I was educated at Cheltenham Ladies College, where I read Latin, Greek, French and English for my higher matriculation, before taking up a closed scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge. At the University, I sat my finals, gaining first class awards in all three parts of the Modern Language tripos. I do not hold a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University, as their statutes preclude
such awards for women.
I am available for interview at any time and I would welcome the opportunity to work in the New World.
I look forward to your reply, while remaining your obedient servant,
W. Tredgold
Abel found it hard to accept that there was such an institution as Cheltenham Ladies College or indeed such a place as Much Hadham, and he was certainly suspicious of claims of first-class awards without degrees.
He asked his secretary to place a call to Washington. When he was finally put through to the person he wished to speak to, he read the letter aloud.
The voice from Washington confirmed that every claim in the letter could be accurate; there was no reason to doubt its credibility.
“Are you sure there really is an establishment called Cheltenham Ladies College?” Abel insisted.
“Most certainly I am, Mr. Rosnovski—I was educated there myself,” replied the British ambassador’s secretary.
That night Abel read the letter over again, this time to Zaphia.
“What do you think?” he asked, although he had already made up his mind.
“I don’t like the sound of her,” said Zaphia, not looking up from the magazine she was reading. “If we must have someone, why can’t she be an American?”
“Think of the advantages Florentyna would have if she were tutored by an English governess,” Abel paused. “She’d even be company for you.”
This time Zaphia did look up from her magazine. “Why? Are you hoping she’ll educate me as well?”
Abel didn’t reply.
The following morning he sent a cable to Much Hadham offering Miss Tredgold the position of governess.
Three weeks later when Abel went to pick up the lady from the Twentieth Century Limited at the La Salle Street Station, he knew immediately he had made the right decision. As she stood alone on the platform, three suitcases of differing sizes and vintages by her side, she could not have been anyone but Miss Tredgold. She was tall, thin and slightly imperious, and the bun that crowned her head gave her fully two inches in height over her employer. Zaphia, however, treated Miss Tredgold as an intruder who had come to undermine her maternal position, and when she accompanied her to her daughter’s room, Florentyna was nowhere to be seen. Two eyes peered suspiciously up from under the bed. Miss Tredgold spotted the girl first and fell on her knees.
“I am afraid I won’t be able to help you very much if you remain there, child. I’m far too big to live under a bed.”
Florentyna burst out laughing and crawled out.
“What a funny voice you have,” she said. “Where do you come from?”
“England,” said Miss Tredgold, taking a seat beside her on the bed.
“Where’s that?”
“About a week away.”
“Yes, but how far?”
“That would depend on how you traveled during the week. How many ways could I have traveled such a long distance? Can you think of three?”
Florentyna concentrated. “From my house I’d take a bicycle and when I’d reached the end of America, I’d take a…”
Neither of them noticed that Zaphia had left the room.
It was only a few days before Florentyna turned Miss Tredgold into the brother and sister she could never have.
Florentyna would spend hours just listening to her new companion, and Abel watched with pride as the middle-aged spinster—he could never think of her as thirty-two, his own age—taught his four-year-old daughter subjects that ranged over areas he would have liked to know more about himself.
Abel asked George one morning if he could name Henry VIII’s six wives—if he couldn’t, it might be wise for them to acquire two more governesses from Cheltenham Ladies College before Florentyna ended up knowing more than they did. Zaphia did not want to know about Henry VIII or his wives, and she still felt that Florentyna should be brought up according to the simple Polish traditions that had been her own education, but she had long since given up trying to convince Abel on that subject. Zaphia carried out a routine that made it possible for her to avoid the new governess most of the day.
Miss Tredgold’s daily routine, on the other hand, owed as much to the discipline of a Grenadier Guard officer as to the teachings of Maria Montessori. Florentyna rose at seven o’clock and with a straight spine that never touched the back of her chair received instruction in table manners and posture until she had left the breakfast room. Between seven-thirty and seven forty-five Miss Tredgold would pick out two or three items from the Chicago Tribune, read and discuss them with her and then question her on them an hour later. Florentyna took an immediate interest in what the President was doing, perhaps because he seemed to be named after her bear. Miss Tredgold found she had to use a considerable amount of her spare time diligently learning the strange American system of government to be certain no question that her ward might ask would go unanswered.
From nine to twelve, Florentyna and FDR attended nursery school, where they indulged in the more normal pursuits of her contemporaries. When Miss Tredgold came to pick her up each afternoon it was easy to discern whether Florentyna had selected the clay, the scissors and paste or the finger painting that day. At the end of every play school session she was taken straight home for a bath and a change of clothes with a “Tut, tut” and an occasional “I just don’t know.”
In the afternoon, Miss Tredgold and Florentyna would set off on some expedition the governess had carefully planned that morning without Florentyna’s knowledge—although this didn’t stop Florentyna from always trying to find out beforehand what Miss Tredgold had arranged.
“What are we going to do today?” or “Where are we going?” Florentyna would demand.
“Be patient, child.”
“Can we still do it if it rains?”
“Only time will tell. But if we can’t, be assured I shall have a contingency plan.”
“What’s a ’tingency plan?” asked Florentyna, puzzled.
“Something you need when everything else you have planned is no longer possible,” Miss Tredgold explained.
Among such afternoon expeditions were walks around the park, visits to the zoo, even an occasional ride on the top of a trolley car, which Florentyna considered a great treat. Miss Tredgold also used the time to give her charge the first introduction to a few words of French, and she was pleasantly surprised to find that her ward showed a natural aptitude for languages. Once they had returned home, there would be half an hour with Mama before dinner, followed by another bath before Florentyna was tucked into bed by seven o’clock. Miss Tredgold would read a few lines from the Bible or Mark Twain—not that the Americans seemed to know the difference, Miss Tredgold said in a moment of what she imagined was frivolity—and having turned the nursery light out, she sat with her charge and FDR until they had both fallen asleep.
This routine was slavishly adhered to and broken only on rare occasions such as birthdays or national holidays, when Miss Tredgold allowed Florentyna to accompany her to the United Artists Theater to see films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but not before Miss Tredgold had been to the show the previous week in order to ascertain that it was suitable for her ward. Walt Disney met with Miss Tredgold’s approval, as did Laurence Olivier, playing Heathcliff pursued by Merle Oberon, whom she went to watch three Thursdays running on her afternoon off at a cost of twenty cents a showing. She was able to convince herself it was worth sixty cents; after all, Wuthering Heights was a classic.
Miss Tredgold never stopped Florentyna from asking questions about the Nazis, the New Deal and even a home run, although sometimes she obviously didn’t understand the answers. The young girl soon discovered that her mother was not always able to satisfy her curiosity, and on several occasions Miss Tredgold, in order not to render an inaccurate answer, had to disappear into her room and consult the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
At the age of five Florentyna attended kindergarten at the Girls Latin School of Chicago, where within a week
she was moved up a grade because she was so far ahead of her contemporaries. In her world everything looked wonderful. She had Mama and Papa, Miss Tredgold and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and as far as her horizon could reach, nothing seemed to be unattainable.
Only the “best families,” as Abel described them, sent their children to the Latin School, and it came as something of a shock to Miss Tredgold that when she asked some of Florentyna’s friends back for tea, the invitations were politely declined. Florentyna’s best friends, Mary Gill and Susie Jacobson, came regularly; but some of the parents of the other girls would make excuses for not accepting, and Miss Tredgold soon came to realize that although the Chicago Baron might well have broken the chains of poverty he was still unable to break into some of the better drawing rooms in Chicago. Zaphia did not help, making little effort to get to know the other parents, let alone join any of their charity committees, hospital boards or the clubs to which so many of them seemed to belong.
Miss Tredgold did the best she could to help, but as she was only a servant in the eyes of most of the parents, it was not easy for her. She prayed that Florentyna would never learn of these prejudices—but it was not to be.
Florentyna sailed through the first grade, more than holding her own academically with the group, and only her size reminded everyone that she was a year younger.
Abel was too busy building up his own empire to give much thought to his social standing or any problems Miss Tredgold might be facing. The Group was showing steady progress, with Abel looking well set by 1938 to be on target to repay the loan to his backer. In fact, Abel was predicting profits of $250,000 for the year, despite his massive building program.
His real worries were not in the nursery or the hotels, but over four thousand miles away in his beloved homeland. His worst fears were realized when on September 1, 1939, Hitler marched into Poland, and Britain declared war on Germany two days later. With the outbreak of another war he seriously considered leaving control of the Baron Group to George—who was turning out to be a trusty lieutenant—while he sailed off to London to join the Polish regiment in exile. George and Zaphia managed to talk him out of the idea, so he concentrated instead on raising cash and sending the money to the British Red Cross, while lobbying Democratic politicians to join the war alongside the British. FDR needs all the friends he can get, Florentyna heard her father declare one morning.