A few hackles have been raised at memories of Dr. J. S. N. Sewell.
He could be extremely offensive and rude, volatile, irrational, uncompromising
and hectoring; he could indeed inflict great hurt with his acerbic and
threatening manner. Im sure that many of us (myself included) could recount the
battle scars that he inflicted. Just occasionally he could also be gracious,
generous and worldly-wise, and he encouraged various societies, notably printing
and film making. But he was certainly a very difficult man to understand, and
had little or no empathy with his charges (disastrous for a teacher, and a trait
which I think he shared with others who have featured in the firing line of
these columns – Bourne, Thomas and Barrett to name three that I knew).
Dr. Sewell was very clearly an intellectual. He had degrees from both the Sorbonne (Paris)
and Trinity College, Dublin. A reliable source has informed me that he ran his
own private school before the war, but that this had somehow failed. He may be
the author of a book of talks for boys leaving preparatory school, dating from
1928 (do a search for his name on Amazon). He was certainly a dramatist, and had
several plays broadcast by the B.B.C. (see the
1957 Alfa for a commentary on this).
His great aunt was, of course, the Victorian author Anna Sewell – a fact he happily
impressed on us at a very early stage in my school life.
A Google search on his name (I do not believe there can have been other Sewells
with the same distinctive J S N initials) suggests that he may have served with
the R.A.F. during the war. My reliable source indicates that Dr. Sewell was an
alcoholic and that his wife left him at some time towards the end of his teaching
career. I have no idea under what circumstances he left F.G.S., but his departure
was not recorded as was the case with his contemporaries, Messrs.
Miles and
Grosch.
(The only acknowledgement to his absence is in the
Annual Record for 1964: the Guild of
Printers indicated that Mr. Booy was their new Patron on the departure of
Dr. Sewell.) One can only speculate that he had become a very broken person. He was
perhaps a man who never achieved his potential and who never adjusted to the
hum-drum of a grammar school, which may (with his background) have seemed much
beneath him.
What became of him? Searches of the General Register Office records indicate that a
John Swindale N. Sewell died in 1988, his death being registered in Basingstoke in
December of that year. The same man was born in Stockport on 20 July 1904, which
would indicate a retirement date in 1964, if he is the same as our man at F.G.S.
Philip Fouracre : March 2010