August 18, 2025 • 13 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
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part twelve of My School Days by en Esbitt. The
sliprivox recording is in the public domain. Part twelve. When
I began to write of the recollections of my childhood,
I thought that all of those days which I remember
could well be told in these twelve chapters. But the
(00:22):
remembrances of that long ago time crowded thickly on me,
and I wandered in the pleasant fields of memory where
time ceases to be. So my twelfth chapter is reached
and finds me still only ten years old, and finds
me moreover, with not one tenth of the events of
those ten years recorded. If only one's memory were as
(00:44):
good for the events of yesterday, of last week of
last year, I have left myself no space to tell
you of my adventures in Germany and France during the
War of eighteen seventy of my English school days, much
that is not ever to be forgotten by me. Since
I must needs choose one out of many remembrances, I'd
(01:07):
choose my Kentish home, dearer to me than all. After
many wanderings, my mother took a house at Halstead, the
Hall it was called, But the house itself did not
lend itself to the pretensions of its name. A long, low,
red brick house that might have been commonplace but for
(01:27):
the roses and ivy that clung to the front of it,
and the rich, heavy jasmine that covered the side. There
was a smooth lawn with chestnut trees round it, and
a big garden where flowers and fruit and vegetables grew
together as they should, without jealousy or class distinction. There
when lever such peonies as grew among our currant bushes,
(01:50):
nor such apricots as hung among the leaves on the
sunny south wall. From a laburnum tree in the corner
of the lawn, we children lung an improvised hammock, and
there I used to read and dream and watch the
swaying green gold of leaf and blossom. Our garden ran
round three sides of a big pond. Perhaps it was
(02:13):
true that the pond did not make the house more healthy,
it certainly made it more interesting. Besides the raft, which
was but a dull thing. When the boys were away
at school, there were nooks among the laburnums and lilacs
that grew thickly round the pond, nooks where one could
hide with one's favorite books, and be secure from the
(02:34):
insistent and irritating demands so often made on one's time
by one's elders. For grown up people never thought of
spoiling their clothes by penetrating the shrubbery. Here, on many
a sunny day have I lounged away the morning, stifling
conscience with missus Ewing's tales, and refusing to remember the
(02:56):
tangle of untidiness in which I had left my room involved.
For I had a little room of my own, a
little little room with a long, low window and a
window ledge where bright plants in pots, encouraged by the
western sun, withstood the intermittence of my attentions and blossomed profusely.
(03:18):
My bookcase stood by this window, an old mahogany bookcase
with a deep top drawer that let down to form
a writing table. Here I used to sit and write verse, verse,
always verse, and stream of the days when I should
be a great poet like Shakespeare or Christina Rizzetti. Ah me,
(03:41):
that day is long in coming, But I never doubted
then that it would come. Here I wrote and dreamed,
and never showed my verses or told my dreams. From
many a long month. But when I was fifteen I
ventured to show some verses to my mother. She showed
them to mister Jap, then editor of Good Words and
(04:04):
the Sunday magazine. And never shall I forget the rapture
of delight and of gratitude with which I received the
news that my verses had been accepted by and by
they were printed, and I got a check for a guinea,
a whole guinea. Think of it now, The day when
I should be a poet seemed almost at hand, had
(04:27):
I not had a poem printed. Besides the desk and
the well oiled key that formed so excellent defense against
the boys, For what young poet could ever set down
a line with the possibility of even the best loved
brothers looking over her shoulder. My little room had another feature,
by terms a terror and a charm. A little trap
(04:50):
door in the ceiling led to that mysterious and delightful
region between the roof and the beams, A dark passage
leading all round the house and leading to oh deep
and abiding joy, to a little door that opened on
the roof itself. This until the higher powers discovered it
(05:12):
was a safer haven than even the shrubbery enclosed by
four pointed roofs of tiles, was a central space, safe secluded,
whence one could see the world around one's self invisible,
or at least unseen. Another trap door from the linen
closet by the boy's bedroom afforded them an equal access
(05:35):
to this same paradise. We kept a store of books
and good things in the hollow of the roof, and
many a pleasant picnic have we enjoyed there, Happy vanished
days when to be on the roof and to eat
tinned pine apple in secret constituted happiness. It was an uneventful, peaceful,
(05:56):
pleasant time. The only really exciting thing was the presence
within a stone's throw of our house of our landlady's son,
who lived all alone in a little cottage standing in
the fields. He was reported mad by the world, eccentric
by his friends, but as we found him perfectly harmless.
(06:20):
His one delusion, as far as I know, was that
he was the rightful owner, nay more, the rightful tenant
of our house. And about once in six months he
used to terrify the whole household by appearing with a
carpet bag at the front door and announcing that he
had come to take possession. This used to alarm us
all very much, because if a gentleman is eccentric enough
(06:43):
to wish to take possession of another person's house, there
is no knowing what he may be eccentric enough to
do next. But he was always persuaded to go away peaceably,
and I don't think we need have been so frightened. Once,
when he was in the drawing room being persuaded by
my mother, I peeped into the carpet bag he had
left in the hall. It contained three empty bottles that
(07:06):
had held mixed pickles, a loaf of bread, and a
barrister's wig and gown. Poor gentleman, I am afraid he
was very eccentric. Indeed, did I say that his existence
was our only excitement? Is it possible that I have
forgotten the dreadful day when my brother Alfred shot a fox.
(07:27):
He drew me mysteriously aside one morning after breakfast, Daisy,
He said, can you keep a secret? I could? I asseverated.
He drew me into his room, locked the door, and then,
opening a cupboard, displayed the body of a big dog fox.
Where did you get it? I shot it? Oh? Poor thing,
(07:51):
poor thing? Indeed, repeated my brother indignantly. Don't you know
no one would ever speak to me again if they
knew I had shot a fox? Then why did you?
Was the natural rejoinder. I didn't mean to. I was
out this morning after woodpigeons and I saw something move
in the bushes. I thought it was a rabbit, and
(08:11):
I fired, and it was this, What shall I do
with it? Bury it? We can have a splendid funeral,
I said you, baby, I was constantly forgetting that Alfred,
at seventeen, was grown up and that our old games
no longer interested him. Well, stuff it, then, you will
(08:35):
hardly believe it. But we really did try to stuff
that fox. My brother skinned it skillfully enough, and we
buried the body. We bought a shilling book on taxidermy.
We spent many shillings on chemicals. We nailed the fox's
skin to the inside of the cupboard door and operated
on it. My interest in the process was not lessened
(08:57):
by the fact that I felt the fox, where stuffed,
must be kept from all eyes but our own, hidden
forever in the depths of that cupboard, lest the world
in general should find out that Alfred had shut a
fox and that I had been an accessory after the fact,
and so should decline to ever speak to us again.
(09:18):
But we never stuffed it. We never even succeeded in
curing the skin, which after a while cried aloud for
vengeance so unmistakably that we had to take it out
and bury it secretly beside the body it had covered.
Both interments were conducted in the very early morning, before
(09:38):
even the maids were stirring, when the dew was gray
on the grass, and the scent of the wet earth
was sweet and fresh. When all the fox was buried,
I breathed more freely. Perhaps no one would ever know,
and people would go on speaking to us. I remember,
after the burial of the skin, we went for a
(09:59):
walk through the long wet grass, and came home with
wet feet and happy hearts. Oh those dewy mornings. The
resurrection of light and life in the woods and fields.
Would that it were possible for all children to live
in the country, where they may drink in consciously or unconsciously,
(10:20):
the dear delights of green meadow and dappled woodland, the
delight in green things growing in the tender beauty of
the evening light, on gray pastures, the glorious splendor of
the noonday sun, on meadows golden with buttercups, the browns
and purples of winter woodlands. This is a delight that
grows with one's growth, A delight that age cannot wither,
(10:44):
nor customs stale. A delight that the years, who take
from us so much, can never take away, can but
intensify and make more keen and precious nature never did
betray the heart that loved her. My book of memory
lies open always at the page where are the pictures
(11:07):
of Kentish cherry orchards, field and farm and gold dim
woodlands starred with primroses, light copses, where the bluebells and
wind flowers grow. Yes, bluebells and wind flowers to me
and to all who love them. Botanists who pull are
poor pretty things to pieces may call them hyacinths and anemonies.
(11:31):
And most plainly of all among the dream pictures shows
our old garden. At home. There is a gray walled garden,
far away from noise and smoke of cities, where the
hours pass with soft wings among the happy flowers and
lovely leisure blossoms. Every day there, tall and white the
(11:56):
septral lily blows. There grow the pans pink and columbine,
brave hollyhocks, and star white jessamine, and the red glory
of the royal rose. There, greeny glow worms gem the
dusky lawn. The lime trees breathe their fragrance to the night.
Pink roses sleep and dream that they are white, till
(12:20):
they wake to color with the dawn. There, in the
splendor of the sultry noon, the sunshine sleeps upon the
garden bed, where the white poppy droops a drowsy head,
and dreams of kisses from the white full moon. And
there all day my heart goes wandering, because there first
(12:42):
my heart began to know the glories of the summer
and the snow, the loveliness of harvest and of spring.
There may be fairer gardens, but I know there is
no other garden half so dear, because tis there this
many many a year, the sacred, sweet white flowers of
(13:03):
memory grow. End of Part twelve, End of My School
Days by e Nesbitt, recording by Corey Samuel
Part twelve of My School Days by en Esbitt. The
sliprivox recording is in the public domain. Part twelve. When
I began to write of the recollections of my childhood,
I thought that all of those days which I remember
could well be told in these twelve chapters. But the
(00:22):
remembrances of that long ago time crowded thickly on me,
and I wandered in the pleasant fields of memory where
time ceases to be. So my twelfth chapter is reached
and finds me still only ten years old, and finds
me moreover, with not one tenth of the events of
those ten years recorded. If only one's memory were as
(00:44):
good for the events of yesterday, of last week of
last year, I have left myself no space to tell
you of my adventures in Germany and France during the
War of eighteen seventy of my English school days, much
that is not ever to be forgotten by me. Since
I must needs choose one out of many remembrances, I'd
(01:07):
choose my Kentish home, dearer to me than all. After
many wanderings, my mother took a house at Halstead, the
Hall it was called, But the house itself did not
lend itself to the pretensions of its name. A long, low,
red brick house that might have been commonplace but for
(01:27):
the roses and ivy that clung to the front of it,
and the rich, heavy jasmine that covered the side. There
was a smooth lawn with chestnut trees round it, and
a big garden where flowers and fruit and vegetables grew
together as they should, without jealousy or class distinction. There
when lever such peonies as grew among our currant bushes,
(01:50):
nor such apricots as hung among the leaves on the
sunny south wall. From a laburnum tree in the corner
of the lawn, we children lung an improvised hammock, and
there I used to read and dream and watch the
swaying green gold of leaf and blossom. Our garden ran
round three sides of a big pond. Perhaps it was
(02:13):
true that the pond did not make the house more healthy,
it certainly made it more interesting. Besides the raft, which
was but a dull thing. When the boys were away
at school, there were nooks among the laburnums and lilacs
that grew thickly round the pond, nooks where one could
hide with one's favorite books, and be secure from the
(02:34):
insistent and irritating demands so often made on one's time
by one's elders. For grown up people never thought of
spoiling their clothes by penetrating the shrubbery. Here, on many
a sunny day have I lounged away the morning, stifling
conscience with missus Ewing's tales, and refusing to remember the
(02:56):
tangle of untidiness in which I had left my room involved.
For I had a little room of my own, a
little little room with a long, low window and a
window ledge where bright plants in pots, encouraged by the
western sun, withstood the intermittence of my attentions and blossomed profusely.
(03:18):
My bookcase stood by this window, an old mahogany bookcase
with a deep top drawer that let down to form
a writing table. Here I used to sit and write verse, verse,
always verse, and stream of the days when I should
be a great poet like Shakespeare or Christina Rizzetti. Ah me,
(03:41):
that day is long in coming, But I never doubted
then that it would come. Here I wrote and dreamed,
and never showed my verses or told my dreams. From
many a long month. But when I was fifteen I
ventured to show some verses to my mother. She showed
them to mister Jap, then editor of Good Words and
(04:04):
the Sunday magazine. And never shall I forget the rapture
of delight and of gratitude with which I received the
news that my verses had been accepted by and by
they were printed, and I got a check for a guinea,
a whole guinea. Think of it now, The day when
I should be a poet seemed almost at hand, had
(04:27):
I not had a poem printed. Besides the desk and
the well oiled key that formed so excellent defense against
the boys, For what young poet could ever set down
a line with the possibility of even the best loved
brothers looking over her shoulder. My little room had another feature,
by terms a terror and a charm. A little trap
(04:50):
door in the ceiling led to that mysterious and delightful
region between the roof and the beams, A dark passage
leading all round the house and leading to oh deep
and abiding joy, to a little door that opened on
the roof itself. This until the higher powers discovered it
(05:12):
was a safer haven than even the shrubbery enclosed by
four pointed roofs of tiles, was a central space, safe secluded,
whence one could see the world around one's self invisible,
or at least unseen. Another trap door from the linen
closet by the boy's bedroom afforded them an equal access
(05:35):
to this same paradise. We kept a store of books
and good things in the hollow of the roof, and
many a pleasant picnic have we enjoyed there, Happy vanished
days when to be on the roof and to eat
tinned pine apple in secret constituted happiness. It was an uneventful, peaceful,
(05:56):
pleasant time. The only really exciting thing was the presence
within a stone's throw of our house of our landlady's son,
who lived all alone in a little cottage standing in
the fields. He was reported mad by the world, eccentric
by his friends, but as we found him perfectly harmless.
(06:20):
His one delusion, as far as I know, was that
he was the rightful owner, nay more, the rightful tenant
of our house. And about once in six months he
used to terrify the whole household by appearing with a
carpet bag at the front door and announcing that he
had come to take possession. This used to alarm us
all very much, because if a gentleman is eccentric enough
(06:43):
to wish to take possession of another person's house, there
is no knowing what he may be eccentric enough to
do next. But he was always persuaded to go away peaceably,
and I don't think we need have been so frightened. Once,
when he was in the drawing room being persuaded by
my mother, I peeped into the carpet bag he had
left in the hall. It contained three empty bottles that
(07:06):
had held mixed pickles, a loaf of bread, and a
barrister's wig and gown. Poor gentleman, I am afraid he
was very eccentric. Indeed, did I say that his existence
was our only excitement? Is it possible that I have
forgotten the dreadful day when my brother Alfred shot a fox.
(07:27):
He drew me mysteriously aside one morning after breakfast, Daisy,
He said, can you keep a secret? I could? I asseverated.
He drew me into his room, locked the door, and then,
opening a cupboard, displayed the body of a big dog fox.
Where did you get it? I shot it? Oh? Poor thing,
(07:51):
poor thing? Indeed, repeated my brother indignantly. Don't you know
no one would ever speak to me again if they
knew I had shot a fox? Then why did you?
Was the natural rejoinder. I didn't mean to. I was
out this morning after woodpigeons and I saw something move
in the bushes. I thought it was a rabbit, and
(08:11):
I fired, and it was this, What shall I do
with it? Bury it? We can have a splendid funeral,
I said you, baby, I was constantly forgetting that Alfred,
at seventeen, was grown up and that our old games
no longer interested him. Well, stuff it, then, you will
(08:35):
hardly believe it. But we really did try to stuff
that fox. My brother skinned it skillfully enough, and we
buried the body. We bought a shilling book on taxidermy.
We spent many shillings on chemicals. We nailed the fox's
skin to the inside of the cupboard door and operated
on it. My interest in the process was not lessened
(08:57):
by the fact that I felt the fox, where stuffed,
must be kept from all eyes but our own, hidden
forever in the depths of that cupboard, lest the world
in general should find out that Alfred had shut a
fox and that I had been an accessory after the fact,
and so should decline to ever speak to us again.
(09:18):
But we never stuffed it. We never even succeeded in
curing the skin, which after a while cried aloud for
vengeance so unmistakably that we had to take it out
and bury it secretly beside the body it had covered.
Both interments were conducted in the very early morning, before
(09:38):
even the maids were stirring, when the dew was gray
on the grass, and the scent of the wet earth
was sweet and fresh. When all the fox was buried,
I breathed more freely. Perhaps no one would ever know,
and people would go on speaking to us. I remember,
after the burial of the skin, we went for a
(09:59):
walk through the long wet grass, and came home with
wet feet and happy hearts. Oh those dewy mornings. The
resurrection of light and life in the woods and fields.
Would that it were possible for all children to live
in the country, where they may drink in consciously or unconsciously,
(10:20):
the dear delights of green meadow and dappled woodland, the
delight in green things growing in the tender beauty of
the evening light, on gray pastures, the glorious splendor of
the noonday sun, on meadows golden with buttercups, the browns
and purples of winter woodlands. This is a delight that
grows with one's growth, A delight that age cannot wither,
(10:44):
nor customs stale. A delight that the years, who take
from us so much, can never take away, can but
intensify and make more keen and precious nature never did
betray the heart that loved her. My book of memory
lies open always at the page where are the pictures
(11:07):
of Kentish cherry orchards, field and farm and gold dim
woodlands starred with primroses, light copses, where the bluebells and
wind flowers grow. Yes, bluebells and wind flowers to me
and to all who love them. Botanists who pull are
poor pretty things to pieces may call them hyacinths and anemonies.
(11:31):
And most plainly of all among the dream pictures shows
our old garden. At home. There is a gray walled garden,
far away from noise and smoke of cities, where the
hours pass with soft wings among the happy flowers and
lovely leisure blossoms. Every day there, tall and white the
(11:56):
septral lily blows. There grow the pans pink and columbine,
brave hollyhocks, and star white jessamine, and the red glory
of the royal rose. There, greeny glow worms gem the
dusky lawn. The lime trees breathe their fragrance to the night.
Pink roses sleep and dream that they are white, till
(12:20):
they wake to color with the dawn. There, in the
splendor of the sultry noon, the sunshine sleeps upon the
garden bed, where the white poppy droops a drowsy head,
and dreams of kisses from the white full moon. And
there all day my heart goes wandering, because there first
(12:42):
my heart began to know the glories of the summer
and the snow, the loveliness of harvest and of spring.
There may be fairer gardens, but I know there is
no other garden half so dear, because tis there this
many many a year, the sacred, sweet white flowers of
(13:03):
memory grow. End of Part twelve, End of My School
Days by e Nesbitt, recording by Corey Samuel
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