3 comment(s) so far. Please add yours!
Introduction
This sequence draws from the Kelley–de Vries correspondence and the less officious corners of Saint Clare’s, chiefly the Blue Prefect Study papers, where respectable documents go to become something else. You will find letters meant to be burned, copies kept “for reference,” drafts that should by rights have been torn up and 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.
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, with the same old hierarchy, the same old tenderness, and rather higher stakes than dormitory gossip ever required.
The file runs on to later years. Do not panic. For present purposes, we begin where the story begins, with Inez’s arrival in 1947 and one old girl’s decision to write, not to a school, but into a memory.
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. I cannot promise the archive is obedient, but it is, as ever, attentive.
Foreword
This document, a letter from Anne Kelley, English teacher and housemistress for Inez and Clarissa, is written on Saint Clare’s letterhead and dated 12 July 1955. The reader will recall that 12 July 1955 was the day of MP Gerald Charrington’s visit, the sort of day the timetable insists is perfectly ordinary right up to the moment it becomes legendary, and poor Clarissa learned that a man may promise to “conclude matters at home” while concluding them perfectly well in the Headmaster’s study. Despite the letterhead, this document is not a school report; in fact, it is not an official communication; it is, strictly speaking, the sort of thing the writer hopes will be burned, mislaid, or eaten by the dog before anyone has the bright idea of filing it.
Fortunately for this archivist and you, dear reader, it was saved and filed.
The reader may recall that earlier, in Miss Kelley’s own journal, there is a line about “enough of this ink-spilling” and the need to “take up a clean sheet” in order to write to “Gwennie” about the day’s events.[1] This is that clean sheet, or at least a draft of one of them. (Saint Clare’s, as we are learning, produces duplicates with the same ease it produces contradictory rules.)
Recently found among Lady Gwendolyn’s papers in the Blue Prefect Study archives, it was part of a bundle of letters tied with green ribbon and optimistically labelled “Williams, G., Misc. 1955.” It is marked, in spirit, for your eyes only, which, in any archive, even Saint Clare’s Blue Prefect Study, is less a boundary than an invitation.
[1] One further note, offered as an observation rather than judgement: the salutation of “Gwennie” is not the sort a young school mistress generally addresses to either a countess or mother of a pupil. And yet Anne Kelley is generally so very professional and proper. Curious, that.
Saint Clare’s School for Girls
12 July 1955
My dear Gwennie,
You asked to be told when anything material touches Clarissa; what follows is for your eyes only. I was correcting essays at the outer desk by the Head’s study when Mr. Charrington arrived with Miss Gladys Williams. I will not pretend I did not linger. One can hear perfectly well from that chair if one is so inclined. (more…)
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.
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.
The 
