From the Headmaster
Welcome back to Term 4 and please hold on tight because it promises to be a frenetic, jam-packed and magical adventure! There is so much going on over the next few weeks in all areas of the school and make sure you check into FIDO regularly to make sure you don’t miss out on the action. Of course it is also a bittersweet time as we prepare to farewell the Class of 2024 who have led our school so superbly well this year. They are as cohesive and positive group as I have encountered in my 23 years as Headmaster and we shall miss them a great deal. Yet they are also fiercely independent – confident in their ability to flourish whatever the world might throw at them. They seem to understand that they are ‘masters of their fate’ and ‘captains of their souls.’
Most of us became familiar with the poem Invictus after watching the 2009 film of the same name which was based on John Carlin’s book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation. It is about the events in South Africa before and during the 1995 Rugby World Cup and those of us who love rugby will never forget Joel Stransky kicking the drop goal which brought the Springboks victory in the second half of extra time. Of course the film is really about Mandela’s extraordinary journey to greatness and we discover through the course of the film that for those long years in prison, Mandela kept a copy of the poem ‘Invictus’ (Latin for ‘unconquered’) by his bedside. It was written by William Ernest Henley, soon after losing his left leg in his late teens, when he was a victim of tuberculosis. It proved an inspiration and a solace to Mandela during his long years on Robben Island.
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
It is a poem worth keeping on one’s bedside table for those times (and we all have them) when the weight of the world is sitting heavily on our shoulders. As with so much of literature there are some lovely resonances in Henley’s life. His friend Robert Louis Stevenson, author of ‘Treasure Island’ wrote to Henley after its publication: "I will now make a confession. It was the sight of your maimed strength and masterfulness that begot Long John Silver...the idea of the maimed man, ruling and dreaded by the sound, was entirely taken from you". So it turns out the one-legged Henley is responsible for one of the great characters from children’s literature.
Another of Henley’s friends was JM Barrie, responsible for Peter Pan. When Barrie came to visit, Henley’s daughter Margaret, unable to manage his name, would call him ‘fwendy-wendy’ and was thus immortalised as the character Wendy in this children’s classic.
As in literature, so in life. There exist resonances everywhere if we take the time to open our senses to the rhythms of life, and such resonances might reasonably reassure us that there is indeed,
‘A divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.’
I am so excited about what the next eight weeks will bring and am delighted by the smooth start we have had this week. I will certainly be looking out for those random connections that somehow seem to make sense of life and I heartily encourage you to do the same. As we head towards the long summer break, let’s give this term everything we’ve got and let’s try to enjoy every moment.
Patrick Wallas
Headmaster
