Defendant.—“Yes, my lord; the plaintiff had insulted my little boy.”
Judge.—“In what way?”
Defendant.—“She had called him ‘rude little fellow’ and ‘little idiot.’ Your lordship will quite understand that I could not put up with such conduct in a governess.”
And, as she pronounced the words in a governess, the look of disgust on the face of the excellent lady must have been a sight to be seen. It would have been a charity to offer her a glass of water to rinse her mouth.
Who would be a governess and highly educated?
But unfortunately the fact is that in England a governess rarely is very highly educated. She becomes a governess much as many a man becomes a schoolmaster: to take revenge on the backs of a rising generation for mortifications endured in the battle of life.
Private teaching is a pis aller; it is a career, not lucrative it is true, but that you can embrace ... when you have tried all kinds of employments without succeeding at any, and things are looking bad.
When England possesses a teaching body recognised as professional; when no one will be permitted to teach without having previously obtained a certificate of capacity, a thing required of the apothecary’s assistant; when the law forbids the dispensing of adulterated instruction, the governess will be able to hold up her head: she will have in her pocket a certificate of superiority over the mother of the children confided to her care; she will no longer have to blush for her calling, but, on the contrary, will be able to take a pride in it.
Correctly speaking, there are few servants in England; there are young ladies (pronounced laïdies) who, for a certain indemnity which they seldom deserve, consent to black your boots, clean your knives, wash dishes, and at the price of your tranquillity, save you the trouble of doing some rather disagreeable things, which you could easily do for yourself, if you had been taught better principles of equality in your youth, and had been brought up in habits more in accordance with the progress of democracy.
In America, among John Bull’s cousins, you find no more servants: there are lady-helps whom the mistress of the house treats on terms of equality. The negro alone still consents, for a consideration, to lend the boots of the Yankee a little of the brilliant ebony of his own ugly muzzle. The lady-helps require references. Before engaging themselves, they make inquiries of the lady-helps who have preceded them, as to the character of the lady of the house, who, it is to be hoped, will soon have to keep her character book. The consequence is that many American ladies have given up house-keeping and taken to living in hotels.