STORY OF A STUPID GIRL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 23, 27 January 1934, Page 15

STORY OF A STUPID GIRL

LADY OXFORD’S SCHOOLDAYS CONFESSIONS BY “MARGOT.” The Countess of Oxford and Asquith on November 28 gave an amusing account of her schooldays when speaking at the annual meeting of the London branch of the Independent Schools’ Association, at the College of Preceptors. “You may think I am an educated woman,” Lady Oxford said. ‘•You never made a greater mistake in your life. I am what they call a self-made woman. I have had no education. I was so backward and stupid as a girl that my mother said, ‘You had better learn arithmetic.’ “This was in Scotland, where the schools are one hundred years in front of you here. My mother was very upset because I could not add, subtract or

| learn the multiplication tables, so I I went to the village schoolmaster to : learn arithmetic. ' “After a little while he said, ‘Miss Maggie’ (as he called me, my name being Margot) ‘is so ignorant and jo foolish and makes so much tomfoolery in the class that we would rather have her go.’ ” Lady Oxford then told stories of her Scottish school. One concerned a squire’s son who was always at the bottom of the class until one day, to the delight of his family, he came home to.p. When pressed about the number of children in the class, he said, “Me and a lassie.” ‘‘Although my education was curiously neglected, as one grows older one learns by oneself,” Lady Oxford said. “It is very important, to learn languages early, because later on it is verv difficult. I started my daughter Elizabeth (now Princess Bibcsco) and my son Anthony from the age of five to loam languages. They learned very ' easily then. ”