The Scadding Story 1

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"Scad"

A RETROSPECTIVE - SEPTEMBER 2000

Part 1

In the Fifties, tears were not for men. Grown men did not cry. Certainly not at Public Schools, at a time when corporal punishment was still the norm, the CCF prepared acned youths to be National Service Men, and success was most easily measured in scrum or line out. Norris Scadding however, did shed tears. Frequently. And often in the company of others. Many of his most intimate friends could move the man to tears on a nightly basis. Lean form curled back in his deep armchair in the room on the top floor of the Main Building, the tears would roll down his face unrestrainedly as Gussie Finknottle, Tuppy Glossop, Bertie Wooster and the inimitable Jjeeves spun their magic through the pen of P.G. Wodehouse. Those who chose to go to Scad's room to read, whatever their age or interest, found it amazing that words off a well thumbed page could so stir the heart, as to make the tears flow.

They were of course, tears of laughter. And if one was just entering the maelstrom of adolescence, that was weird too. Tears were for sadness surely, not for joy. But Scad overturned the accepted order, and cared not a jot for custom. He knew the Wodehouse books by heart, had read most of them a dozen times and more and their familiarity never failed to please. Reading Wodehouse today, half a century later, the books seem a little dated, and the modern reader is as much influenced by television portrayals as by the written word. Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie perhaps stand between today' s reader and the character on the page. But not for Scadding. His joy was in the literary allusions that peppered the pages, the predictable denouements, the awful females, the terrifying aunts, and the glorious pigs: he had a specially warm affection for the Empress of Blandings. Wodehouse created a world more attractive to inhabit than the rather dreary commonplace one which was the lot of a Chaplain and Art Master at what, in those days, was most generally described as a minor public school.

I cannot remember now, half a century later, what first led me to go to Scad's room to read in the evenings. There must have been some encouragement from him, and I vaguely remember that the junior Common Room at the time was not much of a place for anyone wanting to read. And he was disparaging about the philistines who seemed to govern our schoolboy society. Whatever the reason which started it off, I used to go, first occasionally, then regularly, to read, and talk, in that haven at the top of the house. Haven it was, clearly, for people of all ages in the School who wanted to step aside from the mob, either because they were interested in music, or art, or literature, or just conversation. Some graduated to John Appleby's room below, where Classical Music was a compulsory accompaniment; others later would find Spinney's company stimulating ("Stimulating? The Jaw? Stimulating? - You must be joking!") I And others too found Reggy ('Shifty') Sessions, Ruth Dear, Humphrey Moore, or Carl Verrinder adults who could, by their conversation, their interests, their encouragement, alert the individual to a world wider than set books, team games and the weird class structures of an institutional regime.

The great gift that all those adults possessed was to broaden horizons. Often that led to interests which have remained for a lifetime. There are many Clayesmorians of my generation for whom the written word, especially poetically expressed, first drew living breath under John Appleby. Yes, all right (two words, never alright in his book), he might have seemed sometimes slightly weird, eyes half closed, cigarette holder languid in a limp hand as Wordsworth slipped off the lips, but John Appleby showed generations how to recollect in tranquillity. In a similar way Humphrey Moore zapped life into Mozart or Richard Strauss, fired enthusiasm for choral music, and J.D.S, with all his fanaticism for sea battles, taught young minds to appreciate strategy. For many of my generation, and interests, Appleby, Scadding, Moore and Spinney will forever stand as touchstones, and to write about Scadding alone is almost impossible, without seeing him as part of a Quartet of immensely diverse gifts, yet inspired by the same spirit.

Scadding , and the others, awoke in many an interest in books as a way to a more interesting world, though the others did not regard Wodehouse as literature in their sense. Scad also triggered questions about something even more fundamental to human happiness. God. On the whole, God got relatively short shrift at Public Schools in those days. Today, of course, He is an even more optional extra, with comparative religion offering ever easier access to all the great world religions. In the fifties, however, the public access point was easily defined: Confirmation. One was 'done' along with anyone else of the same age and moderate interest around one's fourteenth birthday. There were Confirmation Classes to be attended ' and a Catechism to be learnt. And tested. By Scad, the Chaplain. And when you knew all the answers that the Church had laid down as being correct, you passed, and on a given day, the Bishop came (as did your parents) and you were Confirmed. Confirmed in exactly what, one is now uncertain. Belief in God? Well, maybe. Desire to live a relatively decent life? Possibly. Moral Code accepted for life? Probably at the time. For the rest? The one thing I remember about that Great Day was the instruction of the Bishop, Butcher Key of Sherborne. "No Brylcreem. The Holy Spirit can't work through Brylcreem." I remember that worried me. Surely the Holy Spirit was part of the all powerful and dimly understood ("think of a shamrock", said Scad) Trinity, so surely Brylcreem would be no obstacle to the flowing of his gifts. But apparently, according to the Bishop, it was so. And therefore it must be true. Bishop Key was so huge a man that he could not wear his mitre in the old Chapel, which was held together by transverse iron bracing rods, but even without it, in enfolding cope, with crozier in hand and his great butcher's purple face topped with flaming red hair, he seemed a powerful agent for this Holy Spirit, whatever that might bring.

And so was Scadding. Scad clearly believed in a highly personal, intervening God. Scad's God, it seemed to me, had much in common with Giovanni Guareschi's Don Camillo. This eccentric, immensely likeable Roman priest was another favourite from Scadding's bookshelf, and an author he regularly lent to those showing the mildest interest in religion. Don Camillo's running battle was with Communism, and every problem which beset the priest was tackled in very personal dialogue with the crucified Christ above the altar in Camillo's church. He encouraged us to handle the problems we met by the same means. Talking to God has become an increasingly fashionable term in recent years; the other part of the dialogue "listening to God" is less fashionable and less observed, but it sparkled through the Don Camillo books. It also, clearly, was an active part of the life of Norris Scadding, priest. I remember an aunt of mine, after meeting Scad at some School function, remarking "He doesn't seem like a priest.' I resented that remark and asked her why not. 'Oh, he's far too jolly!" she said in a dismissive, middle class sort of way.

But for Scadding, God could be fun. No question. Religion was not for him meant to be doom and gloom. God had a sense humour. God laughed. Laughed at his creation, and desired that his creation should laugh too. The gift of laughter, of humour, of a sense of fun was an essential part of the mystery of God, as Scadding encountered him. And he tried to show those who would listen that God was, or could be, an intensely personal God; not a God-in-abox and-just-for-Sundays sort of God, but God for everyday. God of the kitchen sink and the workplace, of Monday mornings and Saturday nights; God interested in his humanity and in what interested his creation. So, for Scadding, it naturally followed that the things over which one rejoiced were to be shared with God, as much as the things which saddened or depressed. That did not come over as a series of lectures or classroom discussions so much as in conversations, over the whole of my six years at Clayesmore, and indeed beyond. He prepared the ground for a God of joy and reflection to take root, I suspect, in the hearts of many, and that is no small gift.

When one is at an impressionable age, one looks at those around who impress and questions what it is that makes them tick. It was ever thus. Half a century ago, those who taught were far more role models than they are today, sad though that may be. The Quartet of teachers, and of course there were others at Clayesmore after the War, shared a common belief in the Christian God, though the expression of that belief was widely different. It seemed, on reflection, to be a lodestone around which the lives of each, Appleby, Scadding, Moore, Spinney, revolved. This Christian God made himself known in a variety of ways to each; most obviously to Appleby through the written word, to Moore through Music and poetry and science; to Spinney through order and justice (and the measured tones of the Book of Common Prayer), and to Scadding in humour, life and art. And for all, in worship. Technically of course, Scadding was responsible for the way in which worship was offered at Clayesmore. It was, in those days, compulsory (supposedly for the Staff as well). But Scad's task was not easy : the Master of Clayesmore at the time was D.P. (Bunter) Burke, a Roman Catholic. The School's Governing Council was largely evangelical in religious persuasion. Scad was by nature more Catholic than evangelical. What that meant, in crude terms, was bells and smells as part of worship. From time to time the Council rumbled and had a brief spat with the Chaplain, over such matters as numbers of candles on altars, crosses or crucifixes, music, and of course behind it all, the general leanings of the Church of England as exercised in the School Chapel. Generally, Scadding won, giving a little, or more often, trimming his sails according to the particular visits scheduled by the Members of the Council, and its then Chairman, who was certainly not catholic by taste or leaning. On one famous occasion, when critical details of the new Chapel were to be determined, Scad, well aware that low churchmen prayed sitting, not kneeling, had the entire Council kneel for Divine guidance on the floor of Bunter's study: not perhaps the best way to win friends and influence people!

SCAD - PART 2

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