Читать книгу James Penberthy - Music and Memories - David Reid S. - Страница 5

From the sublime to the Australian mania, sport. I was the fast bowler in the school's first eleven, bowled at and bowled out by Bluey Truscott, Melbourne High School's hero [and later an R.A.A.F. fighter ace]. I played in the first-grade football team and nearly won the interschool half-mile footrace. I only dabbled in schoolwork. This was the time of the Great Depression and I don't know how my father kept me at school. It was I who insisted. I was there, at University High School, when the German cruiser, Koln, visited Melbourne. We entertained the sailors at the school. To us they were heroes, examples of humanity, and they told us about their wonderful leader, who gave them a clean, wonderful fatherland full of athletes, health, hiking in forests, parks, gardens, buildings and superhuman beings. We all became Nazis overnight.

At that time the senior girls wore long skirts down to their ankles. I found that curiously sexy. This fashion lasted no longer than our newfound political philosophy. In the holidays I looked for work, standing in long queues outside rubber factories and other places. Sometimes these queues were a hundred yards long. Every time I got to the place where the employment officer sat I heard the sad words, "Job's filled". So I went back to school at U.H.S. I thought I would be a prefect and have another year of Sport, History and Literature. This luxury lasted only a few days.

The Salvation Army and a newspaper advertisement suddenly sealed my life and fate. Mentone Grammar School wanted a junior master. My father couldn't get to the phone quickly enough. The employer made an appointment and I subsequently met a gentleman named C.C. Thorold, M.A. (Oxon.). There is no other way to describe him. Always a curious man, this dignified scholar organised a walk through the empty streets of Melbourne the next Saturday afternoon. After about an hour chatting in the deserted echoing chasms of Melbourne city, I found that I'd been appointed senior housemaster and junior teacher at Mentone Grammar School. Mentone is a Melbourne bayside suburb, more famous then for racing stables than anything else.

That I got the job had little to do with my qualifications or my good looks - it was simply because my father was a Salvationist. Now I had another debt to the Army. Thorold told me that he once had an excellent gardener at the Hutchins School in Tasmania, who happened to play the euphonium in the Salvation Army. This Salvationist was honest and worked well. It was obvious that from me the headmaster expected morality, not ability. Mr Thorold had been Headmaster of Barker College in N.S.W. and of the Hutchins School. Now he was the sole owner of Mentone Grammar School. There were forty-five boys in the senior school and twelve in the junior. The senior school was a wooden hall with an annex. Within these humble walls, Mr Thorold brought academic distinction and the highest forms of English gentlemen's behaviour to the sons of racing trainers and jockeys.

My first day's teaching at Mentone Grammar was hilarious. In fact, the whole two years of my teaching there can have been of little value to any of my poor students. I hadn't the slightest idea how to teach three-year-old cherubs, six-year-old pants-wetters, nor a slow-learning ten-year-old, who sat there smiling all day at anything and everything. The twelve-year-old son of a racehorse trainer was much too sharp for me so, from the very first day, I left the important business of education to a part-time buxom Irish girl named Lois Murphy and a red-headed sportsman named Jim. Academic excellence was of little importance at Mentone Grammar in those days, except to the charming Headmaster, who did his best to imbue the forty-five scholars with wonderful grace, charm and good manners. The Junior School was one side of a flywire shed. The other side was the boarding house. There was a small corner behind a screen where I slept. Everyone had a cold shower every morning and there was no other kind available.

Mrs Thorold, a straight homely lady with manners to match those of her husband, occupied with utmost graciousness the position of cook and housekeeper. There was a dear old teacher named Mr Tanswell, who had somehow lost his way and strayed into the area - I think he was the senior housemaster. I am sure he was Dickensian. Major Holt, a ramrod, taught drill and I helped famous ex-Collingwood football star, Bruce Andrew, to train the football team. The boarders consisted of Smith Minor, Thompson Major and a lost Russian child named Rovkin. Smith could not be managed at all; Thompson could only be controlled by knocking him senseless and nobody worried about Rovkin - we pretended he wasn't there. The true story, of course, is that the three boys were absolutely delightful characters.

Breakfast was always kedgeree; lunch was better than a ninepenny lunch one could get in a cafe and dinner (or high tea as it was known) was white bread and jam. The Thorolds must have found it very difficult to make ends meet but they still insisted on bread being broken and butter put on only small pieces. This was expensive: Smith Minor, one evening alone, consumed twenty-six slices. We said Latin grace and all had impeccable manners.

It was difficult to teach five classes at once even with a complement of only twelve boys. It was made more difficult because some of the infants were brilliant and only with us for a few months until they could be fitted in to "bigger and better" schools. Some of the seniors, the more delightful ones, were slow learners. The curriculum was topsy-turvey. I never knew whether I was a child-minder, a wet-nurse or a sporting hero. At all important public events, like speech night or garden parties, I had to play trumpet solos. Miss Dorothy Ross, principal of the Associated Teachers' Training Institute at which I was obliged to study, accused me of always using the same tainted fish in nature-study demonstration lessons. I assured her that the fish always appeared in the kedgeree next morning for breakfast. Mentone Grammar School has now become an enormous establishment, having new buildings and hundreds of students. In all my teaching career I have never been so happy as I was in Mentone. There were the sea, the playing fields and the charming company of C.C. Thorold, M.A. (Oxon.).

I have been asked to throw some light on the strange story of this distinguished scholar and headmaster who purchased a little private school among the racing fraternity of Mentone. I don't know, he didn't tell me. When he died, his son took over. I think the son sold it to the Church of England. Once that happened its future was assured. I have seen many headmasters in many schools, many deans and many professors. The best of them all was C. C. Thorold, a gentleman of the highest breeding and scholarship. He was my friend. But for him I probably would have spent the depression in unemployment queues and the rest of my story would never have eventuated. Thorold was the therapy, someone I admired - no, more than that, loved. He encouraged me and in this physically healthy atmosphere, I reached my top as an athlete and won several championships. From the first day to the last of my two years at Mentone, I was always secure in my position and even revered because of my sporting prowess. Not many in Australia could beat me in an 880-yard race or the pole vault.

During this period the first of a series of first-class coaches migrated to Australia. He was Charlie Berger, coach of the Swiss Olympic team. Charlie became coach of the Melbourne Harriers. His method of teaching was effective and now universal. He taught a method of running, not a method of conditioning. Those were the days when running was for health and enjoyment as well as for winning, not like today where it is big business; where training until the joints and muscles collapse is the sine qua non of success. The year Charlie took over, we won both the A and F grade Victorian championships at Olympic Park.

All athletic events, particularly running, sprinting or long-distance, were based on simple principles. Even if running for the bus is the only running you do, this is useful information. The body is relaxed and upright, inclined forward just slightly. The knees are lifted; the concentration is only there. The foot comes to the ground flat - no running tippy-toes, like they used to teach. All balancing movement comes from the waist with the arms relaxed as balancing agents, not threshing machines. The head is upright. The only points of importance are the knees. Come on, mother, try it down the hallway! Relax, lift the knees and let the rest of the body hang like dead meat from the shoulders. This results in the perfect action. You may never become a Ben Johnson but do you really want to?

Charlie Berger told us: "Red Indians, three-year-old human babies and old people are the only ones who run correctly." Before the advent of Berger, athletes often learned to run, toes pointed, arms pumping, head back, body crouched. School and professional coaches were teaching people how not to run. There is another principle, which I have found essential for all good teaching and coaching - in music, school or sport: concentrate on one fault, the worst, and eradicate that. Only then go on to the next fault and so on. This precept has resulted in some success for me as a teacher in the composition of music.

When, after a few years, I went to Trinity Grammar School, Melbourne, I managed to apply what I'd previously been taught and brought the school's athletics team from last to first in the Combined Schools Sports. Some of the Trinity athletes went on to become champions. My biggest success was Ray Weinberg, who became a champion Australian hurdler and a fine coach.

Now, in the day of T.V. athletics, it is interesting to watch the running styles. Most of the best athletes have the Charlie Berger style. De Castella uses strength, a useful alternative and, provided the head, heart and legs are strong, it will succeed. My heart and head were all right, above average, but from somewhere I'd inherited skinny legs. There was nothing I could do about them. The more, I ran, the thinner they got. In one year with Charlie Berger, I'd improved enough to be among the best middle-distance runners in Australia. I represented Western Australia and Victoria and was in the training squad for the 1940 Olympics in Helsinki. Those Games never eventuated and I am sure I would not have been selected anyway. It takes more than a good style and the world's thinnest legs to make a true champion. Instead, I became more interested in musicianship and teaching others to run - and I was obliged to go to war eventually.

My mother and father moved to Perth again in 1935 and I decided to apply for a job at Wesley College there. I was successful and with my sister, Florence, went to Fremantle in the Adelaide Steamship steamer, Manoora. Florence had been left behind in Melbourne, when our parents moved westward again. Father was to become Commander in Chief of the Salvation Army in Western Australia. When they left, Florence lived with an ex-Salvation Army officer, who'd burned his red guernsey and was preaching freelance without the Army's "blood and fire". Mrs Abel, mother of the ex-officer, was one of my mother's best friends. I never doubted their Christianity and this was supposed to be evident in their continued support of Mr Menzies, but they were somewhat unmindful in naming their only child, Noel. Imagine his continuous consternation when asked his name. "Noel Abel," he would answer and then shudder when the retort would come: "Why don't you have a label?"

I rescued Florence from the kindness, cooking and the religion of the Abels and together we sailed to Perth. It was a rough passage, but I discovered that one couldn't be seasick while jogging or eating. However, conversely, one cannot jog or eat while being seasick. I began jogging before the Manooraleft Melbourne and kept it going all the way across. Most passengers left the fresh air and sea and jogging to me. I was a jogger before it became a universal disease.

Strenuous sport will inevitably leave the exerciser in later years with at least ten focal points for aches or pains, or worse. If joints could speak, they would certainly speak out against that extraordinary N.S.W. disease called Rugby League. Now joggers can begin at seventy or eighty years of age if they take it carefully. Young Joggers will probably have worn their joints out by that age.

After our arrival in Perth, Florence became temporary secretary to the British conductor, Sir Malcolm Sargent, during his Perth visit, and she was a temporary Soldier of the Cross as well. [During my time at Wesley College in 1936-37] it was a school among schools. It was unique. Under Dr J.L. Rossiter, it was an efficient operation, probably equalled only by the Catholic Church or the Royal Navy. It was clean, academically strenuous and exhilarating for the boys who went there. Discipline for both dayboys and boarders was effective. The boys seemed to revel in it. The school spirit was worth writing anthems about. Dr Rossiter was happy, Mrs Rossiter was happy, the headmasters' assistant was happy and the parents were happy. The majority of the staff, however, were overworked and underpaid. Only those who had wives and homes in the suburbs seemed to bear it. The discipline for the boarding-house staff was stricter than for the boarders - and the boarders slept in rows strictly at attention, with a prefect in the dormitory and a master at the end of each dormitory. Everybody slept.

My brother, Wesley, was still with our parents when I took up the position at Wesley College. He was a good-natured humorous boy who relished a protected life of safety and kindness. He got on well with everybody, particularly his parents. He was single-minded about art from the very year he was supposed to take his Senior Certificate examinations at the Perth Technical College. As far as I could see, the guilt and sins that weighed heavily on me never touched him. In his final examination, my brother failed every subject except Art, in which he topped his year.

The headmaster summoned father and hit him with the news that Wesley had failed to score a single mark in English. The headmaster was not angry, only stunned. "Let him paint," was my advice. I need not have spoken. When they moved to Melbourne and moved into a house at 59 Bowen Street, Camberwell, father got Wesley a job in a flour mill. Wes acted as though he didn't even hear the proposal. He just went on painting until the house was full of drawings and the walls and ceilings had changed from white to a Michaelangelo-istic kaleidoscope. Every room was thick with the smell of paint and turpentine, crammed with paintings, paper and musical instruments. On the few feet of wall space were books on religion, philosophy and how to fix anything. My parents not only condoned it but also wallowed in it. Some of the nude women would have made Young and Jackson's [famous painting of] Chloeblush. Somehow the self-same parents, who'd once scolded me for carrying a girl's suitcase, now lived unblushingly among mountains of naked flesh - and the devil. Wesley often painted the devil. He painted everything in sight. He even painted the cat.

In 1937 I was selected in the Western Australian team to go to the Australian National Games in Brisbane. After the games I got a job in Melbourne at Trinity Grammar School and soon found out that Methodism is better for scholars, Anglicanism much more comfortable for staff. During my last few months at Wesley, three of the unmarried staff members formed an Oxford Group. We practised Absolute Purity, Love, Unselfishness and Honesty. We prayed, meditated and confessed. It did little good for any of us. I signalled my release from Wesley College by forgetting the Four Absolutes for a start.

The day after the W.A. team reached Brisbane, I won the Queensland pole-vault championship and did not run in the half-mile. I should have landed in the sandpit while doing the pole-vault but landed on the grass instead. In the national championships I hobbled up to the bar and sailed underneath it, sic transit gloria. This prevented any chances I had of being chosen for the 1938 Empire Games. I did some training with du Plessis, the South African who won the Games pole-vault. He gave me his green South African running pants, which later on led me to my first wife. After the vacation, I began teaching at Trinity Grammar, Kew, Melbourne.

The Headmaster, the late Frank Shann, was a totally different kind of principal, a hedonist who believed that boys should be allowed their idiosyncrasies in the boarding house. No matter how much we tried to change things, Shann thwarted us. I don't know whether he believed in Honesty, Purity and Unselfishness, but he certainly did believe in Love, and he was a famous headmaster. After the rigours of Wesley College, Perth, it was, nevertheless, disturbing to me as a boarding-house master, that big boys abused little boys in dormitories and preferred to sleep on the roof rather than in their rooms. My assistant one night caught all the seniors traipsing off to the showers, stark naked with their towels draped over the most convenient peg. For some of their excesses he wanted to belt them with his cricket bat. This was forbidden.

Shann was very kind to me and he and his family assisted very much in building up the school's music and sporting reputation. I was straight from the Four Absolutes and I found the relaxed rules, the wine, the classical-music afternoons in the Shann household and the immodest housemaids a little disturbing. I had virtually become a vegetarian by this time and found the greasy roast mutton every day quite revolting. I complained to Shann. "All my life I have lived on boarding school food," he said. He smoked and drank and enjoyed life in every way. There is no doubt about that. He was also a remarkable headmaster. In my first week there I had the temerity to tell him that he would die of a heart attack by the time he was sixty. I may have been a few days out, but it happened.

Shann's elder son, Frank, became a well-known educationalist too, and headmaster of Hamilton Grammar School, western Victoria. Another son, K.C.O. Shann (Mick), achieved glory by becoming a diplomat. Mick had the best collection of dirty jokes and recordings of the masters of music that I'd met up to 1938. He introduced me to a repertoire of music, which I hadn't known existed. His enthusiasm for good music made him one of my most important influences. I wrote to him when he was ambassador to Japan or somewhere else. He replied that he did not listen to music much any more.

His elder brother, Frank Junior, almost secured my dismissal from Trinity. One of the boys of 5B (eleven-year-olds), to whom I taught everything except religion, raised an interesting question one day. "You teach us physiology and the systems of the body," said Dickenson, sophisticated son of sophisticated forebears, "and you have left out the most important - the reproductive system."

"Not I," I said. "It's not in the book." This was not Queensland but Victoria in 1939. It was the era when the righteous used to bash deviates in the Melbourne Domain. Nice people never said "sex" in front of children - they spelt it. I consulted Frank Shann Junior, who was at Trinity at this time. "Will I teach sex?" I asked.

He was gleeful and answered "Why not? Let's try an experiment. Give them the whole story."

"O.K.," I said, "but who'll tell the old man?"

"Don't tell him," Frank chuckled.

I did, however, call a meeting of parents. They all turned up one evening and sat on seats usually occupied by their sons. I got full approval and away we went - full descriptions in Latin and English words. After this course, there was nothing more to explain. No longer were there sniggers at double meanings. All those who'd been worried about something revealed their problems in front of all. Most of the boys in 5B were Dr A.E. Floyd's choristers from St Paul's Cathedral and some of them had problems. Young Gerry was brave enough to bare all. When he was three years old he was urinating through the chicken-house wire one day. The rooster had pecked the end off.

"Will I still be able to have children?" he 'd asked in front of the class.

"How much did you lose?" I asked. "The end? The middle? The lot?"

"The very end bit," he said.

"No problem, you may go forth and multiply," I assured him.

The whole class seemed pleased. I set a question in the exam paper. "Describe the reproductive system of birds, bees and humans." The paper had to be handed in for checking. I was summoned to the headmaster's office. There were no preliminaries. "I will not have this question placed on an exam paper in this school. I will stake my reputation that this sort of thing should not be placed on an exam paper or discussed in public."

"If you take it off the paper, I'll resign," I said.

"I accept," he snapped, so I went to start packing. As I waited in my room to cool down, I began to think. "We have won the athletics and we have an orchestra, described in the newspaper as the best school orchestra in Australia. He'll back down." He sent his wife to tell me [that he had?]. Perhaps I should have left in a hurry. Had I gone then, I may have kept the vow I'd made to my mother: "I won't marry, Mum," I'd promised, "and we'll go on a trip to the Old Country." But I did not keep my promise.

It happened this way. I trained the football team, the athletics team and supervised boarders from four in the afternoon through the night until nine the next morning. I was training hard at athletics and writing music for the school orchestra. Almost everything the school orchestra played was written by me and I even got my first opera, "Peter Pan", produced at the school by Alma Sylvester, later commander of the women's army. I was exhausted and on edge. The only time for training was after lights out at night. I contracted scarlet fever, diphtheria, golden staff or a mixture, or something else, which almost killed me. The medical superintendent of the Infectious Diseases Hospital called in the family for a farewell visit. The medical superintendent was an Old Trinity Grammarian. "Let's give him private nursing," he suggested. Sister Helen Wakefield took over the chore, got all systems going again and within one month I was back at work. "And marry the first girl you see," she advised as I waved goodbye. I obliged her almost to the letter.

One of Dr Floyd's choirboys had a sister. "Yes," she would mend my South African Empire Games running pants. They came back with my initials embroidered in gold just below the waist. The girl was nineteen, tall and good-looking with dark eyes and a love of music. Her name was Dorothy Kerin, but they called her Judy, and she lived with her mother in a boarding house in Kew. When I first caught sight of her I became convinced that there was more to life than eternally being housemaster in a boarding school. Soon after the presentation of the South African running pants, Judy got into the habit of making her way across the grounds of the two colleges. On these visits, I played to her selections from my gramophone records, while lying on the floor of my housemaster's rooms. Sometimes I dashed across the playing fields to her place.

One night I [arrived at the boarding house after Judy and her mother had gone to bed in the same large room. I was kneeling in earnest but quiet conversation beside Judy's bed.] The lights were out and her mother was in another bed only three feet away. She was wide-awake! Soon after this her mother introduced the subject which had never crossed my mind - marriage! I was shocked but had to face the fact that this was a situation from which there could be no easy escape. And so we were married [in August 1940] in my father's house with my father officiating. Judy wore a butter-coloured dress and looked extremely beautiful. We made our vows in a room appropriately adorned with murals of women with no clothes on. There was no way of avoiding the bacchanalian intrusion of my brother's paintings. Every room in the house was decorated with the same "shameful" art works. My best man was a Presbyterian clergyman's son named "Lofty" Elliot. "Lofty" enjoyed the decor and, after the ceremony, whisked us away to a discreet hideaway in the Melbourne hills.