On 21 January this year, my old housemaster, Guy Shuttleworth, died, aged 94. He lived only a few miles from me, down the road in Eastbourne. I am kicking myself now as it would have been the work of moments to have found out where he was and to go and see him. I heard of Guy’s passing on the Whatsapp group that I share with five of my best friends from those school days. The news immediately made me terrifically sad. Guy was, for all of us at school, a second father. He was our Mr. Chips.
Chips was a fictional school master in the novella Goodbye, Mr. Chips, who devoted his life to the boys in his charge. He worked at the school as a housemaster and classics teacher and generations of old boys at the school revered him – he was remembered with affection by all of his charges. Chips personified what a housemaster of the old school should be: kind, fair, straight talking, slow to anger, quick to forgive and always with your best interests at heart. And our old housemaster, Guy, was all of these.
Whenever I think of Guy, it is either leading evening Prayers and giving out house colours in the table tennis room in our house, Manor, or on the touchline dressed in his Cambridge blue scarf or blazer. And of his smile, which he wore so often. I have always been incredibly grateful to him. He showed us an example of decency, good humour and quiet authority. A thunderous look from him spoke volumes and we never wanted to incur his displeasure, mainly because you knew that if you did, you had disappointed him and so let yourself down in some way.
I was reminded of this when my friend, Neil, with whom I shared a dormitory in the IVth form (14/15), asked if I remembered a wall punching competition between us one night after lights out. I did. We took it in turns to hit the wall opposite our beds as hard as we could with our fists. The idea being, either one of us would punch through the wall or break our knuckles trying. I stepped up. I threw my punch and, my guardian angel taking charge, hit straight through a weak point where the wall had just been plastered over. A false wall. Guy, doing his duty rounds, heard the noise, came in, turned on the light, saw us standing there looking guilty, looked at the hole in the wall and the shards of plaster strewn on the floor and simply asked “Why?”. He put out the light and left. We had no answer and went to bed, shamed.
Guy also knew when to look the other way. One evening, when everyone had gone over to tea in main school, I snuck into a bathroom with my then girlfriend. Carried away with passion, we had forgotten that this bathroom was directly above Guy’s study. He must have been working downstairs and heard us. In a heart stopping moment, we could hear him ascending his private staircase, come through the fire door and along the corridor to the bathroom door. We had locked the door but lay, entwined and terrified. We held our breath. Guy just stood outside the door for a moment, his face against the door. We could hear him breathing. Then went away. He didn’t even try the door handle. That is all he had to do. As his footsteps retreated back to his study, we let out our breath, reassembled ourselves quickly and quietly snuck out of the bathroom. We never did that again. Guy could have rumbled us and made a big deal of it. We would probably have been expelled and he knew that. So he just made his presence felt. Message received and understood.
Guy was old school, in all the right ways. Gentlemanly, interested in everyone, dedicated and both academic and sporty – the public school ideal. I remember being very impressed that he had a Cambridge Blue. And that he had gone to King’s College. And that he played cricket for Lancashire. And football for England. And – most confusing of all – was magic at mathematics. A word of encouragement from him meant the world and you wanted to do your best for him. Because he always did his best for you, and you knew that he did. When Guy retired from being a housemaster in 1981, his replacement had very big shoes to fill. Which he didn’t. He couldn’t have.
In Manor, we were incredibly fortunate for the four years we had when Guy was in charge. The environment he and Tan, his wife, created was safe. You could be yourself and not be scared. Not true in other boarding houses at the time where bullying was a real issue. Manor was fun, lively and happy. And that was entirely down to the environment the two of them created. I will always be grateful to Guy and the nurture he provided. We called him “Boooky” in homage to his Lancastrian vowels – we were a Yorkshire school, after all. He was, and always will be, our very own Mr. Chips.