Remembering Arthur Douglas

Abstract

Americans who might wonder what inspired Monty Python or The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy need ook no further than England's public schools.

Arthur Douglas was teaching a class at Victoria Academy, on the Island of] ersey, when he noticed his students were distracted by the presence of the school's porter, standing in the door.

"The headmaster wishes to see you at your earliest convenience," the custodian/handyman announced.

"You mean right now?" asked Mr. Douglas. "Yes, sir!" was the reply.

Leaving the porter in charge of the class, he stepped over a large and formidable dog into the headmaster's office, made uncomfortable by a blazing fireplace.

'Tm glad we could keep this in the family," said the headmaster. "I can understand if you cannot afford a gold cigarette case, but gentlemen could at least offer ladies a cigarette from a silver one!"

It turned out that Mr. Douglas had committed the gross social sin ofleaving an entire carton of American cigarettes on a table at a party. (Rationing had just ended).

"They were always having parties," he told me.

This was not the first time a faculty party had gotten him in trouble. He had received an invitation from the headmaster's wife, which read: "Mrs. XYZ requests the presence of Mr. Douglas at ..... " to which he replied: "I should be delighted to accept."

When he subsequently found he had done something awful, he consulted "the colonel," one of the older teachers who appeared to know about such things.

"Replying to a third person invitation in the first person-it isn't done!" the colonel explained.

So, when he was encouraged to apply at St. Mark's School of Dallas by two former colleagues who had already gone there, Douglas made the decision to come to Texas, where he would live the rest of his long life.

Dallas in 1955 was a very different place from Dallas today.

St. Mark's, established by Episcopalians, was always a progressive institution, but the city at the time maintained some traditions that led to a degree of culture shock.

Initially Arthur Douglas' responsibilities at St. Mark's included art, Spanish, English literature and handwriting. This included enduring "Hark, hark the lark," from Shakespeare's Cymbeline, rendered in flat Texas accents, at break-neck speed, with "Doodlebugs" substituted for "Mary-buds":

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings, And Phoebus 'gins arise,

His steeds to water at those springs On chalic'd flowers that lies;

 And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes;

With everything that pretty is, My lady sweet, arise:

Arise, arise!

After three years, he was transferred to the science department, where he taught first- through eighth-grade science for several years.

In 1963 he commenced teaching seventh-grade life science, which would become his signature course until his retirement in 1982. He made full use of the numerous St. Mark's resources, incorporating into his curriculum a greenhouse, built in 1960, and the Texas Native Plant collection in the Math/Science Courtyard, both of which he designed, and, to a significant degree, stocked.

In the mid 197's, he was appointed Curator of Living Materials. The collection by that time included an aviary, which he designed in 1969. His students had the privilege of observing Mendel's Laws oflnheritance illustrated with a carefully maintained colony of budgies. Each year, birds of different colors would be...

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References

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