Time changes shape as we look back. The sad news that Pembroke School in Ballsbridge - generally known as Miss Meredith's - is to close in June released memories of my experiences there.
The foundation date, 1929, seemed really distant. That was the year that the first talking film opened in the Capitol cinema. The Ardnachrusha electricity scheme had just been inaugurated, the first east-west transatlantic fight had left Baldonnel, John Devoy had just been buried, the foundation stone of Stormont was laid, and material for the Ford factory had just reached Cork from Detroit. I then realised that the date of my own entry to Miss Meredith's, as Paula Clarke in 1945, was only 16 years later.
The front hall on Pembroke Road still displays the illuminated address sent to Miss Meredith by the parents in the early 1930s. It captures the vibrant spirit of the school she so gallantly founded, a spirit sustained to this day by the director, Dr Pauline O'Connell and the principal, Mrs Gilleran: "True education requires a foundation of happiness". And even more wisely: "To make children happy requires unrelaxing vigilance and forbearance." That was certainly the watchword of the school, as manifested by Miss Meredith and her staff, from Miss Brown, who helped us form our letters from plasticine in the Little King Room, to Miss McKendrick, who sliced up an apple to demonstrate the relationship of the earth and the sun in the Top Front room.
Later, after my time, my sister was among the girls who enjoyed the teaching of Maeve Binchy in her prime.
Miss Meredith came from North Kerry, daughter of a justice of the peace and landowner. She qualified in London under the Froebel system in 1912. Her vision for her school was clear: a glorious - and at the time, unusual - expectation that we would achieve high academic standards. I recall Miss Meredith as infusing the little community with a gentle attentiveness. I still treasure her wonderful copperplate handwriting on prizes, reports and references.
Pupils were treated with great kindness and sensitivity. When little ones wet themselves, an older child was dispatched to the draper's across the road in Baggot Street, where there was a standing order for pants and socks.
Miss Meredith's dedication was such that we collected our schoolbooks for the new year from her bedroom. Although it is now a classroom, this is still known as Miss Meredith's room.
In my first two years, Miss Meredith herself taught history and nature, including those of Britain. So we learned about Richard the Lionheart and Magna Carta, and about grass snakes and voles. In later years, the history lessons more than restored the balance, and the nature studies ceased. Some of our teachers specialised in lurid stories of Boolavogue and the Famine. But whether the fact that one teacher radiated enthusiasm for the geography of Africa every year afresh, yet never mentioned our neighbouring island, was due to Anglophobia or "Afrophilia", I can only guess. To this day I have only the sketchiest idea of the location of any part of Britain except London. Events in what some teachers called "pagan England" loomed large, but were invariably problematic. When King George VI died, we passed on the news on the QT in the cloakroom, and when Queen Elizabeth was crowned, the broadcast wafted though the window considerately opened for us, as a result of preparatory signalling, by the young men in the flat next door.
When four young men (one was the theatre designer the late Sean Kenny), sailed a yacht, the Ituna, across the Atlantic, an Irish Times photograph of their arrival, all with beards and bare chests, appeared on the noticeboard in the hall. This step was taken by Miss Meredith on the perfectly logical grounds that one of the crew had a sister in the school, so we all to some extent shared in the achievement. Over the next weeks, girls flocked to the hall on any, or no, pretext. In those pre-rock'n'roll days, pin-ups were rare, and even photos of boys, if circulated under desks, were apt to be confiscated. But in Meredith's, the few official references to boys dismissed them as "all very well", a necessary evil, to be included in our plans only after we'd entered university, preferably on a scholarship.
At prizegiving, with any luck, we might get something quite adult, as Miss Meredith ordered a set of books from Fred Hanna's, with too much insouciance to check the content. I remember how my friend was presented with A Town Like Alice, containing what rated at the time as lurid love scenes. The arrival of males on the premises - such as the two singing teachers I remember, or a series of Department inspectors - led to outbreaks of teasing.
As a lay school, Miss Meredith's was unusual, and attracted many myths. It was held to be liberal, elitist, not really Catholic, West-British even. We were certainly encouraged to think for ourselves, and to aim high in study and career options, so it was freethinking in that sense. But like its founder, the school was deeply Catholic, with a close relationship to Haddington Road Church. First Communion breakfasts were amongst the proudest moments of the school year: feasts of chicken, ham and cake, served on Royal Tara china. We were honoured by the presence of Mr de Valera, in his role as proud grandfather. The roll-call of past pupils has many distinguished names. A few I remember are members of the Ó Cuiv, Dillon, Aiken families, Eavan Boland, Eimer Philbin Bowman, Mella Carroll, Caroline Gill and Caroline Walsh.
The school was located on the fringe of bohemian Dublin, the Baggotonia later chronicled by Michael Kane. I once saw Brendan Behan feeding a bottle of stout to the donkey who lived in the plantation, the open space of ground at the top of Herbert Street. We frequently sighted Patrick Kavanagh on what Tony Cronin describes as his "patrols" of his territory: from Mooney's pub to Kilmartin's bookie shop, to Parson's bookshop. Let his words capture the essence of Miss Meredith's: "What wisdom's
ours if such there be
Is a flavour of personality".