A LADY’S EDUCATION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
Retrogression in the seventeenth century--Tone of women’s
education--Mrs. Hutchinson--Lady Ann Halkett--Mrs. Alice
Thornton--Mrs. Makins--The Duchess of Newcastle--General
estimation of learning--Changes in social life--Some patronesses
of learning.
After the sixteenth century the lamp of learning flickered a good
deal. The air was very unsteady; winds came blowing from all quarters.
There was the adverse gale of the Civil War, which was a great peril
to progress. And what followed was almost equally disastrous. Neither
the austerity of the Puritans nor the licence of the Royalists was
favourable to the arts of peace, and when political passions were
dividing the country, it was no time for poring over books, and holding
commune with philosophers and poets. Religious enthusiasm thrives by
opposition, and the purity of principle has often been maintained by
persecution. It is otherwise with learning and culture. They need
encouragement and tending in order to blossom and bear fruit. From
a variety of causes, a period of reaction set in after the vigorous
and healthy awakening in the time of the Tudors. The fault of the
seventeenth century was its lack of earnestness about intellectual
matters. It combined all the faults of all the ages--laxity of morals,
indifference to high aims, combined with religious fanaticism and a
lack of appreciation of knowledge and learning. The Puritan party were
so much engrossed with religious dogmas, that they had little time to
spend on purely secular thought, which they considered a frivolous if
not a sinful exercise. The Royalists loved pleasure too well to give
more than passing attention to serious studies. The period of the
Restoration is thus described by a writer in the next century--
“Religion which had been in vogue in the late times was
now universally discountenanced; the name of it was hardly
mentioned but with contempt, in a health or a play. Those who
observed the sabbath and scrupled profane swearing and drinking
healths were exposed under the opprobrious names of puritans,
fanaticks, presbyterians, republicans, seditious persons.”
The advantages to be derived from intellectual liberty were not
appreciated. Charles II., joking with the Royal Society, to whom he
loved to propound insoluble problems, reflects the attitude of the
aristocracy towards science and literature. By that time Shakespeare
was considered a little out of date and vulgar by an age of fops and
_élégantes_ who could read Wycherley without blushing. There was a
quiet cultured set, such as Evelyn and his friends. Evelyn’s daughter
Mary, who died at the age of about nineteen, was a most accomplished
and studious girl, and shared her father’s literary labours and
enjoyments. But the seventeenth century was not favourable to the
production of scholars. As the intellectual horizon widened learning
became less profound. Women’s education was pursued on somewhat
different lines. There was less scholarship among the best-educated
women. We do not hear of ladies corresponding in Greek or translating
from the Hebrew. The classics no longer held the chief place in the
curriculum. Literature was multiplying in English and other living
languages, and music and painting were more cultivated.
But there was little attempt, in the seventeenth century, to provide
substitutes for what women had lost by the dissolution of the convent
schools. For accomplishments, such as singing and dancing, wealthy
families engaged special masters--generally French--and the domestic
chaplain sometimes acted as tutor for the more solid parts of
education. Among middle-class families, however, whose means did not
allow of private tuition, the girls came off badly, there being very
few schools of any sort, and very scanty supplies of literature in the
home.
The seventeenth century was a great period for famous painters, and the
presence of numerous excellent foreign artists in England influenced
the attitude of society among the higher classes towards art. It might
have been thought that, with a professed pedant like James I. following
the learned Queen Elizabeth, there would have been a renewed impetus
towards the profounder studies. But James I. was deficient in real
strength of character, and was not an intellectual force. He might
have played a very fair part among a knot of schoolmen disputing over
theological points, but as a sovereign his talents did not show to
good advantage. Moreover, he was in every way adverse to the progress
of women. He treated them as inferiors, with a ponderous levity, and
nothing was further from his mind than giving any encouragement to the
cultivation of learning among the ladies of the court. Under Charles
I. culture would have had a fair chance in England had not political
trouble intervened, and during the remainder of the century society
underwent a series of changes inimical to learning.
Women’s education in the seventeenth century, among those sections
of society where learning was cultivated, seems to have taken a more
feminine tone. Accomplishments were sought after rather than solid
acquirements. There was a leaning to lighter pursuits, to what were
quaintly called “virtues,” such as instrumental and vocal music,
dancing, and needlework. There was a dash of fine ladyism in it all.
At the same time there was a parade of education. It was customary,
among the families of the nobility, for the daughters to have tutors
for reading and writing (which are specified as distinct subjects, not
included, as now, under a general term), French, Latin, and perhaps
Italian. Mrs. Hutchinson tells us that she had as many as eight tutors
when she was seven years old, but she was exceptionally well instructed.
Lucy Aspley, as she was then, was a child of extraordinary abilities,
of which her father was very proud. At four years old she could read
English perfectly. Her brothers at school, finding she was outstripping
them in Latin with her tutor at home, tried to emulate her zeal. She
cared for none of the feminine accomplishments, such as needlework and
dancing, and always preferred the company and conversation of older
people, even as a child. With all her precocity, and in spite of the
fact that she was treated as the literary light of the family, she
grew up unspoiled by flattery, and developed into one of the noblest
women of her age.
Lady Anne Halkett, the daughter of Thomas Murray, preceptor to Charles
I., was probably better taught than most young women of the time. She
herself lays stress on the pains bestowed upon her education by her
parents, but there is no mention of any profound study. She had masters
for French, for writing, for dancing, and for the practice of the
lute and the virginals, and a gentlewoman was employed to teach her
needlework.
Mrs. Alice Thornton, who lived between 1626 and 1707, and whose family
on the father’s side was related to the Earl of Strafford, says that in
1632, while living in Ireland, she had--
“the best education that Kingdome could afford, having the
advantage of societie in the sweet and chaste company of the
Earle of Strafford’s daughter, the most virtuous Lady Anne, and
the Lady Arbella Wentworth, learning those qualities with them
which my father ordered, namelie--the French language, to write
and speak the same; singing, danceing, plaeing on the lute
and theorboe; learning such other accomplishments of working
silkes, gummework, sweetmeats, and other sutable huswifery, as
by my mother’s vertuous provision and caire, she brought me up
in what was fitt for her qualitie and my father’s childe.”
Presumably, spelling formed one of the subjects of education; but the
extremely faulty orthography of female letter-writers, even among the
cultured classes, in the seventeenth century, points to a haphazard
method of teaching this branch of knowledge. After making due allowance
for the unsettled state of the language, and the want of uniformity in
good authors, the letters of women of high rank show an extraordinary
licence in orthography, which appeared to be a matter regulated by
individual fancy.
Mrs. Makins, writing in 1673, says--
“I verily think women were formerly educated in the knowledge
of arts and tongues, and by their education many did rise to a
great height in learning. Were women thus educated now, I am
confident the advantage would be very great.” She adds, “I am
very sensible it is an ill time to set on foot this design,
wherein not only learning but vertue itself is scorn’d and
neglected as pedantic things, fit only for the vulgar....
Were a competent number of schools erected to educate ladyes
ingeniously, methinks I see how asham’d men would be of their
ignorance, and how industrious the next generation would be to
wipe off their reproach.”
One of the most celebrated women of learning in the early part of the
century was Margaret Lucas, afterwards Duchess of Newcastle, and she
seems to have acquired her knowledge chiefly by her own efforts.
Sir Charles Lucas had tutors for his daughters, but half the year
the family spent in London, enjoying all the diversions the capital
could afford, and study was not at all strictly enforced on the girls.
The Duchess wrote numerous poems and prose works of a philosophical
character, and was, she tells us herself, a very rapid composer, her
ideas outrunning her hand. Judged by the standard of to-day, her works
seem like the voluble outpourings of a curious fancy. Her ideas are
interesting rather as giving us a glimpse of the thought of her day,
than valuable for intrinsic merit or freshness; but in her lifetime
she was applauded by scholars with lavish adulation, partly, no doubt,
on account of her rank. The heads of the University of Cambridge were
full of wonder that a woman should be able to compose such works, and
many scholars from other parts wrote in terms of respectful admiration
and astonishment. The fulsome flatteries poured into the ears of the
duchess were unworthy of their authors, but there is no doubt that her
productions appeared sufficiently remarkable to her contemporaries.
More than one scholar to whom the duchess sent her books, remarks on
the proof her Grace has given that women are as capable of intellectual
acquirements as men. One writes that she has confirmed the statement
of an old author, that women excel men; and another, that she has
clearly decided the question of mental equality between the sexes.
In watching the evolution of women in regard to learning, the general
estimation in which learning was held in those days has also to be
noted. Gentlemen might certainly be scholars, but scholars were not
considered gentlemen. The study of books, more especially the writing
of them, was thought a laborious occupation unfit for those who could
sit at ease and enjoy the world.
“Neither do our Nobilitie and Gentry so much affect the study
of good Letters as in former times,” wrote Henry Peachman in
1638, “loving better the _Active_ than the _Contemplative_ part
of _Knowledge_, which in times of the Monasteries was more
esteemed and doated on than now.”
One scholar, writing to the Duchess of Newcastle, speaks of authorship
as an “inferior employment” unmeet for the rank and qualities of a lady
like her Grace.
Another element that has to be taken into account was the change which
came over social life in the upper ranks of society. There was more
going to and fro between London and the country. Formerly, people
stayed quietly in their own homes from one year to another. But as
travelling became more general, the custom grew up for families of
rank and wealth to spend half the year in London--the winter half--and
the other half in the country. This greatly altered the conditions
of family life. The season in London was a period for amusement,
for seeing sights, receiving company, and going to balls and masks.
There was not much time for serious studies, and the more frequent
intercourse with society encouraged young daughters in a family to
cultivate such accomplishments as music and dancing, to study French
and Italian rather than Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and to generally
avoid subjects that demanded much patience and assiduity. There were
women clever and brilliant, and noted for their versatile talents. Lucy
Harrington, Countess of Bedford, was one of these. She was certainly
a good Latin scholar, had many accomplishments, and was a friend and
favourite of the learned men of the day. Lady Wroth, niece of the
celebrated Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, was another patroness of
the learned, and seems to have inherited some of her aunt’s ability.
But we have to wait until the middle of the next century before we find
any coterie of learned women, comparable with the scholars and students
of the Tudor Period.