A girl at boarding-school cost about the same as a boy, but day schools seem to have been very cheap, judging by one in Salisbury Square, Fleet Street, where the governesses say, in their advertisement, that
"Their system of education is the result of close observation, blended with long experience; and it embraces all the advantages of a superior private instruction, with those which will ever be found to exist in a well-conducted school. Terms, including reading, geography, history, grammar, and useful and ornamental needlework, one guinea per quarter. The Misses Thompson are assisted in the departments of penmanship and arithmetic, the French, Italian, and Latin languages, music, drawing, and dancing by professors of eminence, on the usual terms."
But I fancy the following advertisement appealed to a far richer clientèle:—
"At a first-rate Finishing Ladies' Seminary, Vacancies occur for a few Pupils. The system of education adopted is of the highest order, embracing superior and peculiar advantages. In addition to an extensive course of English studies, invaluable to young ladies finishing their education, they will be perfected in the French and Italian languages, music, comprising the harp, pianoforte, and singing, with a knowledge of harmony and thorough bass, drawing, dancing, and every research in science and literature to qualify them to move in the first circles."
We may note that the guitar, which was then very fashionable, is not mentioned, and we never find the German or Spanish languages taught. The dancing comprehended galop, mazurka, waltz, quadrilles, and a variety of fancy dances, such as the shawl dance, etc., which were never used out of dancing academies. The poor little dears had no other physical exercises, no swimming, nor Swedish gymnastics, and their punishments consisted in being put in the stocks, which made them turn out their toes, and in the back-board, which tended to expand the chest and cure round shoulders. Their principal relaxation was, as now, a solemn walk in procession.
Afternoon tea, as we know it, was unknown; but, as people dined much earlier than now, it was a fairly substantial meal of hot buttered toast, muffins, Sally Lunns, and other tea cakes. It was essentially a chatty cosy meal, the same that Cowper sang of—
"Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast,
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round."
Either the copper tea-kettle sang on the hob or on a trivet on the bars, or the tea-urn hissed on the table; whilst on the polished brass three-legged trivet, standing on the hearth, were the muffins, crumpets, toast, or what not, keeping nice and hot. In many middle-class houses a toasting-fork hung with a hearth broom by the side of the mantelpiece, and it was thought no harm for the younger portion of the family to "make the toast" by the dining-room fire. The tea drank was exclusively of Chinese growth, that of India and Ceylon never having been dreamed of, and the prices (retail) ranged from 3s. 6d. to 7s. 6d. per lb. A paragraph in the Times, July 15, 1836, gives us an idea of the amount consumed.
"Yesterday the East India Company" (who at this time had the monopoly of the tea trade) "issued their declaration for the sale of teas in September next. The declaration amounts to 4,000,000 lbs., and comprises 500,000 lbs. of bohea, 2,770,000 lbs. of congou, souchong, and pekoe, 600,000 lbs. of twankay, and 130,000 lbs. of hyson. In the present declaration there are 100,000 lbs. less of bohea than in the June sale, 100,000 less of twankay, an increase of 170,000 lbs. of congou, souchong, &c., and 30,000 more of hyson. The whole amount of bohea teas entered under the Treasury minute for payment of the duty of 1s. 6d. per pound until the 1st of August next is above 12,000,000 lbs."
With regard to the food, it was plain and wholesome, but was supplied with such prodigality that the table literally "groaned" under its weight, and I may safely say that at a dinner-party there was at least six times more food provided than the guests could eat. It was their way of showing hospitality. There was some truth in the description by the old French émigré, who found England uninhabitable, because "there were twenty-four religions and only one sauce, no ripe fruit but roasted apples, and that each man ruined his health in drinking to the health of others." But as it is good sometimes to "see oursen' as ithers see us," let us hear what Count Melfort has to say on the English middle-class dinner in this reign. After giving a most humorous description of the mauvais quatre d'heure before dinner, he says—