This blogpost is a follow-up to a post originally sent out on November 25th 2021, which presented an overview of the school archive’s collection of items relating to the late, acclaimed OM, television producer and BAFTA winner Norman Swallow. Since that post was written, the archive has now acquired a further donation of even more intriguing material, demonstrating Swallow’s apparent knack of cultivating friends in high places, appearing Zelig-like in photographs with the likes of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (see featured image above – Swallow to the right of Nehru, far left) and receiving warm, personal correspondence from such diverse luminaries as Leni Riefenstahl, Marcel Marceau and Daniel Day-Lewis (who wrote to Swallow in 1994 to discuss the actor’s recent appearance in the controversial film In the Name of the Father), not to mention his connection with the great Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein, made through his mutual friend and collaborator Grigori Alexandrov, as covered more fully in the earlier post. Adding to the earlier batch of Eisenstein-related material, the archive now holds two extraordinary early photographs of the director with Alexandrov, shown below: one picturing the two men shooting the film October on the roof of Leningrad’s Winter Palace, while the second shows the two together working in Hollywood.
Leni Riefenstahl
Some of the items in the Norman Swallow collection demonstrate just how far from the expected ‘everyday school life’ quality the MGS Archive can take you. Take, for example, the items relating to Swallow’s friendship with the legendary and controversial German film-maker and photographer Leni Riefenstahl, such as the photograph shown above, showing Riefenstahl with the Nuba people of Sudan in 1963, one of many which would be used in her well-known 1973 documentary book known in English as The Last of the Nuba.
There are also a couple of images in this collection which document the making of Riefenstahl’s controversial, fascistic 1938 film of the notorious 1936 Munich Olympics, Olympia, one of which shows the film-maker in action, directing her photographer (below). Additionally, there is a brochure for a special screening of the same film at the 1959 Venice Biennale, the front cover of which is shown below.
During the late 1960s, Riefenstahl also sent several postcards to Swallow, signed, with personal messages, featuring images of the photographer herself on the front, often from her younger days, such as the two pictured below:
Marcel Marceau
The famous French mime-artist Marcel Marceau was another legend who appeared to be on first-name terms with Swallow, at least close enough to send regular self-designed, hand-written Christmas cards to him and his wife, Madeline, such as the following two delightful examples from the collection, sent in 1973 and 1974:
Taken as a whole, this fascinating collection of Norman Swallow-related items, generously donated to MGS Archives, now adds up to some of the most wide-ranging, socially and culturally significant material which the archive is privileged to hold, with the multi-faceted nature of the collection reflecting the clearly personable, generous character of Swallow himself.
This week, an exhibition has been staged in the archive room to give the school community a chance to see some treasures from the MGS archive alongside a selection of “everyday” documents that form the majority of the archive.
Here are some photographs from the exhibition, and a digital version of the exhibition.
Missale Romanum, 1494
The provenance of this volume is unknown, but it has belonged to the school since at least 1931, when repair work was carried out on the spine. It is a Missal – a liturgical book containing texts and music for use in the Roman Catholic mass. Only 11 other known copies of this volume exist.For further reading, follow this linkhttps://www.mgs-life.co.uk/article/the-history-of-mgs-in-50-objects-48-missal?ref=
This volume is the third edition of Erasmus’ translation of the New Testament. The volume has the signature of Hugh Bexwyke, one of the founders of MGS, at the head of the preface. It has belonged at various times to MGS, possibly Durham School, Corpus Christi College and finally made its way back to MGS. It was probably the gift of Percy Stafford Allen, a noted Erasmus scholar, who was President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford and a governor at MGS.For further reading, follow this linkhttps://www.mgs-life.co.uk/article/the-history-of-mgs-in-50-objects-4-erasmus-new-testament?ref=
“Speeches Spoke At The Grammar Scholl Manchester In The Year 1640“
This volume contains handwritten Latin speeches that were delivered by boys at MGS in the 17th century. It was presented to the school by Prebendary Finch Smith, son of High Master Jeremiah Smith, in the early 19th century. Its first two owners are recorded as George Chetham and John Lightbowne. It is then recorded that the papers were discarded and then rescued “From a fish stall in the Market place Manchester as waste paper, 1700”.
In 1921 the Chetham Society published extracts of transcriptions of the original Latin, edited by Alfred Mumford (school doctor and author of a history of MGS). The verses and poems appear to have a strongly Royalist flavour and Mumford suggests this was due to the political leanings of High Master Ralph Brideoake – “Manchester was a hotbed of Puritanism at the time of Brideoake’s appointment, and he clearly used his position to instil Royalist principles in his scholars.”
This document is the original legal basis for the founding of the School. It is written in Latin, as all legal documents were during this period. The archive also holds a number of later copies of the deed.
Key excerpts include:
“…the said parties had often taken into consideration that the youth, particularly in the county of Lancaster, had for a long time been in want of instruction, as well on account of the poverty of their parents, as for want of some person who should instruct them in learning and virtue, and therefore to the intent that there should be some fit person to teach youths and boys freely.”
“…the said parties covenanted and agreed that the said Hugh Oldham, bishop of Exeter, the said warden and fellows, and the said Thomas Langley, Hugh Bexwyke and Ralph Hulme … should provide and nominate a fit person…learned and fit to be master, to teach and instruct scholars in grammar, in the town of Manchester…and an usher (hostiarium) or substitute to such master, to teach grammar in his absence, or for his assistance…and the said warden and fellows agree to pay annually without any deduction, £10 to the said master, and £5 to the said usher; and William Pleasington was thereby appointed as the person who should first, freely and without anything to be therefore given to him, except his stipend, instruct in grammar all boys and children in the said town of Manchester”
This boy was studying in the sixth form on the “Classical Side”, which meant his education would have focused on classical languages and studies. High Master J.L. Paton has filled in this report:
“Needs more joyousness & sunshine in his life. Needs also, as all creatures of flesh & blood do need, one day’s rest in seven. A new man into new surroundings & new society sh[oul]d open him up & give fresh vitality to his mind”
In this letter Shaw replies to a request to donate money to a fund set up by the Old Mancunian Association to honour Old Mancunian playwright Stanley Houghton. The fund would be used to award a prize for best Drama essay, and was set up, despite Shaw’s misgivings. F. Voyce, who had written on behalf of the OMA, gave the letter to the school in 1970.
16th June 1914 – The Stanley Houghton Memorial
I shall certainly not support the monstrous proposal to make the drama a schoolsubject and thereby propagate an incurable loathing of it among the futurecitizens of Manchester.
Why not endow a guarantee fund to enable the Gaity Theatre to give performancesof his works every year, or to produce one new play by a Manchester beginner? Thatis the proper way to keep his memory green and fertile
The provenance of these three letters is unknown. Most probably the letters were purchased by an Old Mancunian collector or friend of the school and given as a gift. There is no known connection to the school
H.G. Wells
Xmas 07
Dear Mr. Ross,
I may be in Oxford on Feb 24 or 25. If so I might do a talk on Socialism or some
Dear Sir, Many thanks for your interesting book of photographs of Defensive Steel work which I have examined and herewith return. I have done what I could and as the War Office is taking the matter up, it has entirely passed out of my hands. Yours truly A. Conan Doyle
Dear Sir, I have been away from home for a few days and so have not been able to acknowledge the two books you have so kindly sent me. Please accept my best thanks for them and believe me, Very sincerely, Rudyard Kipling
The existence of this letter in our collections is something of a mystery. Was the recipient of the letter a member of staff or Governor at the school?
Nightingale writes on hearing the news of the death of her friend, noted Manchester reformer and campaigner, Joseph Adshead:
30 Old Burlington St
Feb 23/61
My dear Sir
I have been much shocked by hearing of the death of my good and kind friend, Mr. Adshead of Manchester. I do not know his nearest relatives yet I would gladly convey to them how much I feel their loss. Manchester has lost among her many good, one of her very best citizens. He was always thinking of doing her good. England has lost one of those men who, I do believe grow only in England – men of business and of the world who incessantly apply those habits of business, without going out of the world, to mending the world’s ways. Words, hackneyed in most cases, occur to me as literally true in Mr. Adhead’s case. To me the loss is a severe one, because he was going to carry out my ideal of a Country Hospital. The best tribute that could be paid to his memory (the one which, of all others, he himself would have liked) would be if Manchester would yet carry out his plan.
Believe me
Yours Faithfully
Florence Nightingale
If you know any particulars of his last illness I should be anxious to know them. His last letter to me must have been written [?] before. He said he was “better”.
Adshead campaigned against the corn laws, for penal reform and the improvement of public health. The reference in Nightingale’s letter to “his plan” was Adshead’s desire to build a convalescent hospital in the Manchester area. Adshead died in 1861, but in 1871 construction started on the Barnes Hospital in Cheadle which would serve as a convalescent home for patients in the Greater Manchester area until its closure in 1999.
High Master J.L. Paton (1903 – 1924) seems to have been a prolific letter writer, with many examples preserved in the MGS Archives. Communication from subsequent and previous High Masters is rarer, but we do have this example of a letter from Frederick Walker (1859 – 1877).
It was written in March 1869 to grieving parents who had just lost their son, and gives a rare insight into Walker’s approach to his pupils:
My dear Mr. Kelly,
On paying a chance visit to town this morning I got your sad announcement of your son’s death. I am deeply touched. This is the first death I have known of a pupil under my immediate care. A year ago he was a playful, lighthearted boy. I have watched with interest and pleasure his gradual passage into the thoughtfulness and conscientiousness of manhood. I never on principle exaggerate to a parent his child’s merits and was but stating the barest fact when I told you in our last interview you had a son of whom with reason you might be proud.
Hoots from the archive 