The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 10, Issue 10 (January 1, 1936)
“Manners Makyth Man” — Our English Heritage in School and University
“Manners Makyth Man”
Our English Heritage in School and University
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The task of defining the word “English” has puzzled world writers for centuries. However subtly-minded they may he, however acute as observers, however highly trained as critics, they are baffled to find the proper verbal symbols to explain the essential qualities of the race that governs, in such a cheerfully haphazard fashion, a quarter of the earth's surface and a quarter of its people. The ceaseless permeation of English ideas makes for them a further problem. One well-known Continental writer says this: “The majority of Frenchmen and Germans have doubtless never been conscious how completely they have adopted the ideals of English civilisation, having made them so completely their own that they have forgotten their origin… To-day social life is English, as in the eighteenth century it was French.”
Millions of words have been wasted to find some explanation for this resistless march and the query remains unanswered. The one truth that remains is that English culture, in its strictest and narrowest nationalistic sense, has a spiritual and practical power that makes it the greatest living and effective force in the world. I dare to suggest that this is due to its intrinsic rightness; so in this article I want to show how this heritage of our British forbears has been cherished and brought to full fruition in our New Zealand, the country farthest away from its land of birth.
The buildings of Christ's College today are of striking beauty. The Chapel is an aesthetic jewel, built in 1867 and quaintly described in the first edition of the School List, “from the designs of Mr. Robert Speechly, the then resident Architect of the Cathedral, and is an admirably proportioned stone building 64 feet in length by 20 feet in width.”
Fifty years ago, transepts and a sanctuary were added and to-day it is worth a pilgrimage, for anyone who appreciates perfection. We had better walk round the “Quad” and take the buildings in their order. On the left as we enter the gateway with its enormous tree sentinels on either hand, is the Memorial Hall (interior shown in our pictures), and next are the Cloisters and the New Classrooms which were, by the way, built sixtyfive years ago. Then there is the Chapel, and sitting next is “Cotterill's,” whose corner abuts on “The Big School,” the oldest stone building in Christchurch with walls two feet thick and a wonderful steeply pitched roof. The rest of the square contains the handsome Hare Memorial Library, School House and “Jacobs.” Through the alley is a nest of handsome new classrooms, the gymnasium, and “lab.” before the playing fields are reached. Parts of it might be a thousand years old, and in some inexplicable fashion, the whole rambling village of edifices blends into one harmonious whole.
Do not forget, either, that Christ's College has kept pace with the march of progress. It has modern open - air class - rooms, up to date laboratories, and all the equipment of an advanced English public school. Its sports organisation is on English lines, and, in our illustrations, do not miss the river and boating facilities.
Its scholars have earned distinction as well as its athletes. Its roll of Old Boys contains names that are known the world over, and in the Dominion its formative influence has been one of wide incidence and abiding strength. Its Pantheon of masters and governors is worthy of reverence, and I can only say that it includes great names of both England and the Dominion.
Otago was also flourishing and there, with Scottish resolution, the Provincial Government, without more ado, set up a teaching institution, The Otago University. This changed the nature of the problem, and there grew a dislike for the idea of confining university training to one city. The Canterbury Union supported the broader view, led by the able Henry John Tancred. There was a deal of marching and counter marching but the birth of the central Parliament and the abolition of the provinces, eventually brought about the form of the University of New Zealand which now exists. It is simply an examining body to which are affiliated the four colleges.
While all this was going on in New Zealand, the revolution in the conduct of Oxford and Cambridge was taking place. They had become moribund, stifled by religious tests and innumerable restrictions, and teaching was almost at a standstill. In the curiously effectual way of Englishmen, reforms proceeded at a rapid rate and at Cambridge, Girton College and Newnham Hall women were actually admitted. Among the “giants in those days” of Canterbury were many Cambridge men, notably Bowen, Rolleston, and Joshua Williams, and Canterbury College owes much to their advanced ideas.
It is sometimes ascribed to luck, but it must be set down to the sterling wisdom and selective judgment of those early great men of ours, that Canterbury College started its life with a trinity of teachers who were complementary in their qualities, and for whose equal the world might have been combed without avail.
Professor Bickerton, the unruly, lavishly hospitable, universal genius, was the first. His fireworks, his partial impact theory, his “free love” discussions, his never-failing fund of spirits “filling the atmosphere with a kind of intellectual champagne.” his endearing oddities of behaviour, stay in memory and make him one of the great figures of all time in the history of the College. Professor MacMillan Brown was the youngest of the trio, but the second to arrive. He became a world figure in literature and sociology but his enduring monument will be the fire of love of literature which he kindled in his lifetime of teaching. He was an Oxford man, winner of the coveted Snell Exhibition, and he arrived in the little colony with honours thick uopn him. He was a teacher of original genius. It is said that in two years his elementary Greek classes could translate from sight any classic author. He was a dominating and tremendous personality, but his Sunday morning break-
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