Nicknames for schoolmasters

In Summoned by Bells, John Betjeman describes his time at the Dragon School in Oxford. Charles Cotterill Lynam was the Headmaster, known to the boys as “Skipper”, and this is what Betjeman wrote about another master, Gerald Haynes [1]:

Much do I owe this formidable man

(Harrow and Keble): from his shambling height

Over his spectacles he nodded down.

We called him “Tortoise”. From his lower lip

Invariably hung a cigarette.

A gym-shoe in his hand, he stood about

Waiting for misdemeanours – 

Nicknames for masters were common in Betjeman’s day - although just among the pupils one presumes - and it was the same in my secondary school. Coming through the State system, I moved from Oldway Primary to Torquay Boys’ Grammar, as I described in Walking with Gosse [2]:

The atmosphere at TBGS was formal and all the familiarity, inclusiveness and enjoyment of learning at Oldway Primary were behind me. Masters wore gowns, were mostly rather severe, and learning was now a serious matter. I had embarked on the grim business of growing up.

Each subject was taught by a different master and was governed by a syllabus, as we needed to know various facts and principles for national examinations. There was some rote learning, but also problem solving, and insights into topics about which I knew very little...

It was quite a change. Our teachers at Oldway Primary were all women, with the exception of Mr Mitchell who had a BSc degree, something that elevated him to a very high level in our minds, as none of the other teachers had a University qualification. At TBGS, there were no mistresses and all the masters had degrees, or their equivalent. As mentioned in the quote, they all wore gowns (except the PE staff), with some, including the Headmaster, taking great pride in keeping their gowns in immaculate order. Others appeared to take the opposite approach and preferred a ragged and faded version, often having streaks of chalk dust embedded into the stuff fabric.

In addition to learning all the master’s surnames, new boys also had to memorise their informal names and nicknames, passed down to each new year group. We felt they were our secret, although I’m sure they were known widely among the staff. Some masters were referred to by their first names (or what we thought were their first names), but there were many with nicknames. Some of these had obvious origins, others were more obscure. The following are some that I remember (surnames have been omitted out of courtesy), together with a list of the first names that we used among ourselves. In addressing masters, they were always “Sir”, of course:

First names:

Bill – mathematics master

Chas – mathematics master

Chris – physics master

Dave – chemistry master

Don – chemistry master

Fred [1] – English master

Fred [2] – geography master

Geoff – geography master

George – languages master

Graham – biology master

Harold – chemistry master

Ian – English master

Joe – actually John (headmaster)

Percy – deputy headmaster

Tony – biology master

 Nicknames: 

Bilko – mathematics master, whose surname unfortunately led to Sergeant  

        Bilko

Bum (or Jim) – PE master, but unknown origin

Charlie Drake – master who resembled the comedy hero of the time

Chick – languages master, but unknown origin

Growler – mathematics master with a bad case of “small man syndrome”

Hoppy – music master; abbreviation of surname

Mole – physics master who used this pronunciation when describing molecules

Moon (or Bert) – languages master with a round face

Neddy – history master, but unknown origin

Piggy – languages master of rather large dimensions

Ptolo – classics master; short for Ptolemy

Rip-Rap – history master, but unknown origin

Taff – PE master; from Wales

Zip – geography master, but unknown origin

So, using first names and nicknames was a way of softening the secondary school experience, as was the camaraderie of friends. There was bullying, but I was never bullied by other students, only by two masters. My policy was to keep out of trouble and I only had one whacking and one detention in my time at TBGS. As to learning, a lot was drummed into us and a few masters commanded respect for their wide knowledge and humanity.

As readers of Walking with Gosse [2] discover, mine was not a distinguished academic career and I was given no honours for achievement, no honours in sport and failed to become a prefect or sub-prefect (almost all my classmates managed to achieve this status). I went on to success, of course, and it was my love of natural history that sustained me though the secondary school years. I was much more in tune with the approach to learning we had at Oldway Primary and that is something that I maintained in my own teaching career (where I was awarded three teaching prizes and also acted as Director of Studies). I wonder if my students gave me a nickname, or if this was a practice confined to UK boys’ schools long ago?

[1] John Betjeman (1960) Summoned by Bells. London, John Murray.

[2] Roger S Wotton (2020) Walking with Gosse. e-book (available widely!).

Below are pictures of me at Oldway Primary and at Torquay Boys’ Grammar School

 

 

Looking at the countryside from railway carriages

In the Preface of A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast, the Victorian Natural Historian Philip Henry Gosse wrote: ¹

..I have not made a book of systematic zoology; nor a book of mere zoology of any sort. I venture to ask your companionship, courteous reader, in my Rambles over field and down in the fresh dewy morning; I ask you to listen with me to the carol of the lark, and the hum of the wild bee; I ask you to stand with me at the edge of the precipice and mark the glories of the setting sun; to watch with me the mantling tide as it rolls inward, and roars among the hollow caves; I ask you to share with me the delightful emotions which the contemplation of unbounded beauty and beneficence ever calls up in the cultivated mind.

This is typical both of Henry Gosse’s writing style and his approach to Natural History. In A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast he gives detailed descriptions of many marine organisms, but always in the wider context of habitat and environment.

One of the pleasures of studying Natural History is that it allows us to appreciate the huge variety of living things at scales from the microscopic to that of landscapes. Although one cannot see the creatures in a pond, one knows the types that are likely to live there, their habits and biology. Added to that is an understanding of how the pond ecosystem functions, with the energy from organic matter passing through micro-organisms, to plants and animals of all sizes. In the same way, background knowledge enhances one’s appreciation of coasts, woods, hedgerows or any other natural features of the landscape, whether one is observing on foot or using some form of transport.

                    [Acrylic painting by Anna Todd in the collection of the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board]

I have always enjoyed travelling by train and my journeys are rarely spent reading or chatting, although the former was my chosen approach during years of commuting to work in London. For me, railway journeys have always been an opportunity to gaze out of the carriage window and observe the countryside we passed through. I’ve always found that the best view is provided when travelling First Class and that, perhaps, results from well-placed seats and large windows that give a wide field of vision. To make it affordable, travelling First Class now requires advance booking and gone are the days when trains were made up of miscellaneous carriages some of which had First Class compartments labelled as being available for the use of Second Class passengers (see the sticker below). It was always worth scanning along the carriages of those trains to see if one’s luck was in.

Henry Gosse preferred to travel First Class on trains ² and, in his time, during the expansion of the railways, this would have been an expensive option. It is not recorded whether he used to gaze from the window, but I’m sure that he did, especially as he was naturally shy, although his occasional outbursts of religious evangelism also had the unintentional effect of buying the silence of other passengers. As the brilliant biographer Ann Thwaite wrote of a journey he made with his son, Edmund: ²

They travelled first class, as Henry always did. At Newton Abbot a young woman joined them and a label on her luggage announced her to be ‘Miss Christabel Coleridge’. Edmund was consumed with curiosity, wondering if ‘she was of the poet’s family’. No one spoke a word and she got out at Exeter, where her place was taken by an elderly gentleman. The two men started talking and the boy found himself listening to the sort of conversation he had heard so many times as a small boy travelling with his mother. Now his feelings were different. Without much preliminary, Henry Gosse ‘advanced the Cross of Christ. He eagerly enquired whether our new acquaintance had found peace on the bosom of his Saviour’. The answer was curt. The elderly gentleman withdrew to his corner of the carriage, buried himself in a book and took no further notice of them.

It is not surprising that there was no communication with ‘Miss Coleridge’ on this journey, as the railway line between Newton Abbot and Exeter passes right along the coast and then up the muddy Exe estuary and it is a brilliant stretch for a Natural Historian to make observations of wildlife. Trains in Gosse’s time moved more slowly than those of today, but their sudden and noisy appearance was sure to disturb many birds and other animals and that made them easier to see.

As a boy, I used to enjoy travelling on the branch lines of Devonshire using Holiday Runabout tickets that allowed unlimited travel for a week on all lines within a defined area. As I lived by the sea, I headed for the country and also stopped off to look at some of the small towns and villages that I had not visited previously. Trains on branch lines moved at a gentle pace and one thus felt more integrated with the landscape and the “rural idyll”. There was always much to see on these train journeys, but this pleasure cannot be enjoyed nearly as much today, for most of the lines are now closed, although some track beds remain as cycle tracks. I empathise with the sentiments made by John Betjeman in a BBC Radio broadcast of 10th March 1940, a time when the peaceful country railways must have seemed havens from bad news: ³

Roads are determined by boundaries of estates and by villages and other roads; they are shut in by hedges, peppered with new villas, garish with tin signs, noisy with roadhouses. A town spreads out along its roads for miles, leaving the country in the fields at the back that you don’t see.. ..railways are built regardless of natural boundaries and from the height of an embankment we can see the country undisturbed, as one who walks along an open footpath through a field.. ..Railways were built to look from and look at. They still provide those pleasures for the eye.. ..I advise slow trains on branch lines, half-empty trains that go though meadows in the evening and stop at each once oil-lit halt. Time and war slip away and you are lost in the heart of England.

I know what he means and I’m grateful to have had what are now nostalgic memories of branch line travel in the 1960s. My interest in Natural History enhanced those trips, just as it does when enjoying modern train travel. In the most pleasant sense, there is no escape from having a knowledge of Nature.

¹ Philip Henry Gosse (1853) A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast. London, John Van Voorst.

² Ann Thwaite (1984) Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape. London, Secker and Warburg

³ John Betjeman (2006) Trains and Buttered Toast. London, John Murray.

Discovering John Betjeman

We obtained our first television set in 1959. It was rented (a common practice then, as TVs were so expensive) and received only the single BBC channel in black and white. As having our own TV was a novelty, I loved watching programmes on wildlife and sport, and sometimes those of a different kind caught my interest. It was through his excellent series of vignettes for the BBC that I first encountered John Betjeman. I knew nothing about him and his background, but I liked the way he described the places he visited, whether towns and villages, churches, or railway lines. As I was an enthusiastic train spotter at the time, it might be expected that it was this interest that drew me to Betjeman’s television work, but it was everything that he did. I learned about architecture, about how the arrangement of buildings in towns and villages was often haphazard, about the exteriors and interiors of churches, about so many things that caused me to look at my surroundings with a bit more insight. I was also attracted by Betjeman’s campaigning for buildings he felt strongly about, like St Pancras Station and the adjoining Midland Grand Hotel, efforts commemorated by Martin Jennings’ wonderful statue on the concourse of the restored station. ¹

An important part of the “TV Betjeman” was his appearance, with rumpled suit, jacket or coat, a battered hat, and a range of deliberate affectations. I loved the eccentric persona, but the magic came from the way he used, and delivered, words. He conveyed nostalgia, a love of the past and the need for preservation, all described in a way that made it easy to be carried along. Take a look at this clip and you will see what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDrQkg8lOGc&t=52s&ab_channel=THERESALWAYSSOMEONE

At the time I saw his TV programmes, I didn’t know that John Betjeman was a poet. I have always found poetry difficult, as it usually requires more concentration than I can muster, but Betjeman’s work is different. It is so accessible and has a lightness of touch. He has a way of describing feelings and anxieties, often couched in humour, that expose his vulnerabilities. Nowhere is this more true than in Summoned by Bells, the verse autobiography of his early years published when he was 54 years old. I have the version illustrated by Hugh Casson that gives two great artists for the price of one ² and, each time I read it, I can recall John Betjeman’s characteristic delivery; the same method of delivery that drew me to his TV programmes when I was a boy.

Nostalgia for things past often comes with apprehension about the future and that was certainly true of Betjeman, especially as he neared the end of his life. If I had to pick a favourite poem, it would be “The Last Laugh” on the final page of A Nip in the Air (itself a memorable title for a last anthology): ³

I made hay while the sun shone,

My work sold.

Now, if the harvest is over

And the world cold,

Give me the bonus of laughter

As I lose hold.

By coincidence, this poem is used by Bevis Hillier, the official biographer of Betjeman, to close his book John Betjeman: A Life in Pictures ⁴ and I suspect that all who read it are affected by its sadness.

¹ https://stpancras.com/news-events/the-sir-john-betjeman-statue

² John Betjeman (1989) The Illustrated Summoned by Bells. London, John Murray.

³ John Betjeman (1974) A Nip in the Air. London, John Murray.

⁴ Bevis Hillier (1984) John Betjeman: A Life in Pictures. London, John Murray.