Nursing, flower-arranging and the importance of Bovril
Nursing skills are an important character trait in determining whether a
girl is a good sort, one of the ways in which Haverfield uses injury as
a means of bringing two girls together as friends.
In The Discovery of Kate, Dilys StOswald, isolated by the Grammar School
girls as being stuck up, crashes her bicycle into a herd of cows and
is taken unconscious to Kate's house nearby, where she stays in Kate's
bedroom until she has recovered, Kate's mother handily being a trained
nurse. The accident starts the process of bringing Kate and Dilys
together although Kate first has to choke off the attentions of the
unpleasant, dog-beating and distinctly lower-class Magdalene Russell.
During her stay at Kate's home Dilys realises that Kate cannot be bird
of a feather with her friend Magdalene and is attracted by her cheery
face, her care and thoughtfulness to the sick and her flower arranging
skills.
In The Luck of Lois her nursing expertise also indicates that there is
more to Ann Craig the headmistress' daughter, than meets the eye.
Sphinx-like Ann saves Lois from drowning with cramp and then
reluctantly accompanies Lois back to school when Lois' friend Zoe fails
to jump at the chance to go with her, as all good friends should when
one is ill. Ann, who has always held herself aloof from the girls who
have invaded her home, then tucks Lois up with a rug, takes off her
shoes and brings her a hot water bottle and a cup of hot Bovril. Zoe's
ignoring Lois when she faints marks the shift in Zoe's affections as she
transfers her friendship from Lois to Lois' newly-arrived sister, the
beautiful and accomplished Vivian. When Lois goes up to bed, her
room-mates fail to notice that she needs help and again Ann comes to the
rescue; I thought you had a sister and a friend here to help you or I
would have come up before. Later she sends up a temptingly set tray
(Does anyone know what a cup of Benger is?) decorated with a red rose,
although she is very particular about flowers being removed from
sick-rooms at night and Lois is not allowed to keep it. Ann's
solicitousness when Lois is ill is a hint to the reader that the silent
Ann cares for Lois, something Lois herself fails to realise until the
final chapter.
In Blind Loyalty, Alison spends a night in the dormitory placing cool
bandages on Georgie's head and Esm's lack of sympathy for Georgie is
the first hint that Esm might not be the perfect friend Alison has
thought her, I was conscious of something other than the confiding love
I had given to this beautiful girl. In Our Vow, hated Cousin Evelyn
sits up all night bathing the face of Alison who has covered herself in
shoe blacking while playing missionaries and heathen (did children do
this all the time or is this where EBD got the idea from?) and although
Alison is not yet reconciled to her cousin, the reader realises that
Alison is wrong.
Stoicism and the power of delirium
Haverfield heroines are brave to the point of insanity when in pain.
Hilary Walford in The Girl From the Bush, set alight by a Christmas tree
candle, refuses to be examined until her rescuer Dorothy's hands have
been bandaged and is told by the doctor that she is pretty plucky.
All night long she was unable to sleep for the pain where the flames
had scorched her but she allowed neither groan nor sigh to escape her.
Dorothy herself lies with her lips closed tight in the endeavour to
crush back a single murmur, though she was white with the agony she was
forced to endure.
The Girl from the Bush also introduces 11 year-old Leslie who is having
the open-air cure sleeping alone in a hut in the woods. Her disease,
presumably TB, is not stated but the cure specifically involves
breathing pine air. Her parents were with her until her father caught
influenza and her mother had to stay with him instead (obviously!).
Despite being frightened to death at night she says her parents would be
disappointed if she asked to join them in their cottage. This seems to
be taking stoicism a little too far.
When faced with pain, sympathetic characters soldier on while
unsympathetic ones go to pieces. The eponymous heroine of Dauntless
Patty responds to being hit in the eye by a tennis ball with don't
mention it, accidents will happen. It will be all right in a moment or
two, but turns out to have been half-blinded, faints and is sick with
concussion. Similarly Margaret MacDonald felled to the ground by a
golf ball in The Girls of St Olave's is determined to continue playing
with a supreme effort until forced by staff to return home to rest.
Snobbish Phyllis Staunton-Taylor in Sylvia's Victory, on the other hand,
makes a fuss groaning and covering her face with her arm when hit on
the ankle at hockey, while Zoe in The Luck of Lois is proved not worthy
of Lois' friendship when, caught in a forest fire on a walk (pupils in
The Luck of Lois encounter
