My fourth and last governess was a remarkable woman, a Mdlle. Montriou, a person of considerable force of character, and in many respects an admirable teacher. With her I read a good deal of solid history, beginning with Rollin and going on to Plutarch and Gibbon; also some modern historians. She further taught me systematically a scheme of chronology and royal successions, till I had an amount of knowledge of such things which I afterwards found was not shared by any of my schoolfellows. She had the excellent sense also to allow me to use a considerable part of my lesson hours with a map book before me, asking her endless questions on all things connected with the various countries; and as she was extremely well and widely informed, this was almost the best part of my instruction. I became really interested in these studies, and also in the great poets, French and English, to whom she introduced me. Of course my governess taught me music, including what was then called Thorough Bass, and now Harmony; but very little of the practical part of performance could I learn then or at any time. Independently of her, I read every book on Astronomy which I could lay hold of, and I well remember the excitement wherewith I waited for years for the appearance of the Comet of 1835, which one of these books had foretold. At last a report reached me that the village tailor had seen the comet the previous night. Of course I scanned the sky with renewed ardour, and thought I had discovered the desired object in a misty-looking star of which my planisphere gave no notice. My father however pooh-poohed this bold hypothesis, and I was fain to wait till the next night. Then, as soon as it was dark, I ran up to a window whence I could command the constellation wherein the comet was bound to show itself. A small hazy star—and a long train of light from it—greeted my enchanted eyes! My limbs could hardly bear me as I tore downstairs into the drawing-room, nor my voice publish the triumphant intelligence, “It is the comet!” “It has a tail!” Everybody (in far too leisurely a way as I considered) went up and saw it, and confessed that the comet it certainly must be, with that appendage of the tail! Few events in my long life have caused me such delightful excitement. This was in 1835.
Newbridge, Co. Dublin.
CHAPTER
III.
SCHOOL AND AFTER.
When my father, in 1836, had decided, by my governess’s advice, to send me to school, my dear mother, though already old and feeble, made the journey, long as it was in those days, from Ireland to Brighton to see for herself where I was to be placed, and to invoke the kindness of my schoolmistresses for me. We sailed to Bristol—a 30 hours’ passage usually, but sometimes longer,—and then travelled by postchaises to Brighton, taking, I think, three days on the road and visiting Stonehenge by the way, to my mother’s great delight. My eldest brother, then at Oxford, attended her and acted courier. When we came in sight of Brighton the lamps were lighted along the long perspective of the shore. Gas was still sufficiently a novelty to cause this sight to be immensely impressive to us all.
Next day my mother took me to my future tyrants, and fondly bargained (as she was paying enormously) that I should have sundry indulgences, and principally a bedroom to myself. A room was shown to her with only one small bed in it, and this she was told would be mine. When I went to it next night, heart broken after her departure, I found that another bed had been put up, and a schoolfellow was already asleep in it. I flung myself down on my knees by my own and cried my heart out, and was accordingly reprimanded next morning before the whole school for having been seen to cry at my prayers.[[8]]
The education of women was probably at its lowest ebb about half-a-century ago. It was at that period more pretentious than it had ever been before, and infinitely more costly than it is now; and it was likewise more shallow and senseless than can easily be believed. To inspire young women with due gratitude for their present privileges, won for them by my contemporaries, I can think of nothing better than to acquaint them with some of the features of school life in England in the days of their mothers. I say advisedly the days of their mothers, for in those of their grandmothers, things were by no means equally bad. There was much less pretence and more genuine instruction, so far as it extended.
For a moment let us, however, go back to these earlier grandmothers’ schools, say those of the year 1790 or thereabouts. From the reports of my own mother, and of a friend whose mother was educated in the same place, I can accurately describe a school which flourished at that date in the fashionable region of Queen Square, Bloomsbury. The mistress was a certain Mrs. Devis, who must have been a woman of ability for she published a very good little English Grammar for the express use of her pupils; also a Geography, and a capital book of maps, which possessed the inestimable advantage of recording only those towns, cities, rivers, and mountains which were mentioned in the Geography, and not confusing the mind (as maps are too apt to do) with extraneous and superfluous towns and hills. I speak with personal gratitude of those venerable books, for out of them chiefly I obtained such inklings of Geography as have sufficed generally for my wants through life; the only disadvantage they entailed being a firm impression, still rooted in my mind, that there is a “Kingdom of Poland” somewhere about the middle of Europe.
Beside Grammar and Geography and a very fair share of history (“Ancient” derived from Rollin, and “Sacred” from Mrs. Trimmer), the young ladies at Mrs. Devis’ school learned to speak and read French with a very good accent, and to play the harpsichord with taste, if not with a very learned appreciation of “severe” music. The “Battle of Prague” and Hook’s Sonatas were, I believe, their culminating achievements. But it was not considered in those times that packing the brains of girls with facts, or even teaching their fingers to run over the keys of instruments, or to handle pen and pencil, was the Alpha and Omega of education. William of Wykeham’s motto, “Manners makyth Manne,” was understood to hold good emphatically concerning the making of Woman. The abrupt speaking, courtesy-neglecting, slouching, slangy young damsel who may now perhaps carry off the glories of a University degree, would have seemed to Mrs. Devis still needing to be taught the very rudiments of feminine knowledge. “Decorum” (delightful word! the very sound of which brings back the smell of Maréchale powder) was the imperative law of a lady’s inner life as well as of her outward habits; and in Queen Square nothing that was not decorous was for a moment admitted. Every movement of the body in entering and quitting a room, in taking a seat and rising from it, was duly criticised. There was kept, in the back premises, a carriage taken off the wheels, and propped up en permanence, for the purpose of enabling the young ladies to practise ascending and descending with calmness and grace, and without any unnecessary display of their ankles. Every girl was dressed in the full fashion of the day. My mother, like all her companions, wore hair-powder and rouge on her cheeks when she entered the school a blooming girl of fifteen; that excellent rouge at five guineas a pot, which (as she explained to me in later years) did not spoil the complexion like ordinary compounds, and which I can witness really left a beautiful, clear skin when disused thirty years afterwards.
Beyond these matters of fashion, however,—so droll now to remember,—there must have been at Mrs. Devis’ seminary a great deal of careful training in what may be called the great Art of Society; the art of properly paying and receiving visits, of saluting acquaintances in the street and drawing-room; and of writing letters of compliment. When I recall the type of perfect womanly gentleness and high breeding which then and there was formed, it seems to me as if, in comparison, modern manners are all rough and brusque. We have graceful women in abundance still, but the peculiar old-fashioned suavity, the tact which made everybody in a company happy and at ease,—most of all the humblest individual present,—and which at the same time effectually prevented the most audacious from transgressing les bienséances by a hair; of that suavity and tact we seem to have lost the tradition.