Thirdly. I was taught no precision nor etiquette of manners; it was enough if, in the little society we saw, I remained unobtrusive, and replied to a question without shyness: but the shyness came later, and increased as I grew conscious of the rudeness arising from the want of social discipline, and found it impossible to acquire, in advanced life, dexterity in any bodily exercise, skill in any pleasing accomplishment, or ease and tact in ordinary behaviour. [[168]]
Lastly, and chief of evils. My judgment of right and wrong, and powers of independent action,[1] were left entirely undeveloped; because the bridle and blinkers were never taken off me. Children should have their times of being off duty, like soldiers; and when once the obedience, if required, is certain, the little creature should be very early put for periods of practice in complete command of itself; set on the barebacked horse of its own will, and left to break it by its own strength. But the ceaseless authority exercised over my youth left me, when cast out at last into the world, unable for some time to do more than drift with its elements. My present courses of life are indeed not altogether of that compliant nature; but are, perhaps, more unaccommodating than they need be, in the insolence of reaction; and the result upon me, of the elements and the courses together, is, in sum, that at my present age of fifty-six, while I have indeed the sincerest admiration for the characters of Phocion, Cincinnatus, and Caractacus, and am minded, so far as I may, to follow the example of those worthy personages, my own private little fancy, in which, for never having indulged me, I am always quarrelling with my Fortune, is still, as it always was, to find Prince Ahmed’s arrow, and marry the Fairy Paribanou.
My present verdict, therefore, on the general tenour of my education at that time, must be, that it was at [[169]]once too formal and too luxurious; leaving my character, at the most important moment for its construction, cramped indeed, but not disciplined; and only by protection innocent, instead of by practice virtuous. My mother saw this herself, and but too clearly, in later years; and whenever I did anything wrong, stupid, or hard-hearted,—(and I have done many things that were all three),—always said, ‘It is because you were too much indulged.’
So strongly do I feel this, as I sip my coffee this morning, (May 24th,) after being made profoundly miserable last night, because I did not think it likely I should be accepted if I made an offer to any one of three beautiful young ladies who were crushing and rending my heart into a mere shamrock leaf, the whole afternoon; nor had any power to do, what I should have liked better still, send Giafar (without Zobeide’s knowing anything about it) to superintend the immediate transport to my palace of all three;—that I am afraid, if it were left to me at present to institute, without help from kinder counsellors, the education of the younger children on St. George’s estate, the methods of the old woman who lived in a shoe would be the first that occurred to me as likely to conduce most directly to their future worth and felicity.
And I chanced, as Fors would have it, to fall, but last week, as I was arranging some books bought two years ago, and forgotten ever since,—on an instance of the use [[170]]of extreme severity in education, which cannot but commend itself to the acceptance of every well informed English gentlewoman. For all well informed English gentlewomen and gentle-maidens, have faithful respect for the memory of Lady Jane Grey.
But I never myself, until the minute when I opened that book, could at all understand Lady Jane Grey. I have seen a great deal, thank Heaven, of good, and prudent, and clever girls; but not among the very best and wisest of them did I ever find the slightest inclination to stop indoors to read Plato, when all their people were in the Park. On the contrary, if any approach to such disposition manifested itself, I found it was always, either because the scholastic young person thought that somebody might possibly call, suppose—myself, the Roger Ascham of her time,—or suppose somebody else who would prevent her, that day, from reading “piu avanti,” or because the author who engaged her attention, so far from being Plato himself, was, in many essential particulars, anti-Platonic. And the more I thought of Lady Jane Grey, the more she puzzled me.
Wherefore, opening, among my unexamined books, Roger Ascham’s Scholemaster, printed by John Daye, dwelling over Aldersgate, An. 1571, just at the page where he gives the original account of the thing as it happened, I stopped in my unpacking to decipher the black letter of it with attention; which, by your leave, good reader, you shall also take the trouble to do yourself, from this, [[171]]as far as I can manage to give it you, accurate facsimile of the old page. And trust me that I have a reason for practising you in these old letters, though I have no time to tell it you just now.
“And one example, whether love or feare doth worke more in a childe for vertue and learning, I will gladly report: which may bee heard with some pleasure, t̄ followed with more profite. Before I went into Germanie I came to Brodegate in Leicestershire, to take my leave of that noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceeding much beholding. Her parentes, the Duke and the Dutchesse, with all the householde, Gentlemen and Gentleweemen, were hunting in the Parke: I found her in her chamber, reading Phædon Platonis in Greeke, t̄ that with as much delite, as some gentleman would read a mery tale in Bocase. After salutation, and duetie done, with some other talk, I asked her, why shee would leese such pastime in the Parke? Smiling shee answered mee: I wisse, all their sport in the Parke, is but a shadow to that pleasure yͪ I finde in Plato: Alas, good folke, they never felt what true pleasure ment.”
Thus far, except in the trouble of reading black letters, I have given you nothing new, or even freshly old. All this we have heard of the young lady a hundred times over. But next to this, comes something which I fancy will be unexpected by most of my readers. For the fashion of all literary students, catering for the public, has hitherto been to pick out of their author whatever bits they thought likely to be acceptable to Demos, and to keep everything of suspicious taste out of his [[172]]dish of hashed hare. Nay, ‘he pares his apple that will cleanly eat,’ says honest George Herbert. I am not wholly sure, however, even of that; if the apple itself be clean off the bough, and the teeth of little Eve and Adam, what teeth should be, it is quite questionable whether the good old fashion of alternate bite be not the method of finest enjoyment of flavour. But the modern frugivorous public will soon have a steam-machine in Covent Garden, to pick the straw out of their strawberries.
In accordance with which popular principle of natural selection, the historians of Lady Jane’s life, finding this first opening of the scene at Brodegate so entirely charming and graceful, and virtuous, and moral, and ducal, and large-landed-estate-ish—without there being the slightest suggestion in it of any principle, to which any body could possibly object,—pounce upon it as a flawless gem; and clearing from it all the objectionable matrix, with delicate skill, set it forth—changed about from one to another of the finest cases of velvet eloquence to be got up for money—in the corner shop—London and Ryder’s, of the Bond Street of Vanity Fair.