A Portrait of McClure

‘Those of us who had the chance of sitting near (McClure) in Hall were kept constantly amused and improved by his fund of stories and information. One of his reforms was to abolish the practice of reading at meals, but he taught us how to converse over our food. It was in these meal-time conversations that we first began to learn to marvel at his prodigious feats of memory, for we found he could give full accounts of all the important cricket matches that had ever been played, with the exact scores made by each man, his manner of getting out and every other thrilling detail.’

Appendix I

1907 C Entenary A Ppeal

In 1907 Mill Hill launched a Centenary Appeal for £50,000 - equivalent to £6.4 million in 2022 money values - as part of a plan to create ‘The Big School’ by doubling number of pupils from 150 to 300.

In the appeal McClure makes the case for his vision for Mill and for private and state education

In 1907 Mill Hill launched a Centenary Appeal, much as was created for the bi-centenary in 2007.

In 1907, the School raised £50,000 - equivalent to £6.4 million in 2022 money values, as part of a plan to create “The Big School” by doubling number of pupils from 150 to 300.

£25,000 was required to upgrade the estate and sports facilities, of which £10,000 was donated by Herbert Marnham to provide new classrooms - The Marnham Block.

£25,000 was required to fund ten Exhibitions and also Entrance Scholarships averaging about £450 per annum.

John McClure makes the following case for the fund-raising appeal with the following statement of his vision for Mill Hill and for Private and State education in general.

‘Our hopes for the future must needs be founded on the experience of the past.

(1.) The fact that for the last fifteen years there has been a steady and continuous growth in the numbers attending the School shews that the School supplies a distinct want; and that there is a large and increasing circle of parents who are in sympathy with the character of the Foundation, the aims it embodies, and the ideals for which it exists.

(2.) I believe that the same period has witnessed also a steady growth in the efficiency of the School and in the development of that esprit de corps, that enthusiasm which every good school invariably and inevitably inspires. It has been made clear, at any rate that masters and boys trained under widely different conditions and belonging to different churches, can and do live in mutual helpfulness and respect united by the strongest of ties -a common loyalty and a common faith.

(3.) Nor does this spirit cease to operate nor do the ties become less strong when boys leave school for the wider interests and duties of professional, business, or University life. Each of the two older Universities is training a small band of Old Millhillians who are certainly not amongst the least distinguished, the least honored, or the least worthy of their sons. It has been said by one well-known Oxonian (not himself an Old Millhillian) that Mill Hill boys at Oxford live up to their School motto, “Et virtutem et musas” (Character and scholarship) and independent testimony from Cambridge is equally emphatic.

These facts and others of which they are typical are the things we see “which justify the hope of and belief in the greater things yet to be” that are to grow from them. As one considers the future, the number and magnitude of its requirements and the many ways in which improvement and progress ought to be and must be made, would make one well nigh despair were it not for the consciousness of the solid achievements of the past under conditions much less favorable than those now prevailing. It is well, however, to consider carefully the signs of the times. In a few years, at most, the Secondary Schools of the Kingdom will be of two types, (1) those supported wholly or in part from the public funds; (2) those which rely entirely upon their own endowments and fees. The State will doubtless exercise some control over all schools, but over the first kind its power (whether exercised directly through the Board of Education or indirectly through local Authorities) will be practically absolute.

Into this category will fall the great majority of the Secondary Schools. The other class will consist chiefly, if not entirely, of the great Public Schools, and over these the control of the Local Authority will be virtually nonexistent, while the power of the State will be limited to the settlement of Schemes. The authorities of such schools may safely be trusted to manage their own finances, arrange their curricula, and generally conduct the education of their pupils in a far more satisfactory fashion than if working under State regulation and supervision. There cannot be the least doubt as to which class Mill Hill must belong; yet the position she may rightfully claim can only be permanently secured by the possession of such support, financial as well as moral, as shall render her efficiency indisputable and free her from the need of assistance from public funds. To accept such aid would be not only to place the School under State control but to destroy her very raison d’etre. For Mill Hill is, in truth, a great religious foundation; great, not in the magnitude of endowment nor in the numbers gathered within her walls, but great in the work she is called upon to do, and in the principles of which she is the living embodiment. To support such an institution is not merely an act of loyalty to a beloved alma mater but an act of loyalty to cherished convictions - an act of faith in a great principle. To invite or to accept aid from the State, which is (or ought to be) neutral in matters of religion, would be tantamount to a confession of failure, a recantation, or a denial of the faith once professed. That this should ever take place is inconceivable to anyone who knows the nature of past and present Millhillians, whose loyalty and love are, after all. the great foundation upon which rests the hopes of the future. The School begins its second century of existence under happy auspices. Never has the equipment been so good; never have the numbers been so great; never has the school spirit been so strong; never has the faith in the future been so firm ; never has the ideal which Mill Hill imperfectly realises been so clear in the minds and hearts of her sons. We claim that in the past the School has stood for unity and comprehensiveness, and bas shewn the only way by which that unity can be (or ought to be) attained. In the future it must be our aim that Mill Hill continue not as an Undenominational (for she exists not for negations, but for the assertion of a positive truth) but rather as an Inter-denominational School, second to none in equipment, character, and teaching.

Such a school cannot be great in numbers, but it ought to be great in the consciousness that it is the pioneer in the path in which others must sooner or later inevitably follow. Boys thus educated under the influence of such ideals, learning sympathy from differences, unity of spirit through diversities of training, must needs grow into large-hearted, generous, tolerant, yet earnest Christian manhood and form no unworthy part of that true aristocracy of character which constitutes the real wealth of every nation.’

McClure’s words were followed by the following concluding paragraph, probably written by Dickie Buckland, Treasurer of the School:

‘To some who do not know the School and its Head Master, these words may almost seem to relate to visionary things. The answer to such a criticism is that a century ago the idea of Mill Hill was a dream in the minds of the few men who founded it. That idea has for generations been restricted in its growth by the lack of means to nourish it, and by the rigidity of the forms in which it has hitherto been expressed. It is for this generation to find for it a freshened energy and to give to it a wider significance.’

‘Lecturing to our class in the Large, he walked up and down between the dais and the front row of desks, with his hands behind his back and his gown cockled up in them. He was a good lecturer, easy to listen to and always surprising us with some turn of phrase which made things stick...’

A school boy’s observation on the Headmaster

Appendix II

M c Clure contributed to the ‘Cambridge Essays in Education’, first published in 1917, edited by Arthur Christopher Benson and republished in 2015 by Creative Media Partners, Scholar’s Choice Edition. This work was selected by scholars ‘as being culturally important, and part of the knowledge base of civilisation as we know it’. We reproduce in full M c CLURE’s chapter ‘Preparation for Practical Life’