AOSA CENTENARY HISTORY 1841 - 1941
page sixty-two
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Appendix
His death came very suddenly and we realised what a personal friend he had been to a very wide circle of people. Dr. Murray has carried on his good work and no one can be more grateful than myself for his patience and willingness to leave his fireside at any minute.
I should also like to record here the splendid work of our handy men, without whom we should often have been in a sorry plight. I think of Charlie Baker; his cheery word and smile showed that he was ready to help in any emergency. The same may be said of Davis and Biggins. Mr. Clayton, our woodwork master and electrician, has always done many jobs in a difficult time, and his originality and clever work have been great assets.
For many years it has been possible to take parties of boys and girls abroad. My first experience of this kind of holiday was with a party of girls to Glenridding on Ullswater. We spent ten days at Eagle Farm and had a wonderful time, walking and climbing with many exciting experiences.
Other holidays followed, boys and girls going together, and we visited Bruges, Rouen, Tours, Dinard, Freiburg, Paris, and once Switzerland. The visits to Geneva for those from Friends’ Schools who had gained the Merrtens’ Essay Prizes were a great education and experience, and one visit to the Hague was another memorable time. The kindness of the Dutch people, their wonderful picture galleries and fields of flowers will be lasting memories.
A stiff forbidding building facing the village green; a back-view much more attractive with wings extended across two asphalted playgrounds, Quakerly, and good for its purpose; the Beck beyond the terrace, the playing fields and primrose banks beyond that, and then stretching away in the distance those wide free Yorkshire hills, inviting on to boundless life.
The girls’ side revolved round the Senior Mistress. The girls were devoted to Miss Hobson, and she drew out the best in them. She was a born teacher, possessed of the readiest tongue, and had a quick sympathy that endeared her to colleagues and children alike. Her disciplinary methods, if methods they were, were entirely her own, and when exercised by herself, they acted. Personally I owe a lot to Miss Hobson. She demonstrated how a firm, and at times, severe teacher could relax, and show the children her real self; how she could gain their affection as well as their respect, and how her own vivid personal interests in life only quickened and added value to academic knowledge.’
I am surprised how vividly I remember some of the children. There were Flossie and Dossie Galbraith, an independent pair of twin sisters, there was sturdy little Amelia Bainbridge, pretty Flossie Hobson, little Alice Heslop, nervously strung Amy and Eliza Pearson. How Spence Hodgson made Amy read Dickens, and how she rose to it! There was a queer little boy, Walter Lancaster, another, Gilmour, and a real little wool-gatherer in Hector Lithgow. I tried, but failed entirely, to teach him the elements of Latin. He had not a notion why he should learn ‘Mensa, Mensa, Mensam.......’ anything else seemed to him to go just as well.
Of the life, in school and out, I cannot write a continuous account, it comes back to me in flashlight pictures. That queer inadequate mistresses’ sitting-room, partitioned off the schoolroom, and at the head of the stairs was a sociable place. Many the visitors who called in for a chat, and a cup of tea, and all were welcome. The Misses Griffiths from next door were familiar friends, Mrs. Watson and her daughter were honoured guests, Mrs. Arundel and her children were frequent visitors; then there were Friends from the village and old scholars. How we did any work in that little Common room, I do not know, but we did. That little classroom off the girls’ schoolroom where I struggled with those little children, and doubtless learnt more than I taught.
That little bedroom under the eaves with the school clock in close proximity.
That nightmare duty in the dining room, when the girls were laying the tables for meals, and there were never enough utensils. The somewhat solemn meals to follow the hectic preparations, and the conscientious striving to teach table manners to a crowd of hungry little boys and girls at that middle table.
The stately staff dinner on Sundays in the housekeeper’s room, when Mr. Arundel was so thoroughly happy with a big joint of roast mutton, and his wife was so sure she was the better carver.
Those walks over Captain Cooks, down into Kildale, and those spring flowers that grew on the banks of the streams. Never before or since have I seen such lovely free grown anemones. Once there was snow on the slopes of Captain Cooks, and we took all the sledges we could find. When they proved too few, we borrowed tea trays from the White House, and boys and girls and staff had a royal time, all thoroughly natural, and thoroughly at home with each other.
So to me the buildings of the school make a reflection of the life of the school.
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