Reviewing these sketches of our early days, I feel that they are
incomplete without a tribute to some of the teachers employed to
instruct us. Even in colonial days our great-grandfathers had been
sent to England to be educated, so that education was considered
all-important in our family, especially with my father, who exerted
his influence for public schools and advocated teaching the negroes to
read and write, contending that this would increase their value as
well as their intelligence.
Determining that my sister and myself should have proper educational
advantages, he engaged, while we were young children, a most
extraordinary woman to teach us--a Danish lady, better versed in many
other languages than in our own. Her name was Henriquez, and her
masculine appearance, mind, and manners were such as to strike terror
into the hearts of youthful pupils. Having attended lectures at a
college in Copenhagen with several female friends alike ambitious to
receive a scientific education, Mme. Henriquez scorned feminine
acquirements and acquaintances, never possessing, to my knowledge, a
needle or thimble. Her conversation was largely confined to scientific
subjects, and was with men whenever possible, rarely descending to
anything in common with her own sex. Sometimes in school our
recitations would be interrupted by recollections of her early days in
Copenhagen, and, instead of pursuing a lesson in geography or grammar,
we would be entertained with some marvelous story about her father's
palace, the marble stable for his cows, etc. In the midst of
correcting a French or German exercise she would sometimes order a
waiter of refreshments to be brought into the schoolroom and placed
before her on a small table which had a history, being made, as she
often related, from a tree in her father's palace grounds, around
which the serfs danced on the day of their emancipation. She had a
favorite dog named Odin which was allowed the privilege of the
schoolroom, and any girl guilty of disrespect to Odin was in serious
disgrace.
This Danish lady was succeeded by one of a wholly different type, all
grace and accomplishments, a Virginian, and the widow of Major Lomax of
the United States Army.
Mrs. Lomax had several accomplished daughters who assisted in her
school, and the harp, piano, and guitar were household instruments.
The eldest daughter contributed stories and verses, which were greatly
admired, to periodicals of that day. One of these stories, published
in a Northern journal, won for her a prize of one hundred dollars, and
the school-girls were thrilled to hear that she spent it all for a
royal purple velvet gown to wear to Miss Preston's wedding in
Montgomery County.
In this school Mrs. Lomax introduced a charming corps of teachers from
Boston, most cultivated and refined women, whom it will always be a
pleasure to remember. Among these were Mrs. Dana, with her
accomplished daughter, Miss Matilda Dana, well known in the literary
world then as a writer of finished verses.
We had also a bright, sweet-natured little Frenchwoman, Mlle. Roget,
who taught her native language.
Besides these teachers we had a German gentleman, a finished pianist
and linguist; and the recollections of those days are like the delicious
music that floated around us then from those master-musicians.
After such pleasant school-days at home we were sent away to a
fashionable boarding-school in the city of Richmond, presided over by
a lady of great dignity and gentleness of manner, combined with high
attainments. She was first Mrs. Otis of Boston, and afterward Mrs.
Meade of Virginia.
At her school were collected many interesting teachers and pupils.
Among the former were Miss Prescott of Boston and Miss Willis, sister
of N. P. Willis, both lovable and attractive.
Among the noted girls at Mrs. Meade's school was Amélie Rives[20] of
Albemarle County, Va. She spoke French fluently, and seemed to know
much about Paris and the French court, her father having been Minister
to France.
[20] This interesting girl married Mr. Sigourney of Massachusetts, and
after the war, as she was crossing the ocean to Europe with her
husband and all her children (except one son) the ill-fated ship sank
with nearly all on board. We have heard that, as the ship was going
down, Amélie, her husband, and her children formed a circle, hand in
hand, and were thus buried in the deep.
We looked upon Amélie with great admiration, and, as she wrote very
pretty poetry, every girl in the school set her heart upon having some
original verses in her album, a favor which Amélie never refused.
Closing this chapter on schools suggests the great difference in the
objects and methods of a Virginia girl's education then and now. At
that period a girl was expected not only to be an ornament to the
drawing-room, but to be also equipped for taking charge of an
establishment and superintending every detail of domestic employment
on a plantation--the weaving, knitting, sewing, etc.--for the comfort
of the negro servants to be some day under her care. I have thus seen
girls laboriously draw the threads of finest linen, and backstitch
miles of stitching on their brothers' collars and shirt-bosoms. Having
no brothers to sew for, I looked on in amazement at this dreary task,
and I have since often wished that those persevering and devoted women
could come back and live their lives over again in the days of
sewing-machines.
At that day the parents of a girl would have shuddered at the thought
of her venturing for a day's journey without an escort on a railway
car, being jostled in a public crowd, or exposed in any way to
indiscriminate contact with the outside world, while the proposition
of a collegiate course for a woman would have shocked every
sensibility of the opposite sex.
How the men of that time would stand aghast to see the girl of the
present day elbowing her way through a crowd, buying her ticket at the
railway station, interviewing baggage-agents, checking trunks, and
seating herself in the train to make a long journey alone, perhaps to
enter some strange community and make her living by the practice of
law or medicine, lecturing, teaching, telegraphing, newspaper-reporting,
typewriting, bookkeeping, or in some other of the various avenues
now open to women!
Whether the new system be any improvement upon the old remains open
for discussion. It is certain that these widely opposed methods must
result in wholly different types of feminine character.