PETERHOUSE
NOSTALGIA
PETERHOUSE
NOSTALGIA
An address given in Keble College, Oxford, by Bishop Mark Wood, formerly Rector of Marondera
Dear
friends, fellow workers and admirers of Robert Grinham (pictured
right) and Maurice Carver, you have honoured me with an impossible
task--in one short address to do anything approaching justice to the memory
of these two great men, who each in his own way touched the lives of so
many for good. Faced with this impossible task, I can only speak of a little
that came within my own personal experience. Robert and Maurice first came
into my life in 1955. They were in Johannesburg for a Headmaster's Conference
of some sort - Robert was Headmaster of Springvale and Maurice had moved
up to replace him as Headmaster of Ruzawi. Both were members of the Marondera
PCC and had been deputed to have a look at, and report on, some dubious-sounding
Welshman that Bishop Paget was trying to foist on them as the new Rector
of Marondera. Winifred, my wife, and I were at that time urban missionaries
living in a small house in one of the less fashionable suburbs of Johannesburg.
We then had four small children and entertained these two distinguished
visitors to family tea in our kitchen - a rowdy affair - Maurice made a
hit with our two daughters - the boys were too small to take much notice,
Robert tried to put us at our ease.
They must have reported back favourably, or favourably enough, since a few months later we saw them again on the platform of Marondera Station meeting us after our long train journey from Johannesburg. Maurice carted us off to Ruzawi to stay a few days until our furniture arrived and we were to inhabit the Rectory. We struck up an immediate friendship with Maurice and he became godfather to our next son when he was born the following year. My relationship developed more slowly with Robert but went even deeper in mutual trust and love since we were fellow priests and he stayed on in Marondera and gladly, humbly, and loyally acted as my honorary curate.
We came late, of course, into the lives of Robert and Maurice - both had full life times of work and experience behind them. Both grew up in Edwardian England with its consciousness of Empire placed upon good Englishmen in the way of responsibility for service and integrity. Both served in the First World War. After university Maurice turned to teaching and Robert trained for the priesthood, serving a curacy in Southampton. Then both Robert and Maurice teamed up and launched themselves into teaching together as a God-given vocation which led them to the long years at Ruzawi - interrupted in Maurice's case by his going off to war a second time in Hitler's war where he became involved in dangerous special operations in Greece and then back again to Ruzawi to continue with Robert the humdrum but exacting job of educating young white Rhodesians in traditions of Christian civilisation, citizenship and service. Ruzawi's motto "LEARNING KNIGHTS" was the ideal always aimed at. Then Robert left Ruzawi in Maurice's hands while he went off to found similar school at Springvale - the need was obvious since Ruzawi continually had a long waiting list and at the same time he was involved with Fred Snell in the creation of Peterhouse - a senior school in the same tradition of Christian foundation. So both men had had a full and fruitful life time of work and service behind them when I first met them, yet more, much more, was to come.
Those were heady days in 1955 in Rhodesia. The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland had just been launched. My first Sunday in the Colony saw us going up from Marandellas to Salisbury for the inauguration of a new province of Central Africa which was (with the addition of Botswana) coterminous with the Federation. Well, the Province of Central Africa, comprising the Dioceses in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, and Botswana, has endured but the Federation has long vanished. At the time, we all had high hopes that there would come into reality a multiracial state where black and white could live together in harmony, happiness and mutual benefit. Partnership was the key-word - but alas the concept of partnership was that expressed in the magnificent statute of Energy, originally set up in Northern Rhodesia, then sent to Southern Rhodesia when the former became Zambia and last seen by me in Salisbury - I don't know where it is now - if it has survived - but it depicted a horse and his rider and was supposed to symbolise the partnership between black and white in the Federation. The Winds of Change, however, had already at that time begun to blow and the Federation was really doomed before it began but little did most of us realise it then.
But perhaps Robert and Maurice did realise it with the shrewd insight with which both were endowed for soon both were ready to retire from their work with European boys and turn their attention to the education of Africans. Maurice went to Ranche House College which was a bold experiment to try to help men and women (mostly young, mostly African) to catch up on education that they had missed out on through poverty or other misfortune - a sort of forerunner of our present Colleges of further education. From there Maurice went to Malawi to help the Mission School in Malosa in its development into a modem secondary school of great reputation. Robert remained in Marandellas and set to work on Bernard Mizeki College, transforming a humble mission school into a prestigious African senior boarding school, parallel as it were with Peterhouse and endeavouring to give the same breadth and depth of education in the tradition of the English public schools. At the same time he was involved in a similar venture at Bonda, helping with his expertise to guide the O.H.P. Sisters to build what became a premier school for girls on the same lines.
My personal bonds with both men went deep. The impression they made on me was similar to that recorded by Noel Brettell in his autobiography-extracts from which are printed on the back of today's service sheet. I cannot better some of his words:
"...Maurice Carver...was a most subtle compound of contradictions, absentminded and alert, gravely earnest and gravely facetious. He was one of the most unaffectedly humble of men and one of the most generous. Critical of his own limitations, he knew from the inside how to give advice with a sort of earnest gaiety I came very much to love …
Robert Grinham was a formidable figure: his one fierce glass eye (the result of a war wound) and his battleship jaw gave him an almost falcon-like air of austerity. I came to know the extraordinary sweetness of his nature, the capacious charity of understanding he had for everybody except humbugs, the buoyancy with which he accepted the knife-edge between success and failure and which was to carry him so much later into other ventures at an age when most men are thinking of hanging up their tools for ever, above all the sort of secret joy that was in the heart of him.. ."
Maurice was godfather to my youngest son. Robert was my honorary curate and fellow priest at Marandellas. His priesthood was a fundamental dimension of his life - he was a priest and pastor through and through - loved and trusted as such by the whole local community. The Church at that time, even in Rhodesia, had begun to see change and new ways. I pushed them rather in Marandellas and Robert, always ready to see the best in everything, gave me his unfailing support and friendship. His is the only name that appears on the foundation stone of the Parish Church and Centre that we built in 1960. In the early seventies, when Robert was in his late seventies, and the new services, a kin to our ASB, had reached Rhodesia, Robert took to them with his usual enthusiasm. I remember his telling me how the additional canticles of Mattins and Evensong had renewed the delight which the recitation of the Daily Office gave him.
I must end but how we think of Robert and Maurice without mentioning the women who stood beside and behind them. Maurice was indeed fortunate to enjoy the love of three wives. Nancy and Gwen I never met but often heard of them from those who had loved them. He was fortunate indeed in the love and care for him given by Mary through the good years in Malawi and through the more difficult years of his illness in Colwall. Robert had Katie. She terrified me at first until I got to know her and then to love her. After her sudden death, I was proud to be invited back to Marandellas to give the address at her memorial service. How fortunate Robert was too in the other women in his life--his dear daughters, Jane caring for him during his last long years at Tichborne and at the same time gladdening his heart by continuing the tradition of teaching at Ruzawi. There was yet another good woman in the lives of Robert and Maurice ... Dupie ...Miss du Plessis, who never revealed her age and served Ruzawi as San Sister for even longer than either of them, terrified their pupils and adored them both. Such richness of love and goodness and service! We were privileged to have had a small share in it. We thank God for it all and pray that He will bless these his servants and give them their reward.
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