CHAPTER XVIII.
Reviewing these sketches of our early days, I feel that they are incomplete without a tribute to some of the teachers employed to instruct us. Even in colonial days our great-grandfathers had been sent to England to be educated, so that education was considered all-important in our family, especially with my father, who exerted his influence for public schools and advocated teaching the negroes to read and write, contending that this would increase their value as well as their intelligence.
Determining that my sister and myself should have proper educational advantages, he engaged, while we were young children, a most extraordinary woman to teach us—a Danish lady, better versed in many other languages than in our own. Her name was Henriquez, and her masculine appearance, mind, and manners were such as to strike terror into the hearts of youthful pupils. Having attended lectures at a college in Copenhagen with several female friends alike ambitious to receive a scientific education, Mme. Henriquez scorned feminine acquirements and acquaintances, never possessing, to my knowledge, a needle or thimble. Her conversation was largely confined to scientific subjects, and was with men whenever possible, rarely descending to anything in common with her own sex. Sometimes in school our recitations would be interrupted by recollections of her early days in Copenhagen, and, instead of pursuing a lesson in geography or grammar, we would be entertained with some marvelous story about her father's palace, the marble stable for his cows, etc. In the midst of correcting a French or German exercise she would sometimes order a waiter of refreshments to be brought into the schoolroom and placed before her on a small table which had a history, being made, as she often related, from a tree in her father's palace grounds, around which the serfs danced on the day of their emancipation. She had a favorite dog named Odin which was allowed the privilege of the schoolroom, and any girl guilty of disrespect to Odin was in serious disgrace.
This Danish lady was succeeded by one of a wholly different type, all grace and accomplishments,a Virginian, and the widow of Major Lomax of the United States Army.
Mrs. Lomax had several accomplished daughters who assisted in her school, and the harp, piano, and guitar were household instruments. The eldest daughter contributed stories and verses, which were greatly admired, to periodicals of that day. One of these stories, published in a Northern journal, won for her a prize of one hundred dollars, and the school-girls were thrilled to hear that she spent it all for a royal purple velvet gown to wear to Miss Preston's wedding in Montgomery County.
In this school Mrs. Lomax introduced a charming corps of teachers from Boston, most cultivated and refined women, whom it will always be a pleasure to remember. Among these were Mrs. Dana, with her accomplished daughter, Miss Matilda Dana, well known in the literary world then as a writer of finished verses.
We had also a bright, sweet-natured little Frenchwoman, Mlle. Roget, who taught her native language.
Besides these teachers we had a German gentleman, a finished pianist and linguist; and the recollections of those days are like the delicious music that floated around us then from those master-musicians.
After such pleasant school-days at home we were sent away to a fashionable boarding-school in the city of Richmond, presided over by a lady of great dignity and gentleness of manner, combined with high attainments. She was first Mrs. Otis of Boston, and afterward Mrs. Meade of Virginia.
At her school were collected many interesting teachers and pupils. Among the former were Miss Prescott of Boston and Miss Willis, sister of N. P. Willis, both lovable and attractive.
Among the noted girls at Mrs. Meade's school was Amélie Rives[20] of Albemarle County, Va. She spoke French fluently, and seemed to know much about Paris and the French court, her father having been Minister to France.
We looked upon Amélie with great admiration, and, as she wrote very pretty poetry, every girl in the school set her heart upon having some original verses in her album, a favor which Amélie never refused.
Closing this chapter on schools suggests the great difference in the objects and methods of a Virginia girl's education then and now. At that period a girl was expected not only to be an ornament to the drawing-room, but to be also equipped for taking charge of an establishment and superintending every detail of domestic employment on a plantation—the weaving, knitting, sewing, etc.—for the comfort of the negro servants to be some day under her care. I have thus seen girls laboriously draw the threads of finest linen, and backstitch miles of stitching on their brothers' collars and shirt-bosoms. Having no brothers to sew for, I looked on in amazement at this dreary task, and I have since often wished that those persevering and devoted women could come back and live their lives over again in the days of sewing-machines.
At that day the parents of a girl would have shuddered at the thought of her venturing for a day's journey without an escort on a railway car, being jostled in a public crowd, or exposed in any way to indiscriminate contact with the outside world, while the proposition of a collegiate course for a woman would have shocked every sensibility of the opposite sex.
How the men of that time would stand aghast to see the girl of the present day elbowing her way through a crowd, buying her ticket at the railway station, interviewing baggage-agents, checking trunks, and seating herself in the train to make a long journey alone, perhaps to enter some strange community and make her living by the practice of law or medicine, lecturing, teaching, telegraphing, newspaper-reporting, typewriting, bookkeeping, or in some other of the various avenues now open to women!
Whether the new system be any improvement upon the old remains open for discussion. It is certain that these widely opposed methods must result in wholly different types of feminine character.