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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…)

  • 1
    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

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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

10 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:

(more…)

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.”

(more…)

discipline

Gladys in Trouble – 7 to 9 July 1955

Posted on By Mija

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The story of Inez de Vries 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.

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.

Foreword

From the archivist:

The Charrington Papers, of which the present collection forms a small but telling part [see also Heard in the Charrington Household, Melodrama by Post, and The Secret Letters] offer a glimpse into the anxieties of an English household in the mid–twentieth century. The documents gathered here—letters, annotated responses, and private jottings—capture in miniature a struggle over authority and propriety between Gerald H. Charrington, Member of Parliament and self-appointed patriarch, and his sister-in-law, Miss Gladys Williams, a young woman who had the misfortune to combine a lively disposition with a poor instinct for discretion.

Gerald’s concern, as his marginal notes repeatedly remind us, was not primarily with his own standing in the Commons (never more than modest) but with the long-term durability of the Charrington name. For him, a single ill-judged phrase, if repeated outside the family, could metastasise into a reputation for “wildness”—a quality, in his view, both unbecoming in a woman of five-and-twenty and indelible once attached. That his sister-in-law’s lapses might be mentioned in the Hertfordshire Gazette or (worse) among the parents at Saint Clare School was to Gerald a matter of great peril.

Gladys, for her part, complies outwardly—she had little choice—but her replies, clipped and formally correct, show a mastery of what might be called “obedience with barbs.” She acknowledges each of Gerald’s terms in turn, yet her diction—quotation marks, ironic phrasing, and finally the notorious sign-off, “Your ever-dutiful sister-in-law”—betrays a simmering contempt. Gerald, pen in hand, read her words as if they were a draft to be marked, underlining insolent turns of phrase and scribbling anxious comments about “damage” and “reputation” in the margins. His annotations, reproduced here, are at once the most revealing and the most inadvertently comic element of the collection.

The reader may choose to treat this exchange as a serious episode in the policing of female conduct in postwar Britain. Equally, one may detect in it the rhythms of a domestic farce: the ponderous elder brother pronouncing “terms” as if from the bench, the young woman skewering him with her pen even as she submits, and the lurking fear that the Gazette might carry word of it all. Either reading is legitimate; indeed, part of the value of the documents lies in their capacity to sustain both.

Letter from Gerald Charrington to Miss Gladys Williams

 

7 July 1955

My beloved sister Gladys,

Following our interview in the study this morning, I set down the following terms, which will remain in force until further notice:

      1. Your allowance is suspended. You will be provided with necessities at my discretion, but no sums for amusements, travel, or frivolities.
      2. You are not to remain in this house without either myself or Mrs. Fielding in residence. Neither are you to absent yourself on visits without my express approval.
      3. You will attend a course of domestic science at the St. Albans Institute. Mrs. Fielding will make the arrangements. Attendance is not optional.
      4. You will accompany me to Saint Clare School later this month, to answer directly for your actions in the matter of your niece and her friend.
      5. Fielding will remain in residence and will report daily by post. In addition, I will require  a weekly written account of your progress from your teachers at the domestic science institute..

As to your question of when these restrictions will be lifted: that will be when I am confident in your maturity and judgment.

Gladys, I care for you as I have always done. It is because of that affection that I cannot allow you to go on as you have. Think of this less as a punishment than as a remedy, one that may yet set you on the sounder course you require.

I trust you understand me clearly. Please respond to this letter and indicate your understanding and agreement with each of the tenms. 

Gerald H. Charrington

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discipline

Heard in the Charrington Household, OR,The Day Miss Gladys Came Home

Posted on By Mija

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

The story of Inez de Vries 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.

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.

Introduction:

Miss Gladys Williams was enjoying herself in Scotland — scarves, suitors, and no shortage of attention — when a telegram from her brother-in-law yanked her home like a fish on a line. By the time she stepped off the train at King’s Cross, protesting she’d been “dragged back in chains,” the machinery of the household was already rattling back into place. The chauffeur collected her, the housekeeper was torn from her seaside holiday, and even a maid had to be fetched from the village. All this fuss over a single letter — one that should have stayed safely in the school office, but instead slipped out with Aunt Gladys’s obliging help.

What happened once the front door shut was not meant for public ears. But houses have ears of their own. The chauffeur, the housekeeper, and the temporary maid each caught a part of the day’s drama, and their accounts, set side by side, give us the picture.

Here, then, is Heard in the Charrington Household, OR, The Day Miss Gladys Came Home.

Having trouble reading? Try the plain text version. 

Private Notes of J. Fowler, Chauffeur

 7 July 1955, King’s Cross Station

9:55 AM

Mr. Charrington and I arrived on the platform. Dark suit, bowler, gloves, umbrella. Car polished and ready, myself in uniform. His mood was grim.

I positioned a trolley where the first-class carriage was expected. Train in on time.

Miss Gladys Williams stepped down, breaking off with two young men who pressed their cards on her as though it was their right. Two porters trailed after with the luggage. She carried a small valise and a bright little handbag, face done up, headscarf tied like a cinema actress — not the thing for King’s Cross morning, but she’s always been a pretty girl and knows it. Too much indulged, if you ask me.

Exchange heard:

Miss Williams (too loud): Well, here I am, dragged back in chains!

Mr. Charrington (curt): Good morning, Gladys.

I said nothing but took the valise and set it on the trolley atop her other luggage. She clung to her little handbag as though I had offered to take it too. Her smile faltered then, as if she finally realized this was no game.

We walked off in silence. She tried chatter:

Miss Williams: It was only a bit of fun, Gerald — all blown up into a five-reel melodrama.

Mr. Charrington: We will not discuss it here.

While I saw to the cases, stowed them in the boot. Mr. Charrington opened the rear door himself, put her in, and then got in the other side.

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