Backwater focuses on Miriam Henderson’s time as a teacher at Wordsworth House, the school for girls run by the Perne sisters. This experience corresponds closely to Dorothy Richardson’s time at Edgeworth House, which was a girls’ school run by the Ayre sisters in Finsbury Park. The following is excerpted from George H. Thomson’s article “The Perne Sisters and Dorothy Richardson,” which appeared in Pilgrimages: The Journal of Dorothy Richardson Studies No. 4 (2011):
Who were the Pernes of Backwater? They were a trio of maiden sisters named Ayre who conducted a private school in North London called Edgeworth House at 28 Alexandra Villas, which was also 28 Seven Sisters Road opposite Finsbury Park. In the Autumn of 1892 Dorothy Richardson began to teach in their school, her job was to look after the younger students. Her employers were Anna Mary Ayre, the Principal, and her sisters Emma Ainsley and Isabella Reed Ayre. A fourth sister, Fanny Ellen Ayre, had died in March 1892, six months before Dorothy Richardson arrived. And a fifth sister Annie Oxley Ayre, in 1884 at the age of 40, had married. She will appear later in this narrative.
The 1891 Census for 28 Alexandra Villas enumerates the four resident Ayre sisters, Anna 49, Emma 48, Fanny 46, and Isabella 43, an Irish-born governess 23, two resident pupils 12 and 14, and one housemaid 15, one domestic 16, and one cook 44, all single of course, for women who held paying positions were almost always single or widowed….
Richardson’s text is also faithful in minor details. Once Miriam is settled into Wordsworth House she experiences the routine of the evening meal of bread and butter and milk, followed by evening prayers attended by the servants, the cook, tall and thin and old, Flora the parlour maid, short and plump, and Annie the housemaid, raw and grinning. They parallel the three servants in the 1891 Census….
By the time of the 1891 Census the four remaining unmarried Ayre sisters are conducting their private school for girls at Finsbury Park. When Fanny died on 13 March 1892 at age 47 she left her small estate of £207 to Anna Mary Ayre. The next to go as noted above was Isabella on 13 February 1900. The surviving sisters Anna Mary and Emma appear in the 1901 Census along with their independent single aunt, Emma Thornton, now 95.
When Emma Ayre died at age 69 on 21 Feb 1912 she left her considerable estate of £5,605 to Anna Mary Ayre, spinster. This event is not echoed in Pilgrimage nor ever mentioned in Richardson’s surviving correspondence.
The sole survivor, Anna Mary Ayre, next appears in Richardson’s life in 1936. On 18 August 1936 she writes to Owen Wadsworth: ‘To-day I go to see, for the first time since I left north London, the head of the school, “Miss Deborah Perne”, now aged 100’.4 And on 26 August 1936 she writes to Bryher: ‘Miss Ayre, “Deborah Perne”, was quite wonderful. Very thin and small and withered, her raven black hair still only partly grey, she nips about like a girl, has all her faculties and remembers everything and everyone. She refused to allow me to deal with the huge and heavy silver tea-pot. “Grace Broom” and I stayed hours and, when at last we had to go, the old lady seemed not at all tired’.
But was the vigorous Miss Ayre 100 years old as Richardson asserts? Records of birth show that she was born in the fourth quarter of 1841 and all the Census records from 1851 onward confirm this date. So in August 1936 she was approaching her 95th year. Quite good enough….
Anna Mary Ayre, spinster, 382 Seven Sisters Road, Finsbury Park London died 22 June 1940 in her 99th year.