John Davison, a tribute

 

One of the Winchelsea Literary Society's most popular and regular speakers was John Davison, whose memorial service, delayed because of the pandemic lockdown, took place at Berkhamsted School recently. Thanks to Jonty Driver for providing this tribute, delivered at the memorial service:

John Anthony Davison, JAD, was a first-class example of the all-round schoolmaster. His father had taught for many years at Brighton College (where John himself was at school), ending his days there as Second Master, and in a sense JAD was born a schoolmaster. He didn’t think the extras were extra; they were part of the vocation. He was for years Master in charge of Athletics and Cross Country (proximity to Ashridge Common was a great advantage for those who loved long-distance running). He coached rugby. Henproduced plays. He set up, supervised and encouraged various societies. He was first housemaster of the day-house, Greene’s, and then for fifteen years housemaster of School House. John knew the boys in his house from the inside out; he knew their strengths and he knew their weaknesses. His end-of-term reports on them were kind, clever and funny, and his UCCA (later UCAS) references were insightful and truthful. In their turn, the boys in his house knew where they stood with him: he was strict, but he was straight – he always did what he said he was going to do. It’s small wonder so many boys became immensely fond of him, and regularly came back to see him; the turnout of ex-pupils to JAD’s funeral was evidence.

He was also a very good teacher; early on in his career he taught Latin occasionally, but his main subject was English, and for John that meant English Literature. He had been well-taught himself at school and at Oxford; he was properly proud of having been at Wadham. He loved reading and had a good memory, and he could communicate his enthusiasms: Shakespeare, the “metaphysical” poets like Donne and especially George Herbert, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Hardy, Kipling, and the great English novelists, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Dickens, and the moderns too. Some teachers of Literature stop reading when they begin teaching; John never did.

JAD was one of those fortunate souls whose discipline seems somehow innate. It derives in part from self-discipline, but there is also an assumption that pupils will do as you tell them to do: “or else...” and you don’t really have to spell out what “or else” is. It may seem obvious, but a teacher who cannot get his class to sit down and shut up is unlikely to get much work out of them. JAD had an especial dislike of those electronic watches which make a “beep beep” sound. “Here, take it off,” he would say. “Give it to me”, and out of the window of his classroom it would fly, usually to land safely on the lawn below; so boys soon learned to switch their noisy watches off, unless of course they wanted to bereminded that JAD had a considerable temper - which he did. He was very good with the less clever of his pupils, but he didn’t tolerate fools.

After retiring, John returned to live permanently in Sussex; he was very much a Sussex man, having been born at Fragbarrow, Ditchling Common, in 1937, within sight of the South Downs. He bought a cottage in Rackham, within sight and walking distance of those same downs, and he lived there until his death. However, really he didn’t retire from teaching, nor indeed from looking after other people. He had a term successfully teaching at Eton, subbing for an absentee. For years he worked tirelessly for the CAB (Citizens‘Advice Bureau), though latterly political correctness got in the way of his commitment. He was a volunteer for the Samaritans, though I never found out much about this side of his life, as it was something he couldn’t discuss with outsiders. He ran a Literature class for the WEA (Workers’ Educational Association) until the local overlords of that worthy organisation decided Literature wasn’t part of its true purposes; so John’s class asked if he would please go on teaching them Shakespeare even though it wasn’t official; and of course he did. He was for years one of the office-holders of the Society of Schoolmasters, looking after members of the profession who had fallen on hard times. He was a regular speaker at the Winchelsea Literary Society, talking about Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Byron, Tennyson et al, so popular there that every time he spoke on any writer he would immediately be asked if he would take on another subject the next year. John was a good writer too. One piece of evidence is the poem, “Hope”, included in the order of service; it could have been written only by someone who had absorbed the poems of George Herbert into his deepest imagination. There is also the evidence of John’s great endeavour of his retirement years: a brilliant history of Berkhamsted School, written with the help of Peter Williamson, sometime Chairman of Governors.

John was profoundly a Christian, not in any doctrinaire sense, but because it was part of his nature, part of his upbringing and his culture. The Book of Common Prayer, the English Hymnal, and the version of the bible inspired by King James were ingrained in his imagination. At school he was a stalwart of Chapel, singing in the choir, reading the lessons, turning up for services. After his retirement, he became churchwarden of the little church in the grounds of the local “great house”. Even promisingly pleasurable invitations which interfered with his duties as a churchwarden were courteously but firmly turned down. Although he never married (he told me once, only half-joking, that he was “terrified of women”) he was close friends with a number of women, and was as devoted to his extended family of aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins, as they were to him. The big festivals were always spent en famille.

In what has turned out to be quite a long life, I have come across a good many schoolmasters, schoolmistresses and teachers. John Anthony Davison was one of the greatest schoolmasters and finest teachers I was ever lucky enough to know. I was his boss for six years, but we became friends and allies then, and thereafter Ann and I went on being friends with him for thirty years. We count ourselves exceptionally fortunte to have known him.

C.J. (“Jonty”) Driver

Headmaster, Berkhamsted School, 1983-9

Here's a poem written by Jonty, that eloquently sums up the impression we all carry with us of "JAD":

THE SCHOOLMASTER

Like a stork, someone said, watching him run.

Exactly so: the feet placed precisely,

The long thin legs, the stoop, the beaky nose,

A tendency to flap his arms out wide,

A watchful concentration fixed ahead

To make quite sure that nothing moved at all

Which should not move.

! ! ! ! The world was better once.

Things of course are never what they seem to be,

But what they seemed was easier to bear

In our fathers’ time, and when the monarchs

Truly ruled. Unruly’s now the word –

Elizabethan cadence, but he thinks

They may have had it right, all right.

! ! ! ! ! Dear friend.

They may not always like you much, right now;

But you’re the one they’ll come to show their wives –

The boys I mean – and whom they’ll think of, when

(Old men and full of tales) they want to tell

Just how it was, way back in the old days:

Like a stork he looked, with his long thin legs

And a huge beaky nose, and a temper.

You knew exactly where you stood with him –

He never said a thing you could not trust.

The world was better in those older days.

C.J.(Jonty) Driver

(first published in SO FAR, Selected Poems 1960-2004)

Finally, here is one of John's poems:

HOPE

by J.A.Davison

August death, we hail

Your kindly power:

We know our flesh will fail

And time devour

The house of clay at last;

Our life is lease

Not freehold, and must cease;

The die is cast.

Indeed, and from the first

Our end is sure;

But this curse, though your worst,

Will not endure.

The bodyʼs yours to claim;

The spirit draws

Its substance from a name

More real than yours.

We move through you, we hope,

From good to better:

You burn the envelope;

We keep the letter.