The Voice of Scout
Enter Scout. The moment Mrs Lovell changed her perfect elocution and adult tone to the gritty, fiesty accent of a little girl from Maycomb County, Alabama I believed that anything was possible in a classroom. The entire class was transfixed. Similar to how I'm sure the generation of radio listeners felt at the lead up to the next Goon Show, or War of the Worlds, our English lessons became much anticipated events. We would sit enraptured for an entire lesson as the voice of Moira Lovell, an English teacher in South Africa, unraveled a story, through just her voice, of the deep injustices of being born the wrong colour in America.
Mrs Lovell was my favourite. She dressed as a performer would, classy, feminine and expressive. One of my favourites was a blazer with a bicycle embroidered on its breast pocket. One felt one could go boating on a English river when she wore that blazer.
And that's the thing, with every book and poem that Mrs Lovell taught, one could go somewhere. On those hot, mundane Maritzburg days, with the drift of the Nestlé factory blowing through the open windows, we would be far from the madding crowd, or hearing the owls call our names, or swapping water for chocolate.
And then of course there was our main man, William Shakespeare. It was because of my high school English lessons that I will fight ardently that his voice must always be found in the classroom. When we silence Shakespeare we silence a long standing spirit of humanity.
Not only did Mrs Lovell introduce me to the Bard in her classroom, she recognized in me a deep passion for the stage. I was never the best student in her class but I might possibly have been one of the most enthusiastic. And it was this zeal for Shakespeare, for performance, for finding my own voice that led to her and Anthony casting me as Portia in 'The Merchant of Venice' for the Hilton Arts Festival.
Every year when I bring my own students to the festival and I smell the jasmine, see the sun streaming in through the stained glass windows of the chapel and I enter into the darkness of the Drama Centre I am overcome with nostalgia and so deeply grateful that the Lovells took a chance on me. The privilege of playing one of the strongest and most powerful female roles in the Shakespeare stable will stay with me forever.
As a teacher I have taught many of the texts that I grew to love during my tenure as an English student. But possibly one of my greatest joys as a teacher has been to teach Mrs Lovell's poem, 'Suburban Intruder' to hundreds of girls at Westville Girls High School. The poem about someone discovering that a rat is making its way into the house through the toilet bowl is funny in itself. To know that my perfect, super classy English teacher penned the poem is just hilarious. And of course, the metaphor of safety and security in South Africa and the invasion of that security from the most surprising of places makes the poem a total delight to teach.
Over the years I have bumped into Mrs Lovell at public speaking events, the Hilton Festival etc, always with Anthony at her side and I have delighted in sharing my news with her. We have followed a similar career path and her voice in my pubescent brain is what encouraged me to become a teacher. To be a teacher is to shoulder the huge responsibility of bringing out the voice of the next generation. A voice that needs to speak with tolerance, compassion and intellect. It is no easy task.
Mrs Lovell it pains me deeply to know that there is great irony in the fact that in your passing your voice would have been physically silenced. The voice that awakened in generations of girls the idea that they mattered, that they had agency, that what they had to say had weight. Please know that the voice you instilled in each of us will never be silenced, that teachers like me will continue to espouse your legacy in our classrooms and that the voice of Scout, your kindred spirit, will echo forever in the hearts of your students.
Beautiful words, Em x
ReplyDeleteSo beautifully written!!!
ReplyDeleteDear Em, may I call you that?, you have beautifully captured how many of us feel about our beloved Mrs Lovell. And our year, matric class of 1980, has just been reflecting how we felt like she belonged only to us, but through your words, we realised, she belonged to generations of girls. Like you, I was privileged, to act in Hilton plays, and like you, I loved Shakespeare and the bards words and wit have stayed with me always. Unlike you, I live in the world of business now, but it was the Lovells too who encouraged me too, to spread my wings and express my strongest voice, first in anti- apartheid politics and later in the business world. How fortunate were we to have such passionate and bold role models to encourage us to be our finest selves!
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