AOSA CENTENARY HISTORY 1841 - 1941

page forty-seven

Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Appendix

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The circumstances of his resignation did not overshadow, for those who knew him, the outstanding marks of his character. He knew boys; girls he did not understand so well, but he understood the minds of boys. He knew what appealed to them and how little things seemed big. His introduction of a uniform school cap and of permanent record boards for head scholars, champion athletes and swimmers, caught their attention and interested them in the school as a place with a past and a future. He took a great deal of care over the details of the annual excursion and enjoyed it with the children. His personal interest in their swimming encouraged the experts and stimulated the duffers. He was a beautiful bat, fluent and effective on the offside, though he was not comfortable with quick bowling on or outside the leg stump; he took pains in coaching likely players. He enjoyed lawn tennis and encouraged it on the girls’ side; mixed hockey he put forward as a suitable game for a mixed school. His football was past its best, but were no other keeper available he would play goal in the mud and he dearly liked to see the school team win. These things the boys appreciated.

From his assistant masters he secured good work. He let them take responsibility and was never afraid to delegate authority. He did not interfere with their work unless they were palpably on the wrong lines, and he encouraged good work by judicious praise. When he went to America as a member of the Moseley Commission to study American and Canadian schools he contentedly left the School in charge of his assistants who, indeed, at that time, were severally and collectively capable of anything.

The little ups and downs of life did not worry him; he kept an even temper in trying circumstances and could laugh at himself. One Sunday in Meeting he tried to shut a window on the men’s side. It resisted stiffly and he sat down on his silk hat. The Meeting smiled with him as he picked it up and straightened it. All smiled again and he smiled again when John Dixon walked from his seat to the outside, climbed on a box, pushed hard on the window and crashed from sight with a splintering of wood.

His wife and their three young children, Ruth, Philip, and Hugh, brought a new element into school life. No married headmaster had lived in the school for many years; no tiny children had made it their home. Their presence and Alice K. Arundel’s presence subtly changed and humanised the school atmosphere. Mrs. Arundel’s keen appreciation of books, her flaring impetuosity, her rapid decisions, her sympathy with the sick and ailing, marked her vivid and lively character. She might flash like lightning but the tempest soon passed and she bore no malice. Her delight in her children, her care for them, her devotion to Ruth during the child’s long and increasing weakness, revealed to girls and boys at school something of the way their own parents regarded them. The three children playing about in the grounds and mixing with the younger children made school a little more like home.

Frank Arundel thus filled a double position; the school enclosed his home. His urbane good humour and his liking for children served him in both places. He was essentially friendly and preferred to live at peace with all, men and women and children alike. But his bluff heartiness rather concealed the practical outlook of his mind. He understood human nature and its weaknesses, and he had an insight into the doubtful springs of action. His energy found outlet in action rather than in reflection, in works rather than in faith.

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