I think that people who could afford it travelled more in former days than is realised. Both my grandparents made prolonged tours with most of their elder children. My grandfather Westminster took my mother and her elder sisters in his yacht to Constantinople and Rome. My mother well remembered some of her experiences, including purchases from a Turkish shopkeeper who kept a large cat on his counter and served various comestibles with his hands, wiping them between each sale on the animal’s fur. At Rome she told me how she and one of her sisters, girls of some twelve and thirteen years old, used to wander out alone into the Campagna in the early morning, which seems very strange in view of the stories of restraint placed upon children in bygone days. As to my grandfather Leigh, I believe he travelled with his family for about two years, to Switzerland, France and the North of Italy. They had three carriages, one for the parents, one for the schoolroom, and one for the nursery. A courier escorted them, and an avant-courier rode on in front with bags of five-franc pieces to secure lodgings when they migrated from one place to another. On one occasion on the Riviera they met the then Grand Duke Constantine, who thrust his head out of the window and exclaimed “Toute Angleterre est en route!”
GOVERNESSES
After our return from Normandy we were placed in charge of a resident governess, a young German, but as far as I can recollect she had very little control over us. We discovered that the unlucky girl, though of German parentage, had been born in Russia, and with the unconscious cruelty of children taunted her on this account. Anyhow her stay was short, and she was succeeded about a year later by an Englishwoman, Miss Custarde, who kept us in very good order and stayed till she married when I was fourteen. Her educational efforts were supplemented by masters and mistresses during the London season and by French resident governesses in the winter months, but I do not think that we were at all overworked.
I doubt whether Miss Custarde would have been considered highly educated according to modern standards, but she was very good in teaching us to look up information for ourselves, which was just as useful as anything else. Her strongest point was music, but that she could not drive into me, and my music lessons were a real penance to teacher and pupil alike. She would give me lectures during their progress on such topics as the Parable of the Talents—quite ignoring the elementary fact that though I could learn most of my lessons quickly enough I had absolutely no talent for music. She was, however, a remarkable woman with great influence, not only over myself, but over my younger aunts and over other men and women. She was very orderly, and proud of that quality, but she worked too much on my conscience, making me regard trivial faults as actual sins which prevented her from kissing me or showing me affection—an ostracism which generally resulted in violent fits of penitence. She had more than one admirer before she ended by marrying a schoolmaster, with whom she used to take long walks in the holidays. One peculiarity was that she would give me sketches of admirers and get me to write long stories embodying their imaginary adventures. I suppose these were shown as great jokes to the heroes and their friends. Of course she did not think I knew the “inwardness” of her various friendships, equally of course as time went on I understood them perfectly. Miss Custarde is not the only governess I have known who acquired extraordinary influence over her pupils. In Marcel Prevost’s novel Anges Gardiens, which represents the dangers to French families of engaging foreign governesses, he makes the Belgian, Italian, and German women all to a greater or less extent immoral, but the Englishwoman, though at least as detestable as the others, is not immoral; the great evil which she inflicts on the family which engages her is the absolute power which she acquires over her pupil. The whole book is very unfair and M. Prevost seems to overlook the slur which he casts on his own countrymen, as none of the men appear able to resist the wiles of the sirens engaged to look after the girls of their families; but it is odd that he should realise the danger of undue influence and attribute it only to the Englishwoman. Why should this be a characteristic of English governesses—supposing his experience (borne out by my own) to be typical? Is it an Englishwoman’s love of power and faculty for concentration on the object which she wishes to attain?
We liked several of our foreign governesses well enough, but they exercised no particular influence—and as a rule their engagements were only temporary. I do not think that Miss Custarde gave them much opportunity of ascendancy. With one her relations were so strained that the two ladies had their suppers at different tables in the schoolroom, and when the Frenchwoman wanted the salt she rang the bell for the schoolroom-maid to bring it from her English colleague’s table. However, I owed a great deal to Miss Custarde and know that her affection for all of us was very real. She died in the autumn of 1920, having retained all her faculties till an advanced age.
After all no human being could compete with our mother in the estimation of any of her children. Small and fragile and often suffering from ill-health, she had almost unbounded power over everyone with whom she came in contact, and for her to express an opinion on any point created an axiom from which there was no appeal. As middle-aged men and women we have often laughed over the way in which we have still accepted “mama said” so-and-so as a final verdict. As children our faith not only in her wisdom but in her ability was unlimited. I remember being regarded as almost a heretic by the younger ones because I ventured to doubt whether she could make a watch. Vainly did I hedge by asserting that I was certain that if she had learnt she could make the most beautiful watch in the world—I had infringed the first article of family faith by thinking that there was anything which she could not do by the uninstructed light of nature. She was a good musician, and a really excellent amateur artist—her water-colour drawings charming. Her knowledge of history made it delightful to read aloud to her, as she seemed as if the heroes and heroines of bygone times had been her personal acquaintance. Needless to say her personal care for everyone on my father’s property was untiring, and the standard of the schools in the various villages was maintained at a height uncommon in days when Education Acts were not so frequent and exacting as in later years.
“MRS. GAILEY”
Another great character in our home was our old nurse. For some reason she was never called Nanna, but always “Mrs. Gailey.” The daughter of a small tradesman, she was a woman of some education—she had even learnt a little French and had been a considerable reader. Though a disciple of Spurgeon, she had lived as nurse with my mother’s cousin the Duke of Norfolk in the days when the girls of the family were Protestants though the boys were Roman Catholics. When the Duchess (daughter of Lord Lyons) went over to the Roman Church the Protestant nurse’s position became untenable, as the daughters had to follow their mother. She told us that this was a great distress at first to the eldest girl Victoria (afterwards Hope-Scott), for at twelve years old she was able to feel the uprooting of her previous faith. The other sisters were too young to mind. Gailey’s idol, however, was Lord Maltravers (the late Duke), who must have been as attractive a boy as he became delightful a man.
Gailey came to us when I was about four, my first nurse, who had been my wet-nurse, having married the coachman. Our first encounter took place when I was already in my cot, and I announced to her that if she stayed a hundred years I should not love her as I had done “Brownie.” “And if I stay a hundred years,” was the repartee, “I shall not love you as I did the little boy I have just left”—so we started fair. Nevertheless she was an excellent nurse and a fascinating companion. She could tell stories by the hour and knew all sorts of old-fashioned games which we played in the nursery on holiday afternoons.
The great joy of the schoolroom children was to join the little ones after tea and to sit in a circle while she told us either old fairy tales, or more frequently her own versions of novels which she had read and of which she changed the names and condensed the incidents in a most ingenious manner. On Sunday evenings Pilgrim’s Progress in her own words was substituted for the novels. Miss Custarde could inflict no greater punishment for failure in our “saying lessons” than to keep us out of the nursery. Gailey stayed with us till some time after my marriage and then retired on a pension.