Alfred Rolfe (headmaster)

The Reverend Alfred James Rolfe (20 December 1870 - 19 December 1941) was an Englishman who emigrated to Australia to pursue a career as a clergyman and teacher, rising to become headmaster of Malvern School in Sydney.

Rolfe was one of seven siblings, the youngest son of James Rolfe and his wife Ellen Pilcher. James Rolfe's piano business was not prospering, and in 1879 he arranged for his son Alfred to be 'clothed' at Christ's Hospital. Alfred left the school in 1887 and began his studies for the Anglican ministry. In 1889 he emigrated to Australia, where in 1893 he was deaconed for the Newcastle Diocese. However, the following year he was suspended from his ministry by the bishop, for reasons which remain unclear. He turned to schoolmastering, for which he quickly demonstrated a remarkable aptitude. He taught in Parkes in rural New South Wales, and in 1897 founded his own small school in Bega, where he met and married Beatrice Ashdown in 1898. The marriage was a happy one, and the couple had five children.

In 1904, Rolfe began a nine-year stint as headmaster of Wolaroi Grammar, now Kinross Wolaroi School, in Orange. In 1908 he was at last ordained to the Anglican priesthood. After a time at St Peter's College in Adelaide, he became acting headmaster of Barker College in Sydney before founding his own school, Malvern School, in Hunters Hill, again in Sydney. He was headmaster of Malvern from 1915 until his death in 1941.

One of Rolfe's elder brothers was the writer Frederick Rolfe, who corresponded regularly with his younger brother and the principal protagonist of whose novel The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole is represented as having written a novel named Sebastian Archer, based on Alfred Rolfe's life in Australia.

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