Reminiscences: William H Paradice (Pupil, enrolled 1883)

I was the winner of No 4 scholarship when the School was first established in 1883. The other four winners of the first five scholarships have now passed beyond and left me the sole survivor. Your invitation card reminds one that it will be the Seventieth Annual Speech Day, and I may be the only person living who was present on the occasion of the first one. If there are others I would like to get in touch with them. The Second Session pupils had not then entered the School, and none of the original staff are, to my knowledge, still on deck. The recital of a few facts, still in my memory, may be interesting, although it makes me feel sorry that advancing age will prevent me from being present to compare the facts, then and now.

Mr (later Sir) G H Reid was then the Premier of New South Wales and Mr J H Carruthers (later knighted) was his Minister for Education. He was a graduate of Sydney University (I think in Classics), and Mr A B Piddington , our teacher, himself probably the most brilliant graduate of Sydney University, to that date, in Classics and Modern Languages, thought that Mr Carruthers’ presidency over the first Speech Day was worthy of being made a “special occasion.” Accordingly, he deputed myself, Frank Doak and Arthur Eedy the three top boys in his senior Latin Class, to compose a Latin oration , which I as No 1 was to read. But as we had been less than three weeks on our first Latin authors, we needed some assistance to grace our efforts and make them presentable; and so he found us a quotation, I think from Horace, which was, if I remember correctly, “Longas o utinam, dux bone, ferias Praestes Hesperiae/” and which we were told would be translated in everyday English as “‘Wouldst thou, oh/ esteemed leader, grant long holidays to us.” Anyhow, it did the trick, and we were given a week’s extra holidays, more than were usual for the ordinary public schools. The precedent was thus established, and, I understand, has never since been departed from, that the staff and pupils of the New South Wales State Public High Schools enjoy an extra week’s holiday than is granted to the staff and pupils of New South Wales ordinary public schools.

Mr Piddington continued his interest in the School for many years after he gave up actual teaching, and those who were fortunate enough to hear his last address at a Speech Day not long before his death will agree that Shakespeare’s words, which he quoted in eulogy of the late Dr Badham, applied equally to himself:

He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one, Lofty and sour to those who loved him not; But to those men who knew him, Sweet as Summer.

I regret also the passing of Harry Halloran, who was a Second Session pupil in 1884 ; always maintained the deepest interest in the School; and although while there he was never a show scholar, for many years he was always a welcome guest and a wise counsellor in the deliberations of the shrewdest business man.

I wish you personally all good health and prosperity, and the School, under your Headmastership, every success in scholarship and sport.

Yours very sincerely,

W H Paradice.

The Record, November 1954, pp 47-49.