REVIEW: The Lower Fourth and Joan
Feb. 9th, 2026 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThe Lower Fourth and Joan: Winifred Darch
(Part of ‘The New Winifred Darch Omnibus’, Oxford University Press, Reprint 1958)
I had intended to read this sooner, but such is life. I've still got another story to go in this omnibus.
Joan Miller gets to Towndon High School through the good graces of family friends. Her father recently died, her older brother is barely an adult, and the extended family think they can advise Mrs Miller to do things like give up the family mill, by selling it to the nouveau riche Billings family. Stephen stands up to that proposal, but it looks as though 12-year-old Joan will have to train for suitably feminine and lesser pursuits, even though she’s shown promise as a linguist.
Joan has a ‘twin’ or best friend in Prue Waring, who shares her birthday. Prue’s older sister Patricia has just returned from Oxford and is hoping to become a writer. The Warings are better off than the Millers, being county people, although not as rich as the Billings family. However, they have more sense and more carrying power. Patricia and her mother contrive to use a local bursary to help Joan get to the high school after she failed the scholarship due to her arithmetic. She had also been guilty of not quite trying hard enough, for this was back in the days when her father was alive. But with a more serious bent than Prue and more brains than Chloris Billings, who failed her entrance exams to a boarding school, she may perhaps flourish at Towndon’s.
All three girls are placed in the Lower Fourth, whose leading light is mischievous American Charlotte, not the monitor. The form mistress, Miss Mansfield, is engaged, and well known to be moony and increasingly slack, to the disgust of the senior girls, particularly Tony and Coral, patrol leaders of the school’s waning Guide Company.
Joan has promised Patricia, who she idolises, to keep Prue out of trouble, but trouble soon comes, when Miss Mansfield’s laxness brings the Lower Fourth into conflict with Tony, who is the school hockey captain. Tony’s sense of honour when she clashes with the mistress leads to unexpected results. Miss Mansfield resigns, bringing forward her wedding date, and the headmistress asks Patricia, an old girl, to replace her. Once a Guide patrol leader herself, the young Miss Waring follows good advice to go hard on her form, even though it contains her sister and one or two good girls, like Joan and Helen.
She wins the first battle, and the form fall into line. The next battle is to get more of the younger girls to become Guides. Joan would love to do so, but once again, her wretched aunt and uncle spoil things, while Chloris, Prue and Charlotte join Tony’s patrol. But Tony suggests that Joan imagines herself a Guide and lives up to the promises and ideal of being prepared, which is what she does, fortunately enough, as a picnic Prue instigates goes wrong, and then a later Guide camp in the vicinity gets entangled in quite a serious fire. People who tended to think Joan was pi and dreamy find out that she’s more, and Patricia and Tony’s influence leave their mark.
As ever, Darch is such a satisfying writer. She never forgets that her heroine is quite a young girl, liable to make mistakes even when her motives are noble. Patricia too, is not shown as too good to be true, with the author revealing how the more experienced Mrs Waring and mistresses see her. Darch’s authorial voice is pretty blunt about spoiled Chloris’s stupidity – and terrible spelling. But the influence of school, Guides and Joan’s example change her, and like many characters, she’s depicted in the context of her relations and their influence. Admittedly, Charlotte was more of a cliché fictional American of the time (and the reason that the n-word gets used.)
There are seaside rescues and threats of fire, although they are within the bounds of credibility. But it’s the scene where Joan imagines herself becoming a member of the Guide Company while locked into her bedroom that will stay with me.
(Part of ‘The New Winifred Darch Omnibus’, Oxford University Press, Reprint 1958)
I had intended to read this sooner, but such is life. I've still got another story to go in this omnibus.
Joan Miller gets to Towndon High School through the good graces of family friends. Her father recently died, her older brother is barely an adult, and the extended family think they can advise Mrs Miller to do things like give up the family mill, by selling it to the nouveau riche Billings family. Stephen stands up to that proposal, but it looks as though 12-year-old Joan will have to train for suitably feminine and lesser pursuits, even though she’s shown promise as a linguist.
Joan has a ‘twin’ or best friend in Prue Waring, who shares her birthday. Prue’s older sister Patricia has just returned from Oxford and is hoping to become a writer. The Warings are better off than the Millers, being county people, although not as rich as the Billings family. However, they have more sense and more carrying power. Patricia and her mother contrive to use a local bursary to help Joan get to the high school after she failed the scholarship due to her arithmetic. She had also been guilty of not quite trying hard enough, for this was back in the days when her father was alive. But with a more serious bent than Prue and more brains than Chloris Billings, who failed her entrance exams to a boarding school, she may perhaps flourish at Towndon’s.
All three girls are placed in the Lower Fourth, whose leading light is mischievous American Charlotte, not the monitor. The form mistress, Miss Mansfield, is engaged, and well known to be moony and increasingly slack, to the disgust of the senior girls, particularly Tony and Coral, patrol leaders of the school’s waning Guide Company.
Joan has promised Patricia, who she idolises, to keep Prue out of trouble, but trouble soon comes, when Miss Mansfield’s laxness brings the Lower Fourth into conflict with Tony, who is the school hockey captain. Tony’s sense of honour when she clashes with the mistress leads to unexpected results. Miss Mansfield resigns, bringing forward her wedding date, and the headmistress asks Patricia, an old girl, to replace her. Once a Guide patrol leader herself, the young Miss Waring follows good advice to go hard on her form, even though it contains her sister and one or two good girls, like Joan and Helen.
She wins the first battle, and the form fall into line. The next battle is to get more of the younger girls to become Guides. Joan would love to do so, but once again, her wretched aunt and uncle spoil things, while Chloris, Prue and Charlotte join Tony’s patrol. But Tony suggests that Joan imagines herself a Guide and lives up to the promises and ideal of being prepared, which is what she does, fortunately enough, as a picnic Prue instigates goes wrong, and then a later Guide camp in the vicinity gets entangled in quite a serious fire. People who tended to think Joan was pi and dreamy find out that she’s more, and Patricia and Tony’s influence leave their mark.
As ever, Darch is such a satisfying writer. She never forgets that her heroine is quite a young girl, liable to make mistakes even when her motives are noble. Patricia too, is not shown as too good to be true, with the author revealing how the more experienced Mrs Waring and mistresses see her. Darch’s authorial voice is pretty blunt about spoiled Chloris’s stupidity – and terrible spelling. But the influence of school, Guides and Joan’s example change her, and like many characters, she’s depicted in the context of her relations and their influence. Admittedly, Charlotte was more of a cliché fictional American of the time (and the reason that the n-word gets used.)
There are seaside rescues and threats of fire, although they are within the bounds of credibility. But it’s the scene where Joan imagines herself becoming a member of the Guide Company while locked into her bedroom that will stay with me.
