Carry Me Not, Repeat Not, Back to Ole Virginny: A Boarding School Chronicle of the 40'S
Anne Williams Ferguson
FIRST of all: Onion grass in the spring. This is the quintessential memory of anyone who has ever attended a Virginia boarding school and, during the months of April and May, been confronted by ominous rows of half-pint containers of lait à l'oignon (made even more gastronomically interesting by small but effective shingles of wax),
But I have chosen to call this a "chronicle," so perhaps I should be more precise in describing my disaster-ridden history as an un-willing preppie."Unwilling." Not quite true. I guess I'd become what is now known as a "liberated woman" at approximately age eleven. By the following year my New Orleans school had become anathema to me, and two younger sisters contributed more gratuitous angst than anyone should be asked to handle, so I persuaded my parents to send me to boarding school. My sentence at Chatham Hall was not to commence until freshman year, and so I spent my eighth grade year at a now long—and mercifully—defunct institution called The Warrenton Country School.
Warrenton, 1943—44: The decision by my parents to spring me from the land of moss-hung mentalities was based on the following criteria: my great-grandmother knew the head-mistress, one spoke French until two o'clock in the afternoon, one rode—with the Warrenton Hunt, of course, side-saddle (1943!)—one spoke French from 6 p.m.until light out. Yes, "light:" that's how many there were in my dorm of eight skinny, pustulous 12- and 13-year-olds.
