Foxcroft's Accolade

"This," wrote Hearst Colyumist Arthur Brisbane one day last week, "is written at Middleburg, Va., where you find the finest hunting country, with many packs of hounds, the best horses and the best girls' school in the land."

To most of the millions who read the Hearst press the last phrase probably meant nothing. To Miss Charlotte Haxall Noland it was, though Colyumist Brisbane is notoriously free with his superlatives, an accolade. The Best Girls' School in the Land, her creation, is only 15 years old. Its name is Foxcroft. Only 75 girls may go there at a time, tuition $2,500 each per annum. Foxcroft has an elite waiting list of 400.

When a Virginia gentlewoman needs to do something for a living she is likely to do something worthwhile. Charlotte Noland, sportswoman, went to Baltimore and taught physical culture at St. Timothy's.

Then she started a children's camp in Virginia. In 1914 she founded Foxcroft. The War probably helped her quite as definitely as it helped U. S. munitions makers, though differently. People were not sending their daughters off to school in Europe in 1914. Miss Noland got some specially fine daughters among her first Foxcrofters. Flora Whitney, whose turfwise family knew the Middleburg atmosphere, was an early and helpful matriculant. Novelist Rupert Hughes sent his dark daughter Avis. Other New York names later enrolled were Vander Poel, Milburn, Wickes, Griswold. From Philadelphia came a Clothier. From Boston came a daughter of Editor Ellery Sedgwick of the Atlantic Monthly; from Chicago came Pattersons of the Tribune. From the first Miss Charlotte managed to keep her girls well scattered geographically, taking only the cream of the applicants from Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Washington and the South.

No pedagog herself, Miss Charlotte obtained the services of Miss Christine Weyman, an able, experienced Scotswoman who is still Foxcroft's academic headmistress. Miss Charlotte's role was that of organizer, executive and setter of the school's atmosphere, director of its purpose. She put her girls into corduroy uniforms--dark green coats, tan skirts, white shirtwaists. In the evening Fox croft girls wear white crepe de chine, all alike, no chance for rich little girls to show off.

The curriculum was set up with two courses, a stiff educational one to prepare "career girls" for the Bryn Mawr examinations, a less strenuous one in letters and the arts for misses planning to take their places in Society. But each & every girl must pass an examination to get into the school. And each & every one is taught that character, competence, self-reliance come before Career or Society.

Simplicity and the outdoor life are Foxcroft's keynotes. Horses are its main theme outside of classroom. The school has well-filled stables. Girls who can, may board their own horses. With their parents' consent and Miss Charlotte's approval of their horsemanship, they may ride in the foxhunts for which Middleburg is famed. Miss Charlotte, a hale, erect, full-bodied horsewoman in her late 30's with clear grey eyes, fresh complexion and prematurely grey hair, rides with them. Her piebald jumper's name is "War Paint."

The biggest hunt of the year comes on Thanksgiving Day when the Middleburg hounds meet at Foxcroft and the girls themselves serve the hunt breakfast in the old brick dining hall. Another great event is Alumnae Day in May when hundreds of Foxcroft parents and graduates drive over Virginia's slick concrete roads to Middleburg and out to Foxcoft to eat a luncheon and watch the Foxes and the Hounds (competitive divisions of the whole school) play at basketball on a neat grass court.

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