A London Girl of the Eighties

by Hughes, M. V. ;

  One day I indulged in a tram along Holloway Road, so impatient was I to get home.

  ‘You are back very early, darling. Have you been expelled or something? I’ll have your dinner hurried up!’

  ‘I’m so excited, mother; I’ve been made a prefect. We had an election this morning. We were all given slips of paper with the names of all the form, and we had to cross out all except the ones we chose, so that no one could tell who voted for which. There was a long talk beforehand, telling us not to choose our favourites, but the ones who would be best for the whole school.’

  ‘But why the whole school?’

  ‘You see, prefects are not like the mere form monitors, they help to keep the discipline all over the school at all times, and they wear a special badge with blue ribbon.’

  That was about all I knew at first, but gradually I found that the prefects were a real power in the place. It was no doubt from the example of Arnold of Rugby that Miss Buss sought to govern her school and set its tone through their agency. Influence rather than power was what she chiefly desired; there was to be no ‘Jack in office’ spirit; and although the prefects had full power to order any girl to sign, I can remember no instance of their exercising this power. How fully I now realized the distress of Mary Worley at my breaking a rule when she was prefect over me in Hall, and how wisely she had used her influence. I think the two ideals nearest to Miss Buss’s heart were her Hall and her Prefects. She lavished on the latter all the little privileges she could think of, guessing unerringly the kind of thing they would appreciate. They were allowed to speak anywhere at any time. They came in at the front door instead of the pupils’ entrance. Every now and again they were summoned to a special ‘Prefects’ Meeting’, to discuss some difficulty that had arisen in discipline or school arrangements. Once I remember we were consulted about a girl in the Fifth who had become over popular, was uproariously clapped on going up for a prize, and was having her head turned. Another time the point was raised: ‘Should teachers come to school on bicycles?’ I remember giving it as my considered opinion that such a thing was undignified!

  Miss Buss was far more friendly and confidential with her prefects than with several of her assistants, and obviously respected them more. But neither her prefects nor her most exalted assistants dared to tell her an unpalatable truth, as the following incident shows:

  The weekly moral lectures, already referred to, were given to the whole school in detachments, about three forms at a time, in the theatre-shaped room. The Sixth had the same lecture, but since they must not be mixed with other forms, it was given to them separately in their own room. Topics of a general nature were treated in a vigorous way—loyalty, truth, courage, idle thoughts, and such-like. They were never dull, but one week for a change it was an entirely comic lecture, full of gay reminiscences and good jokes (jokes that seem good even in memory today). We of the Sixth rose to it finely, letting ourselves go with bursts of laughter, and I excelled myself by prolonged whoops that the others used to call ‘Molly Thomas laying an egg’. At each fresh outburst Miss Buss beamed with delight, and had some difficulty in keeping her countenance sufficiently to read her manuscript, and this totally new aspect of our austere head was a big joke in itself. At the end, however, she straightened herself up and warned us that such a frivolous lecture would not happen again.

  But it did. Re-enter Puck. Next Monday as usual we were all set for the weekly address when in walked Miss Buss and announced that she had intended a lecture on ‘Humour’, but thought it would be better to give a few examples of it instead, and we settled ourselves for some kind of elevated discourse with illustrations from great authors. To our utter bewilderment we soon perceived that we were to have the identical lecture of the week before. Still, we hoped that there was some subtle humour in its opening in the same way. But no, on it went with the same anecdotes and the same pauses expectant of laughter. Well, I can laugh at most things, but all merriment was frozen, and I knew that no sound is more mirthless than forced laughter, or more easily detected by someone telling a chestnut. I gave a side glance at Mary Wood, and then at Bessie Jones, and they might have been at a funeral. No propitious moment arose for us to jump up and explain. Besides, there sat Mrs. Bryant, the form mistress and confidential friend of Miss Buss, looking as miserable as we were—even she didn’t dare to interrupt, although every now and again she jerked her head at me as much as to say, ‘Do for goodness’ sake, Mary, get up and stop it.’ That was all very well, but there were limits even to my audacity. So on went that lecture, drained of all life, the jokes that were funny the week before seeming stupid if not lugubrious. Miss Buss went on doggedly to the final word (a specially funny climax), looked round at us with disgust and swept out of the room. Mrs. Bryant hurried after her, and inside a minute they were both back and the storm broke. Miss Buss was never lacking in invective, and there was a good deal of it hurled at us, of which the burden was, ‘Why didn’t you stop me?’ ‘Why didn’t you, Mary?’ was specially thrust at me, but Mrs. Bryant bore most of the brunt, deservedly I think.

  Mother’s comment on it was ‘Miss Buss is such a great woman, what a pity she isn’t a bit greater. If she had only come back into the room and had a hearty laugh over the mistake, what a real lesson in humour she could have made from it.’

  ‘We were all dreadfully sorry for her, you know.’

  ‘Sorry! That’s fatal.’

  § 2

  It was at the close of one of our holiday times, and Charles heard me boasting about my knowledge of the theatre.

  ‘Pooh!’ said he, ‘why, you’ve only been once, and that was to a farce. You’ve never seen a real play.’

  Annoyed at this, I asked him what he meant.

  ‘In a farce you can hardly tell what’s happening at the time, let alone afterwards. You can’t remember the story of Betsy, can you now?’

  I had to admit this. Then he added, ‘you haven’t seen what a play can be till you’ve been to a Shakespeare or a melodrama.’

  ‘What’s a melodrama?’

  ‘It’s difficult to explain exactly, but I’ll take you to see The Silver King and then you’ll know.’

  Mother was very pleased for me to have this treat the last night before term; it would freshen up my brain. Charles was right on its being a perfectly new experience. Entirely unsophisticated, I hung on every word and gesture, completely entering into all the troubles of the hero, and I can remember the progress of the story to this day. How noble Wilson Barrett seemed when he pretended that he had signed the forged cheque! I understood then what Tom meant by ‘lying well in a good cause’. As mother and I walked to school the next day I had to tell her the whole plot, and even now there is a bit of Camden Road that recalls to me the cry of the man who thought he had committed a murder: ‘Oh God, put back Thy universe and give me yesterday.’ Mother was impressed by this, or else pretended very well, for she never appeared bored by anything I related.

  Not very long afterwards I had a good chance for indulging my love of acting. The time drew near for the Sixth to perform a play to the rest of the school. A committee meeting, with Miss Buss in the chair, was held in the Library, to settle the great question—what shall we act? In recent years there had been scenes from Pickwick and A Winter’s Tale, and a play of Molière’s. We wanted to strike out a new line if possible.

  ‘Any idea, Mary?’ said Miss Buss to me.

  Yes, I certainly had. My love of the Greek stories amounted to an obsession. Saturated with Church’s Tales from Homer, even as a small child I had imagined myself Achilles as I bowled my hoop along Grange Road, smiting the Trojans hip and thigh. So

  ‘Why not do the siege of Troy?’ said I.

  ‘But how could we do the wooden horse?’ objected someone.

  ‘And the burning of the city?’ objected another.

  The idea had taken root, however, and soon someone suggested that we could make Hector and Andromache the leading characters, and arrange a complete story
round them. This looked more feasible, and plenty of ideas were offered. But Miss Buss saw a serious difficulty in providing the poetic language needed to give the thing the right Homeric flavour.

  ‘I have a very classical brother,’ said I, ‘who could do the language for us, and he knows a lot about plays and how to make them.’

  Fearing that this might be thought cheeky, I was relieved when Miss Buss said, with sharp decision: ‘Tell your brother to come to see me.’

  Whereas mother had come back from her interview with Miss Buss full of admiration and affection for her, Tom came home bubbling with laughter. That many-sided woman had become quite a different person when confronted with a young man whom she was predisposed to like. After he had heard what she wanted done about the play and had promised to do his best, she said:

  ‘So you’re full of the Classics, are you? And now I suppose you’ll be pitchforked into some school?’

  Tom was greatly taken aback at her expression, and replied that he supposed he would.

  ‘And I suppose you have not the faintest idea how to teach?’ Tom grinned acquiescence, but said he thought he could manage all right.

  ‘You young men have an easy time…. Now that sister of yours, if I don’t rescue her, is destined to the dreadful career of stopping at home and helping mother—dusting the drawing-room, arranging the flowers, and other horrors.’

  ‘I know,’ said Tom, ‘and mother and all of us want her to do something better, and you can’t think how grateful we all are to you for all———’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she interrupted. ‘Now what I say is, Why did the Lord create Messrs. Huntley & Palmer to make cakes for us, if not to give our clever girls a chance to do something better?’

  Tom didn’t tell us whether she hugged him, but I shouldn’t have been surprised.

  Within a short time Tom had concocted a play for us, by selecting a few dramatic episodes from Pope’s Iliad. He rounded it into a complete story by writing a Prologue, to tell the previous events, and a final speech (to be delivered by Cassandra) prophesying the Greek wile, the Trojan debacle, and the burning of the city.

  I bought a new exercise book, and took great pride in copying out the passages from Pope that Tom had selected, decorating them with drawings from Flaxman, to give the girls an idea of correct clothing and posing. Tom’s main job lay in the Prologue and Epilogue, and for these he felt that blank verse would be far more soul-stirring than rimed couplets. Up and down the study floor he paced, slowly declaiming the Lines as he invented them, while I sat at the table taking them down roughly, to be polished up and written out neatly afterwards.

  The finished book created something of a sensation at school, as the girls crowded round Mrs. Bryant’s desk to look at it. It was taken to Miss Buss, who presently had me summoned to her to receive her very warm approval and grateful messages to Tom. The next business was a meeting for casting the characters. Andromache was easily settled, for Ethel, Miss Buss’s niece, was tall and beautiful, very dignified in bearing, and never known to laugh. Again, Hector was soon fixed, for Bessie Jones was not only tall and handsome, but had cropped curly hair, almost black—Hector’s locks to the life. For the subordinate parts I was given first choice, and at once picked Cassandra, so that I might speak Tom’s Epilogue.

  Feverish work on the dresses was carried on in every available moment and spot. Even the sacred Library, where the head girls were preparing for Girton, had quiet corners of needlework industry. A Greek woman must have had an easy time with her toilet, for all she needed (so we were told) in the dressmaking line was a sack, open top and bottom, and provided with a couple of buttons and holes at the top so as to make three gaps; her head went through the middle gap and her arms through the side gaps, while the whole fell in graceful folds from the two buttons. With this hint we provided dresses for Andromache and all her maidens. The meaning of ‘we’ must not be pressed. My part lay in general encouragement, admiration, and advice, with a lukewarm offer to make a few buttonholes. A far more congenial task for me was helping Bessie Jones with her armour. The helmet was the worst, for it had to be strong enough to stand being taken off gallantly, and carelessly put on, and flashed about a bit to amuse Astyanax. What with donning and doffing we tested it so severely that it came apart, and had to be made all over again on a firmer basis. About this second one Bessie felt like Don Quixote—‘so sure that it was sound and strong that it need be put to no second trial’.

  The Greek ‘sacks’ were really beautiful in their varied colours and materials. There was no machine available for the long seams, but the rate at which some of the girls worked filled me with amazement. One girl in particular, named Alice Codner, ran and felled absolutely like the wind, and merely laughed at my astonishment. When it came to Cassandra’s dress Miss Buss herself went to Liberty’s to select the material. She must have spent a good deal on it, for it was soft and glossy and heavy and of a deep saffron colour. When it was draped on me to get the right length I kept looking down to see the effect, for I had never been so gloriously clad. ‘Hold up your head, silly,’ said the girl who was measuring me, ‘you haven’t got to see it.’ My only contribution to it was to cut out in red material a border of the Greek key pattern, for someone else to apply to the edge. The idea was to make the whole as much like a flame as possible (in accordance with a kind of stage-direction from Tom).

  Meanwhile, the rehearsing of the speeches was going on in other odd corners, and several times we stayed on for the afternoon to rehearse in the hall. I remember once coming suddenly on Bessie Jones lying prostrate on a form in No. 1 cloakroom, representing the corpse of Hector, while some of the best-looking of the Sixth were firing off their wailing speeches over her. The discomfiture of others gave me much amusement, for I was spared any rehearsing. I was not to appear at all until the end, had to speak by myself, without bothering about cues, so Mrs. Bryant said, ‘I know you can fill the hall with your voice if you like, and if you break down from nervousness or forgetting the words, why that in itself will add poignancy to your speech.’ So I only practised it at home to mother and Tom.

  ‘Hector and Andromatch’ (as certain of the Lower School called it when the bills were posted up) went without a hitch. Hector’s helmet stayed the course, Andromache fainted on the wall in realistic style, the many maidens did their wailing so well as to draw tears from some of the audience, and Hector lay very dead, in spite of being maddeningly tickled by something on her up-turned face. Meanwhile, in the little room behind the organ, Mrs. Green, our make-up artist, was laying herself out to make me look as blood-curdling as possible. How abandoned I felt when I looked in the glass and saw the tragic effect produced by Mrs. Green’s paint and cunning touches under my eyes! I felt that I actually was the prophetess doomed to speak the truth and yet never to be believed.

  The moment came. My excitement was stronger than my nervousness, and I strode through the mourners to the footlights which lit up the flame-effect of my saffron robe; then I let loose on the assembled school my prophetic vision, ending with stretching wide my arms at the words, ‘And Troy is all a-flame!’ Mary Wood told me afterwards that she and the girls near her were genuinely frightened, for the speech had not been dulled by rehearsing and came with all its fresh force.

  § 3

  The serious business of my last year at school was preparing for matriculation. In those days it was something of a peak of achievement, second only to an entrance to Girton. About a score of us were to go in, and scholarships were to be awarded to the six who should come out highest on the list. I was disappointed to find Caesar among the set books, for Latin was my strongest subject, and I should have welcomed a far stiffer author.

  The actual days of examination in Burlington House were a pleasant excursion. On the first day Mrs. Bryant took us all in an omnibus in very cheery style, and as she was an invigilator, the whole thing seemed no worse than a test in our own form-room. The Latin paper was absurdly easy, but what was my chagrin to fin
d when I got outside that I had left out a whole paragraph of the despised Caesar. There goes my chance of a scholarship, thought I, and it serves me right for being so cock-sure about the Latin. As for the mathematics, my only hope there was to scrape through. Geometry and Algebra were not so bad—you knew where you were—so far in Euclid, so far in Todhunter. But there was a mixed grill called sometimes Mechanics, sometimes Natural Philosophy, and this subject seemed to have no natural boundaries. A ladder against a wall, however, was always cropping up and could be understood, and the parallelogram of forces was merely common sense. But Dym had alarmed me by solemnly warning me never to confuse two things—mass and weight, I think they were. Anyhow, I was so confused about everything that mass and weight were mere flea-bites. My secret fears were as nothing to the paper that actually faced me. I gave a hurried glance through the page and a half of long-worded problems, of which not a single one seemed possible. A look round the room showed the other candidates applying themselves calmly. ‘Scholarship! It’s not even a Pass I’ll be getting!’ I shall never forget the dismal aspect of that room and how I dropped my head on my folded arms on the desk. But despair is a tonic and I braced myself for another look. After all, three hours are a good stretch, and I might manage some little bit of some question. As Livingstone appeared to Stanley, so did the word ‘ladder’ leap from the page to my searching eye. Yes, the good old friend was at the old stand of 60°. When put into plain English the examiner’s demands about it were quite easy. It was just like the lions in the path in the Pilgrim’s Progress, and elated with my success I attacked three or four more questions.

  Determined to squeeze some extra marks in some paper or other, I had prepared a map of the Mediterranean. This I had practised until I could do it almost blindfold, with Italy sloping the right way and the coast of Africa and the Black Sea complete. ‘Give the situation and modern names of the following’, one question ran. Suppressing a whoop of joy I put forth my map, and with the coloured chalks I had secreted in my pocket I put blue round the coast-line and red spots for the required sites, adding foot-notes on the modern names. Tom had advised me ‘always save the examiner trouble’ and there it was, the examiner had nothing to do but glance.