From THE CITY OF OXFORD HIGH SCHOOL MAGAZINE VoL. LI, iii JULY 1959 No. 166
Some men’s lives are not celebrated in the histories of the world and yet, to those who knew them, they were the salt of the earth. M. J. Soulsby was such a man.
He was born on July 9th, 1888, and was teaching with the thought of going into the Ministry when the Great War intervened. He survived its entire length on active service mostly in France, where he was a casualty in the first gas attack. After the war he came up to St. Edmund Hall, already a man of thirty. Without quite completing his course he became a master at the School under Arthur Wilson Cave in 1922, where he remained until his retirement in 1952.
He belonged to the select band of great schoolmasters who make it their business, not only to see that all their pupils learn facts and learn to think intelligently and critically about them, but who also help the weak to stand up and the infirm to walk. He was between the wars widely known and consulted for his knowledge of and experience with delinquent or backward or handicapped children, and even in the last few years of his life he was active as a consultant in this field for those who knew of him and would seek him out.
His knowledge of history (which he read at Oxford) and of English literature was considerable, but his principal interest was always in Church History and biblical interpretation. His library bulged with publications on religious subjects and there still remain many shelves of controversial pamphlets and re-examinations of orthodoxy.
An early fruit of his retirement was ‘Retrospect’, a quite remarkable account of the activities of Old Boys of the School, readable and lucid, when it might so easily have been a mere catalogue of dates and names. Regrettably it is one of the only things he was ever persuaded to write, for his prose was excellent and could have given permanence to many original and stimulating thoughts which now remain only as memories of a few.
He was a fine conversationalist and could rescue almost any gathering from tedium. He could turn his hand to the production of verse for almost any occasion – anniversary, pantomime, play, song – and set it to music if required. He could play the violin and piano well, though latterly he allowed his skill to decline through lack of exercise. His pencil sketching was very competent, though few knew this. Ecclesiastical architecture was his abiding interest and, though his knowledge never satisfied him, it was extensive by ordinary standards. He wrote short stories, some of which have been published in America though never under his own name.
He died towards the evening of August 5th, 1959, after a final short illness – and all his former pupils feel the loss of one who had become a beloved friend.
His influence will be passed on in the lives of others for many generations, and what better memorial can a man seek?
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