Poor Nelly Weeton
PATRICK ANDERSON
Miss Weeton's Journal of a Governess edited by Edward Hall with a new introduction by J. J. Bayley (David and Charles Reprints 2 Volumes 105s)
In May 1834, a gaunt white-haired woman of forty-eight paid the sum of two pounds for an outside seat on the express coach from Prescot in Lancashire to London. Although the weather was bitterly cold she confessed herself 'greatly pleased with my journey . . . Riding in a coach is very easy; I never felt tired or benumbed with it.' Indeed she refused the guard's offer of an inside place during the hours of darkness. They reached Lichfield at midnight, stopping only for ten minutes, had an early breakfast at Lutter- worth and then proceeded by way of North- ampton (lunch) to arrive at Islington in the early evening. The traveller, lo was a vege- tarian, found practically nothing to eat but fortified herself with gingerly but persistent sips of brandy and water. She was content to observe a lunar rainbow for the space of two hours. The candles of drunkards going late to bed were fol- lowed by exciting glimpses into bedrooms where the windows had been thrown open by early risers. Throughout she blessed the engineering skill of Mr McAdam. And then, 'I got to bed as soon as I could, and never woke until near noon next day.'
, During the next eleven weeks this genteel, articulate, tactless but also diffident solitary walked about London to the extent of no less than 5381 miles. 'I am astonished at my strength, but I have a kind Friend above, who permits me to have some enjoyments, in pity to me for those He thinks proper to bereave me of for a: time.' Armed with guide-book and a map, and never failing to comment on the prices of ad- mission, she took in all the sights: St Paul's, 'in majesty what the lion is amongst beasts'; Greenwich, which 'rose to my sight like a piece of enchantment' and had, besides, a fair with 'large boat Swings' as well as grassy knolls down which even the respectable, of both sexes too, rushed hand in hand; Pentonvilte, gay and ex- travagant with its ascending balloons; Billings- gate, so 'diverting, stunning, and disgusting'; Richmond Park, where she dined 'in the hollow of an old oak tree,' and Primrose Hill, where the new terraces surpassed 'anything in house- building I ever saw,' and so, daringly, to an even- ing amusement at Vauxhall, whence she `got quite safe home at one o'clock in the morning.'
What with Dioramas, Waxworks, Menageries, Panoramas, Apollonicons, an Invisible Girl and an Infant playing the Pedal Harp there was plenty to enjoy by way of shows, while the end- less lines of traffic were also exciting: 'It was fine fun for me, for I like a good excuse for a run.' Only occasionally was she disappointed. The crown jewels were 'grand baubles' to her. 'I would prefer seeing the emerald isles of Win- andermere, the ruby coloured setting sun, its golden rising, the silvery clouds, the azure sky, or even the simple yellow buttercup.' And sad- rAess struck only once. A child at her second lodgings died of smallpox. But this was perhaps
for the best; the disease made little Keziah, who was already an invalid, 'completely loathsome' and had she recovered she would have been 'one of the most deplorable objects ever seen.'
The traveller was Nelly Weeton, schoolmis- tress, governess, feminist, frustrated literary
genius, and now the estranged wife of a small Wigan industrialist, Aaron Stock. Fascinating in both historical and human terms as her trip to London undoubtedly is, it is only one episode, and that a late one, in the two solid volumes which contain what papers of hers have not been lost, chiefly the letters she so carefully transcribed for her own subsequent perusal and in the faint hope that some day they might be rescued from 'a musty shelf.' She was first pub- lished in 1936.
Much of her life was unhappy. Her father, captain of a slave ship, had amassed a small fortune during the American Wai but when he died abroad his employers cheated her mother of every penny. Immense sacrifices were needed to have her young brother, Tom, trained in the law, not least the suppression of her own literary yearnings as unsuitable for an assistant in her mother's little school at Up-Holland : 'Oh! how I have burned to learn Latin, French, the Arts, the Sciences, anything rather than the dog trot way of sewing, teaching, writing copies, and washing dishes every day' But her brother, whom she loved so excessively, and rallied, ad- vised and nagged at such prodigious length, soon married a snob and treated her coldly; `Strange that so tender-hearted a boy should become so selfish a man.' , A lonely, prickly woman, she moved to lodg- ings in Liverpool, where her hosts manhandled each other and she 'dipped' in the sea thrice a week; to a position as governess on the shores of Windermere, with her employer drunk and savage and her charge burned to death; to another post amongst the Luddites in Yorkshire; and then, despite more attractive suitors, to a catastrophic marriage with a man who beat her up, sent her to prison, kept a mistress in the house, and finally (with Tom's assistance) executed an infamous Deed of Separation which exiled her from the family home in Wigan and allowed her only three visits to her daughter Mary each year. (Her marital vulnerability is an interesting gloss upon The Tenantof Wildfell Hall.) Somehow she maintained the resilience of her 'more than female soul.' She kept her keen eye and her adventurous spirit. She even made a little money. And, although a temperamental female friend once wrestled with her for the precious, secret book in which she had already been lambasted, she continued to write: Ideas come floating like full fraught vessels in a fine sea-port in serene weather.'
It was shortly after the wonderful London jaunt that, still entirely alone, she perambulated Wales and made the ascent of Snowdon: 'Here I stood, perched on a ridge like a crow on the point of a pinnacle . . . for aught I knew, I had the whole mountain to myself.' Skirting a hideous precipice, 'I drew my bonnet closer over my right cheek, to hoodwink me on that side.' Her final reflection (June 1825) declares, 'The solitary life I lead is not from choice; I see no way of avoiding it.' It is pleasant to add that soon after- wards the Deed was abrogated, the wicked hus- band decamped and poor Nelly Weeton was re-united with her Mary.
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