Well, my dear girl, I am at length arrived at my journey’s end. I sigh when I say so, but it matters not, I must labor for content, and try to reconcile myself to a state which is contrary to every feeling of my soul. I can scarcely persuade myself that I am awake; my whole life appears like a frightful vision, and equally disjointed. I have been so very low-spirited for some days past, I could not write. All the moments I could spend in solitude were lost in sorrow and unavailing tears. There was such a solemn kind of stupidity about this place as froze my very blood. I entered the great gates with the same kind of feeling as I should have if I was going into the Bastille. You can make allowance for the feelings which the General would term ridiculous or artificial. I found I was to encounter a host of females,—My Lady, her step-mother and three sisters, and Mrses. and Misses without number, who, of course, would examine me with the most minute attention. I cannot attempt to give you a description of the family, I am so low; I will only mention some of the things which particularly worry me. I am sure much more is expected from me than I am equal to. With respect to French, I am certain Mr. P. has misled them, and I expect in consequence of it to be very much mortified. Lady K. is a shrewd, clever woman, a great talker. I have not seen much of her, as she is confined to her room by a sore throat; but I have seen half a dozen of her companions. I mean not her children, but her dogs. To see a woman without any softness in her manners caressing animals, and using infantine expressions, is, you may conceive, very absurd and ludicrous, but a fine lady is a new species to me of animal. I am, however, treated like a gentlewoman by every part of the family, but the forms and parade of high life suit not my mind.... I hear a fiddle below, the servants are dancing, and the rest of the family are diverting themselves. I only am melancholy and alone. To tell the truth, I hope part of my misery arises from disordered nerves, for I would fain believe my mind is not so very weak. The children are, literally speaking, wild Irish, unformed and not very pleasing; but you shall have a full and true account, my dear girl, in a few days....
I am your affectionate sister and sincere friend,
Mary Wollstonecraft.
It was at least fortunate that she escaped, with Lady Kingsborough, the indignities which she had feared she, as governess, would receive. Instead of being placed on a level with the servants, as was often the fate of gentlewomen in her position, she was treated as one of the family, but she had little else to be thankful for. There was absolutely no congeniality between herself and her employers. She had no tastes or views in common with them. Lady Kingsborough was a thorough woman of the world. She was clever but cold, and her natural coldness had been increased by the restraints and exactions of her social rank. If she rouged to preserve her good looks, and talked to exhibit her cleverness, she was fulfilling all the requirements of her station in life. Her character and conduct were in every way opposed to Mary’s ideals. The latter, who was instinctively honest, and who never stooped to curry favor with any one, must have found it difficult to treat Lady Kingsborough with a deference she did not feel, but which her subordinate position obliged her to show. The struggle between impulse and duty thus caused was doubtless one of the chief factors in making her experiences in Ireland so painful. How great this struggle was can be best estimated when it is known what she thought of the mother of her pupils. She was never thrown into such intimate relations with any other woman of fashion, and therefore it is not illogical to believe that many passages in the “Rights of Women,” relating to women of this class, are descriptions of Lady Kingsborough. The allusion to pet dogs in the following seems to establish the identity beyond dispute:—
“... She who takes her dogs to bed, and nurses them with a parade of sensibility when sick, will suffer her babes to grow up crooked in a nursery. This illustration of my argument is drawn from a matter of fact. The woman whom I allude to was handsome, reckoned very handsome by those who do not miss the mind when the face is plump and fair; but her understanding had not been led from female duties by literature, nor her innocence debauched by knowledge. No, she was quite feminine according to the masculine acceptation of the word; and so far from loving these spoiled brutes that filled the place which her children ought to have occupied, she only lisped out a pretty mixture of French and English nonsense, to please the men who flocked round her. The wife, mother, and human creature were all swallowed up by the factitious character which an improper education and the selfish vanity of beauty had produced.
“I do not like to make a distinction without a difference, and I own that I have been as much disgusted by the fine lady who took her lap-dog to her bosom, instead of her child, as by the ferocity of a man, who beating his horse, declared that he knew as well when he did wrong as a Christian.”
If Lady Kingsborough was a representative lady of fashion, her husband was quite as much the typical country lord. Tom Jones was still the ideal hero of fiction, and Squire Westerns had not disappeared from real life. Lord Kingsborough was good-natured and kind, but, like the rest of the species, coarse. “His countenance does not promise more than good humor and a little fun, not refined,” Mary told Mrs. Bishop. The three step-sisters were too preoccupied with matrimonial calculations to manifest their character, if indeed they had any. Clearly, in such a household Mary Wollstonecraft was as a child of Israel among the Philistines.
The society of the children, though they were “wild Irish,” was more to her taste than that of the grown-up members of the family. Three were given into her charge. At first she thought them not very pleasing, but after a better acquaintance she grew fond of them. The eldest, Margaret, afterwards Lady Mountcashel, was then fourteen years of age. She was very talented, and a “sweet girl,” as Mary called her in a letter to Mrs. Bishop. She became deeply attached to her new governess, not with the passing fancy of a child, but with a lasting devotion. The other children also learned to love her, but being younger there was less friendship in their affection. They were afraid of their mother, who lavished her caresses upon her dogs, until she had none left for them. Therefore, when Mary treated them affectionately and sympathized with their interests and pleasures, they naturally turned to her and gave her the love which no one else seemed to want. That this was the case was entirely Lady Kingsborough’s fault, but she resented it bitterly, and it was later a cause of serious complaint against the too competent governess. The affection of her pupils, which was her principal pleasure during her residence in Ireland, thus became in the end a misfortune.
A more prolific source of trouble to her was, strangely enough, her interest in them. Lady Kingsborough had very positive ideas upon the subject of her children’s education, and by insisting upon adherence to them she made Mary’s task doubly hard. Had she not been interfered with, her position would not have been so unpleasant. She could put her whole soul into her work, whatever it might be, and find in its success one of her chief joys. She wished to do her utmost for Margaret and her sisters, but this was impossible, since she knew the system Lady Kingsborough exacted to be vicious. The latter cared more for a show of knowledge than for knowledge itself, and laid the greatest stress upon the acquirement of accomplishments. This was not in accord with Mary’s theories, who prized reality and not appearances. A less conscientious woman might have contented herself with the thought that she was carrying out the wishes of her employer. But Mary could not quiet her scruples in this way. She was tormented by the sense of duty but half fulfilled. She realized, by her own sad experience, how much depends upon the training received in childhood, and yet she was powerless to bring up her pupils in the way she knew to be best. She had, besides, constantly before her in Lady Kingsborough and her sisters a, to her, melancholy example of the result of the methods she was asked to adopt. They had been carefully taught many different languages and much history, but had been as carefully instilled with the idea that their studies were but means to social success and to a brilliant marriage. The consequence was that their education, despite its thoroughness, had made them puppets, self-interest being the wire which moved them. She did not want this to be the fate of her pupils, but she could see no escape for them.
In addition to her honest anxiety for their future, she must have been worried by the certainty that, if she remained with them, she would be held responsible for their character and conduct in after-life. Though she had charge of them only for a year, this eventually proved to be the case. Margaret’s reputation as Lady Mountcashel was not wholly unsullied, and when it was remembered that she had, at one time, been under the influence of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of the “Rights of Women,” the fault was attributed to the immoral and irreligious teaching of the latter. Never was any woman so unjustly condemned. In the first place, Mary was not her governess long enough to actually change her nature, or to influence her for life; and, in the second place, she was not allowed to have her own way with her pupils. Had she been free she would have been more apt to encourage a spirit of piety, and inculcate a fine moral sense. For she was at that period in a deeply religious frame of mind, while she did all she could to counteract what she considered the deteriorating tendencies of the children’s home training. As Kegan Paul says, “Her whole endeavor was to train them for higher pursuits and to instil into them a desire for a wider culture than fell to the lot of most girls in those days. Her sorrow was deep that her pupils’ lives were such as to render sustained study and religious habits of mind alike difficult.”