Peruse her biography:

Emily at the Watford School

In the fall of 1892, Snodgrass Place was quieter than it had been in years. The 7 th Regiment had long since departed London, and bled "The Artery" dry. Emily's uncle had purchased a small cottage on Maitland Ave., adjacent to the rambling Victorian Home, and there moved his workshop, which he called his "cave".(1) Gertie Goldthwait, their tidy but unrelentingly foul-mouthed German housekeeper, had moved into show business, playing with several freak shows throughout Southwestern Ontario.(2)

And not least, Emily had moved to Watford, Ontario, to take a position at the Watford School. Teaching. She'd taken a teaching position.

At this point in her life, Emily had already begun her writing career, penning her first three novels, The Wonder (1887), Scarlet Sunday (1888), and The Unmentionable Ambrose (1890). She had also written a number of short stories and a series of rollicking poems such as "Those Alien Girls", "The Ballad of Naughty Nell" and "Labia, Labia, Lie" (all recorded on her uncle's infamous "swillinder"). Though she enjoyed some notoriety from these works, she had yet to find a readership. She still enjoyed the hours she spent riding, though her relationship with Thudgar Lawrason had ended shortly after the Parkhill Shootout (and his unfortunate de-nosing).

Emily had taken the job at Watford to help out her uncle with his financial difficulties. Give the paucity of scholars available to teach in the remote village, Emily had been able to secure the job, even though she was;

a) a woman;
b) Irish; and,
c) more than likely going to cause trouble.

	The Watford School had miraculously escaped the Watford Guy Fawkes Fire of 1880, in which the revelers had pushed their fireworks display far beyond "sensible".

The Watford School was known at the time as a place where the scions of Southwestern Ontario's "leading" families could be sent for an education that would teach them something, but not enough to let them get any ideas. It also had the best all-in rugby team in the Province. Emily wrote in her journal:

The high point of my week is the Saturday match, though to call these melees "rugby" is to stretch the term a bit. I do enjoy the taught athleticism of my lads, the way they pound up and down the length of the field with such vigor. I believe the other teachers, the "masters" as they are called, also enjoy the spectacle, though I'm not sure if it's because of the physical prowess of their charges, or the inevitability of the opposition suffering some kind of cranial trauma. I cannot confirm this, as none of them will talk to me, but I suspect it is the former . . .

The school had miraculously escaped the Watford Guy Fawkes Fire of 1880, caused when the revelers started throwing fireworks on their bonfire (except for the imported brain-power of the school, Watfordians were never known for the wattage of their bulbs, so to speak). The school may have been lucky enough to escape destruction, but Emily was not sure that it was such a good thing. She strongly suspected that the Upper Canadian institution had fallen prey to the worst of British public school traditions, or the "English disease" as it is known among the French. (3)

	Emily suspected the "master" of geometry, Alfred Rectanus, of having the "English disease."

Though she had been engaged to teach classics, the Headmaster, Bertram "Old Whatsit" Shagnasty, had never checked in on her classes, so by mid-term she had her "lads" learning all about Norse and Icelandic mythology instead of all that Greek rubbish. She was pleasantly surprised at how quickly they took to the dark, brooding tradition. She was also pleased to discover that several of her oldest students -- young men really -- were of Norwegian extraction. Naturally, she grew quite close to these boys -- young men really -- named Odd Fufenlik and Knut Døbilhung. She writes in her journal:

Odd and Knut have confirmed my worst fears. The school is rife with abuse! They are reticent to name names, but I have my suspicions. Top on my list is that English fop, Sir Reginald Gorcharp. I also suspect the geometry master Alfred Rectanus and that horrible wall-eyed rugby coach, "Captain" Jack Meehoff. But it is that Gorcharp who represents all that is worst about the British Empire -- imagine coming to Canada to indulge in young impressionable Upper Canadian boys! I would be a hypocrite if I objected to the indulgence, but it is the youth of their victims that upsets me so. Odd and Knut are now 16, but they say they have been given "the treatment" since they arrived seven years ago.

I am somewhat lonely here. The only other women in the school are the twin housekeepers, Lucy and Rainey Bowels, and they have confirmed the stories, as has the groundskeeper (and a close personal friend) Ned George. (4)

Emily determined to set up a "sting" operation with her two best students. The Norwegians would sneak her into the dormitory, dressed as one of the other boys, so that she could be on hand as a witness.

True to form, several of the masters appeared that evening after lights out. Even in the gloom of the dorm room, the curvaceous buttocks called out to them; the first to grab at her was Master Rectanus. Underneath the covers, Emily had hidden a Rifled Rain Repellant Apparatusand she poked it in his ribs.

"Well, what do we have here?" he asked.

"More than you can handle," Emily replied. "Now back off, or I will fire."

	Yes, all was not well at the original Watford School (before 1893).

The Masters hissed in surprise, and Captain Meehoff, shouted "a woman!" Master Rectanus screeched, and turned to bolt. At the same time, Sir Gorcharp jumped on the bed, shouting, "we have to subdue her!" Unfortunately, the Bullet Brolly went off. The projectile ricocheted off a metal bed post, and taught the geometry master a lesson of his own in trigonometry. The bullet passed through his gluteus maximus, clipped the terminal segment of his digestive system, and left him with an eponymous injury. (5)

Naturally, Rectanus's screams of pain and outrage woke the other students in the dorm. In the orgy of recrimination that followed, Emily was able to convince the Headmaster Shagnasty what the three masters were "up to" in the dorm. He was inclined to let the incident slide, having been through a similar "character building" process at Eton. However, Emily would not let the matter drop, so he was forced to let the three masters go, and for good measure he fired Emily. Emily wrote to her uncle of the incident:

Shagnasty has threatened to inform the press of the questionable nature of the "tutorials" I have held with the Norwegian lads. It seems my good intentions have been undone again, Dear Uncle. Do not fret -- I no longer blame our blood or my unorthodox upbringing for my prurient nature. It is clearly the fault of all men, and in particular, Englishmen. I have seen the thick women of this village mutilate themselves because of men, and I have been a witness to what men will do to propagate their madness from one generation to the next. The whole episode has inspired me to begin writing a new work, which I believe I will call the Beastly Brains of Blenheim Township.

By the fall of 1893, Emily had scandalized London with the publication of her first important novel, the Brain Beasts of Blenheim Township, and her writing career began in earnest. Apart from her involvement with the Young Women's Speculative Reading Circle, she never taught again, though she did keep up an enthusiastic correspondence with Odd and Knut. Though the Watford School did not experience a scandal, it did not survive the fire that burned the building to the ground during the summer hiatus in 1893.

The residents of Watford claimed they did not cause this particular fire, and reported that they had smelled a noxious combination of bat guano and uric acid the night of the fire. The authorities did not believe the Watfordians, much to Emily's relief. (6)

--"Scholarship" by The Squire

Notes:

1) He never explained why he called it a "cave" but it was dank, dark and batty enough to qualify. [back]

2) Dr. George Gilles de Tourrette had identified a condition similar to Gertie's in his patient, the Marquise de Dampierre, in 1885, as a neurological disorder we now know as Tourrette's Syndrome or GTS. Interestingly, Tourrette originally thought to call the syndrome, "vous êtes un sac de douche" or "SDD" as that is what the Marquise tended to shout when most afflicted by her tics. [back]

3) For more on this subject, we recommend the sensitive historical autobiography by Sir Harold "Tweeaky" Hindcut: Buggered Me Senseless, But Taught Me a Thing or Two. [back]

4) Emily felt the need to seek out the company of women while working at the Watford School. Though her reputation had not proceeded her, she found that she could not stomach what passed for polite society in Watford. As she wrote in her journal:

"The women in this place are even more thick than the men, all the more so as they do everything they can to please their men. The worst evidence of this is that most of the genteel ladies of this village have had at least one rib removed to suit the dictates of fashion. I would much rather spend my time with the hard-working and sensible Bowel twins."

This propensity to befriend Celtic women from the working classes, eventually led to Emily forming the Celtic Union of Non-Testosterone Sybarites, or the "CU", in 1894. Also, in her journal, Emily mentions Ned George almost as often as she does her Norwegian students. She described him as "an FBI from Kettle Point", and this author suspects he was at least part of the inspiration for Bjorn Crow, the male protagonist in Brain Beasts of Blenheim Township. [back]

5) The probability of such a ricochet was highly unlikely; however, Watford is not too distant from Parkhill in space, and the event was not too far removed from the Parkhill Shootout in time. The noted* theoretical physicist, Steven Mawking, has suggested that the entire region of Southwestern Ontario was experiencing an "improbability flux in the curvature of the space-time thingy" during the entire decade.

*He is noted for being a loon. [back]

6) Some Chesleyan scholars believe that unlike the Great Chicago Fire, this was her last true "outburst". [back]