History- 100 Years Ago; A Headmaster departs

Mr Arthur Pollard, who succeeded Dr Edwin Abbott as
Headmaster in 1890, resigned in 1905 at the age of 51.The reason
for his early departure seems to have been conflict with the
Schools Committee, centring on two main issues: his wish to
arrange for the retirement of some elderly masters, and what he
saw as the undue power of the School Secretary, A J Austin.The
Secretary’s control over access to the Schools Committee gave
him great influence over the staff. His salary was £600 at a time
when the most senior masters were paid £450, and he required
boys to stand when he entered a room, a salutation previously
given to no one but the Headmaster. Rumours of internal
disagreements, not helped by an interview Pollard gave to the
Saturday Review in 1903, affected public confidence, and the
number of pupils declined from 700 in 1894–7 to 617 in 1904.A
Special Committee reported on these issues in March 1905 in
ways that supported Pollard, stating that ‘We are glad that a
satisfactory arrangement with Mr Pollard has been arrived at.’ But
by then he had resigned, so presumably the ‘satisfactory
arrangement’ took the form of an offer he could not refuse. It
seems that this able and much respected man never obtained
another post; he died in 1934.
The following article in the September 1905 Gazette indicates
the warm affection with which the boys and Old Boys regarded
Arthur Pollard. The author is almost certainly Stanley Hodgson
(1887–93), a physician, who on leaving school canvassed support
and called a meeting in the School Library (l December 1893)
with the immediate aim of forming an Old Citizens’ football club;
this led to the establishment on 27 August 1894 of the Old
Citizens’ Athletic Union, with Mr Pollard elected as President.
‘I don’t think I shall ever forget that morning when Lofthouse, the
School Captain, made his little speech and presented the
“Doctor” with the School’s parting gift.There was just a suspicion
of moisture in Dr Abbott’s eyes when he thanked us. I remember
he went on to speak of his successor, who was as yet just a name
to us, and he asked for our wholehearted help and obedience to
be transferred from him to the new Headmaster.As a pledge he
said that he would call on an Old Boy, an old School Captain, to
give three cheers for Mr Pollard. I remember how we turned to
look for the Old Boy, and thought we had found him standing in
the shadows at the back of the Great Hall. Dr Abbott saw the
movement of his audience, and broke in with the announcement
that he was the Old Boy and the old Captain, and then he called
for three hearty cheers.That was Mr Pollard’s first introduction
to our old School.
‘Next term found us striving to accustom ourselves to the
loss of our vocabulary: it was a hard task at first, but soon “The
Head” took the place of the once familiar “Doctor”. Things
seemed to go on just as before, and no one was conscious of any
change in the daily life, but all the same a steady process of
development was at work, and gradually the Modern and Science
sides arose. I remember when I was in the Fifth it became
necessary that I should attempt the London Matriculation, and to
my surprise I found that there was a complete machinery at hand
for my advancement. My chum Scott (now Captain Scott,
R.A.M.C.) hankered after the Prel. Sci. of London University, and
found himself swung into an environment that left him
triumphant. Men like Grunbaum and Thiele, ripe for judicious
help, found their last year at School of immense value in its sound
grounding in science.And downstairs, in the familiar room by the Library, sat the mainspring of the new life – quietly, steadily
moulding and shaping. But there was never a suggestion that the
old privileges, the old customs,were to be curtailed or altered ...
‘Not infrequently the profession of a schoolmaster hides the
man beneath the cloak of a pedagogue, but it was never thus with
Mr Pollard. He was always a man to whom one could speak
openly. He had the knack or the gift of masking the relative
position in which one stood with him, and encouraged a free and
open mind as between man and man.He would ask for an opinion
on little matters of detail where perhaps the boy had better
means of knowledge than the master, and if the opinion betrayed
the prentice hand, he never allowed his informant to feel small.
The opinion was accepted in the same spirit as that in which it
was offered.
‘And afterwards, when one became an Old Boy, there was the
same smile and the same cordial handshake, and though
doubtless his manner was tempered by one’s added years, yet it
was the same “Head” whom we had loved and respected at
School.
‘Every reader of this Gazette knows what Mr Pollard has done
for the Old Citizens’ Athletic Union. It lay with the Headmaster
of the City of London School to make or mar the enterprise.We
do not need to ask which way he turned his hand.
‘And now he has left the old school for a well-earned leisure.
The next time I come to London and walk down to look at the
School, it will be with the feeling that something is missing, and
that of a truth I must be getting old.’
S.H.