Look what somebody found in the attic: a 1987 newspaper clipping from “the Brazil Herald”

Aiglon alum Jim Heidenreich posted this clipping on the school’s FB alumni page, with the following caption:

I stumbled on this article from a 1987 newspaper (The Brazil Herald) where my father was working in São Paulo. You might be interested to know what it has to say!
The article’s headline is “Prepping in Europe: The discipline is tough and the work is tougher but it’s strictly high marks for Europe’s best boarding schools.”

Thank you, Jim

About those cold showers...

Back when John Corlette held the reins at Aiglon, all students were supposed to take quick cold showers in the morning, after some brief outdoor exercise (PT). It turns out that, according to reliable sources, most of the girls laughed it off and took hot showers instead. But the boys sucked it up and took the plunge. Soon after JC retired, the practice was stopped. Phillip Parsons said he was told that the icy showers were dangerous—they could lead to sudden cardiac events. But JC thought they served an important purpose. The writer of a recent article in The Atlantic, a highly regarded American magazine, takes JC’s side. For all of you who think those cold showers were just a sadistic eccentricity, read on: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/cold-showers/605557/

The Recollections of Chas MacLean Cochand

John Corlette
A memory

It is almost impossible to describe the impact of going to Aiglon. I was a pudgy bespectacled 14-year-old youth from Canada, unsophisticated and un-travelled and nothing prepared me for [John Corlette] and the first meditation of the September term in 1965; but I will come to that.

The school was unprepossessing, though as new boy I had a warm welcome from Group Captain and Mrs. Watts [Group Captain Roy Watts flew with the RAF in The Battle Of Britain in WWII], and some disdain from my new roommates, Tom Fehr, Jonathan Cogswell, Mike McCabe and Steve Axon (I think).

I’d flown from Brussels, alone. The school had advised that as a 4th former, normally I’d be expected to make my own way from Geneva to Chesieres-Villars, but as happenstance would have it, a school master, Mr. Phillips, was collecting a 3rd former, Gray Muzzy, off the same flight and was able to collect me as well. Thank heavens for that!

My first few hours were passed in a panic. My parents had offered me Aiglon; as Canadian friends and neighbours were sending two boys I knew quite well. Derek Morton and Nipper Dunn. Of course I knew Bobby (he’d been rusticated [Brit: expelled/suspended] the previous year for some unexplained exploit with Bharat Jhangiani); but when I checked the list of students on the Alpina [an Aiglon dormitory/house] notice board, Nipper and Derek’s names were not there. I was devastated. I had no idea that they were safely tucked up in Belvedere under the charismatic care of TBO’H and Miss Trott (or that there were two other houses, Clairmont and the mysterious ‘Chalet’ somewhere in the village).

Fortunately Bobby was in Alpina. He came in at some point to kick the lock off Cogswell’s bedside cabinet and ‘borrow’ his peanut butter. The only thing that appeared to be standing between Bob and total chaos in the house was the quiet spoken house captain Martin Yates who seemed to have everything under control and a direct line to 'the Boss'. 

The concept of cold showers was novel, and the idea of an early morning run followed by ‘beer and cigarettes’ parade’ of physical jerks worse. And why a cold shower? And green soap? And that tiny towel? It was cold. I didn’t fully appreciate the dangers of the obligatory open window at 2,000 metres until November when I found the water in my glass had frozen.

But nothing prepared me for John Corlette. I’d seen his photo in the brochure and read it from cover to cover, but as I filed into Belvedere for ‘meditation’ I had no idea. The hall was tired and needed painting, the metal chairs were battered and creaky and the noise as old chums met and chattered was phenomenal. Then there was hushing and a modicum of order as everyone finally sat down.

J.C. was slightly stooped, and wore a tweed jacket over a sleeveless jumper. He seemed too small for his clothes, but he was tanned and when he mounted the stage and turned to look at us, the silence deepened. The stage was bare but for a lectern, a table and a bizarre speaker for the phonograph. J.C. explained that the heart of Aiglon was the Meditation and then with a soft penetrating voice proceeded to hypnotise 128 noisy, smelly boys and young men.

It was his manner of total command and confidence. He radiated power and his eyes drew you in, deep pools of thought, windows on his spirituality. He began with toes, and then feet shuffled, bottoms squirmed, hands folded, shoulders straight, cough (and everyone coughed) breathe deep and listen with his mellifluous voice and slowly the testosterone was stilled and there was real, deep silence and he spoke, and we listened. I wish I could remember but it was profound and like the pebble in the quiet pool it rippled through your mind.

He played music and then, slowly we awoke. Noise and boys resumed. A burly Mr. McColville shouted incomprehensible nonsense about basketball. A nut-brown little Mr. Berry announced something about expeditions. The head boy warned something about church on Sunday and then we were filing out. I had maths with Mr. Roddy in Alpina, followed by history with the Group Captain and French with Mr. Agier.

I was a little taken aback by Alan Kitz in French. His world of chaos seemed a far cry from J.C.’s spiritual depths. But slowly and effectively I was won over by one man’s view of preparing for life. It was an engaging and heady mix of muscular Christianity tempered by Kurt Hahn and a frontal assault on all my senses and prejudices at the same time. Who could explain the magic of exploring the mountains under the scrutiny of D.? How could you understand the undercurrent of mysticism and mystery that emanated from J.C., Lady Forbes and Dr. Doris Odlum?

Aiglon was a magical collection of misfits and that included the staff. Cowboy Bob taught art. Mr. Harris told war stories and drank in the Chalet. Tiffer Reynolds was sane and charming while TBO’H was quite sensible and terrifying. Black Mark! Mr. Phillip’s geography classes were chaotic.

Compared with my quiet rural school in remote Ste.-Adele, Quebec; Aiglon’s students all seemed to have escaped from somewhere. All those eccentric English boys! Who could explain Edwin Pollard and Harry Summers? Simon Murray-Wells and Robin Bayford entertained Fritz Koch to sherry most evenings in the top floor of Clairmont and I certainly remember Taylor Dinerman running away just before Meditation. He flitted past me completely buck naked and into the village. Alastair Crooke!  How was Louis de Veauce able to be so good at chess? Music was exploding from England, but we asked: Was the Sixth Race better than Just a Few (or was it the Esthetics?) and where did Mike Leonard get the sitar? Why were there so many asthmatics? Hugh Astley? Richard Trafford had a cavalry sabre and would practice slashing thrown fruit. Very messy. In the basement at Alpina, a boy called Jago was building a huge black Czech motorbike. There was some consternation when in the summer term, he completed his work, fired it up and left for England. I knew he was going. We all knew. ‘Groupie’ was astonished.

Why did John Moodie come from South Africa and Chris Master from Oz? Did all the heads of state of emerging African nations send their sons to Aiglon? Was Phillip Mackonnen really Haile Selassie’s grandson? Edwin Nasser? Robin Mycock?

Even the Americans were interesting. Did Todd Barbey and Karl Clark really know how to surf? The Yeagers were very odd and what about Rob Donnell? Or Randy Tucker and Pat McDonnell? Why did Louis P want to run a shop? Was Stephen Dizard’s father really the CIA spy chief in Warsaw? Was what's-his-name, the Crown Prince of Rumania, really allowed to wear a gun for P.T. in case he was attacked?

I went to Milan with Mr. Boas, Antony Haggi and Eric Friedl to hear von Karajan direct La Cavalieri Rusticana at La Scala. On another outing, with a group of some 30 schoolboys, I climbed on [seal] skins to the fabled monastery of St. Bernard. The weather turned and we were trapped there for two days and food had to be dropped from a ski plane. I still remember the net baskets of school bread breaking on impact.

What was a Long Expedition ( and why Dijon?), a Bouquetin award and why was the Dependence out of bounds? How could J.C. afford a Bentley? What about Green badges, pocket money and fines for tipping chairs, leaving lights on, and flicking towels. Why did Dr. Méan have to check my testicles? Were the Armaillie de Conche really local musicians?

I learned to ski in deep powder, to taste and breathe the snow. I embraced the mountains in my blood. Dom, Monte Rosa, Allalinhorn to name some embedded in my heart. Broke my leg training for the ADISR ski race. Monsieur Gysin apologised and said I was too heavy to carry and sent Tom Clark for hot chocolate and a blood luge. In the summer term, I swooped down the 27 kilometres of the Col des Mosses on a bike. It was freedom and responsibility.

There was a rhythm to the school. A deep thread that grew in me as I woke each morning to see and enjoy the Dents du Midi. No boy of 14 is spiritual by choice, but the focus of the school and the dream of its founder was burrowing deep in my soul. The heady mixture of mountain and mysticism and rough boyhood captured me and keeps me still. Through the years, I spent more time with J.C. There were ups and downs, mistakes and triumphs. Initial fear turned to puzzlement and then respect. Deep respect. I never knew him, or understood him, but I knew he was sure, his vision bright and his command total. He became more frail, and skiing with him became rare, but there were moments of total, blissful thralldom when in conversation, he’d smile and his eyes twinkled and his charm and intellect flooded your senses and you just marvelled. He was extraordinary.

Church became more and more meaningful and the hymns will stay with me to the end. Steak and all the frites [french fries] you can eat Sunday night. Molasses stirred into yoghurt for breakfast. Very smelly sleeping bags. English comics like The Dandy. It was always cold in the ‘bogs’ [lavatories].

I never understood the bread, baked once a month in Clairmont. The school was eclectic, such a mixture of odd and unexplained. Mr. Linde was a worry. Bretaye was glorious. I still like Sugus. D.B. introduced me to Socialism, the Labour party and the Financial Times. I never bought it, but he opened my mind. How do you quantify the importance of a Bibi or Joyce?

I was amazed, sceptical, and then consumed. The wonder of it all. A disciple and defender by the end. Committed to a man and his ideal and what he built in a small village in the Alps. Look at what he sent forth across the world and marvel.

Thank you.

C.M.C.

4.12.08

It's not just about our luck in life; it's also about the luck we create for others.

Koome Martin Gikunda, a scholarship student from Kenya, graduated from Aiglon in 1999.  He says his time on the Mountain completely changed the trajectory of his life. Certainly, Koome's subsequent journey has been nothing short of remarkable. Last year, he was asked to deliver the school's commencement address. Here is his story in his own words:

Thanks to Steve McCrea for editing and forwarding the video.

A tribute to longtime Aiglon English teacher "Teddy" Senn

Teddy Senn was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1928 and moved to the UK as a teenager. He acquired English as a second language but learned to speak it flawlessly. He arrived at Aiglon in the 1960s and taught English language and literature there for several decades. Actor Michel Gill (House of Cards, Mr. Robot) credits him with first getting him on a stage, to perform a Shakespearean play. The following is an obituary for Teddy written by Wall Street Journal editor Eric Gibson, one of his students. It gives the reader a good sense of the sort of education young men and women received at Aiglon back in the day. 

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Gustav Theodore "Teddy” Senn (1928–2013)

There's a memorable exchange at the beginning of "A Man For All Seasons,” a play filled with memorable exchanges, and one that Teddy taught at O-Level [a British standardized exam]. It occurs between Sir Thomas More, the doomed protagonist, and Richard Rich, a young opportunist who sees More as his ticket to fame, fortune and power at the court of Henry VIII. 
  
Recognizing that Rich is bad news, More tries to steer him out of his orbit into teaching, assuring him that he would make "a fine teacher. Perhaps even a great one.” 

"And if I was, who would know it?” Rich asks. Replies More: "You, your pupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that.” 

Teddy was not a world-renowned figure—nor did he wish to be. But as the postings on Facebook and the many e-mail exchanges in the wake of his passing have attested, to his students Teddy was a legend, one of that rare breed of educator whose mark and memory stay with you down the decades. 

Gentle, courtly, erudite, and possessed of an impish wit and a taste for the well-turned pun, Teddy arrived at Aiglon with his family in September 1966. Over the next 33 years he would teach O- and A-Level English and serve as a Houseparent in Alpina, Clairmont and Exeter, Deputy Headmaster and Senior Master. Retired, he undertook to write the official history of the school. But this brief sketch scarcely captures the extent of Teddy's contribution. He was one of the Aiglon stalwarts, that group of singular personalities who, along with John Corlette, did so much to define the character and tone of Aiglon in its early decades.

As a teacher, Teddy did double duty. On the first day of our Fifth Form O-Level English Literature class, he announced that since exam success depended not only on what you knew but how you expressed it, he would cover both. So where other teachers would have confined themselves to the explication of Shakespeare, Milton and the other assigned texts, Teddy coupled that with instruction in expository writing. Our papers would come back marked up with notes to use fewer words, choose more appropriate ones, avoid repetition, eschew the likes of "very” and "nice”—"meaningless words,” he called them, dismissively—and much else. It was hard going, but this revelation of language as a precision tool as well as a marvelously rich and supple creative instrument instilled in some of us a lifelong love of words and writing. Even without igniting that spark, Teddy's injunctions equipped his charges with an indispensable skill. The written word still matters, even in the age of Twitter. 

But what made Teddy's teaching unique was its moral dimension. There was no separation between who he was and what he did for a living. He didn't puncha clock; English literature was the warp and weft of his life. It shaped his worldview, informed his Meditations and inflected his personal interactions outside the classroom. This meant that, more than simply communicating a body of knowledge, Teddy imparted a set of values. You need to know this canon, was his unspoken message. It is a bedrock of civilization. We all have a stake in keeping it alive. 

Then there was what you might call the Joseph Conrad factor. The author of "Lord Jim” and other masterworks was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Poland in 1857. He didn't become fluent in English until he was in his twenties, but went on to become one of its greatest prose stylists.

English was Teddy's second language, too. He was Swiss, and had started life speaking Swiss German. Yet to us young tyros he seemed to know every word in the Oxford Dictionary, and was so intimately familiar with Shakespeare that, as a group of us demonstrated one day in a brief, after-class parlor game, when quoted a single line of dialogue he could instantly identify the play, character, act and scene to which it belonged. Faced with such a sweeping command of your own language and literary culture in someone not native to them, you felt a certain pressure to step up your game. 

Teddy could have taught at a university but undoubtedly shaped more young minds by getting to them earlier at Aiglon. At a reunion in the late 1970s I found myself chatting with Mike McCabe and Richard Sears, two graduates of my era. Mike was then on the staff of a U.S. Senator in Washington, Richard was a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, and I was beginning my career in arts journalism in New York. The conversation turned to our old English teacher, and soon we were comparing notes on his influence. One saw the same thing in the recent testimonials on Facebook. Dozens of different people, dozens of completely different lives, each one touched in some way by Teddy. Not a bad public, that. 

Godspeed, Teddy Senn.

Eric Gibson
Aiglon College, Class of '72