Muriel PASSEY

Mrs P was my A level English teacher at Stockton Sixth Form College in 76/77 and a jolly scary woman. Bright and fierce, passionate about the subject; I worry about my punctuation even now. I'm going to make free with dashes from now on. If it was good enough for Jane Austen then it's good enough for me. Passionate about her pupils - I remember her getting a van and driving us down to Stratford for a feast of Shakespeare - Judi Dench in a comic masterclass of Much Ado, amongst other treats. I remember her extraordinary outfits and shall be wearing a blue sweater in memory of one of my favourites. Alas no leather trousers for me. Most of all, I remember her railing at our miserable failings and I'm sure we mostly and richly deserved her ire. But one time she was wrong and many, many years later I was having tea with her and was able to tell her so.
So I take you back to an ordinary day, one ordinary class with Keats as our subject. Those who knew her, know that Mrs P had a beautiful voice, a voice that relished and tasted words as if they were the most delicious morsels to be rolled around the mouth and savoured. On this day she read, from beginning to end, The Eve of St Agnes. 'And they are gone; ay, ages long ago'. When she came to the end there was absolute silence in the class. Which then precipitated a Passey tantrum of monumental proportions at our wretched, collective, cultural heathenism. 30 years later I was having lunch with Mrs P in La Fromagerie in Marylebone and the subject came up. I said 'Of course you know, Mrs P, that sometimes a moment is so profound that it can ONLY be met with silence, You can be so stunned and so moved that you want to hang on to that moment of silence and stay in it.'
I can't know why the other pupils sat there in silence but I do know why I did. I'm glad I got to tell her.
Bless you Mrs P. What a shooting star. What a wonderful woman,