David Steele 1935-2025( CoRo, 57-95; HoDo E, 74-89)
No. 141
The Trusty Servant
David Steele 1935-2025( CoRo, 57-95; HoDo E, 74-89)
David Hurley( E, 76-80; CoRo, 16-) remembers his polymath housedon:
My father recently unearthed a letter dating from February 1973 from David Steele offering me a place in Freddie’ s. I had not yet met David, but he took recommendations from Beloe’ s house don Geoff Hewitson and my prep school headmaster for a start date in January 1976. Not only had I not met the housemaster-in-waiting in person, but I had not yet seen inside Freddie’ s. From my perspective, it was an inspired chance that brought me into the right boarding house under the supervision of a polymath with a passion for music, and especially singing. Whilst Freddie’ s in the mid-1970s may not have had the sporting credentials to rival Beloe’ s, or the instrumentalists to challenge Furley’ s in Palmer Pot, David was determined that we would excel in House Singing. Under his enthusiastic tutelage, and with little chance to select our song choices, we won in four of my five years, twice claiming both Bobber and Schuster Pots, the latter with successive movements of Byrd’ s Mass for Three Voices.
His style of management was to encourage you to find things at which you could excel, and to support this he introduced the concept of cultural ekker to the weekly schedule: there had to be a mix of sports and non-sports in everyone’ s timetables. There was a feeling in Freddie’ s that we resided in a more benign environment that some of our Wykehamist contemporaries. Too much noise in mugging hall would be treated to his silent but furious appearance at the top of the spiral staircase leading from his study, where his blazing eyes would stare down JP and MP over the rim of his halfmoon spectacles. However, his greatest fury seemed to be saved for occasional
DMMS in the 1976 Freddie’ s House Photograph, with his future obituarist in the front row.
lectures in Preces which would be heralded by“ Eh, another thing; the electrics”. There would follow a rant about the large number of lights left on that evening.
For a while I was up to him for Chemistry. He was happiest when demonstrating spectacular chemical reactions, and his annual pyrotechnical shows were extraordinary, and on the edge of acceptability in a time when health and safety regulations were far more limited. He had an interesting way of bringing back an inattentive pupil from his reverie. During a Chemistry double on a dark winter’ s evening, one pupil in my set sat slumped in a happy sleep. After a while, David stopped speaking, and slowly moved to the nearest fire extinguisher. He lifted it from its holder, placing it gently on the demonstration table. He then went back to his teaching. A while later, he removed the pull pin, once again resuming the lesson. We all waited in expectation, until suddenly he brought his fist down on the firing pin. A cloud
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