Ecole Normale d’Institutrices
Orléans
Oct 7th 1900
My dear Mother
Here I am at Orléans! you will have had my post card from Paris & now I must write you a long letter & tell you what I been doing.
M & Mme Coeuret were both very kind to me, I managed to understand them pretty well & to make myself understood. Mme Coeuret said that I had a good accent & she thought I shall soon learn to speak well. Their meals seemed very funny & the way they eat amuses me very much - the French have not good manners at table, & everything on the table is in such a muddle, also I find they eat very fast only luckily they talk so much that I can manage to keep pace with them! I find that when they are all talking together I cannot understand much, but when one person talks to me alone I can understand much better. They strike me as very polite in the way they speak to each other, all the mistresses here shake hands with each other night & morning, a thing which I don’t think they would dream of doing in any English school. M & Mme Coeuret were of course busy in the morning so I amused myself at the piano & with a book until they came back to dejeuner at 11.50 & afterwards they both went out with me to the Gare d’Orléans, but they were not allowed on to the platform to see me off although M Coeuret expostulated angrily with an official. I had to change at Aubret (I don’t know if that is the way to spell it) it is the station next to Orléans.
Mlle Préan met me here & we drove to the school in a ‘bus. The school is about half an hour’s walk from the station, in the Faubourg de St Jean de la Ruelle, so we are fairly in the country, it is a large building, there are 56 éleves & four mistresses in the school, some of the mistresses live in the town. They were all very kind & friendly to me when I arrived & Mme la Directrice seems nice, they all seem to like her very much. I had time to unpack & arrange my things before dinner time, & I also was shown round the school. My room is large & I have a little dressing room opening out of it. I shall be glad when my other box arrives then I shall be able to make it look nicer. I have a nice large book-case & a little table to write at, a good sized hanging cupboard & a chest of drawers. I had a bowl of chocolate & some bread brought me in my room this morning but on week days I think we have it in the refectory, the four mistresses & I have our meals at one table apart from the girls, Madame le Directrice has her own rooms quite separate.
This morning I went with one of the mistresses & 9 girls who are Protestants to the French Protestant Church but I did not like it at all, it is a hideous place & we had a very long sermon of which of course I could only understand bits here & there, then they never knelt at all, they stand up to pray & sat down to sing! I shall try the Cathedral next Sunday. There is no Church very close although there are a great many in the town. This afternoon I have been for a walk with the girls, they only go out on Sundays & Thursdays. I spoke English with a few of them, just a few have not a bad idea how to talk, but we get on better in French. I shall be able to tell you more next week, of course I still feel very strange & I scarcely know my way about yet. Goodbye, with very much love to you all
I am
your loving daughter
May E Sladden
