WISBOROUGH LODGE, 1945-1949

by Anthony James Campbell Weill - (now simply Asher Weill)

My first acquaintance with Wisborough Lodge Preparatory School was actually in the spring of 1945, in the austere Victorian premises of Gabbitas and Thring, in Sackville Street, London; then (and I think still), England's premier and most snobbish school placement agency. How my parents could afford a prep school, God only knows; they didn't have two pennies to bless themselves with and my father was still with British Military Government in Germany. I assume my grandfather helped.

Anyway, I duly got there, a nine year-old Jewish boy (more of that later), uprooted from immediate post-war bustling London to the isolated South Downs of Sussex. All that I am going to jot down here is as best memory serves me - never very good at the best of times. So everything is with limited liability - names, dates, personalities: I might ascribe actions to the wrong person - so if anyone is offended (those of us who are still alive and kicking) my apologies and feel free to correct me - just don't take me along to the headmaster's study for a caning.

My overwhelming and most lasting impressions of the school revolve round a) the cold and b) the food. Again, is it my failing memory or did we really have to break the ice in the washbasins in the morning? Who remembers the agony of returning circulation while trying to thaw out frozen fingers or blue knees after a football game? Never any good at sports at WL (rather ironic as ten years later I went on to swim for England), I remember once being goalkeeper, and deflecting a shot over the crossbar by leaping blindly but fortuitously into the air - a hero for all of ten minutes. Or being one of the bottom supports of a rather wobbly pyramid on Sports Day. Or my gallant mother coming in dead last in the Mother's Race in another of those same auspicious occasions. And also a propos Sports Day, I remember that Pemberton, who was about eight feet, won virtually all the events (it was probably 1948). On the grounds of his height he was disbarred from receiving all his prizes - I thought that was singularly unfair then, and I still think so now.

But Oh the food! The reek of boiled cabbage, brussel sprouts and cauliflower (I can't stand them to this day) - and worst of all, a balefully ectoplasmic orange blob of swedes. If you couldn't finish it (or like me, just gagged) you were forced to sit at the table until you did. (I would put lumps of the stuff in my pocket and get rid of the glutinous evidence later). My parents once sent me a pot of marmite. I remember hiding under the gooseberry bushes beneath the Macdonald's study and finishing the whole lot with the aid of a finger - I was as sick as a dog afterwards and couldn't look at marmite for the next forty years. Who remembers sneaking down the staircase in pitch-black middle of the night to filch dog biscuits from the silver pot on top of the table outside the Macdonald's study, and creep back up again to eat them under the blankets? The yellow ones were best - you had to hope you did not get one of the black ones - pure carbon!

A mixed bunch, the staff. I don't remember them all. Colonel Kennedy was a good teacher until he got nobbled for "playing" with some of the boys and disappeared. It was certainly not with me; I was rather repulsive looking - Cobley was a target as I recall. Anyway, while Kennedy was still there, his film nights were our regular entertainment: other people have written about these, but the only film I remember vividly was the sequence showing the ritual and bloody beheading of a young bull sometime during the colonel's service in India. Miss Cowlishaw (Margaret? Peggy?) was a paragon of what teachers should be - kind, gentle, understanding, enthusiastic. I don't remember what Miss Oliver taught but I know that as we grew up we looked upon her with increasing lasciviousness (well, Bennett and I did). I remember Mr Brook, mainly for one reason. He would creep noiselessly into the dormitories so as to restore discipline in such a way that you never heard him coming - he put it down to his special rubber-soled shoes of which he was inordinately proud. I suspect his bark was worse than his bite. If I don't remember him that well, it was probably because he taught mathematics - a total mystery to me then and no less so today. On the other hand, the Macdonalds were extremely disagreeable; snobs, cold, unfeeling and dictatorial and probably anti-Semitic into the bargain. Mfanwy Macdonald, (I can't remember his first name) appeared to relate to people according to their status or the depth of their pocket and simply cut dead any parents she thought unimportant (like mine).

But the jewel in the crown of the teaching staff- and one of the main reasons why not all my WL school memories are negative - was John Brooke-Little. A scholar and a gentleman - charismatic, charming, a born and brilliant teacher who could make any topic interesting - such teachers are as rare as hen's teeth. He was born in 1927 so he was only 20 or 21 at WL! He instilled in me a lifetime interest both in English literature - and in heraldry. In fact, under his guidance, I painted an enormous heraldic genealogical table of the kings and queens of England - an undertaking which won me the first prize (the boys voting) in a school art competition - much to the Macdonalds' annoyance who had no hesitation in telling me that I didn't deserve it. Brooke-Little and my family kept in touch after he had left the drudgery of prep-school teaching (he carried out a genealogical research project for our family) and I still have a copy of his book "An Heraldic Alphabet." I last heard from him in 1987 when he was Norroy and Ulster King of Arms, and feel guilty for not having contacted him since.

Back to the question of being Jewish. Frankly, as I recall, it never really impacted on me, or I was too thick-skinned or stupid to notice. I never particularly related then to being Jewish and it is quite possible that no one knew I was; in any event I have no personal remembrance of being harassed on this account, so I was shocked to learn that Samuel Salter was bullied because of his Jewishness. Moreover, I am afraid I don't remember him well and I certainly never knew about the Jew-baiting unless I have repressed it out. I also have no idea if there were any other Jewish boys in the school at the time, although it might have been a consideration at the initial interview at Gabbitas and Thring. My parents were quite convinced (apparently based on comments and attitudes) that both the Macdonalds were anti-Semitic. I only became really aware of my own Judaism following my Bar-Mitzva; and then I swam for Great Britain in Israel in 1957 - but that is another story and not germane to this.

As to the boys: as far as I recall, my own circle of friends included Cobley (his parents had a boys'and mens' outfitters shop in Brighton - I think we got our school uniforms there), Dustin, Borrisow, Harvey and Bennett. I have not seen or heard from any of them since 1949 -with the exception of John Bennett. He and I washed cars in the Maida Vale area of London when we were both about 14 or 15. Actually I washed and he collected half the income, so I dissolved the partnership after a few weeks. I am sorry if I let Robert down if it was indeed I who showed him round the school on his first day. I can only plead in self-defence that an 11 year-old, himself undoubtedly bullied and suffering from feelings of insecurity, would prize above everything else the goodwill of his peer group, and if the prevailing attitude was to be nasty to the new boys, then that was what would be done. I came across some old Wisborough Lodge school reports of mine not long ago - a pity, they should have been consigned to oblivion ("Weill must try harder," Weill must learn to concentrate"). As a totally indifferent scholar (except for English - vide Brooke-Little), and an even more indifferent athlete, I only managed to get on to the school half-term "Order of Merit" outing once in my school career. Among other things, I remember we went to the Tower of London. My father's office was very near and on an impulse, I sneaked to a phone booth and called him. He immediately came over and I played hooky from the school group for the rest of the afternoon. No one even noticed.

I am often asked as to my attitude to boarding schools, and my answer is ambivalent. We went to prep school at the end of an era. The 1940s still followed the social mores and beliefs of the 1930s and only began to change in the 1950s with the Attlee government. Whether we admit it or not, we were still part of a privileged class for whom the notion of going to a local (state) school, was simply unthinkable to our parents - irrespective of the financial sacrifices that might have to be made. In 1945, I don't think I had ever even met a child who went to a state school (except the children of our cleaning lady - then called a charwoman). Accents were everything: in Shaw's words, "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth, without making some other Englishman despise him." In the 1950s, our accents still played a large part in determining our futures. In 1955 I went to work as a young editor at Oxford University Press. Even then I would never have got the job if I sounded as if I had been to a state school - even if I had got a double first. I would like to think that times have changed and they surely have - but I suspect not as much as all that, despite "received English" and the flattened A's in every mouth - up to and including Princess Ann (or Unn). (Comment from wife Deborah who read this "I am your perfect example of state school and unflattened vowels, so sod off"). Anyway, getting back to us Wisborough lads: we were brought up on Imperialism, the sun never setting over the vast pink areas of the terrestrial globe, the superiority of the British race and our perceived position in life.

But back to boarding schools. Robert Priddy has talked about Sparta: at Wisborough Lodge, we were certainly closer to that than Athens - but did it have an entirely deleterious effect on us? I don't believe so. The situation in our time was even more abnormal: the war was barely over, food and sweets were rationed, eggs, oranges, bananas and many other things were rarities indeed. On top of which, 1947 was the coldest year on record (and still is…) Cold baths, a great deal of physical activity, later on, the cadet force at public school, the camaraderie of living together, eating the same unspeakable food together, sharing together, doing together, achieving together: all built up a resilience, an ability to cope, a team spirit, an ability to strive for a common goal. To many people the idea of projecting a nine year-old (or even younger) boy into the maelstrom of a boarding school seems tantamount to child abuse (and indeed so it seemed to my parents 13 years after I went to WL when my brother entered school - a nice, safe, London day school). Robert is right of course when he uses the expression "to sink or swim." Yes, surely some sunk but I believe that by and large the majority swam and were better for it. So, having said that, would I send my children to a boarding school today if I had boys of the right age (which I don't) or if I lived in England, which I don't? Yes, I probably would if I could afford it (which I can't) and if I was damn certain it was the right milieu for that particular child. (Another comment from Deborah, "No child of yours will go to boarding school as long as they are my children too.) So there we are: take your choice - I said I was ambivalent. I never believed that I would ever get back to thinking about Wisborough Lodge again - and certainly not writing about it. As a repressive character (my wife calls it anal retentiveness, but then she had the benefit of a state education) so many of the Dotheboys Hall aspects of it still remain, I am glad to say, buried in my psyche. I take my hat off to Robert Priddy for his initiative, and I am now all enthusiasm about the idea of tracking some of the other ex-pupils down - and reading their recollections - and finding out what they are doing now. We are still young enough to start searching for them, before we start dropping off like flies. How about putting a modest ad in (say) The Telegraph and The Times (and perhaps The Guardian) asking for people who were at Wisborough Lodge to come forward. We could all chip in for the costs.

I am sending along for posting on the admirable wiswebsite some photographs from my old albums. I hope they bring back some memories. At least some of them might be good for a laugh.

And a very truncated biography:

City of London School in 1949, then Oxford University Press, moving to Israel in 1958 after swimming for Great Britain in the Maccabiah (Jewish "Olympic") Games. Two years on a kibbutz.

Publisher and Editor all my life. Founder and Publisher of Israel Universities Press; Managing Director, Weidenfeld and Nicholson Publishers, Jerusalem. Since 1981 and to this day, Editor-in-Chief of Ariel: Israel's leading cultural magazine with editions in six languages, English, German, French, Russian, Arabic and Spanish. No plans to retire.

Chairman and co-founder of the Israel Debating Society, and an international debate judge. In 1998, convenor of the World Schools Debating Championship in Israel.

Convenor and organizer of the Anglo-Israel Colloquium, a yearly meeting of British and Israeli leaders held on a different topic each year.

Author and/or Editor of many books and articles on Israel; Jewish and Israeli culture and history, etc.

Married to Deborah (née Lipson) ex Camden Girls School and proud of it. Five children, four grandchildren (so far). Address: P.O.Box 7705, Jerusalem 91076 Tel: 02 6432147 Fax: 02 6437502 Email: debasher@netvision.net.il