A London Home in the Nineties

by Hughes, M. V. ;

  Each student agreed to select one pupil suspected of such tendency from the schools we attended, and watch her from the back; have a look at her notebook if possible; ask her sometimes at the end of a lesson what she had learnt from it. The reports brought to College were illuminating enough, often depressingly so. Special efforts were made to interest these girls in something—anything. One of those under observation sat mentally asleep week after week in an elder class of a private school, and a rivalry arose as to who should get a gleam of intelligence from her. At last, in a geography lesson, some mention was made of cannibals, with explanation of a very slight kind. ‘Do they really eat one another?’ exclaimed this girl. When she was assured that it was a fact, she sat up, took notice, and never relapsed into her lethargy.

  Another plan I devised for making the most of our small practice was this: each student had a ‘shadow’, a fellow student (chosen by herself) who went to as many of her lessons as possible during the term, watched teacher and class as a whole, gave her all the help she could, told her of little tricks and mannerisms, and discussed the effect of the lessons on the pupils as it appeared to an onlooker. But none of my devices made up for the lack of plenty of practice. Help was at hand, however, from a most unexpected quarter.

  § 2

  One morning the College porter came up to say that two gentlemen were downstairs desirous to see me. To my surprise these were two Roman Catholic priests. After apologies for troubling me for the interview, with excessive courtesy and delicately worded questions, mixed with vague statements, they drew from me (what I was in no way anxious to conceal) the fact that Bedford College was entirely denominational. Yes, indeed, they had heard a rumour to that effect; strange as it seemed, no statement of creed or faith was required of its students; not even attendance at prayers was required; nor even the formality of special exemption from prayers.

  ‘Quite,’ I answered readily, ‘for the simple reason that there are no prayers to be excused from. No one prays here at all, let alone requires anyone else to do so.’

  At this they smiled a little, and so did I, and then they approached their main point. Their teaching sisters were well educated and devoted to their work, but felt the need of understanding its principles and knowing about modern methods. It was hoped soon to start a training college for them in London; indeed they had a prospective head for it. But she herself was vague as to what the work embraced, and would like to go through a course of training—would like, in short, to attend for a year at Bedford College.

  ‘Just to get hold of our ideas, and then carry them out herself afterwards?’ said I. They laughed a little uncomfortably at that, but I immediately added that I thought it a capital idea, and should be delighted to help on the good work as much as possible. We parted with great cordiality, and two nuns were entered, and followed by several more from other convents a little later.

  It was those first two nuns that made the greatest impression on me, partly because it was the first time I had made the acquaintance of a nun, but still more because they were both remarkable women and have remained my friends for life. The one who was to become herself the Principal of the Convent Training College somewhat alarmed me on her arrival, for she was ten years older than I was, and had far more experience of teaching. ‘Mother St. Raphael’ in her convent, she was entered at College as Miss Paley. As I was taking her name down I said, ‘Are you any…?’

  ‘Yes,’ she interrupted, ‘I’m his granddaughter.’ I need not have feared her wealth of experience, for she was quite humble-minded about it, and ever willing to describe the mistakes she had made in her early teaching, for the benefit and encouragement of the others, as well as to provide apt and often humorous illustrations for any principle I put forward. Her much younger ‘sister’, Angela Bethell (with the equally beautiful religious name of ‘Mary of Assisi’), was one of the most charming girls I have ever met, as well as being one of the finest teachers I ever trained. Many years later she succeeded to Miss Paley’s work at the Convent Training College, which has now become a widespread and flourishing institution, sending out every year large numbers of trained graduates—whom I like to think of as my grandchildren.

  It was not so much the addition to our numbers that I rejoiced in as the addition to our facilities for practice. The Roman Catholic authorities felt grateful to us, I think, for our hearty welcome to the nuns, for they were generous in allowing us to practise in all their schools within reach. This was a great boon, for the classes were large and the pupils behaved well; in this way the students could get experience in class management without being unduly worried by disciplinary troubles at the same time. I had come to the conclusion that too many difficulties at once may easily discourage a beginner, who needs to be broken in gradually. A lions’ den is not a favourable milieu for trying out new ideas, and, after all, rough behaviour with a visiting teacher is the fault of the ordinary teacher, rather than the visitor’s.

  All this increase in our students and in facilities for practising led Miss Penrose, the new Principal of Bedford College, to feel that she ought to pay a call of courtesy at the convent in Cavendish Square. This she did, but told me afterwards that she had been afraid to go alone and had induced someone to face the ordeal with her. I couldn’t help amusing Miss Paley with this terrible adventure, but she pretended great disappointment. ‘Oh, what fun we missed!’ said she. ‘If we had only known we could have locked her in the torture-chamber.’ She then told me that a visitor once expressed surprise that they had windows in the convent. ‘Oh, yes,’ she had replied, ‘and if we had time we should look out of them.’

  Being ignorant of the daily routine of the convent, I said, when Ash Wednesday was looming, ‘Would you like the day off, or to come late, for special services or something?’ ‘Oh thank you, no,’ laughed Miss Paley, ‘we get through all that kind of thing long before College hours. We are up at five every day, you know.’ In fact I was astonished how light-heartedly they took everything, even their religious duties. However, a nun from another convent who shortly arrived was of a different kidney. She had been the headmistress of a large school for several years, and was (perhaps in consequence) extremely lugubrious; and her dress of unrelieved black emphasized her woe. But we soon made her as frivolous as ourselves, for she discovered that in order to be impressive there was really no need to be dismal.

  Among the lectures that I had to administer I came to feel that those on nebulous psychology were not so valuable as those on famous teachers of the past. A knowledge of how Comenius had started a direct method, how Milton had insisted on practical activity in school, how Pestalozzi had managed to teach single-handed in a barn some fifty young people of all ages, and so on—such knowledge would bring a balanced judgement when the students were later on to be confronted with some world-shaking ‘new method’. Now when my syllabus warned me that a lecture on the Jesuits was due, I felt some misgiving. Much as I admired their genius for teaching, I feared that I might say something that was inaccurate or needlessly derogatory to them, while Miss Paley would be sitting there always polite and taking notes, but possibly thinking. So I took her aside a fortnight beforehand, told her plainly my trouble, and suggested that she herself should give the lecture, ‘as practice for the future’, I urged. To my relief she leapt at the idea, and said she could get the very best material for it from a Jesuit Father to whom she could apply. It was a great success all round, for the other students felt that they were getting the information straight from the horse’s mouth, took copious notes, and asked questions which Miss Paley answered ably. In the discussion that followed I raised some points about Jesuit educational methods of which I doubted the wisdom, and all of us, nuns included, were quite outspoken both in approval and disapproval. I had a notion that the nuns enjoyed their perhaps unwonted freedom of speech.

  It would be hard to find pleasanter people to deal with than these nuns. My sole objection to them was their habit of wiping their pens on some portion of
their voluminous garments. I approached Miss Paley in the matter, but she laughingly replied that its potentiality as a pen-wiper was the main advantage of the get-up.

  Looking back on that interview with the priests, I hardly wondered that they had scruples in sending their nuns to us. In those days of definitely denominational institutions, Bedford College was looked upon as godless, indeed almost Unitarian! Perhaps they feared that we might heartlessly persecute anyone definitely religious. But as individuals we were all godly enough, and one I remember was fiercely so—a Plymouth brother. I should never have discovered her particular shade of belief but for her propensity to preach devastating doctrines in such simple things as a geography lesson. ‘This must stop,’ I said, ‘you may believe that if a good person and a bad person are thrown together the good person is bound to become bad, but I won’t have you spreading this gospel among the children.’

  As for Roman Catholicism, we others all treated the nuns’ faith with courtesy, and they played the game, too, and made no attempts to convert us. The nearest Miss Paley ever came to it was to say one day, ‘We shall make a good Catholic of you yet, Miss Thomas.’ And when the public examination was impending, and one of the students was dreading failure, a nun pressed an inch-long figure of a saint into her hand and said, ‘Take this into the room with you to help you.’

  With our numbers going up and examination results good, my salary was raised, I was given an assistant, and Professor Muirhead was appointed to give some very learned lectures on psychology. Sometimes I took a few of the students to an outside lecture, and one of these interested me specially, partly because I knew the lecturer, Graham Wallas, personally, and partly on account of his detached and humorous attitude to education—treated as a rule so absurdly solemnly by lecturers. ‘I don’t know why I am talking to you about teaching,’ said he, ‘for I know practically nothing about it. But experience in one walk of life often sheds light on another. Now the subject that I know a lot about is statistics. No connexion with education, you will say at once. But, believe me, statistics can give a wide view of life, and impart great peace of mind, and peace of mind goes a long way in any occupation. For instance, in teaching. Now I hear on quite reliable authority that children in school sometimes misbehave. Let us take the population of England to be forty millions. Tables of statistics will show you exactly what percentage of these millions are attending schools. Well, then, of those attending schools a certain percentage, at any given moment, are bound to be behaving badly. When, therefore, your class is behaving badly, say to yourself: “Am I to be exempt from the mathematical law of averages? Am I so marvellous that no child ever misbehaves with me? Am I never to bear my share of the nuisance? What priggishness! What selfishness!” And in the long run, believe me, what a lot of life you would miss.’

  VIII. Pisgah

  § 1

  EVERYONE has some special place in the world that he wants to see. Today anyone with a holiday and a little money can go almost anywhere, and consequently dashing about has lost much of its zest. But in the nineties it was thought a great thing to go abroad, and any ‘travelling’ for myself I had placed in some rosy future. Two places had floated in my fancy—America and Italy. I wanted to see the former for its newness and go-ahead ideas, and the latter for its odour of antiquity and its art treasures. As for the equally attractive Greece and Egypt, where parties of people pop about now, they were as remote in my dreams as Tibet. It was annoying to meet people who had the chance to see such places and. no power to enjoy them. Just picture my pain in receiving this on a postcard: ‘We have been to see the ruins of Carthage; this was a town founded by the Romans in 850 B.C.’ My brother Tom had a pupil who was taken to Rome, and on his return asked whether the town he had visited was the same as Julius Caesar lived in; he had suspected a kind of fake to attract tourists. He was not a bright boy, for in some public examination he had to ‘say what he knew about’ various items, among them Flodden. In going over the paper with him afterwards Tom said, ‘I suppose you could do Flodden?’ ‘Oh yes, Sir, we spent last summer holidays there!’ ‘Yes,’ said Tom, ‘but what happened there?’ ‘Oh, we just mouched about.’

  Well, America had fallen miraculously into my lap, and a year or two later, in a rather absurd way, I was to set foot in Italy. The member of Bedford College Council who had contrived to get me appointed to the training work, and had continued to take interest in all we did, had become very friendly with me in a detached way, and had probably been instrumental in my being selected to go to America. But great was my astonishment at the beginning of a long vacation when she suggested that I should go with her and her sister to Switzerland. I declined, knowing them to be rich people who would travel in a style beyond my means. Since they knew the exact amount of my salary they easily guessed the cause of my refusal, and I was hastily assured that they always went about in the cheapest way they could, and that twelve to fifteen pounds would cover all fares and hotel expenses. I said I would think it over. This meant consulting Arthur (whose existence I kept dark). He had recently been on a trip to Germany with his doctor brother, and got so much interest, chiefly of a political kind, from it that he urged me to take the chance to see something of another country. The chief lack he had felt was some knowledge of German, for ignorance of the language prevented him from hobnobbing with the ordinary people he met—the only real way to get to know a country. Here I felt a bit superior, for hadn’t I learnt French from my tenderest years, and French would be all right in Switzerland. So I wrote a note agreeing to go, and was then asked to come for a consultation as to what luggage to take.

  The two sisters were the last members of a family to occupy an enormous house at a corner of one of the more dignified of the Bloomsbury squares. I had been invited to dine with them now and again, and had been somewhat overawed by the ritual of the meal. Although they were rigid abstainers, different kinds of wine-glasses were laid for each place. Grace was said, of course, at the beginning, but at a certain moment in the meal a slip cloth was drawn away from the carver’s place by a solemn servant and a second grace was said—a mumble that referred, I think, to what we had received. I had once been caught by this in the middle of a funny story, and forgot the point. I suppose that this signalized the dessert stage, for elaborate doilies and finger-bowls on fancy plates were brought in, merely for us to look at some oranges and eat two or three grapes. I used to wonder whether all this was a survival of the days when the men were left to their ‘walnuts and wine’, and, if so, it was easy to see why grace had to be said fairly early. But it was a mystery why such formalities should be retained by two ladies of middle age, teetotallers, with very small appetites. Perhaps it was to pass the time, but more likely it was to keep the servants up to the mark, just as the drawing-room was ‘turned out’ every Tuesday, however spotless it might be.

  The house had been built to last till doomsday; stone stairs were taken up as far as the first floor; steel burglar-proof doors protected the basement with its world of kitchens, pantries, sculleries, and cellars. The furniture was all of the substantial kind now called Victorian and valued as period pieces—huge bookcases, wardrobes, washing-stands, tallboys; but no chairs built for comfort. During the long years of my intimacy with these friends I can recall no change in the position of tables, looking-glasses, settees, and so on, not to mention any variety in the pictures, or vases on the mantelpieces.

  The sister with whom I had most to do was the younger one, named Henrietta. I fancy that a boy had been hoped for and the wish had crept into her name, and indeed into her nature, for she was always masterful. After a while I softened her name into Yetta, the Norwegian form of it, dear to me from association with a friend of my mother’s called Yetta Barnholt. Henrietta ruled everybody she came across, and if she made an enemy thereby she enjoyed a fight. The lines that Sir Herbert; Richmond wrote of Gertrude Bell might well be applied to her:

  From Trebizond to Tripolis

  She rolls the Pashas flat
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  And tells them what to think of this

  And what to think of that.

  She was the master mind in the home régime, and her elder sister, Mary Jane (always clipped to M’Jane), although nominally head of the house, had neither power nor influence. Her duties were confined to sitting at the head of the table, and ‘doing’ the tradesmen’s books. She went into the kitchen every morning to receive instruction from the cook as to what would be best for dinner, and what should be finished up for lunch, what groceries needed replenishing, what linen needed repairing, and so on. She was the more lovable of the two sisters, partly on account of her failings. She would lose bills, write cheques twice, mislay keys.…To help her to more businesslike habits Yetta presented her with a roll-topped desk, but the multitude of little drawers only meant more places to lose things in, and it was pathetic to see her sitting in front of it disconsolate. Well, you could be sure of her sympathy if you made a mistake or forgot something; in fact she never saw faults in anyone.

  I knew only a little of the characteristics of these two sisters when I watched their arrangements for Switzerland, and I was amazed. They had been there many times before, and knew exactly what would be wanted to meet every emergency. ‘The great point,’ said Yetta, ‘is to take as small packages and as few things as possible.’ This harmonized with my ideas to the full, but their ideas of what was necessary were at the poles from mine. I wish I could remember all the things they had collected for the trip: there were clothes for every caprice of weather; a packet of tea, ‘because you can’t get drinkable tea abroad’; medicines for every complaint, including the one that my aunt Tony once referred to in a letter thus: ‘I am suffering, dear, from what I cannot spell’; rolls of Mead’s plaster in case of accidents; soap; biscuits; guide-books; mackintosh squares (‘to sit on when we are out’); maps mounted on linen; scissors that folded up; a pocket aneroid (‘to see how high we go up the mountain’); Dutch bulb-catalogues; dark glasses to wear in the snow; mending-kit and knitting-wool; two midget packs of cards (they didn’t approve of card-playing, but were great at patience, about which they owned a book that detailed sixty-one varieties); unbreakable horn mugs that fitted into one another; elastic bands to gird up their skirts for going up a mountain-side; halma-men and board; a saucepan that served as a tea-kettle and a teapot too, because the tea, enclosed in a muslin bag, could be put in when the water came to the boil. All these things are confused in my memory as they were in the packages, for the only system on which they were put close together was ‘fitting in’ (such as stockings snuggling round a medicine bottle). I gave great pleasure by my surprise and admiration as each item found its niche, and by exclaiming at the end, ‘Why, it has all come out like a game of patience!’ The only object I felt unhappy about was the methylated spirit-lamp. I told them of a note I had heard of posted up in a Swiss hotel—‘All tin kitchen is defended.’ M’Jane laughed softly and said that no one would ever detect her in evil-doing, and as time went on I found this to be no empty boast.