SPE ET LABORE

MEMORIES OF THE HARRIS 1928‑40

I retired two years ago, after twenty years of teaching, and none of the three schools in which I taught had for me the sunny atmosphere of the Harris. Maybe it was the memory of those classrooms facing south over the Tay, so hot on those long afternoons, that left this impression, or maybe my schooldays have taken on the golden glow of nostalgia.

My father was an assistant teacher in the Maths Department, then Head of Department after Willie Ormond, and finally Deputy Head when Mr Hope was Rector. He had lost a leg in the First World War and I anguished for years over his nickname of 'Corky' until I discovered he thought it was funny. I think we joined the school together, he going to the staff, I to the tender care of Miss Daisy McQuoid in the Infant Department. She belted me in the first few weeks for putting six petals on a flower drawing instead of five and I thought the iron had entered my soul but good relations were restored and in the last few years of her life we exchanged letters.

Am I remembering accurately, when I recall that the Rector at that time, Mr Barrie Robb, wore a tail coat and striped trousers? My father certainly always wore a bowler hat and dark formal suit to school, which was in Park Place then. We had slates and smelly little sponges for cleaning them, and my schoolbag always smelled of that and the floury aroma of the roll I'd brought for playtime. There was Miss Menzies with her fiery red hair, and lovely Miss Braid of the deep blue eyes. A long time after, I taught beside Joy Andrew in Perth Grammar School and discovered her aunt was May Andrew on the Science staff, whom the Rector referred to as `Honeypot' because she attracted the attentions of the male members of his staff! She later became a well known headmistress.

My happiest memories of Primary in the new school are associated with Miss Kate Bremner whose father had been Rector of the school and had written the Holiday Song. She had a lasting influence on my life. Quite apart from making the usual lessons interesting, she spoke to us about a philosophy of life, about courage and responsibility, about character‑building and integrity. And after her English lessons, I could analyse any compound or complex sentence under the sun! Sometimes as an English teacher following completely different methods, I would think guiltily that such a grounding as Kate's would have prepared my pupils well for Higher interpretations. Analysis brought out the meaning of the sentence. What heresy! I bow my head in shame.

Mr Peterkin was Rector now, with his eagle profile, his hard, blue collars, his husky voice. He swept onto the platform on assembly days with a swirl of his gown, his gaze seeming to meet every eye. And we stood all through assembly! They are not made of such stamina now, the pupils. Occasionally someone would faint which made an interesting diversion.

In the Secondary Department, I was introduced to a very pure Hamlet by Euphemia Beveridge. Such a shock it was to learn about the Oedipus Complex at University! Tommy Steele taught us Latin and warned us that mental toothache was worse than the physical kind. Thanks to him I can sing `Tipperary' in Latin and can tell what the Roman soldier said as he left the restaurant: `Waita, bring my scuta !' I loved Tommy. Sandy Niven, Bobby Patterson, Jimmie Proctor and Margaret Duncan set a high standard in our Latin class as in others. We enjoyed lessons with Tommy, who made a dead language live, which is more than can be said of one who taught in the classroom above! Little Johnny Munro left with his peppermints and Adam MacLure took over the French Department, throwing the sleeve bits of his gown dramatically around him as he urged us to greater efforts. He fell in love with the new Maths Teacher, the delectable Ella Winter, whose wardrobe was the envy of us girls. Mr Greig infected us with his own enthusiasm for Shaw, and Renee Dorward in the sewing class sighed over my two left hands.

The school choir was very strong under its conductor, Nessie Simpson. She was tiny but she was dynamite! She had to stand on a large box to see us all and the senior boys teased her endlessly. The singing articulation exercise `Pearls, please, pretty Penelope' became `Players, please...' and great hulking lads would be hauled to the front to be admonished, hardly able to stop laughing at the furious, dark, little face glowering up at them. But we all respected her and she coaxed the most beautiful sounds out of us savages. I remember us singing `Jesu, joy of man's desiring' at a choir rehearsal before Christmas and then waiting for a tram at the foot of West Park in the frosty pink dusk, Bach still in my ears, aware that this was a moment I would remember forever. We sang a setting of `Old Mother Hubbard' at a prizegiving. The basses growled `Bones' and the tenors added `Bow‑wow' while above that waltz rhythm, we trebles and altos trilled the melody. We sang `Ca' the Yowes' as a contrast that day. Was the whole school present at the prizegivings then? I remember it that way just as I think we were all at assembly together. Schools today are too big to manage that which is a pity.

The Guide Company thrived under the leadership of Lena Crabb and her lieutenants, Bunty and Louis: Camps were extremely well organised, discipline was excellent and yet we felt we were on friendly terms with our leaders. And the musical education! Ask me to sing `Wha cut yer hair, Sna'drap?' Oh, those `camp fire' singsongs in the dusty hall and outside on balmy nights! Memories are made of this‑and of sardines on Dundee cake at midnight feasts!

The school dances were very sedate compared to the decibel‑wild affairs in schools now. I remember the Lambeth Walk being all the rage. I made my father promise to dance with me if I was a wall‑flower but Willie Cape saved the day. He whispered sweet nothings in my ear like `You've got a great gift of the gab !' There was a boy called Stanley Lumpkin who had come to the school for only one year. At the school dance he clung to the girl friend he was soon to be parted from. We all thought it so romantic. He was a charmer was Stanley. I wonder if he survived the war.

Came the Coronation of 1937 and our Head Girl was chosen as the Queen. My father booked a table in a window of the Cafe Val d'Or so that we could watch Nancy Keay being crowned. She had lovely colouring and that day she was a picture.

About this time, too, there was a startling innovation. Miss Watson, the Lady Superintendent, decided the girls should wear school hats. Happy Annie, as she was called because she was usually smiling, chose a navy cloche­like hat, sporting the school badge on the front. Unfortunately, it did nothing for my round, rosy, pudding face and I was always in trouble for not wearing it. As a result of being stuffed into my trench coat pocket it had a crinkled brim and Happy Annie would splutter over me, looking very unhappy. I incurred her wrath again when I took to fainting. When war was imminent, and the suggestion was that the school might become a first‑aid post for bombing casualties, we prefects were sent to D.R.I. for training. At the first smell of disinfectant down I went. Miss Watson thought it was terribly unpatriotic.

Before was was declared, we had been practising the use of gas masks and carrying out air‑raid drill. When war came, the school was evacuated to Forfar! I was to sit my Highers that year so it was decided I would stay in Dundee, where my Dad could keep an eye on my Maths, no doubt. My sisters set out for Canada but their ship, the S.S. Volendam, was torpedoed one hundred miles off the coast of Ireland. The other ships in the convoy were not supposed to stop but a tanker, the Bassethound, did and brought my sisters and others back to Glasgow. Hamish Drummond, now a dental surgeon in Forres, and my sister, Moira, were praised for their care of the younger children during that awful night. The school knitted furiously and sent a large consignment of woollen comforts to the tanker which received them while on duty in the tropics! My sisters were offered another chance to sail but my parents could not face another parting and they stayed at home. The ship they would have sailed on was also torpedoed, this time with the loss of many lives.

In our class, there was a tall, slim girl called Ena Pope, and I remember how she used to sing one of the hits of the time, `Love walked in'. She had straight, fair hair cut in a fringe, a keen mind and a quick sense of humour. She went to London to work and when she came back on holiday, we envied her clothes and her interesting life in the capital. Our school uniform and daily schoolwork seemed deadly dull in comparison. She and Betty Nicholson, another classmate, a quiet and gentle girl, shared digs. Our class had its first taste of the tragedy of war when they were both killed in an air‑raid.

We had to become accustomed to the thought of classmates in danger. Willie Blair was a fighter pilot and broke his back in a crash. He came to see us, wearing a plaster cast covered in nurses' signatures. Jimmie Proctor went off to the Fleet Air Arm and Sandy Niven in the Navy sailed the dreaded Baltic run. At the time of St. Valerie and Dunkirk my father sat at the phone, night after night, trying to find out if this one or that one had returned. I think Bobby Patterson was the first in our class to join up ‑ and to marry. Jimmie Murray, the school captain of the year before, died on service in India.

One night, a stray German plane dropped a string of bombs across Dundee. Morris Moodie in our class returned to a space in the terrace off West Park where his home had been. My father, coming home from Home Guard duty (he was a Quartermaster Sergeant, no less!) was delayed when the tram could not make its way through the rubble on the rails.

In our Sixth Year, after the exams were over, we girls were given a crash course in cookery. One hot day, when the puff pastry was melting in our hands, Mr Carrie burst into the Domestic Science room. His face was white. "It was on the wireless at lunchtime," he said. "France has fallen." I remember Miss Howe, that elegant lady, kept her cool. "Now, grlls," she said calmly, "cool your hands under the cold tap before handling the pastry." And she left the room with the air of one about to pick France up again! Of course, we expected bombing raids at once as a prelude to invasion but they did not come.

I've often wondered what became of a pair of comedians from two classes above ours. David Hart and Wally Huggins were the life and soul of any party. One day before the war, when the newspapers were full of accounts of the two dictators, David and Wally dressed up as Hitler and Mussolini and marched through the school giving the appropriate salutes. I remember Wally was flying pathfinder planes for a while, and we admired the special badge on his uniform.

While the school as a whole was in Forfar, the teachers left behind in Dundee were worrying about us and our Highers. My father started Maths classes in our home ‑ in my bedroom, to be exact. (I was sent to stay with my Granny in Seafield Road.) Other teachers followed suit and soon we had a full school day's timetable to follow. We would cycle to my home for Maths, then up to Mr MacLure's for French and back down to Hyndford Street to Mr Robertson for Latin. He had a young family, just babies, and when he left the room to help Mrs Robertson with the pram we once or twice moved on the hands of the clock and gave ourselves a longer lunch hour!

English and History were usually in the afternoon. This was the first year English and History were separate exams. Ian Gilroy in Sixth Year and myself in Fifth were the first to sit the new Higher History exam. Together we would sit on either side of Miss Beveridge at her dining room table trying to concentrate on the Congress of Vienna or some such fascinating subject, while her dog sat beneath the table emitting the most dreadful smells. Across Miss Beveridge's symmetrical curls, Ian would wrinkle his nose at me in the most comical way. It was very difficult to concentrate!

My father would sometimes move his class out to the garden and Janet Proctor tells me that what she remembers most vividly of this time is doing Maths among a mass of dahlias. News of the classes being held brought other pupils back from Forfar to join them and it was not long before the school opened again.

There are so many memories. There were the group who waited for the bus to Invergowrie and beyond ‑ Eva Melville, Alastair Walker, Roberta Seath, Peter MacGregor. There were the classics people ‑ Roberta and Peter again and Hugh Mackay. There was Mary Reid who wandered about in a kind of daze writing poetry, and Emily Bruce who played the cello. There was a girl called Marion who wasn't at the school for long but made a great impression by tap‑dancing in very short skirts at a lit. concert. There was Ernest Brady and ‑ but I could go on and on! Sometimes a kent face from these old days appears at the strangest times. In the Taj Hotel in Bombay on the eve of the transfer of power from the Raj, I saw Harvey Whitfield at the other side of the big dining room. When I was free to go and talk to him, he had gone. Pity! A chorus of the Harris Holiday Song would have added a bit of tone to that establishment and impressed all those public schoolboys more than somewhat!

Mabel Adam (nee Esplin)
(School Captain 1940‑41 and formerly Head of English at Perth Grammar School)