800 Years of Women's Letters (27 page)

ED. E. HALL (1936)

Nellie Weeton to her brother, 28 December 1810

How often do I wish that I could see you for a few weeks. I could tell you much that would exceed the limits of a letter – perhaps when Mr and Mrs P. go to Prestion in the Spring, I may get a seat with them as far as there, if they go in a chaise – not that I think there is any chance of it either, for they always take such a load of luggage with them, when they go from home – perhaps I may come soon enough, for Mr P. when he is in one of his violent fits of passion, often threatens to turn me out, so he does with his wife, or the servants. I am not worse treated than others; often better, but still feel very uncomfortable.

If I listen in a kind of submissive silence, he will attack me in high style for disrespect. These humours often hold for a week – till visitors arrive; then he is exactly the opposite and treats me with too much deference. . . .

ED. E. HALL (1936)

Later she took a post as governess to the many small children of a wealthy industrialist, Joseph Armitage, near Huddersfield. She writes to a friend, Bessy Price, in July 1812.

He and his wife are young people, not 30 yet. He has a handsome fortune and four women servants. There has been a good deal of company since I came; but though I dine or drink tea with them, I am obliged to leave the room so immediately after I swallowed it, that truly I see little of them.

My time is totally taken up with the children; from 7 o'clock in the morning till half past 7, or 8 at night. I cannot lie longer than 6 o'clock in a morning; and, if I have anything to do for myself, in sewing, writing, and etc, I must rise sooner. At 7, I go into the nursery to hear the children say their prayers, and to remain with them till after they have breakfasted, when I go out with them whilst they play; and am often so cold that I join in their sports to keep warm myself. About half past 8, I breakfast with Mr and Mrs Armitage, and then return to the children till 9, when we go into the schoolroom till 12. We then bustle on our bonnets, etc, for play or for a short walk. At one, we bustle them off again, to dress for dinner, to which we all sit down at quarter past; the children always dine with their parents. By the time dinner is well over, it is 2 o'clock, when we go in to school, and remain till 5.

Whilst I am at tea in the parlour, the children eat their suppers in the nursery. I then go with them till 7, either walking out of doors, or playing within, as the weather may permit. I then hear their prayers and see them washed; at half past 7 they are generally in bed. All their children, though well-ordered by their parents, when out of sight are as unruly, noisy, insolent, quarrelsome and ill-tempered, etc, as I ever met with. I am beginning to get them to pay some respect to my mandates, and perhaps by & bye, I may to my requests . . .

Mr and Mrs A. are pleasant and easy, make my situation as comfortable as such a one can be; for it is rather awkward for a female of any reflection or feeling. A governess is almost shut out of society; she must possess some fortitude and strength of mind to render herself tranquil or happy.

ED. E. HALL (1936)

In 1814 her brother persuaded her to marry a friend of his, Aaron Stock, who soon began ill-treating her. She was beaten and bullied, and not even allowed her only child Mary, when she was forced to leave him.

In the nineteenth century some governesses were treated as respected companions, but more commonly they were thought too ‘lowly' to be appreciated by the parents, too educated to be allowed to consort with servants. Even after the wide sales of
Jane Eyre
, governesses were still often publicly humiliated and their wages remained painfully low. Claire Claremont, a friend of Mary Shelley, wrote to her in 1863:

I am so worried I fear I shall go out of my mind – this is now my life – I go by nine to Mrs Kitchener's house where I give lessons until one – then I rush to the top of Wilton Place and get a Richmond omnibus and go to Richmond to the Cohens – their daughter is going to marry a Genoese and must have an Italian lesson every day . . . that vile omnibus takes two hours to get to Richmond and the same to come back and so with every giving my lesson I am never back before seven. Four hours wasted in transit. Four precious hours of earning capacity!

B. HOWE,
A GALAXY OF GOVERNESSES
(1954)

Governesses rarely earned as much as £80. Misery in abandoned old age became a public scandal, and led to the founding of the Governess Benevolent Institution by the end of the nineteenth century.

Setting up small schools offered a respectable if not prosperous living for a few middle-class daughters. Charlotte and Emily Brontë begged their aunt for their small inheritance to pay for a stay in Brussels which would improve their French and so enable them to advertise among the rising industrialist middle class. Kind fathers, particularly in the upper middle class, sometimes supported their daughters' philanthropic efforts. In the 1840s, the daughters of a Birmingham banker set up a Sunday School at the back of their house. When the family moved to Leamington on the father's retirement from active business, the Sunday School became a day school, partly in the interest of the daughter, Adele, who was a semi-invalid, as described in this letter.

My father allowed us to have a little school for poor children, chiefly for Adele's pleasure, as she could enter into so few amusements. He built a room for it next door to our stables, and we took forty little girls. . . . We taught reading, writing and arithmetic, sewing, mending, marking and cutting out. We also taught them to plait straw and make their own bonnets. When old enough to go into service, my Mother allowed us to have the girls in the house for a fortnight, to learn under our maids, who took great pride in their pupils and turned them out tidy little servants.

I. DAVIDOFF AND C. HALL,
FAMILY FORTUNES: MEN AND WOMEN OF THE ENGLISH MIDDLE CLASS 1780–1850
(1987)

Teaching offered a career for a few determined unmarried well-educated women from the seventeenth century onwards. By the nineteenth there were dame schools, ragged schools and a few boarding schools – more in America than Britain. Mary Lyon (1797– 1849) pioneered academies for young ladies in Londonderry, New Hampshire. She seems to have had sole responsibility for teaching and boarding her pupils.

[Mary Lyon to her friend and fellow teacher Hannah Chickering, 21 February 1825, Buckland, Mass.]

My school here consists of twenty-five young ladies. After so large a number had been admitted, I had some anxiety respecting it. I feared that I might attempt more uniformity about books than, considering the circumstances, would be expedient. I expected also, a cold winter, and my design was to have the scholars study in school. And as I possess not much natural dignity, I could foresee my scholars crowding around the fire, some whispering, some idle, &c . I remembered that, several years ago, I had a school of young ladies in this town, in which there was more whispering than in all the schools in which I had been engaged for the last three or four years. The fault then was mine, and I new not but that the effects might be felt even now. . . .

At the commencement, I thought it best to assume as much artificial dignity as possible; so, to begin, I borrowed Miss Grant's plan to prevent whispering. All, with one exception, strictly complied; and that was one of the first young ladies in age and improvement. It appeared altogether probable that the termination of this affair would be a matter of considerable importance in relation to her, her father's family, and perhaps to the school generally. But after I had passed a few almost sleepless nights about it, a kind Providence directed the result in a manner that seemed best calculated to promote the interests of the school; for at length she came cheerfully to the arrangement.

A circumstance in relation to the first set of compositions was somewhat trying. One pupil refused entirely to write: but I was assisted in leading her to comply with the requirement. Some other things I
could
mention. Suffice it to say, that I have had just enough of such things to give me continual anxiety: but God in his providence has been very kind to me. Many events have terminated as I desired, when it seemed not at all in my power to control them. Perhaps I have generally been able to accomplish about what I have undertaken.

My school in many respects is very pleasant. I have but two or three pupils under sixteen years of age. With the exception of two or three, they are very studious. On the whole, I think it the best school I have ever had; the best, because the most profitable to its members; I do not mean the best in which I have been engaged. I have an opportunity this winter to see the value of what I gained at Derry [Londonderry].

EDS. E.O. HELLERSTEIN
ET AL., VICTORIAN WOMEN
(1981)

Mary Lyon to Zilpah Grant, 26 December 1825, Buckland,
Mass.

My school is larger than I expected, having about fifty scholars. . . . My heart is pained to see so much important unaccomplished labor accumulating on my hands, and I have engaged an assistant. . . .

Fourteen of my scholars board in the family with me. Before I came here, and for the first week after, I had much anxiety about the arrangements for these young ladies. We have finally become settled, so that everything seems to go on well. The members of the school in the family have a table by themselves. As I was well aware that it would require more than an ordinary share of dignity to prevent too much, if not improper, conversation at meals. I thought it the safest to introduce some entertaining exercise. This requires an effort on my part which I had scarcely realized. I frequently think, ‘How
could
Miss G. take care of so many last summer?' But I recollect hearing you say that your first schools were as much your all as your one hundred pupils at Derry.

My spirits have been unusually uniform for four weeks. I do not recollect an hour of depression. I consider this a blessing for which I ought to be thankful. . . .

EDS. E.O. HELLERSTEIN
ET AL.
(1981)

Teaching offered respectable employment to adolescent girls and young women once primary education became compulsory. Towards the end of
The Rainbow
D.H. Lawrence depicts the difficulties with large classes, the long hours on low pay. Conditions in isolated French villages could be unenviable too, as recounted in
Lettres d'institutrices rurales d'autrefois: rédigées à la suite de l'enquête de Francisque Sarcey en 1897
. This account is from a vulnerable young teacher in 1892.

When I arrived at Selles-Saint-Denis – it was past ten at night – the mayor had not yet gone to bed; he was waiting for me in order to give me the keys, and welcomed me with ‘good night.' – The first driver took me to his place; he kept an inn. I had to sleep there until my furniture arrived. . . .

Finally I was at home. The house belonged to a rich farmer, and was ill-equipped to be a school. There was a little garden where the teacher who preceded me had taken care to destroy the half-grown crops so that I would not be able to enjoy them. . . .

Because I had no kitchen, I could not cook for myself. Therefore I arranged with the mistress of the big hotel to provide my meals for forty-five francs a month. In the morning they bring me breakfast at home; I am going to the hotel for the other two meals. There I sometimes enjoy the distraction of other dining companions. I am not too bored. . . .

Sept. 18, 1892. – It seems that I shock my colleagues more and more; they have never seen a teacher take her meals at an inn. The hostess . . . has asked me to eat at home.

It has cost me a great deal to go back to cooking and washing up. I have no vegetables and have to pay the mailman to bring me some from Salbris, or to do my shopping at Romorautin on market days. I don't want to patronize the other inns, which are real dumps.

Jan. 4. 1893. – Solitude, bitter cold, frosted walls in my rooms – nothing to read. . . . The class is distraction for me, but how hard. Oh! that little Ch——, a true alcoholic's daughter. One could call her half-cracked. How she makes me suffer!

February 1893 – No courage to live. . . .

[No date, but after April 15] – This winter the mayor has received all the benedictions of Bacchus. Suddenly he has begun to speak to me in rather spicy language. And because I have kept silent out of respect for his office, he probably believes that I go along with his talk, and he continues his idiotic declarations, all in order to attract me to him, to make me fall into his arms. My gesture to him expressed my complete disgust. . . .

And now my innocent walks [in the neighbouring woods] have become suspect. Madame L—— has been spreading absurd rumours: that I go there for trysts.

Sept. 7. 1893. – Before shaking the dust of this rotten town off my feet forever, I want to go over the sufferings I have endured. I have not had the energy to write for a long time. These last three months have been hell. I wanted to die! Today I await my reassignment and the world begins to brighten.

Women depended on male relatives financially, despite continual hard work in field and house. A few aristocratic women might own land, but as property grew more important in the eighteenth century, women lost rights both to land and to a personal income. Even earnings from books went to husbands. Interestingly, letters about money worries are more often to help other women rather than pleas for the writers themselves. Margery Clerke in 1526 wrote to Cranmer to protect her five children; Lady Lisle in 1538 attempted to protect her husband's land for him. Anna King, in the nineteenth century, wrote to prevent her husband's bankruptcy. Florence Nightingale complains to her mother about her tiny allowance, which she needed to educate four orphan boys.

When women managed money they could be extremely efficient, as shown by one medieval woman who exported goods to Gascony, and imported wine in those same ships. Aphra Behn supported not only herself but her lover, in spite of not always being paid for work. Louisa May Alcott's account demonstrates the writer coping well with a complicated budget and virtually two full-time jobs.