"OLD POLLY."

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17612, 15 November 1922, Page 13

"OLD POLLY."

A short time ago, at Parramatta, died one who was a Teal power for good in her time, "Polly," tho.oia matron of The King's School (writes M. Stacey Waddy in the "Sydney Morning Herald").

Mary Atkin went out to Australia as housekeeper to Bishop Barry. We can picture her dressed in black silk, a large bunch of keys at her waist, a decided personality at the old Biahopscourt, at Waverley. When the Barry family left, she preferred to remain in Australia. !>;-. Harris, headmaster of The Kind's School, offered her the position of matron, and her real life work began. She came to the school, the old school, in the one largo building, big and little boys mixed \\[> together, and she took her yfand at once. The matron's room was somewhere in the background. Old Polly looked about. "The matron's room is here," sho said—at the top of the first flight of stairs, right in the centre of the school life, and so it remained. When the school was enlarged, and the architect planned a suite of rooms for tho matron elsewhere, she looked at it, and went back to her old room, there to dispense pills and salts, biscuits and milk, scoldings and good advice, and a great deal of love —love that never became soft or made favourites, sho had too strong a sense of humour for that.

She had a wonderful memory—for faces, for voicos, family histories, details of housekeeping, numbers of linen and clothing. Porhaps our system of education partly spoils memory, for the old matron had been given no education. Sho could hardly write, though she had taught herself ;o read, and read a great deal, but alio never forgot anything. She had he gift of organising, and when she made rules they wero kept. Boys were not allowed to go up to the iecond storey of the school in their boots. 1 Old boys had to loam thoy might not either. One day a gay crowd of squatters, lawyers, and 'Varsity men running upstairs for a shower-bath after an old boys' football match were arrested by a stern figure with a pointing finger. They all sat down meekly, and off came the boots. One mother went to visit her small boy in tho sickroom during his first term. He exclaimed: "Mother! You ;hould not have come up in your boots," and matron had to be fetched to explain that tho rule did not apply to parents. Another mother came to discuss tho question of necessary dothing for a new boy. Sho had read the printed list,of requirements. She said: "I need not send the undervests, matron, as my boys nevor wear them." Said matron: "My boys always do!" And the vests came. The school games wero, of course, a part of matron's life, and hor disgust when her boys were beaten was powerfully expressed. She always had fresh in her mind' tho great timo, somewhere in the eighties and nineties, when the Bchool was victorious at football year after year, matches when the King's line was never even crossed. Yet she never really liked to watch a football match. She was too anxious about her boys, and too much of a partisan to appreciate the points of a game. She could not Ijear that any opposing team should score a goal. After she resigned the position of matron, she used to" attend yie matches in ordet to meet the boys, "her boys," still. Once, when they were badly defeated, she asked if the new matron had given them suet pudding for dinner. "I never did," she said, "not on football days. Never should they say I lost them a match." She was a keen Englishwoman always. In theory England was the beat place, English-born. Australians superior to all others, but practically die loved Australia best, and thought her old.boys the cream of the, earth. She was a great admirer of Queen Victoria, and knew all about the Royal family, to the last wedding, and the last great-grandchild. In her earlier days she expended a good deal of affection, on a parrot (now stuffed, in the school museum) and her little dog. Latterly, it all went to her boys and old boys. Her old boys! How delighted she was when one came back to the school as headmaster. When war broke out she followed the fortunes of every one. How she sewed, and tried to knit, and worried because she could not be there to patch their shirts and darn their socks —no one in the world could dp that so well—and prayed" for them night and day. "Matron, come and hear this story about Moses." "Moses! Mosesf He wasn't an old boy.V-*" Good old matron. Dear old Polly. She would never allow us to call her ! Polly > but we think she will iorgive it now. We hope there were some old boys to follow her to her resting-place at Eookwood. If there is no stone to mark it, will some old boy see that one is raised. . . , ' Mary Atkin, "Old Polly.'' For twenty-five years matron of the King's School, Parramatta: And then, below, the school motto, which might have been chosen to describe her character, "Fortiter et Fideliter."