Six to Sixteen: A Story for Girls

by Juliana Horatia Ewing

Her good conscience and her timidity both helped to make her feel school-keeping a heavy responsibility, which should perhaps excuse the fact that we suffered at Bush House from an excess of the meddlesome discipline which seems to be de rigueur in girls’ schools. I think Miss Mulberry would have felt that she had neglected her duty if we had ever been left to our own devices for an hour.

To growing girls, not too robust, leading sedentary lives, working very hard with our heads, and having (wholesome and sufficient meals, but) not as much animal food as most of us were accustomed to at home, the nag of never being free from supervision was both irritating and depressing. Much worse off were we than boys at school. No playing-fields had we; no leave could be obtained for country rambles by ourselves. Our dismal exercise was a promenade in double file under the eye and ear of Madame herself.

True, we were allowed fifteen minutes’ “recreation” together, and by ourselves, in the school-room, just after dinner; but this inestimable privilege was always marred by the fact that Madame invariably came for us before the quarter of an hour had expired. No other part of school discipline annoyed us as this did. It had that element of injustice against which children always rebel. Why she did so remains to this day a puzzle to me. She worked very hard for her living—a fact which did not occur to us in those days to modify our view of her as our natural tormentor. In breaking faith with us daily by curtailing our allotted fifteen minutes of recreation, she deprived herself of rest to the exact amount by which she defrauded us.

She cannot have pined to begin to teach as soon as she had swallowed her food! I may do her an injustice, but the only reason I can think of as a likely one is that, by taking us unawares, she (I won’t say hoped, but) expected to find us “in mischief.”

It was a weak point of the arrangements of Bush House that Miss Mulberry left us so much to the care of Madame. Madame was twice as energetic as Miss Mulberry. Madame never spared herself if she never spared us. Madame was indefatigable, and in her own way as conscientious as Miss Mulberry herself. But Madame was not just, and she was not truthful. She had—either no sense at all, or—a quite different sense from ours of honour and uprightness. Perhaps the latter, for she seemed to break promises, tell lies, open letters, pry into drawers and boxes, and listen at keyholes from the highest sense of duty. And, which was even worse for us, she had no belief whatever in the trustworthiness of her pupils.

Miss Mulberry felt it to be her duty towards our parents and guardians to keep us under constant supervision; but Madame watched and worried us, I am convinced, in the persuasion that we were certain to get into mischief if we had the chance, and equally certain to do so deceitfully. She gave us full credit (I never could trace that she saw any discredit in deceit) for slyness in evading her authority, but flattered herself that her own superior slyness would maintain it in spite of us.

It vexed us all, but there were times when it irritated Eleanor almost to frenzy. She would have been in disgrace oftener and more seriously on the subject, but that Madame was a little afraid of her, and was, I think, not a little fond of her.

Madame was a clever woman, and a good teacher. She was sharp-witted, ready of tongue, and indefatigably industrious herself; and slow, stupid, or lazy girls found no mercy at her hands.

Eleanor’s unusual abilities, the extent of her knowledge and reading on general subjects, the rapidity with which she picked up conversational French and wielded it in discussions with Madame, and finally her industry and perseverance, won Madame’s admiration and good-will. I think she almost believed that Mademoiselle Arkwright’s word was to be relied upon.

Eleanor never toadied her, which I fear we others (we were so utterly at her mercy!) did sometimes; assuming an interest we did not feel in her dissertations on the greatness of France and the character of her especial idol, the first Napoleon.