A London Girl of the Eighties

by Hughes, M. V. ;

  ‘Have you girls got any books at home?’ said I.

  ‘Yes, a lot,’ was the rather indignant reply from several.

  ‘Next Friday, then, I want each of you to bring to school any book you like, and read a bit out of it to us all.’

  Questions rained on me—Did I mean it? Would poetry do? How long must it be? Must it be a school-book? May it be really anything we like? May it be funny?…

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether it’s long or short, comic or tragic, poetry or prose, grown-up or childish. But there are three things you must remember. First, it must be something that will interest us. Secondly, you must practise it at home, reading it aloud to your mother or in an empty room, till you can do it really well. And lastly, you must keep it a dead secret from the rest of the class, because we all want to have a little surprise over each reading; now rehearse the three points to remember: interesting—well prepared—secret.’

  It was as though a magician had waved a wand over the class. Friday afternoon became the star turn of the week. The children were seen coming to school with volumes of all sizes wrapped up in newspaper for purposes of protection and concealment, and when the turn came to read there was a solemn unveiling of a fat Shakespeare, or a wedding-present-looking Tennyson, or a tattered copy of Alice. I had prepared a chapter of Uncle Remus to read to them if the supply of matter failed. But it never did. There was such eagerness to read that I had to put names into a box and draw out by hazard. I enjoyed myself as much as they did, for they chose quite good stuff and rendered it in entirely their own fashion; and of course I was secretly glorying in the vast improvement in the reading without the slightest effort on my part. No teaching or criticism was necessary, for we agreed at the beginning that anyone who couldn’t hear easily, or didn’t understand a word, was to put up her hand, and the reader had to repeat, or make her own explanations. The few boarders in the class were at first a difficulty, because they lacked the home for finding a strange book and a mother to practise on. So I asked the elder boarders to help them with suggestions and rehearsals, and to keep all a secret from me. I well remember one of those Friday afternoons. A rather sentimental girl rose solemnly to announce the title of her poem, ‘Speak gently’.

  I couldn’t resist, ‘Oh yes, I know the poem, a good one it is, doesn’t it go like this—“Speak gently to your little boy and beat him when he sneezes”?’ It was some minutes before order was restored, and our faces straight for the proper poem. I was glad to note that the reader had laughed heartily herself, and a little apology from me made her quite happy. The next contribution was also a moral poem, but with a touch of humour in it, and I learnt it by heart:

  ‘Well,’ said the duckling., ‘well’ as he looked at his broken shell,

  ‘If this is the world I dreamt about, it’s a very great pity I ever came out.’

  ‘My dear,’ said the duck, ‘my dear, don’t think that the world is here!

  The world is a pond, and it lies out there; you will soon see life, so don’t despair.’

  But the eyes of the duckling looked beyond the reeds and weeds of that muddy pond.

  It’s certainly most atrocious luck, to be born with a soul when you’re only a duck.

  §2

  The headmistress was a martinet about her assistants, but lazy about her own work, and as the term went on I found that she was pushing ever more and more duties on me. For instance, the visiting master for Drawing was obliged to take a large class that spread over two communicating rooms. When he was in one room the discipline in the other declined. So I was asked to give up my free afternoon—usually spent in a walk with mother—in order to sit in the younger Drawing division and eye the children. I soon found that what they wanted was not eyeing but something interesting to draw. After a little furtive helping I began to supply this need, and the master was only too glad to leave me to it, and as soon as the headmistress heard of it she asked me to take on the teaching of Drawing regularly. I ought to have borne in mind Tony’s dictum about servants: ‘I never think much of a servant who is willing to undertake duties that she has not bargained for.’

  Mother had noticed that I was getting fagged out with the ups and downs of my first term, and she had been busy devising a summer holiday. A little family reunion seemed to be indicated, for Tom was within easy reach, and Charles could very likely come from Bedford. In her varied explorations she had come across a little fishing village called Runswick Bay, that fascinated her artistic sense. She thought it would also please Charles, who had written to say that if we could get some nice, damp, inconvenient habitation that was picturesque, he would join us. It certainly filled the bill as far as being damp, inconvenient, and picturesque, but it failed on the point of habitation. Mother could find no cottage that she could fancy herself entering, let alone asking for ‘rooms’ in it. She climbed back to Hinderwell again, determined to try some other place along that lovely coast. There was a long wait for the next train, and she passed the time by confiding her disappointment to the stationmaster.

  ‘Well, mum,’ said he, ‘why not put up here in the station?’

  ‘Good gracious!’ said mother, ‘I had no idea that anyone could live in a station.’

  He thereupon showed her what he could do. There was a real sitting-room, right on the platform, most convincing, with lace curtains, and fern, and red table-cloth, and a fine view of the railway and signal-box. Tucked away behind the little Booking-office was a smaller room that would do for meals, and a tiny kitchen beyond. Along the platform was a waiting-room that could be used as an extra sitting-room if required. Over all, going the length of the platform, were three bedrooms. It was like a house in a two-dimensional land. He ended the tour of inspection by saying, ‘My wife is a good cook, and you will be very comfortable.’

  And so we were. Tom and his wife, and Charles and I, and most certainly mother, were all of us children enough to be enchanted with our new mode of life, and the fun never grew stale. Four trains passed to and fro every day—two ‘to’ and two ‘fro’. One was due to rattle in during our dinner hour, and we always had to run to the front room to see how many alighted. There was usually a half-finished picture on Charles’s easel by the window, and we enjoyed watching the passengers trying to look at it without seeming inquisitive. Most of them had come for an afternoon at the sea.

  Runswick Bay was enough to attract anyone, when once the approach to it had been overcome. A rough stony lane led down to it from Hinderwell, and after that a path went steeply down to the sea, winding in and out among the primitive fishermen’s cottages. To say that it smelt like Caliban would be merely flattery. But what matter? Once down by the sea and the place was a paradise. The insanitary old cottages took on another aspect, nestling among the rocks and verdure of the hillside; and in the foreground there were the boats and fishing-tackle on the firm white sand in a brilliant setting of sea and sky. Mother and Charles were busy sketching all day long, whilst we others read and bathed and basked. I had brought Rudder Grange with me, and recommended it to Charles, because it described the same kind of odd dwelling that we were in. Mother and I slept in the room next to his, and one morning we were alarmed by great bursts of laughter coming from him. We were alarmed because it was so extraordinary. Charles made others laugh but never laughed himself, and we feared that something serious was the matter—a brain attack or something. I jumped up and knocked at his door.

  ‘What’s the matter, Charles?’

  ‘Oh,’ he managed to say with fresh outbursts, ‘we are like the people in Rudder Grange, we five in a stationary wash-tub!’

  Mother and I liked to hear that laughter, for it was a sign of the new enjoyment of life that had begun for Charles. We had been troubled about him long enough. On my father’s death he was a sensitive, highly-strung boy of seventeen, the only one of us ever likely to shine, and he was obliged to take the only job that offered—one that involved long hours as a clerk in a sordid factory in Kingsland. He got away from
it after a few months, but not until it had half killed him, body and spirit. But now he liked his work and friends at Bedford, and had ample chance to carry on his painting.

  On one of his expeditions round Hinderwell for fresh subjects Charles had come across the picturesque village of Ellerby, and on the following Sunday evening he suggested that we might all walk over there to church.

  ‘Has it got a church?’ we asked.

  ‘Bound to have,’ said Charles, ‘though I didn’t happen to notice one; we may as well go to find out where it is.’

  It was a lovely evening, the cliffs and sea at their best, and we were half inclined to cut church and continue our walk, especially as there was no church visible, although the whole extent of the village lay stretched in front of us. But mother suddenly said, ‘Look at those two girls—they have the unmistakable walk of people going to church—let’s ask them where it is.’ Yes, they were going, and said they would lead the way, if we would follow. Still no symptom of a church, and presently they began to climb a ladder, placed against the side of a cottage. We followed up and found ourselves in a large attic. There were plenty of people already seated, and there were more coming up behind us. The ceiling was so low that Charles, in getting up too suddenly for a hymn, hit his head against a rafter. There was a harmonium and a real clergyman, and the familiar evening prayers, but all I remember is the text of the sermon: ‘There is a path that no fowl knoweth, and that the vulture’s eye hath not seen.’ This lovely bit of poetry harmonized with my mood, for I was imagining all the time that we were a band of early Christians, gathered together in our secret upper room, in imminent danger of a raid by our persecutors.

  This was our last walk all together, because Tom and his wife had to return to Middlesbrough the next day. But Charles had another fortnight, and mother had been hunting round to find a place that would give him a greater variety of subjects for his work. At Sandsend she had found the very thing to delight him—a rickety house right against the seawall. It was a tiny inn, with floors aslant and narrow stairs, each one a foot high. But, as Charles pointed out, we shouldn’t spend our time going up and down stairs, and the view from the sitting-room window was superb—a big stretch of sand, the changing sea, a straggling row of fishermen’s cottages, and Whitby in the distance, with its abbey standing out against the sky. Moreover, we found a glorious hinterland in the Mulgrave woods, and Charles was embarrassed with his riches. Every day of his fortnight was carefully planned, almost every hour. He would do a morning’s work on one picture, and an afternoon’s on another, so that the lights should be right for each. He decided all his lights and ‘values’ at the outset, and never touched anything indoors. We both wished that mother would follow this rule, for she ruined her sketches by improving on them afterwards, and thus never getting the clean, decided effect of Charles’s.

  We had no sooner discovered the charm of Sandsend than mother suggested my asking Mary Wood to spend the rest of the holiday with us. She and I corresponded fairly regularly since our school-days, and she has kept several of my letters. Here is part of the one I wrote inviting her to Sandsend:

  As to economy, the fare is very little. ‘You must do without a pair of gloves’, as Miss Buss used to say. I believe she considered that that would raise untold sums. It used to puzzle me rather because I did go without heaps of pairs of gloves, but never received any addition to my wealth thereby. Problem leading to a simple equation: How many pairs of gloves will it take to go without to be able to go to Sandsend to see an old friend? Solution: Let x = the number of pairs of gloves required. Let a = the fare to Sandsend. Then x = a—old friend’s affection.:. x = a—∞:. x = o Ans. o pairs of gloves required to be gone without to go to Sandsend to see an old friend. So you have only to come. I am afraid there is a fallacy somewhere, but that is a detail.

  When she arrived we found that the inn had used up the bedroom we had designed for her, but we were told that another was to be had in the village. Mother thought it best that I should share this strange room with her, so we went forth together to find it. The village consisted of no more than the row of fishermen’s cottages along the front. Outside the one mentioned to us was seated an old fisherman, very deaf. When at last we had made him understand what we had come for, he hauled himself up and climbed his narrow little stair, and then opened the door of the ‘room’. It was about eight feet square, almost entirely filled by a four-poster bed. We could just squeeze along past this huge structure.

  ‘This will never do,’ said I.

  ‘Oh yes, it will,’ said Mary, ‘it’s the funniest room I have ever been in. But’, she added after a pause, ‘it doesn’t smell as if it had been lived in lately.’

  ‘Nay rather,’ said I, ‘as if it had been died in lately. That old man looked a bit sad, perhaps his wife has recently…?’

  At this Mary pushed along to open the tiny window. But it was not made to open. After a lot of shaking and shifting we managed to lift it bodily from its moorings, and stood it on the floor. After this we felt better and ‘took’ the room. The old feather-bed was comfortable enough, but very early every morning we were awakened, positively awakened, by the smell of the vilest tobacco known to man.

  ‘Wherever can it come from?’ we puzzled. I thought I discerned a tiny hole in the ceiling, that must lead into the attic where the old man slept. But Mary had a more subtle suggestion: ‘It comes through no visible hole, it’s everywhere around; it comes in by osmosis.’ From this it might be supposed that Mary had been going in for science. At school we had both indeed dabbled in a little chemistry in the lab., with bunsen burners and sinks and test-tubes, but our enthusiasm cooled after Bessie Davies let loose the H2S on us one day, and little remained to us but a few choice words, which we employed, like Humpty Dumpty, to mean just what we wanted them to.

  We spent our days mostly in long walks and arguments, or in watching mother or Charles at their sketching. One of these walks gave rise to our attendance at a church service as peculiar in my experience as the one at Ellerby. Mary and I had gone with Charles for a walk to Lythe, where he had planned to make a drawing of the church. He was just starting on it when out came the vicar to see what was going on. After a general chat he said:

  ‘I hope that none of you will turn up to our service on Sunday evening.’

  ‘Oh, why?’ we all exclaimed, astonished at such an unusual request from a vicar.

  ‘My organist is ill. The Morning Service doesn’t matter so much—very few come—but in the evening all the villagers come and will feel dull and disappointed without a bit of singing, and to tell the truth I’m keeping off every one I meet.’

  ‘Shall I help?’ said Charles. ‘I always play the organ in our school chapel, and if I practise a bit on your organ beforehand, I daresay it would go all right.’

  ‘How good of you!’ Then he hesitated. ‘But our small boy who blows is stupid enough at the best of times, and would be paralysed at the thought of blowing for a stranger.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nothing, my sister here and her friend will blow for me. We can go and have a practice as soon as I’ve had an hour at this sketch, and we can put in another tomorrow.’

  The vicar went off delighted, saying that he should let his people know that they were to have a distinguished organist on Sunday evening.

  Charles soon showed us how to blow, and we managed to avoid jerkiness, and the following morning, when he had finished his painting, we quite astonished him with our proficiency. We took it in turns, and he couldn’t decide which of us was best. Mother was specially pleased, because she had always wanted to hear Charles play the organ, and we four set off on Sunday evening in great pride. The vicar had been as good as his word, and the little church was packed. Charles had ventured on some favourite hymns and psalm-tunes, but what we long remembered was his voluntary, ‘O rest in the Lord’, and Handel’s ‘Largo’ at the close.

  Owing to the different dates of term beginning, Charles had to leave for Bedford tw
o days before we had to return to Darlington. I went to the little station at Sandsend to see him off.

  ‘Is there any chance of your coming south?’ he asked, ‘because I want you to meet Hughes, and he wants to meet you.’

  ‘I shall have to go to Cambridge for my Teacher’s Diploma, but not till next year, because you can’t take it till you’re twenty, and I shan’t be that till October.’

  ‘All right. Then we must put off the meeting till then. We will manage for you to have a week-end at Bedford just before or after, as it suits. Our headmaster and his wife know about you and will gladly put you up.’

  The train came in, and to my intense surprise he gave me an affectionate kiss, the only one, so far as I remember, that he ever gave me. That little scene is impressed on my memory, for I never saw him again.

  § 3

  The autumn term at Polam began much the same as before, but after a week or two the headmistress broke to us that she was leaving at Christmas. The fact itself required no ‘breaking’, for the only feeling anybody seemed to have for her was a faint dislike. But further implications were disclosed bit by bit. Although we did not suspect it till much later, she was leaving a sinking ship. We ought to have guessed that the finances of the Association were rocking when we heard that Polam was to be given up. Next term the school was to migrate to another house in Darlington, called West Grove. At the same time we were told that there would be a large influx of new pupils and another assistant teacher. This looked well, for mother and I were too green in the methods of school business to be aware that you can have plenty of pupils if you don’t mind what they are like, and also you can have assistants if their salaries can be avoided.