SE CHRONICLE 684

38 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

Diary of a Victorian Schoolmaster In 2021 the St Edward’s Archive received a donation of a collection of diaries, papers and scrapbooks belonging to Dallas Alexander Wynne-Willson, a language teacher at St Edward’s from 1891-1904, and one of the very first Set Tutors at the School. In 1939, shortly before his death, Wynne-Willson wrote a summary of his time at St Edward’s. Our Archivist, Chris Nathan, has painstakingly transcribed over 16,000 words of elaborate copperplate handwriting to produce a complete digital record of this account. Here we publish a selection of excerpts, giving a fascinating glimpse into s S

life at Teddies at the turn of the last century. WITH THANKS TO GEORGE WYNNE-WILLSON

people had travelled along it to Woodstock; for, long before the days of Queen Anne and the Duke of Marlborough, Woodstock had been a Royal Chase, and its history goes back to the 12th century. The Warden in 1891 was the Reverend Algernon Barrington Simeon, and I remember my first meeting with him; he had taken me on trust, and I had had no preliminary interview. He was a big burly man, with rather a protruding under-lip and

kind eyes. Another master who arrived at the same time was my friend, EH Montauban, who had been previously inspected. He was a shy young man, fresh from Cambridge, and he told me that when he came down to breakfast in the Warden’s dining room on the first morning he did not realise – nor did the Warden or Mrs Simeon – that their two sons had ensconced themselves under the table, and poor Montauban had to carry on a conversation above the table while these E

A colleague of mine at St. Neot’s, Eversley, who had later joined the staff of St Edward’s School, Oxford, had the offer of a good appointment at another public school, and the Warden of St Edward’s had agreed to let him go without notice if he could find a satisfactory man to fill his place; so he wrote to me in Switzerland, where I had just finished a long tutorship, and I readily accepted the offer. So, in September 1891, I made my way from Codford to Oxford, and, leaving my luggage for the carrier, cycled up the Woodstock Road and caught sight of the tower at St Edward’s, which I had never noticed before, but which was to become a very familiar object indeed. The School has a most advantageous position, for across the Woodstock Road are its fields and beyond them, Port Meadow and the wooded slopes of the Wytham Hills. It has made the most of this open prospect and has acquired several of the fields adjacent to what was the playground when I first arrived there, so there is no question of its being built in. This view was a constant pleasure to me, as I lived in the Lodge and could study the view from my bedroom window as I dressed. I used to tell my pupils that the Woodstock Road was a pathway of English history. Probably every English sovereign and his court and hundreds of other famous

Wynne-Wilson’s Set in 1896