Sr. Daphne and Sr. TJ

After the sad passing of both Sr. Daphne and Sr. TJ earlier in the year, a memorial Mass was held in the School Chapel in October to remember two formidable, horse loving former members of staff who impacted so many with their wisdom and willingness to share their time and love of knowledge. The Chapel was full of OCs and former staff who came to honour two wonderful, positive and inspirational women and celebrated them with afternoon tea in the dining room afterwards, sharing many happy stories and antidotes.  

Sr. Maria gave a eulogy for Sr. Daphne while Sr. Jean spoke with love for Sr. TJ. Please read them below. 

Sr. Daphne SHCJ

We are remembering Sisters TJ and Daphne today, two very unique persons. You   may have heard that if you have met one Holy Child Sister you never meet another one like her, and you will be familiar with Cornelia’s saying: ‘Be yourself, but make this self what God wants it to be’. These two certainly followed this guide, developing very different personalities, and the difference even extended to their shared love of horses:  TJ an ardent follower of steeple chases and Daphne of flat races.

Daphne was brought up in Inverness, the youngest of 4 siblings, and from an early age spent much of her time in the stables. It must have been hard for her to be sent to Boarding School, the Holy Child School in Harrogate. However, her love for music was developed there and she progressed to the Royal College of Music in London in 1942 where she studied the violin, graduating in 1946.

Daphne joined the Society of the Holy Child Jesus here in Mayfield about two years after graduation. She made her First Vows in 1951 and then taught music for a year in our school in Blackpool, taking up the post of Director of Music at Combe Bank, near Sevenoaks, in 1952. In 1963 she came to Mayfield, succeeding Sr. Mary Consolata as Director of Music. Apart from looking after the scholas and the various choirs, the orchestra as well as teaching the violin and piano, Daphne was involved in the foundation of the biennial Mayfield Festival and also the Tunbridge Wells International Young Musicians Competition which now takes place in Mayfield during the Festival.  During her years in Mayfield, Sir David Willcocks, whom she probably knew as a former student of the RCM, came to conduct among other works the Dream of Gerontius during one Festival, and girls from years 11 – 13 ( in those days Fifth and Sixth Forms ) joined the Festival Choir – as they did in other years for the performances of Bach’s St. Matthew and St. John Passions, the Mass in B minor etc. When Daphne asked Kenneth Pont, who has joined us today, to take over the training of Schola the girls also sang services and concerts at Chartres and Rouen Cathedral Cathedrals, as well as Sunday Mass at Notre Dame de Paris.

Daphne also had little schemes to raise funds to contribute to the financing of Schola concerts away from Mayfield, running raffles and knitting cuddly toys for sale. There is a tale, probably apocryphal, that one time she put the fees for public exams on a horse! If true it must have been before 1971, at a time when she was in charge of organising the O and A level exams.

In the early 1980s, Daphne was diagnosed with Dystonia, a neurological movement disorder – uncontrollable muscle spasms which affected mainly her face and particularly her eyelids, and therefore her uninterrupted vision. This made it difficult for her to teach and to drive!  So, Daphne took early retirement and left Mayfield in 1983.

The next seven years she spent in Harrogate – the home of the Great Yorkshire Show! I am not sure if Daphne had much interest in all the other wonderful animals on show there – it was the horses that drew her, and she always managed to get free tickets from the organisers.

Now her fundraising was for the Dystonia Society, and she set up a small stall offering home-made games, but she was not to be found in the enclosure for all the other charities – she chose a little hill right in the centre of the equine stables and exercise paddocks! She knew almost all of the owners and trainers. 

In 1990, Daphne moved again South to London where she spent the next 25 years.  No horses there, but plenty of racecourses within easy reach – and she knew places on the outside where she could follow the action without having to buy a ticket!

She had joined at least one string quartet in Harrogate, now in London there were several! One of them regularly visited primary schools to introduce youngsters to classical music, and she also joined an orchestra attached to St. Bartholomew’s, the oldest hospital in England. Members of this musical institution are normally former medical staff of the hospital.  How did Daphne become a member? Well, if she had set her heart on something, she had ways of getting it!

There are many other things she loved to do such as playing backgammon, chess and scrabble, tours around stately homes. She always felt at home back in the Highlands and in later years made regular visits returning to her childhood roots, when she stayed mainly at the Coach House, a Retreat centre on the Black Isle where she was warmly welcomed and used it as a base to tour the area.

During her annual Retreat there she enjoyed solitary walks, as she did in Kew Gardens. She was in many ways a very private person; as her family said, ‘fiercely independent’ and ‘somewhat hard to reach’, but also colourful and fun to be with.

In these later years it was hard for her to come to terms with the gradual loss of competence, above all the loss of music. Her violin, which had never left her, fell silent – but now she is certain to have joined a heavenly orchestra making music to her LORD.

Sr. Teresa Joseph SHCJ

‘Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us, by letting us be called God’s children – and that is what we are’: a status which informed TJ’s long life of service, seeking to instil in all whose lives she touched a real knowledge of the unconditional love of God.

Until the late 1960s postulants about to enter the noviceship could suggest the name by which they would be known in religion; TJ had a great devotion to St Joseph, the humble, self-denying carpenter of Nazareth, the guardian of Mary & Jesus.  Virtually all variations of the name were already taken; Mother Theresa Joseph Fox, who had taught TJ’s mother at St Leonards, had recently died at Mayfield, and she asked for this.

St Teresa of Avila wrote: ‘Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world.  Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.  Yours are the hands through which he blesses the world’.

The many cards, emails & messages from students, staff and parents reflect her desire to live this.

Students: ‘She helped make Mayfield what it was: a supportive & happy school with relationships between staff & students based on mutual respect.’ 

 ‘She was gentle, compassionate, wise beyond words, and with a wicked sense of humour’. 

‘Her highly efficient management of the complexities of events is the memory that stays with me; whenever there was something to be organised or directed (often an unruly group of girls) there was TJ calmly observing, directing and ensuring that all would go well’. 

‘Before A levels I will always remember her encouraging me to have a small glass of wine before supper ‘to calm the nerves’.  Who else would have taken such a practical approach to a child/young adult suffering from anxiety – and it worked’. 

‘She taught me that kindness and ‘doing the right thing’ are the most important qualities in a person, and I always try to follow that principle and the school motto ‘Actions not words’. 

‘TJ always made us feel safe and gave us a sense of belonging despite being thousands of miles away from our families’.

Staff: ‘As a new member of staff TJ played an important role in my settling so happily into the Mayfield school community.  In her down to earth and matter of fact manner she quickly put me at my ease and allowed me to be myself in that new environment’. 

‘She was a wonderful person, teacher and mentor as well as a great friend’. 

‘My own memory of her was rushing into the working staff room, where like everyone else then, she had a desk (not an office with a closed door!) and she would always stop for a brief chat with whoever was there … she made everyone feel part of a very warm community’. 

‘She quietly demonstrated through example how to lead, support, enable, listen to, respect and love others’.

Parents: ‘We will always remember her as a genuine and thoughtful friend, with a lovely sense of humour which seemed to give things the right sense of proportion’. 

‘I will forever be grateful for her wise care of the girls and for her amazing support when my husband died’. 

‘She was such an important part of our family life at Mayfield.  She was above all a wonderful example to us, coping with continuous pain from her back.  She was aware of life and its problems, which she discussed with a wonderful dry sense of humour’.

TJ loved and was inspired by the Lord’s creation in all its glory: raging seas breaking on the Cornish Atlantic coast, the hills of the north of Scotland, the garden at Oxford, a variety of birds. Animals held a special place, horses from her earliest years in her father’s stud, other animals, some recovering from trauma in the coolest Aga oven, under her mother’s care.  In the Highland Wildlife Park, she took particular delight in the wolves.  On a grey day in 2018, her last visit, she had not the physical strength to walk to the wolves’ enclosure, so I took my camera – only to find the wolves helpfully huddled under a platform, a tangle of bodies, legs and tails, not remotely photogenic. She would be delighted that the province and then the Society have become part of the Laudato Si’ action platform.

‘I will take you to myself’.  We rejoice that TJ, who sought to follow the Way and to seek the Truth, enjoys eternal Life, united to the Lord she loved ‘without reserve and without recall’.