Frederick William Sanderson - Death and Posthumous Biographies

Death and Posthumous Biographies

Sanderson collapsed and died of a heart attack on 1922-06-15 at a meeting of the National Union of Scientific Workers (with Wells as the chairman) in the old Botanical Theatre, University College, London, to whom he had just given an address entitled "The duty and service of science in the new era".

As mentioned in the introduction, Sanderson was the inspiration for the character of Henderson, the progressive headmaster of the fictional Caxton School in Wells' novel Joan and Peter. After Sanderson died, Wells was initially involved in the official biography of Sanderson, entitled Sanderson of Oundle and co-authored by over fifty staff of the school, whose proceeds were to go to the school. However, Sanderson's widow objected to the way that Wells portrayed her husband, and Wells left the project in favour of writing his own biography, The Story of a Great Schoolmaster. It was published in 1923 by the same periodicals that had serialized Joan and Peter, The New Leader and The New Republic, and published in book form in 1924. It is also in volume 24 of the Atlantic Edition of the Works of H.G. Wells, immediately following the second part of Joan and Peter, where, incidentally, the character name of the fictional headmaster changed from Henderson to Westinghouse. In the biography, Wells wrote:

Of all the men I have met only one has stirred me to a biographical effort. This one exception is F.W. Sanderson, for many years the headmaster of Oundle School. I think him beyond question the greatest man I have ever known with any degree of intimacy. To tell his story is to reflect upon all the main educational ideas of the last half-century, and to revise our conception of the process and purpose of the modern community in relation to education.

—Wells 1924, p. 1

Wells's biography and the school-staff-written biography portray Sanderson differently: Wells (who deplored the neglect of the Temple of Vision after Sanderson's death) concentrated upon Sanderson's ideals, whereas the staff concentrated upon Sanderson's actual work at the school. The contrast between the two accounts of Sanderson was described by William George Walker, in his 1956 history of the school, thus:

The composite volume, as was natural, erred on the side of hero-worship, whereas Mr Wells's showed, as some think, characteristic lapses from good taste. Somehow, between them, the real man has got overlaid and Sanderson is on his way to becoming a legendary figure.

—Walker 1956, p. 570

In 2002 Richard Dawkins, an old boy of the school, was invited to the school to present the first in what was to be a series of annual Oundle Lectures. Michael Downes, a modern language teacher at the school and the school's recently appointed Sanderson Fellow (more on which later), suggested to Dawkins that he use Sanderson as the subject of his lecture. Dawkins did so, and just over a week later, wrote an article for The Guardian based upon his lecture (Dawkins 2002), which he then included as a chapter in his book A Devil's Chaplain. Historian A. N. Wilson called it a "joyous essay" in which Dawkins quoted "quite extensively" from the sermons that Sanderson had given in the school's chapel. Wilson noted that Dawkins' account, whilst focussing upon Sanderson's inspirational qualities with respect to science and engineering, that Wilson likened to Dawkins' own, had stripped from the quotations (as compared to the texts of those sermons to be found in the 1923 official biography) any mention of religion, despite Sanderson's background in theology. Wilson observed that "some would consider it dishonest" of Dawkins to have omitted this, since from Dawkins' nonetheless laudatory and moving biography the reader would not have learned that Sanderson was a religious man. Mark T. Coppenger, professor of Christian Apologetics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, was one person who did in fact consider it so, saying that Dawkins' biography of Sanderson, which he too described as one that lauded Sanderson, was, in its omissions, "dishonest but understandable".

Dawkins is one of several recent commentators who have compared Sanderson to, or put him in the place of, modern headmasters. He observed that today Sanderson would have been headmaster of "a large, mixed comprehensive" and would have been "contemptuous of the pussyfooting, lawyer-driven fastidiousness of Health and Safety, and the accountant-driven league-tables that dominate modern education and actively encourage schools to put their own interests before those of their pupils". David E. Hellawell, professor of Education Management at the University of Central England observed that the headmaster-as-autocrat attitude, related in one history of Oundle School by the statement that Sanderson's masters were required to "see eye to eye with him; if they did not they must go", would land a modern British headmaster in the local newspaper, and possibly in jail.

Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, in his 1979 book The Public School Phenomenon, praised Sanderson even though he was highly critical of public school education in general.