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Tag: Inez de Vries

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.

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fiction

The MP Visits Saint Clare: Part I – 8 – 12 July 1955

Posted on By Mija

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And we’re back in 1955. Sorry about the time traveling. We will get back to Ned and Honour soon.

Context is in Foreword below.

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..

Foreword

From the Archivist

If the Prologue shows Miss Williams after a disastrous morning at the Institute, the present entry shows the three days that led to it—days filled with small offences, smaller triumphs, and domestic tensions that simmered steadily from the 8th to the 12th. Birchwood is not a large house, but it proves more than large enough for misadventure.

When last we left Miss Gladys Williams, it was the night of 11 July 1955, as she lay awake in a fury: raw from her first morning at the Domestic Institute, smarting under Gerald’s tight-lipped decrees, and dreading the next day’s return to Saint Clare School for Girls.

Before we press on to the events of the 12th (where the scenes in the Headmaster’s office still leave Miss Kelley wincing in her private journal), we must step back. Gladys’s bewildered anger in that entry did not spring from nowhere. It was the culmination of several small misadventures, misjudgments, and more than one melodrama by post.

Readers may wish to revisit:

The Elwood Files — the failed attempt to slip Inez’s letter past the school authorities.
The Lady and the Headmaster — in which Lady de Vries learns just enough to become dangerously perceptive.
The Secret Letters, Part I — where Gladys first involves herself in a correspondence she might have been wiser to avoid.
Melodrama by Post — ending in Clarissa’s own very revealing postscript.
Heard in the Charrington Household — Miss Gladys, hauled home from Scotland, is made to “answer for herself.”
Gladys in Trouble — Gerald’s formal terms, Gladys’s formal compliance, and the informal tears that followed.

Yet between her 7 July return and that prophetic line on the 11th — “Apparently 25 is still old enough to be spanked by circumstance” — lies a small but significant gap: three too-warm, sticky, uncomfortable days during which

  • Mrs Fielding’s patience was tested,
  • young Elsie was driven to tears (twice),
  • the milkman did not cometh,
  • the vicarage was pressed into service for stamps,
  • the Institute visit loomed like a thundercloud,
  • and Miss Gladys Williams of St Albans ricocheted between fury, sulks, and the sort of despair that leads a young woman to accuse, with more heat than prudence, a certain lady of having set the entire chain of events in motion.

The documents that follow: Mrs Fielding’s notes, Elsie Turner’s account, Gladys’s own private scribblings, and an unfortunately not-so-private letter, restore that missing chapter. Together, they illuminate why the 11th felt to Gladys like a trap snapping shut, and how the stage was set for the catastrophe of the following day.

For the most attentive readers, it may also be worth glancing back at the 1938 Honour’s Game series:

Connections grow clearer in hindsight, though none of the players in 1955 yet understand how far the past reaches into their present.

Some of the documents reproduced below are drawn from the Blue Room Archives at Saint Clare, specifically from the Lady Gwen de Vries papers and from the Charrington household files.

The Notes of Mrs Dorcas Fielding, Housekeeper
8 to 11 July 1955, St Albans

Friday, 8 July 1955

Since Mr Charrington and Miss Gladys came home yesterday, the house has been all upheaval. Miss Gladys stayed in her room most of the day, resting from her journey. Breakfast tray sent up at eight; returned at ten with only the toast disturbed. Luncheon laid in the dining room; untouched. At half past three she rang for tea and something sweet, then refused the scones as too dry.

Her untouched meals made me want to cry. It is a sin to waste good food.

Young Elsie Turner has been up and down the back stairs carrying trays that come back as full as they went up. I warned her not to show temper. It is not for us to say what a lady ought to eat. But I did begin reducing the portions. There is only so much that can be scraped into the pig bucket before it weighs on one’s conscience.

Mr Charrington kept to his study. He did not speak of Miss Gladys or ask whether she had come down to meals.

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fiction Card with post title on it.

The MP Visits Saint Clare: Prologue – The Institute and Its Discontents – 11 July 1955

Posted on By Mija

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And we’re back in 1955. Sorry about the time traveling. Context is in Foreword below.

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..

Foreword
From the Archivist

We open with Miss Gladys Williams at the end of a day that began far too early and went downhill with impressive speed. The St Albans Institute had little patience for her, and she had even less for it. This evening entry preserves the results: indignation, exhaustion, and a level of offence that could be measured with school rulers if one were inclined.

Her morning at the Institute on 11 July 1955 offers our first glimpse—at least in this sequence—of a girl, well, a young woman, whose capacity for trouble is exceeded only by her capacity for surprise. Nothing dramatic occurs, but the atmosphere is unmistakably primed.

Readers joining us midstream may wish to revisit the earlier Saint Clare entries that converge upon this moment:

The Elwood Files — the failed attempt to slip Inez’s letter past the school authorities.
The Lady and the Headmaster — in which Lady de Vries learns just enough to become dangerously perceptive.
The Secret Letters, Part I — where Gladys first involves herself in a correspondence she might have been wiser to avoid.
Melodrama by Post — ending in Clarissa’s own very revealing postscript.
Heard in the Charrington Household — Miss Gladys, hauled home from Scotland, is made to “answer for herself.”
Gladys in Trouble — Gerald’s formal terms, Gladys’s formal compliance, and the informal tears that followed.

The Charrington Papers, of which the present collection forms a small but telling part 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.

These episodes form the quiet prelude to the tensions now gathering just out of sight. What follows in this entry—indignant, tired, and brimming with offence—is merely the overture.

In the meantime, a wee hint. Look closely at the 1938 Honour’s Game posts and consider where Ned and Honour’s little “game” may have carried Lady Gwen by 1955.

Note: If you’re struggling with the font, here is a plain text version. 

Gladys’s Diary  –  11 July 1955

Diary on nightstand, pen, lipstick

11 July 1955

It’s after 11 PM but I can’t sleep and my head and heart are so full I can hardly stand it. No, I can’t stand it. I’m writing this in the hope of making sense of it. Though it may be I’m just talking to myself.

This morning was Gerald’s humiliation exercise number one: the Institute. He marched me there, hand on my arm like a ward in chancery, and handed me over to the Head as though I were a new pupil. Rather than leave me alone to discuss this, he then stood by while Mrs Perris discussed timetables and subjects as though I’m ten years old. Timetables! For me! And what an utterly wretched timetable it is.

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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 – Prologue – Autumn 1938

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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 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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fiction

Staff Meeting Transcript – Inez of the Upper IV

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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.

Forward: Staffroom Transcript: The Inez de Vries Meeting

If you’ve been following the events of the past week at Saint Clare’s, you already know that one essay—unwritten, then written in defiance—has ignited more than just the usual hallway gossip and that the cast of characters is growing.

It began with a missed geography assignment. It escalated with a detention essay that raised eyebrows, a “contract” punishment scheme, and a growing file of staff memos that read less like documentation and more like dramatic monologues.

Then Matron added her own notes—unsentimental, cod-liver-scented, and unbothered by anyone’s feelings.

Now, finally, the meeting. The transcript below was taken by the Headmaster’s secretary and marked confidential. It includes commentary, interruption, and at least one very pointed biscuit refusal.

If you have ever been in a meeting where nothing was resolved but too much was said— this may all sound rather familiar. Please feel free to add your thoughts on what you’re seeing between the lines, where you’re thinking this may go next. 

 

 

CONFIDENTIAL TRANSCRIPT

Staff Meeting Regarding: Inez de Vries, Upper 4th
Date: Thursday, 15  June 1955
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Saint Clare’s Headmaster’s Library
Transcribed by: Miss Edith Simms, Secretary to the Headmaster
For: Headmaster Stephen Lewis’s Files Only

Present:
Mr. Stephen Lewis (Headmaster)
Mr. George Green (Geography)
Miss Anne Kelley (English and French; also assistant housemistress for Inez de Vries)
Mr. Bertram J. Johnson (Latin and Classics)
Miss Elaine Clark (Modern History)
Matron Patricia Rowntree (Head Matron, Infirmary)

 

Mr. Lewis:
Yes, well—thank you, everyone, for coming. I realise this may seem an elaborate convening for a single Fourth Form girl, but the situation appears to have developed… contours.

Before we begin—Mrs. Frobisher has sent up tea, and a tray of those ginger biscuits the kitchen’s trialling. I encourage fortification. As I was reminded repeatedly during the war, an army marches on its stomach—and I daresay this staff does as well.

Now then—George, I believe you were first to raise the matter?

Mr. Green:
Raise it? Headmaster, “it,” as you say, landed in my lap. de Vries failed to submit her geography essay. When questioned, she claimed—quite breezily—that it was in her dormitory. In fact, the essay did not exist. She absented herself from my lesson and ignored a summons from Matron when I sent for her return.

Eventually, I found her in Miss Clark’s classroom, participating in that class as if nothing had occurred.

Miss Kelley: (evenly):
You sent the girl to the dormitory. How then do you find it surprising she left your lesson?

Mr. Green (stiffly):
I think the reasonable expectation was that she would retrieve the paper and return promptly.

Mr. Johnson (mildly):
Did you say that? How was the girl to know?

Mr. Green (teeth clenched):
It was clearly implied. That she failed to intuit my implication is, I think, rather the point.

Having finally located the girl, I confronted her—an hour later—and she admitted the paper had never even been written so her leaving my classroom was entirely a ruse, as I had suspected from the start. 

de Vries’s attitude was evasive, her responses were unsatisfactory. Insolent, even, given the circumstances. I promptly administered six strokes of the tawse to her hands. This was, I might add, was a mild punishment, entirely within school guidelines and should not have been unexpected. That she chose to turn the matter into an epic for her detention essay is another issue entirely, but also indicative of her poor character and relevant to this discussion.

Miss Kelley:
Was a record of that punishment entered in her file?

Mr. Green (after a beat):
Not yet. I’ve been—preoccupied.

(more…)
writing

Inez of the Upper IV – Cast of Characters

Posted on By Mija

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Introducing our actors…
A necessary act of discretion before the drama resumes.If you’ve made it through Inez de Vries’s infamous detention essay, you already know Saint Clare’s isn’t just any girls’ school—and Inez is not just any girl. Before we move into the staffroom files tomorrow (starting with a crisply worded concern from Mr. Green—whose tone might benefit from a small glass of sherry and a nap), I thought it worth pausing to formally introduce the cast.

I’ve always loved these sorts of pages—the dramatis personae tucked at the start of vintage novels, the ones that told you, with great precision and a glint of menace, that “Colonel Arbuthnot has a revolver, a past, and a scheduled appearance on page 243.” Agatha Christie did it especially well, and so did school stories of the mid-century: characters arranged like chess pieces before the game begins (or after it’s already started and someone’s flipped the board).

Saint Clare’s is no different. Everyone wears the same uniform—but no two girls wear it the same way. And the staff? Well. Let’s just say the prefects aren’t the only ones taking notes.

Here, then, is your guide to the players: the faculty, the form mistresses, the prefects, and the girls—sharp, slippery, loyal, watchful. You may already suspect their alliances. Tomorrow, you’ll see them in motion.

Welcome to the cast. Curtain’s up soon.

(more…)

Teaser – “Inez of the Upper Fourth” – a Saint Clare Summer Saga

Posted on By Mija

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This summer in Mija’s Room, I’ve come back to to Saint Clare’s School for Girls. Here’s a teaser of what’s to come, starting, hopefully, later this week. 

Saint Clare’s School for Girls. 

Where you eat what you’re given.
Where the prefects are as sharp as their pens.
Where the staff only agree on one thing: a clever girl is dangerous —and must be managed.

Yet Saint Clare’s School is for clever girls.

 

Enter Inez de Vries.

At fourteen, she is a strategist in a gym-slip—a third-generation legacy.
She’s read the rules.
She understands the masters’ and mistresses’s expectations.
What she hasn’t learned—yet—is the code the girls keep among themselves.

This isn’t a redemption arc.
Not a story of downfall or triumph.
This is an end-of-term report. Inez’s portfolio. Her folder.

Inside are the essays no one wanted to mark.
The memos no one was meant to read.
And a perfect curtsy, well-timed, and offered not to the Headmaster,
but to the young woman wielding the Head Girl’s hairbrush.

 

Bring your best pen.

Press your shirt.
Straighten your collar.
Check your tie.
And wear your badge properly.

You are seen. Always. Even the silences.

…That, at Saint Clare’s School, is and eternally has been the final word.
Post TitleDate Posted
Teaser – “Inez of the Upper Fourth” – a Saint Clare Summer Saga21 July 2025
Saint Clare School Justifications or A Few Explanations for the Inconsistencies That Are Absolutely Not My Fault)22 July 2025
Waiting for Inez – It’s your own time you’re wasting…23 July 2025
Start HERE: Inez’s Detention Essay24 July 2025
Inez of the Upper IV – Cast of Characters25 July 2025
The Real Motto of Saint Clare’s School for Girls27 July 2025
The Staffroom Files Part 1: Inez of the Upper Fourth29 July 2025
Notations from Matron’s Logbook: Inez of the Upper 4th30 July 2025
Staff Meeting Transcript – Inez of the Upper IV2 August 2025
Inez’s Diary, 19 June 19553 August 2025
Clarissa’s Letters Home or The Jelly Baby Files11 August 2025
The Elwood Files – Inez of the Upper IV17 August 2025
The Lady and the Headmaster23 August 2025
The Secret Letters – Part 15 September 2025
Melodrama by Post: Aunt Gladys, Lady de Vries, and Other Disasters7 September 2025
Heard in the Charrington Household, OR,The Day Miss Gladys Came Home12 September 2025
Gladys in Trouble15 September 2025
Honour’s Lesson, Autumn 193816 September 2025
Honor's Game - Prologue - Autumn 19383 October 2025
Honor's Game - Part 1 - November 19383 October 2025
Honour’s Game – Part 2 – November – December 19384 October 2025
Honour’s Game, Part 3 – December 1938 – January 193924 October 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare – Prologue – 11 July 195516 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare: Part 1 – 8 – 12 July 195519 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part II – The Road to Saint Clare22 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part III – Gladys Williams’ Return23 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part IV – Heard From the Outer Office24 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part V – Clarissa in the Infirmary 11 December 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part VI - Inez’s Diary, 13 July 195526 December 2025
MP Visits Saint Clare – Part VII – Ghastly Gladys29 December 2025
MP Visits Saint Clare – Part VIII – Mustn’t Grumble Gladys30 December 2025
MP Visits Saint Clare – Part IX – Statement of J. Fowler, Chauffeur4 January 2026
The MP Visits Part X — A Closing Essay OR Loose Ends, Properly Filed5 January 2026

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