Winchester College Publication Treausry: Collections Bulletin 2019-2020 | Page 10

OBJECTS IN FOCUS
Monty Rendall: A Newly Discovered
Autobiographical Fragment
For an individual who cast so very long a shadow of influence, Monty
Rendall, Headmaster of Winchester College 1911–24, left few personal
traces. Anecdotes are legion; artefacts or buildings resulting from his energy and
good taste constitute a glory of the local heritage. But letters, personal papers,
and autobiographical accounts are puzzlingly sparse, and have generally escaped
the searches of biographers.
This year, the school acquired a cache of
Rendall papers, kindly donated by the
family of Max Rendall, and including a
125-page typescript autobiography, begun
in 1942 and remaining unfinished in 1945.
Passages of this must have been known to
his biographer, Budge Firth, as they appear
verbatim in his Rendall of Winchester
(1954). But the typescript as a whole has
never been published, nor an account given
of its content or style.
This new find is very much a fragment, not
a finished piece. It reads as a product of two
halves, Rendall’s life before Winchester and
his career there subsequently. In the first half
one is hugely struck by the author’s ability;
in the second by his energy. Even Rendall’s
admirers acknowledged his increasing
isolation from reality as time moved on, and
his mannerisms and idiosyncrasies became
objects more of mockery than of imitation.
Interestingly, one can almost feel Rendall’s
interest in the subject matter wane as the
years succeed, but the style remains direct,
commendably un-fussy and unfailingly
clear.
Young Montague Rendall, taken by H. W. Salmon,
late 19th century (4/8/124)
Rendall’s achievements were prodigious at
Harrow, where he joined his uncle’s House
as scholar, and also athlete. He recollects
“one perfect day in April 1881, when I won
the Gregory Scholarship, the Neeld Medal
for mathematics, and all five events in the
Athletic Sports. The long jump I won two
years with 19 and 20 feet, the Cricket Ball
twice with 98 and 99 yards: I also won the
Shot Hammer and High Jump”. “I mention
these trifles”, he explains, perhaps with logic
unconvincing, “because they have added
enormously to my pleasure among the Lake
Mountains.”
What Rendall regarded as the “debacle” of
not winning a scholarship to Trinity
College, Cambridge did not for long hold
him back. “In my third year I was placed
with only two other men in the First
Division of the First Class in Part 1 of the
Classical Tripos…: Mr A Cook of King’s, a
seasoned examiner, told me twice that in
one Greek paper he gave me full marks,
which he had never done before or since.”
Rendall began a thesis on Plato, but left it
off thinking someone else would obtain the
Vera Elizabeth Tcheremissinof,
Bronze bust of Montague Rendall,
1939 (AS32)
Montague Rendall, 1924 (4/8/126)
impending Trinity Fellowship. In the event
the rival did not apply. “This proved a
cardinal point in my career; but I do not
think I regret it. I was approached with
regard to the Tutorial Fellowship in another,
an important, College: but I had no desire
to stay longer in Cambridge.”
Why the change to the world of schools?
“Four out of the first five of us became
School Masters,” Rendall explains: “the gist
of the matter is that we were following the
real bias of our nature and tradition of our
family.” This is perhaps not entirely so, for
elsewhere in his writing Rendall stresses the
importance to him of his father’s
Oxfordshire parish, his upbringing in the
rectory (“now no longer a rectory but
inhabited by a lady with 22 puppies”), and
his parents’ deep religious faith. But the
churchmanship Rendall himself espouses is
described by him as “propriety without
colour,” intended primarily to mean without
ecclesiological extreme (“a central position”
as he puts it elsewhere), but also suggesting
conformity rather than enthusiasm. Firth
argues that Rendall never married because
he could never find a woman he could
admire as much as his mother—which
perhaps sits oddly, or even explains, the fact
that every woman mentioned in this
fragment is preceded by an adjective
descriptive of her looks. The exception—a
Wagnerian soprano—more than confirms
the rule. Rendall found schools irresistible,
for he could not himself replicate the
environment he most revered. Tristan
would always steer clear of Isolde.
Schools also provided Rendall with
the reassurance of known context.
Rendall seems frequently to assert
his achievements in an attempt
to confirm his sense of himself
as successful yet precarious
insider. The issue begins,
10 Winchester College Collections 2019 – 20