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Tag: Saint Clare’s School

discipline

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

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.

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 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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fiction

The Secret Letters – Part 1

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.

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.

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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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 G. Honor 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, Inez.

     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,
      Honor 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

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 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.
fiction

Staff Meeting Transcript – Inez of the Upper IV

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.

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.

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discipline

Notations from Matron’s Logbook: Inez of the Upper 4th

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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. These pieces will be posted gradually, over the next two weeks, allowing the narrative to take shape not through a single telling, but through fragments. Some will appear typed and orderly; others will retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font to honor the green-ink originals. 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.

Use the comments to build the story together: ask questions, float theories, invent what’s missing. What do you. think lies between the lines? The archive is incomplete—but the story lives in the spaces between.

Introduction to Notations from Matron’s Logbook

Based on yesterday’s and today’s staff memos, if you’re wondering how the adults at Saint Clare’s have been coping with the ripple effects of Inez de Vries’s behavior—well, Matron does not “cope” when it comes to school girls. Matron examines, documents, and judges.

For those unfamiliar with the role: the school Matron isn’t quite a nurse, not quite a governess, and certainly not one to cross. She oversees the infirmary, enforces standards of health, hygiene, and attitude. At Saint Clare’s she doles out cod-liver oil, brisk dismissals, and the occasional perfectly legal bottom-smacking. Given with her broad hand and firm affection, of course.

This log entry, made the Sunday after Inez’s transgressions and disciplinary theatrics, gives us a glimpse into the clinical eye (and moral clarity) of one Patricia Rowntree, Matron of Saint Clare’s since before the Armistice. She has no time for teenaged drama or malingering.

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fiction

The Real Motto of Saint Clare’s School for Girls

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. These pieces will be posted gradually, over the next two weeks, allowing the narrative to take shape not through a single telling, but through fragments. Some will appear typed and orderly; others will retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font to honor the green-ink originals. 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.

Use the comments to build the story together: ask questions, float theories, invent what’s missing. What do you. think lies between the lines? The archive is incomplete—but the story lives in the spaces between.

The True Motto of Saint Clare’s School:

What Every Girl Learns

Publicly, it is this:

Ad Astra — to the stars.

Embroidered in silver and gold upon the blazer’s crest, shining bright against the red.
Printed in gilt on the Speech Day programme.
Spoken with pride at the opening of each term.
It is what your father believes.

It is the promise tucked into your trunk beside the lavender sachets,
the phrase that makes your little sister sigh and your younger cousins lean in with envy.
It is the promise every girl carries onto her train from Paddington or Waverley.
all the way to the warm-yellow stone of the school walls—
soft from a distance, but cold and grey-veined when touched.
Beautiful, solid, and old.

But quietly—almost tenderly—another version is taught.

Not at once, and never aloud.
It is stitched inside the breast pocket of your blazer,
pale threads just over your heart.

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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.

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