Old Walhamptonians Get Togethers in London
Following the success of a number of get togethers in London, it has now become an annual event to meet up in the City one evening in November for a few drinks and a meal. It's all very informal and a chance to not only catch up with old friends, but an opportunity to network with other, now successful, business people who were fortunate enough to have a great start in life. The date for the 2010 get together with be published later in the year.
Alex Macpherson, Richard Bruges, Alexander Heath - November 2009
Neil Fleming, Ralph Montagu, Simon Ashby - November 2009
Mystery Man, Claire Lindsay, David Dibben, Ralph Montagu, Laura Wade, Lindsay Dibden - November 2007
Holiday Spot
Many OWs are keen to welcome fellow OWs to their countries to meet up. A few are mentioned in the profiles, but I'll also add notes here for anyone mentioning it.
Italy - Teddy Bailey left Walhampton in 1964 but is still keen to meet up with OWs from any era and help them with accomodation if they would like assistance. His house is not far from Lake Como. They have a small stone cottage with plenty of land, in the mountains near Parma where they spend most of their summer weekends.
Carol Lawford
As some of you may know, Carol sadly passed away in May 2007. She was a great asset to the school and someone who cared deeply about all the children.
She had been very excited about the recent reunion and had been very helpful with information relating to finding ex pupils and their families.
She was sadly missed on the day.
A memorial service was held for her at Hordle Walhampton on 8 July 2007.
Gerald Carey
Sadly, Gerald also passed away in May 2007, and he was also greatly missed at the reunion. Ralph Montagu wrote the following epitaph which appeared recently in the Lymington Times:
GERALD CAREY, schoolmaster at Edinburgh House, Hordle House, Walhampton and most recently at Hordle Walhampton, died last May at the age of 89. To his friends and family, he will always be remembered as a gentleman, a great raconteur and a supremely kind man.
Gerald John Probyn Carey was born in Fuzhou, China on 31st October 1917. His father was one of the British Commissioners of Customs there and was posted to a variety of different ports across China. Gerald’s connection with Hampshire began when he and his brother Francis were sent back to England, to attend school at Furze Close (now Durlston Court). In 1931, his father, who had remained behind in China, became ill. His mother took the Trans-Siberian railway to rejoin her husband, arriving there shortly before he died. After this she stayed in China to work, and Gerald was not to see her again until he was an adult.
Gerald and his brother were raised largely by his godfather, Archie Rose, an executive in the British American Tobacco Company, and by his grandparents, who lived in Breamore, where his grandfather was rector from 1904 to 1930.
He attended Marlborough College and after completing his studies in 1934 went to join his mother and brother in Shanghai, where he secured a job with Jardine Matheson’s import department. He also became a member of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps (a local Territorial Army) who were called up to help defend the city against Japanese attack in August 1937. In January 1938, he was transferred to Hong Kong as the war was forcing much of the shipping which would have come to Shanghai to be diverted. He worked in Hong Kong until late 1941, when he went to Australia to visit his sister. By taking leave at this time, he managed by good fortune to avoid the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong. In Australia, he was offered a job with the Ministry of Transport as their representative in Freetown, West Africa. His passage there, by a series of flying boat journeys, almost led him to be trapped in Singapore during the Japanese onslaught, but when he did finally get to Freetown, he was frustrated to find himself stuck in a ‘desk job’. He therefore negotiated his way to India on an old freighter where he joined the 8th Punjab regiment, who at the time were looking for Chinese speakers.
Officially, Gerald was charged with gathering information on raw materials, but this was just a cover – he had really been recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a secret organisation created by Winston Churchill to conduct warfare by other means than by direct military engagement. In China, SOE had recruited several former Jardine Matheson employees to run a black market currency scheme named Operation Waldorf; this involved the British obtaining local currency from wealthy Chinese in return for a sterling account in a London bank. Having amassed large reserves of local funds, SOE was then able to exercise considerable financial muscle in the region.
An example of this influence was when Gerald was told to set up holding camps for 3,000 Vichy French soldiers who had been captured while retreating across the border into China. The Americans claimed that their food would have to be brought in from outside, but Gerald had the benefit of local knowledge. Drawing on SOE funds, he was able to buy what they needed from local farmers who, when previously offered an ‘IOU’, claimed they had nothing to spare.
Rising to the rank of Major, Gerald was mentioned in dispatches for gallantry. He also qualified several times for the Queen's Hundred at Bisley (a shooting competition) and had the unique distinction of representing British Asia (India) in the Kolapore Match in 1947.
At the end of the war, Gerald set off for England, travelling via Los Angeles, and it was here that he met his future wife, Maria Josephine Lewis (nee Harris). They married in Mill Valley, California, and Gerald became stepfather to Maria's son Bayan. Before long, though, he headed back to the Far East, where he again found employment with Jardine Matheson. With Maria and Bayan, he travelled to Shanghai and then on to Yokohama, Japan, where his daughter Nancy was born.
It was here that Gerald became involved with an organisation which was committed to repatriating some of the Japanese ceremonial swords that had been taken by the Americans as trophies at the end of the war. Despite the fact that his own mother and many of his friends had been interned in Japanese POW camps, Gerald recognised the spiritual significance of these swords and took part in a ceremony at which they were formally returned to the Samurai families.
Gerald and his family then moved to Calcutta where his son Peter was born. It was here that Gerald opened his home to John Clutton, a 19-year old radio operator on one of his ships. Knowing that John had nowhere go when his ship was in port, he invited him to join the Carey family whenever he had local leave. This hospitality – so characteristic of Gerald throughout his life - was extended to many others over the years.
Gerald’s next posting was to Trinidad, where he ran the West Indies Steam Navigation Company. This was followed by Hong Kong, where, as Jardine’s Shipping Manager, he once found himself asked to give a 20-minute address at the company’s annual dinner. Unusually, he chose to do this in both English and Chinese. Knowing how much this would mean to the mixed audience, he practiced for weeks to get it right, and it was greatly appreciated.
Gerald had a huge appreciation of local cultures and customs, and a sensitivity to the needs of his workforce. One example of this was arranging for new ships to be ‘cleansed’ of bad luck prior to entering their home harbour. He would meet them half a mile out to sea and witness the lighting of firecrackers with the crew, knowing this would bond them to their ship. Moreover, he made sure that whenever possible, his ships were scheduled to be back in their home ports for local holidays so that the crews were able to be with their families.
When hurricanes were forecast, it was his responsibility to ensure that the company’s ships were anchored in shelter harbours. On one such occasion, he returned home late to find his daughter Nancy distraught. Everything outside had been battened down except the aviary containing her beloved budgerigars. Gerald duly stripped down to his underwear, tied a rope around his waist and, while the gardener and cook held on to one end in the house, he walked out into the driving rain and wind to bring the birds back to safety.
His love for his children was shown in other ways too. He knew how much they enjoyed their bedtime stories and on nights when he was working late, he would quietly wake his children and read to them by torchlight. Nancy recalls how the storytelling would be supplemented by ‘midnight picnics’ consisting of hard-boiled eggs and bananas!
Gerald was a member of the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club and usually spent his Sundays sailing or rowing in a team of eight. It was during his time in Hong Kong that he helped to found the Boys’ Maritime Academy on Stanley Peninsula for underprivileged Chinese boys orphaned by their seafaring fathers. This was one of many examples of his desire to help children beyond those in his own family which would recur throughout his life.
In 1962, Gerald retired from shipping and returned to England, where he settled in Pilley. Faced with a decision about what to do next, he realised that he liked the idea of teaching and subsequently made enquiries at nearby Walhampton School. The initial response was ‘no vacancies’ but he must have made a favourable impression, since when one of the teachers unexpectedly gave notice a few hours later, the then headmaster John Bradfield turned up at his cottage to ask if he could start that afternoon!
Family life in England didn’t quite work out as Gerald had planned. Within a year of living at Pilley, Maria decided to return to the United States with their daughter Nancy, and she and Gerald separated. He was left to bring up Peter on his own. His other son, Francis, sadly, died young. However, if parts of Gerald’s own immediate family were often far away, he more than made up for it by providing a home from home for the children of his friends. In particular, he became a second father to the sons and grandsons of many of his Chinese friends who had sent their children to school in England, and who were unable to have them home for the holidays.
After jumping in to teaching at the deep end at Walhampton, Gerald went on to teach latin, history, scripture and geography at several of the prep schools in the area: Edinburgh House, Walhampton (again) and Hordle House. He had never formally trained to be a schoolmaster, but he had a natural ability to hold the attention of children and impart information. A keen stamp collector, Gerald ran the school stamp club for many years. Referring to stamps from different countries was one of the ways he would interest children in other parts of the world. In the geography class, his background in commodities and shipping and his experience of living in many different countries meant that he could talk from first hand experience.
Gerald’s wide-ranging knowledge of many subjects underpinned his authority as a schoolmaster. He regularly completed The Times crossword and was proud to have reached the regional finals. When Trivial Pursuit first arrived on the scene, he swept the board, and had any of his friends ever appeared on ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’, Gerald would have been the perfect ‘Phone a Friend’, such was his encyclopaedic general knowledge.
After his official retirement, Gerald continued to be involved with the running of school clubs, but he also had more time to pursue his many other passions. One of these was gardening, his cottage garden at Kings Huts, Pennington being a model of its kind. Gerald’s care of plants was sometimes as great as his concern for people. When his Bonsai oak tree started to wither due the humidity in Hong Kong, he shipped it back to the Japanese nursery where it had been raised. His reasoning was that it had taken at least three generations of specialised care to cultivate and he couldn’t let it die on his watch.
Gerald was both an enthusiastic tenor in the choir at Boldre Church (and later at St Thomas' in Lymington) and a committed Saints football fan. Sometimes he craftily combined these passions: when reading at St Thomas’, he would discreetly substitute the names of Saints players for biblical names in the Old Testament text. His favourites for this treatment were foreign players such as (Ivan) Golac and (Reuben) Agboola, but on one occasion he managed to get the entire team into a single reading! Only the most attentive members of the congregation noticed.
Gerald had, up to the start of this summer term, still been active in running the stamp collecting and rifle shooting activities at Hordle Walhampton School. A mark of his success with the shooting team was demonstrated when the school won the Wellington Cup (a prep school challenge held at Bisley) two years in succession. He was also proud to have competed at Bisley himself for 50 years.
When Gerald knew that he was dying, he wanted the least fuss possible. He kept his smile and sense of humour until the end of what was a mercifully short illness. Talking afterwards, his son Peter said: “I don't think Gerald felt that life cheated him one bit. He had the fullest life of anyone I have ever known. My Dad was always kind and loving to all around him. Above all I feel he was a gentleman, and an example to everybody who knew him.” Another tribute came from Tony de Launay, Past President of the Old Marlburian Rifle Club, of which Gerald was a long-serving member. “Gerald was never a man to crave the limelight. He was at his most content when beavering away in the background, volunteering unselfishly for the tasks that others did not wish to do. Like so many individuals who devote their time to helping others, his presence was always unobtrusive, but you always felt that you had been in the company of a friend.”
He is survived by his son Peter, his daughter Nancy (both of whom live in California) and by Skippy, the last of his adopted rescue dogs who gave him so much pleasure.
Ralph Montagu
May 2007
