Life at the Grove, 1947-1969

The Grove Finishing School opened in the fall of 1947. A school "for the individual coaching of girls in subjects of post-school education and for vocational guidance," Muriel and her staff taught girls from all over the world courses in art history, music history, English literature, foreign languages, Ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement), cooking, elocution and secretarial courses.

While aiming at giving the same advantages of the usual finishing years on the Continent (with particular emphasis on modern languages and special courses in art and music), [Mrs. Orr-Ewing] can at the same time provide sound instruction in secretarial subjects, and girls can obtain the Pitman Secretarial Diploma at The Grove... Girls are helped to acquire social savoir-faire and a sensible understanding of domestic economy [The Grove Finishing School prospectus, c. 1955 pg. 3]

To help teach the girls at the Grove culture and society, Muriel involved them with the many charities, societies and associations events hosted at the Grove. See some of the Grove group portraits: 1947, 1953, 1958, 1965

Prince Akihito of Japan visits the Grove

In 1953, His Imperial Majesty Emperor Hirohito sent his young 16 year old son, Prince Akihito to represent Japan at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. While on tour of Britain, the Prince spent an evening at the Grove playing table tennis with Muriel's second cousin, Michael Muschamp and dancing with the Grove girls at a ball in his honor.

Berthe Grimault

In 1957 Muriel offered a Grove scholarship to 14 year old Berthe Grimault, a poor French farm girl who had achieved fame for publishing her first novel. When Berthe arrived, Muriel was horrified to find her half-illiterate. She then discovered the majority of Berthe's book was actually written by the local village postmaster. The media rushed in when they learned about Berthe's scholarship calling her a "pig girl amongst the debs". After Berthe left the Grove in 1958 she published another novel with the village postmaster called Berthe in Paradise -- a surrealist fantasy based on her experiences in England. Muriel was asked to write the preface. On the inside flap of the book jacket it reads:

Berthe Grimault has now written a novel about an English school. No doubt many readers familiar with the circumstances of this young girl's recent life will regard it as auto-biographical, but it would be truer to call it a fantasy.

As Mrs. Orr-Ewing, Berthe's former headmistress, points out in her generous preface, no school was ever quite like this, even if some of the events can be traced directly or remotley to actual experience.

The book will however appeal to those who are interested in the author either as a phenomenon, or as a novelist. For the first group, it throws some light on the extraordinary mystery of a poorly educated French peasant girl who, with the aid of Eliézer Fournier, the village postman, has now written three very unusual novels; for the second, it is a fascinating experience to inspect a small English community through the special eyes of a girl who found herself suddenly transported to paradise.

[Inside dust jacket flap, Berthe in Paradise by Berthe Grimault, W.H. Allen, London 1960]

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