He was a veray parfit gentil knight

I’d almost completed a first post about my new School, dominated by the personality of its Headmaster. I was looking for a piece of his writing to demonstrate his pompous English style, when I found a perfectly charming piece which demonstrates nothing of the kind. In homage to his memory and to introduce this man who must have influenced me as much as any male figure in my fatherless childhood, I reproduce it here in full from the School Magazine Standfast.
There was a boy in the school named Parfitt. Bill Erith could never mention his name without quoting from Chaucer’s Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

He was a veray parfit gentil knight

It applies to Bill as much as to any man.

HEAD MASTER’S LETTER

The Head’s Study, 30th October, 1957.

Dear Boys and Parents,

My letter this October will differ somewhat from the usual run. I want to give you some sound advice for your personal well-being ; and if I have to sit on the penitential stool awhile in the doing, doubtless I shall be the better for it.

What I have to say bears the authority of a Royal Commission and the backing of the Ministry of Education. It also has the seal of my own experience.

When I was at school I never so much as smoked a piece of cane ; I worshipped at the shrine of athletic fitness and had no urge to spoil my wind. On going up to University, however, I started to smoke a pipe, for reasons now much more clear. I quickly became an addict and my briar was rarely out of my mouth except during sleep. It is not an exaggeration to say that I would have sooner missed a meal than a pipe; and the time came when I could not study without puffing St. Bruno, my patron saint. And when I went overseas during the war among duty-free tobaccos an ounce a day became the rule.

And so I went gaily on until pulled up all-standing by illness in 1951 just as I needed to be my fighting fittest in starting the work I am now engaged in—Church and School—and in which I so greatly believe. A little reflection in hospital [for throat cancer] put the value of smoking at its true worth ; just another drug, making one less efficient and liable to produce serious illness. That is why for over five years now my pipes have been abandoned—and will remain so. I have chosen greater efficiency and, I believe, wisdom.

Now I wonder how I could have wasted so much hard-won money on smoke and ash. I fell, of course, through first-class advertising. Wishing to be the beau-ideal of manhood (a right and proper attitude), I saw pictures in Punch and similar papers of men from the “wide open spaces” on shikari [Urdu equivalent of Safari], building bridges, in club lounges, fishing, in university quadrangles, in cricket pavilion enclosures—sun-tanned gods to be worshipped by Young England. And all smoking beautiful pipes, imbibing inspiration from Three Nuns, or Parson’s Pleasure, or Dunhill’s No. 1 Mixture. I think, perhaps, Barrie’s “My Lady Nicotine” may have contributed, as, too, the fact that my father was a confirmed pipe smoker.

The appeal, you see, was that all real he-men smoked pipes (I never thought cigarettes stood for the same thing). I know better now. Far be it for me, a sinner, to chide others for the same fault ; all must decide for themselves. But I count it a duty to my boys, who should not have started smoking, to bust wide the fallacious idea that you must smoke to prove yourself a man. You needn’t. My idea of a first-class man is Jesus of Nazareth, and I have yet to learn of his being an addict to tobacco.

My advice to you to take or leave, boys, is not to start what may be as injurious as it certainly will be wasteful. Remember that, though you pull the damper out and push the damper in, the smoke will go up the chimney just the same.

Yours sincerely,

WILLIAM ERITH.

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When I knew him he was completely dedicated to the noble ideal of the Christian gentleman-warrior. This is from his Newport Grammar School, locally bound and printed:

And so this little book will offer to whosoever cares to read not only the history of an ancient and honourable school but a vision of its future. The motto of those who would achieve it is that that our Lord vouchsafed to Joshua, on whom it had fallen to lead his people to the Promised Land: “Quit you like men. Be strong. For I, thy God, am with you whithersoever thou goest.”

Maybe there will be some adventurers who will find herein a challenge to march with us. Such will find a welcome in our ranks whoever may be the leader. Omnes veniant [let them all come].