CHAPTER II
THE STAFF AND THE STRUCTURE
There was a definite hierarchy at the Community, the head of which was Miss Leila; she and Miss Dave were known as "Directors". They were supported by a Committee known as "House Council" which was rather similar to a kind of cabinet. It consisted of some half-dozen or so senior members of staff, some of whom had been at the Community a good many years. This House Council met about once a week and discussed pretty well anything from the drains to delinquency. When I eventually graduated to this august body I was very interested to note the difference between Miss Leila and Miss Dave's outlook and approach to the school's life. The former then seemed to take a broader view of the spectrum and was not so concerned with the practical details as was Miss Dave, who appeared, sometimes, more aware of the snags and possible obstacles which might be met on the way to the realisation of one of Miss Leila's idealistic goals. Of Miss Leila herself I shall devote a chapter later but I realised after quite a short time at the Community that her influence was very great and permeated right through the household.
I found Miss Dave hard to know and it was not till many years later that I did come to know her really well. When I first went to the Community she was fully taken up with her new position as a Director and I found her curiously forbidding and inhibited and very difficult to talk to. She was, I think, very much feeling her way in her new role and was uncertain and in a way, inexperienced in meeting with people except in connection with entirely practical problems. I did in time make contact with her and discovered she could be a delightful companion with a wide variety of interests and with sterling qualities which really came to the fore in the war years we spent in Dorset and later when we returned to Kent and she really blossomed into what I can only describe as a 'genius' with disturbed adolescent girls. She also became a first-class detective who would have risen to the heights in Scotland Yard.
It was fortunate that the Community was housed in such an enormous mansion as was The Mote, as there were, by then, a hundred children and about twenty adults: not all the adults had charge of any children as some were concerned with dining room and pantry work, some with the garden and farm and others were on the teaching staff of the Community's Junior School. Sometimes it seemed to me as if there were thousands of children and very few adults, despite the fact that Miss Leila came to preface her Staff Meetings with what became a classic saying - “What a lot of you!" implying, we presumed, that the place ought to be simply ideally run with so many to see that it was.
The Community was divided into Seniors and Juniors and these respectively into further age-groups. At the bottom of the ladder was the Nursery Group which generally had about a dozen children who ranged in age from a baby, if there happened to be one, to six or seven year-olds; these latter in their turn went to the next age group, which was the one I had charge of during my four years at The Mote. There was yet a further group in the Junior part of the school which had the nine to eleven year-olds.
These groups seemed to me to be sensibly divided: each group had its own playroom and woman in charge of the group: she was known as a "house-mother" which I always thought an appalling title but there seemed none better.
Dormitory life followed the same pattern, as there were dormitories for the younger boys and younger girls and for the next age range. There were two Matrons in charge of this upstairs life, one for the little boys, one for the little girls. The life of these Matrons might have seemed rather restricted as they were endlessly taken up with clothes and mending and seeing children, either into bed or out of bed and there was a lot of drudgery and hard work, I always thought, but it was one of the advantages of the Community, that people's lives might run in small tributaries, as it were, but no one ever seemed to be cut off from the main stream: round the corner, at any moment, there could be some crisis, some dramatic possibility and the very crisis was full of drama and human interest although it might be concerned with misdeeds, delinquency or trouble of some sort, and it generally was. There was nothing sluggish about life in that house; it raced by in full flood, everyone was part of the life, it was a community and not just a boarding school.
The Matrons at least never had to darn any socks, as these were done by the group's house-mothers, whether they could darn or not was irrelevant. Nylon did not exist in those days and the socks were woollen and wore out very quickly. I personally found the sock-darning for the twenty seven and eight year-olds, very trying and sometimes when there seemed nothing but 'darn' left of the socks, I bought new ones and incorporated them among the mended pile. I believe this was looked upon as rather shocking by those members of the Community with thrifty minds but I did not care and used the discarded socks as quickly as possible to polish brass, rub tables, so that there was not the slightest possibility of any feet using them again.
A great deal of the mending of clothes was got through at a weekly institution known simply as "Mending". It took place in the library at about nine o'clock in the evening; it was attended by all staff who were free to be there. Miss Leila presided and we sat round in a huge ring, a row of laundry baskets at our feet; these were filled with clean clothes that needed mending, from the eldest boy to the smallest nursery child: it was a formidable sight, certainly to me who had never had any liking for sewing of any sort and had never been any good at it. The person who really enjoyed this weekly event in the adult life of the Community must have been Miss Leila who did no mending but read aloud to the assembled company. She read extremely well, enjoyed doing it, and was able to choose what she read. Many an Angela Thirkell novel have I heard in this way.
The other person who I think reaped some pleasure from mending boys' pants, girls' navy knickers, vests, jerseys, blouses could have been Miss Dave who genuinely liked mending and renovating and was an expert in this field. Miss Leila, always generous, provided chocolates and biscuits and I expect we had the inevitable cocoa; coffee later took its place.
The group above mine, of nine to eleven year-olds, was looked after by a large downright stalwart woman who once created much disturbance among the Junior Staff by suggesting that a half-day off, once a week, was not really necessary. I remember well the indignation meeting we held in the staff-room; although by today's standards we were pretty 'dedicated' to the job, we were not as dedicated as all that and considered this half day off once a week, essential to our well-being; fortunately Miss Leila thought it necessary too.
These 'half-days' only started at one o'clock and as far as I remember no one ever had a night off during the term except the Junior School staff, who occasionally disappeared from Saturday mid-day till Sunday evening.
The Junior School catered for all the children who were under eleven. It consisted of two main classes and a nursery school group. It was run on the Froebel system and the three R's seemed to be successfully taught, although many of the children, on first coming to the Community, found learning difficult: they were unconcentrated, often emotionally upset and could be educationally backward, having had a chequered school-career in the past and much disturbance in their young lives.
Their I.Qs. on an average were high though; some were very high and although it might take terms before they settled down, finally giving up a stubborn resistance to the acquisition of knowledge, they would suddenly shoot forward, learning at a great rate as their bright young minds were freed from the anxieties and fears of the past.
Crafts, carpentry and weaving played a considerable and valuable part in the life of the Community. The weaving looms were owned by a very remarkable woman who was also in charge of the garden. She was extremely versatile, being a wonderful gardener who could grow anything it seemed and she was the most highly skilled craftswoman I have ever met. She had been at the Community since its early days at East Sutton, just after the first world war: she was a great friend of my aunt and I remembered her well from childhood days. She taught generations of children to do the most intricate and beautiful embroidery in almost mediaeval kind of colours, bright and clear, and to weave expertly and in equally lovely colouring. She was an artist to her finger-tips and could turn her hand to anything: cooking, organ-playing. She was also excellent company, with a caustic, witty tongue. She worked at the Community until her late sixties, when she retired. She lived to be over eighty, her company stimulating and amusing to the end. Her name was Kathleen Syer. I give her name because she must have been known to anyone who was at the Community from about 1920 to the 1960s.
I saw Kathleen Syer in action at the Community after I had been there a week.
The little bell that tinkled so frequently at meals, either for 'silence' or to end the silence or 'less noise' or 'tables can clear' was heard in the middle of one breakfast. Miss Leila said she had something to say and would everyone please listen.
We supposed visitors were coming and could the house please be cleaner, tidier or altogether quite different. A visitor is coming and the house must be cleaner. "And who," asks Miss Leila "scrubs the East Hall and when was it last done?"
Miss F. says very loudly that it is done at least three times a week. Miss Syer rises then sits down again. Miss Leila and Miss Dave converse together: the bell rings again, “And who", asks Miss Leila ominously, "scrubs the Front steps?"
Miss Syer gets up again and with great purpose walks to the Top Table, "I do" she says. There is such a silence as is seldom experienced. She walks very slowly back to her seat and sits down with a kind of triumphant air about her. The bell rings yet again and we hear "tables may clear".
No other or future reference was ever made again to the scrubbing of the front-door steps. I realised what a very great deal I had to learn about the conduct of the Community affairs.
We were fed, catered for and physically nourished by another indomitable woman who cooked for about twenty years and then, after the war, took on the post of Bursar-House keeper for yet another twenty years.
She was a wonderful cook with an artistic touch that could lay a table, set a tray, put together and arrange a magnificent vase of flowers to perfection. She ruled the kitchen at The Mote and must have trained and educated generations of children and adolescents in the affairs of a kitchen. She sewed, she knitted, she gardened, she was a botanist, with an immense love of wild flowers, and without fail at eleven o'clock in the staff-room every morning, with the mid-morning cocoa, came her inimitable cherry cake. We should have been outraged if bought cake had been substituted.
The Community's sick-bay was on the top floor of the house, so it was comparatively easy to isolate, if necessary. The sick in body or mind were cared far, not by a highly qualified state-registered nurse, or indeed by anyone with any nursing qualifications at all, but by a woman who could nurse as skilfully as any professional. She too had been with Miss Leila and Miss Potter at Charlton, East Sutton.
She was rather short with a gentle effacing manner and voice but she could have an amazing effect on an aggressive adolescent or small child in an uncontrollable temper. I was often to see her, with no apparent fuss and barely raising her voice, calm and lead away the unhappy offender to a period of solitude away from the noisy crowd; sometimes she would put them to bed or sit them in a warm pleasant sick room, feed them and persuade them to talk. She was detached from their troubles and was not implicated in any previous quarrels there may have been. I considered her one of the most valuable members of the Community and though it may be invidious to say so, I thought the work she did beyond praise.
She ran a single playroom at the top of the house while we were at The Mote. This was for eight or nine boys or girls who were thought too disturbed to be in a group during their non-school hours. She managed them with consummate skill so that little by little they adjusted and left her to join a group and others would take their place.
Along with all this work she ran a large and successful carpentry class for senior boys. She was a beautiful craftswoman in leather and wood.
The physical health record at the Community was a good one. Miss Leila herself was never ill and thought it quite unnecessary that anyone else should be; certainly the adults, and in the main they were not. She always said that as no doors ever appeared to be shut in any house the Community was in, and the ceilings were so high and consequently the draughts so great, that no germ could ever find a resting place.
The only male member of staff at the Community, when I first went there, was a young German, and what he contributed to the well-being of the boys I never knew, as what he really enjoyed was the company of the young female staff. He played happily around with one after the other, generally giving a term to each. My arrival coincided with the finish of his time with the attractive red-haired young woman who was responsible for the physical training and sport of the Community. Heiner was pleased to see a new face.
It was all very mild and harmless and compared with today's standards would be considered extraordinarily dull, but he was young and amusing and it was enjoyable just holding hands in a cinema, leaving go of hands to have coffee and fish and chips in the cinema cafe and then more holding of hands going back on the top of a bus.
At the outbreak of war in 1939, he went back to Germany and we never heard of him again: he was simply swept into the maelstrom of war.
People were naturally inclined to ask why there were no men on the staff and the answer was quite simply because the Community could not afford them. The women members were paid very low salaries which no man, quite rightly, would have considered, so the senior boys were in charge of a woman.
She was exactly 'right' I thought, for those adolescent boys - objective, clear-headed and with wide and varied interests. She was a good disciplinarian, albeit with a passionate love of freedom; these two attributes seemed to combine well. She was defeated only by the darning of socks and it became known that some of the boys learned to mend their own rather than suffer from the large lumps of wool their feet encountered in the newly darned socks.
The Community's Secretary played a very important part, being, as far as I could judge, chauffeur, typist, office manager and organiser of everything that no one else could or wanted to do. She did most of the driving and was constantly out with Miss Leila. She too remained at the Community for a very great many years, until her death in the fifties.
Such women as those that I first met forty years ago, do not, I imagine, exist now, anyway in residential children's work. They were single-minded, vocational and what is more, unmarried, so had no marital ties.
Who then were they; some of them content apparently to stay in one institution for almost the whole of their working lives? What attractions, compulsions, kept them there year after year? The life could be exacting and exhausting: the terms were long, with little time off and salaries were very low.
Now Miss Leila tapped many sources for her staff. She had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances: her sister was a Consultant at a large London hospital, her brother an actor. She was also a personal friend of the Maxwells, Sir Alexander later becoming Chief Prison Commissioner at the Home Office, so she got to know many of the Civil Servants and the Inspectorate; she had also been a Civil Servant herself for a short time. The staff she chose were generally from middle-class backgrounds and some had private incomes. The idea of communal living must have had no fears for them and they must have been genuinely interested in children to contemplate such a life.
There are perhaps two answers to the question as to why they stayed, the first concerning the life itself at the Community; it really was an absorbing one: always interesting, always stimulating. To be suddenly mixed up with petty crime, delinquency, truancy and every sort of behavioural problem among boys and girls of any age from seven to seventeen, could be exciting and was certainly, for me anyhow, novel, even though such problems were the result of the tragic circumstances of the young offenders, it was impossible not find them deeply interesting.
The second answer, I think, is that we did feel somehow, that we were part of a school, a community, whose work was worth while and whose aims were justified and that although plans miscarried at times, things went wrong, yet the whole conception of this extraordinary place was right. Everyone was made to feel that although the part they played might be small, yet it was important, it mattered.
A strongly held common aim gives a feeling of unity and this engenders a basic security, both for adult and child, and this I found at the Community.