Any in Brodieland
JOHN BETJEMAN
Seventh Child Amy Barlow (Duckworth 30s) This is an unaffected and direct book. It is the autobiography of a schoolmistress: 'We were a large family and my father had a small income wherewith to feed,-clothe and educate us, but we were a sturdy lot. None of us had to wear glasses, and we had hardly any ill- nesses. We were well fed, but ill-dressed and ill-mannered.' Her father was in a bank, and the descendant of many vicars. Amy Barlow was born in 1893 according to my calculation. She went to good middle-class schools in North London, and then to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Her tall, large-boned good looks attrakted some of the men there, but she spurned them. She taught in girls' schools in the north of England first. 'In my experience head mistresses can be-divided into two classes, those who put the staff first and those who consider the children more important. I am convinced that the well-being of the staff should come first . . .' One of her schools was such: not so the preparatory school for the boys at Sedbergh, to which she escaped, and where she lodged in a house called Tooter View.' In fact, games were a large part of her life, and her book is such as would delight Arthur Marshall. When she was a girl she always tried to be like her elder brothers, and became a good cricketer, and had no fear of danger and did not complain of pain. She was also good at hockey and Latin.
What makes her book so enthralling is • its readability. This is a quality hard to define. What she writes about is the seemingly trivial, which is part of most of our lives. She eschews technical terms and knows how to select a telling event and how to summarise a person's character, as on a good school report. There was Mr Wheeler, a master at the preparatory school during the 1914 war, 'who had retired from Repton and had come to the PSS from motives of patriotism, [and] was not equal to dealing with fifty lively small boys, and could not stay the course; he had a nervous break- down and left.' And then, I suppose, most of us must have met somebody like Mr Scargill. 'No one knew whence he came or whither he-went. Some might have said he had escaped from an asylum, because all he said and did ppinted to this conclusion. He told the boys incredible stories of his past career, in which they put no credence whatever. One was that at the age of five he had been thrown by his lather into the Mediterranean and had swum like a fish ever since. He also gave us to understand that he had played cricket for the P4CC . . .' And I like the brevity of this: 'One day early in November as I slid into my seat at dinner I noticed a new face. "Who," I said to my neighbour, "who is the new boy?" "What new boy?" said Macpherson, "that's Sidebotton, he put his face too near his fire- works last night."' Later she moved to Kent and taught first in a county school, where she was given too much to do. There must have been consolation in an old cottage she and a schoolmistress friend took. It was three miles from the school and not very sanitary. The pantry had a brick floor and 'one day, thinking that our tea tasted rather peculiar, we discovered to our disgust that an outsize slug was firmly wedged in the spout of the teapot.' After the county school and a bout of illness, she was asked to act as a supply in the girls' school, of Bedgebury. She arrived on the first of March 'expecting to stay for five weeks, but I was there for more than sixteen years.'
This was a very happy time of her life. I wonder if I detect a hint of Miss Jean Brodie in one of the music mistresses at this ,happy school? • `Miss F. was a very unusual person. I can see her now taking a stately walk round the Boundary Path on summer evenings, dressed in flowing green draperies with many chains, bracelets and brooches, and evidently communing with Nature. She used to read Chinese poetry and would, if requested, in a becoming manner, tell- you about Lao-Tze, his theories, and his art, which, she explained, were so elevated that one had to stand on tiptoe to 'understand them. Miss F. appeared to live in a different world and her pupils, accordingly, found her lessons intriguing. I did-not under- stand her methods but she seemed to explain music in terms of colour.'
Most of us have been lucky enough to meet a Miss Barlow in our lives, when we were young—fair but strict, an enjoyer .of jokes (Provided they were clean), methodical, honour- able and a bit formidable. Miss Barlow is the perfect Englishwoman—on one of her holi- days she and a schoolmistress friend went to Budapest. The year was 1938. 'We were at once accosted by a stranger, who, speaking in broken English, asked if we would like to go to the Royal Palace and see the relics of the famous Queen Elizabeth. "How did you know we were English?" we asked. "You could not be anything else."' So far as I know, this is the first time that a schoolmistress has written her life in autobio- graphical terms. There have been novels on the subject, notably War Among Ladies and Un- willingly to School. Without a trace of self-pity, Miss Barlow is now invalided out of the school- mistresses' ranks. After thirty years of teach- ing, and when she was over fifty, she was granted a disability pension by the Board of Education of f68 p.a. 'Not enough to keep the wolf, or even a rabbit, from the door.' She wrote this book in her flat at Bournemouth. 'If I were asked: "What gift would you bestow on a godchild, if you were a Fairy God- mother?" I should indubitably say: "Courage and gaiety and the quiet mind." '
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