Sundays River Valley
Women’s Institute
This year, 2014, the Sundays River Valley
Women’s Institute is 91 years old.
Johnny Briggs kindly shared Vivienne
Gruskin’s speech at the 80th Annual General Meeting of the WI in 2003. It was
her 60th year as a member. I read her speech and have tried to
extract the essence of her experience of the WI.
- Madam Chair, Fellow Members of the Women’s Institute
and Guests –
I
welcome this opportunity to share my memories with you all. This year, the
Women’s Institute will be 80 years old. This year will be 60 years since I came
to the Valley as a bride.
Hardly
had we arrived back in Addo (Mr & Mrs Gruskin, from their honeymoon), hardly had I had time to take in, what
for me were new and strange surroundings, hardly had I had time to empty the sea
sand out of my sandals, when my mother-in-law, Judith Margaret Gruskin, 15
years Treasurer to the Institute, said “Now you must join the Women’s
Institute”. The Women’s WHAT? I walked into the Valentine Hall and saw these
rows of women – hat, bag and gloves, not hats (demonstration of ‘fancy’) but hats (demonstration of ‘plain and
solid’), and I thought “Oh my goodness,
they’re all so old!” I felt very young, very inadequate, and I don’t think I
opened my mouth for 3 years!
The
hall that I walked into that day was very different from the hall today. There
it stood, four square to the winds that blow, built by the women of the Valley,
built by Women’s Institute members – never forget that. Geraldine Jordi in her
book ‘Settlers in our Valley’, writes that every institute member had to raise
the sum of £1 (R2) over the period of one year – and how difficult they found
this in those hard times, and Valentine Magniac our founder, would not allow
them to ask the men for help – they had to do it themselves. So they started in
1925 and slowly and painfully, by 1930 their hall was built and ready. It took
them 5 years, and I say, all honour to them.
If I
were to highlight the difference between the meetings of yesterday and today, I
would say that today’s are more relaxed and informal. We stood up and addressed
the chair, never by name, but as Madam Chair. We also dressed more formally in
our afternoon dresses, and stockings, summer and winter.
In
the chair at the time I joined, was Mrs. Anne Hutton, a remarkable woman – nine
times she took the chair in the Institute. An academic, classics scholar,
former militant suffragette in the fight for women’s rights, an M.A.Edinburgh –
a prestigious degree in those days even as it is today, she had also studied at
Leipzig in Germany and Poitiers in France. But she had one disadvantage – she
was very deaf. And so, when someone stood up to address the chair and did not speak
up, the information had to be relayed from row to row until it reached Mrs.
Hutton’s cupped ear.
Anne
Hutton and Molly Higgins were both foundation members of the Institute and were
also personal friends of our founder, Valentine Magniac. They decided we must
honour her memory. So we commissioned a sculptress and she created the plaque
on the outside back wall. A number of members didn’t like the plaque, they said
the figures were distorted and grotesque – but I think it has stood the test of
time and the new art forms very well. Besides, I believe Miss Magniac was
rather shapeless and certainly very untidy.
When
I look at the photo (of the plaque), I realized that all but three of us have
passed on to the great Institute in the sky, with the notable exception of Mrs.
Maisie Lewis. Later she became secretary of the Institute and wrote the amazing
Minutes – so detailed; every cough and sneeze was recorded. If someone stood up
and put forward a proposal, her name was recorded, and if someone objected or
made a counter-proposal, her name was mentioned as well. We called it “being
mentioned in dispatches” and I sometimes think there was so much unnecessary
chit-chat at meetings, because members liked to hear their names
mentioned in the Minutes!
I
often wonder, looking back, why did the members fight so much at our meetings?
Why were they always fraught with tension? Why did we all go home with
headaches? – I know I did and probably resorted, in those days, to Bacons Headache
Powders in those pink boxes. I wonder, were they repressed at home that they
vented their spleen on the meetings, or were they merely menopausal?. From now
on I shall call them the Yappers, after that expression dating from the old
days of desert travel – “The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on”. I see that
Geraldine Jordi calls the Women’s Institute meetings of her day – “The
stronghold and the battlefield of Valley womanhood” – I like that!
I
shall now fast forward to 1970-1971, the years of the Big Drought, and Grace de
Kock comes into the chair. By now the hall was much more elegant – the annexe
alterations, red velvet stage curtains donated by the Addo Playreading Society
but – we still have the long drop, the earth closet! Grace de Kock decided it
was now time we had water-borne sewerage and an elegant ladies’ rest room.
Well! That had the Yappers on their feet! ‘How can you possibly contemplate a
building project in this terrible drought. If any money is available it should
be spent on the under-privileged in these hard times’. And so the arguments
thundered forth, meeting after meeting. Then one day Lucille Kirby stood up.
Lucille Kirby was a greatly loved primary school teacher at Sunland School. She
seldom got to her feet to express an opinion, but when she did, people listened
to her. By this time we were having visiting speakers at our meetings. Lucille
said, ‘At the last meeting, the speaker asked if she could be taken to the
toilet. So with great embarrassment I took her to our earth closet. She then
asked if she could wash her hands. So with greater embarrassment I took her
through to the kitchen sink! If we are to have outsiders come and visit us, we
must improve our toilet facilities so that we can receive them without shame or
embarrassment’. And she swayed the meeting, and the Yappers were silenced and
Grace de Kock could go ahead, with the help of Gibby Londt, a local architect,
and install waterborne sewerage in our elegant ladies’ rest room. We were so
proud of this – it was such an occasion.
And
now I would like to let you in on the Great Teenage Morals Scandal, in which
Bert and I were unwittingly involved. The Institute decided, in order to liven
up the school holidays, they would allow the Valentine Hall to be used for
dances, or hops, whatever they called them then – but that these had to be
adequately chaperoned. So Bert and I volunteered, or rather, I suppose I volunteered
and the poor chap was dragged along. We came to the hall and the boys sat on
one side and the girls sat on the other side, and never the twain did meet.
Eventually a few couples took to the floor, and I recall one couple who
remained in a clinch after the music had stopped – sort of swaying in the
breeze. And I can see Bert, like an angry boxing referee, advancing on them and
shouting, “That’s enough, break it up, break it up”. He also continually had to
go outside and haul in the couples who had slipped out – not allowed! But the
evening did not get off the ground – it was deadly dull. Then some of the
teenagers approached us and suggested we dim the lights a little, then people
might dance. So we left the annexe lights on, we left the stoep light on, and
we slightly dimmed the hall lights. We could see everything that went on and,
besides, Bert was constantly patrolling the hall like a restless border collie!
Then the dance really took off and was really successful. Towards the end of
the evening a mother came to fetch her child. She sat talking to us for a while
but never, by look, word or gesture, did she indicate that she was not
comfortable or unhappy with the set-up. A few days after the dance, we heard,
as one hears things in the Valley, whisper-whisper-whisper, mutter-mutter, that
we had encouraged teenage misbehaviour by allowing them to dance in the dark!
We were astonished, and my husband was angry because a more conservative chap you
couldn’t wish to meet. We decided to put our side of the story to the
Institute, and as there was a committee meeting coming up, we decided to go
along. Bert called it “facing the military tribunal” and I must say, I took off
my hat to him for facing all those women. We put our case – said the hall had
never been dark, the lights had only been dimmed; that we were fully in control
of the evening; and that if the mother had found things not to her liking, why
had she not spoken out there and then instead of spreading gossip later. And of
course they understood, and of course the whole thing was a load of rubbish, but
the damage had been done. The Institute could not afford to be associated with
anything regarding teenage behaviour. As one women said. “You never know what
they will put in their cool-drink bottles!” SO the dances were stopped
forthwith and the teenagers lost out.
The early
settlers started the Playreading Society, and we revived it after the war. We
stood under the umbrella of our parent society, the Women’s Institute. The WI
was supposed, by nature of its constitution to promote art and culture – and I
suppose we were the culture! We put on play-readings once a month during the
winter, and these were very well supported as they were the only form of organised entertainment at the time. For five shillings (50 cents) a year the
whole family was covered. SO we had a very volatile audience, ranging form the
noisy front row where the little kids say – their parents were supposed to
control them but this didn’t often happen – to the lively back rows where the
teenagers sat – mostly boarders home for leave-out or on holiday. In any case
they were more interested in one another, and their romances, than they were in
the play. I recall two incidents. It was a mystery play and the body had to
fall out of a cupboard with a dull thud. The little Naude boy ran straight from
his seat up to the stage, waving his arms and shouting, “Daddy! Daddy! That’s
my Daddy!” Of course the audience roared and I don’t know how the corpse
controlled his laughter. On another occasion it was a murder play, a thriller,
and I was on the stage, the light was dim and the murderer was creeping up
behind me, when the irrepressible Peter Slement yelled out, “Hey, hey, hey!
Look behind you!” The hall exploded, and I can’t remember how we got the
tension back in the play.
The
advent of TV knocked everything on the head – not only in the Valley, not only
countrywide, but worldwide, amateur theatre bit the dust.
And
now, ladies, when I look at this hall, I see my entire 60 years in the Valley,
woven into its fabric. I see myself as a bride, young, slim, enthusiastic,
intent on building up the Playreading Society and raising a young family. The I
see the encroaching mists of Middle Age, from 40 onwards - not so slim, still
enthusiastic, probably my worst productive years and the Institute’s as well.
We certainly created our own entertainment in those years. I see the mannequin
parades using local models; I see the teenage mannequin parades, arranged and
scripted by themselves and modelling their own clothes; I see the crowded hall
on Quiz Evenings for Institute funds, with Ken Woolley as Quizmaster (I always
made sure I was on the panel that set the questions so I wouldn’t have to
answer them on stage); I see the many competitions – make a hat from 2 sheets
of newspaper – make a hat from kitchen utensils and vegetables.
I
also see wonderful flower shows in the 1950’s with large floral arrangements, a
section for children, and also a cookery section – arranged by the Sunland
Women’s Agricultural Association and ourselves – fiercely competitive, trophies
awarded. Among the Big Guns of those days were Bertha Coetzee, Mrs. Mat Smith,
Girlie Meiring, Evelyn Pike, Andora Bengough, Olive Gibb, Rina Plumstead. In
those days if your arrangement didn’t have a focal point, you didn’t go home
with a trophy! I can see Mrs. Pike’s pride and joy, the Children’s Arts and
Craft competitions, also arranged by the school, the W.A.A and ourselves
attracting hundreds of entries, where the children were encouraged in
portraying art in various categories, and also to make things with their hands
in various categories. Many Valley children discovered, for the first time,
their true potential through those competitions. And so much more… And now,
despite all my efforts, and with extreme reluctance I have entered rickety old
age, where I have been forced to become more a spectator, than a participator.
In this era I see Rose Day after beautiful Rose Day, where our spectacular
exhibits have brought fame to our Valley, and our hall, nationally and
internationally. If ever you flower arrangers grow tired and dispirited, as I
am sure you often do, think of the man, the visitor to Rose Day, who stood in
the hall and said to Penny Rogers and Ruth Miller, “This is so beautiful. I
could die in here!”
I can
see, passing before me, a constant procession of more that 20 chairladies I
have known, each one leaving her own particular stamp on the Institute. I see
the secretaries, the treasurers, the committee members, who have helped to
uphold the fabric of the Institute. I pay tribute to the husbands who have
supported the Institute in its many endeavours. I recall, with admiration, the
era of the Big Spenders who had the vision, and the financial backing thanks to
Rose Day, and the absence of Yappers, to effect major and necessary alterations
to our hall. I recall in more recent times, the names of Penny Rogers, Glenda
Robinson, Phrosne Riggs, Barbara Burton and Marina van der Westhuizen…
In a
final plea to you all, I say, “Don’t let the Women’s Institute die out, as so
much in our Valley has died out”. Thanks to Rose Day, it is today a vibrant,
thriving organization with the ability to grow and change. It has also the
financial clout to be a power of good in the Valley. Without wanting to sound
stuffy or conservative, which I hope I’m not, I say to you, support your
Institute by coming regularly to the meetings. Don’t look at the next speaker
and say, “I’m not interested in that”. It is your input and your talents. To
adapt the famous words of President Kennedy, “Think not what the Institute can
do for you, but what you can do for the Institute”.
Vivienne Gruskin
May 2003
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