A London Girl of the Eighties

by Hughes, M. V. ;

  ‘Taught’ is hardly the word to apply to the text-book-and-water method that I endured for the first few weeks. At the same time I was kept so busy with one thing and another for ‘homework’ that there was no leisure for the least amusement. Several of us were high-spirited enough to find our own solace during our classes. One, a future artist, for ever chafing against the régime, developed a perfect technique; she would come early on the first day of term, secure a back desk, and then contrive to make her face look attentive while her mind was far away, and she left school after some ten years of this in the middle forms, ‘quite unscathed’ as she expressed it. She had acquired for life an enviable power of enduring boredom, and had always been ‘good’ in school hours.

  We had no chance of pursuing any useful work during a lesson, because the desks had to be clear of everything but the precisely needful. So I amused myself by studying the teacher’s mannerisms in voice, movement of jaw, roving of eye, or nervous fidgeting with her brooch. Choice bits of careful English were also treasured, such as ‘Commence at the commencement’. With imitations of these I regaled my fellows during the scanty times when we were allowed to talk. The girl who usually sat next to me would laugh on the slightest provocation, and it was my cue to upset her by moving my hand sideways in an impressive manner whenever the teacher said something more than usually fatuous. There was no rule against this gesture, though we amused ourselves by framing one that would meet the case: ‘No girl must move her hand sideways in class.’

  Marks were the life-blood of the school. No work whatever was done without them, so that a large proportion of time was consumed in assigning them, counting them, entering them in huge books, adding them, and checking them. Great precautions were taken against cheating, as if this were the natural thing to expect. Tests done in class were marked by one’s neighbour. Each desk was provided with a board that could be fixed into iron sockets at the edge and form a screen, so that the next girl couldn’t see what one was writing. After every test done in class there would follow a cascade of questions as to whether some answer might ‘count’ or not. Thus:

  ‘Please will it count if 1488 is put instead of 1588 for the Armada?’

  ‘Well, dear, give it a half-mark.’

  One evening I spent an hour rather enjoyably in writing an essay. It was returned with one mark deducted for one spelling fault, from a maximum of two—no other comment. This injustice rankled long, although to work for no marks at all would have worried no one.

  Of all the lessons French was the dullest. It is barely credible today that hardly a word of French was spoken. We had to buy an expensive and appallingly dull book by Van Laun, and prepare the French at home for his stupid exercises. When we came to class we had to write out two or three sentences selected to test us, which were taken in and returned corrected. The bulk of the lesson consisted of so-called translation—a muttering of bad English round the class from Picciola. I hated that ‘little flower’ and cast a longing glance back at our merry time in my private school over Les Malheurs de Sophie—a book in lively French with funny illustrations all about a little girl who did gorgeously naughty things.

  The study of a play of Shakespeare’s was simplicity itself. We had to learn the footnotes given in our texts. These consisted mainly of foolish paraphrases of any lines supposed to be obscure, and it was in these notes, believe me, and not in the text, that we had to be word-perfect. However, in the matter of Shakespeare there was a worse thing than boredom—active irritation. So long as a teacher droned on with questions we could curl up mentally as soon as our turn was past. But one teacher fancied her powers of poetic declamation. Although we had the text open before us she would roll out the lines in an exquisitely modulated, soft, pleading style. Whereas with the dull teacher I could think of something else or enjoy the joke of her folly, there was no escape from this murderer of the old friends of my childhood—Rosalind, Fluellen, Aguecheek, Dogberry…. The Saul of dullness may slay his thousands, but the David of sentimentality slays his tens of thousands. I always wonder how Shakespeare survives these energetic spouters, who are more rife today than ever. As You Like It has never recovered in my case from that poetical soul, who would clasp her hands in prayerful attitude and incline her head from side to side, as she chanted the uses of adversity.

  From all this it may be supposed that mentally at least our life was easy. But not so. During my first term I hardly ever had a good night’s sleep. Every morning before Prayers we had to recite to the form mistress or one of the monitors a piece of poetry—a different kind for each day of the week: on Monday it was verses of a Psalm; on Tuesday, English; on Wednesday, French; on Thursday, German; on Friday, Latin. I can picture how this neat arrangement appealed to Miss Buss, or whoever it was who invented the torture, for it was little else. Singing a Psalm in church is easy, but try to recite one in cold blood. The French was enjoyable, because mother learnt it with me and got me to pronounce it properly, so that even now some of the lines linger lovingly in my memory. German was the worst; it simply haunted me until I had staggered through it somehow, or signed for not knowing it. Only two lines of Virgil were required, but it made no difference whether one had done any Latin or not, and how most of the girls managed to learn them is still a mystery to me. At that time I supposed myself to be particularly stupid at learning by heart, for I would spend nearly an hour over half a dozen lines of Milton. But it was the anxiety that militated against memory, for I have learnt plenty of poetry in later life without any trouble.

  Anxiety in some shape was always with us. In order to ease it, and have a little leisure in hand if a friend dropped in, we used to get our work ‘forward’ as much as possible. One girl carried this to such an extent that she worked as feverishly at getting forward as if it were for the morrow, and her only reward was that she had nothing at all to do on the last evening of the term. Miss Begbie told an amusing story of her little niece, who was found late one night kneeling up in bed:

  ‘Whatever are you doing, dear?’

  ‘I’m getting my prayers forward for the morning, Auntie.’

  § 2

  It was just at this turbulent time of my life that our vicar called to persuade mother that I ought to be confirmed. She was taken aback, having never regarded me as old enough for that sort of thing. She had never been confirmed herself, as the ceremony was not on the map when she was a girl in Cornwall. Like the Communion Service, the Order for Confirmation was huddled away in the same small print as Forms of Prayer to be used at Sea. My brothers appear to have been confirmed at school, in absence of mind, all in the day’s work, for I can remember nothing about it. However, mother was quite willing for me to be ‘done’ if it was the correct thing, and it was arranged for me to attend at the vicarage once a week for preparation classes.

  About half a dozen girls of the neighbourhood assembled round the old man’s study table. His only claims to respect were a pompous manner, a kindly goodwill, and a long white beard. Nothing but platitudes ever fell from his bps. Owing to the solemnity with which he uttered the obvious, most of the energy of the class was spent in restraining nervous laughter, for none was required for thought. His main care was to make us word-perfect in the Catechism. This gave me little trouble, except the long paraphrase of the Lord’s Prayer, which seemed to me so much more cumbersome than the prayer itself, and so absurdly unnecessary that my mind positively refused to take it in. So I escaped it altogether by looking as bright as possible when the demand for it was looming. Thus it was assumed that I knew it and need not be tested. We were obliged to learn and recite even the questions, and I had some bother to keep a straight face in addressing the old man thus: ‘My good child, know this…’

  One day he actually indulged in a little Gospel history, apropos of a clause in the Creed, and passed round the familiar map of Palestine for us to see where Bethlehem was. Disgusted, I looked ostentatiously out of the window as it came to my turn.

  ‘Do you not want to kno
w where Bethlehem is?’ he asked, in pained tones.

  ‘I know where it is,’ said I.

  ‘Ah, but we can never be too sure of these things. You had better look.’ So to please him I gave a glance.

  Very occasionally he probed our minds. ‘What is meant by “Ghost”?’ he asked the member of the class who was mentally deficient. ‘It’s something that frightens you’ was the hesitating reply, but as this was not a promising approach to what he had in mind he gave a curious cough and passed on to something else.

  ‘You do not seem to know your prayer-book very well’, was his reproof to the same girl as she was fumbling in the Psalms in search of the Order for Baptism.

  ‘It isn’t mine, it’s my sister’s,’ she answered with confidence, leaving him again defeated.

  I think now that he was more nervous of us than we were of him. Far more. All the time he used to fidget with a quill pen, and at one glorious moment, as he was assuring us that we were all miserable sinners and emphasizing this startling idea by dabbing the pen on the table, the bewitched thing took a flying leap across the room.

  ‘You must not smile,’ said he.

  This finished me, and we all abandoned ourselves to joyful laughter. He hurriedly rose to pick up the pen, but I noticed a distinct grin between moustache and beard. Even the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear….

  For our final class he asked us to write out for him any personal failings or evil tendencies of which we were aware, and especially our besetting sin. I accepted this task like a piece of school ‘home-work’, and set about it as if it were a French exercise. With earnest thought during the week I scraped up about a dozen failings. But which of them beset me I couldn’t decide, so I let that point go. Indeed they were all flights of imagination, and I was not a little proud at having filled two sheets of paper about them, feeling sure that my list would be the biggest. It was.

  When I handed it up to the vicar at our next class I was annoyed to find that not one of the others had got a list at all. And worse still they were on the high horse about it. To his inquiries they replied that their mothers had forbidden them to do it, one even muttering that ‘mother thought it Romish’. And glances were cast at me as though I were a kind of Mary Tudor. However, we started our lesson and I hoped the affair had blown over. But as the class was dismissed the vicar laid his hand significantly on my paper, with the words, ‘Kindly remain behind; I will see you alone.’

  What followed is a black spot on my memory. Opening my wretched paper he very slowly rolled out my sins, one by one, breathing after each, ‘Ahh…mmm.’ I have felt a fool often enough, but never such a completely silly one as during the rehearsal of those absurd ‘sins’. Really it was he who was the fool, for not one sensible remark could he find to make about them. But the whole thing had one good effect. Never again could I take seriously any sense of sin, or desire to confess, or any such thing. The vanity had been purged, I had done my bit in this line, and had attained a kind of freedom of the city. If the mothers of the other girls had only known, they missed a grand opportunity of putting their daughters off the fascination of the confessional for ever. I have come to bless my own mother again and again for her policy of non-interference, which was risky, but as effective as that of Charles II, whom she used to quote: ‘Don’t hang him; give him rope enough and he’ll hang himself.’

  When the day for Confirmation was fixed I inquired at school whether one could have a day off for it. Then I learnt that Confirmation was one of the two reasons that were valid for absence, the other being the wedding of a sister; a brother’s wedding apparently was not of sufficient importance. All I need do was to bring a note for Miss Buss to sign. It was therefore with confidence that I joined the morning queue of girls who daily brought excuses for lateness or absence owing to illness. Miss Buss, seated on her throne in the Hall, received, signed, and dismissed. I felt rather important at being a candidate for Confirmation, and expected a few words of pleasant exhortation. What was my surprise to find my mother’s note received with a storm of abuse. Pushing it back into my hand, Miss Buss burst out:

  ‘What do you mean by bringing me a note in an envelope? Do you suppose that I have nothing better to do than spend my time opening envelopes? What would become of my morning if all these girls brought envelopes for me to open every day? Why, I shouldn’t have any time left for the serious work always piling up for me to do. Take it away. Go to the end of the queue and bring it again—open.’

  I was too upset to care what comment she made on my being confirmed, and it was as well, for she made none, but merely seized the note, signed it, and turned to something else. Mother seemed to get a good deal of quiet fun out of the episode when I told her about it.

  § 3

  Coming into the school at the age of sixteen I saw its glaring faults and absurdities. The whole seemed to me an elaborate machine for doing the minimum of useful things with the maximum of fuss. I didn’t see then, as I saw later, that Miss Buss was faced by a herculean task. The endless anxieties she caused her pupils were as nothing to her own big anxiety. She was a pioneer, and almost single-handed, in getting some kind of systematic education for girls. She had no school to copy, no precedent of any kind. Her private school had been so successful that she found herself before long with five hundred girls—all to be taught something and to be trained along Victorian lines of good behaviour.

  To be taught something—but what? Negatively the problem was easy. All the hitherto satisfactory ideals of accomplishments and ‘finishing’ must be wiped out, but what was to take their place? While the education of boys had been gradually shaped from ancient times, engaging the attention of philosophers, that of girls had as a rule no other aim beyond making them pleasing to men. This idea was to Miss Buss anathema, and she failed to see all its great possibilities when really well done. To be deeply pleasing to a husband, and widely pleasing to other men, seems to me as good an ideal as a woman can have. But instead of facing squarely the real needs of future wives and mothers, as the vast majority of girls were to be, Miss Buss seized the tempting instrument at her hand—the stimulus to mental ambition afforded by outside examinations. By this means the curriculum was readymade. And thus, for better or worse, the education of girls became a feeble imitation of what the boys were doing, for the public examinations made no distinction of sex, and no woman’s voice was heard at the examination boards.

  A more serious problem than the curriculum was the discipline. The girls came day by day from a great variety of homes, and never before had there been so many at work together. Here the example of the boys’ Public schools was no help. Three essentials of their system were entirely lacking: games, effective punishment, and respectable learning.

  I don’t think it ever occurred to Miss Buss that games are far more than games, that they provide a vent for high spirits, develop natural obedience, and prevent mental overstrain. True, we had only a tiny yard of open space, nothing to call a playground, but there was a big gymnasium where games could have been freely played. All we did in it was Swedish exercises—bouncing balls or balancing poles—and marching round to music. Were they afraid that if we played free games we might start a riot? Even our short breathing-space of a quarter of an hour in the middle of a long morning’s work gave us no freedom except to talk. We filed down into a basement room, bought a bun or a biscuit at a table as we passed, and then stood in rows till the time was up. I used to recall with a pang the jolly games of rounders in the grassy garden of my private school, whence we returned to work all hot and recreated.

  Punishment as the boys knew it was impossible. Caning was out of the question, and detention was almost equally so. The bulk of the girls came from considerable distances, and the double journey for an afternoon school had to be ruled out. Consequently the lessons had to be over by half-past one, to allow time for getting home for dinner. But parents had complained that the girls had not enough to do during the afternoon and evening. Therefore, since ho
bbies, were considered frivolous, the curse of homework was started. A detention would involve stopping at school for dinner, and an imposition would add to the already over-burdened homework, so neither of these was widely practicable.

  Reproof, therefore, was the only form of punishment available, and it is hardly to be wondered at that Miss Buss had brought it to a fine art. It ranged from the mild disgrace of ‘signing’ to the third degree in the private room. Very rarely, I believe, expulsion was used. The knowledge that there was always a waiting list of pupils gave Miss Buss absolute power, and this must always be dangerous for a woman. Now by nature she was generous and kind-hearted, and did most sincerely long for the loyal co-operation of her pupils in making the school a success. To this end she delivered every week a moral lecture, and would frequently enlist our cheerful compliance with the innumerable rules. ‘Multiply the results’ was her great slogan for deciding whether a rule was necessary or not. She would point out that one girl running downstairs might not be dangerous, but what if five hundred did? One shoe-bag untidily hung doesn’t matter, but five hundred look bad. One girl talking makes no disturbance, but five hundred do. The fallacy of this argument never struck her. Or did it? and that’s why she repeated it so often? I think that her sleep must often have been broken by the nightmare of five hundred girls all running amok at once.

  Underlying all this iron discipline must have been the subconscious fear that the assistant teachers could not carry on if there were much freedom for questioning and discussion in class. Hard as it is to realize today, a well-educated and cultured woman-teacher was extremely rare. It was in this direction that Miss Buss made her greatest mistake. Instead of searching far and wide for the best, she almost invariably chose women who had been through the school and could be relied on to follow her methods; no doubt from a subconscious fear that those methods might be called in question by some lively and original member of the staff. After all, fresh ideas are always upsetting.