Sunset

This picture seemed to come out well. 

Lift Up Your Hearts

The four roundels or tondi in the pendentives of the chapel dome represent Government, Industry, Learning and the Fine Arts. They are by Sir Charles Wheeler who worked with Sir Herbert Baker on other projects, including the Bank of England and South Africa House.

Government

This Sunday's lectionary readings give as the Gospel Matthew 22, the trap set by the Pharisees and Herodians: is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? It is the great dilemma of all those who would live according to God's Law, or any other set of principles for that matter. Does one follow the Herodians, those who supported the Roman puppet ruler Herod Antipas, and accommodate to the world, follow the dictates of realpolitik and sacrifice one's principles in detail in order to follow them in general? Or is the answer to be scrupulous like the Pharisee: refuse to do anything which compromises the Truth as we understand it, but at the cost of real engagement with the world and the separation into a sect? 

It is a constant struggle to get this right, and the church is guided by her Lord to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." That is, neither to retreat to the false certainties of pure sectarianism, nor to cease to care about the means in the cause of the ends. 

Industry

Haileyburians are influential in Government, Industry, Learning and the Arts. Where they engage in the struggle to balance the demands of Caesar and God they do well; to stand on either extreme of the dilemma posed by the opponents of Christ is to risk ruin: not perhaps material ruin, but spiritual ruin. 

Reading

Returning to the 'Proud Father' theme from Sunday evening's post, seeing No3 reading in chapel as the youngest boy in the school (he will not be 12 until next August), I was put in mind of the reading I did as one of the youngest (my birthday falls in June) in my first term at Haileybury.

London Weekend Television broadcasted the Remembrance Sunday service from the Chapel in November 1979, and I was asked to read the scripture passage (it was the Beatitudes in Matthew Ch5). It was all a very last minute arrangement and I was whisked out of lessons to be drilled in getting it right. I remember the Chaplains (Peter Lewis and Jim Pullen) were pretty stressed.

I decided not to tell anyone in House that I was doing the reading; not sure why, I suppose I thought I might not be believed and that I might be thought to be showing off - a sure way to get taken down a peg or two. I remember sprucing myself up to be all neat and then having to help tidy up the VI From corridor kitchen ready for Sunday House inspection, and getting all messy in the process.

When the moment finally came I was put on the end of the row in Chapel, and the prefect sitting next to me thought I had gone mad when I got up to go and read.

It was the days before video recording was common. I seem to remember seeing a recording once some years later, but I don't know if it is anywhere preserved.

Harvest

In my new peripatetic life going from one church to another and not having a specific parish of my own, I have missed any Harvest Festival this year. So singing "We plough the fields and scatter," in Chapel tonight at the new pupils' chapel service was a joy, where in previous years I might have thought 'Oh no, not again!'

I was playing proud father as No3 son shared reading the prayers, and also proud President as the other Lower School reader is also the child of an OH, the daughter of Andrew Hine (Tr 1979), who was an exact contemporary of mine. I don't think I had seen Andrew since we left Haileybury in 1984 until he greeted me in the meleé of parents dropping their children on the first day of term. One of the extraordinary things about my year as President and just being around Haileybury again, has been to meet people again after a lifetime.

Is this the best view in the school?

Some older OHs will remember the third verse of the Vivat! (It is like the National Anthem - even those who know the first verse seldom remember the second or third).

And sweet was then the victor's crown,

Vivat Haileyburia!

But friendship's joy struck deeper down,

Vivat Haileyburia!

And though our distant feet may roam

Our hearts will ne'er forget the home

The dear old school beneath the dome

Vivat Haileyburia!

The one is not new this term No 1 son, who has moved into a room looking out from Lawrence over the Quad, with a fine view of the 'school beneath the dome.'

Is this the best view in the school?

Lift Up Your Hearts

A happy day today presiding at the Wedding of Ben Tett (Th 1994) and Kate in the Haileybury Chapel. I was standing in for the Chaplain, Rev Chris Briggs. There were loads of other OHs there including Suellen Bartlett (Alb & Ha 1995) who sang beautifully during the signing of the registers, and best man Luke Bretherton (L 1994).

In order to get into the safe and to have the key to Chapel I was lent a Haileybury pass key. That really is the key to all doors in the place. I recognized it at once as I once had one to be able to get in and out of Lock Up as a Prefect on duty.

Pass Key

When I was a curate I moaned once to the Vicar about the number of keys we had to cope with. He remarked that there are no keys in heaven; I always thought that S Peter had the keys, but I see what he meant. Once in, there is no stealing or need to lock up for all is shared and there is in John Donne's beautiful phrase, one equal possession. 

Depending on which calendar you use, tomorrow or last Thursday is the celebration of Ascension Day. An excuse then to re read John Donne's poem from Sermon XX on Heaven.

Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening
into the house and gate of heaven
to enter into that gate and dwell in that house,
where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light;
no noise nor silence, but one equal music;
no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession;
no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity;
in the habitations of thy glory and dominion,
world without end.

Lift Up Your Hearts

Are you a past person or a future person? John Irvine, (E 62) Dean of Coventry, suggested that there are those with regrets, guilt, a sense of missed opportunity, for whom life is dominated by the past and its sorrows. Most of those in the Chapel for the Commemoration, he went on to surmise, are future people, looking forward to something that is to come, hopeful for the future, though possibly also a bit fearful of what it might bring. Christ calls us to live for today. Do not put off the moment of responding to the call which the Lord has for us all. Do not say that there are exams at the moment or the pressures of work or a young family or tasks. Nor, if you are a past person say that the opportunity is passed. The Good Shepherd offers us  his help and support now.

Henry Olonga, who said at speech day: It does not matter how smooth the road,
if your car has square wheels you will have a bumpy ride

Going on from Chapel to the Sports Hall for the speeches we settled down to listen to Henry Olonga. Henry was a Zimbabwean international cricketer who protested against Robert Mugabe's regime by wearing a black armband in a test against England. That gesture cost him everything. Henry now lives in exile in London. He inspired the hall with his wit and wisdom, encouraging the young to respect their teachers, to work hard, to keep uo their sport and present themselves well, and to make the Choice. Having said a lot about what makes a person successful he then put it all in perspective. There is no point in being successful unless you have chosen to live not for yourself but for others, not for selfish aims but for what is right, in the end not for the world, but for God.

The Master had earlier said that education is a never ending process which is reminiscent of a man who runs always to reach the horizon; nobility lies not in reaching the end but in the journey and in the way we travel. When a man like Henry Olonga tells you to be strong to stand up for what is right, without directly referring to his own stand, his moral courage gives huge weight to his words. he speaks not simply from theory but from the cost of his own sacrifice. When he points to the source of strength which enabled that sacrifice, the one sufficient sacrifice oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world which Christ made on the cross and to which the Dean had pointed us, we sit up and listen.

The Heads of School, Rebecca Simmons and Harry Hughes-D'Aeth rounded things off. Harry reminded us of the Hearts on the coat of arms. Haileyburians should have open hearts for others; expansive hearts open to new things; hearts full of love. Rebecca spoke of the wings, the support of those around us; the lifting up which we all need.

Lift up your hearts; we lift them to the Lord; for He stoops down and raises us up to glory.

Running Late

Arriving late for Chapel was, in the early days of the school, the subject of a number of rules now defunct. One was not late provided one could get through the doors before they were shut, and this led to what LS Milford describes as a deliberate 'scrummmage' at the door as the press of those arriving sought to hold the door open against the prefects inside.

No cloisters yet in this view

Then once the cloisters were built a boy was held to be in time if the clock had not yet struck by the time he reached their sanctuary. In order to make sure that everyone heard the clock a hand bell was rung in the cloisters to mark the time.

Milford goes on: 'For a long while after the bell was abolished the habitual sluggards, or those who are professionally nearly as late as they can be for all their engagements, or those who enjoyed a sprint, expected some earlier arrival in the Quadrangle to shout "running," and then they ran. This dangerous practice has been stopped. It is natural perhaps, to like the run, but after all it is hardly a good preparation for public worship.'


He does not make it clear whether those "running' were allowed to run over the grass.

Lift Up Your Hearts

Thge iconography of the stained glass in the apse of Chapel was lost on me until recently. The subjects of the windows by Herbert Hendrie are clear enough: Noah holds his ark, Moses strikes the rock at Meribah with his staff, S John holds the text of his Gospel and S Christopher wades across the stream. I had never worked out what links them. The clue is the text round the apse: Esto fidelis usque ad mortuam et dabo tibi coronam vitae, Apocalypse (Revelation) 2:10, Be faithful unto death and I will give a crown of life.

In the central light Christ holds the crown of life which He offers to the faithful. The figures in the other lights represent Faith (Noah), Hope (Moses), Love (S. John) and Service (S Christopher).

Fath, hope, love and service. A programme of virtues to cultivate through life.

Transitive or Intransitive?

Did you ever do parsing at school? It is important for the clergy (and registrars) to know the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. As in "I am going to marry you in the morning." Done intransitively one has made binding oaths. Transitively one can marry dozens of people without affecting ones own status.

I was surprised to read that when RL Ashcroft wrote his history of Haileybury to 1961 he could note that there had only been to that date, two weddings in the Chapel. (Correctly they were by Archbishop's Special Licence.) There are now a few weddings  each year I think. Some years ago I married a contemporary of mine in the chapel. (Transitively!)

Tomorrow I have been persuaded by the youngest one to brave the crowds in town for the Royal Wedding. The two Haileyburians are moaning that the school is working through the bank holiday. In 1983 the Royal Wedding was in the holidays so the problem did not arise.

God Bless the  Royal Couple and all those others preparing for Holy Matrimony.

Lift High The Cross

On Good Friday - Haileybury Crosses 

This photograph was given to me by Rev PH Rogers (staff 36 -50),
and was taken shortly after the rededication in 1936

RL Ashcroft wrote: Sir Herbert Baker designed the Cross at the same time as he designed the altar. I was myself present in his office in London when he took out a box of crayons and quickly sketched in colours the effect he wished to produce. 

The Cross of Sacrifice

The Cross of Glory

Calix Sanguinis Christi

Maundy Thursday is the day on which the church commemorates the Last Supper. It was with great pleasure that I saw the school newsletter Hearts and Wings today, and a piece in it announcing formally that the East India Communion Silver has been returned to the school.

Picture from Hearts and Wings
Archivist Toby Parker and Chaplain Rev Chris Briggs

The set was made by Rundell and Bridge in London in 1815, William Pitts being the craftsman who did the work. After the closure of the Esat India College the plate was passed to Coopers Hill Engineering College.

In his history of Haileybury up to 1909, Haileybury College Past and Present LS Milford tells the story of the set coming to the school.

On February 9, 1907, Mr. Croslegh (a great-grandson of Dr. Batten), whose father was formerly Chaplain at Cooper's Hill, came up to see the Master and suggested to him that he should put in a claim for the Communion Plate which had formerly belonged to the H.E.I.C. at Haileybury, and had been removed to the India Office on the closing of Cooper's Hill. The Master accordingly wrote direct to Mr. John Morley, who most kindly, without any delay, acknowledged the justice of the claim, and sent down the plate. An admirable photograph of it was published in the Haileyburian. Sir John Ottley records on the box that the plate was " made in 1816." 

The vessels were carried in and used for the first time at the Choral Celebration on Easter Day. 

Good News

"You must see this!" The first thing a friend who I have not seen for some time said to me when I saw him at my installtion. With that he thrust a piece of paper into my hand. It was from a catalogue for an auction of silver.

Insurance picture of the EIC Communion Plate

Years ago at dinner I had told him - he is very knowledgable about silver and such things - about the loss of the East India Company Communion Plate which was stolen from the Chapel after a service in the summer of 1996.

Now here was the sale catalogue from an auction house in Sailsbury: and there was a set of East India Company Communion Plate!

"You have GOT to show the authorities at Haileybury," enthused my friend. "They're mainly here!" I replied and forthwith introduced him to the Master and the Chaplain.

It looked promising. But we thought, maybe there was more than one set of EIC silver. Would there have been a set for the military training college at Addiscombe? Maybe they had a set for use in a London church or in India? Were we to be disappointed? My friend Michael to the rescue again. He knows Wynyard Wilkinson, the leading expert on the silver of the British Empire. EIC silver is exceedingly rare. If this is not the Haileybury Silver then it is some unknown set.

The picture from the sale catalogue

Well, now the police are involved. There is no allegation that the auction house has done anything wrong. I for one am not interested in who stole it all. It would just be wonderful to have it back and in use in the Chapel where it belongs. We await news. I had hoped to be able to report that it is on its way back, but not yet. The General Committee last week were delighted and the school were told from the pulpit of chapel on Friday. The chaplain has not stopped grinning, so my spies among the pupils tell me.

Looks Familiar?

I went recently to a meeting at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster, just round the corner from Church House.

The Building is the same shape as Hall but the same purpose as Chapel and shares many architectural details with both. It is by Sir Herbert Baker who designed Hall and remodeled the Chapel.

Lift Up Your Hearts

This week's thought for Saturday evening to take into Sunday is a quotation from the speech given by the Master, Wynne-Wilson on Speech Day 1908 in the newly built Big School. He speaks of men and boys, but the ideal he proposed to a male audience is no less true for today's coeducational school.

In School we try to train the character by making the boys fit to become men of affairs and to take positions of authority, whether they are to be soldiers, lawyers, doctors, or engineers, or the like. Out of School we try to train the boys' characters by making them learn to conform to rules and obey authority, and in Chapel we try to train their characters by holding out to them that without which life is ineffective, sterile, and uninspired: the great illimitable ideal." 

The great illimitable ideal

Lift Up Your Hearts

Esto fidelis usque ad mortem et dabo tibi coronam vitae.

Be faithful even to the point of death and I will give you a Crown of Life (Revelation 2:10)

Lift Up Your Hearts

Today (Sunday 15th) is kept in the Church of England as the Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary - what someone accustomed to the richer provision of Marian devotion found in other parts of the universal church once described to me rather disparagingly as "your all purpose General Synod Mary Day." In Medieval times the feast of Our Lady in the Harvest was  celebrated in mid August as a day off reaping and gathering (the reason for the long vacation was, of course to release the children to help in the fields at the point in the year when all hands are needed). A year or so ago the Haileybury chapel was beautified with an image of Our Lady. As Vice Chairman of the Anglican Society of Mary I heartily approve of that!

Image of Madonna & Child, Haileybury Chapel

Some of you may know Hilaire Belloc's poem.

Ballade of Illegal Ornaments

"...the controversy was ended by His Lordship, who wrote to the Incumbent ordering him to remove from the Church all Illegal Ornaments at once, and especially a Female Figure with a Child"

When that the Eternal deigned to look
on us poor folk to make us free
he chose a Maiden, whom He took
from Nazareth in Galilee;
since when the Islands of the Sea,
the Field, the City, and the Wild
proclaim aloud triumphantly

A Female Figure with a Child.

These Mysteries profoundly shook
the Reverend Doctor Leigh, D.D.,
who therefore stuck into a Nook
(or Niche) of his Incumbency
an Image filled with majesty
to represent the Undefiled,
the Universal Mother— She—

A Female Figure with a Child.

His Bishop, having read a book
which proved as plain as plain could be
that all the Mutts had been mistook
who talked about a Trinity
Wrote off at once to Doctor Leigh
in manner very far from mild,
and said: “Remove them instantly!

A Female Figure with a Child!”

Envoi

Prince Jesus, in mine Agony,
permit me, broken and defiled,
through blurred and glazing eyes to see
A Female Figure with a Child.

I am not a number!

School Number 208

What was yours? Mine was 430, but I did not use it much. The main thing was to put on chits so that the invoice went to the right school bill. There were still coat hooks on the corridor outside the upstairs form rooms with school numbers on them, but nobody used them. Older books had them written in the fly leaf Does anyone know the basis on which they were allocated? At Marlborough the entrants to the school are numbered consecutively and the number appears in the Register and identifies you for life in respect of school things. As far as I know Haileybury school numbers never had any such individuality and were presumably reused in other generations.  When my own boys entered Haileybury I thought that school numbers would be a relic of a dead past. But no! They have been given a number which is more important to the modern Haileyburian than our numbers ever were to us. They are all four figures which together with their initials make up their school e-mail address.

Pegs outside chapel. No numbers here

Upstairs Corridor in the Form Room Block - where the pegs with school numbers used to be

How Time Flies

A lovely warm summer evening tonight for the Lower School end of term chapel service and BBQ. The Lower School choir sang Rutter's The Lord bless you and keep you, and the congregation sang heartily. Afterwards as the young people spread out across Terrace playing all sorts of games and the adults fell on the food we were all saying that it really does not seem a year since the welcome day and the first day of term in September. Of course the thing is that it is not a year - only three quarters of one, term actually has a couple of weeks to go, and the long summer holiday lies ahead. It certainly seems only a short time to me since we were dropping our eldest, now about to leave LS2, for the beginning of his first year.

There were goodbyes as well, to Chris Jones, the Head of Lower School, who is leaving to be Deputy Head at Churcher's College in Hampshire. His contribution to the development in Lower School was warmly acknowledged both in Chapel and afterwards. In addition Richard Charters, one of the LS tutors, is off to Colombia. Good luck to them both.

We Will Remember Them

The sombre news of the three hundredth death on active service in Afghanistan came today. In my first term at Haileybury ITV televised the Remembrance Sunday School service. During the two minutes' silence the film cut between the six hundred and fifty odd of us standing silent in the chapel, pictures of the horror of the trenches, and the names in the chapel cloisters. During the Great War about 650 Haileyburians were killed - approximately a school full.

The ethos of service remains strong to this day; Richard Palmer (E 92) was killed in Iraq in 2006 and his name now stands at the end of the sorrowfully long list. In the ancient church they spoke of the 'red' martyrdom of those who shed their blood, and also of the 'white martyrdom' of those who offered long lives of selflessness. The examples of both challenge a world which too easily names 'heros' and measures worth in money and success rather than in service and self offering. Generations of Haileyburians have been taught to be true to higher values than gratification and the pursuit of fame and fortune, and many have attempted so to frame their lives, sometimes at great cost.


On 7th May next year we hope to hold an event at the National Memorial Arboretum, whose current CEO is Charles Bagot-Jewitt (Tr 78) to celebrate and reaffirm the ethos of service. John Palmer (E 62) will be with us. Current and former service men and women will be invited and those of whom the Society office knows who have a link to someone commemorated at the Arboretum. There will also be those like me were in the CCF at school but did not pursue a military career, and it is hoped that other OHs and friends of the school will also come. The plan is to take an honour guard from the current CCF and after a service to have a buffet lunch and then allow time for mingling and wandering among the trees and the memorials.