STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY
COLLECTION
OH 561/8
Full transcript of an interview with
RICHARD HOLTHAM
On 10 September 1972
By Richard Freney
Recording available on CD
Access for research: Unrestricted
Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study
Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the
State Library
OH 561/8
RICHARD HOLTHAM
NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT
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J.D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION, MORTLOCK
LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIANA: INTERVIEW NO. OH 561/8
Interview of Mr Richard Holtham by Richard Freney, recorded at Mr Holtham’s
cottage at Inman Valley and broadcast on ABC Radio 5CL on 10 th September
1972 as part of the series ‘Now in retirement’.
TAPE 1 SIDE A
Mr Holtham, you’ve been for 32 years at one school: that’s a very long time.
And, at the end of that, were you pleased to retire? And my second point is,
would you, indeed, like to go back to school?
LS: No, no! Never go back. When the curtain has fallen the old actor had better
keep off the stage. Boys may not have changed much, but methods and education
generally are vastly different. I marvel at my temerity in the past. It might not work
nowadays. I believe they teach languages with machines in laboratories  tape
recorder, suchlike: beyond me.
Yes, but when you were at school, during your career, you liked it, surely, and you
made wonderful friends, both amongst the staff and the students?
Well, I was spoilt to some extent: I seem almost always to have had, to have been
given the able boys. In those days, one could not matriculate, enter a profession,
without qualifying in one or more foreign languages. Poor wretches couldn’t easily
avoid me, much as they wanted to. Different now, I’m told: one can matriculate
purely in ice-cream subjects, never study any language, no mathematics, no science.
Ice-cream subjects! Well, you’ve got me mystified there, Mr Holtham, but before
we go into that I must take you up on the bit about always being given able boys.
Now, you may not recall that in the middle of the ’20s you had me in your form
for two years, trying to learn French, and my vocabulary and grammar and
accent could hardly be regarded as classic, and there were others as stupid as I 
well, almost. So you really must have had your share of troubles. But what’s this
about ‘ice-cream subjects’?
Subjects called ‘Social Studies’, ‘Social Science’, easy Ancient History instead of
Latin, Economics without Mathematics, General Science instead of real Physics and
Chemistry. Often no foreign language at all.
Are you suggesting  and regretting  that a valuable degree of precision in
mental training is lost these days because of a broadened approach, and with it,
perhaps, some rather more exact and necessary knowledge is lost as well?
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I think so.
I believe the curricula of those years, whilst perhaps relatively
unproductive, materially did much to develop and sharpen intellect, which must in
the long run pay dividends in enhanced brain power and therefore in other directions
as well.
And do you feel that your former pupils  many of them, of course, now very
distinguished people  do you think they owe anything to you?
No. No. Emphatically they do not. A pupil either has the initial ability or he has
not. What is important is the will to work, to reach a goal. Such pupils need little 
a little guidance, perhaps, but not much. All this modern nonsense about IQs. An
IQ does not show the will to work. (sound of chiming clock) Boys are often
latently, and potentially, far more able than their masters, though few masters admit
it. Some day they will excel and surpass their teachers. It was GB Shaw, you know,
who wrote ‘Those who can, do; those who cannot, teach.’ Masters  or some of
them  remain as humdrum, pedestrian folk, uttering feeble, often-repeated jokes to
their classes who are forced to laugh for peace’s sake.
Well, that’s  of course, comes out of your experience, Mr Holtham, but surely
pupils owe you something.
Well, the less bright ones, the slow starters, a little, perhaps. But the good ones owe
it all to themselves, I think. South Australians will be interested to know that my
own school in England, one boy, then sixteen years old, stood out at that age as
likely to have a brilliant career. It was John Mellis Napier. Of course, there surely
are good teachers: people with a strong sense of vocation, men and women. I’ve
met many, in independent schools and in the South Australian Education
Department. Schools are fortunate, indeed, which have such staffs.
Well, that’s very interesting, and you’ve certainly mentioned somebody who’s
fulfilled the early promise that you referred to. Now, from your other remarks,
would you say that teaching is difficult or disappointing?
No. By no means. Only, if I had my time over again, I think I’d have been more
friendly, less rigid – more human, in fact – for there was not and is not much wrong
with youth.
It was a famous headmaster who once said, ‘Boys are always
reasonable, masters sometimes, parents never.’ After interviewing parents he once
remarked, ‘I sometimes think that parents are the least suitable people to have
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children.’ Yes, parents can be difficult  particularly mothers, perhaps, but then I’m
a bachelor.
Yes (laughs), but, Mr Holtham, you seem a very happy sort of bachelor, and it’s
great to be here with you today at this delightful cottage of yours at Inman Valley
where we’re having this little chat together, but let me say that I’m sure you’re
right about being friendly and approachable as a schoolmaster, but in my
recollection you personally always were, and your sense of humour was quite
celebrated amongst the boys, and it was certainly distinctive. So I’m certain you
should have no regrets. Another thing, (clears throat) your success with
examination results with your students was quite renowned. Goodness, you even
got me through Leaving French  well, finally, that is. And now to your
retirement days: when did you finally take off the mortar board and the gown
which, incidentally, is my most abiding picture of you?
I’ve been in retirement for a full twenty years now.
And what made you choose the Pyrenees as your place of retirement?
When I was a boy it was rugged country, little known to tourists, all vineyards and,
in the distance, snow-crested mountains. Today, the village people are friendly and
courteous and the hospitality, even in the most humble inn, impressive. The cooking
is excellent. One might be offered first a saucer of hot roast chestnuts, then a bowl
of freshly-caught and fried Mediterranean sardines, an omelette, a bowl of salad, a
carafe of local wine, a mug of good coffee.
Yes; and what about frogs and snails and all that sort of thing?
Well, we have those too  and, indeed, yellow toadstools. One does one’s best; one
survives. If one’s offered snails  the last time, happily, I was offered them the meal
was out of doors and, sitting on the verandah, I was able to put the two-pronged fork
into each snail shell and, when nobody was looking, dropped the snail into the
geraniums behind me. As for the yellow toadstools, yes, the French make all kinds
of dishes out of fungi of one kind or another. I remember a peasant coming to see
me with a basket with a cloth over it and saying, ‘Will you come and have lunch
with my wife and me today?’ I said, ‘I would.’ And then he said, ‘See what I’ve
gathered,’ and he uncovered the basket, and I saw these terrible, terrible-looking
yellow fungi. And I said, ‘Are we going to have these?’ And he said, ‘Yes, yes, but
you mustn’t be greedy; you must leave some for my wife and myself.’ Well, I had
them and they were quite all right.
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Now, do they know anything about Australia, the French?
Nothing. Or almost nothing. Even a high government official remarked to me,
when he was signing some of my documents, ‘Australia: I’ve heard of it. It’s near
our New Caledonia, is it not?’ I told him he was right.
Yes. (laughs) We do get cut down to size in this kind of a way sometimes, don’t
we? It’s very mortifying. How about French children?
They are a delight. Naturally polite. They even thank the driver of a school bus
when they step out of the vehicle. They like being given Australian stamps, too, and
some of the older pupils flatter me by asking me to help with their English
homework. It’s commonly believed that I know English quite well. They all speak
not only French but Catalan. Saturday is not a holiday for schoolchildren; it’s
Thursday. And, of course, Sunday, then our village churches are crowded. Now, I
don’t think they’re ever empty, even by day.
And does nobody speak English, not even the educated?
No; it is very rare indeed to hear English spoken. I noticed once that, under LeaseLend, an American tractor had broken down and apparently instructions given to the
French for the running of the tractor were all, of course, in English  or in American
 and noone could start it. Finally, one of the peasants succeeded in wrenching off a
large piece of metal, and he came across to me in my cottage holding this in his
hand, a greasy, dirty piece of metal on which some words were stamped, and he said,
‘Sir, is it true that you can speak English?’ I said I spoke it. He then said, ‘Can you
read English?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I can.’ Then he said, ‘Will you tell me what these
words mean?’ Well, we had to take it to the kitchen to clean it up with some
kerosene so that the words came out more clearly. When the words came out I read
them out to him. They were these words in English: ‘Patent already granted in
Detroit and world patent applied for in Washington, DC. This part on no account to
be removed.’ I gravely translated it to him (interviewer laughs) and he lost all his
good manners then and began to use a number of French words which don’t appear
in dictionaries.
Just there you were very close, I understand, to the Spanish border, there in the
Pyrenees. Did this ever bring you anywhere near the bullfight arenas?
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That’s a good question, Richard. I’m nine miles from Spain and, indeed, we have
bullfights. In August we have them, the corrida de toros. I believe the French
Government officially is against them. So many of the people are of Spanish descent
that no-one seems to mind. And so we have the whole thing. We have the matadors
with their escorts and the picadores and the caballeros and in the beginning of a
bullfight all the gaily-coloured costumes. It’s very impressive indeed and, of course,
the whole thing is the thing that the bull’s deceived from first to last. He drives off
the first lot of people, he drives off even the picadores, he drives off the caballeros,
and then, finally, that solitary figure enters the arena, the matador with a scarlet
cloak and the rapier concealed in it. You know, if only bulls could have been trained
to watch the man and not the red cloth, they’d have long since come to an end. All
the same, you know, cruel as they are, we have to be careful not to criticise too
much. I’m not at all sure that our foxhunting in England, where the fox is (sound of
passing car) torn to pieces by the hounds, or even the coursing of hares, or the
hunting of deer in Devonshire and Scotland  I don’t know whether they’re not
equally cruel. But this I must say, that a bullfight is, of course, very exciting indeed.
This home of yours in the Pyrenees, Mr Holtham, must be a most enchanting
place to live, and yet one has the impression from you that you’re always very
glad indeed to come back to this Inman Valley, down here near Victor Harbor.
Well, yes. The ideal would be to spend seven months annually on the Spanish
frontier and five  say, from November ’til March  in South Australia or Western
Australia or in Queensland: I know them all. People in the Inman Valley have not
all travelled much.
They ask me, when I return, whether the French were
disappointed when they heard that Sturt had not won the football, and I reply, of
course, that the flags were all at half mast in Paris. But, after all, the French have
never heard of our Festival of Arts, nor even of the fountain in King William Street,
nor even of the Yankalilla Show. Like a missionary  or, rather, an ex-schoolmaster
 I do my best to instruct them and then, and then, come home.
END OF TAPE
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