Tim Francis was cast as Buttons in a Yard production of Cinderella last July. It was an impromptu affair, staged by Helen, a Down's Syndrome member of Westminster PHAB with a passion for recreating musicals she has watched on video - literally, line by line.
Now, while Tim is sweet-natured, not even those who love him best would describe him as blessed with infinite patience; while he is big-hearted and brave, he also embarrasses easily. There was no interval in the production, and Tim was on stage the entire two hours it lasted. He huffed and puffed a good deal and indeed at one point tried to make a break for freedom, when the director's very fierce eyes were briefly averted. Egged on by his colleagues (young Witney and myself), both weeping with laughter, he gave Helen her greatest evening that Summer.
I find in that innocent memory a metaphor for Tim's achievement here. All-purpose, never too proud to take a back seat, or even to look a bit of an ass if it served the greater interest, he has been the sublime servant, as well as part of the pantheon, of Westminster School. As Registrar for the last nine years, to many pupils his face is that of a remote dignitary who set them a Maths puzzle the day of their first visit; for most younger colleagues, he is an amiable but reserved bloke, whose elastic morning breaks give him unrivalled access to the single Common Room copy of The Independent.
Tim is not pushy: he would probably slip into retirement without a murmur, save to his closest friends. They are unwilling to let that happen. In a few weeks, he will leave Westminster after thirty seven years of service and, with his wife Jenny, go to live on their farm in Essex.
It seems an unimaginable timespan. He came to Westminster in September 1964, the same summer that Harold Wilson managed, by a whisker, to squeeze into Downing Street. It was an era of self-conscious modernism, of the white heat of technology blowing away the cobwebs of Edwardian tweediness. Many professionals of this period, a few schoolteachers among them, shot to prominence on the back of an intellectually thin modishness.
Tim was incapable of such artifice, and averse to self-advertisement. In fact, in his first dozen years of Westminster, he simply applied himself conscientiously to what has been called, rather patronizingly, the 'craft' of schoolteaching. He taught the classics, in which his elegance and accuracy are the stuff of legend - nurturing the bright and diligent with quiet approval, and tolerating the apathetic with Spartan stoicism. Intellectually restless, he also studied for a Russian degree at LSE, devoured its literature and took a year's sabbatical in Georgia, adding a formidable second string to his scholarly bow. Year in and out, he coached football and cricket teams and sustained their varying fortunes with the same kind of unvain good humour that has been the imprimatur of his professional life. He ran Expeditions and took boys and girls off mountaineering in holidays and half terms; he went on endless exchange visits to Moscow and Leningrad; he attended house and school plays and concerts, became Secretary of the Common Room.
It all sounds straightforward, in a busy sort of way, but that degree of immersion, not always shared by more flamboyant and less fastidious colleagues, exacts a toll. Shortly after he returned from his sabbatical year in Russia, he married Jenny Parrington, a farmer's daughter and a research biochemist. She and Tim upheld each other's tastes and value systems perfectly, and were soon joined by a daughter, Lucy, and son, Andrew. This vigorous, affectionate (and occasionally quite noisy) household has been the undoubted mainstay of Tim's life ever since.
In 1976, John Rae asked Tim to head a new day house, Dryden's. His housemaster's responsibilities were extended five years later when he opened the first girls' boarding house in Barton Street. The latter, especially, was a formidable challenge at a time when most of the overwhelmingly masculine Common Room were demonstrably ignorant of the ways and the needs of adolescent girls.
But Tim was an enormously capable housemaster: at its simplest, he knew that the children of apparently affluent homes can also be deprived; when problems surfaced, he involved himself with compassion, energy and self-effacement. He also believed that the big problems defied simple, unilateral solutions, and if younger or more immature colleagues could not understand that - that was their problem. While Tim has never patronised anyone in his life, whatever the provocations, it would be stretching truth a little to say that frustration never surfaced. I was a bit crestfallen my first term when I asked him to chase up a well-known malingerer in the Remove and met what was to become a fairly famous TPF formula - Well, I don't know! If he insists on staying at home/doing no work/cutting lessons etc etc - What do you want me to do about it? (All this in a rather ratty staccato.)
Dryden's boys and girls were famously happy to be in his house: he managed expertly that fine line between running a happy ship, and a tight one - I think if he ever erred one way, Dryden's was always happy. Loyal servant of the school he always was, but his reasoning suggested that most of our boys and girls were bright, fortunate kids who could surmise the key lessons in life without a system of martial law. Nagging pupils - or (quite as bad) its corollary, lionising them - were traits he deplored.
In 1988, Tim replaced David Bland as President of the Common Room, an office he held for the next ten years. It was a pretty political time, and meetings were nearly always loud affairs and great fun, unless you happened to be the focus of animus, which was one of the less welcome fruits of office. He chaired meetings with patience and dexterity, and showed a paternal forbearance with the Young Turk element. He was less confrontational with the authorities than some thought desirable, but perhaps he had a point. Tim's instincts have always been cautious, but - once roused - he was dogged in championing a cause. In hosting events - and we had lots of them - he was at his best: he and Jenny were ever-genial, quite without self-importance, and ready with a broom and brush at the end of the evening. His valedictions to departing Staff at the end of term were peerless, combining wonderful felicity in prose, touching gentleness of delivery with the occasional splendid blunder.
In 1991, Mark Tocknell - greatly to Tim's delight - was chosen as his successor in Dryden's. Tim carried on running Barton Street for another three years. Perhaps his care and compassion found its quiet apotheosis in the care of those girls to whom, as he ruefully admitted, he quite often lost his heart.
After Gerry Ashton became Master of the Under School, Tim took over as Registrar. Those of us who knew something of his time habits (approximate) or of his shyness at first meetings (sometimes amounting to abruptness) wondered, a little concerned, how it would work out. We should have known better. Prospective families found in Mr Francis a gentle and perceptive host, and the best counter-advertisement for a school sometimes criticised for being too hard-edged. The intimidating administrative challenges of the job have, of course, been meat and drink for a man with his forensic love of systems. The job is not one which gets easier, but he has blossomed in the role.
Nor have the cares of high office led to any let up in extracurricular activities. He allowed himself to be roped into various plays (a stunning performance in the Mission Band in our 1991 production of Guys and Dolls, alongside Willie Booth and Gerry Ashton). He continued his twice-yearly cycling trips to France and Holland, exhausting most of his pupils (not so fast, Mr f***ing Francis, one Lower Shell was heard to mutter through clenched teeth on the road to St Malo). He also took over much of the management of PHAB, Westminster's course for older pupils and those with serious physical and mental disadvantages. There is nothing glamorous, year after year, of working day and night the first full week of the Summer Holiday, but Tim has kept it up, and never (even when he was moving house that same week) asked to be relieved. Whether organising a transport roster to take people home, dancing his energetic four step at the PHAB disco or presiding at the Sunday entertainment, his energy and mindfulness have given everyone a filip.
Tim spawns stories more than most people - mostly to do with him shouting loudly at people for mistakes which were entirely of his own authorship. But I want to avoid the risks of turning him into a parody. He is a deeply serious man who, had he been more flamboyant and more unselfconscious in looking after his own interests, might have walked into a range of headmasterships. But, as it happened, he chose to stay at Westminster for virtually all his working life.
Perhaps there are moments when that reflection gives him a pang. But I think he made a good decision: one that was true to him, and of immeasurable benefit to us. He and Jenny are good value, great company - and they know right from wrong. Westminster is no more immune to the lure of ephemera and moral relativism than anywhere else: Tim has lent a blend of sociability, gravity and seemliness which has fundamentally affected the character of the school at large and, perhaps, of the Common Room in particular. For each of his thirty seven years here, there are pupils, colleagues and Westminster friends who look on him with gratitude and love.
David Hargreaves
Tim Francis was almost my first point of contact with Westminster; he was my form master, and the qualities he made apparent to my dimly appreciative twelve year old mind are very much the qualities I have continued to associate with him ever since. During that initial rather intimidating lesson he seemed at once to be slightly larger than life, a man with a high regard for truth but also with an impish, irreverent sense of humour, a person of enormous kindness and patience, and a teacher at ease with and understanding of the ways of his charges. To that first impression much else has of course been added subsequently - but it wasn't a bad beginning!
Generations of Westminster pupils have benefited from Tim's wide understanding of Classical matters. He has cast his net very broadly, and his knowledge and appreciation of history and literature frequently put those of his colleagues to shame - quite apart from anything else, the Department's only reliable source for the early Roman Republic is now retiring! Above all, though, he is perhaps a linguist - and a linguist in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Not only in his early years as a teacher at Westminster did he take himself, in his spare time, from Russian alphabet to Russian degree, but of late he has begun to immerse himself in Modern Greek. His grasp of the Classical languages is quite simply superb - not just their grammar and syntax, but also the ways in which they can be manipulated. To read one of Tim's translations from English, be it into prose or verse, can be a very humbling experience; felicity and elegance are their watchwords, and they give great pleasure. This is no mere passive appreciation on his part - it is what used to be meant by the word 'taste.'
Over the years Tim has contributed enormously to the Classics Department, and with far more than just his pedagogic and Classical skills. He understands the ways of men (and schools), and has wide experience of discretion and diplomacy; this has made him a wise and valued counsellor to several Heads of Department. We shall very much miss his acuity and perception - so often delivered with a wry laugh, for he is a keen observer of the ridiculous. And so he hangs up the tools of his trade and leaves us for his Sabine Farm. Is it too much to hope that, as he relaxes with a goblet of well-earned Falernian, he might write one of those many books which he so often urged us to produce?
Charles Low
Tim Francis and Russian at Westminster are all but synonymous. His active interest in the language and associated culture began in that distant era when the Soviet Union was run - although 'walked' might be a more appropriate verb - by Leonid Il'ich Brezhnev, whose torpor has subsequently earned the period the tag in Russia of 'the years of stagnation'. How different was Tim's approach to life: not content with his mastery of the Classical languages, he took up the study of Russian and applied through the British Council to spend an extended period in the land of the language's origin, where daily contact with the written and spoken word would enable him rapidly to come to terms with its subtleties and complexities. The outcome was typical of both Soviet bureaucracy and its counterpart in the British Council, for he was duly dispatched neither to Moscow nor to Leningrad, but to Tbilisi: not then to Russia and its steppes at ll, but rather to Georgia and its mountains.
The language of Georgia bears no resemblance whatsoever to that of Russia, but, undaunted, Tim quickly immersed himself in the cultural milieu of Tbilisi . He enjoyed the renowned Georgian hospitality to the full and with Russian the lingua franca of the entire Soviet Union, returned from his lengthy Caucasian jaunt with an enviable knowledge of the language he has continued to study and teach throughout the intervening thirty years.
During those three decades the Soviet Union has, astonishingly, passed away, General Secretaries - Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, Gorbachev - have come and gone, and even Boris Yeltsin has now yielded his Russian presidency to Vladimir Putin. Through all this turmoil Tim has avoided the perils of the years of stagnation, while still remaining what he always was: an inquisitive linguist who delights in the minutiae of language for their own sake; an erudite literary scholar with an impressive range of reference. classical and modern; an excellent travelling companion - the original meaning of the Russian 'sputnik' - with energy in abundance to appreciate the trip himself and to ensure the pupils did too; above all, a marvellous colleague, always supportive and never complaining, even when asked to teach a Chekhov play for the umpteenth time.
Tim's kindness, humanity, wisdom and utter decency are a lesson to us all, teachers and taught, and I am sure that when those he has helped to nurture look back on his qualities they will appreciate how fortunate they were to be in his charge. Westminster will be a poorer place without him and he will be sorely missed, not least by the Russian-speaking fraternity.
Hugh Aplin
The payphone was placed in an unfortunate position in 4 Barton Street, next to the partition wall between boarders and the Francis family. This meant that we heard most of what went on in the Francis household when we were trying to call home. But one of the great things about Tim and Jenny was that they were very relaxed about us hearing arguments with Lucy about her homework or with Andrew about his practising the violin. I have to say, I don't know what was worse, the arguments or the violin practice! More seriously, it was nice to be next to a normal family, especially in the first few weeks of Westminster School. It made us feel like we were still at home, and that we were just part of an extended Francis family. I recall, to my embarrassment, that I had several heartbreaks and tearful moments over Westminster boys. Tim always treated each event with just as much gravity as the last (although these heartbreaks became rather regular at times!). He resisted making me feel like I was just an adolescent girl, discovering boys for the first time! And he always knew which boy it was and what the problem was before I even told him.
Tim's wisdom always shone through. Once, a couple of hours before one House Concert I was having problems with insubordinate Fifth formers, a difficult situation with a friend in Barton Street and a missing violinist who was supposed to be performing. It was all too much for a 17 year old. Tim was unbelievably supportive throughout the situation, and spoke tactfully and appropriately to my parents, who, following Tim's advice, took me off after the House Concert for a night at home to recover. And when I returned to school, Tim behaved like it had never happened.
I always thought that teachers were supposed to hide their personalities in front of pupils, to ensure maximum discipline-that is, until I went to Westminster, that is. He trusted the girls in Barton Street with a level of independence which I would have thought is unique for a boys boarding school in the middle of a big city. We were allowed to fend for ourselves, make mistakes, break some rules, and live surprisingly independent lives-but he always knew what was happening, and always cared.
Charlotte Collet-White (Dryden's 1989-1991)