A London Girl of the Eighties

by Hughes, M. V. ;

We dispersed in various directions, and presently I found myself alone, and quite lost. The passages were deserted. Through the glass door of each room I passed I saw serried ranks of girls at work. Nowhere could I find a room labelled ‘Upper Fourth’, although there were several other species of Fourth. Presently I caught sight of a little white-haired old woman, cap on head, and dressed in black rather the worse for wear. Some caretaker or cleaner or something, I thought, but she may possibly have noticed the names of the classrooms; I can but try. So I hailed her in a manner I thought appropriate.

  ‘I say, am I going right for the Upper Fourth, do you happen to know?’

  Glaring at me she exclaimed, ‘Do you know who I am?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea; I’ve only just come.’

  ‘I am Miss Buss!’ and standing back a pace she drew herself up to mark the effect on me. It was not at all what she expected, for I cheered up and said,

  ‘Oh, then you are sure to know the way to the Upper Fourth, and I do so want to get there.’

  At this suddenly her face changed, and with a little gay laugh she said, ‘That way, child, down the stairs, the first door you come to at the foot. Run along with you.’

  Thus, oddly enough, it was in my first encounter with Miss Buss that I saw several different phases of her strange personality: her insignificance of stature and attire (natura et arte), her pomposity when she desired to impress, her kindly good temper, and her instantaneous and delighted recognition of anyone who was quite at ease with her. These points didn’t strike me at the moment, of course, but on recounting the incident to a seasoned schoolfellow afterwards I learnt that Miss Buss positively loved anyone who was not afraid of her, who would look her in the eye and speak out.

  At the moment I was far more intent on the Upper Fourth than on the headmistress. I was craving to see those wonderful girls, as low down in the school as the Fourth, to whom the Senior Oxford was a bagatelle.

  Well, I found that Upper Fourth, and the very word gives me a mental shudder even now. After my dreams of cultured teachers and keen-brained girls—how humiliating was the drop! An empty desk among some thirty others was pointed out to me, with a hurried ‘Sit there, dear.’ Something that seemed like geography was in progress, and the girls were being questioned round out of Cornwell’s Geography, a textbook only too familiar to me. After an astonished taking in of the dreadful reality I relieved my feelings by a contemptuous remark to the girl in the adjoining desk. She placed a warning finger on her mouth, but was too late. The teacher had heard an unwarranted voice and beckoned me to her desk. Thrusting an open exercise-book towards me she said,

  ‘You must sign, dear.’

  ‘Sign? Sign what?’ I asked in bewilderment.

  ‘Write down “I spoke in geography” and sign your name, dear,’ she replied, hurriedly resuming a question on the Welland canal.

  Soon there was a mid-morning interval, and I asked a girl what on earth this kind of thing meant. She explained that we had to write down what we had done wrong and sign our name every time we broke a rule.

  ‘Yes, and then what happens?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh nothing more than that. We just sign.’

  ‘Is that all? How my brothers will laugh!’

  ‘Your brothers may, but you won’t when your parents see at the end of the term “Reported for breach of Regulations—23 times”. So look out.’

  In what deep dejection I got home that day and tried to hide my bitter disappointment from mother! But mothers always scent low spirits, and she refrained from asking too much. I was glad that Tony was in Cornwall and need not know that she was paying such high fees for so little. I showed mother the list of Rules that had been presented to each new girl (as well as posted at intervals about the building). It was in small print and double columns, like the blue by-laws in the trams. Mother laughed and thought them ‘rather excessive’.

  Those were the permanent rules, but almost every day a new one appeared in a corridor, in large sprawling home-made lettering—such as: ‘Broken needles must not be thrown on the floor.’ They were so many that they ceased to attract attention and got caught up into the decorative scheme. ‘I can’t possibly remember all these,’ thought I, ‘so I shan’t bother about them.’ A few of them, however, still remain in my memory: Every book had to be covered (a different colour for each subject). No girl might bring a pen to school (was this to avoid ink-stains?). We were forbidden to get wet on the way to school, to walk more than three in a row, to drop a pencil-box, leave a book at home, hang a boot-bag by only one loop, run down the stairs, speak in class. As for speaking, it would have been easier to enumerate the few places where we were permitted to speak than those where talking was forbidden. The ideas were sensible, but why make rules about them? One felt that if a girl were to knock over the blackboard by mistake there would be a rule against it the next day.

  Arriving early one morning I was alone in a corridor and chanced to drop my pencil-box. ‘Thank goodness,’ thought I, ‘there’s no one to hear it.’ Hardly had this crossed my mind when the voice of Miss Begbie came from some distant cloakroom, ‘You must sign for that, dear.’

  The book in which all these crimes were recorded had an ominous title—‘The Appearing Book’, smacking not a little of the Day of Judgement. As the culprit was left to state her own crime, some amusing things were entered in the book that may well puzzle future students of nineteenth-century education. ‘I marched with the wrong foot’ was the way a girl expressed her failure to keep step. ‘I was four in a row’, ‘I spoke in French’, ‘I called out in Latin’. A technical distinction appears here; to speak was to talk to another girl, while to call out was to answer before you were asked. ‘I left my heart at home’ referred to a diagram for physiology.

  On the rare occasions of a Form’s going half a term without a signature, it was awarded a Gratification. This was a half-hour to be spent in any way the girls chose. Only once did this boon come my way, and there was much hesitation among the class, and searching for some noble idea in the way of recreation. In a pause I exclaimed loudly, ‘Well, I should like a romp.’ Amid much laughter the others then confessed to a similar wish, and blessed me heartily as we all trooped off to the gymnasium and let ourselves go.

  Now and again a girl who had collected too many signatures would have an imposition, a piece of French to write or learn, but this was so rare that I only once observed a girl doing it. And anyhow it was nothing to what might befall anyone at any moment: this was what the boys called a ‘jaw’. But I don’t believe any boy since the world began has ever known what a jaw can be. It needed Miss Buss to give a full content to the term. I never experienced it myself, but heard tales enough of poor girls reduced to sobs and almost hysterics as they bent under the storm that went on and on and on.

  In that big building there was one small room, near the front door, dedicated entirely to Miss Buss. Here was held the Inquisition, for to this would be summoned any case of naughtiness with which a Form mistress had failed to cope. A narrow, dark passage led to it, along which no unlicensed person dare go. One day, during some nondescript English lesson, we were suddenly told to stand, and then ‘pass out in lines after me’. Such orders were familiar enough, and we only surmised that the lunch interval was a bit earlier or something. Our curiosity was roused, however, when the long file headed towards the front door. We glanced at one another (there was no rule against this) conveying the idea, ‘We surely can’t be going into the street hatless?’ Curiosity sharpened into amazement when the conducting mistress led us down the sacred passage. Searchings of conscience began. What had we done? Anyhow, it was the whole form, so together we could stand up to it. We were ushered, or rather squeezed, into the little room and managed to stand in respectful files. To our relief there was no sign of Miss Buss. But doubtless she was coming, for there was certainly something up. But no, and the mystery deepened as we stood in silence. I concentrated on the clock, as if it would throw some light o
n the matter, and it soon began to take on that fantastic look that any object does if you stare at it. Suddenly it seemed comic, and I was on the brink of a lèse-majesté burst of laughter, when fortunately from the door came the sharp orders, ‘Turn. Pass out. Go back to your form room.’ We returned to our English lesson as if nothing had happened, and no reference was made to our expedition. The most accepted theory in our lunchtime discussion of the affair was that it had been just idle ordering about, in the same spirit that induces odious people to command their dog to lie down, beg, ‘die’, and so forth, for no reason at all. We had forgotten all about it when, at the next English lesson, a few days later, we were told to write then and there a description of what we had observed in the room during the three minutes we had spent in it. It was a clever exercise, because we had no means of aiding one another’s memory; but as a test of observation it was useless because we had been in too agitated a dread of what might be in store for us to observe anything. I had to spin out all I could about the clock, but the girl at my side was writing busily. This was Bessie Jones, who was never known to do anything wrong. Her conscience had been so clear that she dreaded nothing, and as she had always been a Bluebeard’s wife in her curiosity about the sacred room, she had spent her three minutes to some purpose. Her substantial essay was read aloud to us, while we others were held up to withering scorn for our lack of observation.

  But not even the righteous could always escape. Even Bessie Jones was once summoned alone to the sanctum, and went off light-heartedly, conscia recti. ‘She’ll make you cry,’ said her companions. ‘Nothing shall make me cry; I know I haven’t done anything’ was her stout reply. A letter of complaint had been received from a parent, accusing Bessie of leading her daughter to loiter on the way home. The girls had taken one side of a square while the mother went to meet them on the other and became annoyed at missing them; there had been no lateness. Was Bessie allowed to explain this? No, the storm broke. ‘I won’t cry,’ she kept saying to herself, ‘I won’t cry, let her abuse me as much as she likes.’ But Miss Buss had a trump card; remembering that a few days before Bessie had brought an excuse for being late owing to her brother’s sudden illness, she exclaimed, ‘And fancy your behaving so disgracefully in the street while your poor brother is lying ill!’ Now Bessie’s brother was everything to her, and at this mention of him she collapsed and broke into sobs. That was all Miss Buss wanted, and she dismissed the ‘penitent’ without more ado.

  The iron discipline of the school made things easy for those in authority. Every moment, almost every movement was ordered. Where supervision was impossible we were put on our honour. This was far worse, for to a sensitive conscience it was torture to decide whether the mutter of ‘pardon’ on knocking against a girl by mistake was to be reported or not. And often it roused a bitter sense of injustice. I wonder that any of us retained a rag of conscience, for it certainly did not pay. For instance, one afternoon a week we stayed at school for a two-hour drawing lesson—a Pacific Ocean of boredom. We copied dusty cones and cubes in endless variety, but I can remember no single point or principle that was taught me. We were allotted ten marks, not for what we did in drawing, which mattered nothing, but merely for not talking. Thus, if you said ‘thanks’ automatically for a loan of india-rubber you took off one mark. But two girls who sat near me carried on a conversation all the time, yet took off only one mark. They salved their conscience by counting it as only speaking once.

  Talking appeared to be the main evil, and of course the absence of it made the school seem an ideal of good order and ‘teaching’ an easy job. But the continual restraints and fuss had worse results than actual overwork. Even when we got home we were not free. There were little printed time-tables on which we had to enter the hour at which we began to work, the hour we finished, and the total time taken. We had to fill them in with pen and ink, to prove that they were done at home, for no ink was allowed at school. Then the parent signed them as a voucher of their being correct. Every morning they were collected, looked over by the form mistress, and filed for reference. The cupboards were crowded with them. The conscientious girl was fidgeted beyond belief, and certainly beyond hospitality if a visitor interrupted her work and put out these tiresome calculations. A slow worker came in for continual scolding for taking too long over her sums or what not. Meanwhile many put down just what they thought would look well, and needless to say the average mother signed it without bothering. I had an eye-opener one morning as to the simple procedure that passed muster. I noticed a girl going stealthily past the teacher’s desk, taking a dip of ink and returning to her own desk to fill in her timetable.

  ‘That’s not much use,’ said I, ‘without your mother’s signature.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ she blandly replied, ‘I’m signing it myself; mother’s name is the same as mine.’

  There was no rule against forgery, of course, and it is interesting to calculate how Miss Buss would have acted if this girl had been caught—perhaps no more severely than if she had been seen running downstairs. I am sure that the excessive attention required for trifling duties blinded teachers and pupils alike to the weightier matters of the Law. Common sense and kind-heartedness often had to give way to some pettifogging rule, as the following incident will show.

  One day our form-room door was flung wide open and Miss Buss entered. We all rose, and she addressed us thus: ‘Now, girls, you are going to have a lesson from a stranger. I expect you to attend well and be on your very best behaviour. Of course no one will fidget, or drop a pencil, or speak unless directly asked a question.’

  Turning to the door she then graciously invited a young teacher, a girl of about twenty-two, on to the platform. A solemn-looking man with a beard followed and was given a chair. Miss Buss gave the order for us to sit, and then took another chair whence she could eye us all. The form mistress hurried off to another class.

  The young teacher then shot forth at us in breathless haste a lecture on Townshend, unbroken by the slightest pause, let alone a question or a writing on the board. We looked at the man and saw that he was absorbed in taking notes. He surely couldn’t want to know about Townshend? Then it dawned on some of us that he must be a kind of examiner. We had never heard of a teacher’s being examined, and we naturally concluded that it must be ourselves he was making notes about. So we looked intelligent and managed to hold on to a fact or two. After about a quarter of an hour the lecture came to an obvious end, and the poor lecturer stood irresolute; her matter was finished; what could she do next?

  Now throughout the school there was a system of ‘cards’—a packet for each form with the girls’ names on them. This was a capital device for helping a new teacher, or a visiting one. After asking a question she could read out a name and the girl would stand up if she could answer the question. The packet was also handy for testing a large class fairly, because no one knew whose name would come next, and no one could be left out. It stood on each teacher’s desk for use at any time.

  When, therefore, Miss Buss saw that the lecture was ended she pointed out the packet to the young teacher and said with an encouraging smile:

  ‘Now you ask any question. Then read out a name on a card and the girl will stand up if she can answer it.’

  So the lecturer seized the packet hopefully and began, ‘Where was Townshend born?’—following her question with the name on the top card. No one rose, so she tried another card, then another and another, but no one moved.

  ‘After all, a man’s birthplace is not very important. Can you tell me in whose reign he lived?’ Name after name was called, card after card fell on the table. No response. Of course the lecture had been delivered so fast that it was quite excusable if these questions, and some others that followed, were unanswerable. But it was queer that no one attempted anything at all. The man went on taking notes, and Miss Buss was looking with disgust now at the teacher and now at us. In despair at last came the question, ‘Can anyone tell me anything at all
about Townshend?’ Again the cards fell without result and the poor girl looked on the verge of tears. Then to every one’s relief the man rose and said that the time was up, and the visitors filed out, Miss Buss casting a withering look on the class as she left.

  Fool-proof devices must be a special delight to Puck, for it enables him to come out strong. In this case, as may be guessed, he had popped the right packet of cards into the form mistress’s hand as she was departing in hurried politeness, and substituted on the desk the packet of another form which she had brought in by mistake.

  ‘But why, why didn’t you say that they were the wrong cards?’ she exclaimed, when we told her of the disaster on her return. She did not press the point, for she knew that it needed iron nerves to interrupt what Miss Buss had figured out to go smoothly.

  Yes, smoothly and with the regularity of clockwork—that was the ideal of Miss Buss, as she walked along the corridors continually, looking through the doors and seeing everything ‘going on’. She told me (in later days) that she could tell even from such a passing glance whether or no the teaching and discipline were good. That very tidiness was a danger-signal, had she but known it; but there was no one to warn her, and her power was absolute. The danger lay not so much in our being fidgeted by small routine of externals, as by our being mentally fitted into a procrustean scheme. It was tidy for thirty girls to be all doing the same thing, and the chief enemy was the appearance of confusion (detectable through the door). As for confusion of mind, that didn’t show so much and was overlooked. In my own case—fairly typical, I gather—hours of boredom were spent in listening to stuff I knew quite well; and yet at one time I was obliged for a week or two, owing to some timetable trouble, to attend a rather advanced German class, although I knew little more than der, des, dem, den. I was required to put a piece of English prose into German for homework. A kindly girl let me copy hers in the train, and so I rubbed along. It was no use for a parent to protest. Miss Buss had forestalled such a nuisance as this by making a rule on the Prospectus to the effect that the Head was the sole arbiter of what should be taught to any girl at any time.