The Register

Increased printing costs and the advent of computers may well have killed off the School Register. Many schools produced them, lists of former pupils listing their achievements at school together with their achievements in later life. For the collector of ephemera the older editions can be a fascinating read. Haileybury's latest register goes up to 1994 but even then concerns of cost cut out most of the interesting details of the older generations and the lengthy historical introduction - the first of which, by LS Milford, is an outstanding history of the first forty years of the life of the school. As a result the Eleventh Haileybury and ISC Register, put together with indefatigable energy by Bill Tyrwhitt-Drake (BF 1940), though full of interest for later generations, is a relatively dry volume for the older entries.

FW Bourdillion (E 1865) was a writer and poet who came from a significant Haileybury family. He wrote a poem on Registers in a volume called Sursum Corda published in 1893. You can read the whole book online here, but this is the poem.

 A Public School Register

As birds of passage on some mid-sea isle,

From diverse lands and bound on diverse ways,

In company assembled for a while,

Then lose each other in the ocean haze:

So are we parted when are done the days

Of our brief brotherhood within this pile;

The world grows wider then; new hopes beguile;

And from new lips we look for blame or praise.

No lifeless page is this that bears enrolled

Names once familiar, and bids reappear

Forgotten faces. One has climbed to fame

In law or letters; one proved greatly bold

In battle; one—it may be the most dear—

Just does his life's work well and is the same.

By the way, if you want a copy of the register - you know you need it - you can get one from the Society by clicking here.

Getting Started

There is a story of a new young Master arriving to teach at Haileybury sometime in the early part of the last century. He went into breakfast and took his place at the junior end of the vast Common Room table. The man next to him lowered his paper and growled: "Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I say 'Good morning' to you; Tuesdays Thursdays and Saturdays, you say 'Good morning' to me. Sundays, nobody speaks." Haileybury is so different these days: Masters are Teachers; Haileyburians are as likely to be girls as boys; there is even a move, fiercely resisted by the youngest pupils - who nowadays are just 11 - to call the San the "Health Centre."

The Haileybury Society links the generations. Those who like me are old enough to have children at the school are linked with generations who remember all too well the days when Masters had rules about morning greetings and through the Society we are linked with some who have only just arrived in Lower School - and maybe brothers and sisters yet to arrive. It is a great thing to be part of.

When I was asked if I would be willing to become President Elect of the Haileybury Society my ghast was flabbered. I resolved that if I was to take it on I would like to try and bring a couple things to the role. One is this blog. Reunions and events can be reported pretty much immediately. I have also been gathering anecdotes about the school and OHs in the hope that some of them might be of interest to the Haileybury community. Overall it would be splendid to try to link the generations through the thing which unites us all - the shared link with the place a now largely un-sung song calls "The fine old school beneath the dome."