Many in the preparatory school world (and beyond) will have been saddened to hear of the death of Frank Benson at the age of 83 years. Frank was one of those larger than life schoolmasters who were common a generation ago, but perhaps are a dying breed in the drab world of the National Curriculum. He was a man of many parts: one thinks of his vast knowledge of the culture, music and wine of the Iberian peninsular, for example. A character also: his nightly bottle of whisky (always referred to, with characteristic understatement, as a glass of Famous Grouse) somehow never stopped him from being up and about at 5am to prowl the corridors in search of mischief to punish.
Frank served with distinction in North Africa in WW2 then in 1945 joined Picton House Preparatory school as an assistant master. He served there happily for 13 years until an unseemly string of allegations of serious professional, financial and _s_e_x_ual misconduct against the owner led to a lengthy prison term for that unfortunate priest, and ultimately to the demise of the school. While there he wrote his Graded Latin Sentences for Preparatory Schools, whose success during nearly thirty years made him a modestly wealthy man. It should be pointed out that as an author Frank would wish to be remembered not for this, but for the less commercially successful but magisterial eight volumes of The Corporal Punishment of Boys in the English Preparatory School (referred to by his friends simply as CP).
In the end the incarceration of Reverend Arbuthnot was a blessing in disguise, for Frank was offered the Housemasters job at St Crispins, under Aidan Phelps as Headmaster. Aidan dealt with financial and managerial matters and Frank looked after the nitty-gritty of keeping a House of 65 boisterous boys running smoothly. Neither man had the faintest desire to encroach on the territory of the other, and their partnership lasted for 24 years.
Frank was by nature a conservative definitely with a small c! He always referred to the two main political parties as The Red Thieves and The Blue Thieves, a reference to the amount of tax his book royalties attracted. Even close friends admitted amongst themselves that when Frank strayed off his natural territory into areas such as politics his conversation became tedious in the extreme. The correct course was to steer the talk back to matters dearer to his heart.
It has to be said that matter dearest to the heart of this complex and fascinating man was the beating of small boys. Some found his interest in this often neglected area of human endeavour somewhat obsessive, even unhealthy. A few detractors hinted darkly that he derived some sort of perverse delight from spanking boys on their bare buttocks. As someone who was thrashed by more than 60 times by Frank during my three years in Senior House at St Crispins I dispute this hotly. Moreover as the father of three boys myself I never had the slightest hesitation about letting my boys spend a fortnight each summer with Uncle Frank on the beaches of France and Spain. He tanned their backsides if they stepped out of line, and they never complained of this the time they spent with Frank was one of the highlights of their holiday.
Let me roll back the years and see Frank through the eyes of a wild and reckless 12-year-old (which is what I was). A typical incident would start after lunch. Frank would make a few announcements, then 65 hearts would falter as they waited see if he extracted The Black Book from the breast packet of his tweed jacket. If he did it was certain a boy would be beaten. Frank would spend an unbearable amount of time thumbing through the pages before announcing: The following boy will report to my room after lunch: After a long pause he would squint through his half-moon glasses as if unable to read his own writing, finally finishing his sentence Peter Dickens. 64 pairs of eyes would hone in on me as I wondered what I had done this time. Then came the journey to his room up three flights of stairs. Did one take them quickly (to get it over) or dawdle (to savour each moment of painless bottom)?
With Frankie one never quite knew how one would be punished. He despised what he called The Come In Bend Over Whack Whack Whack Off You Go school of thrashing. Each beating for him was a small piece of theatre. So you stood before the great desk, stomach fluttering as your crimes were described. Questions flashed through your mind. How much would you have to undress? How long would he keep you in suspense? Would you have the dignity of pulling your own underpants down or would Frankie abrogate that privilege? Would you be over his knee or touching your toes or kneeling on the bed or Frankie had a great retinue of ways of positioning little boys for beating. Would he use his hand or the slipper or the strap or (God forbid!) the cane? How many strokes? Would he keep you in his room afterwards, when all you wanted was to dash to toilet, attempt to soothe your bottom and inspect the damage?
The mysterious musky odour of his room (which, it has to be said with adult hindsight, was simply stale alcohol and tobacco)! The gentle but sinister grip of his hand round your neck as he led you to the place of execution! The feel of his tweed trousers against your stomach and thighs as you lay haplessly across his knee! The floral pattern of his carpet seen a close quarters! The interminable patting and rubbing of your bottom (a ritual whose exact purpose I never clearly discerned) that preceded the onslaught!
Frankie beat frequently and vigorously but also considerately, unlike his almost exact contemporary at St Crispins, Ted (Bully) Hartstone. Bully would rant and rage at you, his face very close, his breath fetid, the enormous grey hairs that sprouted from his nostrils a source of horrified fascination. He had a habit of grabbing you by the hair to take you to The Chair a vast flogging block of an armchair where you knelt on the seat and forced your head into the right angle at the back. You made _d_a_m_n_ sure your knees were touching the arms of The Chair otherwise a cut of the belt across your leg reminded you. You felt appallingly vulnerable, your bottom cheeks tugged apart and your tiny privates dangling in the wind.
When he was in control of himself (which was rare) Bully only used the belt; when he was not in control of himself (which was common) he used anything that came to hand. Over the years I took quite savage thrashings from Bully with (amongst many others) an umbrella, a tennis racket (which left astonishing patterns on your bottom), a cricket stump and a large Bible. If by the belt you understand the sort of dainty piece of leather that is currently holding up your well-tailored trousers you do not have the measure of the man: the belt looked as if it had been hacked from some primitive eighteenth century farm implement. It was about two feet long, two inches wide and half an inch thick and it hurt like hell. Unlike Frankie, Bully would never tell you what you were going to get, for the simple reason he had no idea himself. He just hit you until he had vented his exasperation or worn himself out. (If you got a sound spanking from Frankie he allowed himself to spank as much as he deemed fit, it has to be said.) As he thrashed, Bully would hurl epithets at you: Guttersnipe! Thieving mongrel! Idle young toad!
But I find myself digressing from Frank Benson. Under Frank and Aidan St Crispins was, to be honest, somewhat frozen in time as, all around, mores were changing. Cold showers, corporal punishment, Spartan comforts, eccentric (pathological in Bullys case) teachers, nude swimming they all continued until Aidans retirement in 1983. Frank intended to carry for a few more years, but formed a violent dislike of the new head, Stuart Morgan, who was of the progressive school of thinking. There were frequent and ugly clashes between the two, and I have to say that Frank did not help himself by spreading rumours, based on only the flimsiest of evidence, that Stuart was in the habit of having _s_e_x_ual relations with his golden retriever. How can you take orders from a man who rogers his dog? Frank would declaim to anyone in the saloon bar of The Pig and Whistle who cared to listen.
Frank retired in 1984, ostensibly to spend more time at the villa he had bought near Gerona. To his confidants, though, he was more candid: The worlds gone mad when spanking a naughty little boy on his bare bottom is regarded as some sort of crime rather than elementary common sense!
In retirement Frank worked tirelessly on his autobiography The Life of a Schoolmaster (LSM to the inner circle). But, lacking the central theme that gave his CP its coherence, he seemed unable completely to control his material. Much time was wasted alternately cutting sections then expanding them again. Should he give a whole chapter to the bitter 1959 dispute with Percy Fanshawe over the positioning of the Stationery Cupboard? Or merely lay out the briefest prιcis? Or, in charity to a vanquished (and long deceased) foe, simply gloss over the whole incident? In the face of questions like these his deftness and sureness of touch seemed to desert him.
Visiting him in Spain one felt obliged to ask how LSM was coming on. There would be a weary sigh. Slowly, not well. By 2001 he felt he had gone as far as he could. Amongst themselves even his friends began to have doubts about the book. At over 2400 pages was it perhaps over-long? Was there a market or a publisher for it?
Ironically, public recognition of the man and his work came late in his life. In 2002 he was approached by the enormously prestigious and internationally renowned MMSA Stories organization and prevailed upon publish a few fragments of LSM to a wider audience, which he did under the pen-name Prepschoolmaster. The critical response was swift and rapturous. His name began to be mentioned in the same breath as the legendary Tristans, and, somewhat more fancifully, comparisons were made with Swinburne.
He leaves behind him a vast archive: the manuscript of LSM, the three-hundred-odd diaries he filled as he worked methodically through his bottle of Famous Grouse each night (these were the raw material from which he distilled LSM), several tea-chests of notes, jottings, essays and photographs and of course the Ledger, in which he recorded details of the 3371 beatings he was obliged to administer over nearly 40 years as a schoolmaster. I will record a touching moment: when it was clear that the end was near he called me in and presented me with the Ledger, as my name appeared in it more often than any other.
This archive will, surely, be required reading for any serious student of English education in the second half of the twentieth century.
So raise your glass, if you will, to Frank Benson: a schoolmaster with a clear head, a kind heart and a strong right arm!
Peter Dickens