night I went by
                And God was standing there,
                What is the prayer that I would cry
                To Him? This is the prayer:
                O God of Courage grave,
                O Master of this night of Spring!
                Make firm in me a heart too brave
                To ask Thee anything.
We must have felt that not only God, but Chief, was standing there, and a very palpable presence at that. Whatever secret petitions we might in our inner weakness have directed heavenwards, we certainly would have been ashamed to proclaim our cowardice by asking Chief for any remission of our hardships.
Dictator though Chief was, the other two members of the triumvirate which fenced us from the world were more than mere lackeys. Each of them possessed a character of iron, which, joined by the rigid band of a common and apparently uncriticized ideal, dictated the shape of our youth.
The School was called Bampfield Girlsâ College. I think Miss Faulkner would have liked to call it Bampfield Ladiesâ College, since Cheltenham was one of her working models, but she hesitated at the plagiarism, and later even the âGirlsâ was dropped. The reason for this was, I believe, that she had come by this time to regard us all as boys and did not wish to be reminded of the biological facts.
To Miss Murrill and to the members of the triumvirate, Chief was known as Dick, a tribute, I presume, to her masculinity. The second member of this trio, Mrs Watson, despite the evidence of a daughter, might also have been taken for a man, except that her rotund figure precluded allpossibility of her wearing trousers. She, like Chief, wore her hair cropped, but her masculinity had nothing of sex about it. She was a grand old woman and a ripe eccentric. Her humour was, for a girlsâ school, somewhat Rabelaisian, her temper execrable, and her language of doubtful propriety, but there was about her an inalienable air of good breeding. She came of an ancient and cultured family, and showed it, despite the cropped hair, the sagging tweed skirts and the grubby habits (her room smelt abominably). She was known to her intimates as Punch, and the name fitted her exactly.
Her loyalty to Chief was incorruptible. Her keen intelligence and sceptical, inquiring mind could have made her critical, and I knew, later on, that she never hesitated to argue with Chief, or present to her plainly her own views on a situation, but publicly she gave not the slightest indication that even the most monstrous pronouncements, the most impracticable suggestions, on Chiefâs part, were alien to her own way of thinking, and she supported them not merely with good humour but with a personal bias which seemed to proclaim them reasonable. I have never discovered the springhead of this devotion. Punch was condemned to discomfort, for she lived in one of the most disagreeable, though picturesque, corners of the house; she drew no salary and had devoted a substantial portion of her capital to the school; and her work was a mere dismal round of teaching in a school where the standard of scholarship was low, and book-learning played a subordinate part to character forming. Scripture must be taught, and Geography must appear on the time-table. Punch took both, doling out to us the needful portions of each, much as though it were a matter of brimstone and treacle. She was only diverted â and diverting â when drawn into the bypaths of knowledge.It became a matter of tactics to trail red herrings across her path, and she relished the game hugely, casting aside with relief the annotated
                And God was standing there,
                What is the prayer that I would cry
                To Him? This is the prayer:
                O God of Courage grave,
                O Master of this night of Spring!
                Make firm in me a heart too brave
                To ask Thee anything.
We must have felt that not only God, but Chief, was standing there, and a very palpable presence at that. Whatever secret petitions we might in our inner weakness have directed heavenwards, we certainly would have been ashamed to proclaim our cowardice by asking Chief for any remission of our hardships.
Dictator though Chief was, the other two members of the triumvirate which fenced us from the world were more than mere lackeys. Each of them possessed a character of iron, which, joined by the rigid band of a common and apparently uncriticized ideal, dictated the shape of our youth.
The School was called Bampfield Girlsâ College. I think Miss Faulkner would have liked to call it Bampfield Ladiesâ College, since Cheltenham was one of her working models, but she hesitated at the plagiarism, and later even the âGirlsâ was dropped. The reason for this was, I believe, that she had come by this time to regard us all as boys and did not wish to be reminded of the biological facts.
To Miss Murrill and to the members of the triumvirate, Chief was known as Dick, a tribute, I presume, to her masculinity. The second member of this trio, Mrs Watson, despite the evidence of a daughter, might also have been taken for a man, except that her rotund figure precluded allpossibility of her wearing trousers. She, like Chief, wore her hair cropped, but her masculinity had nothing of sex about it. She was a grand old woman and a ripe eccentric. Her humour was, for a girlsâ school, somewhat Rabelaisian, her temper execrable, and her language of doubtful propriety, but there was about her an inalienable air of good breeding. She came of an ancient and cultured family, and showed it, despite the cropped hair, the sagging tweed skirts and the grubby habits (her room smelt abominably). She was known to her intimates as Punch, and the name fitted her exactly.
Her loyalty to Chief was incorruptible. Her keen intelligence and sceptical, inquiring mind could have made her critical, and I knew, later on, that she never hesitated to argue with Chief, or present to her plainly her own views on a situation, but publicly she gave not the slightest indication that even the most monstrous pronouncements, the most impracticable suggestions, on Chiefâs part, were alien to her own way of thinking, and she supported them not merely with good humour but with a personal bias which seemed to proclaim them reasonable. I have never discovered the springhead of this devotion. Punch was condemned to discomfort, for she lived in one of the most disagreeable, though picturesque, corners of the house; she drew no salary and had devoted a substantial portion of her capital to the school; and her work was a mere dismal round of teaching in a school where the standard of scholarship was low, and book-learning played a subordinate part to character forming. Scripture must be taught, and Geography must appear on the time-table. Punch took both, doling out to us the needful portions of each, much as though it were a matter of brimstone and treacle. She was only diverted â and diverting â when drawn into the bypaths of knowledge.It became a matter of tactics to trail red herrings across her path, and she relished the game hugely, casting aside with relief the annotated
Similar Books
