A London Girl of the Eighties

by Hughes, M. V. ;

  The new head was still less attractive than the former one, and had not even the advantage of being a martinet. The new pupils were an unruly set, and my new colleague had no influence on them whatever. How her classes went I don’t know, but her ‘supervision’ times were so noisy that I was requisitioned to take her place, and she could not even be trusted to take the boarders out for a walk in crocodile form. She was a good sort, and I didn’t want her to lose her post, so I took her turns. But it would have been a good thing for every one if we had both lost our posts.

  Evidently there was iron economy required to keep that school going at all. It was in the meals that we felt the change immediately. How well I remember our first supper under the new management. The staff hoped for something rather special after the inadequate midday school dinner. A large dish piled high with potatoes baked in their jackets was placed in front of the head, who proceeded to serve them out. I looked upon this as an original kind of hors-d’oeuvre. But nothing followed. ‘An Irish supper—a bit of a change’, we said to one another afterwards. But this dish of baked potatoes came on every night, and nothing else at all. Our other meals we had with the boarders, and of these I think Squeers would have been ashamed. There was nothing at all but extremely thick chunks of bread, with butter scraped on them, for breakfast, tea, and the boarders’ supper. The midday dinner was sometimes a piece of nondescript ‘meat’, but more often it was a slab of fish that I believe was eel, but looked like a portion of whale. This was followed by a mass of rice cooked in water. It was no wonder that on such a diet the girls were almost impossible to manage. With my extra supervision duties I could never have kept going if I had not been able to rush round to mother’s rooms. Here Miss Steele would always have ready for me some nourishing food that I could take quickly, usually a bowl of generous soup and some cake or buns to take back with me, to share with my colleague. Mother found no increase for these items in the weekly account, and protested; but Miss Steele maintained that they cost nothing, because she had all the ingredients in the house. My colleague and I used to make ourselves odd cups of cocoa with the aid of a spirit-lamp and a tin of condensed milk. Miss Steele’s buns and cakes made a great addition to these feasts; but the fact remained that we were not sufficiently nourished for our work. Confusion and disorder reigned throughout the school, and my only teaching pleasure came from those few elder girls who were doing well with their Latin, and really enjoying the second book of the Aeneid.

  I could always rely on mother for some mental stimulus, and she cared not whence she derived it. One Sunday evening she carried me off to a Salvation Army meeting, to hear Mrs. Booth, who more than fulfilled our expectation that we should have a ‘peep below’. The worst of mother was that the absurdity of the affair would strike her at inappropriate moments, and I would look round to see her doubled up with ill-suppressed laughter; fortunately this had a sobering influence on me. Political meetings were safer in this way, for plenty of jokes would be forthcoming in the speeches, and then we could laugh at what we liked. Home Rule was still the burning question, and we were open to conviction in any direction, being totally ignorant of Irish affairs. At one of these meetings we were invited to sit on the platform, with David Dale in the chair,-and O’Connor as the chief speaker. We owed this distinction to some Quaker acquaintances of mother’s. Both she and I were strangely attracted by the Quakers and their religious ceremonies, or rather lack of them. But we could never bring ourselves to attend one of their meetings. ‘I couldn’t go, dear,’ said mother, ‘in case of fire.’ By this I imagine she meant that a sudden sense of the ridiculous might seize her during the silence. It can be well understood that I didn’t encourage her to risk it.

  To add to my miseries at the school, I was hardly a day free from toothache, in spite of many visits to the dentist. He was a kind fellow, and no doubt understood that it was an empty stomach rather than a bad tooth that was the root of the mischief. One morning Fräulein said to me, ‘You look croshed.’ ‘Yes, I am crushed,’ said I, ‘what with these senseless corrections, and endless supervision, and a raging tooth, and——’

  ‘Ach, no! Sink of what a grade man said, “Nature, she crosh me. But I am grader zan Nature. She croshes, and knows not zat she croshes. I am croshed, but I know zat I am croshed.”’

  For the life of me I couldn’t see what good you got by knowing that you were crushed, but I felt vaguely the pathos of such a philosophy in the mouth of an ill-fed and overworked foreigner.

  A worthy soul who visited the school in some undefined capacity approached me one day from quite another angle.

  ‘I think you would find this little book helpful. Last Lent I read a chapter every day—not exactly as a penance, but to make me realize the power of sin.’

  I accepted the loan politely, but with little intention of reading it. However, the title was more attractive than her introductory remarks—The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When I returned it after a few days I said I thought it a capital story.

  ‘Didn’t it frighten you?’

  ‘Not a bit.’

  At that week-end mother and I were paying a visit to Middlesbrough, to see Tom’s little son; the journey involved some tiresome waitings, and to beguile the way I told this story to mother. She was always the perfect audience; whether she was shown a sketch, or listened to music, or heard a tale, she managed to make it more important, more meaningful. I used to notice how the teller of an anecdote or an adventure would always tell it to her, and seek her eye, whatever the company. Well, this story about poor Dr. Jekyll, that had seemed to me as I read it merely a good yarn, became so terrible as I unfolded it and watched mother’s increasing excitement, that I caught her terror, and there we stood on a gloomy junction platform, staring at one another and clutching each other as I reached the climax. Perhaps a weird story always tells better than it reads.

  One evening in June I had skipped away from the school and its worries to have an hour with mother. She was showing me a half-finished water-colour. ‘Now remember what Charles says, don’t go touching it up indoors, but go to the same spot tomorrow and get the same lights.’ I was just saying this when Miss Steele came in with a telegram. It was from Bedford—‘your son very ill—come at once’.

  ‘Pack your handbag, mother, while I run to the station to see when the next train goes.’

  It was not till midnight, so there was time for me to go round to the school to let them know I should be late, and unfortunately time for mother and me to speculate on what the illness could be. It was a bolt from the blue, for although Charles had been delicate from his birth he had never been definitely ill. And we had had the rosiest accounts from him lately. He had spent the Easter holiday in a sketching tour in Devon and Cornwall, and since then he had begun a series of water-colours to illustrate a book he meant to write on the countryside of Bunyan.

  Next day I had a telegram from mother at Bedford that was obviously vague, so I guessed things were serious, and wrote at once to Tony in Cornwall and to Dym in Plymouth, asking them to go to Bedford at once. The elder girls at school were splendidly sympathetic, saying very little and working very hard during lesson time. It was two mornings later that I was giving them Latin, in a front room, and we all saw a telegraph boy walking up to the front door. In a minute a servant came into the room and handed me a telegram. They were rare things in those days, and there was little doubt what the message was. Without opening it I thrust it into my pocket, and shall never forget the look those few girls gave me before they all bent over their conditional sentences as if nothing else in the world mattered. North-country people may be brusque and outspoken, but for a sure touch of sympathy I have seldom seen the behaviour of that class equalled.

  Charles had died that morning. Mother and Tony came on together to Darlington after a few days, and I had more particulars from them. He had been taken suddenly ill, and though apparently conscious now and again, he was never able to speak. Mother, Dym, Tony, the school
nurse, and one of the masters took turns to watch by his bedside. This master had been with him through the night before he died, and to him (I learnt long afterwards) Charles had made with painful effort a gesture of affection.

  Mother, Dym, and Tony were full of gratitude to this master, ‘a Mr. Hughes’, who acted like a son in helping them to arrange Charles’s few belongings and pack his many pictures. They were anxious to have him buried in the beautiful little churchyard of Elstow, but there were serious local difficulties, and it was not until they had shown his pictures of the village and its surroundings that they obtained permission.

  We ought to have been equally grateful to Tony, but she was always on the spot in any trouble, and we had come to look upon her as part of the scheme of Providence. To her Charles’s death was as great a blow as to mother—greater, I think, for she had understood his artistic capability from his early boyhood, and had continually urged him to devote all his energy to it. And now to lose him at the age of twenty-four, just when he had been able to sell many of his pictures, and was hoping to give up school work, have a little studio somewhere in Cornwall, and paint to his heart’s delight! It is surely a nice point whether a physical mother or a spiritual mother feels bereavement more.

  ‘That Mr. Hughes you speak of,’ said I, ‘is the one Charles talked to me about, and wanted me to meet this summer.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tony, ‘he seemed to know a good deal about you. And so did the headmaster and his wife. They have made all arrangements for you to come to spend a week-end when you have to go to Cambridge for your examination.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s all off now—without Charles there’s no point in going to Bedford.’

  ‘Yes, but they think you would like to see his grave in that lovely churchyard, the chapel where he played the organ for the boys, and his room and everything, and meet his friends. They sent a most pressing invitation, didn’t they, Mary?’

  ‘They couldn’t have been kinder,’ said mother, ‘but Molly must decide for herself whether to go or not.’

  When Tony and I were alone, ‘You go, dear,’ said she, ‘Mr. Hughes is so anxious to see you, and he has been so good to us that I think you really ought.’

  So it was arranged that I should spend the week-end (before the examination) at Bedford, towards the end of June. That examination was rather a godsend at the moment, for it took my mind off other things. I had to look up a few facts about Vittorino da Feltre, and Gerson, and Jacotot, and people like that. I could do plenty of jargon about Sensation and Perception and the Laws of Association, but did not consider the bits of psychology I had picked up while teaching to be ‘examination-worthy’ or that they would go down with a Cambridge examiner. Methods of teaching had become a part of me, but I had to look up the ‘rules for questioning’ so as to have them at my fingertips.

  As the time drew near, any nervousness about the examination was lost in my nervousness at encountering all the strangers at Bedford, and the large staff of masters.

  ‘But the headmaster’s wife is delightful, and has three dear little children, and Mr. Hughes writes to say that he will meet you at the station.’

  ‘How shall I know him? What is he like?’

  ‘Short and thick-set,’ said mother, ‘very plain, dark, a good bit older than Charles, short-sighted, and very severe-looking, not jolly a bit. He told us that Charles used to call him Diogenes, because he took such a gloomy view of life.’

  ‘I don’t care what he’s like—he was good to Charles,’ put in Tony.

  ‘He has a big moustache,’ went on mother ruthlessly, ‘and he plays the fiddle. He tries to do water-colours, but of course is no good at it.’

  I was prepared for something pretty bad, deceived as ever by mother’s trick of putting one off what she really hoped one would like. To stave off nervousness on the journey I went over all the bits of ‘book-psychology’ that I could think of. As the train slowed down for Bedford, I took my small bag from the rack and braced myself for the task of hunting about the crowd for a man who presumably would be looking vaguely expectant. What if I made a mistake, or saw no one at all likely? We drew up, and I jumped down into the usual platform medley. I had hardly landed when someone came briskly up to me, shook me firmly by the hand, and said, ‘There’s a cab waiting. What luggage have you?’ I handed him my bag with, ‘That’s all. Are you Mr. Hughes?’ ‘Yes, come along.’ The headmaster’s wife was in the cab, and greeted me with, ‘You will be just in time for tea, and they’re all expecting you. There’s a big cricket match on.’

  That tea on the lawn was ambrosial; it was a glorious June afternoon, and the men in their white flannels reminded me of my childhood when my father used to have cricketing parties; and at this time there was a specially grand tea on account of the Jubilee celebrations. No one mentioned Charles, but I felt from the manner of each of the masters as he chatted to me that he was doing his best to make my visit a jolly one—all except Mr. Hughes, who had disappeared. As they were dispersing again for cricket I heard his voice at my side, ‘I want you to see the shadow cast by the big tree on Elstow church. Your brother made several studies of it. In this light it will be showing to perfection. Come along, and these roses I have just been gathering are for you to put on his grave.’

  Our walk of about a quarter of a mile lay through some cornfields, in full view of the church and the shadow on it. We passed the village green and the old moot-house and threaded our way through the churchyard to the newly made grave. As I laid the roses on it Mr. Hughes said, ‘He will wake and remember and understand.’ Those were practically the only words spoken during that walk. The evening and the next day were made as bright as possible for me by my host and hostess, till Sunday afternoon when I had to leave for Cambridge. Mr. Hughes saw me off at the station, still silent, but just before the train came in he said, ‘Your brother was teaching me to paint, but I’m no hand at it. I’ve made a little sketch of the corner of the churchyard showing his grave, where we stood together on Saturday, and perhaps you will accept it; but it is only for you, and not to be shown to anyone else.’ He then handed it to me and silence fell again. But just as the train was about to start he said: ‘We haven’t talked much, you and I, have we? But never mind, we have all the future before us.’

  IX. At Hell’s Mouth, 1887

  ON my return I found that affairs in Darlington had been getting worse, and there was a common rumour in the town that the Association to which the school belonged was bankrupt. The tradespeople were refusing to supply what little food was ordered. The pupils stayed on with the dumb acquiescence that young people usually show. We teachers stayed on for fear of risking our salaries. But one day we were informed by the headmistress that the school could not be carried on even to the end of the current term, and that there would not be a penny of salary for anyone. This left the poor Fräulein all but penniless, and if it hadn’t been for Tony’s help she would not have had enough to get home to Germany. Tony as usual took matters into her own hand, and insisted on carrying off mother and me at once to Cornwall. I was sorry to say goodbye to my faithful friends, those elder girls, and mother felt parting from the Steeles. Otherwise we were delighted to shake the dust of Darlington from our heels as we steamed out of Bank-top Station. Our spirits rose higher the nearer we approached the west country and heard the soft tones of the people—such a contrast to the harsher voices of the north. How we hailed the little whitewashed cottages at Saltash, and when I saw Cam Brea rising out of the evening mist I felt like a crusader sighting Jerusalem.

  Lack of money had prevented our going to Cornwall for several years, and I felt that my cousins and I would be almost strangers to one another. I asked Tony whether they had changed much.

  ‘It is you who have done the changing, dear. I think they are rather dreading you as a “modern girl”.’

  ‘What a funny idea! What is a modern girl, Tony?’

  ‘Well, you have been to a big modern school, and to Cam-bridge, and they thin
k you know a lot, and may ride the high horse—absurd idea, of course.’

  The Cornish cousins were divided into two camps. Tony ruled at the old original home of Reskadinnick, and uncle Joe had a large house in Camborne. Not a day passed without interchange between the two families, so that it mattered little at which house one was staying. It chanced on this occasion that mother and I were to be in Camborne; and immediately I felt the tonic of uncle Joe’s large family of boys and girls—so entirely remote from my recent school atmosphere. A very large family at the rectory, too, had now grown up, and were continually dropping in for tennis, or sudden picnic excursions, or merely gossip.

  A few days after our arrival there was a tea-party at Reskadinnick, and conversation was flowing genially when one of the rectory girls asked me what the modern young man was like. I had no idea, but was not to be behindhand with news, so I said (inventing freely):

  ‘The last young exquisite I met was very easy to get on with, because you knew what he would say. If your tone suggested something pleasant, he would say, “How awfully jolly 1” and if your tone suggested the unpleasant, he would say, “How jolly awful!”’ My companion thought this funny and laughed, but then turned seriously to me with, ‘They told us you were clever, but you aren’t a bit!’

  I enjoyed this compliment, and it gave me my cue. I must keep dark the fact that I was working for my degree, and my interest in books and pictures and politics. As heartily as I could I entered into the gossip about love affairs and ‘the length to which some girls will go’. However, I found it convenient to cultivate the reputation for being a bit odd. Oddity didn’t matter, it was only knowledge that was to be avoided. A visitor caught me one day reading Sartor Resartus; hanging over my shoulder for a while she at length asked, ‘Do you read this for pleasure?’ When I nodded, she breathed ‘Oh’ and said no more.