'For the years to come, when the war is over, it will be well to have some visible memorial; some symbol of the redemption of the Great War, and of the heroic part old boys have taken in it; some record of the great struggle from out of which the new spirit will rise; some record of the part the whole school took in this; some record of the boys who have fallen; some thanksgiving symbol for all who have given their service. And for this it is proposed to build a chapel. But when the time comes we shall be sad to leave our present building. It is a poor building, but it is very rich in its associations. The services in this temporary chapel have taken a large part in the building of the school. Simple as is the Tent in the Wilderness, yet we have hoped that the Spirit of God would come and dwell in it. We have hoped that the Divine Spirit would come into all the activities and outlook of the school in its diverse occupations, whether they be literary or whether they be scientific or technical. And we have always looked onward to the day when a permanent chapel should be built, symbolic of the Divine Omnipresence for worship and for sacrifice.
'And this is what is in mind to do—and yet I confess to a certain amount of fear. A lofty, spacious chapel I have had no doubt would at the right moment be built by the Grocers' Company. Just before the war the building of this chapel was emerging as the next great building to undertake—a chapel, such as a college chapel with stalls, as for private service. But now we look beyond this. We want something different, more open. A lofty, spacious chapel to form the nave—no fixed seats, the clear open space; quiet, still, "urgent with beauty." Joined to this the choir and sanctuary, with aisles round the three sides of it, forming an ambulatory. Round these aisles, on the walls and in the windows, the recorded memory of the boys who have fallen. An east window, a reredos, stalls, altar. A chapel, abundant in space, not for the mind to sit down in, but for the mind to move about in, for contemplation, for dwelling in the infinite, for piercing through the night, for vision, for the clear spirit of thankfulness, for communion with the saints, our own young saints among them. So we hope. As you wander round the aisles there will pass before you the memorial of those boys who have cast down their lives for the rescue of man.'
§ 3
I cannot guess how Sanderson, had he lived, would have resolved this conflict between his House of Vision and his Great Chapel, just as I can hazard no opinion of the ultimate form his interpretation of Christianity would have taken. But the recognition of these conflicts is fundamental to my conception of the man and his significance.
He stands for a great multitude reluctant to abandon many of the familiar phrases of the Christian use and eager to read new and deeper meanings into them. But he never took 'holy orders'; he knew the days of the priest, except for evil, were past, and it is only by its being born again as a House of Vision that he could anticipate his chapel with contentment. The time has come for mankind to choose plainly between the priest and the teacher.
Some six months after Sanderson's death I went to Oundle and visited the Yarrow Memorial, that abortive first House of Vision. Except for a bronze statue of a boy by Lady Scott that Sanderson had liked and bought, it was as I had seen it with Sanderson a year before. It was still, deserted, and I suppose I must count it dead. The time-charts had not been carried on. The collection of inventions, the display of humanity's growth, were still represented by empty cases. The statue was intended for the school chapel, but meanwhile it had been dumped in the House of Vision as a convenient vacant place for such dumping. The bronze boy is in an eager pose; there is duty to be done and danger to be faced and a great creative effort to be made. 'Send me!' he said, in that empty, neglected House of Vision. But the hand that would have put that dart to the bowstring and aimed it at work and service was there no more.
Building operations upon the chapel were proceeding slowly. The rising walls were very like the rising walls of the sort of church for respectable people that gets built in Surbiton or Beckenham. I gather that in all probability it will even carry the debt customary in such cases. The new headmaster was, I found, a thoroughly pleasant man who came not from an elementary school but from Eton, and had never met Sanderson in his life and knew nothing of his work. He seemed disposed to regard Sanderson as a bit of a crank and to be intelligently puzzled by his originalities. I felt assured that when at last that old corrugated-iron building is abandoned for the new chapel there would be pews in the new nave in spite of Sanderson, and services of an altogether normal type and no nonsense of walking about and thinking or anything of that sort.
But though I have seen the House of Vision at Oundle dead and vacant as a museum skull, yet I know surely that neither Sanderson nor his House of Vision are in any real sense dead at all. A day will certainly come when his name will be honoured above all other contemporary schoolmasters as the precursor of a new age in education and human affairs. In that age of realisation every village will be dominated by its school, with its library and theatre, its laboratories and gymnasium, every town will converge upon its cluster of schools and colleges, its research buildings and the like, and it will have its Great Chapel, its House of Vision as its crown and symbol even as the cathedral was the crown and symbol of the being and devotion of the medieval city. And therein Sanderson's stout hopefulness and pioneer thrustings will be kept in remembrance by generations that have come up to the pitch of understanding him.