No.127
The Trusty Servant
Vox Senum
College Tutorship
Michael Bell (Coll, 55-60): John
Gunner (TS 125) attributes to Roger
Montgomery as College Tutor the
inspiration of injecting greater realism
into the annual College fire practice
by deploying a smoke bomb. This is
not quite correct. I am in a position
to confirm Roger Montgomery’s
innocence and name the guilty man,
the Second Master, Tom Howarth,
no less. As Schol Prae, responsible
for organising the fire practice, I was
summoned by Tom Howarth earlier
in the half to be told that he felt that
the event was, as he put it, in his
customary nasal tones, ‘insufficiently
verisimilitudinous’, a shortcoming he
proposed to correct by directing me
to obtain, from the CCF stores via
the College Tutor (his only role in the
affair), a couple of smoke canisters
which would be ignited to kick the
exercise off.
My main challenge was to achieve an
element of surprise, difficult because
the practice took place in Short
Half, and invariably on a Saturday. I
decided to schedule it on the Saturday
of my return from doing a scholarship
exam in Oxford, in the hope that
people would not realise I was back.
I ignited the canisters, with the results
John graphically describes. One thing
he got absolutely right. Inhaling
several lungs-full of sulphurous
smoke at point-blank range caused
me severe breathing difficulties, and,
having gasped my way through the
ensuing namers, I staggered off to Sick
House where I spent the following
week slowly recovering from a form
of pneumonia. This at least protected
me from the justifiable fury of my
fellow Collegemen, lovingly described
by my visitors.
Postscript: the following week, my
mother received a letter from the
Second Master, telling her that I
had been injured in an unfortunate
incident and was being treated in
College Sick House. She was just
contemplating this missive, and
wondering what it was not telling
her, when the phone rang. It was
Tom himself. My mother naturally
assumed that I was dead; luckily,
he was merely ringing to pass on
the good news that the I had been
successful in the scholarship exam
which preceded this episode. So I
was spared to spend a career in the
Ministry of Defence and the defence
industry, where, you may be sure, I
made it a rule to steer well clear of
chemical devices.
Monumentum Aere Perennius
Adam Barker-Mill (H, 54-59) points out
that Sir Richard Mille (TS 126) is his
ancestor and that the restoration of
the monument at Nursling Church
has been carried out with support
from the Barker-Mill Foundation.
Harry Altham
Sally Brodhurst writes: My brother,
Robin, and I were delighted to read
Harry Bates’s (TS126) article about our
grandfather, Harry Altham. It came
across so warmly; it really seemed
to us to pick up his enthusiastic
approach to learning, and his
undoubted skills at encouraging boys
to engage with literature or the visual
arts and have confidence in their own
abilities.
He often used to write us letters in
rhyming couplets when we were
children. We loved them, despite
having great difficulty interpreting his
appalling handwriting! I also have
very fond memories of standing at
17
the edge of some games-field with
him, while he puffed away on his pipe
and patiently tried to explain to me
how gerunds and gerundives worked
(not sure I ever quite got the hang of
them). And I remember him taking us
to the Cathedral and taking us up to
walk along the vertiginous clerestory
gallery, high up above the nave, full of
enthusiasm and knowledge about the
building.
We were fortunate as children to
often be packed off down the road
from Kingsgate House to spend
time with ‘Granny and Grandpa’
at Kingsmead. Alison, his wife, was
a wonderful calm counterbalance
to his impractical and energetic
nature. She frequently prevented
small conflagrations when his pipe
had been stuffed in his pocket still
alight. We loved spending time there,
partly because HSA always appeared
really interested in us and always had
something interesting to tell us about
or to show us.
Andrew Joy (C, 70-74) writes: Harry
Bates’s heart-warming – and
instructive – tale of how Harry
Altham’s inspirational Div lessons
rescued him, in his final term, from
relative academic failure, prompted
me to look out a piece of memorabilia
left by my father, Michael Joy (C,
29-35): he was a great fan of Altham
and I had always put this down to
his having been in Lords (…without
distinction). However, not long ago
I found a shoe-box of effects which
included a postcard that led me to
think Altham’s influence went wider.
Sent by my father from Berlin in
August 1936 to his sister Nancy in
England, it reads: ‘12 pm. Femina was
full so we came here. Harry drunk
again tonight: Dancing + girl now.’
The handwriting is very small, the
graphological equivalent of a whisper,