The migration of S. Thomas’ College from Mutwal to Mt. Lavinia

(Excerpted from Selected Journalism by HAJ Hulugalle)

The Editor has invited me to write something about the migration of St. Thomas’ College 50 years ago from Mutwal to Mount Lavinia. To do so I would have to begin at the beginning of my connection with the College.

I joined the Mutwal school as a boarder in January 1908. Among the boys I came to know then were Arthur Ranasingha, always a keen and diligent scholar, and R. S. de Saram, already showing the promise which made him the best all-rounder, in work, sports and leadership, produced by S. Thomas’.

The numbers of the Upper School and Lower School together in those days could not have been more than 400, and Warden Stone kept track of every boy. There were probably a 150 boarders in the four large dormitories and Winchester which housed the smaller boys. E. Navaratnam, perhaps the greatest of Thomian house-masters, wrote in the Centenary Number of the school magazine that “the boarding house system, then as now, was the focal point around which all College activities revolved.” This was because the boarders came from all parts of the Island, and formed a compact and disciplined community.

The dormitory masters were, besides Mr. Navaratnam, two Englishmen, the Rev. Handel Smith and C. W. B. Arnold, and O. P. Gooneratne. Miss Treason was Matron and was also in charge of Winchester. Many of those who were in the Matron’s dormitory, like Sam Elapata, Roy Jayasundara and Gordon Jan, are dead. A close friend of over 60 years, Leo Goonewardene, kinsman and near neighbour at Kurunegala, had a school career parallel to mine. He still preserves the elegant stance which distinguished his batting when he played for the College. He rarely misses Old Boys’ Day or the Royal-Thomian cricket match.

Mr. Christie-David, my first class-master, was something of an artist. He set a standard in map-making of which the Survey Department would not be ashamed and which some of the boys managed to reach, no doubt with help from their elders. He believed in the tonic effects of an occasional caning and sent up a few boys every Friday afternoon to stand in the line in the Warden’s study and receive their medicine. I had only a single experience of this treatment with a modest dose of four cuts.

Our new science master, C. W. B. Arnold, taught us enough chemistry in the Upper Third (fifth standard) to cope with any paper set for the Junior Cambridge (eighth standard) and laid a good foundation which stood in good stead in later years.

Mr. R. W. Evans was the head master of the Lower School, and he saw to it that no boy was issued a new exercise book unless the used one, which was handed in, had been neatly kept. He was a good musician and played the organ at the Cathedral which was in a part of the College premises. The boarders attended matins there every morning before breakfast.

Both Arnold and Evans afterwards joined business firms and prospered. The Rev. G. B. Ekanayake, the Principal of the Divinity School, was part of the College establishment. Warden Stone, the Sub-Warden (first the Rev. O. J. C. Beven), Mr. Ekanayake and sometimes Bishop E. A. Copleston, preached the sermons at Sunday evensong which were well above the heads of most of the boys.

Before I reached the Upper School I left St. Thomas’ and joined my brother at Trinity. Four generations of my family have now been to Trinity. When I went there the Principal was A.G. Fraser, a dynamic Scot who, like Arnold of Rugby, believed in a muscular Christianity. There were more activities at Trinity than at St. Thomas’ with perhaps less emphasis on scholarship even though Trinity had some superb teachers like W.S. Senior, N.P. Campbell and Lemuel. Life was less cloistered there and one got to know more about what was going on in the country.

In the midst of many distractions my work suffered. So I went back to St. Thomas’, to work harder and try to catch up with boys from whom I had parted company a few years earlier. By their standard of scholarship, I was gawky. My Latin was mediocre and I could not construe Virgil with the ease of those, like L.W. de Silva, who had been taught by C.V. Pereira and the Warden himself. How I wish I had had the benefit of the discipline exercised by C.V. Pereira, Navaratnam and O.P. Gooneratne!

I had no trouble with Mathematics and Science, and did not feel disgraced when I was placed below Ranasinha and R. S. de Saram in the Arndt Memorial English Prize for which I made a determined try. There was a crop of brilliant students in the College Form who had read widely. It was, for example said that E.B. Wikramanayake had read every book in the school library.

Many of the science students got distinctions in Latin in the Senior Cambridge Examination. Latin was a sine qua non in those days. The brighter boys had their eye on the English University Scholarships awarded on the results of the Inter Arts and Inter Science Examinations of the London University. To sit for them one had to pass the London Matriculation or gain an exemption from it, which meant passing in an extra language, ‘dead’ or `living’, and in most schools it was Latin. Every Thomian knew some Latin which was started very early. It was compulsory even in the Five A Form, a special enclave for non-scholars.

The story is told of S.J.K. Crowther, formerly Editor of the Ceylon Daily News”, of his first encounter with D.S. Senanayake, our first Prime Minister. Crowther was a new boy and at a test examination he turned to his burly neighbour, whose name he did not know, and enquired surreptitiously how the Latin noun “res” was declined. Senanayake whispered: “yes, rem, yetis, rete.” When his paper was scrutinised by Mr. Handel Smith, Crowther was in no position to give the source of his error.

Some of the most famous teachers in Thomian history moved with the school from Mutwal to Mt. Lavinia; among them C. V. Pereira and Navaratnam (both old Trinitians), O. P. Gooneratne and H.J. Wijesinghe, (Royalists), Leonard Arndt, H.D. Jansz, E.S.D. Ohlmus and George Amarasinghe. The Sub-Warden, the Rev. P. L. Jansz, who had acquired the gift of tongues was a fascinating teacher. He knew more Sinhalese than the Sinhalese boys and more Tamil than the Tamil boys. In addition, he knew French, German, Italian, Spanish and Hebrew.

He was supposed to teach the Inter class English texts but he wandered into so many exciting fields of knowledge that the less diligent boys were never able to master their texts. George Amarasinghe, still hail and hearty in his eighties, was a great mathematics teacher, fully in the tradition of his predecessors like Warden Miller, J.R. Jayatilaka and T.N. Nathanielsz.

I was a prefect of Copleston House which was separated from the main precincts by a noisome jungle. Mr. H. J. Wijesinghe, our dormitory master was Captain in command of the Cadet Corp. He kept a pony which he used to ride at the head of the column during route marches. In his absence some of the more daring boys initiated themselves into the art of horseback-riding. C. H. Davidson was one of the boys in Copleston House in my time.

It is sometimes said, especially by those of the older generation, that a Sixth Form or College Form boy 50 years ago had a better education than the average undergraduate of today. Those who left after the Inter had no difficulty in getting the London degree by private study. The Colombo University College was started in 1920 and the University twenty years later. Most of us were quite ignorant of Ceylon history and proficiency in Sinhalese and Tamil were rare. But one could say with confidence that the discipline of the subjects taught, and taught with thoroughness, had a greater character-forming influence than the loaded syllabuses of today. A boy sitting for the Junior Cambridge, for example, was more at home with the English Language than many a graduate of today.

Even the most ardent nationalism must now realize that, under modern conditions, every educated person needs to have a command of English or other world language which unlocks the treasure house of knowledge and which neither Sinhalese or Tamil will be able to do for a long time to come. Rich in certain respects, our national languages are inadequate to meet the demands of higher education, especially in science and technology. There is thus no alternative to an effective bilingualism.

It is noteworthy that the bigots who would exclude English are the first to ensure that their own children get it! With English as the medium of instruction, the schools were available to surmount the barriers of language and geography. Communal differences were dissolved and it meant nothing that a boy came from Batticaloa or Galle. The price paid for this unity was the gulf that was created between the elite and the masses.

Yet, St. Thomas’ produced many of the political leaders of the first half of the century. They were adept at mixing with the masses and found no difficulty in haranguing them in the language which the populace understood. Indeed they seemed to have learnt something from Cicero and Demosthenes in the demagogue’s art.

There is of course much greater control of education by the government now, and the schools are no longer autonomous. The official policy seems to be to gear the pace of the caravan to the speed of the slowest camel. The flow of brilliant European teachers has been arrested. Classes are often unwieldy in number. Good books in the national languages are few. The spectre of unemployment leads to early specialization but science teachers are lacking.

In these circumstances, if a boy does not wish to be left behind he must not only be prepared to work hard; he must plan his program of studies with the best advice available to him. Unless this challenge is met successfully, the justification for private schools will disappear.

(This was first published in the S. Thomas’ College Jubilee Number in 1968)

R.S. de Saram was one of the first boys Hulugalle got to know when he entered St Thomas’ College Mutwal in 1908.