FRITILLARY March 5th, r 9 2 7
Price SIXPENCE
Editor:
R. 0.
HAYNES
(St. Hugh's).
Treasurer :
C. C.
MCDONALD
(St. Hugh's).
Committee : (Lady Margaret Hall). (Somerville). DOREEN PRICE (St. Hilda's College). P. M. HALFORD (Oxford Home Students). MARGARET LANE (St. Hugh's College). DIANA SCOONES
S.
B. NORTON
fritittarr Magazine of the Oxford Women's Colleges MARCH, 1927 CONTENTS Editorial .. Sonnet .. .. St. Hilda's Caricature For Any Beloved .. The Glass Box .. Mr. Grips .. O.U.D.S. .. The Playhouse
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Page
i 1 2 2
3
4 7
8
. •. .. Hell-Cat Let's go to the Pictures .. .. .. .. Life .. The Street Flower Seller That School-girl Complexion .. News in Brief from the Women's Colleges .. Games Notices
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12 13 16
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Ebitoriat
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HERE are two alternatives, black and white. Apparently our frailty is either non-existent or one of those axiomatic propositions so selfevident as to be impossible of proof. At all events, in spite of our openmindedness, our desire to be convicted, so obtruded in our last issue, of the invited correspondence came there none. And so we remain in a state of pleasing ignorance : pleasing because, where to part is to die a little, to form a settled idea is to commit suicide in great measure. Immobility is death : and so we return to the fact—why are our movements in space restricted ? Editorials are of three sorts—the challenge, the apology for what follows, and the belle-lettre. Since this one has begun by being the first, it would be a declension to add either of the others, necessary as it may be.
Zonnet Puis-je comparer ta jeunesse une fleur ? A la beaute d'une rose toute prete a s'eclore Qui reve toute la nuit, pour s'ouvrir l'aurore ? Tu en as toute la grace et toute la fraicheur. Mais la rose deperit, elle perd sa couleur, De sa flamme ardente le soleil la &yore, Et le soir venu, it n'en reste encore, Que des lambeaux Oars, tristes symboles de bonheur. Tu as Fame immortelle, qui ne peut pas mourir ; La source de ta beaute ne peut jamais tarir ; Ta jeunesse fleurira pour toute l'eternite. Plus belle qu'une fleur fragile, qui tombe sans espoir, Les hazards de la vie ne peuvent pas t'emouvoir, Car to gardes des cieux la pure serenite. PH. HARTNOLL.
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for any Metoveb You who are beloved Shine within a mirror : Never will your lover Know your heart, Your heart or your sorrow, Or your secret self. He can only know the Loveliness he sees Caught in the slanting Mirror of his mind. Through all time he will only hear an echo Of music, music Playing so near :
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Through all time he will only see an image Pacing avenues Of glass so dear, The heart still secret : The life unknown Shining in the glass whence The lover may not turn to Know that grace, Whose ghost is too lovely, Gliding there For his eyes to leave it, The sweet jealous phantom, Leave it even a moment's space. R. O. H.
tbe Glass Vox ' You can't own these things,' he touched the nearest pedestal with a long forefinger, `they have a life of their own, just as we have, inside glass boxes.' In the amazing atmosphere of the Elgin marbles I accepted his amazing speech. ' I had one once, a figure about nine inches high, in a glass box with doors and gold hinges. She was carved out of some white, cloudy stone like moonstone, the long lovely line of her hands and throat and hair. Her skirts were inlaid with rose and lavender and palest green, brilliants and lines of filigree silver. Under their heavy lids her eyes were splinters of diamond, hearted with sapphire. Her look was passionless, intent, as though some strange, sweet music pierced the rustle and flicker of her dreams. Some craftsman made her, spending his life perhaps on the coloured spangles of her garment, the curve of her moon-white brow. Yet, as in all these here, there was something in her which man had never made. I tell you there was breath frozen between her stone lips that seemed to curve so lightly, a pulse of the divine love and anguish strained in her stone heart that could never beat. I, who was mad enough to dream I owned her, have opened her glass box and touched her, and been awed by her diamond eyes ; for they saw, they saw. And I half-divined their seeing to be the thin crackling flame of reality burning up form and shadow . . . I have gazed into their icy depths till my own eyes were tear-blinded ; I have listened till my head rang, for her soundless music ; I have prayed to her as to a goddess. And she knew. But she could not answer to comfort or reveal. I have laid my head on the table and wept beside her, and been reborn and redeemed by her incredible loveliness . . . but at last I was always glad to shut the gold-hinged doors upon her and go back to human life. It hurt her ; I knew it hurt her, but what could I do ? We cannot own them. They have a life of their own, just as we have, inside glass boxes.'
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ribr. Crips Mr. Crips didn't fit in anywhere or belong to anyone. He knew he'd just been born on one of those days when the Almighty was puzzled, unable to make up His mind what kind of animal he'd produce next. It was very awkward not belonging. Mr. Crips felt that if he'd been a cow he'd at least have found another cow somewhere he could have joined on to. But people were just different. If you didn't belong to them you obviously couldn't join on. Mr. Crips wasn't angry with the Almighty for having made a mistake about him. It must have been rather dull going on making just the same kind of people all alike all fitting in. He felt rather friendly towards the Almighty for having amused Him. He was proud he had at least amused someone once. But he was getting a little tired of being perpetually lost. He was beginning to feel he might not even meet the Almighty again. Even He was probably different, a person, not a cow. Mr. Crips added up figures all day long in a lawyer's office. There was a pretty typist in the same room. Mr. Crips had never dared say Good Morning ' to her. He'd always meant to. Once he'd arranged to say it on the cube of two. He counted up to sixteen and managed to say Good ' in a loud voice. But when she looked up he was so embarrassed that he said gracious ' in a quiet voice. Dropped his handkerchief and picked it up again. The typist regarded him as one of the older, more decaying pieces of furniture. At first she'd thought he must be childish, or have an impediment in his speech. But now she'd got used to seeing him sitting every morning for the past five years motionless from 9 till 6 adding up figures. When she'd first got engaged she'd taken the photograph of her young man and gone over and showed it to him. He had got up very ceremoniously and taken it into his hands. Then he had said very slowly and deliberately ' quite,' but as he couldn't think quite what the young man looked like he had gone on saying quite ' very slowly and deliberately. When the typist got married, another one came who was also pretty and had a young man. But she soon gave up trying to communicate with Mr. Crips. The first morning she came she had turned to Mr. Crips and said in a high, cheerful voice, ' Isn't it a nice day ? ' But he had just looked very sad. He had opened his mouth very wide and shut it again. He had gone on opening and shutting his mouth very slowly, looking sadder and sadder. He was praying he might think of something to say about the day. But it was exactly like any other day. Every day was like the last one. There really wasn't anything one could say about any day. The typist concluded he must take drugs. Her young man had been telling her about those people in awful places called night clubs who took drugs and then went funny and mad. She borrowed her young man's largest penknife and always brought it to the office. She felt that if Mr. Crips ever did anything very funny, she could just do like the girls in the movies, plunge it into his vital regions. She rather wondered if he had any vital regions. He was so very small and thin and pimpled. Even his hair was beginning to fall out. He worked so very hard. He tried to do a little more every day, than the last day. It was rather exciting. But he'd never got any more wages than when he'd started five years ago. He had once read of a young man's asking for a rise in a magazine. But he'd unfortunately lost the magazine and forgotten the words the young
F RITILLARY
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man used. He couldn't think of the first word one would use in starting to ask for a rise. So he never did. Mr. Crips had been an only child. His parents did not get on. His mother suspected her husband of numerous infidelities. John Crips in his turn realised the mistake he had made in marrying this tall, thin, bony woman who could never talk civilly to any of his friends because they were so very much beneath her. He'd been in the circus. His friends with their gay conviviality and coarse jokes were the only thing that made his life worth living. Mrs. Crips was genteel. Her father was only a chemist, but her mother had once been a nursery governess to a young lord. She would never have married John if she hadn't been getting on for thirtyfive. She had thought the neighbours might begin to notice if she didn't do it soon, and there was no one else. Mr. Crips' parents by the time he was ten had ceased to communicate with one another. When they had high tea alone, without any of the company from the circus, there was always silence now. If John Crips opened his mouth his wife would remonstrate with him for the lack of gentility in his speech.. Christopher felt very much ashamed of his father's coarseness. \Alien any of the circus people came to tea, he and his mother just tried to pretend they were not there. When John Crips broke his neck falling from a trapeze, Mrs. Crips was very much relieved. She would be able to bring up her son as she liked now. There was no more danger of contamination. She would prevent his becoming a frivolous good for nothing, and make a scholar of him. Christopher won scholarships and got top marks. When he was not working for school he read, not novels—they were impure—but Swendenborgs Heaven and Hell' and any cultural thing he could find. He felt that by the time he was twenty he would have read all the intelligent books in the world. For he never wasted a minute. Even when he went out to buy the potatoes for dinner he took a book with him. He managed to read sixty-six words while the shopman was weighing the potatoes. At school Mr. Crips never spoke to any of the other children. They were so very unintelligent and illiterate. They wasted all their time playing games and talking nonsense. Mr. Crips felt one should never speak unless one had something really interesting to say. When Mr. Crips was eighteen he began to wish he were larger and hadn't quite so many pimples. He began to wash more carefully. Before he hadn't troubled. Washing wasted so much time. One day he heard a little girl in the same form say she didn't care what a boy looked like so long as he could dance. He asked Stephen, a large, loutish youth, to teach him. Stephen was friendly, although Mr. Crips had always treated him with contempt. First, however, Mr. Crips asked Stephen if he had read Swendenborg's ' Heaven and Hel l.' Stephen had not. Mr. Crips felt he could not possibly learn to dance from somebody who had not read Swendenborg's ' Heaven and Hell.' When his mother died Mr. Crips went to live in lodgings in Turnham Green. Mr. Crips did not know anyone in London. For a year he lived in the same house without ever speaking to the landlady. One night he was feeling more remote from everything than usual. He had been alone to the pictures. Everyone else seemed to have their young woman, their father or their sister with them. When he got home he met the landlady in her dressing-gown on the stairs. ' Would you prefer a kipper or a boiled egg for your breakfast, Mr. Crips ? ' she asked.
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He had a sudden violent desire to speak to her, to keep her there just for five minutes. What could he possibly say to her. He had an inspiration. He seized hold of her arm and, looking very earnestly at her, he said, Do you believe in God, Mrs. Hoggins ? ' Fancy,' she screamed, a respectable young man like you getting drunk at this hour of night. Out of this respectable house you go if it ever happens again.' She rushed into her room and slammed the door. Mr. Crips always ate his supper at the same A.B.C. near the tube station. He had often wondered what tomato ketchup tasted like, but he had always sat too far away to reach across the table and get it. He had even begun to dream of tomato ketchup, but even in his dreams someone always sat between him and it. One day he had been sitting contemplating it for some time : he had not even tasted his rasher of bacon, he wanted it so badly. Suddenly the young lady opposite took hold of it and handed it to him. He took it. He wanted to tell her how grateful he was for the marvellous thing she had done. He felt she must be the most wonderful person in the world. He sat pouring the ketchup mechanically into his plate. More and more ketchup, wondering what word he could possibly begin with. Some people can't even say thank you,' said the young lady in a loud whisper to her friend. Mr. Crips was beginning to feel that unless he could manage to communicate with someone soon he would loose possession of his reason. He spent a lot of time in tube crushes now. It was so nice and warm being bumped against by a lot of people. One morning Mr. Crips felt he must do something. He got up to go to the office, but instead of staying in the train as far as Holborn he got out at Piccadilly Circus and started to walk down Regent Street. He was squaring two and squaring the square of that. Miss Lollimer was walking down Regent Street. She had just gone to the Gallerie Lafayette and bought some rouge. She had put it on secretly behind a door, although her fiancĂŠ had always told her the worst would happen if she ever used that degenerate paint stuff. But Miss Lollimer was defying her fiance. She felt her innate purity would shine even through a little rouge. Miss Lollimer was sure that everything in her appearance and clothes proclaimed her to be an impeccable virgin and a lady, a little rouge could not possibly matter. Mr. Crips had counted up to three hundred; when he reached 356 he determined to speak to the fi rst person he met. He did not yet know what he was going to say . . . but . . . When Mr. Crips came to 355 Miss Lollimer stood before him. 356 ' said Mr. Crips, very quietly. He walked up to Miss Lollimer and seized her arm. ' You must,' he said very slowly and with emphasis. If only he could think what she must. Still, he eventually might. So he went on holding her arm and saying very slowly and deliberately, ' YOU MUST.' Leave go immediately,' screamed Miss Lollimer, unless you leave go immediately I shall yell for help.' But Mr. Crips went on very earnestly saying, ' You must.' Miss Lollimer began to scream louder. A crowd collected. ' I have been accosted,' sobbed Miss Lollimer. A large policeman put his hand on Mr. Crips' shoulder. Mr. Crips was very sad. He felt he would never try to speak to anyone again. HELEN TODD.
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' KING LEAR.' It is often difficult to decide, after a performance, how far the actual impression rises above or falls below the point of expectation. With ' King Lear ' even the point of expectation is not constant, for our opinion is driven back and forth by the opposing factions, the one declaring that the play is no less possible than any other great tragedy, and that the cast is equal to it ; and the other clinging to the faith that ' King Lear' should never be desecrated by the footlights, but should remain for ever a feast of the imagination, a dark rite of the mind. ' King Lear' having materialised—to many of us for the first time— through the medium of the O.U.D.S., the possibility of its production is proved. The external detail being admirably conceived by M. Komisarjevsky (for, despite the bitter opinions of his lighting and moving-stairway effects that have been aired, there is no denying that his masses of light and curved screen of distance held the play in a more colourful unity than any other methods could have achieved), we find the framework of the success and failure in the actors themselves. At first one was haunted by a vague fear that Mr. Harman Grisewood might make Lear ludicrous ; that was because his dignity was far less than his pathos, and the consequent lack of kingliness in the first scene did not make sufficient contrast with the later humility. Apart from this, he was admirable, and if his sense were too frequently lost in following the cadences of his voice, it is a glorious voice to be lost in. His last scene was moving to the point of tears ; so complete an effect of senility was amazing in so young an actor. The Fool, whom one can place second only to the King in tragic significance, was a surprise no less than a disappointment. Mr. Fernald's robustness was a little incongruous and he had not that fragile misery that one looks for. It is an inconceivably difficult part, and one only to be approached by the most delicate perception. The feeling which Mr. Toyne's Edmund gave was one of utter rightness. He was forceful, convincing ; both as a schemer and a lover he kept a tense grip on his situations, and the only fault which one can find was in a lack of restraint in gesture. Goneril, Regan and Cordelia impressed at first glance by their magnificent appearance, due partly to superb stature and poise and partly to the colour and stream-line flow of their drapery. Miss Dorothy Green made Goneril comprehensible ; her force of majestic malignity was in fine contrast to the more feline hatefulness of Regan (Miss Martita Hunt), and their vitality perhaps made Miss Elizabeth Greenhill's Cordelia appear a little too crystal clear, a little too cold for conviction. It is impossible, in a production of this size, to give each his due, and it is only by withdrawing the attention from the individual and focussing it on the whole that any complete impression is obtained. In the case of the O.U.D.S. one is really able to see it whole, owing- to the admirable and unselfish team-work of the whole cast, which hints at a blend of enthusiasm and good management. M. L.
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the Playhouse Perhaps the Oxford air is not good for Barrie, or possibly we have become too intellectualized to be able to appreciate fully ' the delicate aroma of old-world surroundings.' We will hope that it is the former, and that elsewhere we shall be able once more to rejoice in that mother feeling of which Mrs. Darling is the immortal exponent and in the very natural; if tedious, tremors of the ' Quality Street ' heroine anxious about her future home. After all, Victorianism can be very charming, and it is possible that, interpreted by an actress of light touch and quiet manners, Phoebe might be tolerable. Miss Webster is definitely not sweet. She is much more suited to a tragic part like that of Sonya, with which she was so successful in ' Uncle Vanya.' It is a pity more was not made of Miss Risdon's part as Patty, which she had mastered very well ; but such as it was, it was very pleasant. Mr. Byam Shaw was not born to act Valentine Brown; nor indeed would one have wished him to be. One's general conclusion is that Quality Street ' should be relegated to the sphere of amateur theatricals, where it is eminently useful and always appreciated. At any rate one has no hesitation in saying that it is unsuited to the Oxford Players. Androcles and the Lion ' was a real delight Mr. Alan Webb maintained his reputation for versatility and gave us an Androcles who was pathetic without being sentimental and funny without becoming mere burlesque. This is not a play which calls for much subtlety of interpretation, so that Mr. Napier escaped his usual pitfall and acquitted himself with great eclat—it is impossible for the burly follower of Mars to be too burly or too martial, so that the more sinew we were treated to—and we were treated to plenty—the better. Miss Risdon, who has a very delightful voice, 'was unconvincing. Personally, the prospect of her being thrown into the lions' den left me quite cold, emotionally speaking, though I felt sure that she would be a great intellectual loss to the world. Perhaps that was partly because one was so anxious about Androcles—what is one beautiful woman compared with a man of parts like the human tailor? And anyway Lavinia was dying for God, which is a consolation in itself. Androcles, one feels, would only have been a martyr to good feeling.. Of the other characters, Spirtlo was satisfactorily abject, the handsome captain as wooden, unattractive and sententious as the presumably puritanical
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Lavinia could desire, and the Emperor an epitome of the ludicrous selfimportance of the Caesars. Perhaps Mr. Byam Shaw was a little hard on Caesar—there was not a touch of the sublime in the ridiculous. But at any rate the error was on the right side. There is something extremely subtle in the order in which Mr. Fagan presents us with his classics—first we have a play which gives us an opportunity for a comforting slop, then a bracing Shavian pick-me-up, and finally our intellects are prepared to cope with a real' contribution to modern drama in the stage of a play by Mr. C. K. Munro. The Cambridge Festival Theatre Company survived the difficult conditions under which acting has to be carried on at the Playhouse very well, and presented The Rumour ' very creditably on the whole. The play is concerned with international complications. Mr. Munro has adopted the cynical method and bases his picture on the presupposition that wars are capitalistic ventures and that capitalists are bloated and corrupt. Clearly this forbids much attempt at characterisation, and we have to be content with vice in the mass. However, the plot, which one must admit is the first requirement of drama, is extremely well constructed, and the story runs smoothly. With regard to the muchtalked-of luminous programmes, one can only, while admiring their ingenuity, regret the prolonged rustling to which it gives rise, which makes it rather difficult to follow the play. When all criticisms have been made about production, acting and methods of advertisement, we still should be very grateful to the Cambridge Festival Theatre Company for bringing us an interesting play, with which, on the whole, its members dealt very well.
M.S. J.
lbetkCat Hell-cat ! ' I said, and then Was sorry when you cried ; For through my sorrow and your tears We saw a common vision, swift and clear, A little cat that walked With careful steps and shocked impressive mien Upon Hell's pavement, And with fastidious stretch of tail Disdained the damned. ' Sorry,' I said, and as you smiled, Pleased and content, I only heard, as we two bent to kiss, Purrs subterranean. R. M. J. C.
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let's go to the 'Pictures THE SUPER-CINEMA. I suppose Iris Barry's ' Let's Go to the Pictures,' along of the Barrymore confessions and Basil Dean's lament over the legitimate stage created considerable diversion among the movie fans. ' Let's Go to the Pictures,' whatever the standards, is an engaging book because it is such an honest one. Few people are really honest about the cinema, and to find someone who can praise and enjoy it is a positive delight, especially when they are as competent to judge as Iris Barry. Most of us suffer an eclipse picturewards. Do we go for the noise ? Certainly not. Society ? Perhaps. Conversation ? Who knows. Anything but the pictures. I protest they are not always an ingredient to the ,pleasure sometimes omnivarious illusion itself ; for I have seen two films of decided accomplishment this term— the ' Waltz Dream,' which was reviewed in the last issue, and ' The Lodger.' This is a very good film indeed in parts. The plot shaped well, but the close was unhinged and childish. I did not feel at all convinced the Lodger was innocent, in fact I would have rather discovered the reverse. The photography achieved excellent shadow impressions and a proper nasty atmosphere, yet although the whole was consistent artistically, technically the figure outlines were sometimes blurred. Marie Ault's interpretation of the mother was one of the best things I had ever seen filmed ; she was repulsively good, and her facial expression did not suffer from the exacting process of the close-ups. June cannot act, nor did Malcolm really do himself justice in a peculiarly unsuited part. Ivor Novello was Ivor Novello. But altogether I was glad it was an English production. Lovey Mary ' is a film of the worst type, buzzing with the reverberant piety of ' call me mummy, call me Lovey Mary.' They did. All the time. Lon Chaney in ' The Road to Mandalay ' was a caricature of his old self, and incidentally of John Barrymore in ' The Sea Beast.' Lois Moore, the heroine, has a delightful profile—would more stars had her charm. The story was the usual one of making good with a sickly adventure of mawkish romance and the Catholic Church. Father James played the strong, silent priest to perfection ; but it would be worth his while if the producer occasionally studied both ritual and vestments—a biretta is a little unnecessary in the house. ' Up in Mabel's Room ' was a bedroom farce of an intimate kind. There was abundant treasure trove, largely masculine. The acting and photography was undistinguished. ' Battling Butler ' came as a disappointment, as it lacked those flashes of inspiration common in ' Seven Chances ' and ' Go West.' Even the three weeks' training course was not to be compared with the stones rolling down the hill in ' Seven Chances.' There has been one first-class Ideal comedy, ' Creeps.' I laughed till laughter was inadequate. B.W.
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the Street flower Zeller And now the evening came, Evening of the midsummer, On the busy street. Evening— Its dusky purple mist is spreading, Spreading, Creeping from beneath the willows, Which stand in a row. Pensive and tired From the dust and heat. Light there, Light here, Light all over. Busy footsteps of shoes and clattering clogs. Frantic bells of the street cars packed with labourers. Dusky purple mist covers them all. The flower seller creeps out of the dusk, Out of the dusky purple mist Like the foolish hermit who fell from the cloud. Flowers red, Purple, Sky blue, Orange. Flowers in little earthen pots With sparkling dews from the watering pot. Red is too red in the gas light, In the smoking acetylene gas light. The flower seller is a middle-aged man With a flat nose. He sits on a stool and grins. An appealing grin, too. He sits and grins at passers-by. Half in the dusky purple, Half in the smoky light. ' Flowers, flowers. Ho ! ' Maidens with rouged lips, Jet black hair And flowing sleeves, Go, laughing, laughing, laughing, Out of the purple dusk, Into the purple dusk.
FRITILLARY A husband—oh, he's a militaristic-looking man— Glances at the seller and goes off. His tired, homely life trailing after him. Lovers almost hand in hand (powder is too white ' Oh, pretty . . . ' - on the girl's nose) : Aren't they ! '—rather a dull answer from the man. They hasten into the purple dusk. ' Flowers, flowers, flowers, Ho t ' The flower seller sits on a stool like a Chinese idol, His large hands are on the patched trousers. Flowers, flowers, flowers, Ho ! ' The dusky purple is getting darker, The yellow gas light thicker. Red flowers are too red, They hurt eyes and hearts.
that %choologirt Complexion Although it may be doubtful whether life at a boarding school be truly the happiest form of existence, it is obviously the happiest subject for fiction, being the remotest from any sort of -reality. Perhaps the reason for the growing popularity of stories about schools is that, for the last twenty-five years, reality, daily gaining opportunities to batter the mind, daily losing the protection of romance, rhythm and repose, has been running, more and more constantly, to hit at it with the soft, irritant, reiterated blows of a club made of picture papers. Although convent schools existed before the Reformation, although Pepys enjoyed seeing a girls' school and although the use of the phrase ' a boarding school miss ' shows that to go to school was common enough, no one dreamed of writing about the lives of girls, either at or away from school, before the end of the eighteenth century, a period when the Young began to be regarded, not as ignorant human beings, but as a different variety of creature, magically to be metamorphosed into the average adult as soon as possible, and preferably to be concealed during the operation. It was realised that frequently this creature disliked the transformation, and that jam was necessary for the quicker swallowing of instruction. Therefore, since the process frequently took place in schools, it might be speeded up and generally assisted by descriptions of the docile behaviour of other patients undergoing the treatment, which was, in the words of the advertisements, to make them into elegant, accomplished and genteel young females, endued with the highest principles and thoroughly instructed in French, Italian, embroidery, music, painting, dancing, deportment and the use of the globes' (whether as mental or physical dumb-bells, who shall say ?). So Miss Edgeworth and Miss Lamb wrote books about girls' schools, entirely as a means to the end of growing up—in fact, entirely from the adult point of view, thinking of age and of the perception of average conduct as things to be acquired as soon as possible. School stories were not written primarily to amuse, nor in the least to provide an escape from the less insistent reality of the time, but in order to inculcate
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instruction, the virtues and the elegancies : and the schools therefore, both actual and fictitious, were as like normal homes as was possibly consistent with the fact of their being hiding places for the swifter development of growth from the ungainly. It was easier, also, to be (like the boardinghouse) a home from home, because of the larger size of families and the smaller size of seminaries, which usually restricted the number of their pupils to twenty at most. That there was none of the modern idea of school as an agreeably artificial block of life, lived for its own sake as corporate existence,' and never likely to be experienced again, is shown by the stock figures of the day. It is true, of course, that the cardboard figures of all fiction fluctuate in fashion : that their rampantly romantic profiles, so satisfying and so distinctly profiles, never to be blurred by depth, or a turning towards the full face, or any tiresome qualifying characteristics, go one by one out of date. Where are the Immaculately Imbecile Heroine, the Sardonic but ain whose black fundamentally good-hearted Hero with a Past, the Vill moustaches were as metallic as his laugh, and even the Pure but Muscular Curate of the thirties ' and forties ' ? Where, as Professor Leacock enquires, is the Glass and Pampas Hero of the ' sixties ' ? Where the Strong Silent Man, his dutifully Delicate Wife ; and, later still, the Intense, Sensitive, Lovable Poet, the Bitter and Whimsical Celt, and the Artistic Purple Sinner of the nineties ' ? But, though they are all gone, it is not so irrevocably as the Prim Governess, the Good Girl, and the small educational establishment : because seeing people, and travelling and flirting and marrying and giving in marriage go on indefinitely ; but school is so much changed that one cannot even laugh at these cardboard types : they are too unfamiliar, too informal for the present notion of school ; as a place full of entertainingly rigid conventions, games, elaborate sporting' qualities and that English reticence ' so carefully cultivated by the public-spirited housemistress. Minerva House,' a Dickens institution of about 1840, is almost incredible : the plot connected with it is that of the elopement of a girl of nineteen, and its mode of life is amusing. The governesses always appeared in the schoolroom' in curl papers of a morning, and whenever a new pupil arrived all the young ladies were given a whole holiday in honour of her coming. The earliest story purely about life at a school, without the extraneous excitements of eloping, is probably Miss Edgeworth's Leonora and Cecilia : or, The Bracelets,' about a school kept by a Mrs. Villars for twenty girls, where no young people could be happier : they were good and gay, emulous but not envious of one another ' ; where they addressed their governess as Ma'am, and where their recreations were dancing in a ring, ninepins and threading the needle. The plot is about the friendship of Leonora and Cecilia and their attempts to gain two prizes, bracelets : one, a chain ornamented with the portrait of Mrs. Villars, as the reward of successful application for her who should embroider a tulip and paint a peach better than her companions' ; and the other, plaited with a lock of hair from the head of each girl, for the most amiable.' The story, however, is not particularly concerned with school existence as such, but with the drawing of character and the pointing of moral lessons for the future, as when it describes one girl as trained in a character and virtues peculiar to a female. She had been early habituated to that restraint which, as a woman, she had to expect in life . . . ' Always there are references to ,
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FRITILLARY Life and growing up, no contentment in the corporate atmosphere of the unreal. Again, there is an informality about Miss Pinkerton's which makes school only into a prelude, a means, not an end. ' The girls were up at four in the morning, packing Amelia's trunks,' and later, when she left ' all the servants were there in the hall, all the dear friends, all the young ladies, the dancing master who had just arrived—and there was such a scuffling and hugging and kissing and crying . . . ' Here the strict profiles of cardboard are strongly cut out, the pompous vanity of the old schoolmistress' and the frigid correctness of the governesses' being especially stressed. The era of the Parlour Boarder was in full swing and the `homely atmosphere' was so thick with informality that such things as ' terms' and ' holidays ' were not even mentioned. All through the nineteenth century schools were regarded and written of like this, though towards the end the caricature was more deliberate and sympathy began to veer to the side of the victim, who was still called a young lady as late as 1868, in Prospect House, where there were only twelve pupils, and where, at the beginning of the holidays, ' there were many promises by the young ladies to write letters to one another regularly once a week.' Indeed the appellation appeared a year later, in ' The Scaramouches at School,' which is frankly a jest : All the heathen gods and goddesses were painted on the staircase walls, and the young ladies had to say all their names in turn as they went down to dinner' ; and even so late as this lessons were considered a memorable part of school life, for it is recorded that Clorinda had to learn fifteen words of spelling, five verses of poetry, four inches of geography, three answers of Child's Guide, two names and dates of Kings of England and one tense of French verbs every night, and repeat it to Miss Barbara,' who is the Prim Grim Governess par excellence. She is only rivalled by the Miss Jane of ' Katy's Doings at School,' and that is an uncertain competition, for, though the one is a caricature, the other does not retain her pristine grimness to the end, becoming almost human after Katy's applications of tea and tidiness to her when ill. The ' school story ' of the present is very far removed from this, though the date is not so very long ago, and it is hard to say when the change came and the earlier set of puppets was replaced by the latter ; an interesting but totally different collection, containing the New Girl, with legs inevitably thin and black, the Bookworm or villain with spectacles, the Disciplinarian Prefect, the Games Captain, the Plucky Junior, the Sympathetic Mistress (note the significant change from ' Governess,' and the regardance as Elder Sister rather than Aunt):and the Jolly Girl, who is meticulously ignorant of sewing. Mrs. L. T. Meade, in the 'eighties and 'nineties was still using the old types and titles, which mentioned girls and names rather than institutions : as, for instance, ' Dora' or ' A World of Girls, as opposed to the modern ' The Girls of St. Genevieve's ' or ' The Fourth Form Favourite' or ' The Luckiest Girl in the School.' Perhaps the complete change may be dated at ispoo, when atmospheres seem to have grown more definite, like the shapes of clouds at sunset, and ' school' was really severed, in its charming unreality, from any connexion with ordinary life, from which it is guarded by an elaboracy of decorative Convention, by the Team-Game-Spirit, by Corporate Life, the Sporting Feeling, Gym. and Vim. It is a joyful artificiality, in truth—and in fiction even more so. In this type of story, blissfully removed from any past or '
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future, during which schoolgirls have been children and will be women, there are a thousand little touches that contribute to unreality, such as the fact that no schoolgirl says things, but instead giggles, grins, grunts, gurgles, groans, gasps, sighs, shouts, screams or whispers. This ' feature ' was, I think, invented by Angela Brazil, and has been received with the imitation it deserves. I do not kiow to whom to give the credit of the other chief touch : the rule that the schoolgirl, if she be a heroine, must possess an Adjective, preferably in the superlative degree, being the Prettiest in the Upper Fifth or the Naughtiest in St. Something's or the Jolliest of the Juniors. It is pleasant to reflect on Progress, remembering that, whereas the fiction reading girl of 1827, asking for bread, was given a jujube inscribed with moral sentiments, her descendant, in response to the same demand, is supplied with diet that trains athletes for team games. It is a delightful escape from reality, and a still more delightful feeling that, in very deed, schools are becoming more and more artificial and distant from the normal human existence, as may be shown by a contrast of ancient and modern advertisements. The former ' instilled liberal acquirements, elegancy and strict morality ' ; the latter prepares for examinations, trains in all games and has a thoroughly healthy Public School tone.' R.O.H.
'Pews fit irief from the Moments Colleges The St. Hugh's History Society has had the pleasure of a lecture from Mr. Elton on Disraelian Elements in Conservatism.' St. Hilda's Musical Society had arranged to meet to hear a recital of Brahms and Woolf by Miss Denne Parker, but owing to the fact that she has had 'flu this has been twice postponed. The Second Year of St. Hugh's has presented A. A. Milne's ' Make Believe,' a performance which caused great delight. St. Hilda's Lacrosse cupper with Somerville resulted in a defeat for the former. The Beaufort Debating Society has had three short private meetings. Debates have been arranged with St. Edmund Hall and Queen's College. The St. Hugh's Debating Society, in a joint meeting with St. John's, discussed the motion that This is the best of all possible worlds.' The Hockey cupper between St. Hilda's and Lady Margaret Hall was scratched. The Home Students' Debating Society held a joint meeting with St. Catherine's. The motion, ' That this House deplores the decadence of modern literature;' was lost by eleven votes. The Society is holding a meeting on March 3rd; at which Miss Drysdale, Secretary of the Oxford Branch of the I.L.P., will speak. The St. Hugh's Hockey Club (Captain, M. R. Fookes) has played the following matches :窶認irst XI : Oxford High School, lost 5-1 ; Oxford Etceteras, lost 3-2. ' A ' Team : v. St. Katherine's, Wantage, lost 5-1. Second XI : Cricklade Ladies, drew 6-6 ; Bedford College, London, Third
FRITILLARY
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XI, won 5-41. In the cuppers, drawing Somerville, the First XI were beaten 6-2. The Second XI beat St. Hilda's 6-2. L.M.H. Lacrosse Club won against the Home Students in the first round of the cuppers and against St. Hugh's 13-5. They are to meet Somerville in the finals this week, weather permitting. L.M.H. Hockey Club won against O.H.S. in the first round of the cuppers. They were defeated by New College School, but won against the Headington Ladies. Many matches were scratched owing to the weather. The O.H.S. Netball Club has had a very successful term, although several fixtures have had to be scratched owing to the weather. Two matches were played against Heading-ton School on xgth February. The First VII won by 24 goals to 17 ; the Second team were badly beaten. Owing to illness neither team had its full strength, and many reserves had to be played.
Games illotices O. U. W. H. C. We have had very bad luck this term with matches, as two of our best, v. Dartford P.T.C. and Woking Swifts, have had to be scratched. The result is that the team is not yet well together, though there is individual improvement. The forward line, owing to the fact that never once has it all played in one match, still lacks combination ; individually, Miss Hardy is the most outstanding forward ; she has played consistently well, and has scored most of the goals this season ; it is in the goal circle that the other forwards chiefly fail. Miss Stave has adapted herself well to right-wing. We are fortunate in having secured Mrs. Cavalier as umpire for the Cambridge match. The team to play Cambridge on March 7th, at Cambridge, will be :g., *G. Sheppard (S.C.); 1.b., M. Prichard (O.H.S.); r. b. *D. Pullin (S.C.) ; 1.h., J. Lupton (O.H.S.); c.h., *J. Darling (S.C.) ; r.h., *P. Scott (S.H.C.); Lw., A. Norwood (L.M.H.) ; Li., *K. Lloyd (O.H.S.); c., *M, Kilroy (S. H. H. ) ; r. i., *J. Hardy (S. C. ) ; r.w., L. Stave (S. H. C. ). * Old Blue.
J.
DARLING.
O.U.W.L.C. Captain—N. DEBES. Secretary—A. GEDGE. Treasurer—B. REINOLD.
February 5th. O.U.W.L.C. v. Queen Anne's, Caversham. Won, 10-4. February 1gth. O. U. W. L.C. v. U. L. A. U. Won, I2-2. The first match was a very enjoyable open game, in which the defence did well, though they should have marked their own men rather more closely. R. Shaw was very good in goal, and the fact that the scoring against us this season has been so low, even in losing games, is very largely due to her consistently excellent play. The attacks have improved,
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especially in dash and combining, but the passing is at times rather wild, and this is also true of the defence. H. Haworth has done very well at second home, and B. Drew has improved considerably at left-attack. M. Fisher has made an admirable hard-working centre, though somewhat handicapped by her stick-work. The whole defence has played consistently well, and at times really excellently. We are most grateful to Miss R. Ellershaw for her very valuable coaching. The team to meet Cambridge on March 5th is as follows :g., *R. Shaw (O.H.S.); p., *D. Oldfield (S.C.) ; c.p. *A. Gedge (L. M. H.) ; 3m.., P. Vincent (L. M. H. ) ; r.d., *K. Smith (S. ) ; 1.d., H, Elgar (O.H.S.); c., *M. Fisher (O.H.S.); 3h., *N. Debes (S.C.) ; 2h., H. Haworth (S.H.C.) ; Th., *1. Munro (O.H.S.); r.a., *H. Reinold (S.C.); 1.a., B. Drew (S.H.H.). The march will be played on the Running Ground Miley Road) , by kind permission of the O.U.A.C. and O.U.A.F.C., at 2.30. ,
O. U. N. C. Captain—B. LACY. Secretary—E. M. SANDS. Treasurer—K. M. PEARSON. January 29th. O.U.N.C. v. Bristol University. Lost, 28-2x. February 12th. O.U.N.C. v. Miss Andrews' Team Won, 18-13. The match on February 12th was played against a team collected by Miss Andrews, an old student from St. Hugh's. It was a very close game, and our victory was due chiefly to our opponents' natural lack of experience in combining. One of the team, a Chelsea P.T. Student, very kindly gave us some coaching before the match. Her verdict was that the team contains very good material, and is quick. But our quickness is also the cause of our chief failings, inaccurate passing and lack of staying power. We had found this to our cost in the match v. Bristol. By half-time we had established a good lead, but we had spent most of our energy, so that when, in the second half, Bristol put on a spurt, we were unable to keep up, and our passing rather went to pieces. Our game needs to be slower and much more controlled. The match v. Cambridge will be played on St. Hugh's College Court on March 14th. The team to play v. Cambridge will be :— E. M. Sands, s. ; P. Fulford, a.s. ; B. Lacey, a.c. ; K. Potts, c. ; H. M. Jones, d.c. ; K. Creswell, d. ; U. Gilbert, g.d.
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