| Michael Fitch (1931-1999) | ||
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Michael Fitch, who was Head of English at Elstree from 1964 to 1993, died in November 1999 after a long and trying illness which he usually described, with characteristic understatement, as 'very inconvenient'. He was a great teacher, especially of clever boys, and his leadership over almost thirty years established the English Department at Haberdashers' as one of the best in the country. His much too early death is mourned by generations of his pupils and colleagues who were privileged to be counted among his friends. Born in 1931, as an only child whose father died tragically young, Michael was always by disposition somewhat solitary and private. After infancy and prep. school in the West Country, Michael and his mother moved to London. He attended St Paul's as a Foundation Scholar, during and after the war of 1939-45. He left with enduring memories not only of frightening war-time bombing but also of a quality of education that remained his yardstick throughout his life. As an Exhibitioner at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he read English and History. History was almost as great a passion for him as literature. David Griffiths, who was Head of History for much of Michael's time at Elstree, remembers that 'his fascination with both the French Revolution and the Troubles in Ireland was very apparent and he was disarmingly (alarmingly! - Keith Dawson) well informed. His range of knowledge fascinated Stuart Moore as much as it did me and the three of us would regularly be ensconced in the same seats in the Common Room pursuing some arcane point that interested Michael probably more than us. I am told that we looked like a trio of old crows 'sitting on the wa' but were never separated, which says much for the considerable respect - even awe - colleagues felt for Michael.' After Cambridge, Michael's National Service was as an Education Officer in the R.A.F., mostly in Cyprus - at a dangerous time. Those who knew him in later years might be surprised to learn that he enjoyed these two years. Later, for six years, he commanded the R.A.F. section of the C.C.F. at Dulwich College, resigning in 1963 because, as he explained in his application to Haberdashers', 'I was beginning increasingly to doubt the value of this form of activity, except for a limited minority of boys'. By the time he arrived at Elstree as Head of English at the age of thirty-three, Michael had nine years' experience at Dulwich. He had completely redesigned their school magazine, editing it for five years, and he had produced school plays, including an excellent 'Richard II' in 1963, a prelude to a string of memorable productions at Elstree. Above all, he was already an outstanding teacher with his own clear ideas about what was important in teaching his subject and its (central!) place in a proper education. This was just as well. In-comers to Haberdashers' have to prove themselves to boys and colleagues alike, especially if they are appointed as head of department, and in the early 1960s the Common Room had its full share of the sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued. Michael certainly had more than one passage of arms in his early days but soon gained respect (very clearly here was someone to be reckoned with) and liking. Michael had no formal training as a teacher and he was highly suspicious of educational theory. His ability as a teacher was instinctive and flowed from his intellectual and cultural interests, which were both broad and deep. In later years he often claimed to be out of touch. 'Of course', he would say, 'I know nothing these days', seeming to believe it. He would then launch into a penetrating analysis of the latest novel or film (he was an avid filmgoer), or tell of his recent visit to the new exhibition at the Royal Academy or the Tate. He had usually seen any play worth seeing well before colleagues and friends, and he was generous with invitations to the theatre, booking ahead for what he knew these particular friends would enjoy. Theatre-going to Michael was always an occasion, beginning or ending with good food and wine, and memorable talk. For such a private man, Michael had an unusual talent for making and keeping friends, over a long time and great distances. Every holiday, a postcard would come, not with a scribbled conventional greeting, but with a witty and detailed analysis of the relationships between his fellow guests or a wickedly accurate description of the holiday location. Living on his own, he took particular interest in his friends' families - wives, children, brothers, sister-in-law and beyond. He had a special talent with young children and awkward adolescents, who began by finding him forbidding, discovering only later the mischievous twinkle that so many of his pupils recall. Michael Fitch has left an enduring legacy. At the start of Robert Bolt's play 'A Man For All Seasons', Sir Thomas More tells the young Richard Rich that the Dean of St Paul's is prepared to offer him the post of schoolmaster at the new school. Rich, looking for preferment at court, is bitterly disappointed, but More presses him. 'Why not be a teacher? You'd be a fine teacher. Perhaps a great one. Rich is unconvinced. 'And if I was who would know it?' 'You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public that...' Thank you, Michael. |
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| On his retirement in 1993: | ||
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'PROPRIETY VERGING ON MISCHIEF': an appreciation of Michael Fitch Michael Fitch came to Haberdashers' in 1964 as Head of English. He retires in July. Colleagues and former pupils remember his years here... Twenty years past, those of us fortunate enough to have Michael as both form master and English teacher considered ourselves fortunate indeed, both for the guiding, generous way he treated us as adults (whether we cared to be or not) and for the elegant, effortless way he communicated a deep enthusiasm for his subject. Michael projected the image of mild authoritarian - a facade we knew guarded a smile of delighted wickedness and genuine care. That wickedness surfaced, as is often the case, in the theatre. "A HANDbag?" enquired Michael's Lady Bracknell, as the then youthful Keith Dawson (playing Jack Worthing) stood on in wonder and a cold assembly hall rang with laughter... Having worked with Michael for several years I have come to respect him as a first-rate schoolmaster and value him as a true friend. Respect is due in no small measure for the intellectual rigour he brings to every task or problem and for his immense literary, historical and critical knowledge. We have always enjoyed and occasionally been humbled by the sharpness of his wit: pupils who bound uninvited into the English office, or those less than enthralled by 'Great Expectations', his fellow teachers, even (dare 1 say it) headmasters, have all felt the edge of his tongue in some exquisitely phrased quip. Yet he is as capable of laughing at himself as at others, and is supportively sympathetic to anyone facing personal distress... TIME: Chilly Sunday in March, late morning. Place: School Hall, cold as only the Hall could be. Dramatis Personae centre stage: cast of Royal Hunt/Merchant/ Shrew/AYLI/Tempest/Murder/Alchemist etc. preparing for a run-through. Dramatis Persona peripheral: JSRW jumping on and off the stage, mostly to keep warm, but also trying to organise the crowd, keep the principals busy - and see the wood through the trees. .. His contribution to staff drama was unforgettable. Summoned through steely lorgnette and august corsage by "Prism, come here! Where is that baby?" I had no need to act; 1 simply quailed. Similarly, when directing, there was little to do; one just built in his improvisations. His appearance in 'The Real Inspector Hound' as a turbanned char, feather-dusting on the trot, made drudgery divine for those watching. Once, when rehearsing this 'ballet' - to his own hummed accompaniment - he was disconcerted by switching on an unresponsive wireless set. Instinctively he thumped it, jolting an inert Richard Baker into announcing that a murderer was on the loose. "Keep that", I shouted from the balcony. His resumed cleaning, executed with a blinkered zeal, and taking him to within inches of the murderer's prone victim, was one of the funniest parodies I have ever seen. The third time I saw him on stage was as Hallam in 'Penny for a Song'. It was difficult to believe that lines with such Fitchean resonances had not actually been written for him. "Tell me", he says, wishing to read some Wordsworth, "do you know of a secluded place in the vicinity of this house to which I can retire for a while... for the purpose of performing my usual literary chores of the day?"... It wasn’t like being taught, more like entering a charmed circle where things were worded differently. My introduction - "Why are you so languid?" the glasses lowered, eyes suddenly arranged into that merry theatrical squint - caused consternation in an untidy 15 year old. No schoolmaster had ever asked me such a thing. I wasn't sure what 'languid' meant, and had never dreamed that 1 might qualify for such a tricky, or interesting, description. There were plenty more of those over the next 7 terms, most, but not all, of them applied to people in books. The world had never seemed such an enthralling place before, and it hasn't done since... Michael is a cerebral experience. The force of what he has said and how he has spoken is memorable. His report writing has a directness and perception that must have been as revealing to the students concerned as entertaining and informative to other readers. My particular favourite was an UCCA reference beginning "This boy is almost as clever as he thinks he is..". Neither shall I forget the look that briefly tenanted Michael's passive public face, a mixture of disbelief, despair and resignation that greeted the luckless colleague's remark that Shakespeare's 'King Lear' presented no great intellectual challenge. But above all he has been for many, students and colleagues alike, a stimulating draught of the best that our culture can offer... ... By traditional methods he ushered his pupils into the world of literary candour. They were shown the respect of being capable of feeling and analysis, even the occasional apercu... The very clever and the very unruly were kept in control by the withering stare and the ironic tongue. These weapons were put on display at the beginning of the year but thereafter were only wheeled on for amusement. There was no phoney pretence that the teacher/pupil barrier did not exist and the mutual respect established resulted in intense work and superb results, but above all a lifelong appreciation of literature... ... Sixth Form English with Michael Fitch was rarely dull. My 6B year involved an exhilarating plunge through English literature from Everyman to Eliot - not just the set books but a range of authors, whom, but for Michael's guidance, I might never have sampled. He could be a sharp critic, but is also a true enthusiast for his subject. While literature can and does give one fresh insight into the human condition, it offers, above all, the chance to recharge one's imaginative batteries. Whatever one's profession, poetry and novels can still provide solace and inspiration. It is to Michael more than anyone else to whom 1 owe the habit of reading good literature for pleasure - a gift for which I shall owe him lifelong thanks... ... In our imagination, Michael belonged to an age altogether more rich and strange than the blandly positive one we inhabited. His last visit to church seems to have been to St Stephen's, Chelsea, where T.S. Eliot was a sidesman, so as to place a coin in the collecting bowl that Eliot handed him. We associated him with first productions by Beckett at the Royal Court, with 'Horizon', with the world of Desmond MacCarthy and Cyril Connolly. What did he use to sip from his flask in between those seemingly interminable close (and closed) readings from Shakespeare? Only a refined cocktail or some pre-war eau de vie would have matched our imaginings. We never found out... ...One of my favourite memories of Michael concerns the time he came to visit us in Scarborough and we nearly drowned him in the North Sea, nearly got him shot on the moors above Haworth and were not able to arrange for him to sunbathe on the leads at Castle Howard. As for Haworth, we told him it was almost as far from Scarborough as it was possible to go and still be in the same county, but he petulantly refused to look at the map, saying "It's all in the same county; it can't possibly take three hours". So we went. The North Sea nearly got him at Boggle Hole, walking from Robin Hood's Bay to Ravenscar (look at the map!), whilst the custodian at Castle Howard, overwhelmed by visitors following the success of 'Brideshead Revisited', let us go almost anywhere but where Michael hoped to go - up on the leads where Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons had sunbathed... Our best and most revealing times were, perhaps, on the 'Twelfth Night' German tour (1969); myself as stage manager sharing some of the burdens of a two week round of schools and theatres with (among so many others) Michael and Keith Dawson, the co-producers. I remember Michael bearing with unruffled poise the strains of improvised staging, minibus packing, autobahn travel and bilingual chat far into the wine-tasting nights. At one hotel, somewhere on our itinerary, I recall someone coming out with the quotation: "1 never saw anyone take so long to dress, with such little result". Memory is a treacherous beast, but 1 think the speaker must have been Michael, with reference to himself. 1 always regret that I missed his actual stage portrayal of Lady Bracknell... .. To the theatre with Michael on many occasions, but most memorably to see Peter O'Toole as Macbeth. O'Toole was mesmerisingly bad - somewhere out beyond laughter - but the rest of the cast was just plain awful. We'd been sniggering intermittently from the start but then there came the line "And so his knell is knolled" delivered with such stiff, weighty pomposity that we both let out a combined, uncontrollable guffaw. Sitting in front of us were a father, mother and two young sons, all in their best theatre-going clothes. No, you never laugh in 'Macbeth' except at the porter (who, on this occasion, had his work cut out), so four disapproving heads swivelled round in unison and glared at us. Michael, trying to straighten his face, was a picture, and that picture recalls for me now what I have always so much enjoyed in his company: a sense of propriety verging on mischief, his artfully constrained relish for the absurd, the occasional absolute surrender as on that evening at the Old Vic... This year’s production of 'Twelfth Night' brought back vivid memories of our joint production at Elstree in the late 1960's. Sharing play production, like marriage, is a relationship 'not to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, nor wantonly...' as Michael was wise enough to know, and we rather carefully parcelled out the scenes. Leaving me to deal with "Sir Toby and the lighter people" he set about the real challenge of making the courtly scenes and the verse live, with wonderful effect. Only those who've done it know what skills and relentless determination are needed to help young actors really perform and Michael did this marvellously; I'm sure they will have remembered the experience to this day. Those who saw it will also remember his brilliant Lady Bracknell in an all-male staff production of 'The Importance of Being Earnest' in 1970. Played dead-straight, it was scintillatingly intelligent and fresh - no tired echoes of Edith Evans for Michael. The famous 'handbag' line was a revelation: long pause, fixed stare, then a slowly raised eyebrow and in a 'how interesting, take me with you' inviting tone... "A handbag??" Deadly accurate and very funny... Contributors in order of appearance: |