Father Rogers SDB

All the priests in Blaisdon were, in their various ways, substitute fathers to a boy such as myself who had never known a real identifiable father in the familial context of a loving family. Father Daniel Lucey was my special surrogate father: I took to him on first sight the first day I was in Blaisdon. After lunch on that day, the boys in my arrival group were taken down to the farm. Earlier, we had been shown a half life-size white marble statue of Saint John Bosco that stood in a niche in the front hall below a portrait of Don Michael Rua, his first successor. But a much more sympathetic representation of the saint we gazed at in the chapel: a gold framed oil painting above an altar, which was dedicated to the founder of The Salesian Order.

Our guide, Freddy Cove, led us across the fields towards Stud Farm and Harvey's Acre - the sports and playing field. Soon we were close to a man pacing lengths and placing spikes among deep lush grass; he stopped and waited for us. We were introduced to - not a workman as we had supposed - but the priest in charge of the farm. His hand put forward in greeting was big and hardened with calluses. His face was brown, his eyes had a blue twinkle, his hair was grey: his whole demeanour radiated kindness. I thought immediately, not of the statue in the hall, but his likeness to the portrait we had seen earlier in the chapel. As he placed his hand on my shoulder after learning my name, I said to him "You are Don Bosco!" He laughed and replied "Don Bosco is a saint - I am a simple priest to be sure and all!" The attraction was instant, and from that meeting I was to remain permanently under the spell of this man who was known to all as Father Dan.

He then played his first joke on me. The purpose of what he had been erecting before stopping to speak to us now became clear: he got us to help him. We were each given a spike and followed him as he paced out a measured distance. On each metal spike, topped with a white porcelain pigtail-head, there was a side foot-piece to aid its insertion in the ground. We pressed on these and soon a line of spikes ran across the field. Fr. Dan then threaded a fine wire through the whole of the line and connected it to a battery. He lined us up, placing me last in the line with us all linked hand in hand. Taking the hand of the boy closest to the fence, he then touched the wire and everyone laughed when I shouted out and recoiled as an electric shock was transmitted to me.

I was electrified also by Father Francis Rogers: musician, footballer, teacher and continuing friend when I eventually left school. He was an all-round enthusiast from Lancashire and was a great fan of The Hallé Orchestra conducted then by Sir John Barbirolli - "Barbersbrolly". "Cursing Flagstone" for Kirsten Flagstad the opera diva, was another boy's howler. Sir Thomas Beecham was often mentioned. There are many anecdotes about him. In rehearsal he once said to a woman cellist: "God has given you the most beautiful of instruments between your legs and all you do is sit there and scratch it!" Fr. Rogers told us that one. Years later I learned its double meaning. Sir Malcolm Sargent was also admired.

Fr. Rogers often praised his predecessor, Father Grace, for setting a great tradition of performing music and its appreciation at Blaisdon HaIl. He told us much about the lives of the great composers - warts and all. The sacred and the profane were considered and weighed in the balance of his objectivity. The mistresses, the artistic back-stabbing, the interpretive betrayals and the composer’s idiosyncrasies were redeemed – in his opinion - by the divinely inspired genius' that created musical masterpieces. His particular tour de force in class was to act out a Prelude by Rachmaninov. The music describes a man who is buried and awakes in his coffin. Fr. Rogers would put the disc on the gramophone - the one with the winder, an inserted needle and large horn and then as the music was played, he acted the part of the hopelessly trapped buried alive person. This always led to a lively diversion about Transylvania, Dracula and catalepsy. All extremely memorable for its excitement. His music lessons were a highlight of the school day.

Our music teacher, animated with his subject, would enter the classroom and with a flourish chalk A.M.D.G. on the corner of the blackboard. Of course we all knew the Latin: Ad Majoram Dei Gloria - To God Be the greater Glory. “AMDG? All Music Derives from God!" he would say. He linked ideas to strings of letters to aid the memory. All boys taught by him will remember the acronym for music notation: EGBDF - Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and GDAEBF - Great Dogs and Eagles Bite Fiercely.

Fr. Rogers was an accomplished violinist. He introduced us to Pagannini, Paderewski, Fritz Kreisler. Yehudi Menuhin, from whom he had taken lessons, was particularly admired. He liked the Americans Les and Mary Paul, who were making completely new music with the electric guitar. Pablo Cassals was a favourite also. Chopin, in his works for the piano, was unequalled. In his view, the top contemporary orchestral conductor was Arturo Toscaninni in the USA, whose protégé Guido Cantelli was the coming man. His musical taste as communicated to us was catholic in its range and appreciation. He would play us discs of Mantovani, Louis Armstrong, Ted Heath, Geraldo and Joe Loss. He loved black American music and the crossover success from the opera Carmen to the popular musical Carmen Jones. George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was another favourite. Russ Conway, Winifred Atwell and Semprinni at the piano were played to demonstrate style and interpretation. And so on.

The brass band and its musical tradition was a genre through which he traced back his musical roots to a boyhood in Manchester. He played all the band instruments with equal facility holding a particular preference for the cornet and English horn. (John Ward tells me it was known as the Tenor Horn in his time.) I vividly recall unforgettable times when the band played on the Hall garden terrace or on the lawns under the great red copper beech. Fr. Rogers would be wearing a white handkerchief knotted at its four corners to keep the midges off what he called his Bobby Charlton wisp: he was a dedicated Manchester City fan. In his view Harry James was the world's best trumpet player - Eddie Calvert despite his very popular 1950s rendering of Roses are Smiling in Picardie - a pale imitator!

As Choirmaster, Fr. Rogers distilled through its voices and dedicated practice, the transcendental beauty of sung Masses and thrilling devotional plain-chant that echo in my memory to this day. For the visit of the Salesian Rector Major, Don Ziggiotti, to Blaisdon in 1954, he composed and set to music an Italian hymn of welcome O Pietosa! Some of the words I wrote down in a diary I kept at the time: Cara Madre del signora Madre sei del nostro bene. Tu bene vene in quanto pene vive afflitto questo cor. He also arranged the music for the pantomime songs and the concerts known as Academies; these were regular showpieces for the variety of musical talents presented by Priests, Lay-Brothers and boys.

None of the boys of that time will forget the friendly rivalry with his walking companion Father Pat McGrath. As Housemaster of Fisher House, Fr. Rogers vied with his A’Becket House. The two of them were always among the boys in the playground playing football; with a tennis ball. They both had a trick of trapping the ball up their cassocks: carrying it rapidly forward to score from close in against the goal painted on the wall of the school porch. On the football field Fr. Rogers was a masterly player. A brilliant floater of the ball to wherever he wished to place it and able to head it to any spot. He was an encouraging referee always commenting positively on a boy’s competence and ability. He played lawn tennis equally well as being a fine cricketer. Model. Mentor. Motivator.

As Dormitory Master Father Rogers had his room adjacent on the first floor level of the tower where, he kept his sewing equipment. It was not at all unusual to see him darning socks and stitching boy’s clothes. Once, when the School Bursar, Father Wilson, nicknamed “Bulldog” refused me a new pair of trousers he took my torn pair at bedtime. By morning he had sewed a full seat patch on them and left the garment ready to wear when I woke up. Wheedling a pair of new boots out of Fr. Wilson required a miracle: Fr. Rogers would put in a word to his other particular chum, Brother Gerald Clifton, the school cobbler. Master and Servant.

I was lucky in having my ex-music teacher, as a friend, when I left school to work at Stud Farm. Being there I was able to remain in regular contact with him. He would often come down to the farm for a walk, usually with Fr. McGrath, or Brother Gerald, and comment on the progress of the pigs. I would make them a cup of tea in the farmhouse. As I didn't smoke nor drink, I could afford to buy records and Fr Rogers became my first music appreciation mentor. Fr. Rogers advised me to buy music that moved me and not to intellectualise:" leave that to the critics", he would say. I looked forward to Father Rogers being a friend for life: but 'for life' it could not be. Early in 1958, aged 47, he was diagnosed with an incurable kidney disease. He told me that he had less than a year to live: there was no curative treatment.

He derived great consolations in the support of his community, his faith and his music. I longed to help him and be of service. I lent him, on permanent loan, my EKHO Record Player and my records. That September I was able to give him one momentous gift: concert tickets for The Hallé Orchestra in Gloucester Cathedral, conducted by Sir. Adrian Boult. Brother Gerald came too. We went in Ronnie O'Connor’s Lanchester car; he dropped us off and picked us up after the concert.

It was a magnificent setting with near perfect acoustics. Mike Turnbull, a Blaisdon Hall Past Pupil, was organist and played as the huge audience settled. The repertory comprised Tintagel - a tone poem by Sir Arnold Bax. Nimrod - The Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar. Symphony No.4 "Italian" Second Movement - andante con motto - Brahms. “Fingal’s Cave” Mendellsohn. Symphony No.8 in B minor "Unfinished" First Movement – allegro moderato, Schubert. Finally, The Pastoral Symphony by Beethoven. Always the optimist, Father Rogers emphasized in his post performance critique, the music’s soaring divine themes and together we shared and reveled in them. But when alone, I was tormented by the music’s profound brooding heart-breaking undertones resonating with the inevitability of death.

Father Rogers died on Christmas Eve 1959. I was feeding the pigs and through a December fog heard the slow sad toll of the Hall tower bell. Later, I saw him for the last time, in his sick room, whose window overlooked the beautiful lawns and led my eyes directly into the stark branches and darkened depths of the leaf-denuded copper beech. He was laid out in sacred vestments on his deathbed. It was the first time that I had ever looked upon the face of a dead person.

Through the love of music, that he opened my mind to, Father Rogers lives on in that love always. He was buried at Beckford Hall near Worcester, where he had studied as a Theologian. My most precious Memento of him is his photograph surrounded with the heads of many of my school chums of that time.

"When words leave off, music begins.” Heinrich Heine

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