shared many things with her in playtime and at school. The best was the Green Gate. The worst was Miss Wilson — the strictest Mistress at the Prep. School — a stern-looking woman with crinkly black hair and a bright purple blouse. She never was satisfied with Marion’s light, spiderish handwriting; and when in sewing class, Kathleen’s plump, inky fingers damply infused the stain into the white fabric, the results were tragic. Both girls stood in awe of Miss Wilson, but they quickly saw through the defences of another Mistress who came to them for one class; and all that they suffered at Miss Wilson’s hands, they gave back (with the interest of a few added inventions of their own) to her. She found — not seven well-bred little girls with a lesson learned — but a rooster, a bee, a donkey, a laughing jackass, a “more pork,” a kitten, a cuckoo. And — after rapping a row of little dents in the desk with her ruler — after mildly protesting that “this wasn’t a Zoo” — she left at the end of the hour reduced to despair, almost in tears.
At play-time, though the Prep. School had no real right in the Gym., Marion and Kass usually were first down. A rope, knotted at both ends, hung suspended from the ceiling. Each clinging to an end, they took turns in leaping from the mantelpiece and swinging out wildly the length of the long room and back again. One day they got into an argument as to who should swing first. Marion leaped into space with her end. Kass, not waiting for her to swing back, plunged furiously after her, and they met in mid-air with a terrific impact. Marion, the light child, was hurled to the floor, where she lay stunned, until Irene ran to revive her with water.
After the Karori Primary School the girls found even this elementary Prep. School difficult, for their preparation was uneven. They had to take some of their classes with Form I. Kass had been so clever in arithmetic at Karori; but here she descended to the First Form, though she was top of it at the end of her third term.
That was a proud prize-giving day for Kathleen Beauchamp — December, 1899. It was a summer evening. Her father, mother, grandmother, Marie, and Vera went with her to the big school hall, decorated with flags and foliage from the bush. While the College girls sang Christmas carols and two-part songs, Kass and Marie sat with their father and mother on the long form benches, twisting the corners of their starched Sunday pinafores, until their names were called out by Dr. John Innes for the awards. The visitors applauded dutifully, while the girls went up to receive, from the Chief Justice, the prizes they had won. Kass went up for three: one in Form II. for English (which meant literature, composition, history and geography); and two for Form I. — arithmetic and French. Marie had a prize for needlework for Form II. Even though some other girl had won the special recitation prize, it was a famous time. The winners were named in The Dominion that evening; and they were listed in The Reporter, the school magazine, which included Kathleen’s second printed “story.”
Mr. Beauchamp had been Justice of the Peace in Karori. He was visiting Justice in Wellington. In view of his later almost unprecedented move: sending his daughters “home” to college — the speech which followed the prize-giving was perhaps one of the most important which Kathleen Beauchamp ever sat through:
“Sir Robert Stout congratulated the students; he said reports showed parents that the children obtained the best possible education at the school; that it was now recognized they must have not only higher education, but also higher education for women. Men and women were on the same platform now in almost everything and it would be a disgrace to the community if it did not make as ample provision for the higher education of girls and women as it did for that of boys and men. They were still far behind other countries in that respect. If they examined statistics of the United States they would find that relative to population, N.Z. did not have at her high schools and colleges half the number of boys and girls or lads and lasses that she ought to have receiving higher education. He knew the great struggle there had been in Wellington even to maintain the Girls’ H.S. He said the G.H.S. was praised for the high place students had gained in Wellington College. In conclusion, after some words of counsel to the students, he urged the claims of the school to the support of the citizens, who, he hoped, would strain every nerve to give their children higher education. Parents who gave their children higher education gave them better dowry than money.”
Even after thirty years, Vera remembered Kathleen’s excitement that night over her printed “story.” The first printed criticism of her work had appeared the year before (1898) when she was nine. It was written by the Sixth Form Editor of The Reporter as a footnote to her first published sketch:
“This story, written by one of the girls who have lately entered the school, shows promise of great merit. We shall always be pleased to receive contributions from members of the lower forms. — Ed.”
3
In their short holidays the children followed the little scalloped bays along the shore to Island Bay. Island Bay was just a suburb of Wellington around the point toward Happy Valley. It was all inlets and rocky caves; a wild man lived in one of them (so they said). He made the expedition uncertain and daring; but unlike Old Underwood, he hid himself well away and so was rarely cornered. Long afterward, Kathleen wrote to Mr. Ruddick:
“Does Marion remember Island Bay, I wonder, and bathing her doll in the rock pools with me? … I wonder if she has forgotten our games at Miss Partridge’s, or old Miss Partridge’s way of saying: ‘Oh, I’m so tired!’ Or the cream buns we were given for tea. I must say I think the cream buns should have been withheld from me, though.”
The girls learned to swim and dive, in those days, at the Thorndon Sea Baths, below the Quay, where they were taken three times a week. For years they remembered the seaweedy odour, the gritty marmalade sandwiches which they devoured afterward, and the lemonade they drank while the elders drank tea.
There were games: tennis on the hard court at No. 75; and, while they lived there — billiards.
“… Billiards…. It’s a fascinating game. I remember learning to hold a cue at Sir Joseph Ward’s, and I can see now R.’s super refinement as if she expected each ball to be stamped with a coronet before she would deign to hit it.”
There were a few parties, usually for tea, but an occasional one in the evening when they were “invited out,” and brought “slippers in a satin bag.” Sometimes there were dances of the kind authorised then:
“Somewhere quite near someone is playing very old-fashioned dance tunes on a cheap piano, things like the Lancers, you know. Some minute part of me not only dances to them but goes faithfully through Ladies in the Centre, Visiting, Set to Corners, and I can even feel the sensation of clasping warm young hands in white silk gloves, and shrinking from Maggie Owen’s hand in Ladies’ Chain because she wore no gloves at all.”
After they had moved back to town, Mr. Beauchamp bought the country place at Day’s Bay, near Mirimar, for the children’s long holidays.
There was no road around the edge of the Harbour then; the only way to reach the Bay was by The Duke or The Duchess, sailing across Lambton Harbour. Often the girls held each other’s heads for that rough half hour. Day’s Bay was a quiet place, a paradise for children. Zoe was at a cottage near the Beauchamps’ and the Walter Nathans were not far away; but except for a pavilion occasionally open for entertainment, these few families had the Bay to themselves. Kass and Marion spent their December summer holidays there. To the Canadian child, this semi-tropical life was filled with surprise :
“When we weren’t paddling in the sea, we were digging sand castles with marvellous moats and draw- bridges. Zoe initiated us into the joys of shrimping in the rock pools; and we loved seeing shrimps back, in their silly way, into the nets. We thought it cruel to have them plunged into boiling water alive, but the assurance that they were killed instantly, and the lovely
