Starting school in 1851

Press, 21 February 1978, Page 18

Starting school in 1851

(This is John Hall’s third and last letter to his friend, Paul, in England, describing his life at Lyttelton in 1851. John is aged 11 and his sister, Ann, is nine. Their father is a labourer and has built the family a cob house. They are poor but the parents work hard. The children help with the chores). The Track, Lyttelton, New Zealand. February 21, 1852. Dear Paul, Our first winter in the cob house passed quickly. Ann and I were busy with chores every morning and, as you can guess, mine were the hardest. She used to help Mother cook and sew while I chopped wood and dug in the vegetable garden. It was my task, too, to fetch water from the stream. We need plenty of water, particularly on bath nights, when we fill the big tub and wash ourselves in front of the liv-ing-room fire. All the same, I hated carrying the heavy buckets up the slippery track. And usually my hands stung with the sharp cold.

Meanwhile, Mother was putting pennies aside each week towards our school textbooks. Then, one day last September, she tipped the coins out of her tin mug and said that she had enough saved and that we

could start at Miss Johnson’s school the next week.

We were pleased as the school is close — down The Track and up — and we wanted to meet the other children. Miss Johnson came out on the Charlotte Jane too, and she has turned the front part of •her house into a classroom.

I was glad to see a couple of big boys at the school on our first day, for most of the children looked younger than me. After the first week, Ann and I made some friends and began to enjoy the lessons.

I do wish, though, that we didn’t all share the same classroom. The small children sit in the front rows and chant the alphabet or write the letters on their slates. They are noisy and take up a lot of Miss Johnson’s time.

While they are occupied, we older ones struggle with geometry and history. Then, after a while, Miss Johnson helps us. I like history best as she is reading aloud to us from a book about the Black Prince and it is most exciting.

At lunchtime we eat our bread and dripping outside and play marbles, or tops, or fly our kites. The girls usually skip and play hopscotch. Then the bell rings again and we have English grammar. After that we

boys have geography and the girls learn sewing.

On the whole I like this school better than our English one. It’s not so strict. But it’s a pity we are so short of books, for Miss Johnson is always having to write on the blackboard.

Ann and I are usually starving when we arrive home after school and we eat plenty of thick homebaked bread and fresh butter. And sometimes Ann and I make damper, one of my favourite foods. Mother gives us a big round of floury dough and we roll it out. Then we spread it on a flat stone on the embers in our fireplace and leave it to cook. It’s delicious.

I’ve grown tall this year and it must be the good New Zealand food. We eat more meat than in England — in fact we have it nearly every day. And sometimes we have pork as Father hunts wild pigs in the bush. We also catch our own fish and eat vegetables fresh from the garden. The only food I miss is sugar. It’s expensive here. However, Mother flavours our puddings with ginger which I like.

Our neighbours steam their meals in an earth oven outside. That must be no joke in winter. Fortunately, we have the open fire in the living-room and recently Mother has found

cooking much simpler as Father gave her a campoven.

It’s a heavy iron pot with a lid and is popular with many of the settlers. Mother is always using hers for stews and vegetables. She bakes bread in the camp-oven, too, and stands it on the hot embers and places more embers on the top. After dinner we sit by the fire while Mother sews. She works by the light of a slush lamp as it’s cheaper than burning a candle. You should try it. ’You simply pour some pig’s fat in a tin and, when it is set, place a rag wick in the centre. While Mother mends. Father reads aloud to us. We have three books — the Bible, the history of Little Goody-two-Shoes, and Gulliver’s Travels. However, last week a boy at school lent me Robinson Crusoe, and that’s the most interesting story I’ve ever heard. Hardly any of the children here have toys apart from home-made ones, like kites and boats. Ann has a doll’s house which father constructed out of an old wooden box. We play our favourite games outside and we are never bored. There is so much to do at Lyttelton — on the beach and in the hills. I wish you would emigrate too. Your friend, John HalL