My own private Sydney High — 3

In Rockjaw’s English class 1958-9

R W “Rockjaw” Smith 1959

Even if he once called me “Wordy Whitfield” and pooh-poohed my idea that maybe movies could be taken as seriously as literature. He also tried to convince us that Rugby was “poetry in motion.” Some of course agreed. He did a good job though. Come to think of it I was fortunate in my English teachers, as I had the eccentric Mr Harrison who wove his own suits but also had such a talent in reading aloud that he inspired me to do the same in my own teaching career as far as I could. It is a priceless skill even today.

We studied Julius Caesar from the recommended Verity edition — they are famously bowdlerised but this was the recommended edition at the time. Loved this play, still do. Taught it many times in later years.

Antony. This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators, save only he,
Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar;
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix’d in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, ‘This was a man!’

Octavius. According to his virtue let us use him,
With all respect and rites of burial.
Within my tent his bones to-night shall lie,
Most like a soldier, ordered honourably.
So call the field to rest; and let’s away
To part the glories of this happy day.

We went to the Elizabethan Theatre in Newtown to see the play with Ron Haddrick in the cast, as I recall. But the Internet these days supplements memory, so here you go….

In this theatre where many notable productions happened 1955 onwards. It closed in 1980 and soon afterwards was “destroyed by a suspicious fire. A three-storey white office block now occupies the site.”

Yes, originally a movie theatre. On the Elizabethan Theatre Trust see Theatre Heritage Australia.

We also saw the 1953 movie with Marlon Brando as Mark Antony — a piece of casting Rockjaw did not really admire. But the great Sir John Gielgud of course…

Then we had as our novel Wuthering Heights. I found the dialect a touch difficult to understand.

Vinegar-faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the barn.

‘What are ye for?’ he shouted.  ‘T’ maister’s down i’ t’ fowld.  Go round by th’ end o’ t’ laith, if ye went to spake to him.’

‘Is there nobody inside to open the door?’ I hallooed, responsively.

‘There’s nobbut t’ missis; and shoo’ll not oppen ’t an ye mak’ yer flaysome dins till neeght.’

Wuthering Heights Chapter 2

But one gets to cope, even overlooks this business of digging up a corpse in order to make love to it, and reaches that wonderful coda:

I sought, and soon discovered, the three headstones on the slope next the moor: the middle one grey, and half buried in the heath; Edgar Linton’s only harmonized by the turf and moss creeping up its foot; Heathcliff’s still bare.

I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.

Wuthering Heights Chapter 34

In the 1990s, I think it was, I taught Wuthering Heights to a Year 11 class at Sydney High and found the copies not exactly mouldering but certainly aging of the very books we had used. One student put his hand up on receiving his, and there it was: “N Whitfield 5A 1959” in the list of previous custodians. My very Leaving textbook!

We also studied Douglas Stewart’s The Fire on the Snow — a radio play. I loved it. Good to see someone still teaching it.

A quick note or two on Edgar Bembrick’s Latin class

There was the day in Latin* that I placed a bottle of ink on my desk and pulled out a sharpened feather and commenced to write…. Bembrick did not even crack a smile but just proceeded as if nothing was happening. The feather was not all that easy to use….

Mine was just an ordinary bottle of Quink. We were still using fountain pens in those days, and The Record always had ads for them.

More expensive than my Platignum — or the feather, which some bird donated free and left for me to pick up.

When Bembrick was feeling relaxed he would challenge us to quote him any line of Latin poetry and he would give us the next line. We never caught him out. He would quite often come in without a text book and tell us to turn to page whatever and then from memory get on with whatever we were translating, or he would tell us to turn to North and Hillard Chapter whatever and then expound on the point made there….

I had him in Fourth Year as well as Fifth. I recall one day — it may even have been Third Year as we were doing Caesar’s Gallic Wars Book II. Someone had a crib translation out of sight under the desk and was reading from that. “Son,” said Bembrick, “I’ll have you know I wrote that crib!”

Yes it was Third Year: 1957 or MCMLVII. And I told that story then. But we octogenarians are like that… And though the essence is the same there are stylistic differences — but my memory is not as perfect as Bembrick’s was. (I reckon I could still outdo Trump on those tests he rabbits on about — the ones he thinks are IQ tests but in fact are screening for dementia…)

C. IULI CAESARIS DE BELLO GALLICO COMMENTARIUS SECUNDUS

CUM esset Caesar in citeriore Gallia [in hibernis], ita uti supra demonstravimus, crebri ad eum rumores adferebantur litterisque item Labieni certior fiebat omnes Belgas, quam tertiam esse Galliae partem dixeramus, contra populum Romanum coniurare obsidesque inter se dare.

“When Caesar was in Hither Gaul [in winter quarters], as we have shown above, numerous rumours were brought to him, and letters also…”  Then something about Belgians…? Yes, I have the eBook now!

BOOK II

I.—While Caesar was in winter quarters in Hither Gaul, as we have shown above, frequent reports were brought to him, and he was also informed by letters from Labienus, that all the Belgae, who we have said are a third part of Gaul, were entering into a confederacy against the Roman people, and giving hostages to one another…

In 1957 I sat here and read that.

Edgar Bembrick was the legendary Latin teacher of us mob in 3B. I was 14. He, I suspected, personally knew Julius Caesar, in fact probably taught him. In fact it appears he was born in 1890. In 2007 I wrote, referring to 1959:

Edgar Bembrick, my Latin teacher in my last year in high school — his last year too as he died before that year was over — was in some ways as boring a person as you could hope to meet, and with a face remarkably like a prune. However, there was a twinkle in the eye and an awesome reputation in his subject area: “Don’t use that crib, son; I wrote it.” He would also come into the lesson without a text book and tell us what page to turn to and would then proceed to his exposition without recourse to anything other than his memory. He once claimed to be able to complete any line of Latin or Greek verse we could throw at him. We never caught him out.

From my archives

Now is that right?

* Beginning to wonder. I certainly did that thing with the feather — probably from a large bird like a cockatoo. But was it in Latin? Or maybe Birdseed Bill’s French class? Or even Rockjaw’s English class? Certainly not in Wombat’s History class, or Outterside’s Maths, or Passmore’s Chemistry. Whatever, the response was basically to ignore what I was doing, even though I do recall I sat in the front desk….