Many of our readers are old Michaelhouse boys, as are their fathers and sons. Stars of the Morning is a magnificent tribute to this premier boys school in Balgowan.
Established in Pietermaritzburg in 1896 and transferred to rural Balgowan in 1901, Michaelhouse has been one of South Africa’s premier senior boarding schools for boys for more than a century. As a diocesan school, set up on the model of the great English public schools, from the start Michaelhouse aimed to shape the whole boy – academically, spiritually and on the playing field.
The glorious, richly-illustrated Stars of the Morning – A History of Michaelhouse 1896-2021chronicles the history of the school, from the move to Balgowan and the indelible imprint left by the two world wars to the impact of load shedding and Covid-19. Author Gary Ralfe has a long and storied connection with Michaelhouse – as an Old Boy, grandparent, governor, chairman, trustee and benefactor. R950, Jonathan Ball Publishers
An extract, selected by the author
Ask any Old Michaelhousian (OM) from rector Fred Snell’s time (1939-1952) to recount his memories of School and he will mention Snell’s insistence that boys and masters, like himself, should swim in the nude. Same-sex naked bathing, particularly among males, was not a novel practice. Snell would have bathed naked at Winchester College, and as an outdoors man he probably frequented Parson’s Pleasure on the Cherwell River while he was up at Oxford.
The practice was even more widespread in South Africa because of the climate. The writer has an old photograph taken while his father was at Michaelhouse (1929–1932) of boys swimming in a natural pool nearby, probably Hutchinson’s; they are all naked. For Snell, swimming naked encouraged a healthy matter-of-factness about the human body, particularly when boys’ bodies were changing – and it reduced the number of lost costumes! It was for this reason that the original swimming pool had a high hedge surrounding it.
Michael Snell recounts the story of his father being accosted by prospective parents as he was returning from the swimming pool to the Rector’s Lodge, dressed only in a towel round his waist. They asked where they might find the Rector, so he directed them to his study, where in due course on being ushered in they were surprised to find themselves in the presence of the same ‘boy’, now fully dressed.
Snell was not yet 50 when he left Michaelhouse and his looks belied his age. Per Michael Snell, family lore records that when his father’s ship was approaching Durban on his arrival in 1938, a fellow passenger on deck with him asked where he was headed. ‘I am going to Michaelhouse,’ he responded, which elicited the startled reply, ‘Aren’t you a bit old to be going to school?’
According to Chris Perry OM 1949–1953, there were two contrasting cultures at School: thugs and gentlemen. In his first two years, bullying was rife and house prefects had the right to cane. Sometimes it was brutal, with boys beaten in their pyjamas by prefects wielding Malacca canes, striding in by two or three paces and then retreating between each stroke. Perry also saw a small cack (in-house slang for new boy) being held out of a first-floor window by his ankles.
In the first Assembly of 1951, Head Boy John Kumleben and his deputy, John Hamilton, announced, with the backing of the Rector, that any boy guilty of bullying would be expelled. Three boys were expelled in the following six months and bullying largely ceased for the rest of Perry’s time, with ‘gentlemen’ in control. In future only the Rector, Housemasters and school prefects had the prerogative to cane.
Jack Crutchley OM 1952 was the first colonial to win the Sword of Honour at Sandhurst. At a 60th Gaudy lunch he recalled that, because Michaelhouse was a savage place in the post-war years, he plotted with a fellow cack, like him from Northern Rhodesia, to run away by jumping onto a goods train as it trundled past the School. What deterred them from action was their ignorance about how to proceed further north once they had arrived in Johannesburg.
The famous author Wilbur Smith was of the same era and the same provenance. It is well known that he hated his time at Michaelhouse, where he said he was bullied. Peter Clucas was of the same vintage as Wilbur and their beds were next to each other’s in Founders. The rule was that if the alarms sounded for fire drill, boys had to report directly from their beds to roll call in the cloisters. At one such practice drill, Wilbur answered his name stark naked. He was admonished that because the staff ladies’ wing looked on to the Quad, he must for decency’s sake wear some article of clothing in bed. At the next practice, he answered the roll wearing only a pyjama top!
Crispian Trace OM was called ‘the naughtiest boy at Michaelhouse’ by Snell when he visited the former Rector on the off-chance at Peterhouse many years later. Through the good offices of the writer’s ex-partner in De Beers, Nicky Oppenheimer, Crispian sent the section of his memoirs on his years at School. He writes of Snell: ‘I had come to know him quite well, as we met about once a week for me to receive a fairly regular thrashing. (Not that it did me much good, but neither did it do me any harm, I did develop a hard bum.)
‘There was a peculiar tradition at Michaelhouse that after a good beating, one had to shake the Master’s hand and say ‘Thank you, Sir’ – I have no idea where it came from! Certainly not from the boys! But having done this a number of times, it ceased to have much meaning to either of us, and Fred started to ask me what I would like to do next! To this, putting aside my painful bum, I used to ask to be taught about the stars. Thus we would repair to his lawn, lie on our backs (the dew helped soothe the bum) and he would tell me about the heavens, something that has fascinated me all my life. (What a Head Master!)’
Snell enjoyed playing the Hammond organ at Sunday Evensong. There were two loudspeakers, the treble at the head of the nave and the bass in the gallery where the A blockers sat and suffered the booming of the speaker. While Snell was thundering on the organ pedals in the last verse of ‘For All the Saints’, a boy reached out and disconnected the plug. Immediately the bass died, leaving only a weak treble squeak. Snell strode angrily into the nave demanding, ‘Will the boy who has been tampering with my organ report to my study after Chapel.’
There were a few giggles and then the laughter grew until the whole congregation was in hysterics. Snell stormed out and no one went to his study.
One of Michaelhouse’s most distinguished sons, Richard Scott, ennobled as a Law Lord under the title ‘The Rt Hon The Lord Scott of Foscote’, approved of Free Bounds and Rector Snell. In an interview with The Spectator magazine, he cited Snell as ‘one of the major early influences’ of his life, ‘a man who lived by his principles and was never afraid to incur the disapproval of the establishment’.
Scott matriculated in 1951 and was awarded the Old Boys’ Essay Prize and the form prize for English. He played flanker for the disastrous 1951 First xv but was described by the coach as ‘a tireless worker in the loose’. He went on to win his Blue for rugby at Cambridge in 1957. Many years later, in 1996, he was invited to make the speech at the centenary dinner at Michaelhouse. He was then chairman of the Michaelhouse UK Trust. The writer was a fellow Trustee and I would be diffident about arriving at meetings in my chauffeured limousine, knowing that His Lordship the Judge went round London on a bicycle.
