Cicely Lucas - A Memoir

Speculation -  The girl in a family of four

As a small child a few things stand out clearly. I never remember being played with by an adult, or fussed or coddled or my opinion asked or heeded, if proffered. All of us obeyed to the letter and at once. My father, a village schoolmaster, second class certificate, carried out his duties to teach the children of the village to read write and sum to a certain low standard or reached the age of 12 years, with his wife to teach sewing to the girls, and an assistant, to take charge of the infants’ room, whose sole qualification was that she was over the age of 18 and been successfully vaccinated. She was the daughter of the village midwife who was also laundress on request and kept the only shop in the village, the only commodities on sale been bread, twist tobacco, and inscribed white and pink peppermints.

The family income at that time was £110, with house and garden, per annum and school numbered about 90 and 100 children, admitted by government rule at five years of age, but often, if they had passed the third birthday they came along and a few, a very few, who stayed on a few months after the Government Labour Examination had freed the 12-year-old pupils for work and a regular wage of several shillings per week, a good, much needed addition to the weekly wage of the agricultural worker, whose sons they were, that average some 14 shillings weekly with extra for the hay and corn harvest and the swede turnip and potato “raising”. The tenant farmers’ were sent to a school in the nearest town and assisted in farm occupations at all other times, often long after manhood they still did labourers work on the farm with no regular wage and waited through the years for a farm tenancy.  

I got my first “shock” when I “pulled” a daffodil in bloom, for the liquid in the stalk, to me, was white blood and I watched its “death” in the fading bloom.  Enquiries into the cause of my sobbing produced no result satisfactory to my much overworked mother.  I was put across her aproned lap, my bottom soundly smacked, the remark as I struggled off being “and now you’ve something to cry for”. But I knew it was not pure obstinacy: as my mother recounted it, it was far worse I had KILLED it and saw it dying and then wither. I must have been about four years old at the time.

The pleasure of a freshly gathered bunch of garden flowers is never mine, for following on, the next moment, is their withered image pitiful and awful.

The Child – The Girl Child

Our house was of sandstone, sandstone quarried on the edge of the estate, originally intended to be used in the project of a church and vicarage for Westwood Heath. But the shepherd to be appointed refused to dwell in close proximity to his flock, preferring a dwelling place one and a half miles distant from the position suggested as the future village centre.  Westwood Heath still being an almost empty part of Lord Leigh’s estate – a few thatched cottages – squatters for the most part – a tract known to the pedlar's, gypsies and the seasonal workers and from time to time, at long intervals, the charcoal burners established themselves in the woods; beauty became havoc. Solitary cottages shewed here and there inhabited by successive generations that a strip of rich soil, a deep spring of pure water, the deep peace of a secure spot that ‘passes all understanding’, had tempered a wayfarer to linger and at last settled their with space enough to feel free, free for life, albeit somewhat of an haphazard and existence. In the church of John the Baptist, Westwood Heath is a tablet on the wall to the memory of the rebellious one, Edmund Roy, the first vicar, a lifelong bachelor.  It was commonly believed he was a natural son, son of a son, of the ruling house of England, one of the King Garge’s lads, else why did he take that name? Reason why? He were never allowed any other, nor to have a wife neither. He lived alone and he dogged alone and barring burying folk and saying the prayers in church a Sundays never had much to do with the flock around – not that there were many about if he’d wanted to. That’s what they say anyway. He led a truly secluded life. One of my brothers invented deeds of valour after the Robin Hood style to shape him a life and was forbidden severely not to recount such wicked lies about a clergyman.

Of the house above, four rooms were set aside as the abode of the schoolmaster and family, the other half was occupied by the pensioner, head gamekeeper of “my Lord” of Stoneleigh Abbey an enigma, for he was a Liberal Lord owning the surrounding parishes of Stoneleigh proper, Ashow and Westwood Heath. All mapped out, most of it let to tenant farmers of good standing and repute Lord Leigh was a model landlord, the land increased in value. Lady Leigh his wife was of the Duke of Westminster’s family a wealthy one. Both were scrupulously fair to their tenants. Via the bailiffs and ‘Clerks of the Works’. Occasionally her ladyship was driven to the schoolhouse Westwood Heath with tins of Stoneleigh Abbey soup for distribution amongst the undernourished agricultural labourers families in her carriage or rather coach with pair of matched horses and liveried coach and foot footman, the latter descending from his perch to carry the packed soup to the schoolhouse and the sign of the gentleman’s gentleman in his contemptuous smile. And appraised it rightly, as children do, by instinct. Too soon I accompanied the soup to its destination the deserving indigent, for to the inexperienced, all indigent are all deserving. Theft of fowl by tramps living rough in the autumn, sleeping in the dry bracken, brought the cottage cottager to penury. A vixen breaking into a pen constructed of half rotten wood had the same result; in a remote but sheltered spot the only milking cow’s morning milk was found to have been taken, there was no reserve for the household use it had been has. No neighbour next door, no shop and no money, for the labourer earned but 12 or 14 shillings for a full week’s work. I dreaded these visits and the pitiful story that accompanied these tales of distress was written plainly in the unhappy look. So I cut the visits to its shortest and found “the Black Patch Gypsies”. http://www.gypsyjib.com/page/Gypsies+of+the+Blackpatch  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Patch_Park Soon I knew the difference between the real gypsy and the "fair's" product. I learnt their jargon to a small degree and that the horse dealing “gyp” was the moneyed one. I fed their hedgehogs their morning milk tethered close to the camp and Knew the camp’s smells.  My parents objected strongly to this “straying” (their term). I was well slapped and got used to the slaps and the physical suffering too as a necessary adjunct. I learnt how to cook both rabbits and hedgehogs gypsy fashion and to appreciate the cooked flesh.  But an epidemic appeared and the police band there camping grounds and when after some years they reappeared I had grown past them. Moreover I had to do the girls’ work usual to them and bit by bit task after task I should properly act as a “daughter of the house”. Which was, as I interpreted it, the work of an unpaid skivvy (maid of all work).  And I was solitary I was the solitary one the only daughter. So Saturday’s work included opening and making up the bed (all) washing up the last evening’s meal of breakfast, scalding out more milkpans, beating the floor mats of the used rooms and the cocoa nut matting of the kitchen and pantry picking off their surfaces the hundred and one reveling bits of cotton and material contributed by my mother’s mending through the week brushing down the backyard pump with its remnants of adhered plants peelings, paper bits and mud chunks, scraps of accumulated black from the kettle and pots and polishing the handles and spouts of the copper ones and on to the poker and tongs of steel.  On to the gathering and preparing of potatoes and parsnips and carrots onions marrow or other selected vegetables and fruit in its season, and plucking of herbs for stuffing to relieve the meat demand.  And for the same reason feeding fowl (hens, ducks, geese and pigeons) and rabbits ete etc etc - the unpaid skivvy!

My Mother

One morning the postman handed a letter to me over the garden hedge. I saw it was from the village school managers for I recognised the writing on the envelope.  My father claimed it.  I was on my way to open school. He did not appear at all that day.  The rain pelted down and continued for most of the daylight hours. As usual I was on dinner-time duty to prevent undue damage and to clear the schoolrooms if the weather cleared.  I raced home for bread and cheese and back. I wondered if the manager’s letter was a complaint and if it had any connection with my father’s absence.  He had never been away the whole day before.

The afternoon wore away.  The pupils went.  I began my own study.  The cleaner came and gave greeting to Ade Cooke who was going home.  Little did I think it was her last day in the school.  I finished my lessons, it had been a long hard day but things had gone as usual.  I locked up and ran the short way home, for I was rather late.  My father and the apprenticed brother were just sitting down to a late tea of toast and dripping, mother was upstairs and soon my father joined her.  As a joke, more or less, my brother and I concocted a letter to the Training College of Teachers at Derby, the choice being determined by the ‘head or tails’ tossing of a penny. My brother went off to bed after a while, saying he had a 3 ½ mile walk to the factory in the morning so putting his great gear ready for the next day he wished me “good night”.  My evening jobs began.  I worked the crocks and laid for breakfast, filled the kettle and a bucket of fresh water from the school yard, brought in the kindling wood and spread it out in the fender to dry and bolted the door after turning out the cat, before climbing to my bedroom at the top of the house.  Opening the stair door I heard my mother’s voice, “but what! Edwin! Edwin! How could you? How could you? Is it true then! Edwin! Oh Edwin!” She started abrading in a tone of agony. The door was closed. I sank down on the top step of the stairs rather than sat.  I did not utter a word.  I could not.  The voices sank and rose again, my mother half choked.  The clock struck.  How long I was there I don’t know.  I was cold.  Mother was sobbing loudly the clock struck again.  Hardly mistress of my limbs I determined to seek my brother.  He was deep in sleep.  I roused him.  “I’ll go and see” he said, got out of bed and crossed to the stair head and listened.  I sat beside him.  The talk went on.  After a time my brother said “blast that Ada Cooke. I’m going back to bed.  You’d better do the same.”  He went.  “You’ll stay” I said to myself.  It was a dreadful vigil and what they said (and suffered) will never be said, never uttered again.

The Aftermath

I must’ve fallen asleep, I woke shivering. Someone was wailing. It was mother. It was a piteous sound.  “Edwin why have you done this? Why? Oh why!” Another fit of sobbing! There I was, close to the door, quite quiet, feeling that my presence there somehow helped my suffering mother, as her unfaithful husband confessed, with undoubted sorrow and shame, his wrongful doings. It was piteous, heart rending, futile. Faltering questions and whispered answers, moans!  Mother’s sobs again.  Then father broke down.  “And he lifted up his voice and wept”.  Did it say that in the Bible? I couldn’t recall the circumstance. I crept off to my bedroom feeling thoroughly wretched. Mother needed comfort.  I realised I could couldn’t give it to her and she wanted it so badly!

I woke at my usual hour next morning and found my brother was up before me finishing breakfast.  I had I think he was glad to get away though “he would stay, if I thought it best.”  When he’d gone I made a cup of tea to take upstairs.  Before I reached the top, the door opened and my mother appeared.  “Come in” she said in a numb sort of way.  “Your father has something to say to you.”  Pushing the tray into her hand I said I was out of bed the door here all night and heard talk.  But she didn’t reply.  My father looked ill and somewhat shrunken, asked me to forgive him.  In words I did; in reality I scorned him.  When mother made her appearance downstairs I asked to see the letter the school managers had given the post to deliver at our house and made a decision.  The vestry was a small room, part of the church itself, opening onto the churchyard.  Quite close before it stood two vaults of the family of Coussmaker, two farmers who had been in partnership and when living and but a yard or so divided them and that was over grown with self-set, tall weeds and thistles.  Hidden there, I could satisfy my mother as to the happenings (my father was called to the meeting of managers in the vestry) if a scandal monger put ear to the keyhole I could circumvent the fruit of such a desire.  I approached the place vaulting a low wall at the rear of the churchyard about an hour before the time cited for the “urgent” meeting.  The managers appeared one by one and the Sexton appeared also - to let them in - and the sexton’s grown-up son, and the sexton’s grown-up son’s two friends, men of the village.  But I was promenade in the gravel path that run around the church, they saluted and passed through the church gate to the main road.  All the same, I was satisfied I had come.  My father came also - dead on time.  He stayed but a short time and when he emerged, rapidly walked homeward.  I hung around for a while then made up my mind to meet my brother from work; having gone halfway.  I retraced my steps.  I came to a long longer way across fields to my rather anxious parents.  ‘Twas a sad soulful evening, the foremost of many such.

The Aftermath

Late that evening a knock came on the door of the Schoolhouse.  I answered it. It was the Rev Evan Thomas chairman of the school managers.  He handed me a missive saying “I thought the family should know as soon as possible the decisions made at the school managers meeting this afternoon. I’m very sorry but we had no option but to carry out government regulations. I’d say goodbye to you Cecily in case I don’t see you again.  Good luck follow you all your life.”  The letter was a copy of the minutes of the afternoon’s meeting in the vestry, signed by all the managers to this effect: –

My father had been dismissed summarily for adultery with Ada Cooke, who had also been discharged. Mrs Neal would no longer be needlework mistress at the school since it was a joint appointment.  Mr Cecil Neal, now a student at Peterborough Training College for Teachers be asked to apply for the Headship of Westwood Heath Village School and that he receives consideration on the condition that he succeeds in gaining the necessary government qualification in examination now pending at and Mrs Sarah Neal (my mother) be appointed Temporary head Teacher of the school.  That Miss J mills of this village be appointed as Article 68 commencing immediately.

Mother pushed the letter over to father, who looked at it and ripped it open, hesitated a moment or two. “You read it” said he.  I read it.  There was no comment.

Mother broke the silence.  “Thank God we are not to be turned out neck and crop in the road” she said. I got up and left them.

I wondered what Cecil had thought when he got the ill news.  He would do what his mother asked of him I knew, but it would be – a sacrifice.  He had looked forward to going to London so much with his college friend and I had heard something of the plan is when they had made together.  Mother wrote frequently to him throughout his last term and replies regularly came but I saw none of the contents.  My father apparently explored the possibility of other employment, without success.  Then a younger brother, who badly wanted labour to break up a small acreage of land offered him the job; he could bring the third son a lad of 13 with him.  He accepted.  I bent all my energy to books and summed to live outside my family.

Enlightenment

One Saturday afternoon, after tea, I was sent to pay the cobbler’s bill.  By ill luck, I met three of the uncouth farm lads who had lately given me much trouble at school. They turned and followed me chanting: –

“Her name it be Ann, and I does all I can

To find out what a silly she be;

Her follows her nose and whacks me hard blows

And I shouts and pulls faces at she.”

I kept back waves of exasperation and anger.  So they knew my second name.  To be called after in the street! Why?  A flash of insight came.  It was true.  My class children learnt very little.  Again I was bound to admit it was true.  Why?  Because I gave them little time or attention for I was otherwise employed.  Dissatisfied letters had been received both by school managers and me saying my class was neglected.  The seniors only were given set lessons and by me though they were supposed to have a teacher of their own.  Didn’t “he” know enough and that was why “he” came late and why “he” spent most of his time in the little one’s room.  He takes his money and he is a lazy hound.  Quite true. I know. The head Teacher spent little time with the children for whom he was appointed to teach. He was talking to Ada Cooke the Article 68 and I was coping with his class at the end of the room to keep even a semblance of order and occupation while my younger pupils were largely wasting time.  I had been struck once by my father (the head teacher) and reprimanded many times for asking enlightenment on something I had encountered in the “Pupil Teachers Course” and with outraged feelings, anger and outdone I had passed the knowledge by.  ‘Twas his job to cope with his class, not mine, and he needn’t idle his time away with Ann.  And scorn accompanied the thought.  I became bad-tempered and moody.  A party of charcoal burners became part the village community, the “Great House” could not exercise the same authority over them as over the people of the place, who would certainly lose the tenancy of their homes and lease of land and with them their livelihoods.  Scandalous stories of “them as ought to know better” were circulated.  I stayed longer than winter on the vacant school premises withdrawn into another life with my “Course of Instruction of for Pupil Teachers” supplemented by cheap second-hand books from Coventry rag market bookstall, coverless and a few pages missing at front and end.  After the household had retired before I ran the short distance home, tired out, having not set a loose chain at the door to give notice I was “locking up”.  The fourth and LAST year of my apprenticeship was running its course.  Could I qualify by the last examination to a Government Training College?  I’d try, but one thing I should and would do, I’d clear out. 

My father leaves.

The Day came from my father’s departure, taking with him his son Christopher. Mother had “gone over” their wardrobes, their luggage was packed and labelled.  They were due at the little country ‘halt’ at noon and a neighbour had come in his trap to convey them thither.  My brother was already seated. The farewells were said.  The road ran straight ahead up a small hill.  Mother and I watched the trap until it disappeared, then turned away.  I expected tears but mother spoke haltingly in a voice scarcely beyond a whisper.  “He should never have had to go like this.  The charity of a neighbour to take him away.  And who is going to watch over Christopher?  And nobody here to say goodbye to him!  Cicely, I can’t bear it.”  She broke down and hastily passed through the school yard into the house.  I stayed a while before I followed, for I was crying too.

Mother and I kept school together.  Leeway had to be made up and we began and continued a continuous round of ‘The three Rs’ putting in many extra hours as recompense for kindliness.  I stayed late working in the empty school, till I’d mastered the parlours I’d allotted. I made no friends, paid no visits and spent little money.  Outdoor fetes and indoor gatherings I passed by, my excuse always the same I’ve no time ‘I must read.’  The new Article 68 was efficient, a nannie of the district and popular.  She had had experience. HM inspectors made no complaints.  We just drummed on.

The Government Examination for Teachers Training Colleges came and went.  I had done well and I was accepted at Derby T.C. as student in training.  But there was no relief so far as education is concerned.  Town girl PT’s had studied service, and drawing.  They had attended classes for specified subjects and been allowed to allowed a definite number of marks if they had attained a satisfactory level.  I with others had the bare minimum of subjects, and had not advanced for a far even with those, on the other hand I had paddled my own canoe and come through so far and I would continue it.  I did.  I had no companions for the daily work walks.  I bypassed all entertainments in the college and excursions out, commitments to memory were learnt at the frequent church services and at lectures where we, as students, passed in free. Luckily I had a smoke small room in lieu of the dormitory and curtains so many had to put up with but that fierce determination to push through kept steadily on and I scored first class all along the line, but with no satisfaction of triumph or comfort.  It had had to be done. The struggle would go on, and I should do it, but it was money I wanted now.  And I had had NOWT, NOWT.  let’s go backward a little while.  I’d something and I knew it.  I had learnt how not to want, and through life I’d be wanted a few things and those not much. whims and duty calls.

Disaster.

My eldest brother failed at an examination held for would-be entrants to the Civil Service.  He intensely disliked the idea of an apprenticeship to his father’s calling, but was overruled.  Later on he gained a ‘place’ at the Government College for Training Teachers at Peterborough and left home.  I was too young to be apprenticed so served a year as a monitoress, then the four years of apprenticeship began.  I was 18 and finding life difficult. By that time I had battled with difficulties in the school. For nearly 4 years the admixture of village ploughlads, unwilling and rough, whose attendance was on wet days, or absence for a market day, or on call for extra help in the days when the hay, corn and root crops were being gathered, caused great difference of attainment.  Their sisters were “regularly irregular” on washing days, cider, butter and cheese making occasions, and fruit gathering lost and gained attendances as the weather changed.  At the “Great House” the shooting season called for “beaters”; woods, copses, and Spinney’s all visited turn by turn, and school attendance of village boys over 10 or 11 years dropped to zero.  And the Government monetary grant to this school depended and was paid according to attendance marks!

Again disaster.

His Majesty’s Inspector of Schools had been on his annual visit and the report that followed on was unfavourable, very. For it spoke of a continued decline in quality of work of the pupils attending and a sharp warning hadn’t produced any effect.  I knew it to be true.  The children promoted to me from the infant room on the last occasion were much below standard; behaviour and attainment were bad, and below previous years.  And equally true was the poor standard of work done by the children at my end of the room.  I knew why.  They had been left neglected.  I had been coping with the upper end of the room where the elder children’s books and desks awaited them, but there was no teacher to direct.  My young pupils, neglected, left alone, had little chance of improvement.  Those a few years older had to be kept busy, or disorder would arise.  I went early and worked exercises on the blackboards.  There were nearly 40 children on the register, boys and girls, in age ranging from 6 to 10 years. I was not competent for those numbers. The elder boys defied my authority and the other others followed. When the head teacher was not present, disaster began immediately.

Mother and I keep school.

Mother and I kept school until my eldest brother qualified at the Peterborough College for training schoolmasters.  He passed the finals and became the Head Teacher of Westwood Heath School.  Mother had done well with the temporary appointment.  Taking it over beforehand, she decided the “safe way was the bettered day”, we should “slog” hard during the time we had the control, at reading writing and arithmetic - the largest grant earning subjects, History and Geography we could cover by reading the subject matter and retelling it in story form, following by close questioning, playtime games in the playground should take the place of formal drill, patriotic songs the music. Mother and son corresponded frequently, she insisting on anything he recommended being tried out. We looked for no trouble and got little.  In physical strength I was superior to any pupil.  I had literally fought my way to the top.  By experience I knew the value of getting the hard knock in the first and the words of command were noted and respected thereafter.  His Majesty’s Inspector paid his annual visit and sent the report.  Things went off smoothly.  But now mother had a “bee in her bonnet”. She was more than anxious concerning my brother’s inexperience.  She called him “her poor lad”, she had allowed him “to be used to bolster up the family in the days of trial.”  Consultations with me re school matters, practically ceased.  She became depressed.  Her son the “Head of the School”, the “Director of Education of the people of the district”, and the growing district to! An up-to-date schoolmaster, must necessarily be one of far more value than she. That was all very well 20 years ago.  Sometimes ‘twas on another ‘tack’ altogether.  The privilege of an eldest son was to be an adviser.  She had been debarred from those rights.  The most crucial time of her life had been spent apart from him.  “My two sons, two brothers, who from childhood spent their spare time in each other’s company are now traversing different routes.”  Rachel weeping for her children.  Her son came, she threw off the nervous state she was in, and was once again “the sewing mistress” only.  ’Twas a large garden, that of the school-house and a large lawn, flowering shrub shrubs, bush-fruit and a small orchard, all in a more or less wild condition.  They planned improvements and carried them through, one after the other and laid a tennis lawn.  I saw very little of them except at meals.  I resumed my old habits and studied in the empty school till the village slept, on reaching home and finding nobody up and swallow what had been put for me and read on.  Sometimes I stopped when I was tired, once I went to sleep till the daylight had come.

I find myself.

I said nothing at all of friendships, for the lifelong friendships made in childhood.  I can’t for I formed none, nor did my brothers.  None but the family ever sat around our table and I was never asked to the home of any neighbour.  My one hope was to get an admission to college.  Ceaseless work now became ceaseless work and study, which entailed the attendance at Coventry School of Art through one winter’s evenings, to gain art marks that counted in assessing for training College admissions - to gain which instruction I had 4 miles to walk each way - 3 miles through lovely fields, 1 through the town to the art school.

One night I was chased by tinkers, I out ran them; one night I was nearly run down on the level crossing by the fast train in a mist, bordering fog.  But go I would, those extra marks must be gained.  Towards the end of the session I lost confidence in getting back - fog!  And I was crying as I merged into the street after the lesson.  A tall lean lad, one of the class, enquired into the cause of my tears.  I blubbered out the reason. He said he’d come over the line with me, if I’d run, that would be about half.  He did,  Running ‘till one could run no farther - a short walk, running again!  It was Ernest Lucas.  He said afterwards he never was more horribly frightened than on the return, once he lost the way.  Once he fell over a sleeping stick.  But he came till the sessions finished and the exam held.  And it was that suggested he came to Westwood Heath the following Saturday afternoon and my mother who asked him to pick a bunch of roses to take back home. Three weeks after I packed for Derby Teacher Training College.  The students had had tuition in French, Science, Theory of Music, School Management.  All but me.  But my luck gave me a tiny room of my own, high up, away by myself and I bent to my task.  None of the social life of the college I attended throughout the whole period.  French verbs, notes made in class, dates and the like, were memorised at the religious services we attended en masse and I fled to my attic bedroom and watched the file of girls walk off for daily exercise or the group for games and turned my mind towards “catching up”.  Ernest Lucas wrote me a letter every week.  I answered it each Sunday.  He also paid my mother a visit weekly carrying a book from the Coventry Reference Library.  My brothers called him “Ranji” saying he featured that cricketer-gentleman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranjitsinhji.  His dark hair and skin I thought the reason.  In the college holidays I failed to find a job I spring cleaned, stuffed a featherbed, took mother’s class at school and plastered her wall with suitable cut-out and “studied”, the last with pleasure for I had passed HIGH even in the first year College Examinations - Everyone!

I become a teacher

The Westwood Heath villagers had sunk in status and were for the most part in stark poverty. They had lost the Heath for which they had been possesses for centuries, land on which their ancestors had spent their lives laboriously cultivating the parts that yielded some small return, enough to support existence and the sort little more.  Very few could read or write when the first compulsory Education Bill became law, all children were compelled to attend school from 5 years of age till ten.  Schools there were, usually the result of generosity of “The Estate” or the persistency of the Established Church of England which is stood for the religious progressive party of the day.  The withdrawal of child labour from the land caused a diminution of food supply.  The rudiments of reading were valued far less than ability to attend to animals, the fertility of the land more than calligraphy.  But the law was upheld by power and enforced.  Much common land became the property of one person or family who took advantage of misfortune. Hedges were planted and barriers arose.  Common land was sold for the fancied benefit of those that tilled it.  Wars and minor rebellions played their part as did the plague and contagion.  William Henry, Lord Leigh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Leigh,_2nd_Baron_Leigh was the owner of the village of Westwood Heath and Stoneleigh and Ashow in Warwickshire County, a peer who was a Liberal Lord.

Fertilised lands were farmed but those whose hands supplied the labour only were doomed to a poverty stricken life.  A church and school were built, the latter required a teacher and Government supplied, with the help of the church.  Training colleges were built for training teachers for the work, the course specified was two years.  The Leigh family built Westwood Heath School running expenses etc were met by subscriptions.  The staff was Headmaster, Pupil Teacher an Article 68, (a woman over 18 who had been successfully vaccinated - measles were rife amongst children and many died). Pupil Teachers were apprenticed for four years then became “uncertified teachers” or passed an examination that allowed them to enter the training college and become a certified teacher.  The pupil teacher being required, I was put forward as a candidate, but as 14 was the minimum age I entered the teaching ranks as a monitoress candidate until I attained that age and was then given a class of about a dozen children of seven years age or thereabouts promoted from the infants’ room.  There was no release from work for the PT.  When the school children were dismissed for the day, the head-teacher’s duty was to instruct the PT’s against the College entry; another hour added to a heavy day. That through, I rushed home, gulped a meal and adjourned to my bedroom to continue the never-ending preparations for the next exam pupil teachers were subject to. Thank the gods!  I had a very retentive memory.  Salary? Save the mark! 3/10 weekly commencement 7/8 at end!  And my parents claimed the lot!

I go to college

The notification that I was accepted as a two year student at Derby training College for Women Teachers reached me in time to rouse my warming desire to bridge the gap between the education of pupil teachers attached to a town and that of the country apprentice, the former having the benefit of science teaching for four years and also practise in a foreign language (usually French). If a certain standard had been reached a given number of marks were accredited in addition to those gained in the college entrance examination which dealt the compulsory subjects only.  I was ranked high in the college examination, but having had no chance to obtain extra had a lower place than I expected and thought it unfair.  That evening I spent a worried time scanning the second-hand bookshops but came away with a well-thumbed physical geography book and an Elementary Physiography and was transported with pleasure at their contents.  I had read and re-read.  My brother, now permanently at home, was always ready to explain difficulties at length.  My family were desperately poor but he was desirous of me taking my chance to become a trained and certified Government teacher.  Some small sum of cash was borrowed and repaid by me three years later.  His college books were at my service and any other quality equipment he possessed (his silver watch a coming-of-age present from relatives and friends among them).  My mother made a few unadorned garments and my small flock of bantam hens furnished the railway tickets.  I remember well the morning I trudged to the station, up the hill my father had gone into “exile” (my mother’s words).  I was carrying my luggage and old yellow page painted hatbox, the lock of which rusted with age giving way.  I had tied it up with a discarded picture-cord.  It contained an imperfectedly folded Macintosh and old study books.  The perfect ones, covers and pages, were awaiting me at the “halt”.  Mother and my brother were at school.  I looked and instant at the school in the hollow and a few cottages nearby and conjured up my brother’s feelings to become those of imprisonment, solitude and monotony, with too many dependents hanging on him, was the conclusion as I packed up my brown paper parcels and plodded on.  Birmingham’s busy central station made me feel solitary.  I was lost in the crowd.  It was a crowded compartment I occupied from there to Derby.  I had a packet of sandwiches but couldn’t face untying it with strangers around.  Walking to the college, cars passed frequently.  I took them all for collegiales and followed through the entrance gates.  I had arrived, yellow hatbox (tied up with picture cord) and all.

Way by day

There were about a hundred students living in the college, a few living at their homes in the locality and a few were day students.  The college had the reputation of turning out good teachers, I was told.  We soon settled in.  Two impressions of the first evening are in my memory, their books, that I envied, new and clean.  I decided there and then to make brown paper covers for my worst immediately.  All were bargains at second-hand shops with two exceptions - an atlas and a dictionary.  My brother’s college books rouse some interest.  I was pleased to find I had a slip of a room to myself to which I could retreat - and swot - and be alone.  Lessons, lectures, training began next day. After no direction in apprenticeship years I followed the teaching with the greatest interest, the right thing was done at the right time the right thing said, notes, not copious, but enough, information was given, but working back from a result, was entrancing entertaining.  The lecturer spoke and made the following lessons interesting and understandable, a new enchantment.  I found the library used far too little.  One good teacher though knowing her work and using good notes collected as part of the lesson, were infinitely superior to collecting the same from private reading.  I made my way up my degrees.  I reached a stage where in certain subjects prep made the lesson prep made the lessons to follow very understandable and I used to prepare notes in readiness in my room.  Both at college and at religious meetings and educational lectures generally, I scanned these prepared aids “committing them to memory” was my bedtime game.  I’d little interest in the students themselves.  My country life made me proficient in sport more or less.  I played in the tennis team and was captain of the first hockey team the college formed, but the interest ended with the game.  For four years some of our year had studied science and language (Physiography and French).  One drew even only by continued and painstakingly effort.  I had had more than my fill during the first twelvemonth of getting abreast, that was what I had come to Derby to accomplish and time was short. I stuck to it bravely.  Sometimes I remembered the text where I backed the reasoning. (Word)

Usually, luckily it came along in its time.  But it was weary work. I did not join Derby College ex-students’ Association.  In age I was younger, but I always felt senior to them and out of the classroom I thought of them as juniors talking of nothing but local news and chit-chat.  If really educated women, they would be battling for better conditions for the women to come.  I got tired of them and was at best glad to see the end of college - trainers and all.  I’ve never set eyes on the place again.  It seemed to me their code of life was narrow in view and in it they become contemptible!

Second Year of Training

The second year I sat nearer the front as we took position according to examination results.  I soon “got across” the History Tutor, a grey-haired old personage who insisted on naming me Sis-sil-ee.  I, as regularly, put her right with Sisely, until she thought it worthy of a reprimand-interview.  I still slogged!  Several times I found it “hard going”, but then I fell back on my clever companions of the front row, who put me right.  Whole chunks of arithmetic had been admitted, through this entailed trouble, the second time, with my tutor.  It was thus.  Arithmetic to me, as a subject, was difficult and I had recapitulate at intervals to save time before the test came.  My clever classmates were always ready to help.  I used to make a few notes ready for the next arithmetic lesson and put them before me on my desk in class the purpose of comparison, glancing at them from time to time to see the line of reasoning was identical and had found it helpful.  I heard her addressing me loudly – “so Sis-sil-ee, where are your manners? What is that paper you have there? Attend to me please.  Where were you brought up?”  I jumped to my feet and answered “you asked me where I was brought up?  Much better place then you Miss Davies.  I haven’t any relations retail butchers” and got sent from the room with no readmission without an apology.  I stayed out three weeks.  My class companions assisting me in “keeping up” with them.  Then I received a message via the “Head Girl”. “I’m waiting still for that apology.” I went to the Teachers’ Common Room and found three there.  I stood just inside the door waiting for her to speak.  “I’m still waiting for an apology” she said at last.  “That’s exactly what I am waiting for.  An apology from you - to me” and I walked out to wipe my eyes where she couldn’t see them. I turned up to the next lesson unbidden.  There was no word re apologies and things were as usual.  (I took in no more notes).  But when the senior Governess asked my “leaving year” if we were wish to join the Association of DC ex-students I said “no thank you”.  And when Miss Davies wrote to me later asking of if she could bring Derby College students over to see the newly-opened infant school for which I was the head, I gave a polite negative.  About then I was chosen from “my year” to give the annual “Scripture” Lesson to a class from our practise school a Donated Trust affair. The final exam drew near.  The subjects were divided into two classes at that time each having its first second third places.  To pass the students took both classes each with its own paper and to gain a first class in each was called a “Double First”.  Derby Training College gained five Double First that year.  One was mine.  When the news came I was already teaching a boys’ class in Highfield Road boys school Saltley, Birmingham.

The Next Lap

Before leaving college I, with others, was appointed as a Trained Certificated Assistant Teacher by the Birmingham Education Authority, to commence with the Autumn Session, the pay being slightly higher than the average in that busy mercantile town.  Then we were asked to give temporary aid a week or two in the previous term but on less good terms. “Beggars couldn’t be choosers”.  We were really “out or works”, this was paid work we were all glad to accept.  Remembering well my struggles with the farmlads in my apprentice days I applied for a girls’ class but was told a boys’ class was for me for I had experience with them - 45 boys of 7 containing some two or three years older, but on the whole the children were “well away”. Two or three had dodged school by repeatedly and often changing their abode, several had been handicapped by a long or serious or series of infantile complaints but, taken as a whole, the class was both intelligent and lively.  They came from good working-class homes.  Sometimes an angry parent would turn up but it was usually but it usually was an inquiry, not a complaint.  I like the work, the children and freedom.  But I was lonely.  I made no friends and few acquaintances.  Winter evenings dragged, my old landlady, tired out, was glad to get to bed.  I read through meals.  I determined to find evening occupation - paying work.  Little was better than none at all.  I visited the night schools’ authorities, but posts had all been settled by the autumn.  At last, I wrote the authorities again explained my late application, was asked to call, and this I did.  I was given the place of one who had fallen out and found the class was chiefly ex-pupils of low rate private schools and very eager to remedy their faults by rule-grasping.  In September the infants’ school passed on their pupils to the juniors.  I was given the boys’ set the second time (previously experiences in the village school again coming in) and when I had to yield, complained “loud and long”.  For continuous boys teaching meant a class teacher all my life and every report of mine was good.  I wanted promotion and said so.  A few months and I was teaching girls in the daytime, two evenings a week were given to the instructing adults (women) garment making (drafting their own patterns) and the summer holiday was spent in milliner’s establishment with no monetary reward, but, I was one of the first to teach the craft in the evening class to a selected number of previous needlework pupils who had petitioned for it to be included in the list of subjects taught.  This was getting to be known and I was the one who chose the subject.

The village School – Staff

Westwood Heath Elementary school, Stoneleigh, for children of that village at or above the age of five years was opened.  Government regulations had been followed in the building had had a ceremonious opening.  The younger daughter of the Leigh Family the centrepiece of the assembly. The staff of teachers had been appointed, appropriate to the size and status of the school.  My father became head teacher.  My mother became the sewing mistress, teaching a set number of hours weekly in that subject - a joint appointment.  The number of pupils were never large enough to allow for another certified teacher in an assistant’s position, but the ex-pupil teacher, now termed the “Ex PT” became a recognised subsidiary of the staff.  If repeated attempts to get a Training College place were unsuccessful the little extra education usually procured another desirable post.  Pupil teachers of all grades were in all schools whose ‘head’ held the Government Teachers (Elementary) Certificate.  For them a special book was compiled with all the facts and figures necessary for that years educational work, bound one cover and specifying for which year of apprenticeship it was designed - so many pages arithmetic, then followed English (with grammar exercises, names etc of books and their authors - a set number) and so on to Geography and History.  Each question asked in a “Government Paper” exam came from that thick, strongly bound book.  “Diligence brought its own reward”.  Then those of the lowest rank of staff - but accredited staff.  The Article 68, whose sole necessary qualification was that she (usually) was to be “over the age of 18” and been “successfully vaccinated”.  The “Article 68” was usually consigned to the infant children.  I began my education in the village school’s infant room subject to quick surrender to needlework lessons, (particularly when cutting out patterns was the call).  We infants resented this intrusion of the bigger girls with their mistress.  I remember well the room, with armed chairs mounted on a shallow gallery, and the wall adorned with a ‘set’ of sober -coloured scriptural pictures, one of which was of a partially uncurled serpent on the upper portion of an erect cross, with an erect ‘Moses’ behind it.  In the Scripture drawer of the cupboard lay a direction re-picture (serpent).  Class to learn this text and repeat it from memory.  “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so shall the Son of man be lifted up, for whosoever shall believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” to which I added mentally, “Yes in 10 years time” that text might convey some meaning when they’re grown-up.  Now they learn to say it.

Westwood Heath School  (Repeat)

Glimpses of my childhood, through the haze of 90 years present themselves still, strong and clearly cut and impressions then taken have remained much the same.  The only girl child of the family the usual treatment of the girl child was meted out and I was kept on the run with the never-ending jobs attached to the house cleaning and the cooking of the poor family ranked as above the poverty time poverty ranked as above the poverty line in our desperately poverty stricken community.  The owners of the land owned the people holding the possessions by force.  The Church of England although declining in arbitrary power still largely filled its ranks from younger sons of younger sons of the aristocracy or landed gentry.  The gift of benefices was but one way of repaying the faithful bailiff, the sure adviser of the family fortunes through the generations.  Watt woke the industrialists of the township, the parson was the dig delegate of the land owners and ran the Church of England’s parish schools built by the Squires estate workers work men, and used as a means of mastery and espionage (if necessary).  The occupant of the ‘big house’ owned the land and the clergyman connected by similar opinions and desires exercised an enormous power.  Government, seizing the opportunity, adopted ‘Church of England’ as the name of these schools, scores are still being be being, but in course of gradual abandonment.  ‘Denominational schools’ were built by other groups of reformers and ‘ragged schools’, ‘charity schools’ the more ancient foundations for ‘poor scholars’ (grammar schools) sprang into being, as the necessity for a widened education increased.  Government built colleges (training schools) for men and women and syllabuses of the matter to be taught, an examination to find suitable persons to engage in the schools and colleges they approved of and a monetary annual grant towards the maintenance.  Government financed the educational scheme and an annual visit paid to these colleges by their own examiners and the right to issue directions for improvements and additions and eventually a code was issued to all schools that need government aid and apprentices were ‘bound’ for terms of some years to give instruction to children pupils and receive instruction from the master or mistress from the government training College where government issued a permit for the possession the possessor to become a teacher in a Government Elementary School.  Both my parents were such teachers.  Government made another advance compulsory attendance at school was enforced. Five years was the age given for admission, the leaving age suffered variation according to age and attainment. Subservience to State and Church? Yes; but there relative positions were changing and state was winning cheap labour was more necessary for threading the “shekels” towards their section than the sale of indulgences.

Down to the depths – but not to stay there

Ernest was at the end of his tether.  Starving, he clung desperately to the University Scholarship.  His grandparents died, the one after the other, their possession sold to pay off all debts “that their souls might be free before the Lord” (believers’ tenents).  Ernest had to find refuge with his mother.  His mother’s husband (father) opined he should find some sort of paid employment shifts sufficient at any rate to keep himself, whatever this work was.  Ernest was in a pitiable state, lost self-control and railed against his father and ‘The Believers’ and begged me to marry him.  He gave up his scholarship and found employment with a whiskey maker whose son had been a former grammar school friend, as bookkeeper.  He was promoted and again asked me to marry him.  Again I would not listen. I could not distinguish between the liability of the manufacturer of whiskey, knowing the weakness of so many that used it to their own destruction, and the drinker of whiskey, who couldn’t rule himself, was an object of contempt to me.  Ernest became ill.  He was afraid he would die.  I told him I would tie myself to him by a registry marriage and if he were content with that for the time being we would, and could, beat Fate.  I was 21 years at the time.  I made the arrangements in the registry office in central Birmingham taking the addresses of houses in the locality.  When we arrived we were told they had written to say other business had intervened.  But it was finished earlier than they anticipated and the proceedings could begin.  They did, clerks, were the witnesses.  Ernest kept his word not to ever question me on the subject of marriage, ‘Twas to be when I wished it.  I think it was about 10 years ahead that I did.  Very soon after my brother the schoolmaster’s wife asked for leave from Westwood Heath school teaching for two years, she was going to have a child and thought her duty was to care for it herself.  I talked to my brother asking about the possibilities of Ernest filling the place for two years if he could make the qualifications in the time.  He could and did.  His Majesty’s Inspector paying his annual visit to the school about this time supported the idea, the school managers fell in with the suggestion and Ernest “turned to”.  The exam. The exam was cf simple, he became an “uncertificated” teacher, at that years test, continuing and passing that of Certificated teacher the next, and when my brother’s wife returned to the school to teaching at Westwood Heath he took a Certificated Assistance’s post in the South of England, changing the locality to be nearer his folk again when a Warwickshire post was advertised for a “Supply Certificated Assistant”. Later he took a year’s training at Birmingham’s New University buildings passing out First Class Certificate with honours.  Then back again to Warwickshire to gain experience in temporary posts.

Concerning Ernest Lucas

Pity and thankfulness, to strange emotions for love to build from.  But true. That afternoon and evening had been spent in examinations at Coventry School of Art, should I pass or fail?  My admission to the Teachers’ Training College depended on the result. Success added a certain percentage to the marks obtained, the only chance of anything as a sort of career that would come my way.  Ernest Lucas was the name of the candidate next to me, his were major exams to mine.  I was nervous and tried after a week’s work at school.  The long walk of 4 miles to get to the exam centre tired me more, and I had to pass through the stretch of gorse where I had been chased by tramps on a foggy evening just like the present one and ahead was the level crossing, where I had had and narrow escape from being run down by the night train to Birmingham.  The exams finished.  At the exit I found the fog increased.  A wave of terror and self-pity brought tears. I had to get home. The next candidate to me in the room was passing, having also finished, but seeing me in tears asked why.  Hearing the reason he offered to accompany me across the gorse common and over the railway tracks to the lane beyond.  Pity he had, thankfulness was mine.  He came two miles halfway and continued his escort till the session ended.  He was 18, I was 13 months younger.  The acquaintance became friendship, lasting through my college days for I had “scragged through” a few evening walks we had together before he proffered his affections, he then said he would tell me his “disappointed, thwarted life”. But I had to ask for it and three weeks later I left for Derby Training College for School Mistresses for two years.  We would write a weekly letter to each other. This is his story. I thought long and often of the lad.

He was an illegitimate child brought up by ashamed grandparents who had forgiven but never forgotten the mistakes of a self-willed daughter.  As far as I know she had one brother who desired her parents to disown her and on their refusal to call her out, left home.  He kept in touch with them and visited them occasionally.   I never saw him and to me they called him Mr Orton. The grandparents had a thriving tailors business and for years were carefree, then misfortune came, the grandmother lost her reason, her husband’s fingers gradually became crippled, their best customers left them and “court dressmaker” and clients sailed on at leading hotels became misnomers.  For a while they lived on their capital then began a lower class of trade and spitefully used “journeymen” tailors as their description.  They belonged to a strict close religious sectarian chapel (I’ve forgotten the name) and the meetings were held in the homes of the believers.

Continuing Ernest Lucas

The Orton’s were leaders at the Sabbath meetings and on the frequent meetings held in the evening when every small detail of the believer’s life was brought forward prayed over talked of and entered in the Chapel Record.  Celebration of Baptism renewed had been discussed in the Orton’s were a proud pair when their daughter was chosen for the central figure in the celebration.  Shortly after she showed the unmistakable signs of motherhood.  It was a sorrowful meeting that passed judgement, but there could be no other, she was disgraced and eased out according to their rules.  And not only was the daughter of the “leaders” in the meshes of the Evil One but the younger son of the only man of substance among them, the one by whose aid their chapel existed, acknowledged himself to be her lover and the father of the child to come.  She was publicly judged by the members and publicly excommunicated as their rules had decreed.  They - parents and daughter sang the chapel hymns at home and recited the service between them (such is faith) but she’d lost “her push” she could no longer think as a leader.  As for the young man he was on a ship sailing for USA, sent away for his transgression to a business colleague of his father’s it was said.  But letters passed and within a 12 month he unexpectedly returned.  Soon a second child was on its way the parents of both young people withdrew their opposition and six months afterwards he was a married man and again a father.  The first child was named Ernest, the grandparents made him a home as they did his mother until her marriage.  The family arrived Beatrice, Marion, Emily, James, Albert, May and Gladys.  Their father was forced to work as a journeyman as well as a cutter of men’s outer garments, the mother was fain to assist with her needle. Other tailors not so gifted sent him their best customers cloth and measurements but with so many children he had little money to spend and none to keep.  Ernest was the frequenter of children’s free library round the corner at an early age.  He went to the Council School, won a free place for the town Grammar School and then the Birmingham University with railway costs also.  He left home early to allow time for the long train ride out to the new University.  He was nobody’s care and once more lived with the Orton’s.  As neither ‘home’ did he have a cooked meal, or enough to well sustain him and looks like a consumptive.  His clothes come winter could not keep him warm.  I found out he had no shirt.  I was at my first job in school at Highfield Road, in lodgings from Monday to Friday.  I remember well the intense pleasure I had been giving him four grey flannel shirts for his birthday that cold January.  And the joy with which he received them.

I am a busy person not for my own ends.

One quiet evening I told my mother in a few words that I was bound to Ernest by a legal registration marriage. She took it quite quietly saying “he is a good man, loves you very deeply. When he rests his eyes on you when you are having your supper they always change to a gentle expression.”  That meant a lot to me.  And to ourselves mother and daughter we called him Jacob till the joke was worn thin.  My mother was now a confirmed invalid, she had no definite illness, but seemed to fade away.  She was looking forward to seeing her son from USA who was now in a good position, mending and renewing parts of expensive handmade watches, occasionally setting diamonds in the inner cases to make its value higher.  She was doomed to disappointment.  Business intervened.  His wife and child came to visit both families, her own people first while there my mother was taken with her last illness.  Emmie, her daughter-in-law nursed her to the end with her husband’s (my mother’s husband) help.  She was buried at Westwood Heath by the side of an infant daughter she lost early, she for she always called it “my old home”.  Emmie returned to USA.  My father moped for a time.  I was busy with others teaching in writing and getting an infant school primer published (seven thin books), and then the Suffragettes Movement called me. I was one of those who bore the burden and heal of the day.  All reforms that I have supported seemed to have been divided into three sections:-

1)    The scholarly woman who state the case proving it reasonable and desirable.

2)    Convinced women that expressed their opinions for the public weal, who are first ridiculed, opposed, and then punished by the unjust law.

3)    The unjust law lifted but in little dabs and pieces and each with a struggle.

I was a state schoolmistress so no limelight and no absence from work!  No press reports!  No medical support reports for injuries inflicted or strained nerves!  If I could find how to help without running amuck or performing routine work for which there was there never would be lack of volunteers, I should do what I knew I ought and knew well I should try.  Extra money earned was no longer a necessity to Ernest or me. I knew how and where to fall back on evening work if I must.  If a crowd assembled - accident and political noted personage, royalty, roughs etc etc, I joined it and worked through to the opposite end and I knew my subject well.  I possessed the schoolmistress’s voice – a carrying rather than a shoveling one and a rather dominating tone and was accustomed to being stared at etc etc etc could mount and descend from goods wagons and my small height would save many a staggering blow.  These were some activities I could do and I did.  I spoke regularly in Hyde Park on Sundays, in Birmingham open air market and Gosta Green https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosta_Green an evening each weekday.  Outside Small Heath Park gates on Sunday afternoons.  When I couldn’t make the time (too rushed) I joined in the newspaper selling.  I also invented the trick of maneuvering the shouter interrupter to the edge of the objecting crowd by placing myself in his direct front and when the crowd swayed stepped on his leg or his smallest toes (accidentally) gradually working him away.

The family breaks up

My parents had continued a spasmodic correspondence with each other, my mother always anxious concerning the welfare of her youngest child Christopher, who was by far than less sober than the rest of us.  He had accompanied his father to an uncle’s home in Dorset. After several letters had passed he had been bound up and apprenticed to a builder, I learnt and was in lodgings in Poole (Dorset) and keeping in touch with his father at the uncle’s farm.  Cecil, the schoolmaster planned to be married the coming year and I still spent my weekends at Westwood Heath doing the domestic clean-up of the Schoolhouse premises and working in the large garden.  Then I heard that my father had left his brothers farm for lighter work, and was keeping the books for the businessman and that he wished my mother to join him.  Rather to my surprise she spent the summer holidays (a month) with Dorset relatives, meeting my father week-ends and they finally agreed to “let bygones be bygones”.  They rented a small grass farm near to his brother’s farm, buying young stock and cade (motherless) lambs and tending them till they were fit for the market.  My father was very successful, too, with three or four breeding sows.  Cecil married his schoolmistress, who took his mother’s place in the school and at home and they settled their with their only child.  When Kate his wife died he remarried with a Roman Catholic, but stipulated that no Roman Catholic should be borne of the union and remained childless.  later they retired to Kenilworth.  The watchmaker found the market for costly presentation watches was diminishing, the machine-made articles taking its place, the Waltham watch USA watch ousted the British Handmade.  He followed the trade to Waltham USA then for a short period returned to England where Rotherhams the Coventry watchmaker http://www.horologist.co.uk/rotherham.htm was known as the world’s best watchmaker, but the family was dying out and my brother returned to the USA, became a naturalised American, locally known as an exceptionally clever watch repairer changing to clock repairing when his finger joints stiffened.  My mother grew older and could not manage farm work.  I bought a house at Stechford, a suburb of Birmingham, my parents moved their furniture and we settled in together.  My builder brother married the daughter of his Poole landlady, he was a prudent and careful man his employer treated him with confidence and advised him and he became the owner of piece of waste land lying between Bournemouth and Poole that he used with advantage.

Ernest moves

One evening and knock at the door made me jump.  It was Friday I was conning the particulars I had gathered for the “Leamington Courier” the “Stratford Herald” and the “Warwick Advertiser” (all weekly papers).  Particulars of the funeral of a well-known local farmer, ready for their respective editors.  The door opened, Ernest came in.  We had not expected him.  The last weekend or two he had been busy sketching his watercolour “Sunrise” that he hoped to exhibit and was putting in a night or two in the vicinity in order to be abroad early.  Taking from his pocket a business looking envelope, he put it on the table and said “I don’t know if Cicely will call it good or evil news.  I applied for the English school at Paris a month ago through a London advert.  Here is on offer of the post, after interview.  If it is satisfactory I should like to accept for I think it will contain possibilities.”  He pushed the open letter in front of me.  “You see it may expand and it limits mischances.  But if it falls through I have leisure to devote to sketching and I hope will with success.”  I read the news out.  It was to the effect that he had been appointed director of the school if the interview was satisfactory, with a staff of 4 assistants, 2 English and 2 French, salary given was fair and accommodation for living near the school would be provided.  His wife if wished could fill one of the vacancies, all must be qualified teachers.  The school was the property of the English Embassy at Paris and they took all responsibility.  I looked across at my father.  What would become of him?  But he professed himself ready to accompany us - more than that, he was eager to go. I wanted to think it over - the ‘fors’ and ‘against’.  I was 30, it was almost a certainty that what I was now would be continued till pension time at 60.  On the other hand it would give Ernest a chance.  He had entered ‘teaching’ by a devious route which would make it difficult to gain promotion in England but he might aspire to a responsible position if the English Colony in Paris developed. The interview came.  The post accepted, the assistants selected.  I had the youngest entrants.  The Great Exhibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_Universelle_(1900)  had been held a few years before, scores of English workmen had been engaged in construction work and had stayed on to run the machinery.  The time was ripe for a permanent school.  I sold my house with its acre of land and much of its furniture, sent my notice of quittance to my school managers with real sorrow and wound up affairs as far as I could, passing on the free library to a competent and willing committee.  A bill was before the House that I watched day after day for its passing.  The law was that if a child had been born of parents before their marriage it was legitimate by birth and took the mother’s name.  If subsequently, those parents of the child married lawfully each other the child was rendered legitimate and its name in law, as its parents.  I had married Ernest by registrar in Birmingham with his mother’s name, now he took the opportunity of becoming legitimate and using the name by which he had always been known.

In France

So we started.  Both at school.  I had the small children.  Ernest and the assistants the rest dividing them up according to the amount of English and French they had assimilated.  My hours were shorter.  Both of us taught privately in the evenings.  Ernest on the school premises, usually young business men or young people soon to be seen to face examinations.  I had my pupils at home who had short lessons, but many, for “sticking power” was rare.  I was fortunate in my “femme du menage”. She was interested in teaching me the things that a housekeeper should know, to her ‘Twas a mild amusement.  Les Madames invited me to accompany them to shows and amusements but few to their homes.  I invited none.  When I was at home I was teaching, often to a late hour.  Two afternoons three evenings, I caught the first underground railway train I could and traveled to Mons. Berlitz Language school in Boulevarde des Italienny where after a short period of being the ‘stooge’ and he the teacher, he gave over to me, as pupils, small sets of young business Frenchman taking three month course of “cram” before facing the USA as salesman and sentence spoken - written in English for the most part.  I also brought up for him all of his published second-hand lesson books that I came across which promoted sales of news ones of new ones.  The third year I was looking forward to motherhood and followed the advice of the femme de menage in the early days.  But I couldn’t get used to the publicity it was treated with in the apartment house and when I attended to meet the medics and was pushed nearly naked across a huge yard in a sort of bed on wheels to the room where the interview was held, I there and then decided I’d go to England for the birth, kept my own counsel and to leave the long journey as late as possible. There was a certain amount of trouble to get so long a leave while the school was open and I should have to do the journey alone, however that had to be, and I speculated much on what might happen.  Barring the fact that the stewardess told the captain with “concocted facts” and he personally interviewed me and told me regulations I had never heard of, which I thought unnecessary as by then we were “well under weigh”.  The next day in England I made all preparations and began to revel in idleness and holidays.  The birth, a normal one, over, I was flattered to find that every assistant that had been of the Canterbury Road school staff had visited to see me and my babe.  A younger sister of my husband journeyed back to France to get relief from eye trouble brought on by specialising in working buttonholes and embroidered letters in tailoring.  She turned assistant housekeeper and nursery aid.  I had a few more working hours and translated letters written in English to French correspondents who were something read their own translations being the best possible.

Life goes on in Paris (repetitive)

My mother had passed on.  She had little pain in her last illness and faded away.  And nurse I knew well attended her.  I took my turn when I could.  But I was at school all day and three evenings.  I also had teaching work in evening adult school.  Mother talked freely of her childhood and of her own children as such, my father spent many hours at her bedside.  To my surprise he took it for granted that he would accompany my husband and I to Paris.  Two of his sons offered him a home the other had emigrated to the USA.  He purchased a huge English - French dictionary as a first necessity (returned to the bookshop after a further scrutiny).  Then began the sorry affair of selling up and starting anew and some of his possessions his sons found they couldn’t accommodate, too.  From Rue des Acacias, Paris, particulars came that a flat had been taken by the school authorities some five minutes’ walk from the school.  It would be furnished with necessities in readiness for occupation.  The caretaker of the school was an Englishman who had elected to remain in France at the completion of the “Grand Exhibition” (a costly and complicated ‘scheme’ with a bridge built over the Seine for its entrance).  The Embassy School was part of the building purchased from funds, where a Trust Fund was administered and an English man was in charge.  The fund, I gathered, was to aid stranded British to relieve their immediate necessities and to give them assistance to regain their country.  May be it was a troupe of travelling actors or musicians “gone broke” or British workmen whose contract had not been renewed or who had aged or become ill and youths and young women, little versed in the ways of ravaging world fall fallen on evil ways and were completely destitute.  Premises had been set aside for their school venture, equipment followed, the former courtyard made an excellent playground.  I had nothing to do with these affairs, my knowledge of French language was limited.  It was astonishing how quickly how quickly my young pupils remembered the names of the objects I brought along to my classroom each day and the actions that ‘fil in’ to make the mixture of nouns and verbs intelligible in the short sentences created.  When I judged the small class had had enough I turned them over to an assistant French teacher who instructed them according to the syllables of the French schools and then again promoted to my husband’s senior and commercial instruction.  Occasionally the French Education Authorities raised objections to what they termed an illegal school.  Ernest would be called to the Embassy and I suppose the friction smoothed out.  I can’t recollected anything being changed added or subtracted.

Development (repeat)

Ernest suggested he should drop individual teaching of English and substitute groups small groups of three or four, the course a special one suitable for students with the same view in mind.  The course should be held at our flat during the early part of the evening.  The strict rule was that should one of the group be absent from the lesson for any cause whatever the lesson should be taken by him alone before passing on to the next, in order that the others should not be retarded and the course frustrated in its entity at the time that it had been determined.

It was a fortunate moment, for I had made the acquaintance of Monsieur Berlitz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_Berlitz the successful teacher of a Direct method of teaching languages and had a place with his assistants in his Parisian Centre school in Boulevard des Italiens where he ran “special courses for intermediate use in the USA”.  At the time there was a great demand for alerts young men in the business houses of that country.  Berlitz brought out a book that facilitated speed and attainment, using sentences rather than words as language foundation and carefully selected sentences and phrases calculated to be particularly of value in business, of buying and selling.  He attended the classrooms, noting those that ended their eagerness in ability, he gave lessons himself to those he would make his teachers of others.  I recollect him settling down - gold teeth and all - next to me for that purpose and after a capital beginning that lasted through, perhaps the major part of the lesson I erred.  He gave a stern look accompanied with a ‘pish’ that made me jump. “Repeley, Repeley” he said.  He was a clever but somewhat imperious teacher.  The years I had spent at school teaching made it comparatively easy to satisfy him and I went through his ‘course’ time after time with 4s of young Frenchman working hard against the time for their immigration into the USA.  It was enjoyment and pleasant to teach youths of ability, anxious to learn.  And a downright pleasure to be in charge of a group of young French men, hearing them practising the speech they would use in positions in the USA they had already procured.  It was at this time it was at this time I learnt that this year Monsieur Berlitz had taken out papers for USA naturalisation - school gossip the source - and that Berlitz books found a ready purchaser for “second hands”, bought by a Berlitz agent for ‘destruction’ the cost between the ‘new’ and the used book being the ‘used’ book being the warrant.  I liked the man, and his steadiness of purpose exhibited in everything so far as I knew him.  

Another memory when teaching at his language school I saved energy by using the ‘lift’.  My evening pupils were in classrooms at of varying stories.  One evening, descending after a late lesson I was stopped by an official.  “”Are you Mrs Lucas?” “Yes”.  “A pupil?”  “No”. “A Teacher?” “Yes”.  “Then please use the stairs.  The lifts are for pupils and visitors”. A man who had just descended five the stairs on passing me muttered “many a mickle maks a muckle”.  I muttered my joiner “Scotch – mall”.

Just work (repetitive)

Of Parisian life as commonly accepted I had none.  A life when one labours to live, to procure food and lodging, has little time for other things, be what they may, the hours of life are bespoke and before they arrive and Paris proved no exception.  My husband was the Principal of the Embassy School.  I was an assistant; my business was to play, talk, chatter and generally amuse small children, English by nationality, but living in a foreign country and brought up there.  The school was in a good quarter of the city, good for its purpose, the equipment up-to-date and plentiful and the children intelligent, their parents and guardians anxious for them to profit by a selective education.  In age they ranged between eight and fifteen years, the youngest section being my charge, they passed on to French teachers who instructed them in that language (I used the English tongue exclusively) taking the curriculum from French schools.  Then as seniors they followed commercial courses, in English and French, (under my husband’s direction) science and art with periodical examinations.  Adults in the neighbourhood came for what we privately termed “sales conversation”.  My husband was busy at the school during the evenings and all the week end the flat was invaded.  The Bois du Boulogne was close by, the ‘Fortifications’ had not yet been taken for other purposes we made full use of both for “conversation lessons”.

One evening in elegant dressed lady called at the flat with an English letter written in that language for immediate translation.  ‘Twas but a note, the first of many such, cancelling an appointment in London.  She offered very high remuneration if she could come to the flat or the school any time (she knew only a few words of English), unspecified time and as they would be family letters we could understand her desire.  She offered a very high remuneration stressing again and again the necessity of the quick action she wanted an immediate translation.  By word-of-mouth Ernest gave them her, and called it his easy money.  Sometimes she sent the correspondence by car with a request to send the reply by the messenger in English and French.  Once or twice she sent a car asking me to come to her on the plea of feeling unfit.  I went to a grand establishment and followed where directed.  Between two men dressed alike the same height and who never gave a look my way.  I walked down the long passage to ‘Madames’ bedroom.  The passage was trimmed with roses - it was midwinter.  The sprays of roses all red roses - with pink ones mixed in.  The passage carpet was so thick there were no sound and it seemed a quarter mile long.  She was in bed just as had had her face done hair in curlers of silver (colour anyway),  The room was very big and beautifully furnished I should say and the flower trimmings, colour in Bloom to match the passage.

Continuation of episodes and work

She greeted me and rummaged under the pillows for the English communication, the one I had been summoned to translate.  I was ill at ease, for I thought I should fail.  “Zit sen ze cherrr” she said and pushed over an ordinary letter.  It was brief.  “My dear me” it ran, “I am sorry.  Don’t come to London as we arranged.  My wife has elected to remain here a week or two longer”. I don’t remember seeing any ending to the note or whether I had a ceremonious walk out, matching the reception but I passed again through the flower - walk.  I judged the writer of the notes to be the donor of the flowers.  She was one of the most beautiful women and certainly the most gracious I had ever met.  For a month she sent her car for me then desired set lessons to “allow her to read the English” and my husband fixed settled times for her to take “conversation lessons” at the school from him in the late afternoon.  Through a whole winter she came and was an industrious pupil.  Then it stopped, she never came nor sent a word, but a cheque made out arrived a day or two after, everything correct.  It must have been months later when the school concierge said to Ernest “Do you remember Madam -that used to come for her lessons from you in English after school was out?  She used to wear a tiger skin coat pretty well to her heels and she tripped me one night (‘Twas  nearer 5 PM) when I was seeing her out.  Well, she’s tripped over to Buenos Ares now. A cattle rancher’s bought the little English chap out”.  Ernest was sharp with him.  He said to me “I wasn’t being pulled into knowing anything about things like that”.  Ernest wasn’t popular with the Embassy set.  He is “not of our class”.  “He” thought them pretentious “bumptious” was the word for them.  But he couldn’t afford to ‘lose his job’.  They could charge him with using “Embassy premises without leave” and garnish the words with?  And also make it possible for valuable, valuable papers belonging to the English Government that are kept their, to be stolen.  And a French lady visits Mr Lucas there?  For ‘English lessons’ is the reason given, but I, as caretaker, was in no communication with the “owner of the property” and Mr Lucas was perfectly silent concerning the reason he desired the premises.  The chairman of school managers committee and Ernest laughed over the episode.  “Like ‘em” was the summing up.

School episode.  A boy was admitted from Puteaux (village other side of Bois de Boulogne) fees paid, being French, particulars taken.  He came whole day, very keen.  After a while the family went to grandfather’s home south of France for holiday - the last we saw of him.  When they returned the house was empty of people and all the furniture - an absolute clean sweep.

School Episodes.  That were not infrequent.  English and French child same age same ability same sum set, and both made a mistake and sum crossed X.  Told to repeat the sum and get correct answer.  English boy goes to seat and tries it again carefully checks and gets correct answer.  French boy burst into loud sobs and looks piteous.  I have to encourage him after his outburst and assist by much cheer up my laddie have a go he too gets it right.  The French lad takes a lot of time and the class suffers for the time is used up by the silly habit.

Schools. Highfield Road, Saltley, Birmingham

My first appointment as a Trained, Certified assistant mistress in a Government Elementary Day School was to the above.  The following Monday I was due to begin.  The Saturday before the Monday I went to Birmingham to look for lodgings.  I found the school first, that I might judge the walking distance between lodging and workshop in minutes and begin the search among the working people’s homes in streets with houses clean and decent looking.  At the end of an hour or so I had got no nearer the end of the quest.  Then it was I tried the Corner shop that sold everything.  But not to me. No! I didn’t want anything.  But I told her what I was after and hadn’t accomplished.  And she speculated that she’d “bet her bottom dollar I was after Anne Pretty’s job, she was getting married a week today to Mr William Osborne a hairdresser down Saltley”. I already had reasoned and Pretty’s room would be vacant and Anne Pretty would sure to be a good living young woman and got directions to her home.  And secured the lodging.  My information however had been incorrect A.P. had married a week ago.  “Would I like to move in at once?  The place had been cleaned up”,  So I moved in on Sunday after my 22 miles to fetch my luggage and bicycle which shared my bedroom.

The school was but a six minutes’ walk.  An accompanying parent, I suppose, showed me the headmaster’s room near the entrance.  I knocked, a door opened.  I was called inside while he “opened school”.  Whistle in the yard blew.  I heard lines form and march in past the room where I was, to the hall, greeting, prayer, hymn, dismissal.  The Head of the Establishment returned.  I was shown “my boy’s class”, then introduced by name and left - to call the register and ask questions and get busy which I did.  A knock on the door!  ‘Twas only Mr fell the relief teacher, to say goodbye and good luck! I was installed.   I found the work to my taste and discipline was easy.  I hoped to be transferred the next year with the class but found repetition work of the past year was the rule to be taken with the new batch from the Infant section. Horror! A repetition job! Halfway through that year I applied for a headship and asked my “head” for a testimonial of suitability.  How he laughed!  Did I think teaching a class of small boys a year and class of small girls sufficient experience for directing a school?  I certainly had some amount of night school experience, but did making skirts and shirts hardly fit the picture? Then, changing his tone, he spoke of the experience of “seniors” teaching the “singling out” for the “First Assistant”.  I was sharpening well but I must get much more experience and of the right sort.  The “short courses” given to their teachers by the present education authority were for incumbents to be made competent.  He finished by saying “I was shaping (how I hated that word) as a good teacher and I certainly was an excellent disciplinarian, and if I put this nonsense of wider experience and success in storage for half a dozen years and would be a different matter altogether”. He certainly had made his case out.

I move on

Scanning the advertisements of the “Schoolmaster” early in December for the second year with the small boys, I came across one that was of interest.  It invited candidates for a post of “First Assistant” (woman, certified, trained) and in a suburb of Birmingham, but one that had fallen on evil times in-as-much as what had been a well-built quarter of the city had been turned into or was still in the process of being changed into a district of small factories making “parts” which were later assembled for the finished article of commerce, and habitations for the work people.  It was routine work and often the men journeyed to the Black Country and the women worked on a machine at home for ridiculously poor pay.  The streets, such as they were, were dirty and grey, houses were crowded “in a huddle” and small spaces that was still left vacant were neglected and rough.  Back rows were narrow and unclean.  To be tied to work in surrounding such as these was not encouraging.  Could I get home after work or must I transfer nearer?  I studied the railway tables.  Yes, by early getting off and a long day of work.  I could do it - right across the town centre. The application was sent off.  An answer came almost by return.  A School Managers’ meeting came at the weekend.  Only 4 managers and the Head Master were present and, to me, only the latter seemed interested. The candidates were asked to wait in the next room the decision would be told them.  The candidates were all local teachers excepting me.  The post was offered to me and the hope expressed that I should be free after the Christmas holiday.  The meeting was over.  The Head Master told me school numbers were increasing fast, I was the first Chief Woman appointed to the school.  He wished me to take the top class - a mixed set of boys and girls. Cookery, housewifery and woodwork were taken elsewhere at a special centre, this was the end of its first year, this was the first head ship also and he had sketched out many improvements.  Would I take these papers and summary of what he hoped to achieve with my help handing over a role of papers?  He was burning with enthusiasm.  He added “The managers are practically all uneducated men.  I mean - really, but they will do all they practically can.  Before I came, there was but one certified teacher one certified and trained, four ex-pupil teachers and three or four pupil teachers and monitors.  Part of my job is to teach them how to teach. But before that they have to learn to speak English. The brogue is awful.”

“Well girl”, I said to myself “you’ve something to bite your teeth into here.  Good luck!”

School 2 Bolton Road

I left Saltley School one chilly Friday afternoon, saying goodbye to the round of assistants during the afternoon recess.  Some I scarcely knew, we had met so seldom.  The Headmaster’s parting was characteristic “so you’re off. Few of my people have left me so soon. By the way you have not received a fair the well gift from us though we wish you well. Good luck!”  He shook hands. “You never confided in me you know”. To which I answered under my breath “if I had, I should have taught small boys till I’d I was as dead as mutton”.  I never set eyes on the school or any of the staff again but my memory recalls many of that class and the modes of teaching used, that were wonders of success.

Next day, I rose early, catching the local train at 10 to 8 after a half mile trot, on to Birmingham.  Hastening the centre way through by the shortcuts, to the “Circular” where the good-natured guard encouraged me in the race against time.  I jumped in to join the nun who had kept the door open, who left me soon at the nearest stop to her RC school.  We often traveled that distance, but, past greetings, we seldom spoke.  A few minutes sharp walk and I had reached school.  The young Headmaster showed me round and left me with the class, the senior children, boys and girls.  As the First Assistant I knew I should have an upper section.  My appointment was made to secure him (the man of ideas) more time for supervision, he told me, and he was both enthusiastic and capable.  Sound work was done but it was slowly and noisily, in spite of our energetic director. He wished them (his staff) to stampede they prepared to run. The enthusiastic went at everything noisily and overpoweringly and we weren’t a young staff on the whole.  ‘Twas a busy school, but a hard one.  I could stand libraries, collections of all sorts of games on Saturday mornings, but the “Cupboard of Astonishments” was installed in my classroom and free to all after 12:15 PM to afternoon school time.  It started as an “afternoon stroll for the over twelves”. The leader being the headmaster.  The surprises! The worst were newts, rotten wild birds eggs, dead wet plants, a dead small rat without leg or tail, wild fruit overripe, fish (small) in bowls and dead insects and birds etc.  Cleaning and smell objectionable.

By this time a new school had been built with separate departments for the boys girls and infants.  Advertisements appeared in the Scholastic paper “The Schoolmaster” for the representative “Heads”.  Our  Headmaster naturally followed on at the Boys school.  His work was known and the leadership he represented.  Miss Stevens, a previous assistant, would be the new mistress.  I was proposed at the same managers meeting for the Infant School Headship.  Objections to my lack of experience were raised the decision voting produced even figures.  I gained and audition and told of my mother (as young schoolmistress) first sewing teacher in a country school, then given charge of the infants, then infants with juniors, and when the schoolmaster was dismissed for doing wrong, given charge of the whole school I was her assistant.

I direct my first school Canterbury Road Infant, Handsworth, Birmingham

At last!  I leave the Council Chamber with the feeling of intense satisfaction, ‘tis the culmination of a long drawn-out desire, successfully carried out, one that had bristled with difficulties, now passed.  I knew I should fulfill my part all right.  I was dismayed to find myself choked with emotion, and went over the day’s events.  “Repay their confidence” I hammered into myself.  I think I did it.  I followed the example of my late headmaster, if I had a good idea I bounced it into action and tried it out, if successful was adopted and tenaciously held.  I had fought vigorously for a young staff.  I was twenty six, my first assistant, a country girl from the Isle of Man, twenty four, tow or three straight from the Training College, the rest ex-pupils trying for the college entrance for the next year.  We “tried out” then “built up” and “profited by” what had been gained and stuck well to the premier necessity – reading - for half the morning and a portion of the afternoon, not often the whole, I was with the half dozen children of the reading classes that had failed to keep the pace and practise proved the remedy.  Once only, one of the her Majesty’s Inspectors criticised my doing in this.  To this day I remember the tone of my rejoinder given with a smile.  Little he knew ‘twas a forbearing one.  “You know you are here to judge if they can read to a certain level, we made a level and do our best - and it is our best - to bring them to that level.  Now you choose anyone, say half a dozen, and hear them.  The teacher had their names - in sections according to their advance.  Who we may profit.  Not that we shall reduce it, for we think they can get that far unless indeed, you convert us”.  ’Twas true we had everything that helps success, new buildings, newly built district, best type of working class, no poverty corners and me with the tongue of reason.  If the teacher is all right so is the class.  I spent more time thinking of the teacher and her many calls on temper and health than the children.  Young teachers never spare themselves (my experience).  I watched with a sharp eye for any signs of possible nervous strain and did “a bit of coaching” for a space and the apprentice system then being in.  “Two of them and the boss” managed the educative part.  And I knew the characteristics of the coming teacher which I often proved useful in the daily round later.  The annual reports were the usual ones, no complaints no flatteries, nothing wanted more or less.  I preferred an HMI that knew his work, went the round of the place, visited every class and spoke more than a greeting to the teacher in charge and asked me if there was any weakness in the managers or the school buildings before he left.  I stayed there till I married.  I knew I should never enter its doors again and was sad.  School: Canterbury Road infant department accommodation 560.

Change

I left Canterbury Road Infant School with great regret, for I had been very content, right through the classrooms the school was a happy place, it may have been that we were a very young staff (youth). I was still in the ‘twenties’.  The junior teachers had come straight from their apprenticeship as ‘uncertified teachers’, they had the Teachers Training College still to come, after qualifying for the scholarship that gave them entrance for an educational course, for two or three years, previous to practical work in a school approved by the British Government, which carried a substantial money grant if up to the standard required for the purpose.  His Majesty’s Inspectors (as they were called) paid visits to the schools and a report on the school followed, after, and if satisfactory, placed as competent on the grant list, whether conducted by a religious body, church, chapel or a secular group, or the electors, by vote, chose a council to draw direct affairs.  Many of these schools had faced by debt, yielded them to Government, usually when repairs were costly and urgently needed or the district was rapidly growing in population.  School places had to be found for them, more classrooms had been made as extensions.  With the caretaker of the premises, a visitor went through each room and judged by the pupils’ works exhibit exhibited in most of them the mode of teaching had remained much the same.  I rejoiced. When an alteration showed in the method of teaching I showed a lively interest and out came the notebook, but on the whole it had changed but little in the two or three years.  I could not compare Canterbury Road Infant School with the one I was shortly mentally visualising, as the commencing day came nearer and nearer, they (the past one and the one I was going to) were so utterly unlike - in purpose, in working and in the results as far as I could judge.  I should be teaching the whole time as an assistant once again, but my pupils were a mere handful of children of six or seven years of age, and I was both examiner and teacher.  I never saw my employers as such and few of my pupils’ parents.  Not even on admission and when we parted, there were no farewells spoken between us.  Only a few have left their names in my memory, those small incidental happenings at school my memory retains; the features of a few of the characteristics of more I could call to mind, most have been erased a long time ago.  Why all this?  Ernest, finding his life monotonous had been in touch with the English embassy in Paris who had opened an English school, hoping to counteract the large number of children of mixed marriages (English men with French women) who failed to take out naturalisation papers for their sons became French citizens in due course.  He had been asked to be the director of the school with his wife as assistant, teaching English.  French assistants also would be of the staff.   Ernest said little, I could read his mind.  We went.

My child

I found I had a baby coming.  I never thought much about it till it made its presence felt by a couple of gentle movements it gave.  The concierge recommended me to go to the district hospital for the usual examination.  I took the advice but understood little of their chatter as they are rattled on notwithstanding my silence.  In my mind I was still objecting to the publicity of being wheeled, semi naked, across a court adjacent to the hospital, too well peopled for my liking, and I decided then and there I would be in England when my infant should be born.  If a son, he would at any rate dodge the French conscription, if a daughter, she would have the best education her brain and personality called for.  I had not spoken at street corners and in vacant spaces for better payment of hospital nurses without a deep conviction that the status of women was at fault.  I believed that undeveloped brainpower and their lack of physical strength were lacking to disuse to some extent disuse through generations.  I was one girl among brothers.  I had been ‘twitted’, sometimes punished for not taking care of dress “frills and furbelours”, cutting off my beribboned dresses and tearing my far-de-La “best” dress.  Once, returning from a holiday, my parents brought each of their children are present, cricket bat and stumps and balls of the eldest, a box of imitation tools for the next, leather reins, bouncing ball, and sledge and so on.  I got - an embroidered pinafore.  I remembered that all my life, one of the few times I rushed off, hid in an overgrown Spinney and cried.  Yes, what is the way of bringing up a girl? My girl! I didn’t look forward to it.  Whatever else, I settled, no repression, no rules.  Let her father guides.  In one thing only was adamant though, when the hours struck for the bedtime that I’d given, it meant just that.  So I went to England. My husband and the Educational Authorities of the Embassy School strongly objected to each other’s ideas, but Ernest carried it his point and accompanied me to the Gare St Lazare.  He looked such an image of misery that I gave him a later date for the birth.  On the boat at Dieppe the stewardess acquainted the captain of my condition, he came on deck but with my luggage there I stayed (I wasn’t losing that). I had written to the harbour policeman and lodgings for me were booked there, he was awaiting my arrival.  I settled in next morning I interviewed the local doctor and engaged the midwife, she, the wife of the policeman, had had and made what and made what preparations were necessary, none too soon.  Two days afterwards she was born.  The pain was hellish.  When that doctor turned in I said “Dr I’ll have no more if you’re game for using the instruments. God made a mess of her job – Creation”.  After about the third time he went - sent me off to sleep and when I came to consciousness the whole business was over.  My daughter had been rolled up and slept for hours and her mother the same but I never felt so fatigued in my life before or since.  I enquired if she was born without blemish and reassured, and that was that.  My husband came from France and we went back, pram, clothes and the Baby.

Summer break

The summer holidays were near and the English Colony and the well-to-do lost no time in changing their rather monotonous lives, often taking their household staff and their families and dependents to what was a second home or residing for a time in the various hotels frequented by British.  The Embassy School was shut.  Two of my former assistant teachers joined as us near the German borders. My husband got ready his easel and paintbox and furnished himself with a list he hoped to put on canvas.  We took rooms at an English tailor’s near the German border.  He and his wife had been resident there many years and he was known as Le Tailleur.  A steeple-chase trainer lived in the neighbourhood, but both his name and the village he lived in have escaped my memory.  Our party were invited to a village celebration of some sort, the numbers gathered were 60 to 70, no children were present.  I was asked to take charge for the time I was staying there of a holiday camp for the racing boys, who had dodged the education authorities in Britain and to the French were “foreigners”. Their case was pitiful.  All hoped to become jockeys.  The apprentices’ races were for a selective purpose and they drank intoxicants with the view of stunting their growth. A philanthropic religious body in Britain sent a donation to be used for their benefit but no one volunteered for the cause and the money was still unused.  The Tailor’s wife said if it could be founded as a boy’s club that autumn, she would ‘follow on’ as responsible leader, the Lucases were teachers and would possibly help to ‘get going’.  An unused barn had been offered, placards were posted up.  17 suitable boys were present on the opening evening.  Gifts of games had flowed in - a bagatelle board, dominoes. ping-pong outfits and the like.  And to crown all, two of the men as the ‘Trainers’, occupying good positions, offered to form a band of their fellows to ’help things along’ by forming a rota of visitors “to see things went square” as they put it.  I had set my mind on a “light refreshments” ending to the meetings but it fell that through, for what reason I cannot say.

I went to one more meeting in the barn.  The crowd was there but little was said re-the club that was to mean so much.  Rumours were abroad that Germany was to invade France and near that very spot.  Flatly I did not credit such a thing and made fun of a small group of the lads that spoke of following the railway from Garde de Lazar to Dieppe en route for Newhaven and England if need be.  That evening I talked of what had been said and the possibility of a German raid and was promptly told to cease. Impossible! Quite.

Rumours become certainties

Rumours flew around.  They persisted.  I could not rid myself of a fixed foreboding that things were going aslant between France and Germany and that it would come soon.  Ernest was not of the same opinion.  I thought at the time he was so happy painting and sketching he had no time to think of aught else, he forbade himself to think, giving himself up to his dominating pleasure and pleased to see me surrounded by friends.  Rumours turned out to be facts, but blind eyes didn’t see.  I was talking down. Neither did our party converse with the stable men to the place that spoke with such hatred of the neighbouring nation.  I maintained “The Times” might be far more reliable in calculating the tension that existed between France and Germany and more capable of a truer forecast of events to come.  So it went on and at last came as a certainty what had been a rumour.  “German troops were in action massing hundred miles away” said rumour.  But destruction by fire was shown by smoke clouds and the “hundred miles” were less than a day’s journey.  A decision must be immediate, for action must be taken when the sun rose.  When we assembled we were a gloomy party.  The Tailor had been to Paris and back and described chaos everywhere.  My English visitors had evidently taken counsel together.  They had decided to take no risks, they had their tickets and the sooner they were “on their way back” the better.  They’d seen me and the babe which was what they’d come to do.  By remaining they would add to my cares.  ‘Mrs Tailor’ came in to say all foods were rationed and no change could be demanded from the storekeeper.  She and the Tailor were going at once, they had stored petrol in small quantities, they had relatives in Normandy.  They said goodbye.  While still the farewells were being said the sound of a horse at full gallop with a rider shouldering a French “directive” or “news of what was happening” perhaps, made all try to get to the door.  He shouted the message that ran something like this. “The Germans are here! Here! They are burning (couldn’t catch the names)!  Flee while you can!  To Paris you are to go! Instantly! No baggage! You have one and a half hours to be ready. One half hours to be ready to go. To go. To Paris. On this stretch of road you will be picked up. To go. To Paris instantly here.”  He rode off furiously.  The small crowd disappeared almost as quickly.  (Aunt) May and my visitors packed bags (so did I) then cast them away for enveloping towels, and I had the sense to add to large tins of the morning’s milk.   The villagers turned loose their animals and towards the forest tracks.  It was a free fight to board the wagons that did arrive after what seemed an eternity but all children with women were packed on first.  I took my place with Cicely, my baby.  May footed it with, the teacher friends who had promised to see her on to English soil.  We had arranged to meet in the courtyard of the English Embassy School, the huge crowd prevented this.  Late that day ticket holders were drafted to go to Gare de St Lazare.  May went without a ticket. Arrived and they are respective homes - safe.

My baby and I

I stayed in that awful courtyard with my babe, my milk tins under my skirt sitting on a corner carpeted with coarse grass, my resting place between private English lessons I had given the last term. And centuries since then seemed to be passed waiting for Ernest to come.  What should I do if he failed me?  I took off baby’s soiled garments; it was time she went to sleep. I dozed off to.  The shades of evening had come when I heard Ernest voice and the ticket holders had all been forwarded to destinations.  His feet had been skinned in places by the long walk and was swollen and discoloured and painful.  “I must get to the Embassy” he said “Now, tonight. I must see where we stand”.  He limped off.  I sat on, slept and woke.  Baby slept, whined, woke and wept.  By and by he returned, “no luck” he said, “let’s go to our apartment, it’s near, someone is bound to have taken control. Can you walk?”  I struggled up.  He took the baby.  The apartments’ concierge welcomed us, she had the keys, made beds, cooked a meal and burst into tears for both her sons had been “called up” that day.  Next day Ernest went to the School Managers and returned disheartened.  No sympathy.  No help.  Nothing!  ‘They’ just wanted to be rid of us he said, bitterly.  Whatever interest of ours he had thought to preserve by remaining in France had vanished, soldiers were wanted, not schoolmasters.  At length he was called to help young women in mortal danger, had but recently taken a commercial or other post in Paris and were not cognisant of languages or mode of life and in grave danger of being trapped in houses of bad fame as far off as Buenos Ayres.  It was obvious that France had no place for me and it was equally obvious that there would be no money for education for foreigners. It was decided I should take baby to England where I would I could well maintain as both, and Ernest stay in France for the duration of the war, then see how matters stood.  And that was how a jaded, worried young father came to be hunting and haunting Paris streets and corners after midnight and is scared but determined young mother was limping along at 6 AM with a year old child on one hip and an immense bundle of soft goods, seeking deliverance from a disturbing existence by clearing out.  I don’t think I was I ever felt so utterly alone in all my life.  Baby had cried herself out by the time I pulled up at a street water pump to soak a biscuit.  I made my way along the platform by going backwards, there was no room to fall there was no room to fall and I was ‘in’ - and in a corner away from the entrance and on my bundle.  We started - a long, long time, jolted, started again, pulled up, successive jolts then along wait, baby wailing.  So it went on the station was gained, its street filled with abandon luggage.  The worst bit was to come to go from train to platform after platform to ship.  By the time I got pulled on the gang way by a crew member I couldn’t speak but made a sort of deep seated gurgle.  The captain moved off, warning people not to move: the boat being overloaded.  I don’t remember it moving off.  I pushed Cicley’s feet under my skirts, my back was against a box.  She had cried till she croaked. I took no notice for I couldn’t think and couldn’t walk but I told them I had to stand to walk. Mr Standing, the harbour policeman, carried us both off the boat to their home.  I borrowed money from them to take me to Warwick shire.  On Tiled Hill station was Mr Robert Mackay our Westwood Heath farmer and neighbour with a farm trap, and drove us to Westwood Heath School House where Ces and Kate looked took us in.  Then and not till then did I wonder how Ernest had got on.  I had not occurred to me to send a telegram to say I was in England with Ernest left in France.

All set for fair sailing. (repeat)

In 1914 when the Germans invaded France, both Ernest and self were working almost to our limit.  At breakfast we usually went over the work we had planned to do that day and more often than not it was a full one.  My husband was negotiating with a picture dealer in USA to paint watercolours of English country scenes - a fad that had caught on among the USA descendants of British stock.  The celerity with which he made a watercolour of some British countryside, the pleasure he got in his own workmanship and the memories he recalls of Warwickshire were good to witness.  I wonder how many 5 pound small sketches of leafy Warwickshire went across the Atlantic, duplicates of those first watercolours.  One order was repeated again and again till he’d do no more it was “Mill Lane, Warwickshire”, the black beams and the narrow bricks intermingled with roofs of overlapping small tiles and rectangular panels of glass in leaden frames.  Each door facing the street had a sheltering jutting story and a raised block step.  Every house was differently planned yet all were alike in an almost fantastic appearance that is well described as quaint. Thatched roofs stood out here and there chimneys in a clustered group sent up a smoke denoting green kindling, and a newly felled coppice or Spinney nearby.  Orders for this picture came again and again the money placed in a box labelled our house to be alas! The dream never materialised.

Our child, Elisabeth, (Cicely?) had reached toddling age, her fair hair, blue eyes and firm build showed her British ancestry.  She spent much time in the Bois de Boulogne.  As a babe she was carried there like a bundle by Aunt May, the custom collectors at Paris gates gathering in a cluster around her insisting on examining the contents for the mam’selle doubtless was carrying fresh vegetables or other country produce – honey, eggs, fruit etc.  The mademoiselle knew but a few of the French words they were speaking so loudly.  Her miracle words were “Pour uci Madam”.  Holding the exact price she said her ‘miracle words’.  With it she gave a direction point of her forefinger to the commodity desired with the price well marked.  “Pour ula, si vous place Madame” came next.  And by degrees she learnt to shop.  One evening as we left the school, a handsome car sloped and asked from Madame Lucas.  The lady inside carried a letter which he wished me to translate.  It was brief.  The correspondence merely wished the date they were to meet be changed.  These brief notes became a regular source of profit.  Come only, the meetings was cancelled for “my wife is coming to London that week”.  Her visits to me ceased. I called on the concierge who said she is returned to the man who brought her here.  Her luggage was marked to Buenos Ayres.  I know nothing more but I am very sorry she’s gone.

A Sheer Grind.

My eldest brother and his wife did all they could to make me feel welcome and set aside a sitting room and bedroom with a large cot as free accommodation.  I was back again in the home of my childhood, many things remained unchanged, the place was full of memories.  He told me May Lucas had arrived unexpectedly from Newhaven, safe and sound. They had seen her to hear of her adventurous flight from the Germans.  She had visited her optician, found the faulty sight was caused by overwork and had completely recovered and was back in the family tailoring business.  Next day a news reporter called for my escape story.  I slept many hours of the first two days and nights in Westwood Heath school house, I was fortunate in getting a competent help to look after my toddling child and to keep my two rooms as they should be kept. She remained with me till I left the locality about a year later.  My immediate necessity was to find work, suitable work.  With this in view I interviewed the Coventry Director of Education, and the following week was an assistant teacher in a well-run school there, taking the second highest class of boys and some 47 of 12 to 13-year-olds, their master being on the sick list.  Coventry was some 3 ½ miles away but the scale of pay was higher than that of the country schools around at the time.  I stayed till his return the following week, then filled short vacancies and acted as substitute were told.  Usually I was off for the day by 7:40 AM walking through grazing fields and over Hearsall Common to Coventry Town and back by train that put me down at Tile Hill Station about 5:30 PM to walk a country lane of about 1 ¼ miles lovely in the warm months but an undertaking in wintry weather.  My daughter flourished on the whole, but did not escape infantile epidemics and I was always placed to teach boys.  I found myself exhausted when a broken night followed a Coventry School day, for my convenient return train was changed to a time and ran 30 minutes earlier and I was of no use to me.  Men teachers were called up to the colours.  Staff ran short, classes were merged.  I had tried to find my husband’s whereabouts but failed to find the slightest clue and the money in the Government’s (French) hands, putt in our joint names, was ungettable.  The Coventry Education Committee became aware that drill taught as a subject in its elementary schools differed as the teacher’s certificate of qualification and asked those who lacked the accepted qualification to attend a course on Saturday mornings to obtain it.  This was brought to the notice of all recent new-comers.  I demurred, for I possessed the compulsory drill certificate of Birmingham’s Elementary Schools and too, I was teaching junior classes of boys.  I fell too.  I must earn maintenance for my child and me I answered an advertisement of Warwickshire County Education Committee: was a selected candidate and offered the Headship of Solihull girls School Birmingham; a Church of England school and accepted.

Suffrage

I was busy, giving instructions to some 25 matrons of Birmingham City; “How to make a shirt from my husband”.  One autumn evening in Saltley in the evening classes held in that district, when the words “suffrage” and “suffragette” struck my ear. The Saltley housewives had been successful in their request to the Birmingham Education Committee for a sewing class where they could cut out and make undergarments for the family.  During the coming winter ready-made garments had not yet found their way to retail shops and sewing machines were rarely seen in an ordinary home.  The first step the Birmingham Education Committee took was to open a course for instructresses, with an examination of capability at the conclusion and certificates issued to the successful candidates to that effect.  I attended the course for instructresses and had qualified and was appointed to Saltley district of Birmingham.  To make a shirt to fit well for her man, to sew garments for her growing children and for the coming babe and retain the patterns, sounded attractive to the wife and mother, and they came with the full intention of acquiring all the knowledge they could.  My blackboard was in position, its surface marked in squares and numbers.  Nearby was a member of the class just forming relating to her companion that and “attendance officer” had called to know the reason for her child’s non-attendance at the Elementary Government School three times in a fortnight.  “So I told him straight” she said, “no good coming here badgering me, the law don’t reckon me a parent. Go to his dad, you’ll find him at the Co-op where he works”. I passed on distributing the various articles the women would use during the lesson.  But I noticed a small crowd of the pupils to be were listening to what she was saying.  I was very interested.  That week, teachers had had notice of their annual rise of salary.  A male teacher and I shared the class.  Equality in numbers and responsibility, but his had been the greater increase than mine.  And as my results were as good if not better than his, it struck an unfair note.  I went to hear the suffragette women speak at their next public meeting on the rights of women and came to the logical conclusion that the women’s cause was just.  They paid the same rent for similar houses, for railway and other travelling charges, for books and literature, and public amusements etc. and if equal in business ability, their remuneration scale was lower than the wage of a male.  ‘Twasn’t fair.  It had always been so.  As the midday break at school at the midday break at school I had to race home to lay the cloth, my brothers were to be home in time for the meal ready dished up at 1 o’clock.  When they’d finished then ran back to school.  Not so the daughter, who had to keep with the washing up, kept in the scullery till mother gave me the signal to go. The same thing occurred at teatime.  Occasionally I would clear off and be missing till dusk sent me home.  I was 10 or 12 years old then was slapped well and went hungry to bed.

At Solihull

It was uphill work at Solihull ('Soiled Hill' the degradation) Church of England School.  The managers were frank and told me the situation.  A temporary Headmistress was running the school, the late Head had been asked to resign by them on their insistence following very bad reports by his Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools, and warnings had changed to threats.  Government monetary grants would be withdrawn unless improvement was seen to be taking place the following year.  There was lack of discipline and few of the scholars were up to the standard of children of their age so it ran.  On the other hand, it was a denominational school under their management.  I was attached to no religious body.  But I was anxious to get away from Coventry City with the long walk to and from, some 4 miles each way, or the all eternity of long walk for a slow train, and then allow lonely mile and a half through a lonely lane in the winter.  The war had taken the young schoolmasters from their classes.  At Coventry my classes numbered nearly 50 boys, their age group 12 years plus.  I was now asked by the Headmaster “to qualify for teaching them drill and to take an interest in the games of contest”.  That meant attending a suitable physical exercise course for which I felt I was too old and spending Saturday mornings in the sports field. I took stock.  Could I undertake what I what was asked?  The maintenance of self and child depended on me.  My child was now three years old.  My eldest brother had given us house room free when, penniless, I sought sanctuary from German aggression.  She (Cicely) was left in charge from 8:15 AM to 5:30 PM from Monday to Friday.  Winter was around the corner.  I was forced play to safety.  I studied the advertisements in the “Schoolmaster” and applied for the Headship of a Church of England School at Solihull, practically a Birmingham suburb.  A short distance from the C of E school was a small private school where I could leave her on my way to school, call for her at midday to dine with me and we could return home together. Good! I accepted the Headship of Solihull Church of England School,Girl’s Department: number on books 136.  A few years after the Girl’s and Infants department were merged to Solihull Girls and Infants C of E School with separate buildings and playing grounds, and I as Headmistress.  I remained there as such till I retired the day my pension became due.  I passed my work onto my First Assistant, which included running a free library for Solihull, with the help of my school staff (and others).  From time to time I had called a parent and acquaintances meeting, when questions could be asked me by everyone who wished about their children at school, or they could drop a letter into a drain pipe for the same thing, and the pipe being the ornament for the night.  And I dropped my own packet into this was one:- “Can Ray bring a little handkeys tomorrow, one to use on the line, one to use when he marches (that is next), one before he reads, one after, one playtime, one to furnish when he comes in, and they can be bits of rag six or seven.  The boy 6 ¾ years old, see poor mum! But she rose to the occasion.  He was cured and his daily habit of sniffing without us.

My Last Headship

It was with relief I turned to prepare for my next venture.  It would be the first time I had directed a denominational school and the first time I had taken charge of the Girls School. The Solihull girls school was comparatively small in numbers but the number of classes was as a large one, and I should be actively teaching the whole of the time.  I prepared a syllabus of religious instruction that the school managers approved and determined the Church of England catechism should be memorised by pupils whole at school is a great aid to the instruction when the rite of confirmation was approached.  I found girls for the most part were older than their years and less noisy.  With the smallest numbers came some amount of individual attention, which was all to the good.  I realised I could raise the standard of the school efficiency the children admitted from the supplying Infant School, the main supply being well taught.  I enjoyed the first year immensely and the HMI’s report was a congratulatory one.  Our pupils began to take County Scholarships and chapel-goers sent us many interesting scholars.  Solihull was on the edge of that go-ahead city - Birmingham.  The suffrage movement was beckoning teenage girls to office work, previously shuts to them.  Chance played its part, Solihull girl pupils could leave school at 14 years of age by Warwickshire’s Educational rules.  Birmingham’s Educational program kept them at school till 15.  The Solihull girl sought for jobs in Birmingham.  Sometimes they were traced as underage and the employing firms were obliged to discharge them, but many were never discovered.  The aged rector of Solihull visited the school often and boasted of the responsibilities these girl children shouldered at 13 years.  Schoolwork became more or less a pleasant routine.  A gloom was cast by the death of a teacher in a road accident, but that too past.  Then change came.  The Warwickshire villages abutting Birmingham had much increased their population and school accommodation had to be increased a large extension of places had to be found.  A large boys school for the seniors was built to accommodate several closely built villages, the girls school became necessary, through the same cause and the whole number of the senior Solihull girls was transferred to the newly built block for seniors accommodation.  I was asked to keep my junior girl pupils and add Solihull Infant school.  That was my position when I retired at 60 with the government pension.

The End