Marcel Proust had his madeleine. I have Jeremiah Clarke’s Trumpet Voluntary. The French novelist, author of À la recherche du temps perdu, is famous for the passage where biting into a madeleine pastry brings back poignant memories of times past. For me, the same effect is achieved whenever I hear the trumpet and organ processional melody from one of England’s 17th century Baroque composers. Every school day for six years I marched in solemn file into the assembly hall of my preparatory school for morning service and assembly. Mr. Stewart, the English master, would be hunched over a small pipe organ at the side of the hall, playing Clarke’s passage over and over until all three hundred boys were seated and quiet, arrayed in uniformed rows with junior classes at the front and prefects, at the lofty age of 13, at the rear. Then the headmaster and other teachers would file onto the stage, and take their appointed seats, always in strict order of seniority. Mr. Stewart would wait for the headmaster’s stern nod, desist in the middle of a bar, and allow the organ to subside with a quiet groan. After a moment’s rustling of sheet music, the organ would grind to life again to guide us through the hymn of the day, followed by a lesson from the Bible, and a psalm sung more or less as a wailing chant. The whole school would then recite the Lord’s Prayer, pray for Queen and country, and wait silently for the headmaster to read out the day’s notices. Right on cue, Mr. Stewart would strike up Jeremiah Clarke’s music again to march us out, keeping the tune alive till the last footfall had died away from the hall’s cavernous space.
The school was a terrible place, staffed largely by incompetent has-beens with third class degrees from minor English universities. Being a schoolboy there (I was Walters Minimus, the youngest of three unrelated boys of the same name) was like having a walk-on part in an endless parody of Masterpiece Theatre. I particularly remember Mr. Willy Williams, the Divinity teacher, almost 80, deaf as a post, and prone to violent outbursts of temper when some unfortunate pupil couldn’t remember Bible verses verbatim. God’s punishment was meted out by swift smacks round the head with a steel ruler.
Somewhat more affable was Mr. Grundy, who taught geography. He was tall and rangy, with a face weathered like Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. Rumor had it he’d been in Special Operations during World War II. He walked with a limp and drove a massive open-top Bentley, with huge headlights and leather straps around the hood. As small boys, we were captivated by Grundy’s taciturn manner that could transform into merriment like a cloud passing to reveal the sun. Many years later, when watching the marvelous BBC adaptation of John Le Carré’s Cold War spy novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I was immediately reminded of his character Jim Prideaux (beautifully played by Scottish actor Ian Bannen), an old spy eking out his retirement teaching at a boy’s school much like the one I attended — and, coincidence of coincidences, driving an old Bentley two-seater sports car with leather straps across the hood.
The education of my formative years consisted of English grammar, French, Latin, and Greek, divinity, arithmetic, algebra and the magnificently entitled “Euclid,” known to you and me as geometry. This was balanced by a healthy dose of rugby, cricket and cross-country runs, topped off by cold showers. In short, it was a disaster. I couldn’t wait to leave the madhouse when I was 11 to go to a sane state-run school instead.
In my father’s many long absences on Royal Navy duty overseas, my education was salvaged by my aunt, who brought me up from a baby and taught me to read when I was three. A woman with no formal education herself, she left school at 13 and worked as a domestic servant until my mother, her sister, died after childbirth. While she read little else than women’s magazines, my aunt taught me my letters and numbers, and read me to sleep every night. I owe my love of books and reading entirely to her.
When Jeremiah Clarke’s music was played on WDAV recently, memories came flooding back. I couldn’t help thinking how totally different education is today from my difficult days in the 1950s. The troubles concerning academic achievement in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools, the threats of secession from disgruntled parents in North Meck, and the controversy over paddling in Union County, dominate our local news.
Local teachers today are far more evolved and skilful than the dinosaurs who tried to beat knowledge into my thick skull and tender backside. They deserve the support of parents, who should all be as dedicated to their kids as my Aunt Ruby was to me.
This article appears in Mar 23-29, 2005.
