The Naughtiest Girl in the School

* Butter Wouldn’t Melt in Her Mouth**

It’s the first day back at school for most Victorian students today. Can’t say I’m sad those days are long over, but there was one school in my childhood that I adored reading about, and that was Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers series. It was the boarding school of your dreams (not of your nightmares, unlike the brutal reality), and I remember being so disappointed when my big sister kindly told me that it was not in fact a real school. Apparently lots of little English schoolgirls wrote to Ms Blyton, asking the location of Malory Towers. 

How I loved reading about the adventures of Daryl, the heroine, and her friends Sally and Mary-Lou, the mischievous, tricksy Alicia, and the outrageous Gwendolyn (who, in the holidays, never got up before 8 o’clock); Will, who loved horses and her intrepid friend Clarissa; and the American girl who visited one term and alternately amused and shocked all the other girls with her antics, her dreams of treading the boards, and by wearing too much makeup. But then she got caught in the rain or something, suffered an attach of influenza that put her right in her read, and thereafter she wore her hair in plaits and was much nicer, and everyone liked her.

There was that beautiful rockpool that was refreshed whenever the tide came in, midnight feasts, the mysterious and exciting game of lacrosse, kindly Matron, and hilarious tricks to play on the French Mamselles. The North Tower with its view of the sea was where you wanted to sleep though.

I suppose kids today daydream about attending Hogwarts instead. 

** A somewhat accurate translation.

Kent College exterior image taken out from here, and classroom on loan from Miss Terrious.