The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [19]
The Knox School Riding Club. (illustration credits 5.2)
Bonnie Cornelius grew up riding horses near her home in Buffalo, where she was a good student at a private day school for girls. But her home life, with her father and stepmother, was stressful, and when she was a freshman in high school she discovered boys and her grades dropped. Her parents made the decision to send her to Knox, and her arrival was a shock in many ways. Far from home, she was disappointed to find that the classes were less rigorous than at her former school, so much so that she almost felt as if she were repeating a year. The living conditions were a shock as well. Upstairs, the enormous bedrooms of the manor house had been converted into Madeline-style dormitories: five twin beds lined the walls of her shared bedroom, along with five dressers and five desks. Her first year, one of her roommates was a homesick European girl who barely spoke English and did not seem to want to bathe. Eventually, when her body odor got overwhelming, the other girls had to ask the school nurse to intervene. The bathroom was down the hall, as big as a bedroom and shared by all of the girls. The big brick house, never designed for use as a dormitory, was an opulent but ill-equipped lodging for teenage girls.
Every girl felt watched. Mrs. Phinney was omnipresent, the expression on her face always seeming to say “What have you done wrong now?” Miss Wood, the younger of the two headmistresses, was more reserved but also more feared—she was sharp, and nothing slipped past her. With this claustrophobic lifestyle, the girls had no privacy and little freedom, and every aspect of their personal life was fair game for scrutiny.
Even Sundays were given over to self-improvement. The girls were required to attend services at the house of worship of their choosing, and on Sunday nights, for their cultural education, they had to attend staid musical events, such as performances by string quartets. For these, the hard, straight-backed dining room chairs were arranged in rows. Wearing their dinner dresses and school blazers, the girls were expected to sit up straight, not slump against their chair backs, and, of course, to cross their legs only at the ankles while struggling not to allow the music to lull them to sleep.
On weekdays, sports started at two o’clock. The girls raced out of the dorm, then headed up the grassy lane toward the barn or fields. Every girl was required to participate. Besides horseback riding, girls could choose tennis, field hockey, or basketball. Those in the riding program pulled on their riding togs and hurried up the hill to the stables. As they approached, Harry heard laughing and giggling before he saw the girls. Rarely was one late. Most years, Harry had at least fifty girls come through the riding program. Among these, some were passionate about the sport, and others were beginners who were just giving it a try. The five-day girls, the ones who chose to ride every school day, were the most skilled, and the members of the Riding Club—Wendy Plumb, Bonnie Cornelius, Jackie Bittner, Ann Mead, and Kitsie Chambers—formed the dedicated nucleus of the program. These girls would look for any excuse to come down to the stables. A few would even show up on weekend afternoons when Harry was feeding, offering to lend a hand. In return, Harry gave them extra opportunities to ride. Up at the barn, the atmosphere was rigorous but fun and can-do.