Peter Wright at Christ’s Hospital

Peter was a Prep school man. I knew that as soon as I met him. The things about second and third formers which would send me into a rage, he found sympathetically amusing. He was like Mr Carter In Jennings: the one, as Peter loved to read to the squits, who had ·supersonic Earsight'! He had come to us after a dearly-loved school had closed down and rapidly began loving C.H. as well. His sympathies, however, were largely for the ungainly. unco-ordinated and those who really hated games. He was good at soccer and encouraged some excellent House sides, but his real achievement was the invention of games for those who weren’t so good. Three-ball and three-goal soccer. handicapped steeplechase (where the slowest set off first and often won. thereby defeating the handicapper as well as the champions) and the dice-run (throw to see where to go next!). His most powerful incentive to less-keen new boys was to challenge them to beat Tigger (the dog) around the course. Not only did Peter run with them (and over the age of 50) but proved he could walk it faster than some of them ran.

His other great interest was Maths. Well, not proper Maths since his degree was in Spanish and Medieval French, but in numbers - any numbers. He would factorise the numbers on the hymn-board in Chapel: he collected car registration numbers from 1-999 but in order so that it takes 30 years. And as for pocket money! - no sum a boy chose to take out was safe from analysis: If the amount he took was not the cube root of the year times the date, then what was left was probably the square of his birthday! Peter combined games and numbers of course in a love of sporting odds. He was an expert at· the Royal Sport but we will remember him best for Ludham Dogs. Just little wooden models that lived in a large matchbox and moved around a cardboard course according to a pack of cards. But Peter could tum this Invention of his into a magic Night at the Races and, with David O'Meara at the computerised tote, raise money for charity. Ludham is on the Norfolk Broads and that brings back memories of his teaching Scouts to sail (without actually being able to himself) swathed in woollies and a pom-pom hat. He went to Summer Camp too and was a regular crewman of the Empress of Blandings and the Earl of Emsworth.

What took me longer to recognise was his literary genius. I knew that he was fascinated by words - almost as much as he was by number. During Matron's coffee at break he would try out the latest English idioms to send to his brother (David) teaching English in Sweden. I knew too that he had written plays for his prep school and he wrote the script for our House productions of Lord of the Flies, The Hobbit and his own version of Robin Hood. But it was his feeling for just the right words which made him such an effective preacher in Chapel: nothing elaborate, nothing a Junior could not understand, but with a simple power. It was the same when he took to the stage: ‘only’ in comic roles- the gravedigger in Hamlet, a ham actor in Harlequinade ‘only’ a comic actor - but deeply convincing.
Harlequinade was on the night of Hazel’s funeral. It came as a shock to me, when Peter announced (in a pub on the Norfolk Broads and at the age of 51) that he was getting married. He had seemed the archetypal bachelor school­master. But his love is not exclusive and I need not have worried. He and Hazel - and Tigger - became part of Lamb B. Peter wrote. Hazel loved Lamb B from the moment the monitors helped her move in and Richard, Tim, Guy, and Martin came in the evening to hang the curtains. She often said to me “they care so much about each other”, and she cared about them and they about her. Later, after Peter had given up house tutoring, they both went on a counselling course to enrich their already considerable experience: his in-school mastering and hers as a Health Visitor. He was fond of saying that in marrying a wife he had also acquired a dog: in fact, he also acquired a large, and lovely, extended family. To become ‘Grandfather’ suddenly after a bachelor lifetime was a joy which never staled. And so It was that what to those of us with lesser faith was a deep tragedy - to have and to hold and to lose - became to this man of simple, direct belief a transcendent family celebration. It was made almost unbearably poignant for me as our one­time Lamb B boys. angelic ln albs. accompanied the coffin down the Chapel.

You can’t analyse Peter. You can’t sort out his talents into appraisal headings. He is a whole man and he, his wife, his family, his dog, his tutees, his House, his congregation - even the whole school - were one. As Arthur Rider once said when Her Majesty's Royal Commissioner on Public Schools asked him to analyse how he spent his time as a schoolmaster: "My dear boy. I live here!". You cannot appreciate such people by listing what they do, but simply by being grateful for what they are.

But forgive me if I re-emphasise our years together in Maine A and Lamb B. A clerical parent confided, once we knew each other much better, that he and his wife had worried that their sons would be in a house run entirely by bachelors - they thought it would lack the feminine domestic touch. He admitted then that Maine A had surpassed all their expectations of care and concern. I might claim some credit for a strongly led and well-organised house but it was Peter who ensured that confidence in all our charges that they were valued and cared for. It is appropriate to end with a few hymn quotes - we both know most hymns by heart. One of Peter’s favourites is Our blest Redeemer. It refers largely to the Holy Spirit but It applies equally to Peter – for, as he says, the Spirit Is sterile unless we pass him on to others! So we express our gratitude for 'A  Guide, a Comforter· who came ‘sweet influence to impart' and. to the small boy fearing his first nights in a large dorm

‘… his that gentle voice we hear
Soft as the breath of even
That checks each fault, that calms each fear
And speaks of heaven.’
As one squit wrote after three bewildering weeks 'Mr Wright makes things seem better, simply by being there and we all love him'. And It was not Just the squits In the House who felt that!

John Shippen