Principal
The principal of Healdtown was Dr. Arthur Wellington, a stout and stuffy Englishman who boasted of his connection to the duke of Wellington. At the outset of assemblies, Dr. Wellington would walk onstage and say, in his deep bass voice, "I am the descendant of the great duke of Wellington, aristocrat, statesman, and general, who crushed the Frenchman Napoleon at Waterloo and thereby saved civilization for Europe-- and for you, the natives." At this, we would all enthusiastically applaud, each of us profoundly grateful that a descendant of the great duke of Wellington would take the trouble to educate natives such as ourselves. The educated Englishman was our model; what we aspired to be were "black Englishmen," as we were sometimes derisively called. We were taught -- and believed -- that the best ideas were English ideas, the best government was English government, and the best men were Englishmen.
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