The Singing Lesson

Miss Meadows, a singing teacher, walks through the school where she works, heading toward her classroom. She is feeling despair “buried deep in her heart, like a wicked knife.” Around her, girls are arriving at school, “rosy” from the chilly fall weather and full of excitement.

Another teacher, the Science Mistress, stops Miss Meadows and mentions the cold weather. The Science Mistress, who looks sweet and blonde, notices that Miss Meadows looks cold. Miss Meadows thinks this kindness is insincere, wonders whether she “noticed anything,” and says “oh, not quite as bad as that.”

When Miss Meadows arrives in the classroom, the students are noisy. Her favorite student Mary Beazley is preparing Miss Meadows’s seat at the piano, and Mary hushes the other students when Miss Meadows walks into the room. Miss Meadows taps her baton and demands silence without looking directly at Mary or anyone else. She imagines that the students will think she is angry today.

Miss Meadows feels defianMiss Meadows feels defiant in the face of her students’ judgment. Their opinions don’t matter to her, since today she is “bleeding to death, pierced to the heart” by a letter that her fiancé Basil left to end their engagement. He wrote that he loved her “as much as it is possible for me to love any woman” but that the notion of marriage makes him feel “disgust”—however, he lightly crossed out “disgust” and wrote “regret” over it.

Thinking of this, Miss Meadows walks to the piano where Mary Beazley greets her and offers her a yellow chrysanthemum. Mary has done this every day for a term and a half, which seems like “ages and ages” to Miss Meadows. For the first time, instead of greeting Mary and accepting the flower, Miss Meadows ignores Mary and speaks to the students coldly, ordering them to open their books. Mary blushes and nearly cries.

The song Miss Meadows has chosen is called “A Lament,” and she asks them all to sing it through together, without emotion. The lyrics describe the sadness of the passing of seasons, autumn turning into “Winter drear” as music “passes away from the listening ear.” Even while the girls are not singing with emotion, Miss Meadows hears every note as “a sigh, a sob, a groan” and as she conducts, her rhythm matches her recollection of the words of Basil’s break-up letter.

This letter came out of the blue, as Basil’s previous letter had been all about the furniture he planned to buy for their future home. Miss Meadows recalls smiling at his plan to buy a hat stand that holds three hat brushes. She asks the students to sing again without emotion, but still she feels the sadness of the song. She recalls Basil’s handsomeness and how he couldn’t help knowing how handsome he was. She recalls him stroking his own hair and moustache.

Miss Meadows thinks of another conversation she had with Basil, where he said that the headmaster’s wife has asked him to dinner again, but he doesn’t feel that he can refuse—even though he finds it annoying—because “it doesn’t do for a man in my position to be unpopular”

While the girls are still singing without emotion, Miss Meadows hears their voices as a “wail” and sees the trees out the window waving in the wind, having lost many of their leaves. She speaks to the girls in a strange, cold voice that makes the students afraid, and she asks them to sing the song again with as much expression as possible. As Miss Meadows describes how to fill the words of the song with emotion, the awful tone of her voice makes Mary Beazley writhe.

While the students are singing, Miss Meadows fixates on the fact that her engagement must truly be over. This engagement had seemed like a miracle to her, and also to the Science Mistress, because Basil is twenty-five and Miss Meadows is thirty. She remembers him first declaring love to her, saying “somehow or other, I’ve got fond of you” and touching her ostrich feather boa. Miss Meadows asks the girls to repeat the song, and they are so upset by the emotion in it that many of them begin to cry.

While the girls sing, Miss Meadows thinks that it doesn’t matter to her how little Basil loves her, but she knows he doesn’t love her at all. He didn’t even care enough about her feelings to cross out the word “disgust” so that she couldn’t read it. She thinks that she will have to leave the school entirely rather than face the Science Mistress and the girls once they know about her broken engagement.

A student, Monica, comes into the classroom appearing nervous. She tells Miss Meadows that the headmistress Miss Wyatt wants to see her. Miss Meadows asks her students to talk quietly until she returns. Many of the students are still crying.

Miss Wyatt is untangling her glasses from her lace tie when Miss Meadows arrives. Miss Wyatt kindly asks Miss Meadows to sit and says she has a telegram. Miss Meadows is at first afraid that Basil has committed suicide and she reaches for the telegram, but Miss Wyatt holds onto it for a moment, saying with kindness that she hopes it isn’t bad news.

Miss Meadows reads the short telegram—it’s from Basil, saying she should ignore his earlier letter and that he “must have been mad.” He says he has bought a hat-stand.

Miss Wyatt leans forward and again says she hopes it’s not serious. Miss Meadows says it’s not bad news—it’s from her fiancé, she says, emphasizing the word “fiancé.” Miss Wyatt says “I see” and reminds Miss Meadows that she still has fifteen minutes left to teach in her class. Before Miss Meadows leaves, Miss Wyatt scolds her for receiving a telegram containing good news during the school day. She says telegrams at work are only allowed for very bad news.

Miss Meadows returns to the music classroom “on the wings of hope, of love, of joy” and assigns the girls a different song. She turns to Mary Beazley and picks up the yellow chrysanthemum to hide her smile. The girls begin to sing the triumphant summer song Miss Meadows has assigned, but she stops them, saying they should sound more “warm, joyful, eager.” She sings with them, with her voice “over all the other voices—full, deep, glowing with expression.”