But there are more grateful memories, too, of those all-too-rare half-holiday afternoons (Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, as far as I remember) when we would make off to the old haystack and smoke there, as I suppose schoolgirls always have and always will, and talk of what we would do when we were women: or take car into Didcot for a good “blow-out” and an evening at the pictures: or the rainy days, when one “class-room” would invade another, and leave behind it a confused wreckage of Greek statues, glass cases, and electric light globes. There were the football matches too: it is hard for me, now, to believe that I was once a promising half-back! We played the old “Association” game, of course: as yet very few girls’ schools had taken up Rugby. I suppose I have never experienced, in a long life, such a protracted thrill of excitement as when I played, in my third year, in the great match against Radley, and the fortunes of the game hung in the balance for a full half-hour. Summer has less poignant athletic memories for me, I suppose because we still played cricket for the most part, and could do little to improve our game at tennis with only five covered courts.
When I was going through my dear mother’s things after her death in ’59 I came across a whole bundle of my old school letters in one of her desks. It was pathetic to see how carefully she had treasured them, arranged them, tied them up in ribbon of different colours according to the year they were written in. The old, blue-black ink we used then has stood the test of time far better than most modern documents will. There is little about the letters that is of general interest; they are just an expression of the aims and interests, the hopes and the solicitudes, of girlhood just turning to womanhood; hopes how buoyantly eager! Solicitudes how lightly borne! I print one of them here, written towards the end of my first year at school, in the hope that, if nothing else about it arrests attention, the prim, stately language of fifteen-years-old in those days will call for a smile or for a blush, which you will, from the precocious, slangy young misses of to-day.
_Hope you didn’t think I was dead, not hearing from me all these three weeks: fact is, I’ve been abso-jolly-lutely full programme just lately with these theatricals coming on. They are going to be some effort, I can tell you. All the chaps say the scene where I come in drunk is like nothing on earth. But I shan’t spoil it for you beforehand; you are coming down, aren’t you? Don’t bring Dad if you think the old thing will be shocked; he is so mid-Edwardian about some things. We beat the London Hospital nurses by nearly an innings last Saturday: they were feeling frightfully bucked with themselves, too, when they came down, because they hadn’t lost a match this season. You should see Woollcombe, our leg-break bowler! She simply made rings round them. I was top last week in gardening, which was one in the eye for old Monty, because she’d got her rag out with me rather, as she said I was wasting my time and the country’s money—such bilge! Only three more blinking weeks now to the hol.’s;—oh, I say, could you write to Monty and say it’s very important I should come home two days early? Because I simply must go to the Rothwells’. They don’t mind your going home early much, really, even if it does mean missing one or two of these filthy exams, which are the limit anyhow. A new music master has just turned up, with top-hole eyes: remind me to show him you when you come down. I was wondering if perhaps you could let me have a little more money? Because there’s two of the chaps I must, simply_ must _buy birthday presents for, and heaps of incidental expenses, and it’s a fact I haven’t a five-bob note to bless myself with. But not if it’s going to mean a row with the old bread-winner. Lots of love._