Nancy to the rescue

Seeing this is this month's first post we'll begin by catching up with a series of book reviews that by co-incidence is being printed at the start of the Autumn Term.

Following on The New Girl and Nancy, this installment is set at the start of the Autumn term with Nancy being moved to the Upper Fifth  Form with Desda (Desdemona) Blackett which is seen as being a more dull but worthy form more centred around academic work.

It is soon resolved however to do something about this not least by making a AM. group which is really an Amateur Dramatics and Arts group where they'd study to put on short productions, recitals and undertake some games.

Followers of the previous entries might recall this series started not at Maudsley Grammar school but at St. Brides and this past of Nancy's is a key theme in this edition as we are reintroduced to Althea who we learn has moved to Maudsley in somewhat distressing circumstances, her mothers ill health and given the era we are is the nineteen-twenties there is no Welfare State, they ate in a state of acute poverty where Althea and her mother at at risk of losing their rented home and from which Althea has had to leave St. Brides because of being unable pay the school fees.

Nancy's after school life involves her being in charge of ("Maid of Merit") of the Guildry where the adult Miss Knevitt, is talking about setting up a new unit and that it would involve some changes in unit leaders including Nancy.

It was coming back from a meeting where this was being discussed that Nancy hears a flute being played as it happened rather well and upon coming across her realizes this is her lost friend from St.Brides who is malnourished  and Nancy takes her to a cafe for a drink and food and soon realizes things are very bleak.

Disturbed by this, she takes a long detour to Lord Woodridge a local land owner and 'big cheese' of the town and discussed her friend and mothers plight with him suggesting with his mothers knowledge of nature that an offer of the post of Curator of a museum he is about to open soon be given to her and with it a place to stay.

Like many of her generation Althea's mother would feel they could not just accept a place out of charity, it would have to be seen as being in exchange for her services and this way is accepted by him.

Equally Althea herself needs to continue in her education but there is a stumbling block which is that while a 'scholarship' can be issued for any form it is not generally accepted for 'upper school' which is where she belongs but it is in his remit to award one he does and so Althea now goes to  Maudsley Grammar in the upper fifth like Nancy.

Unfortunately, a small rather voracious group of girls lead by Elma hold to the notion that having a Free Scholar rather lowers the tone especially one held to do something vulgar like play a flute for money even though Althea only did this to raise money where her Mum was down to her last three pence and facing eviction and make things difficult by having so they would not play games with her so she helps the Fourth and lower Fifth out instead and having made a big deal in bring her poverty stricken flute playing out so embarrasses her that an offer to join the AM. for which she has considerable talents is just too embarrassing for her to take up.

In time however Althea joins the Guildry, just at the point Nancy is pondering a change to the 2nd new unit as it's leader so she feels supported although the behaviour of those other girls is really bad.

Just before the Museum is about to open and Althea's Mum has moved in, a mysterious Japanese man comes in a demanding a Cedar tree that her Mum refused to sell, refusing to leave until he's gotten it. Nancy and Althea trap him and just by luck Lord Woodridge comes by and has him arrested. 

It transpires what was so desirable about the tree was a Crystal which was buried beneath it as an insurance against hard times for Althea's Mum.

Althea's new found status as an heiress impresses those who so rejected her as the Free Scholar, the shallow meanness thereof not lost on Nancy and clearly transmitted in the book to the reader.  

A area competition for the arts is held called the Rosebury Festival and Nancy's name is put forward as a soloist but Nancy feels strongly this is Althea's time and so puts forward to the Head Mistress that really a change of entry to Althea is really called for as her skills as flautist are the stronger but she'd accompany on piano.

This is accepted so the pair go in the competition judged at City Hall and Althea wins the gold medal  and Nancy awarded a special commendation for the accompanying so the pair have brought honour upon their form and school.

Although in some respects it's a relatively simple book in the series, I think it's strengths are that it tackles head on social prejudice, and poverty in a compassionate, thoughtful  way that reminds me very much of what it felt like being 14 or 15 felt like, caring deeply about issues and each other, wanting to help in the way Nancy did her friend and mother, trying to make a difference for the good.

Making a stand for decency, treating people fairly are important lessons we need to learn to keep our society holding to civilized values.

The New Girl and Nancy

After a bit of a pause, today I have decided to write a bit about a book I have been reading this week.

The Nancy and St.Brides series of school based stories  by Dorita Fairlie Bruce is one I've been slowly making through since being presented  with one book and buying the others in a series of contemporary  high quality reprints.

We last left Nancy at Maudsley Grammar after a disastrous term at St. Brides, working on the resolving the feud between themselves and Larkistone through the Guildery movement and its ethos of moral  education and personal responsibility and the inter-school competitions.

This new term a heiress, Barbara Stephen, arrives and Nancy is involved in settling her in although the expression "two's company, three's a crowd" comes to mind as it place strains on her previous friendship with with Desda.

Things would of been so much the better if Barbara had not been so encouraged to see her role as that heiress, home taught by a Governess who very much indulged that very self centred, revolving all around her way of thinking who just wanted everything to be as it was so when she was spirited away from people who only wanted to be her parents for who she was for the Stephen's, she could not even see she had so much to be grateful for even for going to a lesser school.

An example of that defiant streak is her refusal to consider changing how she has her hair fixed as it is long and very wavy in a more grown up way while at school it would of been  a bit shorter and in pigtails or in a bob even though the signs from the other girls and even staff could not of been plainer.

Nancy takes a principal stand of not ganging up on her but carefully steering her toward the values of the other girls, seeing  past all that attitude she possesses, that there was a lot of potential good and she joins the Guildery where that hair creates problems for the unit inspection although to Nancy's surprise given the problems she had in Section 6  as "Maid of Merit" with unit discipline and even fighting, Barbara does emerge with some credit for her conduct.

That three's a crowd side rears its head when Desda decides to study for a Scholarship (what I understand to be a funded place based on ability) with an examination when Barbara decides to spit her in a battle for affections to apply too even though she really has no need to  given her financial security which indeed brings an attempted kidnapping and would crush Desda's ambitions.

During this period Barbara's relationship with school, the village she moved to and her new parents come under strain as her mind battles with the emotions her past way of life and that she now is in and expected to adjust to.

Indeed she even begs her Aunt to have her back and home schooled but the kidnapping puts that very much on hold as finding Nancy in who spent hours looking for her and her new friends tending to her injuries sustained from escaping the kidnapping,  she finds herself torn between her original aim and wanting to play for Maudsley in the inter school cricket match.

She finds even though she prepared for the scholarship exam revising, she struggles recalling information and understanding what the question is really requiring so she fails it. Pride isn't enough to get you through that.

Having recovered from her injuries, she plays excelling leading her team to victory, gaining acceptance from not just the other girls in the team but the whole school and soon she decides she really wants that school life as just a everyday girl part of a group than that exalted on display older girl as doll-child with all her refinery.

Indeed the end is quite moving that she decides to give away her fancy dresses for her plain girls wear and her uniform and lets Nancy cut her hair in a bob using a pudding bowl: she has given up the past, literally discarding it accepting being moulded anew apologizing to Nancy for how she treated her and the others.

Reading the story really made an impression on me, seeing family fortunes aside some similarities between myself and Barbara and where we were lost in self serving bubble that did us no good.

That Boarding School Girl

Recently I had actually gifted to me a book from their collection of "Girls Own" fiction, a genre I do so love by an author I had nothing  by but was part of that 1920's through 1940's boom of school based girls fiction rather like Angela Brazil.

It's a September 30th 2003 reprint by Girls Gone  By of a 1925 classic, the second in the  "St Brides" series of stories she wrote replicating the original text apart from two alterations at the bequest of the Estate of the author where the original text can be found.

Thank you so much for this.

A few notes on this: In some ways this and Nancy at St Brides (see separate review) are rather odd bed fellows with Nancy at St Brides being more a full account of her first term there and this being  the earlier novel that deals with the consequences of her having to leave and her being sent in some disgrace to Maudsley Grammar as a day student under that cloud, very much feeling the need work hard in lessons and keep the impulsive and easily lead of her personality very much under a lid.

Indeed so much did she try her darnmost that the gulf between her effort and the remainder of Form V.B. invited suspicions that when a conversation by arch rival  Larkiston school  students on the bus that included one who knew Nancy's past became common knowledge as it was overheard by Maudsley students, form V.B. become convinced she'd done something wicked.

In truth while what she had been responsible for did had very serious consequences, in reality it was more she wasn't sufficiently mature so failed to realize the recklessness of the situation she'd lead the others into.

It was the Head Mistresses perception she was not mature enough for boarding school that was the real reason she left. [She wasn't expelled according to "at St Brides", contrary to the claim in this novel more recommended not to return next term because of the Heads understanding of the real issue around her conduct].

When eventually the truth did come out  - and not being very happy over it - she is better understood for the grasping of the second chance given to her and becomes more an asset never more so when she steps in at the last moment in a inter school cricket match with Larkiston as Charity Sheringham had injured her hand leading her team to a draw with a memorable performance.

Nancy at St. Brides

This month I am going to write a bit about a book which taps into part of me but was even when I was growing up was seen as part of a series that were more in the past more what we'd be handed down or bought second hand. This copy is the 2002 Girls Gone By paperback reprint.

 Nancy at St. Brides is the second in this series but in a lot of ways the first proper book in that this is where the main character Nancy makes here appearance as a relatively unschooled 14 year old dispatched to St.Brides  with instructions to be kept an eye on being very ahem spirited which soon shows in the dares she was only too willing to perform and caught out by the Sixth form prefects.

You could say she was impressionable which I was too at this age and this is the the story of her first unhappy term as she gets to grips with school structures, rules and consequences.

It's an enjoyable read not just for her spirit but also how working at channelling her interests starts to pay off.

The Girls of St. Brides

Reading is a passion of mine and it is not uncommon for authors  to write a whole series of stories that are self contained and over time start again which does make it hard pick a series to work ones way through.

In the instance of Dorita Fairlie Bruce, she actually wrote five whole series so I've cherry picked this the start of the St. Brides/Maudsley series to work my way through.

 Originally written in nineteen twenty-three and long out of print, this introduces to Island School of St. Brides on Inchmore far away from industrial west coast of Scotland and introduces us to its main characters although it obviously was not conceived as part of the "Nancy at St.Brides" series at the outset as Nancy doesn't make an appearance!

One strong point of this book is the inclusion of a disabled girl, Winifred who was disabled in early childhood and uses a wheelchair which is very rare for the period and how it touches on the idea of integration, talking about the sense of isolation and lack of acceptance showing how in this school and through the friendship with Morag, she emerges becoming very much a part of the school community.

Integrated education is as I know from direct personal experience as a disabled boy is still controversial and indeed for a period many did not have what would be recognized as a (appropriate) academic education.

Because it was written in nineteen twenty-three, Dorita does use the term "Cripple" to describe Winifred which would jar with many today but we need to remember that it is from the German term "Krupil" and one of the meanings of that word is "lame" which medically speaking is true as her limbs are indeed just that as are mine. 

It also is the case cripple did not acquire the common abusive undertones it did in the nineteen fifties and sixties as did "spastic" both of which went on unofficial blacklists of terms not to be used from the late seventies onward but Dorita in fairness uses cripple with sensitivity.

Thus it does not personally offend because her use of and development of that character is not in any way offensive.