The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed. Judith Flanders

Jane Bradley’s son Wa was learning to read. Six months later his mother worried that he was very difficult to teach: one day he would read his lessons through with no problem, the next he could not. It took her six weeks to teach him to read ‘cab … which he can’t remember from one day to the next’. But she felt this was her fault – that she was a bad teacher, because ‘It requires more patience than I have’ – not that he was simply too young.⁵⁹

For, oddly enough, there were few instructions in how to teach small children, despite the preponderance of advice being given in all other areas of life. Mothers were supposed to know simply by virtue of being mothers. Mrs Warren was one of the small number who did discuss this subject. Her book How I Managed My Children on £200 a Year was precisely for mothers who could not expect to be able to afford any outside help. However, although it listed which subjects to teach, she never said how to teach most of these subjects: she assumed that all women knew.^*

They did not, of course. Molly Hughes (who later became a teacher) left an account of her education at home – intended to be comic, but hair-raising in the barrenness it revealed. Mid-morning her mother would ‘open an enormous Bible. It was invariably at the Old Testament, and I had to read aloud … No comments were ever made, religious or otherwise, my questions were fobbed off by references to those “old times” or to “bad translations”, and occasionally mother’s pencil, with which she guided me to the words, would travel rapidly over several verses, and I heard a muttered “never mind about that”.’^† Then Molly would parse a verse. Her mother painted in watercolour while Molly did ‘a little reading, sewing, writing, or learning by heart’. Geography consisted of looking at an atlas,

but all I can recall of my little geography book is the opening sentence. ‘The Earth is an oblate spheroid’, and the statement that there are seven, or five, oceans. I never could remember which … For scientific notions I had Dr. Brewer’s Guide to Science, in the form of a catechism … It opens firmly thus: ‘Q. What is heat?’ and the A. comes pat: ‘That which produces the sensation of warmth.’ … Some of the information is human and kindly. Thus we have: ‘Q. What should a fearful person do to be secure in a storm? A. Draw his bedstead into the middle of the room, commit himself to the care of God, and go to bed.’^* … Mother’s arithmetic was at the level of the White Queen’s, and I believe she was never quite sound about borrowing and paying back, especially if there was a nought or two in the top row … Often when sums were adumbrated I felt a little headachy, and thought I could manage a little drawing and painting instead.

      If the weather was good, lessons were cancelled and mother and daughter went for a walk, to the West End to shop or to Hamp-stead to sketch. By the age of twelve Molly had never learned how to add currency – she had never even seen the symbols for pounds, shillings and pence.⁶²

      Mothers were the teachers in most houses, of their daughters for their entire school career, and their sons usually to the age of seven. Only the most prosperous could afford governesses. Our impression today is that all middle-class households had governesses for their children, but his impression is based on the aspirational nature of so much writing of the time. There were over 30,000 upper-class families by mid-century, with 25,000 governesses listed in the census of 1851. If we assume only half of these families had young children, that leaves a mere 10,000 governesses to be spread among the families of the 250,000 professional men listed in the 1851 census. Again, assume only half had young children. That is still only one governess for every twelve families, and that is not counting the many tens of thousands of clergy, prosperous merchants, bankers, businessmen, factory-owners, all of whom would have had equal call on this precious commodity.

      Even where governesses were employed, teaching was not necessary any better. As Gwen Raverat said of her governess: ‘They were all kind, good, dull women; but even interesting lessons can be made incredibly stupid, when they are taught by people who are bored to death with them, and who do not care for the art of teaching either.’⁶³ Charles Dickens’s portrait of Gradgrind, with his love of Facts, was not only a comic fiction: literature both high and low reflected this idea of education as chunks of information. Charlotte M. Yonge gave a vivid picture in The Daisy Chain (1856). There the children had a visiting French master who knew the language well and could tell Ethel, the clever child, when she had gone wrong, but he could not explain why. Ethel

      did not like to … have no security against future errors; while he thought her a troublesome pupil, and was put out by her questions … Miss Winter [the governess] … summoned her to an examination such as the governess was very fond of and often practised. Ethel thought it useless … It was of this kind: –

      What is the date of the invention of paper?

      What is the latitude and longitude of Otaheite?

      What are the component parts of brass?

      Whence is cochineal imported?⁶⁴

      Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh (1857) spoke the same language as Miss Winter:

      I learnt a little algebra, a little

      Of the mathematics, – brushed with extreme flounce

      The circle of the sciences …

      I learnt the royal genealogies

      Of Oviedo, the internal laws

      Of the Burmese empire, – by how many feet

      Mount Chimaborazo outsoars Teneriffe.

      What navigable river joins itself

      To Lara, and what census of the year five

      Was taken at Klagenfurt, – because she liked

      A general insight into useful facts.⁶⁵

      The Daisy Chain and Aurora Leigh both appeared in the mid-1850s. Many girls were still being taught the same things in the same way at the end of the century. Eleanor Farjeon, the children’s writer, remembered her schoolroom days in the 1890s:

      Miss Milton taught us Spelling … and the Capitals of Europe, and Tables, and Dates. There was no magic in these things as she taught them …

      ‘What is the date of the Constitutions of Clarendon?’

      ‘Eleven-hundred-and-sixty-four.’

      ‘Quite right. You know that now.’

      ‘Yes, Miss Milton.’

      But what exactly did I know, when I knew that? … I didn’t know what ‘Constitutions of Clarendon’ was. Was it to do with somebody’s health? Who was Clarendon? Or perhaps with the way red wine was made … What was Clarendon? Miss Milton never told me, and I never asked.⁶⁶

      Eleanor Farjeon did not come from a philistine background: her father was a successful author. His sons went to school, while his daughter was doomed to Miss Milton not because he was unkind, but because, as Louise Creighton said a quarter of a century before, ‘I do not think that such an idea was ever entertained.’⁶⁷

      Girls and boys, once past infancy and early childhood, received gender-based conditioning. An advertisement in the back of The Busy Hives All Around Us, a book for children, gave a list of some ‘Popular Illustrated Books’. Their titles are revealing. Girls got The Star of Hope and the Staff of Duty: Tales of Women’s Trials and Victories; Women of Worth; Friendly Hands and Kindly Words: Stories Illustrative of the Law