A Name for Herself Read online

  I thought I had been sufficiently warned about George, but ere long I discovered that the half had not been told me. When George entered one door of Blanktown school, peace and order and law fled out of the other. George’s most striking peculiarity was a passionate love of fighting. George considered that day wasted on which he didn’t have a good, solid, all-round, impartial fight. Not long after his arrival, I entered the schoolroom one morning to find George and another boy in a furious tussle on the floor. The other boys stood around in glee, and the girls were shrieking on the tops of their desks. As nobody paid the least attention to my questions or commands, my only resource was to fly at the cloud of dust and drag the combatants apart by their coat-collars. While I lectured the first, George wriggled from my grasp, and at roll-call I missed him. I appointed a deputy to govern in my absence, and went in search of him. I found him sulking in a corner of the porch.

  Now, I was really very sorry for George. He had had no chances, and his training had been sadly deficient. I was honestly desirous of reforming him. In how many hundreds of Sundayschool books had I not read how bad boys, influenced by their teachers, turned from their evil ways, and grew up to be governors and bank-presidents, and a credit to their country generally. So I talked to George just beautifully – you’d be surprised. I didn’t altogether expect him to burst into penitential tears, and develop into a wingless angel on the spot, but I didn’t see how he could help being impressed. I never was more surprised in my life than when George, having heard me through, looked me squarely in the face and remarked, “You are a confounded fool,” in a tone of infinite contempt!

  Polite, wasn’t it? Encouraging, too! I went back to the schoolroom a sadder and a wiser girl; I thought there must be something astray in the logic of Sunday-school books. Since moral suasion had so poor an effect on George, I thought the birch might bring the argument more forcibly home to him, though I hated to think of using it. So a few days afterwards when he had thrown a smelt2 at one of the girls, I called him up to my desk and said, “Hold out your hand,” in a very terrible tone of voice, that quite concealed my inward quaking. I didn’t expect to be obeyed. In fact I rather expected to be instantly annihilated. It was the second great surprise of my life when George quietly held out his dirty paw and took his punishment without a word. Then he went home, and for a month we saw no more of him. I fondly hoped he had gone for good.

  But, alas! just as the remembrance of his misconduct had begun to fade away like a bad dream, George returned, as cheerful and irrepressible as ever, and in a mood that reminded me of the man in the Scripture, whose house had been swept and garnished.3 From that out George’s record was phenomenal. He really surpassed himself. Our mutual conflicts became so common that the pupils hardly stopped their work to look on. George’s sole merit was punctuality – he never missed a day – and you may well believe I almost regarded it as an additional vice.

  Finally, matters reached a climax, just in time to save my reason. One morning, I took upon myself, without consulting George, to change the seats of the fourth class further front. When he came in, rather late, he emphatically informed me that he didn’t approve of this arrangement. We had a sharp argument, my patience suddenly gave way, and I curtly informed him that I would see the trustees at once, and have him expelled from the school again.

  George’s dignity was mortally offended. He snatched his cap, knocked over a bench, shied his slate at an inoffensive pupil who was wrestling with decimals in a remote corner, kicked over a pile of wood by the stove, and shook the dust of that unhallowed place from his feet, never to return to it while I was teacher in Blanktown school! He was a very peculiar youth – that George.

  (1896)

  James Henry, Truant

  L.

  In this sketch, published in The Prince of Wales College Observer a month after “Crooked Answers,” Montgomery draws once again on her teaching experiences to tell a story of yet another troublemaking boy. But while both this piece and “Crooked Answers” focus on teaching and were published in two issues in a row, each appears with its own byline – “L.M.M.” in the first piece, “L.” in this one – both designed presumably to protect her anonymity.

  IT WAS CHRONIC WITH HIM, SO THEY SAID,1 BORN IN HIM and incurable, but you would never have thought it to look at him. He had the most guileless, open countenance you could possibly imagine; his big, pale blue eyes could look you squarely in the face with an expression of utter innocence; his uneven whitish hair had not one lawless kink or curl in it. He had a most engaging smile, and altogether a stranger would certainly have taken him for the model boy of the school; appearances were never more illusive than in the case of James Henry. James Henry had reduced the practice of mischief to a fine art, but he particularly excelled in playing truant. It was an everyday performance with him, and there was a legend current in the educational circles of Blanktown that on the very first day that James Henry, with a brand new jacket and primer, and a clean face for once in his life, had been sent to school, he had – accidently, of course – dropped his primer over the bridge and spent the day, meditating upon his loss, in the woods. Since then, if ever a week had passed in which James Henry had not played truant, the teacher I was assured, always chalked it carefully up, that he who ran might read and remember the unusual occurrence.

  Very small inducements were sufficient to allure James Henry from the path of duty. A good chance to go trouting, a rumor of ripe raspberries over at Sandy Plains, an opportunity to go bird-nesting or steal a ride to the station, or even the mere fact that the day was warm and the water in the creek just right for swimming – let any of these come in his way and we saw nothing of James Henry in school that day, trying to borrow a slate pencil or driving live crickets, harnessed to strings up and down the aisle when my back was turned, or trying to trade a sour apple for a chew of gum.

  When James Henry answered “Present,” at morning roll-call it generally took me till recess to recover from my surprise. If he did not, however, there was nothing to do but wait till he came shambling in at noon, with his innocent smile and bland blue eyes, as if he had not his pockets stored with imprisoned crickets at that very moment. No punishment ever had any effect on James Henry. He took it, as he took everything else, with a cheerful resignation, and an apologetic smile that seemed to ask pardon for the trouble he was giving you.

  One day in August was particularly warm and stifling. Not a breath of wind stirred, and a smoky, blue haze slept on the brows of the hills, and blurred sky and sea on the far pearly horizon. The blue waters of the creek, shimmered and creamed invitingly down beneath the willows on its banks. It was very, very warm and James Henry, eating his bread and molasses on the fence at dinner time, looked down across the clover pastures, thought what a fine day it was for a swim, was tempted and fell. He put his last crust in his pocket and started for the creek; and, when school went in for the afternoon James Henry was neither at his desk nor under it, nor hiding behind the porch door, nor sunning himself on the woodpile.

  A warm day in school tries a teacher’s patience severely, and I lost mine just then. With a grim smile that boded no good to James Henry, I asked where he was. A dozen grimy hands went up and as many voices shouted out that he had gone swimming in the creek, in defiance of the express warnings and reminders of the owners of the said voices. Thereupon I despatched Tom Merrybone to the creek, with orders to bring James Henry back, dead or alive; and Tom went out, followed by the envious looks of the others. Soon Bob Sly asked to go out and slipped off, after Tom and two boys who had gone for water, left their bucket on the road and joined in the chase. The four ministers of justice, Tom at their head, arrived on the banks of the creek just as James Henry scrambled out on the other side and proceeded to hurry into his scanty garments. Tom shouted across that if he didn’t instantly return to the school, it would be worse for him; and the other boys looked mysterious and said that they just guessed they wouldn’t be in his shoes for a good deal, and adv
ised him to “just wait and see.”

  The unfortunate James Henry did not want to wait and see. He turned, scrambled up the bank, and made off across the fields.

  Tom and his confederates gazed at each other blankly; but “teacher” had ordered them not to return without James Henry, and she must be obeyed at any cost – more particularly when such obedience meant a lively chase through woods and fields, instead of sweltering over fractions in a close room.

  So they resolutely waded across the creek and gave chase to the fugitive. When James Henry saw them coming in full pursuit, he changed his course and made for the blueberry barrens over at Sandy Plains; there he would have a better chance of eluding his pursuers among the spruce copses. He ran and they ran, across fields, over fences, through brush and under-growth, with perspiration streaming from every pore, and a firm determination to win or die. James Henry had the start and, fear lending him wings, he kept it. Like a hunted animal, he flew through the barrens of Sandy Plains, up the railroad track for half a mile, then through the woods between Sandy Plains and Blanktown, and out again into the fields far back of the school. But James Henry’s strength was failing him; his pursuers gained on him foot by foot, till at last they seized him, half over a knotty longer fence,2 and dragged him forcibly to the ground, much to the detriment of his already tattered garments.

  Meanwhile at Blanktown school, we had given up hope of seeing any of them back that day. James Henry must have succeeded in winning the enemy over to his side; probably he had bribed them with apples or trained crickets – crickets were marketable commodities in Blanktown school – and they had basely betrayed their trust. Tom Merrybone’s defection vexed me most; I had always thought I could depend on Tom.

  It was well on in the afternoon when, glancing out of the back window, I saw the four victors marching down across the fields, half leading, half dragging the exhausted and shrinking James Henry. But within one field of the school the latter’s legs, or conscience, or both, failed him utterly, and he lay flatly down on the ground and refused to stir. The others stood over him and argued, but seemingly with no effect and, when I tapped imperatively on the window, they decided that it was time for prompt measures. Each one seized poor James Henry by a leg or arm and, despite his kickings and squirmings, swept down the field with him, in at the door and up the aisle to deposit their victim triumphantly at my feet, where he lay breathless and hatless, torn, dusty and in tears.

  I looked at the poor little object and my anger melted away. Tom Merrybone and company were remanded to their seats with a severe rebuke, and James Henry was told to go and work an addition sum for penance – a mild punishment, which disappointed those who had expected some excitement.

  But James Henry was cured forever and a day. He had had enough of playing truant to last him for the last of his natural life; and though he continued to barter apples and lose his pencils and drive crickets, he never again played truant while I was mistress of Blanktown school.

  (1896)

  A Girl’s Place at Dalhousie College

  LUCY M. MONTGOMERY

  This article appeared in the Halifax Herald in late April 1896 as part of a multi-page coverage of “The Thirty Sweet Girl Graduates of Dalhousie University” – a term from Tennyson’s “The Princess” that had been central to L.T. Meade’s popular school novel A Sweet Girl Graduate (1891). It seems rather odd that the editors asked Montgomery to contribute this piece, given that she was not about to graduate and that she knew she would not be able to continue with her undergraduate studies beyond her one year. Cecily Devereux notes that Montgomery’s journal entry dated the day of the publication of this piece omits any mention of it and describes her journey back to Prince Edward Island: “This article’s appearance on the day of the conclusion of her academic career suggests that it is also interesting as a kind of valediction.”1 For the ever pragmatic Montgomery, the stated challenge with writing the piece was not philosophical but practical: “I want to do it but the request couldn’t have come at a more inconvenient time.” It is worth noting, too, that of all the pieces appearing in this cluster of articles, Montgomery’s is the only one that is signed.2

  Devereux, introducing this piece in her critical edition of Anne of Green Gables, notes that it contains “the full ambivalence of Montgomery’s feminism, conveying her sense of the importance of ‘advancement’ for exceptional women, and of the maintenance of the status quo for everyone else.” More specifically, in Devereux’s view, Montgomery “makes the somewhat compromised point that an educated woman makes a better wife and mother – that is, that education for women is valuable for men and society, rather than for women as individuals.”3 Devereux’s assessment of Montgomery’s feminism in this essay can be contrasted with the unsigned headnote to a reprint of this article in a 1979 issue of Atlantis: A Women’s Studies Journal, which finds this article far more compelling in terms of its treatment of “the pride and independence of her spirit” compared with what is found in the novels Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island, which are “disappointing to feminists” in terms of their “treatment of women’s education” because they focus on “Anne’s romantic aspirations to find a mate who would suit all the vagaries of her imagination and personality.” As the unsigned headnote adds, “Montgomery’s own aspirations and concerns at Dalhousie College in 1896 were closer to her original concept of Anne as the independent and responsible young woman who emerges from her first novel.”4

  “Why, sirs, they do all this as well as we.”

  * * * * *

  “Girls,

  Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed;

  Drink deep until the habits of the slave,

  The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite

  And slander, die. Better not be at all

  Than not be noble.”

  * * * * *

  “Pretty were the sight,

  If our old halls could change their sex and flaunt

  With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,

  And sweet girl graduates in their golden hair.”

  Tennyson – “The Princess”5

  IT IS NOT A VERY LONG TIME, AS TIME GOES IN THE world’s history, since the idea of educating a girl beyond her “three r’s”6 would have been greeted with up lifted hands and shocked countenances. What! Could any girl, in her right and proper senses, ask for any higher, more advanced education than that accorded her by tradition and custom? Could any girl presume to think the attainments of her mother and grandmother before her, insufficient for her?7 Above all, could she dream of opposing her weak feminine mind to the mighty masculine intellect which had been dominating the world of knowledge from a date long preceding the time when Hypatia was torn to pieces by the mob of Alexandria?8

  “Never,” was the approved answer to all such questions. Girls were “educated” according to the standard of the time. That is they were taught reading and writing and a small smattering of foreign languages; they “took” music and were trained to warble pretty little songs and instructed in the mysteries of embroidery and drawing. The larger proportion of them, of course, married, and we are quite ready to admit that they made none the poorer wives and mothers because they could not conjugate a Greek verb or demonstrate a proposition in Euclid.9 It is not the purpose of this article to discuss whether, with a broader education, they might not have fulfilled the duties of wifehood and motherhood equally well and with much more of ease to themselves and others.

  OLD TRADITIONS DIE HARD

  and we will step very gently around their death bed. But there was always a certain number of unfortunates – let us call them so since the world persists in using the term10 – who, for no fault of their own probably, were left to braid St. Catherine’s tresses for the term of their natural lives;11 and a hard lot truly was theirs in the past. If they did not live in meek dependence with some compassionate relative, eating the bitter bread of unappreciated drudgery, it was because they could earn a meagre and precarious subsis
tence in the few and underpaid occupations then open to women. They could do nothing else! Their education had not fitted them to cope with any and every destiny; they were helpless straws, swept along the merciless current of existence.

  If some woman, with the courage of her convictions, dared to make a stand against the popular prejudice, she was sneered at as a “blue-stocking,”12 and prudent mothers held her up as a warning example to their pretty, frivolous daughters, and looked askance at her as a not altogether desirable curiosity.

  But, nowadays, all this is so changed that we are inclined to wonder if it has not taken longer than a generation to effect the change. The “higher education of women” has passed into a common place phrase.

  A GIRL IS NO LONGER SHUT OUT FROM THE TEMPLE OF KNOWLEDGE

  simply because she is a girl; she can compete, and has competed, successfully with her brother in all his classes. The way is made easy before her feet; there is no struggle to render her less sweet and womanly, and the society of to-day is proud of its “sweet girl-graduates.”

  If they marry, their husbands find in their wives an increased capacity for assistance and sympathy; their children can look up to their mothers for the clearest judgment and the wisest guidance. If they do not marry, their lives are still full and happy and useful; they have something to do and can do it well, and the world is better off from their having been born in it.

  In England there have been two particularly brilliant examples of what a girl can do when she is given an equal chance with her brother; these are so widely known that it is hardly necessary to name them. Every one has read and heard of Miss Fawcett, the brilliant mathematician, who came out ahead of the senior wrangler at Cambridge,13 and of Miss Ramsay, who led the classical tripos at the same university.14