From Elizabeth Lloyd, "The Story of a Community"
CHAPTER IV
"THE WARM COCOON OF HABIT"
The days followed a recognisable pattern that I came to know so well. I learnt to master and manage that turbulent, maddening, fascinating, likeable group of twenty seven eight year-olds. I learnt how to get them off to school in the right clothes and foot-wear; the boys still wore huge lace-up black boots; I never really knew why; they were dreadful to clean and made the most appalling noise. I learned to thwart those who wished to go to school without changing out of sandals, to persuade and cajole those who wished to remain and play, and how to get them safely down the path and into the confines of the large class-room, where I hoped they would remain until I collected them again at half-past eleven; then hurrying back up the path to be in time for 'Housework' I found a small girl already waiting for me in the playroom. "What shall I do?" she said.
Now this 'Housework' took place every morning. The entire house was cleaned by the staff, who each had their own particular area to do. The only cleaning I had ever done in the past, was some very vague dusting; so this was a revelation to me. We swept, polished, dusted and wielded enormous ungainly things, known as 'dumpers', which had long handles and were pushed backwards and forwards over the huge parquet floors.
Each adult was allotted one child to assist; some had two children; they trotted about dusting and emptying waste-paper baskets. Sometimes they disappeared and would be found with others clustered round one of the dust-bins down the passage, all having a good chat, like women gossiping at the village-pump. The children worked in the dining-room and pantry, laying tables and helping with the washing-up. Some went into the kitchen and some 'helped' on the farm and in the garden. The farm, it must be explained, consisted of hens, a pig or two and none cows. The children also kept guinea-pigs, mice, hamsters and rabbits; these lived in the stable-yard and when this novelty had worn off, were neglected; but their owners were not allowed to get rid of them in any light manner and indeed, the scorn and derision poured on them from the faithful with the gibes of “cruel!" often brought them to take an interest in their animal's welfare again.
This 'Housework' was an excellent institution, I thought. Each child stayed for one term with the same adult so it was possible to make a real individual contact and the child learned the rudiments of how to keep a house clean.
At half-past-eleven, fortified by cocoa and the cook's admirable home-made cake, I collected the group for its daily walks the dog had learned to wait outside the playroom door for me now. I must have walked some hundreds of miles in my years at The Mote and the whole countryside became as familiar to me as the faces I saw and the hands I held, for those four years. By the second term though, I had mastered the art of those walks. I told stories; endless stories; finishing finally with an enormous saga that went on for terms. Hoarse, but triumphant, I kept the group with me. When I eventually found I could control and manage the children I gave up those stories, but the saga of the engine-driver on the Canadian Pacific Express, which went from Quebec to Vancouver, I considered my masterpiece. I had actually done this journey before going to the Community, so knew what I was talking about, which was an advantage as there was always someone in that group who contradicted on principle and who always knew best.
I had no more fear of walks though, after one that I took with the twenty, plus the dog and a baby in a huge pram. The baby needed a walk, I was told, so it came too. We went up the main Maidstone Ashford road, where in those days there was little traffic but there were cars and buses at intervals. Children, dog and pram and baby were all got safely over the main road, no one, I observed complacently, venturing to cross before I told them to, and up the road we went. I do not remember feeling particularly worried at the time, although the path was very narrow. Once we were off that road and down a lane, the children rushed on ahead, the elderly dog trotting after them and the baby, excited, being unused to such numbers, shouted from the pram, waving its fat small arms about. I think it enjoyed those walks and its views of life must have been considerably widened by them.
A large and very good mid-day meal was always provided. It was always on time, the tables were always properly laid, they all had flowers on them and the food was varied and excellently cooked with fresh vegetables from the kitchen-garden. This description sounds rather like a brochure for a hotel, but the fact remains that the Community was quite exceptionally well-fed for the thirty-five years that I was there, apart from six years cf war, when sometimes, it was a wonder we were fed at all.
The Mote itself had a great number cf very large rooms with enormous windows: it was cool in summer and very cold in winter: there was a form cf central-heating as there were radiators dotted about various rooms; by today's standards, the temperature would probably seem arctic-like in winter but I personally did not find it cold. Each playroom had an open fireplace and wood and coal fires burned in them, the coal being brought by an elderly man who seemed to trudge about all day long with buckets of coal and armfuls of logs.
Upstairs there were more large rooms used as dormitories but there were few bathrooms or lavatories.
The dining-room itself was very big with long beautifully proportioned windows. There was a small lift which rattled and rushed up and down to the kitchen from the beginning of the meal to the end. I always thought it seemed as if it was something living, which simply could not go too fast.
The main entrance hall, which was also spacious, was used as an over-flow for meals when all the seniors were at home.
Miss Leila had very pronounced views on the feeding of children; not only was the food to be nutritious and well-cooked, but it was to be varied. too, so that the children would become accustomed to a variety of foods, not simply living on those stand-bys of an institution, Shepherd's Pie and some pudding drowned in custard. Custard we had, but things were distinguishable under it. She also insisted that adults and children ate together, except for tea, which the staff had on their own in the staff-room. It was the adult's business to teach the art of conversation and civilised table manners: this applied even more to the adolescents. Personally, I seldom found any adolescent boy or girl at The Mote who was unable to talk at meals - they ate and talked in one with immense rapidity.
An institution known as "Rest" took place after the mid-day dinner: I have described my first encounter with this. Miss Leila gave a suitable book to each child from the library and this particular book they read during "Rest"; it seemed to me an excellent idea. It must have instilled into many children a love of reading and they must have read many books that they would never have come across otherwise. They would too, I think, have realised that it was possible to read for pleasure and not just for information, as at school. Those who could and would not read were not supposed to have anything to occupy them during this time, but I found this impossible and made a large private collection of my own of all sorts of well-illustrated books, magazines, animals and so on. In the end everyone learned to read. I mastered these forty minutes, learned to darn socks at a tremendous speed and then away went the 'Junior Study' to afternoon school. They were back at about four o'clock, had a High Tea meal, which I also ate, as although I went to the Seniors and Staff supper later, no one had told me not have to have High Tea as well and I was young and could eat at any time.
After tea it was 'free-time'. In summer everyone rushed outside where they climbed trees and played on the huge lawns; in winter they were inside. Most of the little girls, like generations down the ages, played with dolls, prams, were nurses in hospitals, had 'houses', spilt water all over the floor from doll's tea sets, got in the way of the boys who were brick-building or had out a model railway. In the middle of it all I attempted to teach chess, draughts; ludo, snakes-and-ladders and prevent quarrels among the various stamp-collectors.
The difficulty at this time always arose with those who could not concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes and with those who did not want to do anything except interfere with those who did. It often took many weeks or months to break down the hostility and suspicion of those children who had only just come and much time to find out if there was anything they really enjoyed. It also took time to learn when to persuade and coax, when to press, when to leave alone and finally, like any good old-fashioned nanny, to stamp the foot and say "that's enough."
I learned from Miss Leila by the end of my first term one of Kurt Hahn's favourite theories which he put, I believe, very successfully into practice at Gordonstoun: which was to find out and to foster what he called 'le grand passion': whether it was a passion for collecting match-boxes, stamps, whether it was a consuming interest in railways, cars, animals - it did not matter as long an the interest was there and it must be encouraged, nurtured, fed and then half the battle was over: the child forgot his anxieties, his past troubles, perhaps his failure to make any mark on society; he forgot he still couldn't read. This interest, whatever it was, was something more important than himself; something that he loved and wanted to pursue. I saw many children grow and develop in this way, from such a small beginning perhaps.
In every group there was bound to be much unhappiness in the individual members of it which made them aggressive and neurotic, yet in each group it seemed as if there was always a core of something which was strong and healthy and this somehow permeated through the whole group, spreading out like ripples on water, so that the outsiders on the fringe were gradually drawn in towards the healthy centre and suddenly you realised perhaps only after months had passed, that they were not just standing about the playroom, silent and withdrawn in a corner, but they ran in from school with the rest, they ate a good tea, and were noisy and aggressive; they ran to play, at last. I found this very satisfactory.
I have, up to now, said almost nothing about the Senior part of the school; this consisted of about fifty adolescents, boys and girls in almost equal numbers. These seniors, except for a small class of girls who were taught at the Community by a P.N.E.U. teacher, all went out to the various schools in the neighbourhood - the girls to the Maidstone Grammar School and the boys were divided between the Grammar School and a large Secondary school near Rochester, known in those days as a 'Central School.'
They left the house soon after eight every morning, many of them cycling and were seen no more until about half-past-four, but at weekends they were about and the house rang with noise and a great deal of very vigorous life. I found it stimulating and interesting and was, of course, in the happy position of not being responsible for anything that went wrong.
On Saturday afternoon everyone was supposed to be outside having air and exercise. What all those Seniors did in those far-off days I do not know as I was not concerned with them. I only know that I walked my group many miles, calling in first at the small local sweet-shop where each child spent about 4d on sweets; and the dog was not forgotten, learning to walk behind the group, eating up those sweets that were dropped. We proceeded along the Kentish lanes chewing, munching and sucking.
Despite the sweets, an enormous tea was eaten on the return. I devised what I thought was rather an original method of finding out whether the noise at tea was too great; the twenty and I had this meal alone in the dining-room. I went to the other end of the room and sang quite loudly "Hosanna! "Hosanna!”. If no one took the slightest notice, simply because they had not heard, I knew the noise of those twenty tongues was too great and at any moment Miss Leila might come in from her sitting room opposite and ask, what was going on.”Well, we're just having tea, Miss Leila", I would say, as if we were sitting in some nice homely little cafe called the Copper Kettle and there were just three of us.
After tea we returned to the playroom. After some months I knew all about 'occupations' - who liked what, who didn't like it, and I learned, after one disastrous evening, never never to have soft pastel chalks which crumbled as soon as looked at and the vivid blues, reds, greens, yellows and mauves were ground into the floor, mashed on to table-tops and streaked down the front of the grey jerseys in varying pastel shades; many sat on them too. I then had to explain to the matron afterwards.
But on this particular Saturday all was well, apart from someone who was inadvertently hit on the head by a brick which caused considerable nose bleeding, to the intrigue of all as they were much interested in blood as long as it was not their own; and a small damsel who skidded on a marble and sat heavily on the floor - but these were but mere bagatelles in our life and all was well.
Having seen the last child go reluctantly up to bed and returned to survey the twenty pairs of shoes, boots and sandals to be cleaned and the general wreckage of the room after Saturday evening's play, there was a tap on the door and a large youth in a black apron appeared; he stood to attention, saluted, and said briefly "come to clean your shoes." "Oh," I said, "how very kind of you." "No" he said, "not kind, got to."
He explained: he was doing what was known as "Social Duties". This took place on Saturday evenings and was a form of reparation for the week's fairly trivial offences: if there were more than a certain number then there was a deprivation of part of the evening's liberty.
It could entail the cleaning of all the dining-room spoons and forks, or doing extra housework or any jobs that were considered suitable; it was under the supervision of Miss Dave.
He was a pleasant boy and cleaned those boots and shoes with amazing speed. I hoped fervently he would come every Saturday but he implied that it might be one of those girls who wouldn't be any good.
On Sunday mornings Miss Leila took two Chapel Services, one for Staff and Seniors and one for the Juniors. She herself was a member of the Society of Friends. She had originally been an Anglican, but Phyllis Potter, with whom she had joined forces in 1911 in St. Pancras, wished to be much more involved with the Church of England and presumably to bring the Community's religious side more in line with orthodox Anglicanism. Miss Leila and she disagreed over this and Miss Potter left the Community when it was in Hertfordshire. Miss Leila then joined the Friends and the Community continued to be non-sectarian and the Chapel Services undenominational. This would seem to have been essential as there were children and adults of various denominations, some of none, and some, especially among the adolescents, very anti-church and anti-religion. Attendance at Chapel was compulsory for all Seniors; otherwise, said Miss Leila, if they never hear what's it all about, how can they either agree or disagree. Any Roman Catholics went to Mass in Maidstone. Miss Leila, with the aid of a girl, cleaned the Chapel herself and could be seen regularly every Saturday morning going down the path with a broom and a dust-pan and brush. She gave excellent Address in Chapel every Sunday, her aim, as she said, to provoke people into thinking.
The whole week-end routine followed much the same pattern ten years later when I was involved with Senior school life, except that at the Mote on Sunday afternoon there took place a weekly event, which was later given up. I understood it was resented and disliked by all concerned. The entire Senior school went 'on a walk', taken by one member of Staff, of which there was a rota for the term. Now although it gave a respite to those who had been in charge of their respective groups from the morning onwards and who would go on being so until the late evening, so too had the adult walker been hard at it, either that particular day or all through the week. The cook, who took a walk now and again, had been in the kitchen and would go back there in the evening. The gardener and craft-teacher had been teaching and gardening all the week and any of the Community's junior school staff had done likewise.
I understood that few, if any, of the seniors ever wanted to go on this walk and must have been persuaded, cajoled and threatened every Sunday. I do not know what happened on the walk but suspect that those returning probably met up with those who had just started. After some terms it was given up. I would imagine that much of the Senior's life at The Mote was in the experimental stage as at Goff's Oak in Hertfordshire, where the Community lived before coming to The Mote; there were fewer Seniors and they were much younger.
After tea on Sunday, there took place another remarkable institution, or so I thought; it was known as Sing-Song. The children rushed upstairs after tea and the little girls changed into really very pretty dresses and the small boys into white shirts, with the uniform blue tie. Their heads were brushed, their hands and faces washed and they all rushed downstairs again. The little girls, beribboned and bedecked, made straight for paints and paint-water, the boys for anything on the floor. It was, without doubt, for me at least, the most difficult time, not of the whole day, but of the whole week. It was really only about half-an-hour, but keeping those twenty children reasonably quiet and not doing anything messy or boisterous or rough, otherwise dresses might be torn, white shirts dirtied, taxed all my powers of control and ingenuity. They had 'played' all the afternoon and were just about ready for a five-mile walk.
"Sing-Song" took place in the Library, a very large room which could accommodate a great many. It was attended by the entire Community, from the nursery children upwards. The children sat in a huge semi-circle facing Miss Leila and Miss Dave; the Staff sat behind the seniors and younger children. There was a certain amount of community singing and a great deal of individual recitation of poetry, singing and dancing. There was often some choral-verse speaking, admirably taught by Miss Leila, who had a great gift for the teaching of poetry and verse speaking. Sometimes the girls would give a Eurhythmic dance display. I thought the whole ceremony was good as it brought the Community together and the standards of performance were high. It finally died out in the far more sophisticated days of the future: but it taught child and adolescent to speak properly in public, to recite, to act, to sing and dance and there was also a standard of dress and manners, Nowadays, no one would probably see any point to such a ceremony and it would seem very old-fashioned.