Some years ago, an opera dancer at Lyon's, whose charms were upon the wane, applied to an English gentleman for a recommendation to some of his friends in England, as a governess for young ladies. "Do you doubt," said the lady (observing that the gentleman was somewhat confounded by the easy assurance of her request) "do you doubt my capability? Do I not speak good Parisian French? Have I any provincial accent? I will undertake to teach the language grammatically. And for music and dancing, without vanity, may I not pretend to teach them to any young person?" The lady's excellence in all these particulars was unquestionable. She was beyond dispute a highly accomplished woman. Pressed by her forcible interrogatories, the gentleman was compelled to hint, that an English mother of a family might be inconveniently inquisitive about the private history of a person who was to educate her daughters. "Oh," said the lady, "I can change my name; and, at my age, nobody will make further inquiries."
Before we can determine how far this lady's pretensions were ill founded, and before we can exactly decide what qualifications are most desirable in a governess, we must form some estimate of the positive and relative value of what are called accomplishments.
We are not going to attack any of them with cynical asperity, or with the ambition to establish any new dogmatical tenets in the place of old received opinions. It can, however, do no harm to discuss this important subject with proper reverence and humility. Without alarming those mothers, who declare themselves above all things anxious for the rapid progress of their daughters in every fashionable accomplishment, it may be innocently asked, what price such mothers are willing to pay for these advantages. Any price within the limits of our fortune! they will probably exclaim.
There are other standards by which we can measure the value of objects, as well as by money. "Fond mother, would you, if it were in your power, accept of an opera dancer for your daughter's governess, upon condition that you should live to see that daughter dance the best minuet at a birth-night ball?"
"Not for the world," replies the mother. "Do you think I would hazard my daughter's innocence and reputation, for the sake of seeing her dance a good minuet? Shocking! Absurd! What can you mean by such an outrageous question?"
"To fix your attention. Where the mind has not precisely ascertained its wishes, it is sometimes useful to consider extremes; by determining what price you will not pay, we shall at length ascertain the value which you set upon the object. Reputation and innocence, you say, you will not, upon any account, hazard. But would you consent that your daughter should, by universal acclamation, be proclaimed the most accomplished woman in Europe, upon the simple condition, that she should pass her days in a nunnery?"
"I should have no right to make such a condition; domestic happiness I ought certainly to prefer to public admiration for my daughter. Her accomplishments would be of little use to her, if she were to be shut up from the world: who is to be the judge of them in a nunnery?"
"I will say no more about the nunnery. But would not you, as a good mother, consent to have your daughter turned into an automaton for eight hours in every day for fifteen years, for the promise of hearing her, at the end of that time, pronounced the first private performer at the most fashionable and most crowded concert in London?"
"Eight hours a day for fifteen years, are too much. No one need practise so much to become the first performer in England."