‘You must have been very disappointed by the election results.’
‘Yes, Miss Allen,’ said Florentyna, assuming she was to receive further chastisement.
‘But by all accounts you have learned greatly from the experience and I suspect you will be wanting to make amends.’
‘It’s too late, Miss Allen. I leave at the end of the year and can now never be president.’
‘True, true. So we must look for other mountains to climb. I retire at the end of the year, having been headmistress for twenty-five years, and I confess there is little left that I wish to achieve. The boys and girls of Latin have excellent admission records to Harvard, Yale, Radcliffe and Smith, and we have always been better than every other school in Illinois and as good as any on the East Coast. However, there is one achievement that has eluded me.’
‘What’s that, Miss Allen?’
‘The boys have won every major scholarship to the Ivy League universities at least once, Princeton three times, but one scholarship has eluded the girls for a quarter of a century. That is the James Adams Woolson Prize Scholarship in the Classics at Radcliffe. I wish to enter your name for that scholarship. Should you win the prize, my cup will be full.’
‘I would like to try,’ said Florentyna, ‘but my record lately—’
‘Indeed,’ said the headmistress, ‘but as Mrs. Churchill pointed out to Winston when he was surprisingly beaten in an election, “That may yet turn out to be a blessing in disguise.” ’
‘ “Some disguise.” ’ They both smiled.
That night, Florentyna studied the entry form for the James Adams Woolson Prize. The scholarship was open to every girl in America between the ages of sixteen and eighteen on July 1 of that year. There were three papers, one for Latin, one for Greek and a general paper on current affairs.
During the ensuing weeks, Florentyna spoke only Latin and Greek to Miss Tredgold before breakfast, and every weekend Miss Allen assigned her three general questions to be completed by the following Monday morning. As the examination day drew nearer, Florentyna became aware that the hopes of the whole school were with her. She sat awake at night with Cicero, Virgil, Plato and Aristotle, and every morning after breakfast she would write five hundred words on such varied subjects as the Twenty-second Amendment, the significance of President Truman’s power over Congress during the Korean War — even on the impact that television would have in going nationwide.
At the end of each day, Miss Tredgold checked through Florentyna’s work, adding footnotes and comments before they would both collapse into bed, only to be up at six-thirty the next morning to work their way through further old scholarship examination papers. Far from gaining confidence, Florentyna confided to Miss Tredgold that she became more frightened as each day passed.
The prize exam was set for early March at Radcliffe, and on the eve of departure day Florentyna unlocked her bottom drawer and selected her favorite of the New York shirts. Miss Tredgold accompanied her to the station and the few words they spoke on the way were in Greek. Her final words were: ‘Don’t spend the longest time on the easiest question.’
When they reached the platform, Florentyna felt an arm encircle her waist and a rose appeared in front of her.
‘Edward, you nut.’
‘That is not the way to address the president of the Student Council. Don’t bother to come back if you fail to win the Woolson Prize,’ he said, and kissed her on the cheek.
Neither of them noticed the smile on Miss Tredgold’s face.
Florentyna found a car that was virtually empty. She would remember very little of the journey, for she rarely looked up from her copy of the Oresteia.
When she arrived in Boston, she was met by a Ford ‘Woody’ station wagon, which took her and four other girls who must have been on the same train to the Radcliffe yard. During the journey spasmodic exchanges of polite conversation punctuated long, tense silences. Florentyna was relieved to find that she had been put in a residential house at 55 Garden Street in a room of her own: she hoped she would be able to conceal how nervous she was.
At six o’clock the girls all met in Longfellow Hall, where the dean of instruction, Mrs. Wilma Kirby-Miller, reviewed the details of the examination.
‘Tomorrow, ladies, between nine and twelve, you will write the Latin paper, and in the afternoon between three and six, the Greek paper. The following morning you will complete the examination with the general paper on current affairs. It would be foolish to wish everyone success, as you cannot all expect to win the Woolson Prize, so I will only express the hope that when you have completed the three papers, each and every one of you will feel that you could not have done better.’
Florentyna returned to her room in Garden Street conscious of how little she knew and feeling very lonely. She went down to the ground floor and called her mother and Miss Tredgold on the pay phone. The next morning she woke at three and read a few pages of Aristotle’s Politics, but nothing would stick. When she came downstairs at seven, she walked around Radcliffe Yard several times before going to Agassiz House for breakfast. She found two telegrams awaiting her, one from her father wishing her luck and inviting her to join him for a trip to Europe in the summer. The second, from Miss Tredgold, read: ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’
After breakfast, she walked once again around the yard, this time with several other girls, before taking her place in Longfellow Hall. Two hundred forty-three girls waited for the clock to chime nine, when the proctors allowed them to open the little brown envelopes placed on the desk in front of them. Florentyna read through the Latin paper once quickly and then again carefully, before selecting those questions that she felt best equipped to answer. At twelve the clock struck again and her blue books were taken away from her. She returned to her room and read Greek for two hours, eating a solitary Hershey bar for lunch. In the afternoon she attempted three questions in Greek. At six she was penning emendations when the paper had to be handed in. She walked back to her little room in Garden Street exhausted, fell onto the narrow bed and didn’t stir until it was time to eat. Over a late dinner, she listened to the same conversations with different accents from Philadelphia to Houston, and from Detroit to Atlanta: it was comforting to discover that everyone was as nervous about the outcome of the examination as she was. Florentyna knew that almost everyone who took the scholarship examination would be offered a place at Radcliffe, and twenty-two could be awarded scholarships; but only one would win the James Adams Woolson Prize.
On the second day she opened the brown envelope containing the general paper fearing the worst but relaxed a little when she read the first question: ‘What changes would have taken place in America if the Twenty-second Amendment had been passed before Roosevelt became President?’ She began to write furiously.
On Florentyna’s return to Chicago, Miss Tredgold was standing on the platform waiting for her.
‘I shall not ask if you consider you have won the prize, my dear, only if you did as well as you had hoped.’
‘Yes,’ said Florentyna, after some thought. ‘If I don’t win a scholarship, it will be because I am not good enough.’
‘You can ask for no more, child, and neither can I, so the time has come to tell you that I shall be returning to England in July.’
‘Why?’ said Florentyna, stunned.
‘What do you imagine there is left for me to do for you, now that you’re off to university? I have been offered the post of head of the classics department at a girls’ school in the west country of England, starting in September, and I have accepted.’