Josephine Smith, Autumn 1882

The School Room, Church Road, Chagford, 11th November 1882

Dear Sister,

To think I was complaining of the cold mist last August! It had nothing on the ice and chill of a Chagford winter. Mr Smith customarily believes a quarter skuttle of coal suffices to stave off the cold and if I forget to wear my long johns I am quite undone by it. Of course, if I complain, he reminds me that Chagford Stannary, stretching from the mouth of the Teign through Dartmoor to the Somerset border had its own parliament in Crockentor, and jurates from the 24 stannary towns had to walk tens of miles to the great court of Devon Tinners, no matter their age or the weather, and didn’t complain. I hope they had their long johns too.

Mr Smith has a new humorous pet name for me. Miss “Slap Dash”. He quite missed his calling as a comedian on the music hall stage. Apparently this moniker is down to my hasty manner cleaning the blackboard, and my insistence on curtailing times tables to give the little mites a story before they start their long walks home. He has permitted me to call him George when the children are elsewhere but it feels strange.

I am grown quite fond of my students, for all they spend more time at the factory than at their desks. In fairness, it is probably far warmer in there. George has complained to the foreman but he protested that “he would have to stop the men whose engines the children look after” and we would soon have an angry mob outside the school. I have come to regard good attendance in the same vein as winter sunshine on this inclement moor. If it happens, wonderful, if not, no point in agitating oneself.
Today I managed to fool a smut-faced little factory boy, Herbert Reed, by flexing the muscles on my forehead so that my fringe moved back and forward, and telling him my hair was a wig. I was not expecting him to reach up and try to pull it off! My pained howl brought Mr Smith running in and Herbert Reed gasped, “You was lying miss!”…at which point all the children, dropped to the floor and cowered under their desks. Herbert’s older brother explained that Chagford children have been told dishonesty of any kind causes buildings to collapse, and if I am to perjure myself again, would I kindly go do it in a Moreton Hampstead. I believe some inter-community rancour, persists from the Civil War.

At lunch time, the school room was quite empty and Mr Smith and I had the opportunity to make conversation. He has been reading Tales in Political Economy by the suffragist and socialist Millicent Fawcett, which is surprising.

I asked Mr Smith if he found a woman’s thoughts and theories sufficiently coherent to follow and he looked a little hurt. Next Mr Smith showed me his copy of the Times, and said he thought I might like to read that subsequent to the abolition of slavery in England’s colonies and the USA, a decree in the Ottoman Empire has emancipated all slaves in that region too. We read the article together in silence. He has quite a distinguished profile when silent. The Chagford lady he sets his cap at will perhaps not be so unfortunate… If I professed otherwise, I’d risk the rafters falling on my head.
Love to mother,
Josephine Jeanette

Josephine Smith, Spring 1910

The School Room, Church Road, Chagford, 20th March 1910

Dear Sister,

So my Daisy is eighteen! Thank you for her card. I feel quite the old matriarch! Not least because she insists on calling me one. I preferred “Miss Slap Dash” as a pet name. Daisy asked only for books and one good travelling hat as she is off to Bideford Teaching College in the Autumn.

Dorothy intends to follow her sister into the same vocation, as does her brother Harold, and my boy Leslie is already there, so I suppose all the little apples have fallen close to the tree. I can tell my own dear sister; it is such a relief to see them strong and grown and beyond the dangers of childhood fevers.

Have you read that the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks are meeting in Paris? And Lenin was only in London a few years ago. Can they really mean to overthrow the Tsar? George teases me that I would love such an outcome and am the red peril in Chagford’s midst. But he forgets Chagford’s own history of working man revolt. When three tinners were apprehended for riotous behaviour in 1793, 17 other tinners descended, bludgeons in hand, on the house of the Justice Prudence in Cheriton Bishop to get their colleagues released. Their efforts were foiled but I admire the solidarity. Daredn’t tell the junior girls that story of course. They might set down their darning and I can’t disappoint the school inspector another year running.

In haste, as I have seventy tests to mark and the light of one stout half candle to do it by. George is nothing if not economical.
Love to mother,

Josephine Jeanette

Josephine Smith, Spring 1924

The School Room, Church Road, Chagford, 16th April 1924

Dear Sister,

George and I are safely returned to Chagford. The English Channel was kind to me on this occasion. The shells we collected on our last day will serve me well in drawing lessons for the junior boys and girls.

You will be very tired after all the arrangements you made for poor mother’s funeral. So lovely to smell the sea mists rolling in as we stood by her grave. I am glad to be home. George and I are become creatures of habit now we are in our 64th year. Ridiculous, but I don’t care to see children running in the street or sitting in the church without being able to recall their names-and those of their parents! How will George and I cope when we retire next year?

And more ridiculous still, I don’t like to stray from the place where everyone knew Leslie, as it keeps him alive. Harold, bless him, has given Gordy, his son Leslie for his second name. Though the connections of a close community such as Chagford are not without their complications. I saw Leslie’s widow today buying mouse traps and a fire iron in Webber’s hardware shop. I was so happy on their wedding day. When she turned to the side it was quite a jolt to realise she and her new husband are expecting their second child. George says it is “muddled female thinking” not to wish her happiness, but of course I peeked in the perambulator waiting outside and wondered if the little blanketed face of my grandchild would have looked similar.
I enclose a postal order towards mother’s gravestone.
With love,

Josephine Jeanette