Gruesome Encounter of the Newsome Kind

[Donsimone]

Always good to see someone thinking out of the box, albeit in an in-the-box kind of way...

We could, given your soft spot for all things Gruesome, swap Head's.
Unless I'm mistaken, you were at CH during Clarence Seaman's '60s time but knew Newsome at Cambridge while I was at CH during Newsome's '70s regime but was the last intake to be interviewed by Seaman.

I'll trade the Godcentric godzilla for the Olde-Worlde Mr Chips.

If a little virtual planetry is of no offence that is.

Nanoo-nanoo.

[J.R.]

Just in passing...

Newsome shares a churchyard (I think) with John Ruskin and Donald Campbell.

St Andrew's Churchyard, Coniston. Well, for Donald Campbell and John Ruskin anyway !

[Donsimone]

R.I.P. mate.

While we're looking at the bigger picture - and stepping out of hormonally-hijacked Teen Revisited mode a sec - I suppose the '70s was a hard decade to be a CH Head. One of my less fragrant memories of the time was of the sound of the ordained structure creaking under the strain of a growing irreverent perception of nodcrafty conveyor-belt elitism - dufflecoats/short back and sides versus flares/Byronic locks, if you like. An ephemeral fog of dissent but very disruptive to find yourself in the middle of. There was a lot of very lukewarm communication around at that time, very little dialogue as I remember, plenty of rebellion and repression. Sounds now like a crackly old 78 transferred to digital...
But it's pretty ironic how the Old Régime has come out on top, the seemingly unassailable hubris of technocracy/plutocracy/kleptocracy with the ruinous privatisation of profit and socialisation of debt surely not auguring well for the future.
Don't believe that was the kind of magic circle we were being groomed to aim at though.
I wonder whether that air of DHN gravitas, fake or not, that frozen air of condemnation - usually reserved in relaxed liberal households for rascals who let off in a crowded lift - wasn't a shot across the bows of all of us. Time, as always, will tell.

[Fjgrogan]

To be honest, I didn't understand most of the previous posting, but one bit rang a huge bell ........... 'kleptocracy .......... privatisation of profit, socialisation of debt'! Isn't that what is happening in our society today?

[Donsimone]

To be honest, I didn't understand most of the previous posting, but one bit rang a huge bell ........... 'kleptocracy .......... privatisation of profit, socialisation of debt'! Isn't that what is happening in our society today?

It was about elitism, and dodgy geezers in public office.

Oh..and King Canute.

[Doctor Smellcroft]

Newsome's daughter Louise - the historical novelist A L Berridge - writes about her father here:

http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk ... ridge.html

[michael scuffil]

Newsome's daughter Louise - the historical novelist A L Berridge - writes about her father here:

http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk ... ridge.html

And very true it rings, too!

[sejintenej]

Newsome's daughter Louise - the historical novelist A L Berridge - writes about her father here:

http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk ... ridge.html

I never knew Newsome but his daughter paints a picture of brilliance overshadowing understanding of the world. That a man could become so deeply immersed that he thinks he is Wilberforce (presumably William W) one has to wonder how he could then stay attuned sufficiently to the here and now as to be able to manage a huge school.

JR and I knew a boy who could become so like that that he had to be sent home.

[Donsimone]

Newsome's daughter Louise - the historical novelist A L Berridge - writes about her father here:

http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk ... ridge.html

And very true it rings, too!

Far be it from me to come between people and their treasured illusions but followers of Freud will spot a pattern there... I only knew Newsome as a headmaster, thankfully.
All things being equal - and for all that there is a part of us that wants to fight for what our fathers thought was right - it's also natural that youth defies authority in order to create its own identity.
I very much doubt I would have been partial to him as a parent either.

Because life's rich pageant isn't only a question of taking refuge in a personal sanctuary of history and high-mindedness; a more important challenge is our daily response to the tension between memory AND expectation which provides us with a more personal empirical measuring-stick for the progress of our civilisation. On that front, Newsome was a miserable failure.

So as a new epoch breaks...

Happy Future Dawn

[michael scuffil]

that he thinks he is Wilberforce (presumably William W) .

No. The reference is to the surname Wilberforce, and the book 'The Parting of Friends' is about Henry, Samuel and Robert Wilberforce, not their more famous father, William.

But this was written long before he went to CH. And if you're absorbed in writing a book, I don't think this is too unusual.

[Martin]

Two minor elaborations of points made above:

1. In the 50s at least, “The Oil” (the HM, HLO Flecker) never used the cane in person, NOR were there any public canings.
2. Rev CAC Hann was presumably an excellent administrator and a scholar, for he left CH to take up the post of Principal of the Ripon Theological Training College.

This is indeed an excellent thread.

[Donsimone]

Two minor elaborations of points made above:

1. In the 50s at least, “The Oil” (the HM, HLO Flecker) never used the cane in person, NOR were there any public canings.
2. Rev CAC Hann was presumably an excellent administrator and a scholar, for he left CH to take up the post of Principal of the Ripon Theological Training College.

This is indeed an excellent thread.

Hmm. I remain ambivalent. Cathartic - or futile? Who knows. Not cathartic in the Quentin Tarantino sense - no opera of spattering blood and hewn limbs a -flying. Nor futile in the urinating into a headwind kind of way. But we can investigate a little.

So what do old teachers-old boys - along with postmen-dogs, Thatcher-Karl Marx, Orwell and CCTV - have in common?
A history of natural enmity.
There was a touch of 'A Clockwork Orange' about 1970's CH. DHN was the kind of authoritarian figure who exuded that stricken air of subdued violence, the Medusa-like ability to turn one to stone at a 1000 paces. But he was only a part of a landscape of quasi-Edwardian decorum which grated with those times: the shabby decadence of the boarding houses - badly in need of modernisation - were simply a little degrading. Also, the pseudo-privelege of the CH environment proved to have rather an undermining effect on me personally. But that may well have been a question of individual karma.
Thing is, the past regularly sneaks up and bites us on the bum when we least expect it. When it does, we are faced with an apparently straight chioice - cut the Gordian Knot or attempt to re-tie it?
I suppose, in the final analysis, that everyone follows their own logic.

( By the way, for those unaware, Burgess hated Kubrick's film which, in order to satiate Hollywood's desire for sensationalism, purposefully left out the final reconciliatory chapter of the 21 chapters of his rite-of-passage novella. Consequently the Gordian Knot is re-tied in the book but not in the film. )

[J.R.]

Hmm. I remain ambivalent. Cathartic - or futile? Who knows. Not cathartic in the Quentin Tarantino sense - no opera of spattering blood and hewn limbs a -flying. Nor futile in the urinating into a headwind kind of way. But we can investigate a little.

So what do old teachers-old boys - along with postmen-dogs, Thatcher-Karl Marx, Orwell and CCTV - have in common?
A history of natural enmity.
There was a touch of 'A Clockwork Orange' about 1970's CH. DHN was the kind of authoritarian figure who exuded that stricken air of subdued violence, the Medusa-like ability to turn one to stone at a 1000 paces. But he was only a part of a landscape of quasi-Edwardian decorum which grated with those times: the shabby decadence of the boarding houses - badly in need of modernisation - were simply a little degrading. Also, the pseudo-privelege of the CH environment proved to have rather an undermining effect on me personally. But that may well have been a question of individual karma.
Thing is, the past regularly sneaks up and bites us on the bum when we least expect it. When it does, we are faced with an apparently straight chioice - cut the Gordian Knot or attempt to re-tie it?
I suppose, in the final analysis, that everyone follows their own logic.

( By the way, for those unaware, Burgess hated Kubrick's film which, in order to satiate Hollywood's desire for sensationalism, purposefully left out the final reconciliatory chapter of the 21 chapters of his rite-of-passage novella. Consequently the Gordian Knot is re-tied in the book but not in the film. )

More so in the 50's and 60's, along with that great film 'If', with Malcolm McDowell.

I still just have to watch it every time it comes on the box !

[michael scuffil]

1970's CH... the shabby decadence of the boarding houses - badly in need of modernisation -

They'd been given a thorough makeover in 1964. You should have seen them c. 1955!

[J.R.]

1970's CH... the shabby decadence of the boarding houses - badly in need of modernisation -

They'd been given a thorough makeover in 1964. You should have seen them c. 1955!

Typical - The year after I left !