Rhubarb

28 St Edward’s r h u b a r b

Common Room Obituaries

and parents considered him an extremely gifted and at times inspirational commanding officer, he preferred to say that his place was in the engine room with an oily rag. Fran valued people for who they were, not on account of their plumage, and never ceased delighting in connections and possibilities. His ability to absorb, remember and recall personal detail, even from the most fleeting of exchanges, was legendary. He was an old- fashioned networker, always for the benefit of others, never himself. Amusement and appreciation were his rewards. He remained a pillar of stability – but never inflexibility – in a changing educational world. He always valued loyalty, discretion and integrity. He eschewed tittle-tattle, company. He would lead his audiences in laughter, never at their expense. His humour was wonderfully mischievous, self-deprecating, and peculiarly British. His generosity of spirit and the warmth of his hospitality remained undimmed by Multiple System Atrophy, the rare, aptly named disease he bore so courageously. Claret was always on offer, even when Fran could only sip it from his favourite beaker, the Horn of Plenty, through a plastic straw. In 1951 Fran married Pat, a War Widow and daughter of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Morgan, the chief planner of the D Day Invasion. Together, they bought the Martin Luther, an old Rochester barge, firmly stuck in the mud in the River Blyth, as a holiday bolthole, and later graduated to a much loved cottage next to the Harbour Inn. She died in 2005. backbiting and displays of immodesty. He was good

Fran was then educated at Marlborough College, where he became Senior Prefect. During school holidays in the early years of the War he volunteered for night fire watch in Hereford Cathedral. He joined the Royal Navy in 1944 and served aboard HMS Zealous on the Arctic convoys. As he crossed the Arctic Circle for the first time, the Captain asked him for a noon sun-sight. He responded with his customary honesty, though without the bluff confidence that normally went with it: ‘Well, sir… we appear to be about eight miles north of Derby…’ His grandfather and father had both been up at Brasenose College, Oxford, and in the tradition of that time Fran’s name had been put down at birth, so he assumed that a stroll around Christ Church Meadow with the Principal in his last term at school had been his interview. On demob he phoned that august personage from a public box in Portsmouth dockyard to announce his imminent arrival. His father considered this to be extraordinary behaviour – as, upon reflection, did Fran himself. But it worked. He embarked upon his History degree two weeks later. After a brief flirtation with industry, he tried teaching; first at Summer Fields then St Edward’s – where a job became a vocation. He taught History at all levels, some Latin, sports to those that mattered – the 3rd XI and below – and went on to become secretary of the old boys’ society, appeal director and compiler of the School Roll. It was as the Housemaster of Sing’s that he was perhaps most revered – though the very mention of such a word would have embarrassed him hugely. Whilst pupils, colleagues

He is survived by two sons – the elder an employment judge, the younger a former commanding officer of the SAS – and a stepdaughter in California. ALDEN – On 4th March 2014, Robin Wenham Alden (D, 1946-1950) and Former MCR (1965-1970). The brother of JJW Alden (1946-1947), he studied for his MA at Worcester College, and his Diploma of Education at Oxford University Department of Education. He was Captain of boats at Worcester College, Henley RR, and Leander Club. He was Assistant Master at King’s School, Chester, from 1955- 1961, taught at St Paul’s School, London, from 1961-1965, and returned to St Edward’s from 1965-1970. He was Housemaster and Head of the English Department, as well as Secretary of Arts Society, participating in Choral singing in Chester Bach Choir, Rugby Philharmonic Choir and Woodstock Music Society. CUMMINGS – On 14th May 2014, Douglas Cummings, (MCR, 1997-2007). Mark Sellen (MCR) has kindly provided the following obituary. It is with great sadness that I record here the death of one of the greatest British ‘cellists, Douglas Cummings. Dougie came to St Edward’s in 1997 and through the warmth and generosity of his personality immediately established a rapport with pupils and colleagues alike. He was a larger than life figure, personally and musically. Among the most celebrated of British orchestral cellists from the late 1960s to the end of the last century, it seemed that his was the only name to be talked about repeatedly both in and outside the capital. Born in London in 1946, his father Keith, a distinguished viola player,

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O b i t u a r i e s

Fran Prichard

PRICHARD – On 31st December 2014, Francis Hesketh Prichard, Former Common Room, aged 90. Known always as Fran, he was a dedicated and popular schoolmaster, able to move with the times and to bring everyone with him. He dropped anchor at St Edward’s, Oxford in 1952, and stayed there, in a variety of guises, for more than four decades. His father, the only one of four brothers to survive the Great War, served with the Indian Civil Service in Assam, where Fran was born on 30th October 1925. An only child, he was dispatched to England when he was barely two, and farmed out to distant (and, he reckoned, dusty and reluctant) relatives until his parents returned ten years later. Stability of a kind arrived when he was moved to The Elms at Colwall and began holidaying with the Chesterton family at the vicarage in Tenbury Wells. Their son George, who was to become one of the finest amateur bowlers of the 1950s, provided much needed brotherly support and spirited opposition as The Ashes were endlessly contested on the family’s front lawn.