Victorian Childhood
Daguerreotypes. By Ada Wallas. (George Allen and Unwin. as.) Tars charming picture of Victorian childhood is true, and will give to those for whom it stirs the waters of memory a heartfelt satisfaction, a sense that the honour of a beloved generation so often aspersed is finding an avenger.
Mrs. Wallas introduces us to typical parents of the 'eighties belonging to what was then called " the cultivated." They were not harsh nor did their children pine in close nurseries or dull schoolrooms, in constant dread of punishments temporal or eternal. Intimacy between the two generations was not perfect. Will it ever be ? But at least the Victorians " put up with " their children, their noise and their nonsense, more readily than many parents do now. Preparatory schools, for children of nursery age, whose phenomenal successes depend upon the motherly instincts of lady-matrons, did not then stand thick and ever thicker upon the ground, and Mrs. Jellaby was a figure of scorn, not " a woman of wide interests." True, there was less racket all the year round in the children's quarters, than there is now in holiday times all over the house, but there is more racket everywhere, in the streets, in the country roads, in shops and offices. It is the age of noise, and children are quite as sensitive as their parents to the influence of the time spirit.
Mrs. Wallas came, she tells us, of a nonconformist family. Her forbears had suffered from many religious and political disabilities and " at home when the past was spoken of it was almost always in connexion with praise of the present." Her father welcomed " with boyish enthusiasm the good things offered to his children." The fact that the older Universities had opened their doors wide enough to admit all creeds seemed to him an inestimable benefit. This spirit of delight in the present was even stronger in the grandfather who-lived in a tiny villa about a mile away from the big house of his grandchildren. A very attractive picture of this old man is set before us in a few short pages. Beginning life as a mason he had kept a grocer's shop somewhere in Cornwall. In his retirement, he " dressed in fine black broadcloth with a white choker." His extremely strict evangelical views were modified by his true Christianity and his innate hospitality. He rather disapproved of " parties " as savouring of worldliness but delighted in " gatherings of young people." Card-playing and gambling he condemned as " loose-living," but he kept stores of sweets for which his grandchildren gambled to their hearts' content. Very proud of his little descendants he used to say " God has blessed Agnes with very goodly children " ; and could even find it in his heart to minister to the personal vanity of a little girl by remarking " how comely you look in your new spencer 1 " Thankfulness, we read, was Iiis great Characteristic. He was thankful for the gas-lit streets and for omnibuses and. all means. _of _easy transit. " Baths -where hot and Cold water were turned on at will- were always a marvel to him." " Improvements," busy thoroughfares where once marshland harboured snipe, had his whole-hearted approval. The multitude of investments " now open to godly men " were among the new interests of life which appealed to him. It was only the godly who counted according to his theories, but in practice he did not judge the ungodly at all harshly. He could not help thinking, he said, " that we should be surprised at the company we should find in Heaven."" Stupidity alone tried his charity. " A person of no intellect " bored him frankly, though he might admit such an one to be " worthy."
Rough words and behaviour were strictly forbidden in Victorian nurseries ; all the same, one little boy in this exceptionally well-mannered household had quite a serious fight one morning on his way to school. His parents looked exceedingly grave when an injury to his hand forted him to confess the misdemeanour. A fight ! In the street ! It was shocking. The whole schoolroom shared in the sense of disgrace. A smile, however, was seen to flicker upon the faces of the elders when the naughty warrior was not by, and the cloud soon lifted. The little girls defended them- selves entirely with their tongues. " You wicked boys ! " cried a small sister whose brothers had outraged her feelings by enclosing a favourite baby doll in a pie, " I'll cut you up into little bits with a fruit knife and give you to the canaries." It was a winter afternoon, when all sore feelings had to be put away early lest the sun should go down upon wrath, so the offence was condoned by the outraged doll owner sooner than she might have wished.
The little heroine of these fascinating pages had what we believe was commoner then in young children than it is now, a great hunger at times for peace and quiet. To get away from chatter and company she often took refuge in the workroom where the "sewing-woman," who made the clothes of the family, sat by herself. She was a pleasant creature this dressmaker, devoted to her employers, deeply interested in the fashions and in the greater world with which a sister in smart service connected her. She did not altogether approve of fashionable people, as among them she feared that " marriage was not what it was," but she did not deal in condemnations even when speaking of those obviously upon the slippery path, seldom saying more than, " Time will make mention." The reports of the early suffragists wounded her professional feelings by the strangeness of their dress. She had heard, she said, that some of these ladies had discarded " the natural props of the female figure."
The governess of the period gets hard measure here as elsewhere. Why were Victorian governesses such weak, silly creatures, such prigs, so incapable of interesting an intelligent child in books, sums, music or history. When Miss Clatworthy, whose daguerreotype is here put before us, complained of her pupils, their kind mother always thought that the poor woman must be " a little run down "—and sent her an egg beaten up in sherry at eleven o'clock for many days. The father once or twice made a bolder effort to support her authority, and on one occasion asked his little daughter to promise to try to do better. She wept and refused for conscientious reasons. He gently reminded her that he had only stipulated that she should " try." Further sobs induced him to say that as she was so much upset he would not " press the matter now."
A new mode of education had to be considered, a high school for girls was set up in the neighbourhood and drawing- room dovecotes were much fluttered. Latin was taught.
buld it be right to give girls the same teaching as their others ? A Nonconformist minister in the neighbourhood who was considered to be " enlightened" thought of sending leis own girls, having first' satisfied himself that they Were able to make a shirt, a pudding, and a bed. Advocates of the new system instanced Lady Jane Grey, Hannah More, and Caroline Herschel on their side of the argument. Oppo- nents pointed out that these were " such very exceptional ladies." Finally it was decided that Miss Clatworthy's former pupil should go and in a new world of conscious intellectual interests enriy childhood came to a_neod_ _
CE('ILIA TOWNSEND._
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