Mija’s Room

Category: discipline

Self-Parenting, a poem

Posted on By Mija

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I wrote this two weeks after surgery (more on that later) as I sat in bed crying because the news sucks,  there was another form to fill out, I found out I couldn’t go to the Vegas party this weekend, and plus I couldn’t wash my hair. I formatted it as an image to post on Twitter and Bluesky, but then forgot to do it.

It really is, still, shocking to me that whether or not I’ve eaten and what I’ve eaten has such an effect on me, especially since I’m rarely hungry. I know I’m not alone in this. I have a friend who told me that whenever she and her dad would be in a discussion/disagreement and it started to get heated her dad would say something like “I’ll continue this after we’ve both eaten an apple.” This seems like a really good idea.

Since I’m only cooking for me these days and I’m home recovering I can forget to eat or remember but it seems like too much trouble / easier just to go to sleep.  Especially if, say, I’ve been writing some Inez stuff or reading or practicing calligraphy. Just about anything is less boring than cooking1When I say cooking here I mean the day-to-day keeping myself fed kind of stuff. More elaborate cooking and baking is different and interesting. and eating.

Clearly my more responsible inner self needs to keep better tabs on what I’m eating when because there’s always time for a protein shake.

Text version for those who use Readers:

Self-Parenting

Me: I’m sad & everything sucks.
Me: Nothing will ever be right again.
Also Me: That’s terrible. Have you eaten?
Me: You think that’s why I’m sad? Food?
Also Me: Was it dinner last night?
Me: <rolls eyes> Lunch.
Also Me: But I made dinner.
Me: It’s still in the microwave.
Also me: Eat something now. You’ll feel better.
Me: I won’t. I’ve just eaten something. You’ll see.
(15 minutes & one protein smoothie later)
Me: Shit.
Also me: What?
Me: Everything still sucks but I’m okay.

~by Mija

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    When I say cooking here I mean the day-to-day keeping myself fed kind of stuff. More elaborate cooking and baking is different and interesting.
discipline

The Seduction of Anne Kelley: Part II, Correction Made Plain

Posted on By Mija

1 comment(s) so far. Please add yours!

Many thanks to the helpful beta readers The Preacher’s Wife and @paulatnorthgare. They both say this is fine, so any remaining mistakes anyone (Becca)) finds are obviously their fault. I thank them for sticking their… necks… out so kindly. 

Seriously. though, I currently need eagle-eyed proofreaders even more than usual as I’ve had to have reconstructive surgery on my ankle and tendons with less than a week to prepare. More on that later, except to say that there has been too much of the not-fun-kind-of-pain Because of said pain there has also been some narcotic pain medication. Oh and the discovery that being on temporary disability (apparently I can’t teach on heavy meds with my foot higher than my heart) is way more stressful and at least as much work as doing my job.

More whining about that later. 

Introduction

The papers gathered here belong to the wider Saint Clare archive and sit alongside the documents already familiar to readers of the Inez de Vries sequence: detention essays, staff memoranda, prefect minutes, household logs, and the private writings that have a habit of surviving precisely because no one quite knows what to do with them.

The Seduction of Anne Kelley draws from the Kelley–de Vries correspondence, preserved in the Blue Prefect Study papers, where material that is neither wholly private nor entirely official has long been kept. You will find letters meant to be burned, copies retained “for reference,” and drafts that should by rights have been torn up but were instead saved, retied, and filed under headings of optimistic vagueness. Some pages are neatly typed, as though the truth might be made more palatable by proper margins. Others arrive in the swift, unsteady cursive of someone writing under pressure, or in a place she very much ought not to be.

The sequence opens, deliberately, near the middle of things. In July 1955, Anne Kelley, a Saint Clare’s English mistress, writes a letter to “Gwennie” with the ease of long practice. Only afterward do we return to the beginning, to see how their correspondence formed, why it was encouraged, and what it made possible.

Readers are invited to take up the archivist’s task, and the investigator’s pleasure, of weighing what people say they intended against what they were, in fact, doing. Much will be implied. Little will be stated outright. Those accustomed to the School’s “special friendships” may notice familiar patterns resurfacing in adult form: the same hierarchies, the same alliances and intimacies, and stakes rather higher than dormitory gossip ever required.

These letters trace the development of that correspondence, from proper parental enquiry to something more deliberate, conducted quietly over time in the familiar idiom of the School. For those who prefer their archives with a guide, a brief introduction to the principal actors has been provided, in the manner of a proper dramatis personae. The archive remembers. And so, of course, does Inez.

Previous “Seduction of Anne Kelley” posts:

Comments are warmly welcomed. While I enjoy seeing them on Bluesky and Twitter, those left here become part of the archive proper, where they may quietly shape what follows. I cannot promise the archive is obedient, but it is, as ever, attentive.

Having trouble reading? Try the plain text version.

Archivist’s Foreword

The letters that follow were written in early 1948. By then the novelty of beginning school at Saint Clare’s had worn thin, and routines had settled enough to reveal their effects. Correspondence between Lady Gwendoline de Vries and Anne Kelley was established and less formal. Outwardly, their subject remains Lady Gwen’s daughter, Inez de Vries, recently returned from her Christmas holidays. 

Readers may already sense a shift. Attention moves, almost imperceptibly, from conduct to pattern, from incident to structure. The exchange remains courteous, but its purpose a bit sharper.

These letters are preserved among the Blue Prefect Study papers, arranged in neat stacks, organized by year, tied and retied with faded green silk ribbons, and filed under “Private.” They are offered not as evidence of misdeeds or indiscretions, but as records of how trust develops through encouraged affection.

 

Lady Gwendoline de Vries

Abbey House

 

2 February 1948

Dear Nancy,

   I trust your Christmas was a delightful affair, suffused with its usual gaiety and good-natured merriment. Forgive my intrusion regarding my daughter, Inez. I have some small concerns following her brief return home for the holidays, and wondered whether you had observed any corresponding change as she settles again into Saint Clare’s.

   During her time here, the household staff observed that Inez was less attentive to her room than has been her habit. In some respects, her standards appeared to have slipped rather than improved, falling below those she maintained even two years ago. The housekeeper remarked that she seemed uncertain how to make her bed properly or to hang a dress as expected. Her punctuality, too, was less exact than usual, a change I noted myself. None of these lapses were of any consequence in themselves, but their consistency was sufficient to attract comment and to create unnecessary work for others.

(more…)

discipline

The MP Visits Part X — A Closing Essay OR Loose Ends, Properly Filed

Posted on By Mija

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Introduction

The story of Inez de Vries unfolds through a constellation of documents—some official, drawn from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others more intimate, taken from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font.

Readers are invited to step into the role of archivist, assembling the story from these traces, and imagining the lives that fill the gaps between pages: tensions,  alliances,  secrets far too dangerous to write down. Not everything will be explained. But Inez is watching. And she remembers.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I like reading them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here, and promise to respond. Moreover your ideas and reactions also join the archives, where they may quietly shape what comes next.

The MP Visits Saint Clare – Previously posted

The Archivist Gets the Last Word: 

When the last ink dried on Mr Fowler’s log: petrol topped, ham sandwiches eaten, punctual return to St Albans at four o’clock, the day and its record appeared, on their surface, neatly concluded. A tidy ledger of routes, meals, and mild discontent is precisely the sort of document one expects from a conscientious chauffeur in the summer of 1955. And yet any record, by its nature, resists such tidiness.

(more…)

discipline

MP Visits Saint Clare – Part VII – Ghastly Gladys

Posted on By Mija

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The story of Inez de Vries unfolds through a constellation of documents—some official, drawn from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others more intimate, taken from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font.

Readers are invited to step into the role of archivist, assembling the story from these traces, and imagining the lives that fill the gaps between pages—the tensions, the alliances, the secrets too dangerous to write down. Not everything will be explained. But Inez is watching. And she remembers.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I like reading them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here, and promise to respond. Moreover your ideas and reactions also join the archives, where they may quietly shape what comes next..

Archivist Foreword

The document that follows was written in the back seat of a carefully maintained Humber on the afternoon of 12 July 1955, shortly after its author had been summoned to the Headmaster’s study at Saint Clare’s. Although Gladys Williams was no longer a pupil of the school, this distinction proved to be of limited practical importance.

Readers familiar with the school story will recognise the situation without difficulty. A former girl returns, meaning well, and finds herself required to explain her conduct, to wait, and to remain present. The rules, once learned, are not easily forgotten, and are applied with particular confidence to those who ought to know better.

This entry does not attempt to set out the facts of the incident in full; those are recorded elsewhere, and in proper order. What Gladys provides instead is a running account of the afternoon as she experienced it: the Headmaster’s study, the formalities observed, the tea tray, the silences, and the journey that followed. She writes quickly, with feeling, and at some length. This too will be familiar to readers of school diaries.

With this entry, the Saint Clare record pauses. Lessons resume, bells ring, and the school continues. The account that follows travels on.

The MP Visits Saint Clare – Previously posted

Gladys’ Diary

12 July 1955

Later (the Head’s Study; continued in the car)

I won’t forget today, no matter how old I get or how many pages I scribble. Ghastly. Utterly ghastly. There were so many awful bits I can’t even decide which was the worst, nor which to write first. Now that we are back on the road I am writing as fast as I can, partly so I don’t have to look up. If I don’t look at him, perhaps Gerald won’t speak to me. I can feel him watching me over the tops of his papers, but I go on as if I were completely absorbed.

Instead of letting me slink away after that wretched drive up from London, Gerald marched us straight down the dim corridor to the Head’s study. The cabbage smell clung to the walls and our shoes echoed like a sentence already passed. He opened the door, stood back, and waited for me to go in first, as if I were being presented for inspection. We weren’t expected — not then — but he behaved as if the place had been waiting for him all along, papers under his arm, that terrible air of purpose he puts on when he’s decided something. I think Miss Kelley tried to say something, but I barely caught her eye before I was all but pushed into the Head’s office.

Mr Lewis blinked at us from behind his spectacles, plainly surprised to see a party from London descend on him without warning. Gerald merely inclined his head and said, smooth as you please, “A word, if you please.”

The Head invited us as if we had not already imposed ourselves, and then, almost absurdly, rang for a tea tray with sandwiches .

These niceties over, Gerald turned on me, using that dreadful low voice of his, the one that weighs more than shouting ever could.

“Miss Williams,” he said, quiet and clipped, “I wish you to tell the Head exactly what you have done.”

There was nowhere to look. My heart sank straight through my shoes. I am not a pupil; I have not been one for years. And yet there I stood, spluttering and stammering like a schoolgirl hauled up for passing notes. Gerald would have none of it. I had to admit everything: Clarissa’s letter with Inez’s enclosed, the request to send it on to her mother, my saying yes, my writing a cover note and posting them off to Lady de Vries. I told it in silly little scraps, and every bit felt worse once the Head had heard it. The words slid out like stones, and the room, large though it was, felt very small as the shelves of books seemed to close in around me.

When I finally finished, Mr Lewis did not address me at all, but remarked, almost to the furniture, “Ah, so that is how she knew.” The “she” was certainly not me.

Then, more formally, he straightened in his chair and addressed us both. He was polite, firm but almost apologetic, and said the School could not possibly condone letters carried privately. He paused and added (as I could have told him) that as I am no longer a student, my part in the matter was not his affair, but one to be settled between my brother-in-law and me.

Gerald nodded, but replied that he wished the matter on record, and asked that Clarissa be called.

Mr Lewis went to the door and asked Miss Kelley to have a prefect bring Clarissa to his office. We heard her give instructions to “Fairfax” — a prefect, I suppose — just as one of the kitchen maids came in with the clattering tea tray. Then, adding to the whole Lewis Carroll feeling of the afternoon, the Head apologised for the tray’s “meagre fare,” offhandedly blaming our sudden appearance for leaving the kitchen unprepared.

What followed was an extreme bout of conversational awkwardness. He talked about anything except what we were really there for: the heat, the gardens, the fête already past, the coming holidays. His small talk sounded thin and nervous to me. Gerald answered in kind, dry but courteous, as he ate sandwiches and drank two cups of tea. I never touched mine. No one seemed to notice. Everyone else was fed. The silences between the men grew longer and heavier until they felt like stones piling up. Despite the tea, my mouth was completely dry, and I contributed nothing.

After what felt like hours, but was probably no more than twenty minutes, Clarissa arrived, walking through the doorway as if to her doom, her legs so embarrassingly bare and vulnerable in her field hockey skirt, grass stains still on her knees. I saw the shock on her face when she took in Gerald and then me, sitting there together. Her eyes were huge and round. I heard Miss Kelley say something low to the prefect as Clarissa crossed the threshold. Mr Lewis remained at his desk.

Gerald didn’t waste a moment. After the briefest of greetings, he took Clarissa through the same wretched confession he’d forced out of me, making her tell the Head exactly what she had done. My stomach clenched and I was glad I hadn’t touched the tea. I felt her eyes on me, begging for help, but I couldn’t meet them.

I won’t pretend I listened to every word. I heard her first stumbles, the brave little resolves, the determined refusal to betray Inez. Clarissa would not, could not, name her. Gerald repeated my admissions for her benefit and scolded her for involving me, his voice dry and clipped, as if this were all part of a lesson that needed to be properly understood. Mr Lewis sat very straight in his chair and said nothing, nodding only occasionally.

When it was done, the Head stood, cleared his throat, and spoke with that careful, official politeness of his, saying he was satisfied he understood the situation. He added that the School could not be party to further discussion of family discipline, and that Gerald was welcome to make use of the study. Then, murmuring something about other duties, he left the room.

The door shut behind him and, just like that, the air changed. We were alone.

(more…)

discipline

NEW STORY – Naughty Arabella Gets the Sack – A Krampus at Saint Clare Story

Posted on By Mija

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Foreword:

Every so often, a Saint Clare story arrives from an unexpected corner—this one came from an offhand comment on Bluesky about how “Arabella” is the name of a girl who is absolutely up to mischief. That joke blossomed into an open challenge to write a story with “Naughty Arabella” somewhere in the title.

https://bsky.app/profile/mija-again.bsky.social/post/3m754wu5vrc2n
This is my offering.

Naughty Arabella Gets the Sack – Winter 1925 at Saint Clare’s takes place firmly within the larger Saint Clare universe, but outside the Inez of the Upper IV arc. It introduces an earlier generation of girls—and a long-standing bit of school folklore involving a seasonal visitor who is, essentially, OFSTED with hooves. Krampus pays annual calls to Saint Clare’s, but this year he meets his match in Arabella Fairchild: blonde, brilliant, catastrophically charming, and overdue for supernatural accountability.

The result is part school-story romp, part institutional mythmaking, and wholly Saint Clare’s.

 STORY – Naughty Arabella Gets the Sack

Chapter I – In Which Saint Clare’s Watches a Drama Unfold

Saint Clare School for Girls slept beneath a frosty moon in the winter of 1925, its chimneys puffing industriously and its corridors stretching away into dim, draughty mystery. Most of the Second Form were fast asleep in their flannel nightgowns, except for those peering nervously from their beds, listening to the unmistakable CLONK–CLONK–CLONK of something decidedly not school-sanctioned approaching.

Arabella Fairchild, however, was not in her nightgown.

Oh no.

Arabella stood at the centre of the corridor, dressed in her full uniform—immaculate gymslip, snowy white shirt, hair ribbons neat at either side of her head—because Arabella firmly believed that if one must face the supernatural, one should at least look as though one were about to captain the lacrosse team.

She was, as the Headmistress had once remarked in a despairingly admiring tone, “the sort of blonde beauty who, in six years, during her first season, will oblige her father to consider hiring armed guards1Borrowed from Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather (I think). in addition to the usual chaperones.”

Arabella knew this.

Arabella relied on this.

But Arabella’s beauty had never yet faced Krampus.

Girls Who Watched

Behind her, in the rows of narrow iron bedsteads, half the Second Form crouched behind blankets, whispering furiously.

“She’s done it again,” hissed Primrose Pembury, who had once taken the blame for Arabella’s practical joke involving a frog in the Latin master’s hat.

“And she’ll get away with it again,” muttered Clara Dawlish, who had written one hundred lines after Arabella persuaded her to switch name-tags on the exam papers.

“I’d like to see her caught. Just once!” whispered Lottie, who had been given detention when Arabella accidentally (on purpose) set off a smoke-bomb during sewing.

Little Sally Billings (who had been framed for the “ink-in-the-cocoa” incident) clutched her hot-water bottle and breathed, “Look at her! Smirking like she owns the place!”

The girls’ resentment simmered in the cold air.

This was the year Arabella Fairchild would receive her comeuppance.

They could feel it.

(more…)

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    Borrowed from Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather (I think).
discipline External shot of St. Clare School in the afternoon sun. In the foreground is a girl in a white shirt laying on a cot.

The MP Visits Saint Clare Part V – Clarissa in the Infirmary 1

Posted on By Mija

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“The MP Visits Saint Clare” continues

Earlier instalments:

Further particulars may be found in the Foreword below.

This sequence draws from the Charrington Papers and the less officious corners of Saint Clare’s—those neat staff reports never meant to withstand scrutiny; the household logs written with a pointed, domestic hauteur; and the diaries, margins, and illicit notes in which the girls record rather more than their elders imagine. Some documents are respectably typed. Others arrive in the swift, unsteady cursive of someone writing under pressure, or in a place she very much oughtn’t be.

Readers are invited to take up the archivist’s task, and the investigator’s pleasure, of weighing the School’s polished accounts against the smudged, contradictory recollections of those who actually lived the day. Much will be implied. Little will be stated outright. And attentive readers may notice that Miss Gladys Williams’s file, though she left Saint Clare more than five years ago, has begun to grow again—curiously, and on no official authority whatsoever.

The archive remembers. And so, of course, does Inez.

Comments are warmly welcomed. While I enjoy seeing them on Bluesky and Twitter, those left here become part of the archive proper, where they may—quietly—shape what follows.

Saint Clare November: 42,924 / 50,000 words

Foreword

From the Archivist

Having concluded Miss Kelley’s contribution to the Charrington Papers—written, as ever, from a strategically advantageous desk—we proceed to the next document set, in which Saint Clare’s own medical wing weighs in.

Clarissa Charrington’s transfer to the infirmary on the evening of 12 July was recorded with the calm efficiency peculiar to boarding school matrons, who tend to regard tears as symptoms, disobedience as diagnosis, and cod-liver oil as cure. Matron Whitlock’s notes provide the official version: measured, sensible, and serenely unconcerned with the child’s sense of dignity.

Clarissa’s corresponding diary entry presents something rather different: a young heroine stunned by shock, shame, and a games skirt that suddenly felt two inches too short for public consumption.

Between the two, the reader may triangulate something like truth.

CLARISSA CHARRINGTON – DIARY

Entry 1 – In the Headmaster’s StudyMiss Kelley comforts crying girl.

12 July 1955 – Afternoon

It happened. It truly happened. I keep writing the words to make them real, but my hands won’t stop shaking. Papa asked Mr Lewis for the room, and then for me, and he was perfectly calm – horribly calm, the kind of calm that means there is no escape. I thought I knew what it would feel like, being in trouble with Papa, but it is worse when he doesn’t even raise his voice. Worse than shouting. Worse than anything.

I was marched in still in my games kit, looking a fright. I had grass on my socks and my blouse wasn’t properly tucked in, and all I could think was that if I’d known he was coming, I would at least have changed. But I didn’t know. No one warned me. Georgie Fairfax only said the Head wanted me at once. (more…)

discipline

Honour’s Game, Part 3 – December 1938 – January 1939

Posted on By Mija

2 comment(s) so far. Please add yours!

The story of Inez de Vries’s experiences in the summer of 1955 unfolds through a series of documents – some official, pulled from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others are more intimate, drawn from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others will retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font. Readers are invited to step into the role of archivist, assembling the story from these traces, and imagining the lives that fill the gaps between pages—the tensions, the alliances, the secrets too dangerous to write down. Not everything will be explained.

But Inez watches. And remembers.

This story takes readers back to 1938 and tells the story of Inez’s parents, especially Lady Gwendolyn “Honour” de Vries, a St. Clare Old Girl who notices far more than most people realize.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I like reading them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here and promise to respond. Moreover your responses and ideas are included in the archives and may shift and change the story’s evolution. Also, the observant reader may notice Honour has a new font. I hope it’s more readable. 

Having trouble with the handwriting? Try the plain text version. 

Greystone Abbey, January 1939

If you’ve followed Honour this far – through her first lesson, her first report, and her first taste of consequence – you’ll know how easily a game of observation can become something else.
The new year finds her far from Belgravia, shut in by rain and flooded fields, testing both her wit and her husband’s patience. The guests have gone; Darlington’s lessons continue.

This story follows:

Honour’s Lesson

Honour’s Game – Prologue

Honour’s Game – Part 1

Honour’s Game – Part 2

You might want to read them first. 

Part Three

From the Archivist

From the Lady de Vries Collection, Blue Room Archives, Saint Clare’s School for Girls

The papers presented here form part of what is now known as the Lady de Vries Collection. Though the correspondence was originally preserved among the private files of her husband, Edmund Alexander de Vries, 9th Earl of Darlington, its preservation and eventual deposit at Saint Clare’s are due to Lady Gwendolyn Randolph de Vries herself.

The exchange of initials — D. and H. — occurs throughout. Their precise origins are unclear; however, internal evidence suggests that these letters were both a private correspondence between husband and wife and, increasingly, a record of informal “exercises” undertaken by Lady de Vries during the late 1930s.

The editors have retained the original orthography and punctuation. A few later pencil notes in Lord Darlington’s hand are reproduced in grey type. Where the line between affection and assignment blurs, readers are invited to remember that the world beyond these pages was also shifting — toward war, secrecy, and a very different kind of education.

Recovered documents: December 1938 – January 1939

The following entries belong to that first winter at Greystone Abbey, when the young Countess was learning that discipline can be an intimacy of its own. The surviving pages are marked in her hand and his — neat pencil corrections threading through her typed reports. Both of them writing in their fountain penned script. What began in London drawing rooms now turns domestic, quieter and more perilous.

In these documents, the young Lady Honour de Vries continues working to master her husband’s “exercises”—tasks meant to discipline her curiosity and temper her impulsiveness. Yet what began as a private game of observation now reaches beyond the drawing room. A tea in Chester Square leads to the American Embassy at Grosvenor Square, and the world of polite conversation begins to tremble with rumours of the coming war.

Through reports, annotations, and private diaries, we see the gradual shaping of a partnership: his precision against her wit, his restraint against her appetite for understanding. Honour still writes to please him—but she is also beginning to see, to listen, and to turn the rules of his game to her own advantage.

The tone remains domestic, almost playful. Yet under its surface, something colder and more intricate begins to form.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I enjoy seeing them on Twitter and Bluesky, I especially love receiving them here and promise to respond. Your observations and ideas are entered into the Saint Clare archives and may subtly shift the story’s evolution.

(more…)

discipline

Honour’s Game – Part 2 – November – December 1938

Posted on By Mija

11 comment(s) so far. Please add yours!

The story of Inez de Vries’s experiences in the summer of 1955 unfolds through a series of documents—some official, pulled from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others are more intimate, drawn from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others will retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font. Readers are invited to step into the role of archivist, assembling the story from these traces, and imagining the lives that fill the gaps between pages—the tensions, the alliances, the secrets too dangerous to write down. Not everything will be explained.

But Inez is watching. And she remembers.

This story goes back to 1938 and tells the story of Inez’s parents, especially Lady Gwendolyn “Honour” deVries, a St. Clare Old Girl who notices far more than most people realize.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I like reading them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here and promise to respond. Moreover your responses and ideas are included in the archives and may shift and change the story’s evolution.

Having trouble with the handwriting? Try the plain text version.

This story follows:

Honour’s Lesson

Honour’s Game – Prologue

Honour’s Game – Part 1

You might want to read them first. 

From The Archivist: 

From the Lady de Vries Collection, Blue Room Archives, Saint Clare’s School for Girls

The papers presented here form part of what is now known as the Lady de Vries Collection. Though the correspondence was originally preserved among the private files of her husband, Edmund Alexander de Vries, 9th Earl of Darlington, its preservation and eventual deposit at Saint Clare’s are due to Lady Gwendolyn Randolph de Vries herself.

The exchange of initials — D. and H. — occurs throughout. Their precise origins are unclear; however, internal evidence suggests that these letters were both a private correspondence between husband and wife and, increasingly, a record of informal “exercises” undertaken by Lady de Vries during the late 1930s.

The editors have retained the original orthography and punctuation. A few later pencil notes in Lord Darlington’s hand are reproduced in grey type. Where the line between affection and assignment blurs, readers are invited to remember that the world beyond these pages was also shifting — toward war, secrecy, and a very different kind of education.

Introduction

The archive continues.

In these documents, the young Lady Honour de Vries begins to master her husband’s “exercises”—tasks meant to discipline her curiosity and temper her impulsiveness. Yet what began as a private game of observation now reaches beyond the drawing room. A tea in Chester Square leads to the American Embassy at Grosvenor Square, and the world of polite conversation begins to tremble with rumours of the coming war.

Through reports, annotations, and private diaries, we see the gradual shaping of a partnership: his precision against her wit, his restraint against her appetite for understanding. Honour still writes to please him—but she is also beginning to see, to listen, and to turn the rules of his game to her own advantage.

The tone remains domestic, almost playful. Yet under its surface, something colder and more intricate begins to form.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I enjoy seeing them on Twitter and Bluesky, I especially love receiving them here and promise to respond. Your observations and ideas are entered into the Saint Clare archives and may subtly shift the story’s evolution.

Having trouble with the handwriting? Try the plain-text version below.

Part Two

From: The Blue Room Collection, Saint Clare’s School for Girls
Recovered documents: November–December 1938

 

Exercise — 20 November 1938

You are to attend Mrs. Allerton’s tea tomorrow afternoon. Treat it as a continuation of your previous exercise.

Instructions:

    • Keep your gloves on at all times.
    • Decline the cakes; they are dreadful, and you think better on an empty stomach.
    • Smile when spoken to, but answer only when asked. Listen for what is not said. Women talk freely when they believe you bored.
    • Write it afterwards, while the voices are still fresh.
    • Keep the tone measured, not arch.
    • Distinguish what you know from what you think you know.

Deliver your report to Darlington on the same evening. Late papers will be penalised.

You do not want to be a naughty girl, my Honour.

(more…)

discipline

Honour’s Game – Prologue – Autumn 1938

Posted on By Mija

2 comment(s) so far. Please add yours!

The story of Inez de Vries’s experiences in the summer of 1955 unfolds through a series of documents—some official, pulled from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others are more intimate, drawn from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others will retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font. Readers are invited to step into the role of archivist, assembling the story from these traces, and imagining the lives that fill the gaps between pages—the tensions, the alliances, the secrets too dangerous to write down. Not everything will be explained. But Inez is watching. And she remembers.

This story goes back to 1938 and tells the story of Inez’s parents, especially Lady Gwendolyn “Honour” DeVries, a St. Clare Old Girl who notices far more than most people realize.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I like reading them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here and promise to respond. Moreover your responses and ideas are included in the archives and may shift and change the story’s evolution.

Having trouble with the handwriting? Try the plain text version.

Introduction

This tale follows Honour’s Lesson, where Lady Gwendolyn Randolph de Vries — Honour — first tested the patience of her new husband, Edmund Alexander de Vries, 9th Earl of Darlington. Like that earlier story, it begins in a more traditional narrative mode, borrowing the cadence of Regency romance. Yet here a new element enters: the reports of a bride still half a schoolgirl, too quick with her laughter, too eager for her husband’s notice, and learning how his sternness might be turned into intimacy. What she believes to be a private game of observation will, in time, shape far more than she imagines.

Though not set at Saint Clare’s, its themes are familiar: discipline, secrecy, defiance — threads that will later be woven through the school itself.

From The Archivist: 

From the Lady de Vries Collection, Blue Room Archives, Saint Clare’s School for Girls)

The papers presented here form part of what is now known as the Lady de Vries Collection. Though the correspondence was originally preserved among the private files of her husband, Edmund Alexander de Vries, 9th Earl of Darlington, its preservation and eventual deposit at Saint Clare’s are due to Lady Gwendolyn Randolph de Vries herself.

The exchange of initials — D. and H. — occurs throughout. Their precise origins are unclear; however, internal evidence suggests that these letters were both a private correspondence between husband and wife and, increasingly, a record of informal “exercises” undertaken by Lady de Vries during the late 1930s.

The editors have retained the original orthography and punctuation. A few later pencil notes in Lord Darlington’s hand are reproduced in grey type. Where the line between affection and assignment blurs, readers are invited to remember that the world beyond these pages was also shifting — toward war, secrecy, and a very different kind of education.

Prologue

(This part of the text comes from the end of Honour’s Lesson)

With that she turned away, trembling, pullimg the sheets tight around her, her back to him. He watched as her tears slid hot onto her pillow. Ned stroked her back until, finally, he was sure she slept.

Then he rose and slowly went back downstairs.

He sat at his desk until dawn, the muffled sound of her weeping still in his ears. She could not be silenced, he knew; nor could she be made meek. She could not be made blindly obey, yet he could not explain any further. Would he be required to keep her buried on the estate? Thrash her until his displeasure made her tremble? He didn’t want her to be afraid of him. Not like that. That was not the life or marriage he wanted.

He closed his eyes as if in prayer. Perhaps he did pray.

She would not blindly obey him. He couldn’t expect that. However, she was smart, eager to please. She might be steered. Better a task set by him than mischief sought elsewhere.

Ned began to write.

oOo

 

He sat at his desk while sh slept. He could not silence her — Honour was not a woman who could be silenced, or remain chastened for long without planning rebellion. She was too beautiful not to be noticed, even had she been inclined to play the wallflower — and her debut season had already proved she was anything but.

But perhaps he could occupy her, channel her wit, make her mischief serve rather than endanger. He thought of the gathering that evening — the way her mimicry had held a circle of men, the way their laughter and eagerness to refill her glass had seemed innocent to her but perilous to him. She played at daring, not knowing the stakes.

He dipped his pen. If she must play games, then let him set the rules.Ned wrote at the top of a clean sheet: Exercise. She would to attend her next gathering with her eyes open, not for admiration but for information. She would listen,  note, and report. His words constructed a leash, disguising it as a lark.

He wrote at top of the page:

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discipline

Honour’s Lesson, Autumn 1938

Posted on By Mija

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The brief tale that follows is not of Saint Clares’ in the 1950s, nor yet of the Upper IV. It comes from an earlier generation, set long before Inez first entered the school gates. In the unsettled autumn of 1938, Ned and Honour de Vries were newly wed. Told not through documents, but in the style of Regency romance, this story offers not a school record but a portrait of love, discipline, and loyalty in a world tilting toward war. Attentive readers may recognise here the same threads: secrecy, obedience, defiance, so important to Inez’s own story.

It was a London drawing room, heavy with smoke and restless laughter, late in the autumn of 1938. The newspapers still proclaimed peace, yet every sensible man felt the ground quiver beneath the headlines. Ned stood aloof, a whisky glass untouched in his hand, his eyes fixed on Honour, his young bride—radiant as a flame in pale silk, perilously bright.

The pale gown softened her beauty but betrayed her youth, making her seem more the debutante she had been months before than the worldly wife she fancied herself. Her laugh – pitched a shade too high, lingering a breath too long – drew the eager attention of every young man in the room. They mistook her inexperience for daring, her girlishness for sophistication.

When she mimicked the Prime Minister, tilting an imaginary umbrella and wobbling her voice in his plummy tones, the circle of young men roared with delight. She flushed with triumph, careless of the older women’s sharp glances and of the attaché in the corner whose eyes saw her not as a beauty but as a lever to be pulled.

Ned’s jaw tightened. To the others, she was a charming bride showing off her sparkle. To him, she was a bright flame catching against dry kindling. He saw the peril of innocence mistaken for invitation, the danger of brilliance wielded without care. He sensed gossip already clinging to her like sickly perfume, a risk that could be stored, repeated, used. He admired her wit – how could he not? – yet threaded through the gaiety he heard something else: the false brightness of a society pretending it was not on the verge of war.

Once they left the party, he let his mask slip, stopped hiding his displeasure. They rode home in near silence, the hum of the motor car the only sound between them. Honour was still flushed with triumph, replaying her witticisms, humming, smiling as though she had carried the evening herself. To her, it had been another drawing room lark, a stage on which she sparkled. To Ned, it was a reminder that he was already driving headlong into a war declared in whispers, a phantom that would end only when the real one began.

At last she noticed his tension. “You’re cross with me,” she said, light as champagne bubbles. “Were you jealous, my husband? I did not think you insecure. It was but a bit of fun to pass the time.”

“You enjoy being noticed,” Ned replied flatly.

She smiled, careless. “Is that a crime, my Darlington?”

He did not turn his head. His gloved hands rested steady on his knees, his gaze fixed ahead.

“You enjoyed yourself,” he said finally, his voice level. “Too much.”

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