A defection: Ronald Muirhead

Occasionally the example of the Yellowsands Press travelled with the school’s influence, and in one notable case we can trace how it took root elsewhere.

The new atmosphere of egalitarianism in the 1960s naturally led some boys at Bembridge to ask themselves what was meant by ‘progressive education’ and, given certain facts of the school’s history (notoriously, for some, the absence of the OTC), even perhaps to wonder if they themselves were attending a ‘progressive’ school. Addressing the matter in an article contributed to a short-lived sixth-form magazine of the time, Peter Rendall, then headmaster, was quick to scotch the notion, should it have arisen, that pupil-staff relations had ever been established on any basis of equality. Freedom, based on discipline, had to be earned, and that had always been the way at Bembridge. Moreover,

the Warden knew best and was ready to tell boys what they should do, not to leave the full choice to them. If they were in his school they had to accept the ideas for which he founded the school and those who kicked against his rulings or his discipline were punished or asked to leave.

But though there was now little to distinguish Bembridge from many other schools which had adopted broadly similar aims to Whitehouse (and in particular his belief in the value of providing for a wide range of extra-curricular opportunities), in 1919 he had certainly been a pioneer, and was perceived as an innovator: interestingly, Rendall cites two other foundations of the inter-war period, Canford and Bryanston, which were directly influenced by Whitehouse’s principles worked out at Bembridge.

In the case of Bryanston School, however, it was rather more than a transfer of ideas and methods. In short, according to Whitehouse, the new Bryanston head, Thorold Coade, appointed in 1932 in succession to the founder J.G. Jeffreys (who had fallen out with his governors), had gone behind his back, poaching Bembridge staff, and even perhaps deviously despatched his (Coade’s) wife to Bembridge to be shown ‘as far as possible every detail of our life and work here and the principles we were carrying out’. Particularly galling was the resignation of Muirhead, who had led arts and crafts teaching at Bembridge and only a year or two previously built the new printing room. It is his defection to Bryanston, and before him that of the art teacher and junior house master Reginald Hughes, that lies behind the curious outburst of defiance and bravado which ends Whitehouse’s account of the Press published in 1936. ‘We are the oldest school press in the kingdom,’ he declared (a dubious claim; already in 1919 there were presses at both Abbotsholme and Bedales), ‘our private press and our newspaper have long been known in a national sense.’

We have numberless enquiries by post and in person for advice and help. We have always been glad to respond to the extent of our ability. To those who have acknowledged with courtesy any help we have been able to give them in starting experiments themselves, we extend our felicitations...to those who borrow our ideas and methods (and more besides) without acknowledgement…seeking to reap where they have not sown, we offer our sympathy. Their destiny is to follow and we shall keep them on the run.

The Bryanston prospectus published in January 1934 lists R. Hughes as art master (he appears to have started his employment there in the autumn of 1932) and under the heading ‘Arts and Crafts’ notes that ‘it is hoped in the near future to attempt textiles, bookbinding and printing’.

Bryanston’s historian M.C. Morgan, writing in 1978, found that of the twenty or so hobbies set up at the school in its first decade, from 1928, printing and sculpture ‘made their mark and [in a short time] reached an astonishingly high standard’, unmatched by that achieved in ‘drawing, painting or other graphic arts’.

The Printing Club, formed in the winter of 1934, set itself under the eye of Ronald Muirhead professional standards. From the first it…produced work that was not only technically sound but aesthetically satisfying. It had the further advantage that the boys knew that what they were doing was of direct benefit to the school: chits, play programmes and service sheets were all witness to its achievement. With the profits of Bryanston Sampler (1937) it was able to buy three new founts of Gill Sans type…

For Whitehouse, who felt that he had always gone out of his way to look after Muirhead, this was a personal betrayal. ‘Let me remind you,’ he wrote to him, ‘in no spirit of bitterness but only in friendship of our past connection’.

When you came to me in 1919 you were unemployed. There was great prejudice against you and others similarly situated for their action relating to war service [conscientious objection]. Your local authority had dismissed you. It was an extraordinary pleasure to me to be able to help you. The school suffered many attacks in consequence, and you well know how I met them and the support you always had from me.

You have had as you have told me yourself a very happy life here. You have been able to work in freedom and you have had this experience in a school worked on its own distinctive methods where arts and crafts have been given an equal place of honour with other things. You have been able to see how a school could and should be run on modern lines, where peace in all things is pursued, and this great training has I think helped you in every way as well as at your own subjects.

A house had been built for Muirhead. His son had been educated free. No limit had been set on his position at Bembridge.

I mention these things in no unworthy spirit but only to ask you whether I have been treated quite fairly. You hear of a new school which as you know is copying our methods in every way possible. You enter into negotiations, and accept an offer, without taking me into your confidence at all, or telling me anything about the matter until it was settled. I have therefore not even had the opportunity of telling you of the special arrangements I had made for your future when you retired at the ordinary retiring age – an arrangement I believe far better than the offer you have accepted.

I shall be in all today and shall be glad to see you.

*

One can never quite take Whitehouse at face value: he is often embellishing or exaggerating or striking an attitude; but much of this letter can be substantiated. A manuscript list of staff salaries dated June 1925 shows that only the teacher W.A. Grace (who left Bembridge for Wakefield Grammar School where he was followed by Ernest Baggaley in 1941) was paid more than Muirhead who in the early days at least seems to have cut a distinctly odd figure, drawing occasionally unwelcome attention and speculation. ‘The one weak spot at Bembridge is one of your staff who wears ill-fitting clothes, very long curly hair and sandals’, wrote Alex Devine to Whitehouse, only partly in jest, in May 1922: a prospective parent, trying to choose between Bembridge and Clayesmore School (of which Devine was head) was concerned at the degree of influence Muirhead seemed to wield at Bembridge. William Inge (Dean Inge, of St Paul’s), a lifelong admirer of Whitehouse (and sometime school President), though himself a ‘hardened old Tory’, said later that ‘there was a time, when the school was very young, when certain people tried to represent it as a seminary for young Bolshevists’. But ‘nothing could be more absurd to anybody who knew the Warden…’