Monica Lindsay Curry
Mrs Curry
lived in Nether Yeadon, where her father had the blacksmith’s shop on the
corner of Apperley lane and Warm lane. Shortly before
“Hamlet” she moved to a more modern house off New Road Side in Rawdon. Her husband
had died in 1943.
A devoted
Roman Catholic, she later left AGS to teach in a Catholic school in
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Mrs. Curry was a
devout Roman Catholic, who did not sit on the stage for morning assembly.
Perhaps this devoutness led to a certain prudery. She certainly sanitised
Shakespeare for our ears: adjectives such as "whoreson" (Henry IV,
both parts) were expurgated, while the brothel keeper Doll Tearsheet's
name rhymed with beer sheet, not the more suggestive rhyme hair sheet. When Mrs. Sutcliffe gave us French names
in our first year she had us write them in large capitals across the back of
our exercise books, which we stood in tent-shaped fashion on our desktops so
that she could easily address us by these names. She carried this practice into
our second year on the back of our new exercise books when she taught us Latin,
and said we could illustrate them. I was somehow named Cupido
and set about drawing a naked Cupid (back view) a la Da Vinci complete with
wings, blindfold and bow and arrow. Mrs. Sutclffe
thought it was hilarious. At the end of
that year we had not filled these exercise books so they went into the third
form with us. Only this time it was Mrs. Curry who taught us. Returning these
books after marking our first homework exercise she laid into me: how dare I
deface school property with such an indecency, etc. Thankfully the class came
to my rescue, telling her that Mrs Sutcliffe had approved. Her reply was that
she would have a word with Mrs. Sutcliffe. I should have liked to have been a
fly on the wall if she did. [David Longley]
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