Family Of Four: 52 - Bells! Bells! Bells!
...Bells! Bells! Bells! From now on they were to call me urgently to awaken, to prayers, to lesson periods, and to prep. It was a relief to hear a gong sounded for meals!...
Mrs Vivien Hirst describes settling into the life at a girls' boarding school - with its strict rules.
Mrs Hirst's memories of her childhood were gathered into a book, Family Of Four, by her nephew, Raymond Prior.
I wakened to the sound of a bell, an unusual reveille in my young life. Bells! Bells! Bells! From now on they were to call me urgently to awaken, to prayers, to lesson periods, and to prep. It was a relief to hear a gong sounded for meals!
I opened my eyes to the dim winter light and saw a pleasant room with a bay window. Mu, and my other roommate, told me that we could see the Channel steamers crossing backwards and forwards between Newhaven and Dieppe.
They also told me, that after this morning we should not be allowed to talk upstairs, excepting in the case of a real emergency. "After you tread on the bottom stair of all," said Mu, "you have to be silent."
This surprised me. I wondered how lively schoolgirls could come and go out of their bedrooms, meet at the washbasins in the bathrooms, and even, in a few cases, share a room, and refrain from talking. This was the hardest rule I found I had to obey. I heartily disapproved of it always. After lights were out, that was reasonable, but it was absurd to have strict silence in what, I felt, should have been a friendly time, going to bed and getting up.
If we succumbed to temptation, we were on our honour to give in an order mark before the assembled school when the register was called, after prayers. It was surprising what a high standard was reached in this respect, but, of course, the silence led to hums and grunts, nods and finger-talk, which almost amounted to speech.
In the dining-room Miss Pannett presided at the middle table. I was within her view and received many smiles from her all through my school days.
Miss Pannett and Miss Kate, her sister, had begun their school some years previously. At one time Miss Pannett had been at the Russian court at St. Petersburg as governess to the Royal children.
She was very plump and high in the front and had difficulty in conveying the food over this shelf, so that at first I was constantly watching to see whether it would make its journey successfully, or spill over, which alas! was often the case. Of a gentle disposition, she appeared to me rather sloppy, for when on the rare occasions I was called into her private den, she invited me to sit beside her and stroked my hand, which I detested. She was the antithesis of a headmistress.
On Sunday evenings the older girls were invited into her tasteful drawing-room, and Miss Pannett played for an hour or two, passing from one composition to another, or extemporising brilliantly, often from ideas gleaned from her pupils. In the summer, in their free time, she also allowed these girls to relax in her rose garden. I think we all had a warm affection for her.
Miss Kate ran the housekeeping side and was practical and masterful, and plagued by the difficulty of engaging servants. During the war, many of these girls had been in munition factories, on the land, or employed in other capacities. They were no longer offering themselves for domestic service as they wished to have their weekends and evenings free, and to be spared the long hours customarily worked in an institution, or household.
