would, over the weeks, give way to smooth gear changes, and another skill mastered.
Her parents’ separation was now in the offing, but Frances’s mother resolved to remain until Frances left for boarding school when she was 11 years old.
8. Claude Whitehead had a distinguished military career. He served with the 4th Kings Own Royal Lancaster Regiment (Rifles), and was awarded a DSO and the Chevalier Legion of Honour for bravery and leadership at the final battle in the Struma Valley, Salonica, in which he was wounded. He was twice mentioned in despatches and received the Military Cross for skilful leadership in extricating his men after the battle of Doiran. He played an active interest in local affairs, and was Assistant Area Officer (Newton Abbott division) of the Devon Special Constabulary. (Obituary, The Paignton Observer, 23 March 1944.)
9. The prayer for the day, as set out in the Book of Common Prayer (1662) which was widely used in all Anglican churches for another fifty years.
CHAPTER THREE
Boarding school: 1936–43
September 1936. Frances and her parents packed her school trunk, and her father heaved it into the Fiat. Excitement and anticipation were mixed with uncertainties. As for any child leaving home for boarding school, there are many different emotions. For Frances this moment marked a watershed in all aspects of life. For in addition to a new school, new friends, and dorm life, the landscape at home was changing. Her mother would now be leaving Beara to live with her friend Sylvia Dunsford, whom she had met on board ship as the family sailed to Madeira four years earlier.
Lanherne school in Dawlish, on the south coast, was just twelve or thirteen miles away. After her rather solitary life at home since Pamela’s illness became serious, Frances was glad to have the company of girls her own age. She had inherited her father’s love of fun and of sport and enjoyed the camaraderie of boarding school life, as well as the chance to compete in tennis and netball. Each day would begin with a service in the chapel for the whole school, then a long crocodile of girls in green uniform would process along the Promenade, back to the main building. Continuing her father’s work ethic, and wanting to please him, Frances always aimed to be the best, in sport and in the classroom.
Following a sports injury at Lanherne, she found herself unable to play sport for several weeks. For those excluded from games lessons, a special curriculum was devised. This consisted mainly of Scripture, and focused almost exclusively on lessons from the Old Testament, in particular Kings and Chronicles. This was, as far as Frances could remember, the first time she had read the Bible herself. It would however be another twenty years before she grasped how the Bible storyline fitted together.
While Frances was still young, her mother would often return to Beara for school holidays, sometimes accompanied by her friend Sylvia. It was an unusual arrangement, but made to work. Claude and Evelyn Whitehead never divorced. When Evelyn was back home, she would take Frances to Sunday worship at the ancient Church of St John the Baptist in the village of Lustleigh, a few miles north of Bovey. Frances found the services more friendly than those in the Bovey Tracey Parish Church of St John the Evangelist, which her father continued to attend. The vicar in Lustleigh struck Frances as a humble, gentle, kindly sort of person, and the service was lower-church in its style. It was the personality of the vicar and the warmth of his preaching which made them want to keep going back.
To Malvern
At the age of 13, in 1938, Frances was sent to Malvern Girls’ College in the spa town of Great Malvern, Worcestershire. The Belfast-born writer and Christian apologist C S Lewis had also received his schooling here, a quarter of a century earlier, at the boys’ school, Malvern College.
Malvern Girls’ College, founded towards the end of the nineteenth century, was situated in the former Imperial Hotel, opposite the railway station. The girls were a familiar sight to townspeople with their heather-coloured tweed overcoats and maroon hats. By the time Frances entered the school, Miss Iris Brooks had been Headmistress for ten years. She was a controversial figure from the start of her tenure, and evidently commanded authority, not only over the staff and pupils, but, by virtue of her redoubtable presence, over the Council. According to Pamela Hurle, the school’s historian, there was a sense in which she resembled Muriel Spark’s character – or Maggie Smith’s screen interpretation of it, in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. In the first year of her appointment, the Council reduced its own rather inflated attendance allowance at meetings, settling for a modest sum and ‘the democratic third-class railway fare’. Should a steam train in the station be making enough noise to disturb the headmistress, a member of staff would be dispatched across the road to seek out the station master, and the noise was subdued. ‘Her standards must have been difficult to meet,’ stated the school historian. ‘One girl seeking a reference from Miss Brooks was told that she could not make bricks without straw, while another girl quietly doing some non-examination work was told to give up and switch off the light since it was not worth using the electricity for her efforts.’10
Summerside House
The Middle School was divided into six Houses, all situated in nearby roads. Here girls from Lower lVth to Upper Vth ate breakfast and dinner together. Frances was in Summerside House, in North Albert Road, just a few minutes’ walk from the main school building, where the senior girls lived. Each morning the Summerside girls would assemble in a crocodile, to walk down to the main building, supervised by prefects, returning together in late afternoon, when they could change out of their uniforms and into their home clothes. In summer the tweed coats were exchanged for plain blue blazers or, when they became seniors, stripy blazers of red, white and blue.
After a year, war came, and the buildings were requisitioned by the Royal Navy. At this point the school was relocated to Somerset and split up by year groups. Frances’s year moved to a mansion house in Hinton St George with several staff. However, the evacuation lasted only one year, after which they moved back to Malvern, as the Navy had not needed the buildings.
A particular aim of public schools11 has always been that of nurturing confidence and poise. To this end, Miss Brooks had introduced a custom whereby all girls, from the age of 13, were required to deliver a three-minute speech to their whole house each term, with the Housemistress present. No instruction was given on how to choose a subject or on how to craft a speech; and the girls were not appraised for their efforts. Frances tended to speak on horses or riding, and no doubt marshalled good content. But she, like many others, dreaded the delivery, and she was able to enjoy term only when this ordeal was over. She was probably not the only girl who left school vowing never again to speak in public.
Girls were required to write to their parents weekly. Frances always knew there would be a letter from her father, as Captain Whitehead wrote weekly to his daughter. Other girls’ fathers hardly ever wrote, and they envied Frances her letters from her father. Her mother wrote too, but not as regularly. Her father’s letters were full of encouragement to be the best and expressed his high expectations. If anything was worth doing – study, sports or the pursuit of interests in school clubs – it was worth doing well. Her father instilled in Frances that she must always aim high. Claude Whitehead continued to retain a close interest in his daughter’s education, as he had when she was under a governess.
As with all public schools, the chaplain prepared pupils for confirmation in the Church of England. Other than those from a different Christian tradition, all the girls were confirmed, in Malvern Priory, by the Bishop of Worcester. Wartime travel restrictions meant Frances’s father was unable to be there for the service, but her mother made it, as did a few other parents; the confirmation candidates, all dressed in white, knelt at the communion rail, one by one receiving the Bishop’s blessing. For such schoolgirls this was more a rite of passage than a public confession of faith; and so it was
