Suffer the little children to come unto me
Juliet Townsend
TYRANT OR VICTIM? A HISTORY OF THE BRITISH NANNY by Alice Renton Weidenfeld, f15, pp. 214 My father once defined a gentleman as a man who, when the woman of his dreams entered the drawing-room, went on talking to the governess. Alas, there are all too few gentlemen in the pages of Alice Renton's Tyrant or Victim?
A few outstanding women won through to friendship with the families whose child- ren they taught — Miss Price with the Cunards, Miss Ross with the Waldegraves, and most notably in the 1860s, Miss Johnstone (known affectionately to her charges as 'Pock Pudding') with the family of the Duke of Argyll. Georgina Johnstone was totally uneducated when she was appointed, but made use of the ducal library to satisfy her 'insatiable craving' for knowledge, mastering all the principal European languages, and even tackling Gaelic and Sanskrit. Like all the best teach- ers, she was easily distracted from the set lesson to range among more fertile fields. `My dears', she would say, 'our lesson has been sadly neglected; we must hope, though, that our conversation has not been altogether unprofitable.' She helped the Duke correct the proofs of his books and joined in the discussions when Mr Gladstone dined.
How rare it was for a governess to find herself in this happy situation can be seen all too clearly in this interesting book. The first important point to grasp is that, until the 1920s, the vast majority of governesses adopted the profession from necessity not choice. Anna Jameson, writing in 1846 observed that 'I never in my life heard of a governess who was such by choice', and pointed out that it was The only means by which a woman not born in the servile classes can earn the means of subsistence.'
From the mid 19th century, when male emigration and the demise of the dowry led to a large number of surplus gentlewomen flooding the market, the problem became particularly acute. The majority of these women had no qualifications or aptitude for the work. Uneducated themselves, they could not be expected to educate others. Long queues of desperate applicants sub- mitted themselves for interview, having usually grossly exaggerated their attain- ments to secure the post. Many were pay- ing, from the pittance they earned, for the education of younger brothers and sisters, or to support aged parents. Illness or unemployment spelt disaster. For those who were not required and thus not paid during the school holidays subsistence itself could be difficult. Their pupils seemed unaware of all this. 'Governesses just disappear during the holidays' . . . `she went somewhere, I suppose', they say vaguely.
Alice Renton traces the history of the governess from Elgifu, who taught the granddaughters of King Alfred, to the pre- sent day, drawing on a fascinating store of vivid personal reminiscences. It is a depressing story. The standing of the gov- erness at any date mirrored the standing of girls' education, which meant that it was almost invariably low. Until the 18th centu- ry, the only governesses in private houses were employed by the royal family or nobil- ity, and the post was more that of guardian than teacher. In periods when girls in such families might be well taught, their aca- demic education was in the hands of male tutors — Queen Elizabeth is an obvious example. The royal governess was seldom selected for her erudition. Lady Deloraine, governess to the daughters of George II, was also his mistress, with whom he liked to 'talk a little bawdy'. Described by Walpole as 'that lying bitch,' she does not `Well, that explains the bag!' seem to have been likely to improve the princesses' minds or morals.
The end of the 18th century saw the number of governesses in middle-class homes increase dramatically, but they were not employed to impart book learning. The education of girls was directed to one end — marriage, and the governess herself was an awful warning of what might occur if this were not achieved. Enormous empha- sis was placed on deportment, dancing and music. Hannah More calculated that one girl who started learning the piano at six had spent 14,400 hours practising, only to marry a man who was tone deaf. Mary Somerville the mathematician describes the contraption she had to wear while prepar- ing her lessons.
I was enclosed in stiff stays with a steel busk in front, while above my frock, bands drew my shoulders back till the shoulder blades met. Then a steel rod, with a semi-circle which went under the chin, was clasped to the steel busk in my stays.
It was commonplace for a girl to be made to swing from a bar by her chin to lengthen her neck. Lessons consisted large- ly of question-and-answer books, like The Children's Guide to Knowledge 'What are the three diseases of wheat? Rust, mildew and soot.' This made it easy for the gov- erness to conceal her own ignorance.
The children, taking their cue from par- ents and nurse, almost invariably jealous of the governess, were often insolent. 'More riotous, perverse, unmanageable cubs never grew', comments Charlotte Bronte on her charges, and Anne found the Inghams 'unruly and violent', though she devised ways to counteract this. Mrs Ingham later told her grandchildren that she had
employed a very unsuitable governess, a Miss Bronte, who actually tied the two children to a table leg . . . to keep them quiet while she got on with her writing.
The later Victorian period found child- ren more completely under the governess's control, often isolated in the distant school- room of a country house. Here the tyrant governess did sometimes flourish, Lord Curzon's Miss Paraman, for instance, who made him walk through the village in red calico petticoats and an
immense conical cap . . round which, as well as on our breasts and backs, were sewn strips of paper bearing in enormous charac- ters the words Liar, Sneak, Coward, Lubber and the like.
Standards gradually improved with the advent of Girls' High Schools and institu- tions like Queen's College, Harley Street, which trained and certificated governesses, but their lot can seldom have been a happy one, hovering in limbo between the draw- ing-room and servants' hall. As Mary Wollstonecraft wrote, 'above the servants, yet considered by them as a spy, and ever reminded of her inferiority when in conver- sation with the superiors.'
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