’ over and over again, until
Dorothy had to stand over them and silence them with threats of blows She
was growing almost habitually irritable nowadays, it surprised and shocked
her, but she could not stop it Every morning she vowed to herself, ‘Today I
will not lose my temper’, and every morning, with depressing regularity, she
did lose her temper, especially at about half past eleven when the children were
at their worst Nothing in the world is quite so irritating as dealing with
mutinous children Sooner or later, Dorothy knew, she would lose control of
herself and begm hitting them It seemed to her an unforgivable thing to do, to
hit a child, but nearly all teachers come to it in the end It was impossible now
to get any child to work except when your eye was upon it You had only to
turn your back for an instant and blotting-paper pellets were flying to and fro
Nevertheless, with ceaseless slave-driving the handwriting and
‘commercial arithmetic’ did certainly show some improvement, and no doubt
A Clergyman’ s Daughter
397
the parents were satisfied
The last few weeks of the term were a very bad time For over a fortnight
Dorothy was quite penniless, for Mrs Creevy had told her that she couldn’t
pay her her term’s wages ‘till some of the fees came in’ So she was deprived of
the secret slabs of chocolate that had kept her going, and she suffered from a
perpetual slight hunger that made her languid and spiritless There were
leaden mornings when the minutes dragged like hours, when she struggled
with herself to keep her eyes away from the clock, and her heart sickened to
think that beyond this lesson there loomed another just like it, and more of
them and more, stretching on into what seemed like a dreary eternity Worse
yet were the times when the children were in their noisy mood and it needed a
constant exhausting effort of the will to keep them under control at all, and
beyond the wall, of course, lurked Mrs Creevy, always listening, always ready
to descend upon the schoolroom, wrench the door open, and glare round the
room with ‘Now then 1 What’s all this noise about, please^’ and the sack m her
eye
Dorothy was fully awake, now, to the beastliness of living in Mrs Creevy’s
house The filthy food, the cold, and the lack of baths seemed much more
important than they had seemed a little while ago Moreover, she was
beginning to appreciate, as she had not done when the joy of her work was
fresh upon her, the utter loneliness of her position Neither her father nor Mr
Warburton had written to her, and m two months she had made not a single
friend in Southbndge For anyone so situated, and particularly for a woman, it
is all but impossible to make friends She had no money and no home* of her
own, and outside the school her sole places of refuge were the public library,
on the few evenings when she could get there, and church on Sunday
mornings She went to church regularly, of course-Mrs Creevy had insisted
on that She had settled the question of Dorothy’s religious observances at
breakfast on her first Sunday morning
‘I’ve just been wondering what Place of Worship you ought to go to,’ she
said ‘I suppose you were brought up C of E , weren’t you>’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy
‘Hm, well I can’t quite make up my mind where to send you There’s St
George’s-that’s the C of E -and there’s the Baptist Chapel where I go
myself Most of our parents are Nonconformists, and I don’t know as they’d
quite approve of a C of E teacher You can’t be too careful with the parents
They had a bit of a scare two years ago when it turned out that the teacher I had
then was actually a Roman Catholic, if you please f Of course she kept it dark as
long as she could, but it came out in the end, and three of the parents took their
children away I got rid of her the same day as I found it out, naturally ’
Dorothy was silent
‘ Still, ?
Dorothy had to stand over them and silence them with threats of blows She
was growing almost habitually irritable nowadays, it surprised and shocked
her, but she could not stop it Every morning she vowed to herself, ‘Today I
will not lose my temper’, and every morning, with depressing regularity, she
did lose her temper, especially at about half past eleven when the children were
at their worst Nothing in the world is quite so irritating as dealing with
mutinous children Sooner or later, Dorothy knew, she would lose control of
herself and begm hitting them It seemed to her an unforgivable thing to do, to
hit a child, but nearly all teachers come to it in the end It was impossible now
to get any child to work except when your eye was upon it You had only to
turn your back for an instant and blotting-paper pellets were flying to and fro
Nevertheless, with ceaseless slave-driving the handwriting and
‘commercial arithmetic’ did certainly show some improvement, and no doubt
A Clergyman’ s Daughter
397
the parents were satisfied
The last few weeks of the term were a very bad time For over a fortnight
Dorothy was quite penniless, for Mrs Creevy had told her that she couldn’t
pay her her term’s wages ‘till some of the fees came in’ So she was deprived of
the secret slabs of chocolate that had kept her going, and she suffered from a
perpetual slight hunger that made her languid and spiritless There were
leaden mornings when the minutes dragged like hours, when she struggled
with herself to keep her eyes away from the clock, and her heart sickened to
think that beyond this lesson there loomed another just like it, and more of
them and more, stretching on into what seemed like a dreary eternity Worse
yet were the times when the children were in their noisy mood and it needed a
constant exhausting effort of the will to keep them under control at all, and
beyond the wall, of course, lurked Mrs Creevy, always listening, always ready
to descend upon the schoolroom, wrench the door open, and glare round the
room with ‘Now then 1 What’s all this noise about, please^’ and the sack m her
eye
Dorothy was fully awake, now, to the beastliness of living in Mrs Creevy’s
house The filthy food, the cold, and the lack of baths seemed much more
important than they had seemed a little while ago Moreover, she was
beginning to appreciate, as she had not done when the joy of her work was
fresh upon her, the utter loneliness of her position Neither her father nor Mr
Warburton had written to her, and m two months she had made not a single
friend in Southbndge For anyone so situated, and particularly for a woman, it
is all but impossible to make friends She had no money and no home* of her
own, and outside the school her sole places of refuge were the public library,
on the few evenings when she could get there, and church on Sunday
mornings She went to church regularly, of course-Mrs Creevy had insisted
on that She had settled the question of Dorothy’s religious observances at
breakfast on her first Sunday morning
‘I’ve just been wondering what Place of Worship you ought to go to,’ she
said ‘I suppose you were brought up C of E , weren’t you>’
‘Yes,’ said Dorothy
‘Hm, well I can’t quite make up my mind where to send you There’s St
George’s-that’s the C of E -and there’s the Baptist Chapel where I go
myself Most of our parents are Nonconformists, and I don’t know as they’d
quite approve of a C of E teacher You can’t be too careful with the parents
They had a bit of a scare two years ago when it turned out that the teacher I had
then was actually a Roman Catholic, if you please f Of course she kept it dark as
long as she could, but it came out in the end, and three of the parents took their
children away I got rid of her the same day as I found it out, naturally ’
Dorothy was silent
‘ Still, ?
Orwell - A Clergyman's Daughter
