Reminiscences of an Ingenue

Reminiscences of an Ingénue - written by an Old Girl who was a pupil in the 1930s/1940s
I went as a boarder to the Convent of the Sacred Heart at the age of five.  My home was in York and several schools were considered but none was prepared to take on the full-time care of one so young.  The fact that the Sisters of Charity did so showed a compassion for which I am forever grateful.  The fact that they did so, perhaps with some trepidation, did not occur to me until many years later.....
Suffice it to say that as the “youngest girl in the school” I took full advantage of this connotation when the opportunity arose.  In fact I was, I believe, a remarkably placid and unquestioning child, much given to day-dreams, who snuggled like a kitten into the warm, gentle but all enveloping cotton-wool of the religious order.  And this was perhaps the immediate legacy of life in a religious education establishment.  It took many years to recognise my own identity – a distinct disadvantage in the post war years which had to be the “finishing school” in one’s education for life.
Certain it is that I enjoyed school:  heaven forbid that I would have admitted it!  I had the unique experience of knowing the Sisters in both term and holiday times.  Due to my home arrangements my father took advantage of the hospitality offered and I stayed on for an extra two weeks or so in the long summer holiday until I was transferred to the care of a holiday governess – a situation in unfavourable contrast to the heady freedom I enjoyed at school.  Certainly I went with some reluctance when invited to various friends for this time and once flatly refused – which must have caused some embarrassment!  What a transformation!  Meals appeared, bed-time was before dark but for the rest I met up with ‘day-girls’ and perhaps went to tea with them or just wandered at will – the studio, a haven in or out of term, was no longer out of bounds for most of the day.  Sister Florence, and later Sister Veronica, were my buddies.  The sea was safe.  The fishermen, sitting on the sea wall mending their nets, always ready for a profound discussion.  The swings were untenanted, the tennis courts available;  the delicious solitude and uninterrupted reading under the trees in the wood, the unlimited walks to the coble landing to gaze with awe and some compassion into the coal black eyes of Benny, the sea-lion, are jewels in the memory of my childhood.  The Sisters had on their ‘holiday’ faces, and the sun always shone.
In retrospect it is the insularity of the religious boarding school which predominates.  We were told what was considered good for us.  I recall when some glamourous film-star died in which was no doubt dubious circumstances there was some quite preposterous story concocted, with the best of intentions, that no sordid reality should be given prematurely – or possibly need to be explained!  Similarly our literature was strictly censured.  Comics were permitted but other even more innocuous reading matter was sometimes banned.  “Current” school stories were not allowed and yet there were some ancient Angela Brazil books in the library – perhaps thought too archaic for even us to emulate!  However, great was the rejoicing when a new cinema was opened in competition with the “flea-pit” and we conned our way into seeing Charles Boyer as Napoleon on the somewhat dubious grounds of historical verisimilitude.
The daily round was constant and simplicity itself.  Mass was attended from choice except on Sundays and Holy days.  On Fridays it was celebrated in the school chapel and the smell of candle grease and incense hung in the air on the first floor corridor;  on other days it was held in the church of St Mary five minutes’ walk through the town.  Our first call in the morning was at seven o’clock for those going to mass or wanting to catch up on homework; the second at seven forty-five.  Breakfast was at 8.15 and the British habit of queuing was soon insinuated into the psyche of the boarding school child – when I hear a bell I still look around for a line to join.......
In terms of today’s child we starved.  I do not however ever remember being hungry.  At one time porridge, bread and butter were the start of the day – marmite and marmalade provided from the tuck boxes – though on Sundays we had bacon and tomatoes. Later we were given the choice of Force or to provide our own cereal when the range became greater.  There was one very special custom.  Before a feast day such as Corpus Christi, which was always a holiday, we were offered a choice of bacon and eggs or coffee and French rolls.  The rolls came from Albins, the Swiss bakery in the town, and were delicious – as no patisserie has ever equalled.  We always chose rolls and coffee.  Some years later, when our beloved Sister Superior, Sister Therese, left, our new Superior introduced coffee and rolls on Sundays, but it was never the same.
Dinner was at 12.30.  The only meal I can recall, except for the inevitable Friday fish, was mince decorated with toast triangles.  I cannot believe that we had nothing else but it is perhaps significant that it is all I can remember!  Puddings were rather better except for those twin horrors of the institutional kitchen, sago and tapioca.  Rice became known as “smockie” after a never to be forgotten evening service in the chapel.  Mademoiselle, a floating vision in mauve georgette, French perfume and minor hysterics, rushed in screaming “Fire! Fire!”.  We trooped out with the well bred British phlegm and pounding hearts – the kitchen was in a blanket of smoke but to our intense disappointment there was not a flame in sight.  The next day was a double birthday and jellies had been put to set on a high shelf – they didn’t – and we had liquid delight for tea which was just as well as the acrid smoke had seeped into everything else and rice pudding was on the dinner menu.  A day-girl, with less to lose and therefore fewer inhibitions, happened to stay for dinner and after one mouthful and in a manner reminiscent of the guest of the Borgia’s, spoke thus into the horrified silence – “It’s smockie”.  On such are legends founded!
Tea was at 5 o’clock.  Bread and butter with “paste” or jam – cake only if the tuck box provided and which we shared with our table.  On Sunday we could chose either beans or spaghetti – again from the tuck-box – and fruit salad.  Supper was at 7.00 for the “little ones” and 8.00 for the seniors – a milk drink and biscuits.  Meal times were opportunities for exercises in restraint.  Sister Anais stood at the dining room door as, in single file; we bowed the head as we passed in.  After grace silence reigned until everyone had been served.  Permission to talk was then given – to be withdrawn if the decibels rose too high.  Mealtimes were thus not only occasions to sustain the body but situations exploited in the pursuit of social graces and deportment.  Spilling drinks for example was a foible – one was duly humiliated by reference to it and retribution such as helping to clear the dining room during the recreation time.  I once spilt a whole cup of tea.  After helping to remove the offending stain, I smugly remarked that the cloth looked cleaner than before....the wrath that descended was totally uncomprehended!  Food was to be eaten without any allowance for personal choice or even allergy.  Once a Senior with a congenital abhorrence of eggs dug her heels in.  We sat with bated breath whilst the battle of wills was fought – she must stay there until she ate them or – what?  We never found out  - she and the eggs had been removed by the next meal, but the climb down on either side can have been out of all proportion to the good such discipline can have made.
Our year, not surprisingly revolved around the ecclesiastical calendar.  The Marys and Magdelaine’s seemed to have a special aura on “their” day – I was particularly peeved that, so far, there was no St Theona.  Visiting Church dignitaries were viewed with appropriate awe.  One was a Canadian missionary – and my heart was bursting with love.  My secret joy knew no bounds when, instead of signing his name in my autograph book, he wrote a poem.
Special Feast Days were the milestones of our year and the most memorable of these was the “School” day – the Feast of the Sacred Heart, a day of freedom and rejoicing.  After Mass the day was ours.  We had ice-cream – heaven! – from Peacocks, the best I have ever –but ever – tasted.  The highlight of the day was tea in the Sisters’ refectory, a holy of holies.  The table was laden and part of the fun was to see which Sister’s “place” you were in.  We could swim, play in any part of the garden – and the sun always shone......
Corpus Christi was another highlight of the year.  A week before, mid-day and after school, we denuded the fields of the buttercup heads.  Sister Florence and later Sister Veronica drew and painted designs for the paths:  we each had our areas and we filled in the designs etched out on the paths with coloured sawdust, transforming them to the likeness of stained glass windows.  Buckets of flowers stood in the shade to transform the shelves which had been set up around the statues in the grounds into altars.  By two o’clock the youngest dozen or so children had become unaccustomed angelic symbols in white dresses and short embroidered veils and baskets of buttercups to be strewn before the procession.  This meant one couple walking backwards for a short time and was not without its hazards.  But we were charged with excitement and took our duties very seriously.  A special tea followed – and the sun always shone..........
For many years we were allowed to celebrate Bonfire Night only with sparklers and deadly boring indoor fireworks.  Eventually pressure prevailed and we made a mighty bonfire in the wood.  My father had sent me a selected box of “pretty” fireworks – I was never one for bangers and jumping jacks – and to my mortification, someone found them and the last one was being let off as I arrived!  The next year Father McCormack got a spark in his eye and once more the whole celebration was verboten!
All Hallowse’en was another great night.  We had bobbin’ for apples, party games and the Seniors blindfolded the “little ones” and gave them “plane” rides on a plank.  We then sat around them in candlelight whilst they scared us all silly with ghost stores.  The innocence!  Computer games were light years away.
Party games were part of our smaller celebrations such as birthdays.  Birthday cakes were sent by parents – I was always overjoyed with mine, coming in a small crate from Terry’s and stunningly decorated.  A collection was made for a gift from “all the boarders” – I still have a most treasured leather bound anthology of poems.  Talking of collections, whatever happened to all the “Black Babies” (ahem – racist?) we weekly bought stamps for?  I must have a tribe somewhere, methinks.
Sweets and biscuits were bought from the tuck shop when supplies from home ran out.  They were kept in a cupboard with numbered cubby holes which was opened at morning break and after dinner;  we also each had a larger locker for personal things and a small locker for veils and prayer books.
A walk in two-by-two “crocodile” was taken for half an hour before afternoon classes.  The total boredom was alleviated by the wonderful situation of the school, by the sea.  Despite this, one of our favourite walks was to the cemetery, where, after a prayer at the grave of a long-departed Sister and instructions not to disturb the rest by unseemly behaviour, we were let off the rein without much chance of complaint by the residents.  Weekends were different.  We might go as far as the Brig – paddle in the rock pools, gather winkles, seek out sea anemones or circle the loganstone three times without dropping the pebble balanced on the little finger to ensure your wish came true.  Other times we might go to Primrose Valley.  Here in a marshy wonderland were golden marigolds, primroses and violets, hidden grassy places to read in or streamlets to jump from stone to stone.  Later in the year we would pick blackberries to be made into mouthwatering pies for tea.
Recreation time was spent in the gym.  There was always some craze on the go – the latest dance to 78’s – the needle sticking in the groove and responding good-naturedly to a bash on the lid;  marbles, stamp collecting, acrobatics.  Perhaps Margaret, who danced like a ballerina, or Joan who could have been a trapeze artist, would show us how it should be done, and for the rest of the day we would contort ourselves in vain attempts to reach such perfection.  We painted, played chess, made up our own rules for Monopoly and read permitted books and comics – the more questionable under cover of homework or eiderdown.
Riding, Dancing, Piano and Studio were extras.  The stables were in the town just a few minutes’ walk. When the tide was out we walked along the beach, hoof marks criss-crossing the glistening sand. When the tide was in we rode in the paddock, sights on the gymkhana.  The Stables were owned by Alan – quiet, courteous and reserved, and Albert – macho, weather-beaten and not quite at ease with his innocents.  I remember my incomprehension at his amusement at our inability to distinguish between Hayward and Harwood, two not dissimilar greys, though one was a mare.....  Dancing was never the same fun for me at least, when we changed, not without some justification on the part of our dancing mistress I’m sure, from ballet to tap.  Whilst under no illusion that I offered serious competition to Fonteyn, capturing the rhythmic tap entirely eluded me.
Sister Cecile, our first piano teacher, played the organ in church and the harmonium in chapel.  Minute, French and perpetually worried, short-sightedly seeking the specs she’d pushed up on to her forehead, her gentle patience was unlimited.  “Ah, ma petite T’eona, you will need to practice more”.  Practice!  - in the icy cold of the music rooms at some Godforsaken hour!  She guided us through our first grades until we passed to Miss Gofton – of sterner stuff with the responsibility for the higher grades.  This entailed dreaded yet exciting visits to the genteel hotel in Scarborough – wide thick-carpeted stairs to the ante-room where we waited in mind-blocking terror to be called to the examiner.
Studio was sheer bliss.  When I was very small, Sister Florence, talented, ebullient, flying along the corridor with her habit streaming along behind, was a haven in tears or in laughter.  She would sit me on the step ladder to cut my ‘pony’ fringe – a job which otherwise left me in hysterics and the hairdresser in depression.  When she left we were determined in our bereavement that we would never love again.  But her successor, Sister Veronica, was wise – she rode the tide and we were soon her devoted disciples.  Poker work, Barbola, water and oil painting, crayon, pastel and charcoal – the time was never long enough.
Tennis was ‘bought in’ from the municipal courts as we had insufficient for our needs.  A few minutes’ walk, past the Royal Crescent Hotel, round the side past the basement kitchen windows.  To this day the smell of Brown Windsor induces a feeling of déjà vu.  And the sun always shone............
We were so lucky to be by the sea; the grounds falling by winding paths to the promenade level of The Villa.  This dormer windowed house was run as a free school by the nuns for local children, but two bare rooms with only sunbleached benches along the walls were our changing rooms.  Here, modestly engulfed in huge bathing sheets, we wriggled into our bathers.  We waited in orderly queue by the fuchsia hedge, cracking the unopened buds, impatient to be in the glistening sea.  How effortlessly we learnt to swim.  Back in The Villa – by now the drying sand forming a sliding golden carpet under our feet as we once more wrestled under the towel and our wet cossies dropped to the floor.  We laid our towels out in the big lawn to dry like giant postage stamps vying with the colours of the flower beds.
The nuns wore, in those days, a habit – white wimple covered by a starched poke bonnet, shawl gathered into a long black dress, full-skirted and with a piece held up across the front called, I seem to remember, something that sounded like a ‘PS’.  They must have been hideously hot in summer and the only extra – at any rate visible – was a black knitted shawl in winter.  Our uniforms we disliked intensely – both specifically and in principle.  It did not occur to us however that we should not have one.  At five years of age I wore black stockings in winter and brown stockings in summer.  Temperatures in the 70’s or not, come the middle of September we were delivered from all parts of the country on to York station in our winter plumage.  Navy, white and silver were the school colours.  Gymslips were the everyday wear with Viyella blouses in winter and cotton in summer; on Sundays in winter we wore navy dresses and navy velour hats; on weekdays serge inverted pudding basin hats with ears.  In summer we wore navy suits with cream blouses, we had panamas adorned with the school ribbons and badges.
By the time I was about seven we had progressed into summer dresses and white socks.  The dress material was bought through the school and even in those days we fell about when we saw the design specifications to which they had to be made up to preserve modesty and stunt any budding inclination to haute couture.
Scholastically we certainly had advantages.  Classes of 6 – 8 were the norm – over ten unheard of.  Years later I remember Sister Clare telling me with some incredulity and amusement that when the men from the Ministry came the only criticism they had come up with was that they felt the classrooms were under used and could have taken twice as many children.  Plus ça change......  But teaching Sisters who had formal training were few and some lay teachers were not, as I recall of a consistently high standard.  Nevertheless exam results were good and the dedication, lack of change in the staff and sensitivity were compensation indeed.  My own regret was the lack and standard of science subjects offered – subjects which were not considered of much importance.
Sister Agnes was Headmistress.  Remote and a disciplinarian – I have no recollection of her smiling.  I remember just once a rush of tenderness but there was no empathy.  Maybe she was too ‘adult’ for us.  She once tried to arouse our interest in the rudiments of philosophy by an hour of reading and discussion on Sunday afternoons.  It was short-lived.  The failure was perhaps a combination of her inability to communicate and our unawakened minds – a symptom of the ideology of the school?  With hindsight I suspect she was unfulfilled by the limitations of the area of teaching which was her lot, and a cause of pain of which we had not the remotest inkling.
Who else stands out in these formative years?  Sister Henrietta – jolly, relaxed, enthusiastic and guiding her 5 – 7 year olds through kindergarten with gentle discipline and lots of fun.  Sister Elizabeth, patiently unravelling our tortured knitting and transforming our grubby embroidery – and never taking the glory!  Sister Louise, firm and infinitely suited to the traumatic stage from nursery to junior school.  Sister Clare – a legend for generations of Fileyites and perhaps for countless pupils the most positive influence of their school days.  Sister Clare – English, History and Latin across all the senior forms, was a teacher par excellence.  Not only did she have the subject matter but she imparted it with her own brand of communication skills.  We were indeed fortunate.
Sister Josephine, in my first years one of the only three French Sisters, morning and evening, winter and summer, trotting – she never seemed to walk – to the discreetly sited hen run, returning with her apron carefully enfolding the collection from her brood.
Miss Lenihan – a raving Irish beauty – doomed to failure by her inability to control us.  We must have made life hell and it’s a pity we didn’t benefit from her undoubted ability.  Miss Holland, ‘Dutchy’, was a gentle, perhaps less talented person but whose personality and ability to communicate made her an infinitely better teacher.
The most formidable of our mentors was undoubtedly Miss Jackson who took P.E.  If she had a Christian name we never knew it.  She ruled supreme – no velvet glove for her iron grip and a stare that would terrify Medusa.  Once a week she dined with us.  Backs were never straighter, voices more subdued and it never occurred to us that she could not see round corners.  In fact her discipline went over the top and she went away for a ‘rest’.  She undoubtedly had major problems and when she announced her engagement to be married it was received with incredulity.  However, we gave her a wedding present with sincere good wishes and much relief.  Miss Jacklin, a dignified, immaculately coiffeured lady came on Wednesdays to give Elocution sessions, and I suppose was the nearest we got to formalised drama.  School plays were great fun.  Each year we put on a Nativity play and during the Spring Term something more demanding.  Sister Florence and later Sister Veronica did some wonderful costume drawings which we sent home to be made up.  In the course of time as the dress boxes arrived back we paraded around, practising with greasepaint and exhorting family and friends to rally round on the night.
Eventually a new dormitory was built.  That summer parents received a letter to say the work was not finished and we had a two week extension to our holiday.  Oh joy!  The largest bedrooms had had only five beds and the new dormitory had twelve for the youngest group.  We had an infirmary but it was very seldom used.  If there was an infection the invalids were usually confined to a back room.  However one year an epidemic of chicken pox really got a hold and about six rooms had to be taken over.  I got it last of all, rather badly and, as a result, had to spend a whole week on my own in this drear room with all the tatty comics listening to the interminable sounds of  ‘Cherry Ripe’ being practised for a forthcoming concert, floating up from the hall.
We were divided into three Houses, and the colours of red, green and blue were identified in badges and gymslip girdles.  Hockey, tennis and netball matches, both inter-house and against other schools, were the highlights of the sports year together with a Sports Day in the summer term.  Hockey was played on the sands – very fast and a moveable feast according to the tide.
I recently saw a documentary about the experiences of Convent Boarding School girls.  I found my experience related to a great deal and the nostalgia was strong.  However there was an excerpt which bore no resemblance to my recollections – the insensitivity of the particular nun was foreign to my experience.  If there was a certain snobbishness it was based on values and expectations rather than a contempt for differences.
The events of the world did not impinge unduly unless they were indeed world-shattering.  It was not that we were not informed – indeed the radio was an important part of our lives and we would have whole days off to hear important events, but a benign censor prevailed.  Matters of moment were discussed but there was little impact in that sheltered environment and, compared with our contemporaries in more open establishments and certainly in comparison with our own children, I think we were often late developers!
My final years were at the Convent of the Nativity, Romilly.  A small group were evacuated and I have few happy recollections and wished desperately I had taken the alternative I was offered.  The upheaval itself was bad enough but the general environment – a culture shock – came at the wrong time.  The world was in turmoil and the years which should have prepared us to adapt were wanting.  Personally, scholastically, although leaving with qualifications, they were not suited to my expressed needs.  Not all this was apparent at the time but general dissatisfaction is the over-riding memory.  The friends I have retained are from Filey and our support came mainly from the Sisters who came with us.
How much do I regret?  In the immediate years after leaving, quite a lot.  But in retrospect, and in terms of my own career and married life, not a lot.  We had time to grow;  simple straightforward unquestioning acceptance of ideals were however painful to question and sometimes reject – but there was no insuperable barrier to make this impossible and overall there was so much of incomparable value.