, so well won in the past, to be held well in the future ? Only in one way, only by the old method.  Read your grand motto, which faces you there at the end of this room ' Sursum Corda.' Boys ! Up with your hearts ! Act up to that, be true to that. Lift up your hearts for the strength and help which never fails them who will lift them up honestly and humbly, and you will answer that question in a way which will do honour to your School, and make your country glad and grateful that it has risen up in our midst.

Lift Up Your Hearts

Tempus fugit! I preached today at the golden jubilee in the priesthood of my training incumbent to whom I went 20 years ago last June. Fr John seems not to have changed at all since then. 

Time sometimes seems to have flown. Then again it can go so slowly. Waiting behind Big School for the team coaches to get back from Rugby with the teams - including no 2 son - it seems very slow. 

Maybe time really does go at different speeds. However that may be, what we do with the time we have is the important thing.

Where is Bobs?

It was the end of term today and I have made the journey yet again up the A10. I was late because of the traffic. My spy in Lawrence told me about a bit of nomenclature I did not know. "I was waiting for you at Bobs."

Given what seems the inexorable decline of Haileybury slang I was quite pleased to hear that new words are developing after all.

Where is Bobs? Scroll down for the answer.

Not sure whether Bobs should have an apostrophe… 

Bobs "Back of Big School."

Singing

Music has been an exceptional strength of Haileybury for many years. I have just got back from a three day parish pilgrimage to Walsingham. We had an afternoon out at Wells-next-the-Sea and I found in the second hand bookshop there a small volume published in 1889 called Songs Sung at Haileybury. The content is interesting, more on that another time; but the use is presumably that described in Random Recollections of Haileybury: 'Another use of Big School which has lapsed (1953) was "Upper School Singing" on Saturday nights, when the School collected with the old Haileybury Song Book to let off steam with community singing. To this sophisticated age such an entertainment may well savour of "Eric or Little by Little." But then, the cacophonous jazz records one now hears from study windows had not yet vitiated the standard of taste or or enjoyment.'

Hugo Bagnall-Oakeley (Ha 51.1-55.2) wrote today to remark on another musical entry in Random Recollections in which Ashcroft referred to "the exceptionally high standard of the 1954 house unison singing competition. I only realised later that this was the year Hailey won the competition and I was the director and conductor. The regulations provided that the entire house must take part—i.e. not just the good singers--- but I instructed those who couldn’t sing in tune to mime the words without making a sound. Incidentally our housemaster Killer Cook was distinctly unimpressed as he regarded musicians as long haired, limp wrested nancy boys but I managed to convince him that this was, after all, a team event so he grudgingly agreed to have the cup in Hailey, although he would much rather have won cock house rugger!"

What would Mr Cook have thought of Haileybury winning the BBC Choir of the year competition in 2005?


(PS you can buy one of the CDs by clicking here or on the picture of the Haileybury Coat of Arms at the bottom of the blog home page.)