CHAPTER IX
THE CONTEMPORARY SCENE
It was unquestionably the end of an era for the Community after the sudden death of Leila Rendel. She died, as she always said she wished to, ''in harness'', still, after fifty years, ruling and administrating.
She fell one morning in March 1969 in her own house and broke her hip; she died in hospital a few days later.
Ethel Davies carried on, managing the Community's affairs both skilfully and courageously: James King, a house-master at the Community, was appointed at Leila Rendel's previous wish as a second Director, finally taking over from Ethel Davies at her retirement in 1972. She did not live long after this, dying at the age of 77 two years later.
It is a truism to say that Institutions, whatever their nature may be, can, like Empires, rise and fall; a decline sometimes due to an unawareness of the necessity for change or a dislike of such change; circumstances too may make any appreciable alteration impossible. The Community, although forced to go through much unhappy experience, was fortunately able to make the necessary changes just prior to Ethel Davies's retirement.
Family groups took the place of the well-worn and familiar age-groups of the past. This new grouping evidently did away with a great deal of stress as above all it appears to have eliminated the ‘ganging-up’ of noisy adolescents which the Community was then suffering from, and this in turn must have greatly lessened the actual noise in the huge echoing rooms and passages of the house.
Now the spit-and-polish of the past, which distinguished those elegant eighteenth century rooms, and perhaps the general order and high standard throughout the whole house, is no more: such an appearance and the work which it entails would doubtless seem completely out-of-date and quite pointless to a present generation of staff; yet it made for a certain distinction which, to the outsider at any rate, is missing now.
The value of an institution such as the Community is much in question today; a society, which is becoming accustomed to the very large schools in which the child may have to spend many hours of his waking life for many years, will certainly prize a smaller unit for his home life.
I have hanging on my wall an old crayon drawing of a small boy; he looks about four years old. He is sitting quite comfortably with his hands tucked under him as children do sometimes sit, his short legs dangling over the large chair. He is evidently dressed in his best suit for the occasion although it is much too big for him, the trousers falling widely and loosely over his knees. His jacket is topped by a white Eton collar and a large black silk bow knotted as an artist would tie it; he wears black socks and sandals; his hair is neatly cut and brushed and parted.
He gazes out from that picture with an air of calm certainty; grave and serious over the business in hand but not in any way apprehensive, as if he was accustomed to the woman who was drawing him. She was Ruth Rowson, who could always 'catch a likeness' in her portraits and drawings and it is plain that she has done so here, in this drawing of one of the first children of that long past Caldecott Nursery school.
Could that child have seen into the future some sixty years later it seems probable that his surprise would have been as great as that of the noted Cortez seeing an ocean for the first time.
It is tantalising to speculate how different that small London boy who went to the embryo Community in 1911 was from his counterparts and elders of today. Indubitably his appearance - clothes, hair, but just how much does he really differ?
Now the Founders of the Caldecott Community never saw it as a 'Children's Home' in the generally accepted sense of the title; it was first a 'Boarding School for Working Men's Children' and then a 'Community' with all that that implies.
It has suited some, and not others, but looking back over the decades it does appear to have been the right place for many generations of children; it is certain that those two imaginative gifted women, and those who worked with them and created this Community, would have said that the differences between the children of 1911 and those of 1977 are only superficial. The basic needs of a child, if his prosperity is to be ensured, must be satisfied and these needs do not change with the centuries.
It was Osbert Sitwell who wrote in his autobiography "The Scarlet Tree" "that a child in order to progress must be persuaded that he is doing well, and is of the utmost importance to his elders".
I think it is true to say of the children at the Community that they were and are, always, of such importance.