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   Obituary - Claud Campbell Macdougall Watson

  

Claud Campbell Macdougall Watson

House: ?
Year: 1932-1935?

Text supplied by David Watson (Claud's son) in an e-mail dated 29th July 2003

I do not know which house my father was in, but I am pretty sure that his dates must have been 1932-1935 at the Prince of Wales School. His full name was Claud Campbell Macdougall Watson. His father, Patrick Watson, was Accountant General in the Treasury in Nairobi. Although my father was born in Nairobi in 1915, he was sent "home" in 1921 for schooling. He disliked Tonbridge School so much that after trying his school certificate and failing due to French, he asked to be allowed back to Kenya, and enrolled in PoW as a day boy in 1932. He passed his School Certificate and I believe went on to become the first pupil to pass the Higher Certificate in East Africa.

In 1935 he became a medical student at Edinburgh and eventually settled into General Practice in North Wales, where I was born and brought up. Thus I never entered the hallowed portals of PoW, but I remember my father talking about the school with a degree of fondness, especially after having experienced the somewhat savage discipline of the more traditional English public schools.

As we saw so little of my grandfather - he retired to South Africa after the war, he wrote an autobiography for his family. My father did the same and I append the section relating to his return to Kenya from England in 1932, and his time at PoW. I hope you find it of some interest.

RETURN TO KENYA
As we disembarked at Mombasa it seemed strange to realise I was returning to the country of my birth after an interval of about eleven years. I could not remember much about it all as I had been so young when I had left in 1921. So it was really a great experience. Travelling on the railway to Nairobi I found great fun. The line is a metre gauge one. This meant the rolling stock had to be low and broad which gives it rather a clumsy look compared with railways in Britain (where the gauge is over four and a half feet feet).

The journey to Nairobi is uphill all the way, and the line has to climb five and a half thousand feet; which means the journey to Nairobi takes much longer then the return journey to Mombasa. One of the delights of the journey was the frequent sight of the wild animals, who took but little notice of the trains. In the early days it is said that it was not unknown for a rhinoceros to attack the engine as an intruder. Such an encounter could only have one result. With all his weight and speed a rhino could only make a small dent in an engine weighing over a hundred tons.

I was later told by a fellow pupil at Nairobi that the funniest experience he had on the railway was when there was a swarm of locusts about. They made the line so slippery that the engine wheels just skidded round and the train came to a halt. Even blowing sand on the rails made little difference, so dense was the locust swarm. I was later to be able to verify for myself what an astonishing sight it is when a swarm of locusts invaded us in Nairobi a year later. There were millions of them and it took days for the swarm to pass.

My father met us at Nairobi and took us to his house a few miles outside the town. He lived in an area called the Marlborough Estate. For some odd reason he had never given his house a name. He had built for himself a very nice stone bungalow overlooking a steep valley with a small stream running at the bottom from which he pumped up the water for his swimming-pool.

It was a pleasant house to live in. It had a large veranda facing east, so that one could sit outside in the shade during the heat of the day. He had also built a small wooden guesthouse nearby for visitors.

THE PRINCE OF WALES SCHOOL
I was soon introduced to my new school which was at Kabete, a few miles north of Nairobi. I used to cycle there, part of the way along native paths until I joined the main road north further west. I enjoyed this cycle ride so much that I used to dream about it years later. Cycling along the Kabete road itself was a dreadful experience. Like most roads in those days it was a dirt road not surfaced with macadam. This gave it a horrible corrugated surface which was jolting to ride on. In a car if you travel fast enough you could skate along on the top of the corrugations; but it must have been a terrible strain on the springs. In wet weather the dirt turned into mud.

The Prince of Wales school had been designed by a famous architect, Sir Herbert Baker, who had also designed many famous buildings in India. It was cool and spacious and the classrooms never felt hot and stuffy, even in the hottest weather. This is a great asset when living in the tropics at a time when luxuries such as air conditioning were unheard of.

The headmaster was a Captain Nicholson, an ex naval officer who ran the school like a ship. There were bugle blowing rituals morning and evening with the Union Jack being raised and lowered. He was a real gentleman who could be a strict disciplinarian but whose decisions were always fair ones. He was thus greatly respected by all the boys under his care. They were very much a mixed bag. Mostly Europeans, but with a large number of Boer Dutch whose parents had emigrated to Kenya and taken up farming. The two races mixed quite well but it needed a good headmaster to keep good order. The Dutch boys were good at outdoor sports but inclined to be quarrelsome, and many an argument began because of some adverse comment about the Boer war, which to them was very recent history, even if to us British boys it was something in the remote past.

I had to study for the dreaded School Certificate again; but to my delight I found that the French teacher was Captain Nicholson himself. He was not a trained teacher but had taught at Dartmouth. He spoke fluent french and was the first teacher of the language I had ever found any good. He really made the language alive and interesting, and when I sat the exam the following summer I had no difficulty passing the third time.

To my dismay my father insisted that I take Latin again, the language I had grown to loathe. We found the only master at the school who could take latin was a doddery old chap called Twells. He was not at all keen on the idea and I had difficulty in even getting him to correct my latin exercises.

However my father valiantly offered to coach me himself; no mean feat as he cannot have studied the subject for thirty years. There was a set book to study by Tacitus all about the Roman Emperor Galba and his times. I cannot say I found it at all interesting, but as my father was so enthusiastic and obviously enjoyed coaching me, I did my best to summon up enthusiasm for the antics of Galba and Co. and rather to my surprise passed the exam when it came.

By now I was so proficient at physics, chemistry and maths that I must have nearly got full marks in them. In the event I was awarded an Honours Certificate; the first boy in the school to have done such a thing. Another boy called Weller also got Honours. I believe our names were eventually put on some sort of a board but it must have been after I had left.

The question after I passed the School Certificate at last was what to do with me next. I was now seventeen and a half and could have gone straight on to University at Edinburgh to do medicine. But my father did not think I was mature enough and wanted to wait another year or two. I did not agree with him but did not feel particularly strongly about it. I knew the average age of entry to medical school was eighteen and a half. But now fate stepped in to decide the issue. Nobody had ever taken the Higher Certificate in Kenya before, but Weller's father was the Director of Education and he thought it would be a feather in his cap if he could persuade enough boys to stay on at the Prince of Wales school for another two years to sit this exam. A circular was sent round to all the senior boys’ parents. Eight of us agreed to have a go. The Education Department had agreed that they would fund the extra expense involved if there were at least six of us.

So I was now committed to staying on another two years. During that time I hoped to see a bit more of Kenya, and if I liked it I might settle down there after I had qualified. Little did we know that before I ever qualified there would be another world war after which the whole political situation in Kenya was to be altered with Mau-Mau and independence looming over the horizon.

When the next term began it was found that two boys had dropped out leaving six of us. The subjects we were to take were physics, chemistry and math­ematics- the science trio. It meant enormous expense for the education depart­ment. A huge amount of equipment had to be purchased solely for our use, and I don't think Mr Weller was very popular with the Treasury who had to fund it.

In the end it turned into farce. One by one the others dropped out and for the second year of study I was on my own. I had two teachers entirely to my­self. A Mr Aston took me in physics and maths, and a South African (whose name I cannot recall) took me for chemistry.

I soon discovered, rather to my surprise, that advanced chemistry consists to a large extent of applied mathematics, and physics almost entirely so. This was just up my street- as maths has always been my strong subject Mr Aston found me a willing pupil. Advanced maths starts off with integral calculus and he was surprised how quickly I mastered it. Calculus is not easy, but once you get the hang of it, it is just a question of doing it step by step and I found it quite fascinating. The chemistry teacher merely dictated notes which he had prepared himself, and very good notes they turned out to be. He assured me that if I knew those notes thoroughly I was bound to pass. He turned out to be quite right.

Even Weller, the son of the Director of Education, dropped out of the course after the first four terms. He was made head boy for his last year- a job he was most unsuited for as he was far too absent minded.

The rest of the narrative concerning this period describes various characters Claud met in Kenya leading up to his return to U.K. in 1935. I wonder if my father ever did have his name put on a board in the school! I am hoping to add illustrations to my father's writings - he died in 1994. Do you have any photos concerning the school of that period. Various other ancestors of mine were old Kenya hands. My father's uncle Ted Sanderson was the first town clerk of Nairobi, his other uncle Arthur Watson became the second. My father's cousin's husband Charles Taylor became head of the coffee growers association. Another cousin Dorothy Noad ran the Highland School in Nairobi. I wonder if you know anything of that school?