While this man aroused dislike and contempt, the other produced a boredom that was of a vintage unsurpassed by any that I have tasted since. For the last half-hour (1 to 1.30) every Wednesday the school assembled in hall to hear a sermon from him, preceded by a collect—always the same one, which ever since recalls to me, and probably to hundreds of others, the figure of a tall, thin, long-bearded, dark, cadaverous-looking clergyman, who spoke, all on one note, about Christian Evidences, possibly with the aim of making them so dull that we should never question them again.
During the last period of morning school we could stick to hard work fairly well, but to listen to dreary talk was another matter. Most of us had breakfasted before eight, and it was considerably past two before we could reach home for dinner. Bessie Jones has told me that she used to get back in such an exhausted state that she often had to lie down and rest before she could face her dinner. Well, one day during this sermon ordeal the girl next me fainted. I got her out as quietly as I could to someone who would attend to her, and then returned. When the address was over I was summoned to Miss Buss’s presence.
‘Why did you take that girl out?’ she thundered.
‘She fainted. What else could I do?’
‘You meant well, my dear, no doubt, but you must never allow a girl to faint.’
When I looked my surprise, she added: ‘Once I was in church with a pewful of girls. I noticed that one of them looked like fainting. I leant across to her, shook my fist at her and said: “You dare faint.” And she didn’t.’
The choice of that particular clergyman for our weekly sermon was the more surprising because Miss Buss seemed to take great pains to prevent our school-days from being dull. Exacting and often stupid though the lessons might be, there was always some little event on the horizon to look forward to. She gave ‘at homes’ to certain forms now and again, and the Sixth would give theatrical displays to the Upper School. But on two occasions in the year the whole school spread itself for special enjoyment. The merriest and most care-free day of the year was Foundation Day on April 4th. Since daffodils are then in season they were chosen as the school flower, and we were exhorted to bring as many as we could. The hall, corridors, classrooms—every available space was smothered in daffodils. How jolly the place looked compared with its usual severity. For in those days there were no pictures to relieve the blankness of the walls or to distinguish one room from another. No, that is wrong. In one room hung an illuminated notice, headed LOST. In pretty and varied lettering followed the information that there had been lost one golden hour, studded with sixty ruby minutes, set in sixty brilliant diamond moments. No reward was offered, for they were lost for ever. I was driven by some kind of nervous strain to read this again and again, and how I longed to write underneath ‘Then why mention it?’
Well, on Foundation Day we lost as many minutes as we liked, and the day before was still better, for several of us stayed at school to help decorate. We were given plenary dispensation to talk when and where we liked, got into a thorough mess, and had an uproarious tea together, during which our austere teachers became as frivolous as ourselves. On the day itself the school was thrown open to parents and friends, for whom the main interest was an exhibition of toys made by our own hands and destined for a children’s hospital.
While Foundation Day was mainly a gala for parents and pupils, the authorities looked upon Prize Day as the more important festival. Miss Buss always managed to secure some great personage for this—a member of the Royal Family, or a Church Dignitary, or a Celebrity of some kind. It was a gay scene. Parents (of prize-winners only) were huddled into the gallery and upper corridor, while the whole school, dressed in the brightest garments possible, white for choice, filled the hall. Tables on the platform were loaded with books, for there was never any stint of prizes. Proceedings began with a speech from Miss Buss, detailing school successes, and then the Grand Person spoke a ‘few words’.
During my school career there were three of these ceremonies, and I remember each as though it were yesterday. In my first year (1883) it was the Duchess of Teck who had consented to officiate. That was very grand and pleasant, but had its drawbacks for us that the Duchess would never have guessed. For a fortnight beforehand we had a morning drill in the correct method of approaching and receding from Royalty. After Prayers Miss Buss seated herself on her throne to act the part of the Duchess. Each prize-winner had to mount the steps of the platform on one side, approach, make a deep curtsy, receive a book and then retire (rather perilously) backwards to the other side of the platform and descend, without once turning her back on the ‘duchess’. Now I had never curtsied in my life, and Miss Buss, with many an impatient ‘tchah’, made me do it over and over again until I would willingly have foregone my prize to be delivered from this public exposure of my awkwardness. Mother was much amused over my description of it, and since she could curtsy as to the manner born she soon got me into the way of it. How the Duchess would have laughed to see mother and me practising at home.
The great day was very hot, and we were all packed into the hall in good time, so as to be on the safe side, because ‘Royalty was always punctual’. But the Duchess was late, Miss Buss showed signs of fluster, and we began to think there had been an accident. At long last there was a stately ushering on to the platform and bowing and smiling. The Duchess was a dear, for she inflicted no speech on us and gave us our prizes without the least observation of our manner of bowing. Mother (in the gallery) was amused to note that my much-practised curtsy ended in a jerk from the waist and a hurried retreat foremost down the platform.
The broad homely accents of Bishop Temple warmed our hearts at a later Prize-giving. He assured us that girls were far cleverer than boys. ‘Now my wife,’ said he, looking round at Mrs. Temple as she sat nervously brooding over the piles of books she was to distribute, ‘always says the right thing at the right moment. As for me, my efforts at speech-making consist of what the French call “staircase wit”, or what you wish you had said as you go downstairs afterwards.’ Everyone must have rejoiced when this most human of bishops went to Canterbury. He deserved the highest honour, if only for his advice to the curates of his diocese. ‘In making a sermon,’ said he, ‘think up a good beginning; then think up a good ending; then bring these two as close together as you can.’
It is absurd how an anecdote will stick for a lifetime when all the uplifting thoughts of a speaker are forgotten. In ’84 our celebrity was Roby, of Latin Grammar fame. Perhaps he was none too good at mathematics himself, guessed what the average girl was like in that line, and so, faced by five hundred of them, he chose the following reminiscence (which I remember practically verbatim):
‘It was during the Education Commission of ’68 that I happened to be in the chair at one of the meetings. Sitting near me was Matthew Arnold, who had recently visited France to investigate the kind of education going on there. He was bubbling over with a New Method they had got. No matter what was on the agenda, he kept referring to it. It was a positively magical way of doing “Rule of Three” sums, called, so he said, the “Unitary Method”, and was so simple that not even the dullest could fail to understand it. He explained it so fully to us that we got quite confused, and at last, in desperation at the waste of time I said, “Look here, Arnold, I’ll set you a sum, and you do it for us by this new method of yours.” “Good,” said Arnold, “that will be splendid.” So I set him a good long one, with plenty of trench-digging and men with unusual hours (you know the kind, don’t you, girls?) and he retired into a corner of the room with it. We turned to our business and forgot all about Arnold. In due time we broke off to go downstairs for a tea interval. Presently a voice was heard calling over the banisters: “Roby, Roby, is this a real sum?”’
IV. Under Grace
§ 1
IF the weather during my first term might be described as ‘cloudy with bright intervals’, one day shortly after the beginning of my second term the sky changed to ‘set fair
’.
A school official burst into our room and asked in an offhand way, as though expecting no response, ‘Has any girl here ever done any Latin?’ I put up my hand, the only one, as well as I remember. On further questioning, I admitted having read a good deal of Caesar, two or three books of the Aeneid, and some Livy. These points were taken down and the official departed. We were so used to such sudden questionnaires, demanding statistics as to our birth-place, full Christian names, father’s initials (if dead, put ‘none’), and so on, that I thought no more of it, not even mentioning the incident to mother, the ever eager listener to the smallest items of news.
Next day at the mid-morning interval we were lined up as usual in rows, and indulging in as much talking as we could squeeze into the time while we ate our halfpenny buns, when Miss Buss entered. There was a slight sensation in the ranks, for her presence in the dining-room was unusual, and a stormy petrel. An underling in her wake called out ‘Mary Thomas’.
‘Now you’re for it,’ said the girl standing by me. ‘What have you been up to?’
‘I can’t think,’ said I, as I started off.
‘Mina you stand up to her,’ was the parting injunction.
Miss Buss was evidently in one of her unpleasant moods. But I was fairly comfortable in my conscience and looked her full in the eye.
‘What was your last school?’ she barked at me.
‘Oh, only a private school,’ said I in a deprecatory tone as an attempt at delicate flattery.
‘What is its name, I said. Answer my question.’
I gave her the name, but it obviously conveyed no idea to her, and I wondered why she wanted to know it. Then she shot at me almost venomously:
‘How long have you been learning Latin?’
‘I can’t remember. Mother began me when I was about six, and I have been doing it off and on ever since, chiefly with my brother.’ Then something in her expression gave me the clue to her ill-temper and induced me to add ‘Not much at the school’.
At this a look of relief crossed her face and she visibly relaxed, but pulled herself up again, glared at me for a moment or two in silence and then snapped out:
‘Go back to your place.’
‘What was the matter?’ was the inquiry of my neighbours in the line.
‘Nothing much. She only wanted to know the name of my last school, and exactly how long I had been learning Latin, just to fill in some of those eternal forms, I expect.’
On our return to the classroom I was ordered to take the books out of my desk and go to the Upper Fifth. This must mean a sudden ‘remove’, and staggering mentally under the idea and physically under the books I made my way to the room that was actually next-door to the Sixth! Here I was cordially welcomed by the form mistress and helped quite graciously to a vacant desk. A lesson was in progress on the derivation of French words. I found this amusing, for it was quite a new idea to me that other countries had ‘derivations’ for their words. I gained much kudos from being able to contribute several Latin words in the accusative, which appeared to be in great demand. Towards the end of the morning one of my new comrades was told off to show me what the homework would be for the next day. I went home on the wings of an eagle, giving mother the full dramatic scene as I ate my dinner.
She and I turned with anxiety to examine the new home-work, and found it difficult in some ways, but not beyond our joint efforts. Mother came out strong over a tricky bit of French composition, and the exhilaration of my ‘remove’ made everything seem fun to us. The mere look of the Cicero text (lent me for the day) was like the rattling of spears to the war-horse. ‘Bless you, mother,’ said I, ‘for having started me in Latin so early, for that’s what got me my move.’
The next day I felt more at ease and able to look round the room. The sight that attracted me more than any other was a girl with a mass of red-gold hair and, whenever I caught her eye, a jolly smile. We gravitated to one another in the lunch interval, and exchanged our names and gossip. This Mary Wood had known no other school, had been under Miss Buss since childhood, and thought everything perfect. She had reached the Upper Fifth as she said, ‘in a proper and orderly way, not like you “by the earthquake”.’ I was glad she knew her Alice, and we soon found many books and tastes in common. When I demurred to so many rules all over the place, she told me that it was nothing to what they endured in the lower part of the school. Here a wooden instrument called a ‘clacker’ was in use for giving commands—to stand, put pencils down, ‘hands away’, pass out, and so on. It was used even for punctuation in a dictation exercise: one clack, a comma; two clacks, a semicolon; three, a colon; four, a full-stop. I had heard this clacker clacking in the distance and had wondered what it was. But I gathered that as one went up the school the discipline was relaxed bit by bit, and to my relief I found that learning daily portions of poetry was not required in the Upper Fifth.
There was an announcement one morning that Mary Wood was to have a day’s absence for a sister’s wedding, and would someone volunteer to send her the particulars of home-work by post? I immediately offered, and stepped up to my newfound friend to get her address. Only recently, while writing this book, I recalled this incident to her, and she said, ‘Yes, indeed I remember it well, and the angry tears I shed at being obliged to stay away from school for even that one day.’ Surely the oddest of reasons for tears at a wedding.
When the half-term holiday came mother asked me whether I would like to invite a schoolfellow to tea.
‘Very much,’ said I. ‘There are lots of jolly girls, only I have no idea where any of them live.’ Then suddenly remembering that I had Mary Wood’s address in my notebook, I looked it up and decided that it couldn’t be very far, for it was in Camden Road itself. So off I started to fetch her. But Camden Road seemed to stretch endlessly, and the numbers on one side bore no relation to those on the other. I persevered until I reached No. 267, and found it to be an imposing house with a large garden. Rather shyly I knocked at the door, little thinking how often I should come to it, how dear all its inmates were to become to me, and how I should be married from it.
Mary was more than willing to come back to tea with me, and insisted on bringing her shoes to change, in spite of my assurances that our family didn’t mind mud. Mother was much struck with this bit of thoughtfulness, and took a great liking to Mary at once. There was a special tea for us, and Mary was delighted with the boys’ study, and Charles’s pictures and our family magazine. Thus began a friendship of over fifty years between our families, that has had no break nor even suspension.
§ 2
On the very first day of the next term we were informed that there were two vacancies in the Sixth, and the official added, ‘Mary Wood and Mary Thomas, take your books and go.’ Almost helpless with excitement and nervousness we stood laden with our books outside the sacred door of Room No. 1. ‘You go in first’, we exclaimed simultaneously, and pushing each other forward we fell in together, for the door had given way unexpectedly, and our books were scattered over the floor. The form mistress, Mrs. Bryant, was much amused and made some reassuring remark about such an energetic entry being a good omen.
From that first moment we found the atmosphere entirely different from that of the rest of the school. We were privileged beings and felt that the whole place belonged to us. We were expected to behave properly, for, as Dr. Abbott said of his own Sixth, we were under Grace and not under the Law. Or, as Mrs. Bryant pointed out to us, the attitude of ‘liking what you do’ comes to the same thing as ‘doing what you like’.
And certainly we did like what we had to do. We were considered capable of discussions in class and having opinions of our own. The history specialist made the subject quite a new thing to us, all about people who really lived, and ‘policies’ that acted or didn’t act. As her Christian name was Sara she was dubbed ‘the divine Sara’, not so much in fun as in genuine admiration.
Our main comic relief was provided by a weekly French lesson. The
grammar was assumed to have been ‘done’, and the chief business was conversation, carried on almost entirely by Mademoiselle herself, punctuated by oui, oui from us. A terror in the lower forms, to us she was just a lovable old thing. I think she was of a great age, for she wore a black wig, with grey hairs showing beneath it, and was extremely wrinkled. She liked teaching the Sixth, for there she could unbend without fear of disorder. Coming along the hall she would herald her approach to the room with shrill cries of ‘Qui est-ce qui parle? Qui est-ce qui rit?’ On entering she would throw up her hands in feigned amazement as she saw (what she expected) my broad grin—‘Hélas! c’est la petite Miss Thomas!’
Her one bit of serious work was a dictée, in which we had far more words wrong than right, but that didn’t seem to surprise or worry her. At the close she would say ‘Qui veut épeler?’ and always picked me out, no matter how many others offered. I stood by her desk, facing the class, and spelt out the French letters without any pause.
‘Doucement, doucement, petite’, she would insist every now and again, grasping my arm as if putting on the brake. Pretending to think that this meant ‘softly’, I lowered my voice still more every time she repeated it, but still went as fast as breath permitted—much to the joy of the class. When I looked round panting and triumphant at the end, her face was always wreathed in fatuous smiles. I think now that this was the only approach to a joke that she obtained from her stolid English pupils, although she assured us that the dictée was always a droll anecdote.
Indeed, with nearly all the teachers I enjoyed something of the privilege of a court jester, for not only did I look absurdly young for my seventeen years, but I had my hair cropped like a boy’s instead of being ‘done up’ like nearly all the others, and my famous dress came only to my knees.
A London Girl of the Eighties Page 6