August 18, 2025 • 9 mins
In this enchanting memoir, the author takes us on a nostalgic journey through her school days, originally serialized in The Girls Own Paper from October 1896 to September 1897. Filled with heartfelt stories about beloved teachers, cherished friends, and the childhood fears that lingered into adulthood, this account also offers a vibrant depiction of the most memorable summer of her youth. Summary by Cori Samuel.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part nine of My School Days by E. Nesbitt. This
liprivox recording is in the public domain. Part nine La Haye.
After our experience in Auverne, the rest of our travel
was so flat as to have faded almost entirely from
my memory. As soon as we reached England, I was
(00:23):
sent to school, to a school of which I shall
have more to say. Presently there were only twenty girls.
Missus mac Bean was one of the best and kindest
women who ever lived, a devoted Christian with a heart
large enough to take in all her girls. If I
could have been happy at any school, I should have
been happy there. And I was not actively unhappy, for
(00:47):
I lived on my mother's promise that in July I
should go back to her again. Where she was I
didn't know, but I knew she was looking for a
pretty home for us. All I used to write letters
to her address to Saint Martin's Legrand, which I think
I believed to be in Paris. At last, the news
came that she had decided to live at Dinan in Brittany,
(01:09):
and that in two short days I was to go
by boat and join her. One day passed. The next day,
at dinner I was hugging myself on the thought of
the morrow. To morrow, I said to the girl next me,
I shall be going to my mother in France. Oh no, dear,
said the governess. At the foot of the table, Miss
(01:31):
mac Bean says, you're not going till Wednesday. With a crash,
my card castle came tumbling about my ears. Wednesday might
as well have been next year. It seemed so far off.
I burst into passionate weeping. Just as the servant placed
a large plate of steaming black currant pudding before me.
(01:52):
I saw through my tears how vexed Miss mac Bean looked.
She hadn't meant to break the news to me in
this way. Come, daisy, she said, after a while, don't cry, dear.
Have some black currant pudding, nice black currant pudding. I
don't want any black currant pudding, I cried, I hate it.
I never want any pudding again. And with that I
(02:15):
rushed from the room, And from that day to this
I have never been able to tolerate black currant pudding.
Every One was very kind to me, but there was
not any one there who could at all understand the
agony that that delay cost me. I didn't care to eat.
I didn't care to sleep, or play or read. When
my mother met me at Saint Malo on the following Thursday,
(02:38):
her first words were, why how pale and ill the
child looks. My sister suggested that it was the steamboat,
but I don't believe it was. I believe it was
the awful shock that came to me over the black
currant pudding, a long drive on a diligence by miles
and miles of straight white road, the fatigue of the
(03:00):
journey forgotten in the consciousness that I was going home,
not to a hotel, not to a boarding house, but home.
The small material objects that surround one's daily life have
always influenced me deeply. Even as a child, I found
that in a familiar entourage one could be contented, if
(03:21):
not happy. But hotels and boarding houses and lodgings have
always bored me to extinction. Of course, as a matter
of theory, one ought to carry one's intellectual atmosphere with
one and be independent of surroundings. But as a matter
of practice it can't be done, at least by me.
(03:42):
I have a cat like fondness for things I am
accustomed to, and I am not singular in this respect.
I once knew a woman who, after years of genteel
poverty and comfortless economy, had an opportunity of a new
life in comparatively affluent circumstances. Why, ever, don't you accept it,
I said, when she told me of it, I can't
(04:05):
make up my mind to it. She said, you see,
I should have to leave the furniture. I felt some
sympathy for her, though I hoped that in her place
I should have been strong minded enough to make another choice.
At last, the Diligence drew up at a cross roads
where a cart was waiting, and to this our luggage
(04:26):
was transferred. It turned up one of the side roads,
and we followed on foot up a hill wound the road,
a steep wooded slope on one side, and on the
other a high clay bank set with dainty ferns. Here
and there a tiny spring trickled down to join the
little stream that ran beside the road. We turned a
(04:49):
corner by a farm, through a herd of gaunt pigs
nearly as big as donkeys, the sight of which made
me clasp my mother's hand more tightly. Each pig had
a bar of wood suspended from his neck by a string,
so that if he tried to stray through the hedge,
the bar would catch and hold him back. All the
pigs tried to walk over this bar as it hung
(05:10):
against their fore legs. They never succeeded, but the action
gave them all the air of high stepping carriage horses.
Then we walked a little further along the white road,
and the cart turned in at a wooden gate. We
followed along the carriage drive, which ran along outside the
high red wall of the big garden, then through a
(05:31):
plantation of huge horse chestnut trees. To the left, I
could see ricks, cows, and pigs, all the bustle and
color of a farm yard. Two great brown gates swung
back on their hinges, and we passed through them into
the courtyard of the dearest home of my childhood. The
(05:52):
courtyard was square. One side was formed by the house, dairy,
coach house, and the chicken house formed the second side.
On the third side were stable, cow house and goat shed.
On the fourth wood shed, dog kennel, and the great
gates by which we had entered. The house itself was
an ordinary whitewashed, slate roofed French country house with an
(06:16):
immense walled fruit garden on the other side of it.
There never was such another garden. There never will be. Peaches,
apriy carts, nectarines, and grapes of all kinds lined the
inside walls. The avenue that ran down the middle of
it was of fig trees and standard peach trees. There
(06:37):
were raspberries, cherries, and strawberries, and flowers mingling with fruits
and vegetables in a confusion the most charming in the world.
Along the end of the garden was a great arcade
of black clipped ewes, so thick and strong that a
child could crawl on the outside of it without falling through.
(06:57):
Above the dairy and coach house was immense hayloft, a
straw loft over the stable and cow house what play
rooms for wet days. Beyond the chicken house was the orchard,
full of twisted gray apple trees, beneath whose boughs in
due season, the barley grew beyond a network of lanes
(07:19):
fringed with maidenhair, led away into fairy land. My brothers
eagerly led me around to show me all the treasures
of the new home. There was a swing in the orchard.
There were trees full of cherries, white and black, and
we may eat as many as we like, said Alfred.
That afternoon we gathered a waste paper basket full of cherries,
(07:42):
and with strenuous greed, set ourselves to empty it. We
didn't succeed, of course, but the effort, so far as
I remember, was attended by no evil consequences. We gave
what we couldn't eat to the little black English pig.
Another of the treasures of the new home. There was
a little black cow. There was a goat who resented
(08:04):
with her horns my efforts. After goat's milk. I learnt
to milk her afterwards, though, and she grew very kind
and condescending. Then there were two ponies, Punch and Judy.
And Punch, my brothers told me proudly, was for us
to ride. This was the crowning happiness. We had never
had a pony of our own before. He was a tiresome,
(08:27):
pig headed little beast, that pony, but we loved him dearly.
He had a way of pretending to be frightfully thirsty
when you were out riding him, and when in the
kindness of your heart you let him bend his head
to a wayside pond for a drink, he would kick
up his wicked little heels and over his head you
had to go. If he could rub you off against
(08:48):
a tree as you rode across the fields, he would
do it with all the pleasure in life. He was
rather good at jumping, and he and I had some
pleasant cross country expeditions. But if anything in the nature
of the obstacle you put him at happened to strike
his fancy disagreeably, he had a clever way of stopping
short at the last moment, when, of course, you went
(09:08):
over his head. He threw me three times in this
way one morning, but after that I was up to him.
End of Part nine
Part nine of My School Days by E. Nesbitt. This
liprivox recording is in the public domain. Part nine La Haye.
After our experience in Auverne, the rest of our travel
was so flat as to have faded almost entirely from
my memory. As soon as we reached England, I was
(00:23):
sent to school, to a school of which I shall
have more to say. Presently there were only twenty girls.
Missus mac Bean was one of the best and kindest
women who ever lived, a devoted Christian with a heart
large enough to take in all her girls. If I
could have been happy at any school, I should have
been happy there. And I was not actively unhappy, for
(00:47):
I lived on my mother's promise that in July I
should go back to her again. Where she was I
didn't know, but I knew she was looking for a
pretty home for us. All I used to write letters
to her address to Saint Martin's Legrand, which I think
I believed to be in Paris. At last, the news
came that she had decided to live at Dinan in Brittany,
(01:09):
and that in two short days I was to go
by boat and join her. One day passed. The next day,
at dinner I was hugging myself on the thought of
the morrow. To morrow, I said to the girl next me,
I shall be going to my mother in France. Oh no, dear,
said the governess. At the foot of the table, Miss
(01:31):
mac Bean says, you're not going till Wednesday. With a crash,
my card castle came tumbling about my ears. Wednesday might
as well have been next year. It seemed so far off.
I burst into passionate weeping. Just as the servant placed
a large plate of steaming black currant pudding before me.
(01:52):
I saw through my tears how vexed Miss mac Bean looked.
She hadn't meant to break the news to me in
this way. Come, daisy, she said, after a while, don't cry, dear.
Have some black currant pudding, nice black currant pudding. I
don't want any black currant pudding, I cried, I hate it.
I never want any pudding again. And with that I
(02:15):
rushed from the room, And from that day to this
I have never been able to tolerate black currant pudding.
Every One was very kind to me, but there was
not any one there who could at all understand the
agony that that delay cost me. I didn't care to eat.
I didn't care to sleep, or play or read. When
my mother met me at Saint Malo on the following Thursday,
(02:38):
her first words were, why how pale and ill the
child looks. My sister suggested that it was the steamboat,
but I don't believe it was. I believe it was
the awful shock that came to me over the black
currant pudding, a long drive on a diligence by miles
and miles of straight white road, the fatigue of the
(03:00):
journey forgotten in the consciousness that I was going home,
not to a hotel, not to a boarding house, but home.
The small material objects that surround one's daily life have
always influenced me deeply. Even as a child, I found
that in a familiar entourage one could be contented, if
(03:21):
not happy. But hotels and boarding houses and lodgings have
always bored me to extinction. Of course, as a matter
of theory, one ought to carry one's intellectual atmosphere with
one and be independent of surroundings. But as a matter
of practice it can't be done, at least by me.
(03:42):
I have a cat like fondness for things I am
accustomed to, and I am not singular in this respect.
I once knew a woman who, after years of genteel
poverty and comfortless economy, had an opportunity of a new
life in comparatively affluent circumstances. Why, ever, don't you accept it,
I said, when she told me of it, I can't
(04:05):
make up my mind to it. She said, you see,
I should have to leave the furniture. I felt some
sympathy for her, though I hoped that in her place
I should have been strong minded enough to make another choice.
At last, the Diligence drew up at a cross roads
where a cart was waiting, and to this our luggage
(04:26):
was transferred. It turned up one of the side roads,
and we followed on foot up a hill wound the road,
a steep wooded slope on one side, and on the
other a high clay bank set with dainty ferns. Here
and there a tiny spring trickled down to join the
little stream that ran beside the road. We turned a
(04:49):
corner by a farm, through a herd of gaunt pigs
nearly as big as donkeys, the sight of which made
me clasp my mother's hand more tightly. Each pig had
a bar of wood suspended from his neck by a string,
so that if he tried to stray through the hedge,
the bar would catch and hold him back. All the
pigs tried to walk over this bar as it hung
(05:10):
against their fore legs. They never succeeded, but the action
gave them all the air of high stepping carriage horses.
Then we walked a little further along the white road,
and the cart turned in at a wooden gate. We
followed along the carriage drive, which ran along outside the
high red wall of the big garden, then through a
(05:31):
plantation of huge horse chestnut trees. To the left, I
could see ricks, cows, and pigs, all the bustle and
color of a farm yard. Two great brown gates swung
back on their hinges, and we passed through them into
the courtyard of the dearest home of my childhood. The
(05:52):
courtyard was square. One side was formed by the house, dairy,
coach house, and the chicken house formed the second side.
On the third side were stable, cow house and goat shed.
On the fourth wood shed, dog kennel, and the great
gates by which we had entered. The house itself was
an ordinary whitewashed, slate roofed French country house with an
(06:16):
immense walled fruit garden on the other side of it.
There never was such another garden. There never will be. Peaches,
apriy carts, nectarines, and grapes of all kinds lined the
inside walls. The avenue that ran down the middle of
it was of fig trees and standard peach trees. There
(06:37):
were raspberries, cherries, and strawberries, and flowers mingling with fruits
and vegetables in a confusion the most charming in the world.
Along the end of the garden was a great arcade
of black clipped ewes, so thick and strong that a
child could crawl on the outside of it without falling through.
(06:57):
Above the dairy and coach house was immense hayloft, a
straw loft over the stable and cow house what play
rooms for wet days. Beyond the chicken house was the orchard,
full of twisted gray apple trees, beneath whose boughs in
due season, the barley grew beyond a network of lanes
(07:19):
fringed with maidenhair, led away into fairy land. My brothers
eagerly led me around to show me all the treasures
of the new home. There was a swing in the orchard.
There were trees full of cherries, white and black, and
we may eat as many as we like, said Alfred.
That afternoon we gathered a waste paper basket full of cherries,
(07:42):
and with strenuous greed, set ourselves to empty it. We
didn't succeed, of course, but the effort, so far as
I remember, was attended by no evil consequences. We gave
what we couldn't eat to the little black English pig.
Another of the treasures of the new home. There was
a little black cow. There was a goat who resented
(08:04):
with her horns my efforts. After goat's milk. I learnt
to milk her afterwards, though, and she grew very kind
and condescending. Then there were two ponies, Punch and Judy.
And Punch, my brothers told me proudly, was for us
to ride. This was the crowning happiness. We had never
had a pony of our own before. He was a tiresome,
(08:27):
pig headed little beast, that pony, but we loved him dearly.
He had a way of pretending to be frightfully thirsty
when you were out riding him, and when in the
kindness of your heart you let him bend his head
to a wayside pond for a drink, he would kick
up his wicked little heels and over his head you
had to go. If he could rub you off against
(08:48):
a tree as you rode across the fields, he would
do it with all the pleasure in life. He was
rather good at jumping, and he and I had some
pleasant cross country expeditions. But if anything in the nature
of the obstacle you put him at happened to strike
his fancy disagreeably, he had a clever way of stopping
short at the last moment, when, of course, you went
(09:08):
over his head. He threw me three times in this
way one morning, but after that I was up to him.
End of Part nine
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