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discipline

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

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 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.

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fiction

Honour’s Game Part I – November 1938

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 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 are 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.

Part One

If you haven’t read the Prologue yet, you should. 

Note from D. –

11 November 1938

Honour,

You are attending Lady Fenton’s gathering tomorrow. Treat it as exercise.

– Sit where you are seen, not where you are heard.
– One glass of champagne, no more.
– Listen more than you speak. Note what is certain, and what you only suppose.
– Write it after, neatly, as if for school.

Report due upon return, as soon as possible. Marks for observation, not embroidery. Late submissions will not be entertained, .  

 

D.

 

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discipline

Honour’s Game – Prologue – Autumn 1938

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 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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Melodrama by Post: Aunt Gladys, Lady de Vries, and Other Disasters

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How to Read Inez of the Upper Fourth

Banner of "How to Read Inez of the Upper iV"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.

(Writing this section of the story has me missing the ASS/SSS poster and story writer, the late, great Alex Birch 1Alex’s stories are other places on the ‘net, however I’m absolutely sure The Spanking Story Archive had his enthusiastic permission. So try there first.more than I can rightly say.)

Introduction – A Prefatory Word

At Saint Clare’s, it is a truth universally acknowledged (at least by Ronnie Elwood) that any girl seen in Inez de Vries’s company after lights out is more or less doomed. Thus Clarissa Charrington — (a character created by reader JustABoomer) a perfectly decent Lower IV with a genius for self-pity and a Jelly Baby happiness scale— was slippered for nothing more shocking than talking in slippers. And this was before her role in the “The Secret Letters” or with Lady de Vries and Headmaster Lewis had even been revealed. 

Trusting his indulgent understanding, Clarissa poured out her grievances to “Papa,” only to find he had abruptly transformed into “Father,” replying with all the ponderous dignity of the House of Commons. Clarissa, meanwhile, revealed a transformation of her own: the once devoted daughter emerged as a haughty, stroppy teenager, indignant at every turn and grandly refusing the hundred lines set for her. What might have remained a minor school punishment swelled into a correspondence campaign. Aunt Gladys, recalled from her Highland idyll with all the grace of a cat yanked from a sun-beam, contributed her tilted-halo irreverence by post, while Lady de Vries, with a deft flick of the foil at the Garden Fête, contrived to elevate the whole business into something resembling a diplomatic incident.

Thus, a few minutes’ chatter after lights out blossomed into an exchange of letters in which Papa became Father, daughter became adversary, and a melodrama about six slipper whacks on the knickers went speeding back and forth across the country by post — culminating in a command summons so imperious it required a telegram and sleeper train.

(Having trouble with the handwriting? Try the simple font version.)

 

 

Clarissa Elizabeth Charrington
Saint Clare’s School for Girls

Lower IV Dormitory
22 June 1955

Dearest Papa,
   You must prepare yourself — for I have suffered one of the most frightful injustices in the whole history of school.

   On Tuesday evening I was caught in the Upper IV common room after lights out. Yes, I own up: I was out of bed in slippers and dressing gown, with Inez. But what were we doing? Only talking. No feasts, no sneaking fags behind the lavs, no plotting to burn the place down — just talking!

   The punishment? One Saturday detention and six whacks with the house slipper across our knickers. Papa, it was beastly humiliating. As if I were some dreadful hardened case when my only crime was conversation. I know girls who’ve had nothing more than a ticking-off for worse.

   And everyone can see why. It wasn’t what I did — it was who I was with. Because it was Inez, the staff came swooping like hawks, and I was caught in their net. She can’t so much as sneeze without someone making a whole to-do of it. That I should catch it too seems monstrously unfair.

   I bore it like a soldier, of course — not a single tear, though the corridor was thick with girls craning their necks to see. Matron tutted and gave me a spoonful of cod-liver oil afterwards (as if that helped!). I can’t help thinking it was all absurdly over the top.

   Really, Papa, you must agree it was hardly tyranny beastliness. A detention and a slippering for twelve minutes after lights out? Mamma would have called it petty, I’m sure, and I daresay you might too.
  Please do say I’m right to be indignant. It would comfort me to know at least someone thinks talking after lights out is not the moral equivalent of mutiny.

   Your bruised but not beaten Darling, Daring Daughter,

Clarissa

P.S. On my Jelly Baby scale: 2½. Pride very sore, bottom less so (thank Heavens).

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  • 1
    Alex’s stories are other places on the ‘net, however I’m absolutely sure The Spanking Story Archive had his enthusiastic permission. So try there first.
fiction

The Secret Letters – Part 1

Posted on By Mija

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Banner of "How to Read Inez of the Upper iV"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

The Secret Letters exchange began when Clarissa Charrington slipped a note into the post for her aunt Gladys, with Beano clippings and a sly message from Inez de Vries tucked inside. Gladys, amused and willing, forwarded the enclosure under her own respectable cover. In this way, the girls’ words travelled by official post — yet hidden in plain sight, a letter within a letter.

Placed between the correspondence between Lady de Vries and the Headmaster and the memoranda of The Elwood Files, this packet shows another face of Saint Clare’s: the smuggled confidences, the dodges, the clever workarounds that made school life both dangerous and delightful.

It also helps explain one puzzle of the summer term: how Lady de Vries came to know of her daughter’s punishment almost at once, when other attempts at posting letters — Ronnie’s, most notably — were intercepted and handed over to staff. For Gwen, the way was cleared by her niece-by-marriage, and the Headmaster and faculty were left wondering how she learned so quickly.

Those who remember school will recognise it straightaway — the thrill of knowing your secret was out, the conspiratorial tone (“if you’re not too greedy”), the Beano page folded in like a wink, the sense that one joke could topple into disaster if an adult opened the wrong envelope.

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

Clarissa Elizabeth Charrington

Saint Clare’s School for Girls

13 June 1955

Dearest Glad,

Thanks awfully for your last — and for the gossip about Cousin Margaret’s fête. I can just see her trying to look queenly with jam on her gloves and nose. How long was it before someone told her? Or maybe no one dared!

Everything’s much the same here — prep, bells, and the usual scramble for hot water (honestly you’d think we were fighting for it like rations). I’m sending you two Beano clippings that gave us a proper giggle in the dorm. Minnie the Minx in the second one is the spit of a certain Upper IV girl — you’d know the sort, can make a Latin lesson feel like the build-up to a jailbreak.

IdV has the staff muttering and the rest of us craning our necks to see what happens next. That’s why I tucked in the second clipping — if you like it you might pass it along to someone who’d appreciate the likeness (you know who). Just keep it under your hat — not everyone here has the right sense of humour, and I’d be in the soup if it got round.

Buckets & buckets of love,

Clarissa

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Oasis 2025 – Day 1: Local at the Dog Park, Stranger at the Party

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As I mentioned yesterday, this isn’t my inaugural Labor Day-weekend spanking shindig—I’ve been doing the “spank-and-sun” combo for a couple decades. What is new, though, is that it’s the first one in 20+ years without Paul, and the very first with Sutti in tow. Her presence rewrote the itinerary entirely.

Even in a city that markets itself as a playground for strangers, a quick stop at the dog park turns you into an instant “local.” Suddenly I’m swapping leash tips and weather forecasts with people who assume we’ve lived here forever—while I’m still trying to plot the route back to the hotel with the fewest left-turn-arrow intersections.

Sutti isn’t just any service dog; she’s a whoodle (Wheaten Terrier × Poodle)—fluffy, low-shedding, and happily immune to the chaos that follows me. Within minutes she’d made friends with every ball-chasing Labradoodle in sight. It was still under 90 degrees and I felt good about our calm, canine-filled intermission. It’s good to get outside sometimes, you know? Then, one young boxer, a newcomer like us, planted a wet, enthusiastic lick square on my forehead. It felt affectionate at the time.

By the time I was back in my Zoom lecture, fresh iced coffee to hand, that lick had staged a coup. First a tingle, then a welt, then a neat little cluster of blisters. Turns out I’m really, really allergic to boxers. Ooops!


 

My last Zoom ended at 3:00 PM.—that indecisive hour between lunch and dinner. Given that I hadn’t even had breakfast, it hardly mattered. I met a friend at the deli in Circa, across from the Plaza. My forehead welts by then were obvious, and she mentioned them immediately. I’d been hoping only I could see them. Not the case. I told her about the boxer and she wisely suggested Benadryl.

We caught up, moving from my forehead to a surprisingly detailed hair-brush showdown back in my room. Both of us measure brushes in inches but brag about their weight in grams, as if this were a miniature Olympic lifting competition. You can insert your own imagined commentary. Soon enough, our conversation gave way to testing: jeans first, then panties, smacks light enough for a first night. No one wants to start out a party feeling like they’ve been whacked by a novice lumberjack. It was perfect—warm, companionable, a glow we both hinted we’d like to revisit later.

We said goodbyes with vague promises about the suite parties that evening. The plan was solid—until 9 p.m., when I followed her advice and took a Benadryl. By the time I’d showered, it’d kicked in. The next thing I knew, it was 6:30 a.m. and I was already gearing up for another round of dog-park runs and Zoom meetings.

Perhaps by Day 2 I’ll make it up to the suites.

I did manage to get my name badge and (gulp) an envelope containing my detention slip.

fiction

The Lady and the Headmaster

Posted on By Mija

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How to Read “Inez of the Upper IV”

Banner of “How to Read Inez of the Upper iV”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

In which an Old Girl writes, and luncheon invitations become articles of surrender.

Most Fourth Form girls, after receiving a tawsing, a detention, and a caning, learn to keep their heads down. Inez de Vries, however, reached out to her mother. Her account of the affair travelled through the post as a stowaway, arriving at Hollingwood Hall with the stealth of a midnight feast.

Lady Honor de Vries — Head Girl by record, an Old Girl to her fingertips — writes on monogrammed blue paper, her words as precise as they are perilous. They reach Saint Clare’s Headmaster like a perfectly timed volley on the hockey pitch: elegant in delivery, devastating in effect.

Poor Mr. Lewis, veteran and Headmaster, responds on cream bond, summoning every Edwardian circumlocution to defend his flank. He insists that Saint Clare has “ever been jealous of its reputation” — a dangerous protestation, given that his previous post at a boys’ school ended, rather suddenly, and without fanfare. Here there lingers scarcely more than the whisper of a whisper, yet Lady de Vries has contrived to hear it.

The duel proceeds with the utmost courtesy: “your obedient servant” meets “with every good wish,” and each line conceals more sting than any prefect’s detention book. Meanwhile, Inez herself is counselled by Mummy in terms worthy of a field manual: play for position, win gracefully, reform from within, and, above all, guard your hands if you value your skin.

Having trouble with the handwriting? Try the simple font version.

Lady Gwendolyn de Vries

 

15 June 1955

Dear Headmaster Lewis,

     I hope this letter finds you well and that St. Clare continues to uphold its fine tradition of cultivating young ladies with discipline, character, and common sense. I am writing in connection with an incident involving my daughter, the young Lady Inez deVries.

     I have received a somewhat dramatic letter from her which I have chosen—very deliberately—not to share with our solicitor.

    According to Inez, she received not one but two separate rounds of corporal punishment over the matter of a late essay, along with a most curious document involving the exchange of caning for academic credit.

     While I understand and respect the School’s codes, I sincerely hope this “contractual” arrangement was not sanctioned at the administrative level. If discipline is now to be treated as a competitive sport, I trust the girls are at least being awarded points and prizes accordingly. I need hardly remind you how swiftly such matters, once whispered, can alter the tone of a Headmaster’s tenure.

     Please reassure me that your staff understand the distinction between correction and coercion. Further, that Inez is studying the violin at my request. To strap a budding musician’s hands seems uncalled for, though perhaps your present geography master prizes percussion above bowed instruments.

      Yours sincerely,
      Lady Gwendolyn  de Vries née Randolph

P.S. Inez also mentioned interrupting a lesson on the Marshall Plan, which she appears to have found illuminating. If nothing else, thank Miss Clark for me.

 

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discipline sketch of a folder and pen on top of a skirt and blazer

The Elwood Files – Inez of the Upper IV

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How to Read “Inez of the Upper IV”

Banner of "How to Read Inez of the Upper iV"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.

Forward to the Elwood Files

It is one of the consolations of life in a girls’ boarding school that, although hairbrushes vanish before prayers only to reappear at bedtime, knee socks sag at inspections, and knicker elastic betrays its wearers at the worst possible moments, one may always rely upon the ingenuity of the pupils. The present dossier — christened in pencil The Elwood File — began with a folded scrap of green ink and a doodled key, and swelled, in due course, to the proportions of a minor parliamentary scandal. Or so it felt to Ronnie Elwood at any rate.

decorativeThe dramatis personae require only the briefest introduction. Veronica (Ronnie) Elwood (Upper V) is amiable and obliging, with a handwriting that proclaims every secret long before she intends it. Inez de Vries (Upper IV) is armed with both daring and design, seldom without a plan calculated to vex her elders. Keeping them under ceaseless watch is Georgina Fairfax, Senior Prefect, whose close supervision might well recommend her to the quietly vigilant MI5. Among the staff, Matron persists with her infallible spoonfuls of of cod-liver oil, Miss Kelley keeps a close eye on her house with rather sharper judgement than some expect, and the Headmaster, from his lofty perch, maintains that martyrs are not to be manufactured at any cost.

The scheme itself — to smuggle a page of prose through the mighty bulwark of school protocol, hidden inside another girl’s letter home — did not succeed. Prefects pounced, staff rummaged, and the mail-bag emerged none the wiser. And yet — here is the rub — Lady de Vries, many miles away, somehow contrived to receive the very intelligence intended for her, and with remarkable promptness.

How Lady de Vries came by her intelligence is not disclosed in these pages. That she had it — and was corresponding about her daughter with the Headmaster before the week was out – is beyond dispute. The archivist can only remark that Saint Clare’s leadership is already discovering how very little control remains within its grasp.

Having trouble with the handwriting? Try the simple font version.

Notes Found

[Folded small; tiny key inked at the top.]

 


Strictly Between Us — Dispose Wisely
Do you have space in your letter home for a stowaway?
Thought you might add something for me next time you send yours — nothing shocking, just something better not left in the St. Clare’s pigeonholes. I’d owe you a favour (real currency, not just toffee).
Your mum wouldn’t mind a stowaway page, would she?
P.S. Your hair looks like it’s plotting mutiny today. In the best way.


Margin (G. Fairfax): 11/6 — confiscated, folded tw

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Clarissa’s Letters Home or The Jelly Baby Files

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How to Read “Inez of the Upper IV”

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, as this post indicates, your responses and ideas can be included in the archives, shifting and changing the focus.

 

Forward to: “Clarissa’s Letters Home”

Archivist Note: These letters, begun and co-authored by reader JustAnotherBoomer, were the private correspondence between a widowed father and his fourteen-year-old daughter.

Clarissa Elizabeth Charrington and her father, the Rt. Hon. Gerald T. Charrington, weren’t writing for teachers, headmasters, politicians, or biographers sifting through archives in search of origin stories. Clarissa, newly arrived at Saint Clare’s School for Girls in the Lower Fourth during the summer term of 1955, could never have imagined these early letters home would be treasured decades later—by a daughter who may have walked the same school corridors, or found by a granddaughter after a lifetime of stories. The letters themselves spoke to no one but sat quietly for years in a forgotten tuckbox, hidden behind a yellowed copy of Jane Eyre, a single petrified Jelly Baby, and a torn wrapper from an ancient toffee.

This first exchange between Clarissa and her father captures her earliest days at Saint Clare—tentative, observant, and already sharpening into something unmistakably her own. Clarissa’s letters home are notable not only for her frank admiration of one Inez de Vries—already firmly on the staff’s watch list—but also for the affection and respect she shows her father and his public life, and for introducing a private code between them: their “Jelly Baby Ledger.”

Clarissa left the ledger on her father’s desk the morning she departed for school—a small, deliberate gift in her careful handwriting. Its pages are marked with doodled sweets in the margins and a hand-drawn scale that ranges from “catastrophic” to “triumphant.” In her letters home, each Jelly Baby count is shorthand for how she is faring—socially, strategically, and in terms of her all-important tuck supply.

The paradox is part of the charm: Clarissa is still young enough to count her sweets in Jelly Babies, yet already capable of nuanced political metaphor and a subtle, sidelong interest in the de Vries family. Something is awakening here—not a rebellion exactly, but an alertness. She is watching Inez. She is watching the adults. And, increasingly, she is watching herself.

You may already be familiar with other records from this term—the official school reports praising Clarissa’s eloquence, the stern notes cautioning against questionable friendships, and the famously provocative essays. Yet these letters offer something different—personal, candid glimpses of Clarissa quietly shaping her conscience beneath covers and torchlight, with Inez’s daring casting long, flickering shadows across the page. In these early exchanges, we glimpse not only the schoolgirls they are—but hints of the women they will become.

The archive cannot answer every question. But the Jelly Baby count will shift, and the careful observer might notice that while Clarissa watches Inez, others have begun watching Clarissa.

Read on, gently, knowing these letters are not merely relics, but snapshots of a life becoming—quietly powerful, subtly courageous, and, well, interesting.

Having trouble with the handwriting? Try the simple font version.

 

This sort of stationery/letters attache case was a frequent and much coveted gift to boarding school girls. Many Old Girls used them their entire lives.

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Inez’s Diary, 19 June 1955

Posted on By Mija

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 How to Read “Inez of the Upper IV”
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 them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here and promise to respond.

Forward to Inez’s Diary Entry 1

(Pinned inside the front cover, possibly written years later. Possibly not.)

The pages that follow were not meant to be shared. Not with teachers. Not with school authorities. Certainly not with Mummy (not that she would ever read another’s diary!). These are the extremely private thoughts of one Inez de Vries, age fourteen, penned under the covers at Saint Clare’s School for Girls, Summer Term 1955, using a torch that needed new batteries and her trusty, if leaky, fountain pen.

sketch of manuel typewriterThey were tucked away in a locked tuckbox, behind an embroidered handkerchief, a Latin vocab book, and three boiled sweets (two of them fuzzed). She cursed the book so no one could read them. Naturally, you may read them anyway –but on your own head be it.

You may already have seen other documents from this term — the official reports, the memos, the staff meeting minutes (oops! that’s tomorrow!), the infamous reflective essay. This document is not like those –i’s her diary, what she didn’t say, not even to her closest friend. Or perhaps especially not to her closest friend.

It’s tempting to say the diary reveals “the real Inez,” but that’s too easy. All of these posts are “real,” as Inez was “real” in all her forms: the strategist, the spark, the girl with too much cleverness and just enough conscience. Her diary doesn’t contradict the rest —-it deepens it. Complicates it. And, perhaps makes you feel ashamed for having read it.

Grown-up Inez, now an old woman of 84 –though she doesn’t look a day over 70– will likely laugh and claim it was all fiction, all drama, all performance, and perhaps it was. Still, if feminism taught me nothing else, it’s the truth that just because something’s constructed doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

— Archivist’s Note, redacted version. Not for circulation outside Form IV without permission.

Image of diary on bed with flashlight on top.

Private!!!!
This diary is for me only so you Get Out! 

To Whomever Disturbs This Book:

Death shall come on swift wings to him who touches the secrets of the daughter of de Vries.1Adapted from the tomb of King Tut. Look it up — they found the curse scratched in charcoal behind a statue. No, really.

 

Sunday, 19 June 1955 
(Under the covers. Torch getting dim. Note to self: Ask Mummy for batteries in next letter. Also: do Not leave this in pillowcase again, you idiot.)

Dear Diary,

I wasn’t going to go up there, truly. I’d survived the caning — medium cane, four sets of three, all very proper — and I wrote the “reflective” essay they asked for. It said what happened. It said more than what happened: it named names, explained motives, laid everything out. No one but me wanted that, but TOO BAD.

Miss Kelley said it didn’t take responsibility. But it did — it took as much as I should, as much as is mine. I’m not going to take ALL of it. I may have been the spark, but the fire came from Mr. Mean’s hot air and rage going TOO FAR. They all know it, tooo, whatever they say.
(Must stop calling him Mr. Mean. Even in here or will do it where he could hear about it. That’s the sort of thing some swot fink might tell him.)

It was amazing – Green was incandescent. Not only red, but that awful blotchy purple one sees on exploding thermometers. I rather thought he might burst. (No such luck.)

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    Adapted from the tomb of King Tut. Look it up — they found the curse scratched in charcoal behind a statue. No, really.
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