A London Girl of the Eighties

by Hughes, M. V. ;

  ‘We get something to think about anyhow,’ said mother.

  ‘Of course the hymns are too emotional and the praying a bit outré; but that man Critchley has some fine ideas.’

  ‘Oh!’ cried Lizzie in horror, ‘you don’t mean to say that you listen to him! I’m told that if it weren’t for the look of the thing he would be a Unitarian!’

  ‘Come now, Lizzie, tell us what doctrines you hold that this man is likely to upset.’

  Lizzie was nonplussed for a moment, and then said with great solemnity, ‘I subscribe to all the Articles of the Church of England’, and mother was merciful enough not to ask her if she had as much as read them.

  Christmas Day was the nadir of that holiday. In all my experience of London weather I can recall no worse fog than the one persisting throughout those wretched hours. I remember counting six of them that I spent reading Sully’s Psychology by gaslight. Charles found his painting impossible, and mother had got hold of a realistic novel. Not even Lizzie could venture out to church. Dinner was the worst, for rich food without wine or merriment is more lowering than a vegetarian cutlet. I can quite see why we remember the pleasant things of life, and also the tragic, but can never fathom the reason for the lingering in the mind of mere dullness.

  Charles was a real godsend during the blessed week that he spent with us, delighting mother with the sketches he was doing or planning, and me with his stories of his colleagues at Bedford.

  One young master had difficulty in keeping discipline. ‘Make a boy stand on a form if he is troublesome’ was Charles’s advice to this poor fellow. A few days later he came into Charles’s room in distress: ‘Look here. I’ve got all the boys standing on the forms; what do I do next?’ Charles strode into the room and said ‘Sit’. The boys sat down at once and Charles went out again and said to their master, ‘There you are; now go in and carry on.’

  One conversation in those holidays became memorable from later events. Looking idly through Charles’s birthday book one day I saw another signature by the side of my own. ‘Hullo!’ said I. ‘Who is this Arthur Hughes with the same birthday as mine?’

  ‘Oh, he and I are great friends. He is the mathematics man at Bedford. But he is only doing teaching for a time. He is reading for the Bar.’

  ‘The Bar. That’s the best thing of all.’

  ‘By the way, I’ve told him a lot about you, and your being at Cambridge, and reading Browning, and all that kind of thing, because he is great on poetry himself. So he wanted to know what you were like, for he has never met a girl yet who can cope with Browning.’

  ‘I suppose you told him all the worst things about me that you could think of.’

  ‘Oh, rather. And he’s taken quite a fancy to that portrait of you as a little girl that’s hanging in my room. He often puffs his pipe at it and says he wonders what sort of woman you’ll grow into.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘A dark fiery Welshman, who thinks there’s no country like Wales. And he lays down the law already about everything.’

  ‘I like anyone all crazy about his own country. I should like to meet him.’

  ‘Well, I’ve promised to get you to meet one another some time soon. Where are you going to be after Cambridge?’

  ‘No idea, Charles, anywhere from Land’s End to John o’ Groats.’

  § 4

  This business of where we were to go next began to press upon us about the middle of our second term. With no experience, and training not much believed in, but rather despised by those who had never had it, our main chance for getting a post was Miss Hughes’s recommendation. Headmistresses were occasionally visiting Cambridge and seeking assistants, and several of us were dispatched for interviews. This word didn’t seem half so humorous at first-hand as it had seemed when it concerned my brothers, and when my turn came for enduring an interview I had to summon up the kind of courage I used for going to the dentist—by five o’clock it will be over—a paraphrase of Macbeth’s idea. Like Dym, I suffered from looking much younger than my years, few as these were; and my hair was cropped short; and my nervousness always took the form of grinning and saying foolish things. ‘That’s better than being tongue-tied like some of the others,’ said Miss Hughes, ‘and to help you through with moral support I’ll lend you my bonnet.’ I had never had such a thing on my head before, even for a charade, and the strings of it were enough to check any tendency to laugh. A group of the students made encouraging remarks to me as I set off. The appointed house was on the other side of the town, and I walked with the utmost care lest the bonnet should develop a list. Fortunately it was late afternoon and the light in the room poor. I answered lots of questions and heard myself declaring ability to teach subject after subject, including, I fear, arithmetic. It was all in the future, anyhow, and the most pressing need of the moment was to keep the bonnet on. Once out, I hurried home, and to judge by the laughter of those who saw me arrive I must have looked a strange figure. But I was offered the post, and I am sure it was the bonnet that did it. All the others got posts too, so that the only drawback to the pleasure of our last weeks was the misery at the idea of their coming to an end. We tried to make the Saturday cocoas as lively as possible, and I did my bit with Charles’s stories of the boys at Bedford. Of course these suggested anecdotes to Miss Hughes. She knew of an instance something like the poor fellow with the boys all standing on forms; only that in this case the teacher showed a ready wit. She had prepared an interesting lesson and was rather dashed to find on going into the classroom that the girls were all sitting with their backs to her desk. Instead of courting disaster by ordering them to turn round, she began her lesson as if there was nothing unusual; but she picked occasion to draw some illustrations on the board, and noticed the furtive attempts of several to turn round for a look. At last someone laughed, then the teacher laughed and suggested that they would all see better if they turned round, which they did amidst good-tempered general laughter.

  For our final cocoa Miss Hughes herself was the host, and in order to keep us from getting melancholy she decreed fancy dress. And we were to keep our dress as secret as possible, so as to spring a surprise on the rest. Since my complete inability to sing in tune was one of the standing jokes, I determined that my contribution to the entertainment should be a song. To heighten the effect I would get myself up as a German student and render a very sentimental ditty in broken English. I was forced to get Bessie Jones’s help in making a pair of black knickerbockers, and to apply to the housekeeper for some tow to make a wig. But my chief ‘property’ was to be a pipe, and this I meant to acquire in great secrecy. Not knowing in the least where to get one, I started off by myself one afternoon to the district remote from Newnham Croft, away over Magdalene Bridge. Not daring to enter a respectable tobacconist’s, I found a little combination shop, where they sold papers and birthday cards as well as tobacco—indeed, what mother used to quote from an old notice, ‘mouse-traps and other sweetmeats’. I went in boldly and bought some acid-drops, and while the man was weighing them I confided to him that what I really wanted was a pipe—a large wooden one, ‘not to smoke,’ I hurriedly added, ‘but for a fancy dress’. He smiled and disappeared under the counter, emerging after a prolonged hunt with the very thing, a pipe with a big bowl and a stem a foot long.

  ‘But how much will that be?’ I asked, fearing that such a beauty might strain my resources.

  ‘You shall have it for nothing, Missy, and welcome; it’s been lying by here for ages.’

  Then I told him what I was going to do with it, and he encouraged me by saying he thought it a fine idea, and he showed me how to handle it effectively, stuff tobacco in with correct gestures, and so on.

  Thus armed I was game for any folly, and drew forth joyful laughter as I made my unexpected flights from key to key in my song, ‘Mein Jacob Schmidt, ver vas you?’ For an encore I rendered the most sentimental ballad I knew—‘Some Day’.

  We had clubbed together to give Miss Hu
ghes an oak chest as a parting present, and her letter of thanks to us contained the following:

  ‘My dear Furies, you may rest assured that that chest shall be the last thing that goes to the pawnshop. It shall stand in my room as a memento of that happy year which I so much dreaded, but which (thanks to you) I have so much enjoyed.’

  VIII. My First Post, 1886

  § 1

  ‘POLAM, Darlington.’ These two words were all the information I had about my new work; for when I was in that bonnet I took in very little as to my duties. Mother was all alive at the idea of coming with me and seeing new kinds of people. ‘Very outspoken’ was the characteristic she had both heard and experienced of the north country. We could not actually live together, since it was a resident post, but the headmistress recommended to us a trustworthy landlady not far from the school. So with this name and address we started off together from King’s Cross in good spirits. On our arrival in Darlington we drove first to mother’s lodgings.

  The word ‘lodgings’ casts a gloom over most people, but to me it brings a memory of a large sunny room in West Terrace, and of an old lady and her daughter of gentlest nature, who laid themselves out to have mother well-fed and tended. Indeed, I gathered that a real affection grew up between them, for Mrs. Steele used to have heart to heart talks with mother about times and customs that were past; she was too old for much active work, and I think Miss Steele was grateful for mother’s friendliness with her. Her stay with these people was one of the really happy periods of mother’s life, for she was free from cares, had time for reading and sketching, and had my daily visit with school gossip to look forward to.

  By another stroke of luck it chanced that my brother Tom, who had not long been married, came north at the same time that we did. As classics master in Middlesbrough High School he was within a short railway journey of Darlington, and very seldom a week passed when he didn’t manage to run over to see us.

  Polam was not a private school, but was under the management of some kind of Church Trust, about which I was never clear. ‘Polam’ was the name of a large house in extensive and well laid-out grounds, including lawns, woods, and a good-sized lake. Schoolrooms had been added as a kind of wing, beyond the conservatories; the pupils numbered about seventy day-girls and over a dozen boarders; the staff consisted of the headmistress, who did Arithmetic and what she called ‘a little mathematics’, a Fräulein for French and German, visiting masters for Music and Drawing, and me for the rest.

  What appalled me was not the number of subjects assigned to me, but the elder boarders. I met these girls at supper on my arrival, and barely slept for fear of facing them in class on the morrow. Big girls they were, in long skirts and with their hair done up, looking older than I did, or felt, and apparently far more women of the world.

  My first lesson was with a younger class, and it passed off without much trouble, but for the second hour I was faced by two rows of those formidable young women for a geography lesson. Few animals are more awe-inspiring than a group of English schoolgirls who are taking your measure. I had had no opportunity for preparing a lesson, so it was with assumed nonchalance that I asked: ‘What country are you to be taking next?’

  ‘Italy,’ was the lack-lustre reply.

  ‘Oh, then we shall want a map,’ said I as casually as I could, but thanking my stars for that map of the Mediterranean I had practised for the matriculation. With careless ease I turned to the board and executed the western half of my masterpiece. When I looked round the class had come to life, and amazement sat on the previously disdainful faces.

  ‘Did you do that out of your head?’ exclaimed one girl.

  At this I spread out my hands, to show that there was no book or atlas near me, and said, ‘No deception, ladies and gentlemen.’ When a laugh greeted this my nervousness had entirely gone, and we all set out to fill up the map, as by a kind of dentistry I extracted a few of the ‘natural features’ from the class. While the Alps were being laboriously chalked in, I muttered ‘Poor Hannibal!’

  Overhearing this the girl nearest me said, ‘Hannibal? That’s a funny name—it’s what our old horse at home is called.’

  ‘Funny name!’ I said, ‘but surely you know who Hannibal was?’

  Not one of the class had so much as heard of him, and when I looked shocked and said, ‘Why, he was one of the greatest men that ever lived’ there was an urgent demand, ‘Do tell us about him.’ Only too glad to get away from the products and industries of Italy (which I felt to be approaching) I plunged into Hannibal’s boyhood, and took those girls with genuine excitement from Africa through Spain, over the Rhône (with a sketch of an elephant thrown in), across the Alps and down to victory in Italy. Then pacing up and down the classroom I acted Fabius, wintered in Capua, made a crescendo to Cannae, cursed the authorities in Carthage, and was hesitating about attacking Rome when the bell rang to the accompaniment of groans.

  I had taken my first fence, but there was another to be taken that I had not even suspected. During those first few days one after another of the elder boarders would come up to me at any odd time of the day to ask me the meaning of something—anthropomorphic, bicentenary, protoplasm, and other long words. I gave the meaning briefly, but one day it was ‘Upanishad’.

  ‘I have no idea what that means,’ said I, ‘fetch the book where you came across it, and we shall be able to give a guess at it from the context.’

  The expectant group looked uncomfortable, and then confessed that they hadn’t got any book, but had picked it out of the dictionary. Then they told me that my predecessor had always explained a word if she knew it, but if she didn’t she would not admit her ignorance but would say, ‘Don’t bother me about a mere word, look it up in the dictionary, dear.’ This sport lost its zest as soon as I admitted ignorance, and we laughed together at the absurdity of pretending to know everything.

  After this we were friends, and sincerer friends than those few elder girls I have never had. They began to take an interest in their work, and induced me to join in their play, which chiefly consisted of tennis and rowing on the lake. They had the north-country outspokenness and were extremely matter-of-fact; their intelligence and interest in almost any topic gave a real fillip to my daily round. One day the eldest came to me, with the others attendant, to say, ‘Miss Thomas, dear, we think something ought to be done about your hair.’ Ever since leaving Cambridge I had been trying to look more grownup by cajoling my hair into a knob with hairpins, but with the utmost pulling I could produce nothing much bigger than half a crown. So I asked these girls to try their hand at it. After several efforts they came to the conclusion that it would be better cropped short. When I saw Tom at the week-end I consulted him on the point. ‘Well dear,’ said he, ‘you may as well have it cut, for you couldn’t possibly look worse than you do now.’ And on this hint I cut.

  While all lessons with the elder classes were sheer pleasure, those with the younger ones gave me more difficulty. Soon it became clear that ‘giving lessons’ as we had done in the Training College, when each one was an adventure, was a different matter from teaching day after day the same children in subjects that were already dull to them. Instead of giving them plenty of jolly and simple things to do, I was foolish enough to try to explain things. I have come to the conclusion that children are endowed with some protective instinct that smells an approaching explanation and leads them to curl up like a cat in a thunderstorm till it is over. However, one day I really got the attention of the class to what I proclaimed as one of the most important things in life; and then I made clear what ‘transitive’ meant to every Christian eye. I wound up with a challenging ‘Break is a transitive verb. You can’t break without breaking something. You can’t give me a sentence with break in it unless there is something that you do break.’ Hardly were the words out of my mouth when I thought how they might quote Tennyson at me, but a glance at the class reassured me on that point. One little girl, however, appeared to be in mental struggle, and
then up shot her hand with a triumphant ‘I can!’ An expectant stare at her from the rest, and then came forth this:

  ‘I tried to break the glass, but couldn’t. You see, I didn’t break it.’

  What should I do? My solution was to laugh, say ‘Right you are, Elsie,’ and pass on to another point. No one minded, of course, or inquired further of the matter. But I learnt more psychology from Elsie than from many hours of studying Sully. I returned to the simple grammar of my childhood for these little girls. In this style:

  Interjections show surprise,

  As, Oh! how pretty, Ah! how wise.

  The hour-long lessons were a trial with the younger ones, for I hadn’t learnt the technique of making the pupils do all the work. But this soundest of principles was discovered by me in the following way. The period of the week most dreaded by me was an hour and a quarter, at the close of Friday, assigned to reading. At first it was greeted by the pupils cordially, for my predecessor had allowed them to ‘read round’ and when once the turn of each was past she engaged in her own affairs. But I dodged them, and they had no peace. The only available Reader was more than stale, and already decorated with pipes in the mouths of the persons illustrated. ‘Oh, don’t let’s have this one,’ was the inevitable murmur whichever one I chose. Silent reading, even if there had been any books for it, would have been considered laziness on my part by the headmistress, who was a martinet. She had scolded me once up and down for having dismissed this dreadful class five minutes before time. An hour of horribly bad reading, with an undercurrent of insubordination, was bad enough, but it was that extra quarter of an hour that drove me to desperation. Surely heavenly inspiration is not confined to solemn matters, or else whence came my idea?