10. Fanny Goes to School

When she was three years old Fanny started at the Hook School. Her parents paid a few pence a month so she could attend. In order to go to school, the White children had to go around “the Hook” which was a section of land bordered by Gilver Lane on the one side and another lane which ran rather parallel to Gilver Lane on the other side. The school was on the other side of the Hook from the White family’s home. It was a small national school sponsored by the Church of England. It was in the countryside named the Hook Common and right next to the Church of the Good Shepherd where all of the children had been christened. A qualified Governess was in charge of the classroom and her daughter taught the children from three to six years of age. They first learned the alphabet, colors and shapes, and by the time they left that class they had learned some adding, subtracting, reading, writing. knitting, simple sewing, and Bible stories.

The school day started by the class singing a hymn and repeating a prayer, as well as the Lord’s Prayer, in unison. Before leaving the school room for lunch they would sing this blessing on the food:
“Be present at our table, Lord.
Be here and everywhere adored.
We creatures bless, and grant that we
May feast in paradise with Thee. Amen.”

Those who lived close to the school went home for lunch. Fanny, and another brother and sister would sit under the tree outside, or in the lobby inside. They took their lunch in a bag, “a bit better-class bag than a gunny sack, with perhaps a few large lines of color going through the center. It had handles made of the same kind of material. The food was wrapped in newspapers. When returning for the afternoon lessons, they commenced by singing another grace:

“We thank thee Lord, for this our food;
But most of all for Jesus’ blood.”

At age seven years they started in the large classroom by standards or grades from one to seven. All standards were taught by the Governess herself. The subjects were those already mentioned but more difficult as the standards got higher. She also taught scripture. The girls learned more knitting and sewing; the boys learned drawing. Fanny says, “ I marvel now I am older at the knowledge the Governess must have had... She must have been very clever.”
All the kids who lived in Gilver Lane had to go through some fields on the way home from school. The farmer had usually planted broad beans in his field, and rutabagas to feed his cattle in winter. Fanny says they would be so hungry after school that they would eat some of the broad beans, or pull up rutabagas, chew all the dirt off them, and eat them.
One author described the typical approach to health found in country living at the time: “The general health of the hamlet was excellent. The healthy, open-air life and the abundance of coarse but wholesome food must have been largely responsible for that, but lack of imagination may also have played a part. Such people at that time did not look for or expect illness, and there were not as many patent medicine advertisements then as now to teach them to search for symptoms of minor ailments in themselves...the majority relied upon an occasional dose of Epsom salts to cure all ills.”1
One time when Fanny was ten or eleven, her big brother, Jim, wanted to surprise her. He knew she liked music and singing and was good at memorizing poems and other things. He brought a zither home to her from his travels on the railway. She was so happy and says that she “thought the world was almost to the end” because the same year, the Governesses two daughters who were about the same age had zithers but not near what her brother had brought her. Theirs were just little things, but she had such a nice big one. She was never taught to play it, but she could play different little songs that she knew. She thought that this was quite an expensive thing for a little child like her to have. Some of her brothers played the mouth organ and she learned to play that too.2
Fanny completed her education when she was twelve years old. She got through the sixth grade. “There was only ever one or two that continued on in the seventh grade,” she said.
Now a big change was coming for her. Find out what it was.