Agahta Christie_ An autobiography

IV

I sometimes think that in my last incarnation, if the theory of reincarnation is right, I must have been a dog. I have a great many of the doga€?s habits. If anybody is undertaking anything or going anywhere I always want to be taken with them and do it too. In the same way, when returning home after this long absence I acted exactly like a dog. A dog always runs all round the house examining everything, sniffing here, sniffing there, finding out by its nose what has been going on, and visiting all its a€?best spotsa€?. I did exactly the same. I went all round the house, then went out in the garden and visited my pet spots there: the tub, the see-saw tree, my little secret post overlooking the road outside in a hiding place up by the wall. I found my hoop and tested its condition, and took about an hour to satisfy myself that all was exactly as it had been before.

The greatest change had taken place in my dog, Tony. Tony had been a small, neat Yorkshire terrier when we went away. He was now, owing to Froudiea€?s loving care and endless meals, as fat as a balloon. She was completely Tonya€?s slave, and when my mother and I went to fetch him home Froudie gave us a long dissertation on how he liked to sleep, what exactly he had to be covered with in his basket, his tastes in food, and what time he liked his walk. At intervals she broke off her conversation with us to speak to Tony. a€?Mothera€?s lovely,a€she said. a€?Mothera€?s handsome.a€Tony looked very appreciative at these remarks, but nevertheless seemed to take them as no more than his due. a€?And he wona€?t eat a morsel,a€said Froudie proudly, a€?unless you give it him by hand. Oh no, I have to feed him every single little piece myself.a€?

I noticed a look in my mothera€?s face, and I could see that Tony was not going to receive quite that treatment at home. We took him home with us in the hired cab which we had got for the occasion, plus his bedding and the rest of his possessions. Tony, of course, was delighted to see us, and licked me all over. When his dinner was prepared and brought, Froudiea€?s warning was proved true. Tony looked at it, looked up at my mother and at me, moved a few steps away and sat down, waiting like a grand seigneur to have each morsel fed to him. I gave him a piece and he accepted it graciously, but my mother stopped that.

a€?Ita€?s no good,a€she said. a€?He will have to learn to eat his dinner properly, as he used to do. Leave his dinner down there. Hea€?ll go and eat it presently.a€?

But Tony did not go and eat it. He sat there. And never have I seen a dog more overcome with righteous indignation. His large, sorrowful, brown eyes went round the assembled family and back to his plate. He was clearly saying, a€?I want it. Dona€?t you seeI want my dinner. Give it to me.a€However, my mother was firm.

a€?Even if he doesna€?t eat it today,a€she said, a€?he will tomorrow.a€a€?You dona€?t think hea€?ll starve?a€I demanded.

My mother looked thoughtfully at Tonya€?s immensely broad back. a€?A little starvation,a€she said, a€?would do him a world of good.a€?

It was not till the following evening that Tony capitulated, and then he saved his pride by eating his dinner when nobody was in the room. After that there was no further trouble. Days of being treated like a Grand Duke were over, and Tony obviously accepted the fact. Still, he did not forget that for a whole year he had been the beloved darling of another house. Any word of reproof, any trouble he got into, and immediately he would sneak off and trot down to Froudiea€?s house, where he obviously told her that he was not properly appreciated. The habit persisted for quite a long time.

Marie was now Tonya€?s nurse-attendant, in addition to her other duties. It was amusing to see Marie arrive when we were playing downstairs in the evening, an apron tied round her waist, saying politely, a€?Monsieur Toni pour le bain.a€Monsieur Tony would immediately try to get down on all fours and slide under the sofa, since he had a poor opinion of the weekly bath. Extracted, he was carried off, his tail drooping and his ears down. Marie would report proudly later on the amount of fleas that were floating on top of the Jeyes fluid.

I must say that now dogs do not seem to have nearly as many fleas as they did in my young days. In spite of baths, brushing and combing, and large amounts of Jeyes fluid, all our dogs always seemed to be full of fleas. Perhaps they frequented stables and played with other flea-ridden dogs more than they do now. On the other hand they were less pampered, and they did not seem to live at the vets as much as dogs do today. I dona€?t remember Tony ever being seriously ill, his coat seemed always in good condition, he ate his meals, which were the scraps from our own dinner, and little fuss was made about his health.

But much more fuss is made about children now than was then the case. Temperatures, unless they were high, were not taken much notice of. A temperature of 102, sustained for twenty-four hours, would probably involve a visit from the doctor, but anything under that was given little attention. Occasionally, after a surfeit of green apples one might have what was termed a bilious attack. Twenty-four hours in bed with starvation usually cured that quite easily. Food was good and varied. I suppose there was a tendency to keep young children on milk and starch far too long, but certainly I, from a young age, had tastes of the steak that was sent up for Nursiea€?s supper, and under-done roast beef was one of my favourite meals. Devonshire cream, too, was eaten in quantities; so much nicer than cod liver oil, my mother used to say. Sometimes one ate it on bread and sometimes with a spoon. Alas! You never see real Devonshire cream in Devon nowadaysa€“not as it used to bea€“scalded and taken off the milk in layers with its yellow top standing in a china bowl. There is no doubt about it, my favourite thing has been, is, and probably always will be, cream.

Mother, who craved for variety in food as well as in everything else, used from time to time to have a new craze. One time it was a€?therea€?s more nourishment in an egga€?. On this slogan we had eggs at practically every meal till father rebelled. There was also a fishy period, when we lived on sole and whiting and improved our brains. However, having made the round of the food diets, mother usually returned to the normal; just as, having dragged father through Theosophy, the Unitarian church, a near miss of becoming a Roman Catholic, and a flirtation with Buddhism, she returned at last to the Church of England.

It was satisfactory to come home and find everything just as usual. There was only one change, and that was for the better. I now had my devoted Marie.

I suppose that until I dipped a hand into my bag of remembrances I had never actually thought about Mariea€“she was just Marie, part of my life. To a child the world is simply what is happening to him or her: and that includes the people in ita€“whom they like, whom they hate, what makes them happy, what makes them unhappy. Marie, fresh, cheerful, smiling, always agreeable, was a much appreciated member of the household.

What I wonder now is what it meant to herShe had been, I think, very happy during the autumn and winter that we spent travelling in France and the Channel Islands. She was seeing places, the life in the hotels was pleasant, and, strangely enough, she liked her young charge. I would, of course, like to think that she liked me because I was mea€“but Marie was genuinely fond of children, and would have liked any child that she was looking after, short of one or two of those infantile monsters that one does encounter. I was certainly not particularly obedient to her; I dona€?t think the French have the capacity for enforcing obedience. In many ways I behaved disgracefully. In particular I hated going to bed, and invented a splendid game of leaping round all the furniture, climbing up on wardrobes, down from the tops of chests of drawers, completing the circuit of the room without ever once touching the floor. Marie, standing in the doorway, would moan: a€?Oh, Mees; Mees! Madame votre m?¨re ne serait pas contente!a€Madame ma m?¨re certainly did not know what was going on. If she had made an unexpected appearance, she would have raised her eyebrows, said, a€?Agatha! Why are you not in bed?a€and within three minutes I would have been in bed, scurrying there, without any further word of admonition. However, Marie never denounced me to authority; she pleaded, she sighed, but she never reported me. On the other hand, if I did not give her obedience, I did give her love. I loved her very much.

On only one occasion do I really remember having upset her, and that was entirely inadvertent. It happened after we had come back to England, in the course of an argument on some subject or other which was proceeding quite amicably. Finally, in exasperation, and wishing to prove my point of view, I was saying: a€?Mais, ma pauvre fille, vous ne savez done pas les chemins defer sont: At this point, to my utter amazement, Marie suddenly burst into tears. I stared at her. I had no idea what was the matter. Then words came amongst the sobs. Yesa€“she was indeed a a€?pauvre fillea€?. Her parents were poor, not rich like those of Mees. They kept a cafe, where all the sons and daughters worked. But it was not gentille, it was not bien ??lev??e of her dear Mees to reproach her with her poverty.

a€?But, Marie,a€I expostulated, a€?Marie, I didna€?t mean that at alla€?.a€It seemed impossible to explain that no idea of poverty had been in my mind, that a€?ma pauvre fillea€was a mere expression of impatience. Poor Marie had been hurt in her feelings, and it took at least half an hour of protestations, caresses, and reiterated assurances of affection before she was soothed. After that, all was healed between us. I was terribly careful in future never to use that particular expression.

I think that Marie, established at our house in Torquay, felt lonely and homesick for the first time. No doubt in the hotels where we had stayed there had been other maids, nurses, governesses, and so ona€“cosmopolitan onesa€“and she had not felt the separation from her family. But here in England she came in contact with girls of her own age, or at any rate of not much more than her own age. We had at that time, I think, a youngish housemaid and a parlourmaid of perhaps thirty. But their point of view was so different from Mariea€?s that it must have made her feel a complete alien. They criticised the plainness of her clothes, the fact that she never spent any money on finery, ribbons, gloves, all the rest of it.

Marie was receiving what were to her fantastically good wages. She asked Monsieur every month if he would be so kind as to remit practically the whole of her pay to her mother in Pau. She herself kept a tiny sum. This was to her natural and proper; she was saving up for her dot, that precious sum of money that all French girls at that time (and perhaps now, I do not know) industriously put by as a dowrya€“a necessity for the future, for lacking it they may easily not get married at all. It is the equivalent, I suppose, of what we call in England a€?my bottom drawera€?, but far more serious. It was a good and sensible idea, and I think in vogue nowadays in England, because young people want to buy a house and therefore both the man and the girl save money towards it. But in the time I am speaking of, girls did not save up for marriagea€“that was the mana€?s business. He must provide a home and the wherewithal to feed, clothe and look after his wife. Therefore the a€?girls in good servicea€and the lower class of shop-girls, considered the money they earned was their own to use for the frivolous things of life. They bought new hats, and coloured blouses, an occasional necklace or brooch. One might say, I suppose, that they used their wages as courting moneya€“to attract a suitable male of the species. But here was Marie, in her neat little black coat and skirt, and her little toque and her plain blouses, never adding to her wardrobe, never buying anything unnecessary. I dona€?t think they meant to be unkind, but they laughed at her; they despised her. It made her very unhappy.

It was really my mothera€?s insight and kindness that helped her through the first four or five months. She was homesick, she wanted to go home. My mother, however, talked to Marie, consoled her, told her that she was a wise girl and doing the right thing, that English girls were not as far-seeing and prudent as French girls. She also, I think, had a word with the servants themselves and with Jane, saying that they were making this French girl unhappy. She was far away from home, and they must think what it would be like if they were in a foreign country. So after a month or two Marie cheered up.



I feel that, at this point, anyone who has had the patience to read so far will exclaim: a€?But didna€?t you have any lessons to do?a€?

The answer is, a€?No, I did not.a€?

I was, I suppose, nine years old by now, and most children of my age had governessesa€“though these were engaged, I fancy, largely from the point of view of child care, to exercise and supervise. What they taught you in the way of a€?lessonsa€depended entirely on the tastes of the individual governesses.

I remember dimly a governess or two in friendsa€houses. One held complete faith in Dr Brewera€?s Childa€?s Guide to Knowledgea€“a counterpart of our modern a€?Quiza€?. I retain scraps of knowledge thus acquireda€“a€?What are the three diseases of wheat?a€Rust, mildew, and soot.a€Those have gone with me all through lifea€“though unfortunately they have never been of practical use to me. a€?What is the principal manufacture in the town of Redditch?a€a€?Needles.a€a€?What is the date of the Battle of Hastings?a€a€?1066.a€?

Another governess, I remember, instructed her pupils in natural history, but little else. A great deal of picking of leaves and berries and wild flowers went ona€“and a suitable dissection of the same. It was incredibly boring. a€?I do hate all this pulling things to pieces,a€confided my small friend to me. I entirely agreed, and indeed the word Botany all through my life has made me shy like a nervous horse.

My mother had gone to school in her own youth, to an establishment in Cheshire. She sent my sister Madge to boarding school but was now entirely converted to the view that the best way to bring up girls was to let them run wild as much as possible; to give them good food, fresh air, and not to force their minds in any way. (None of this, of course, applied to boys: boys had to have a strictly conventional education.)

As I have already mentioned, she had a theory that no child should be allowed to read until it was eight. This having been frustrated, I was allowed to read as much as I pleased, and I took every opportunity to do so. The schoolroom, as it was called, was a big room at the top of the house, almost completely lined with books. There were shelves of childrena€?s booksa€“Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, the earlier, sentimental Victorian tales which I have already mentioned, such as Our White Violet, Charlotte Yongea€?s books, including The Daisy Chain, a complete set, I should think, of Henty, and, besides that, any amount of school-books, novels, and others. I read indiscriminately, picking up anything that interested me, reading quite a lot of things which I did not understand but which nevertheless held my attention.

In the course of my reading I found a French play which father discovered me reading. a€?How did you get hold of that?a€he asked, picking it up, horrified. It was one of a series of French novels and plays which he usually kept carefully locked up in the smoking-room for the perusal of adults only.

a€?It was in the school-room,a€I said.

a€?It shouldna€?t have been there,a€said father. a€?It should have been in my cupboard.a€?

I relinquished it cheerfully. Truth to tell, I had found it somewhat difficult to understand. I returned happily to reading M??moires da€?un ??ne, Sans Famille, and other innocuous French literature.

I suppose I must have had lessons of some kind, but I did not have a governess. I continued to do arithmetic with my father, passing proudly through fractions to decimals. I eventually arrived at the point where so many cows ate so much grass, and tanks filled with water in so many hoursa€“I found it quite enthralling.

My sister was now officially a€?outa€?, which entailed parties, dresses, visits to London, and so on. This kept my mother busy, and she had less time for me. Sometimes I became jealous, feeling that Madge had all the attention. My mother had had a dull girlhood herself. Though her aunt was a rich woman, and though Clara had travelled to and fro across the Atlantic with her, she had seen no reason to give her a social debut of any kind. I dona€?t think my mother was socially minded, but she did yearn, as any young girl might, to have a great many prettier clothes and dresses than she had. Auntie-Grannie ordered herself very expensive and fashionable clothes at the best dressmakers in Paris, but she always considered Clara as a child, and more or less dressed her as such. The awful sewing women again! My mother was determined that her daughters should have all the pretty-pretties and frivolities of life that she herself had missed. Hence her interest and delight in Madgea€?s clothes, and later in mine.

Mind you, clothes were clothes in those days! There was a great deal of them, lavish both in material and in workmanship. Frills, ruffles, flounces, lace, complicated seams and gores: not only did they sweep the ground and have to be held up in one hand elegantly as you walked along, but they had little capes or coats or feather boas.

There was also hairdressing: hairdressing, too, really was hairdressing in those timesa€“no running a comb through it and that was that. It was curled, frizzed, waved, put in curlers overnight, waved with hot tongs; if a girl was going to a dance she started doing her hair at least two hours earlier and the hairdressing would take her about an hour and a half, leaving her about half an hour to put on her dress, stockings, slippers and so on.

This was not, of course, my world. It was the grown-upsa€world, from which I remained aloof. Nevertheless, I was influenced by it. Marie and I discussed the toilettes of the Mademoiselles and our special favourites.

It so happened that in our particular road there were no next-door neighbours with children of my age. So, as I had done at a younger age, I once more arranged a set of friends and intimates of my owna€“in succession to Poodle, Squirrel and Tree, and the famous Kittens. This time I invented a school. This was not because I had any desire myself to go to school. No, I think that The School constituted the only background into which I could conveniently fit seven girls of varying ages and appearances, giving them different backgrounds instead of making them a family, which I did not want to do. The School had no namea€“it was just The School.

The first girls to arrive were Ethel Smith and Annie Gray. Ethel Smith was eleven and Annie was nine. Ethel was dark, with a great mane of hair. She was clever, good at games, had a deep voice, and must have been rather masculine in appearance. Annie Gray, her great friend, was a complete contrast. She had pale flaxen hair, blue eyes, and was shy and nervous and easily reduced to tears. She clung to Ethel, who protected her on every occasion. I liked them both, but my preference was for the bold and vigorous Ethel.

After Ethel and Annie, I added two more: Isabella Sullivan, who was rich, golden-haired, brown-eyed, and beautiful. She was eleven years of age. Isabella I did not likea€“in fact I disliked her a good deal. She was a€?worldlya€?. (Worldlya€was a great word in the story-books of the time: pages of The Daisy Chain are devoted to the worries in the May family because of Floraa€?s worldliness.) Isabel was certainly the quintessence of worldliness. She gave herself airs, boasted about being rich, and had clothes that were far too expensive for her and too grand for a girl of her age. Elsie Green was her cousin. Elsie was rather Irish; she had dark hair, blue eyes, curls, and was gay and laughed a good deal. She got on quite well with Isabel, but sometimes ticked her off. Elsie was poor; she wore Isabela€?s cast-off clothes, which sometimes rankled, but not much, because Elsie was easy-going.

With these four I got on well for some time. They travelled on the tubular railway, they rode horses, they did gardening, they also played a great deal of croquet. I used to arrange tournaments and special matches. My great hope was that Isabel would not win. I did everything short of cheating to see that she did not wina€“that is, I held her mallet for her carelessly, played quickly, hardly aimed at alla€“yet somehow the more carelessly I played, the more fortunate Isabel seemed to be. She got through impossible hoops, hit balls from right across the lawn, and nearly always finished as winner or runner-up. It was most annoying.

After a while I thought it would be nice to have some younger girls at the school. I added two six-year-olds, Ella White and Sue de Verte. Ella was conscientious, industrious and dull. She had bushy hair, and was good at lessons. She did well in Dr Brewera€?s Guide to Knowledge, and played quite a fair game of croquet. Sue de Verte was curiously colourless, not only in appearancea€“she was fair, with pale blue eyesa€“but also in character. Somehow I couldna€?t see or feel Sue. She and Ella were great friends, but though I knew Ella like the back of my hand Sue remained fluid. I think this is probably because Sue was really myself When I conversed with the others, I was always Sue conversing with them, not Agatha; and therefore Sue and Agatha became two facets of the same person, and Sue was an observer, not really one of the dramatis personae. The seventh girl to be added to the collection was Suea€?s step-sister, Vera de Verte. Vera was an immense agea€“she was thirteen. She was not at the moment beautiful, but she was going to be a raving beauty in the future. There was also a mystery about her parentage. I had half-planned various futures for Vera of a highly romantic nature. She had straw-coloured hair and forget-me-not blue eyes.

An additional help to a€?the girlsa€were bound copies of Royal Academy pictures which my grandmother had in the house in Ealing. She promised that they should belong to me one day, and I used to spend hours looking at them in wet weather, not so much for artistic satisfaction as for finding suitable pictures of a€?the girlsa€?. A book that had been given me as a Christmas present, illustrated by Walter Cranea€“The Feast of Floraa€“represented flower pictures in human form. There was a particularly lovely one in it of forget-me-nots wreathed round a figure who was definitely Vera de Verte. Chaucera€?s Daisy was Ella, and the handsome Crown Imperial striding along was Ethel.

a€?The girlsa€?, I may say, stayed with me for many years, naturally changing their characters as I myself matured. They participated in music, acted in opera, were given parts in plays and musical comedies. Even when I was grown up I spared them a thought now and then, and allocated them the various dresses in my wardrobe. I also designed model gowns for them in my mind. Ethel, I remember, looked very handsome in a dress of dark blue tulle with white arum lilies on one shoulder. Poor Annie was never given much to wear. I was fair to Isabel, though, and gave her some extremely handsome gownsa€“embroidered brocades, and satins usually. Even now, sometimes, as I put away a dress in a cupboard, I say to myself: a€?Yes, that would do well for Elsie, green was always her colour.a€Ella would look very nice indeed in that three-piece jersey suit.a€It makes me laugh when I do it, but there a€?the girlsa€are still, though, unlike me, they have not grown old. Twenty-three is the oldest I have ever imagined them.

In the course of time I added four more characters: Adelaide, who was the oldest of all, tall, fair and rather superior; Beatrice, who was a merry, dancing, little fairy, the youngest of them all; and two sisters, Rose and Iris Reed. I became rather romantic about those two. Iris had a young man who wrote poetry to her and called her a€?Iris of the Marshesa€?, and Rose was very mischievous, played tricks on everybody, and flirted madly with all the young men. They were, of course, in due time married off, or remained unmarried. Ethel never married but lived in a small cottage with the gentle Anniea€“very appropriate, I think now: ita€?s exactly what they would have done in real life.



Soon after our return from abroad the delights of the world of music were opened to me by Fraulein Uder. Fraulein Uder was a short, wiry, formidable, little German woman. I dona€?t know why she was teaching music in Torquay, I never heard anything of her private life. My mother appeared one day in the Schoolroom with Fraulein Uder in tow, explaining she wanted Agatha to start learning the piano.

a€?Ach!a€said Fraulein Uder with a rich German sound, though she spoke English perfectly. a€?Then we will at once to the piano go.a€To the piano we wenta€“the schoolroom piano, of course, not the grand piano in the drawing-room.

a€?Stand there,a€commanded Fraulein Uder. I stood as placed to the left of the piano. a€?That,a€she said, thumping the note so hard that I really thought something might happen to it, a€?is C Major. You understandThat is the note C. This is the scale of C Major.a€She played it. a€?Now we go back and play the chord of C, like that Now againa€“the scale. The notes are C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. You understand?a€?

I said yes. As a matter of fact I knew that much already.

a€?Now,a€said Fraulein Uder, a€?you will stand there where you cannot see the notes and I play first C, then another note, and you shall tell me what the second is.a€?

She hit C, and then hit another note with equal force.

a€?What is thatAnswer me.a€?

a€?E,a€I said.

a€?Quite right. Good. Now we will try again.a€?

Once more she thumped C, and then another note. a€?And that?a€a€?A,a€I hazarded.

a€?Ach, that it first class. Good. This child is musical. You have the ear, yes. Ach, we shall get on famously.a€?

I certainly got off to a good start. I dona€?t think, to be honest, I had the least idea what the other notes were she was playing. I think it must have been an inspired guess. But anyway, having started on those lines we went ahead with plenty of good will on either side. Before long the houses resounded with scales, arpeggios, and in due course the strains of The Merry Peasant. I enjoyed my music lessons enormously. Both father and mother played the piano. Mother played Mendelssohna€?s Songs Without Words and various other a€?piecesa€that she had learned in her youth. She played well, but was not, I think, a passionate music lover. My father was naturally musical. He could play anything by ear, and he played delightful American songs and negro spirituals and other things. To The Merry Peasant Fraulein Uder and I added Trdumerei, and other of Schumanna€?s delicate little tunes. I practised with zeal for an hour or two a day. From Schumann I proceeded to Greig, which I loved passionatelya€“Erotique and the First Rustle of Spring were my favourites. When I finally progressed to being able to play the Peer Gynt Morgen I was transported with delight. Fraulein Uder, like most Germans, was an excellent teacher. It was not all playing of pleasant tunes; there were masses of Czernya€?s Exercises, about which I was not quite so zealous, but Fraulein Uder was having no nonsense. a€?You must the good grounding have,a€she said. a€?These exercises, they are the reality, the necessity. The tunes, yes, they are pretty little embroideries, they are like flowers, they bloom and drop off, but you must have the roots, the strong roots and the leaves.a€So I had a good deal of the strong roots and the leaves and an occasional flower or two, and I was probably much more pleased with the result than the others in the house, who found so much practising somewhat oppressive.

Then there was also dancing-class, which took place once a week, at something grandiosely called the Athenaeum Rooms, situated over a confectionera€?s shop. I must have started going to dancing-class quite earlya€“five or six, I thinka€“because I remember that Nursie was still there and took me once a week. The young ones were started off with the polka. Their approach to it was to stamp three times: right, left, righta€“left, right, lefta€“thump, thump, thumpa€“thump, thump, thump. Very unpleasant it must have been for those having tea at the confectionera€?s underneath. When I got home I was slightly upset by Madge, who said that that was not how the polka was danced. a€?You slide one foot, bring the next up to it, and then the first,a€she said, a€?like this.a€I was rather puzzled, but apparently it was Miss Hickeya€?s, the dancing-mistressa€?s idea of getting the rhythm of the polka before you did the steps.

Miss Hickey, I remember, was a wonderful if alarming personality. She was tall, stately, had a pompadour of grey hair beautifully arranged, long flowing skirts, and to waltz with hera€“which happened, of course, much latera€“was a terrifying experience. She had one pupil teacher of about eighteen or nineteen, and one of about thirteen called Aileen. Aileen was a sweet girl, who worked hard, and whom we all liked very much. The older one, Helen, was slightly terrifying, and only took notice of the really good dancers.

The procedure of dancing-class was as follows. It started with what were called a€?expandersa€?, which exercised your chest and arms. They were a sort of blue ribbon elastic with handles. You stretched these vigorously for about half an hour. There was then the polka, which was danced by all once they had graduated from thump, thump, thumpa€“the older girls in the class dancing with the younger ones. a€?Have you seen me dance the polkaHave you seen my coat-tails fly?a€The polka was merry and unattractive. Then you had the grand march, in which, in pairs, you went up the middle of the room, round the sides, and into various figures of eight, the seniors leading, the juniors following up. You had partners for the march whom you engaged yourself, and a good deal of heart-burning took place over this. Naturally, everybody wished to have as partner either Helen or Aileen, but Miss Hickey saw to it that there were no particular monopolies. After the march the smaller ones were removed to the junior room, where they learned the steps of either the polka or, later, the waltz, or steps in their fancy dances at which they were particularly maladroit. The seniors did their fancy dance under the eye of Miss Hickey in the big room. This consisted of either a tambourine dance, a Spanish castanet dance, or a fan dance.

Talking of the fan dance, I once mentioned to my daughter, Rosalind, and her friend Susan, when they were girls of eighteen or nineteen, that I used to do a fan dance in my youth. Their ribald laughter puzzled me.

a€?You didna€?t really, mother, did youA fan dance! Susan, she did a fan dance!a€?

a€?Oh,a€said Susan, a€?I always thought that Victorians were so particular.a€It dawned on us soon, however, that by a fan dance we did not mean exactly the same thing.

After that the seniors sat out and the juniors did their dance, which was the Sailora€?s Hornpipe or some gay little folk dance, not too difficult.

Finally we entered into the complications of The Lancers. We were also taught the Swedish Country Dance, and Sir Roger de Coverley. These last were especially useful because when you went to parties you were not shamed by ignorance of such social activities.

At Torquay we were almost entirely girls. When I went to dancing-class in Ealing there was quite a number of boys. This I think was when I was about nine, very shy, and not as yet adept in dancing. A boy of considerable charm, probably a year or two older than I was, came up and asked me to be his partner in The Lancers. Upset and downcast, I said that I couldna€?t dance The Lancers. It seemed to me hard; I had never seen so attractive a boy. He had dark hair, merry eyes., and I felt at once that we were going to be soul-mates. I sat down sadly when The Lancers began, and almost immediately Mrs Wordswortha€?s representative came up to me. a€?Now, Agatha, we cana€?t have anyone sitting out.a€?

a€?I dona€?t know how to dance The Lancers, Mrs Wordsworth.a€?

a€?No, dear, but you can soon learn. We must find you a partner.a€?

She seized a freckled boy with a snub nose and sandy hair; he also had adenoids. a€?Here you are. Here is William.a€During The Lancers, when we were engaged in visiting, I came up against my first love and his partner. He whispered to me, in dudgeon: a€?You wouldna€?t dance with me, and here you are. It is very unkind of you.a€I tried to tell him that I couldna€?t help it, that I had thought I couldna€?t dance The Lancers but I was told I had toa€“but there is not time when you are visiting in The Lancers to enter into explanations. He continued to look reproachfully at me until the end of the dancing-class. I hoped I might meet him the following week, but alas I never saw him again: one of lifea€?s sad love stories.

The waltz was the only dance I learned that was going to be useful to me through life, and I have never really liked waltzing. I do not like the rhythm, and I always used to get exceedingly giddy, especially when honoured by Miss Hickey. She had a wonderful sweep round in the waltz, which practically took you off your feet, and which left you at the end of the performance with your head reeling, hardly able to stand up. But I must admit that it was a beautiful sight to watch her.

Fraulein Uder disappeared from my life; I dona€?t know where or when. Perhaps she went back to Germany. She was replaced a little later by a young man called, as far as I remember, Mr Trotter. He was the organist of one of the churches; was rather a depressing teacher, and I had to adopt an entirely different style. I had to sit practically on the floor, with my hands reaching upward to get to the keys of the piano, and everything had to be played from the wrist. Fraulein Udera€?s method, I think, must have been to sit high and play from the elbows. One was more or less poised above the piano so as to be able to come down on the keys with maximum power. Very satisfactory!