Female education--Women of quality taught at home--General illiteracy
of the sex--Strong clerical control--Ignorance of the rudiments of
knowledge among girls--Shakespear's daughters--Goldsmith's _Poems for
Young Ladies_--Rise of the Ladies' School--Political importance of the
training of women.
I. The neglect of female education in the United Kingdom down to a recent
date proceeded from an absence of any adequate or organisable machinery
for the purpose, and from the complete monopoly of learning by men in
early times. In Scotland this mischief was remedied to a certain extent
much sooner than in England, owing to the institution of Academies, where
both sexes received instruction under one roof from the same masters; and
this circumstance may help to explain the general superiority of the
Scots, within certain limits, to the Southern Britons in this respect,
the better upbringing of the mother communicating itself to her children.
Common academies for boys and girls were not wholly unknown in England,
however, but they were of very rare occurrence, and have now become still
rarer, as they barely exist at all except as dame-schools.
Now-a-days, of course, the most elaborate and costly apparatus is provided
for the mental cultivation and training of girls of all ranks; and the
daughter of a citizen may acquire accomplishments which were long beyond
the reach of daughters of kings. Formerly the lower classes of females
remained as illiterate as the corresponding rank of men, and the studies
of the gentlewoman were superintended by her parents and her tutor or her
governess. But in the Middle Ages, and long after the revival of learning,
the only persons capable of conducting the education of a lady who had
emerged from the nursery and passed the rudimentary stage were
ecclesiastics; and the laymen who gradually qualified themselves for the
task, such as Ascham and Buchanan, were scholars of a scarce type, who
had gained their proficiency in the gymnasia and universities of Italy,
Germany, or France. The Italian influence was doubtless the earliest, but
the German was the most powerful, and has proved the most lasting.
In France from a very remote period the dame-school appears to have
existed in some measure and form, for a fourteenth-century sculpture,
already mentioned in the remarks on scholastic discipline, depicts an
establishment of this kind--a petty school for boys kept by a woman. If
there was any such thing among us, I have met with no record of it; but
the practice, from the early intimacy between those countries, would be
more apt to find its way first of all from the French into Scotland.
To such as have had under their eyes the letters and other literary
monuments which reveal to us the condition of the more cultivated section
of the English female community in the old days, it seems superfluous to
insist on the strange ignorance of the _principia_ of knowledge, and on
the fallow state of the intellectual faculties which these evidences
establish. The Paston and Plumpton Correspondence, Mrs. Green's _Letters
of Illustrious Ladies_, and Sir Henry Ellis's three Series of Original
Letters, may perhaps be quoted as affording an insight into the present
aspect of the question before us; and I think that the most striking
proofs of the inattention to female culture in this country are to be
found in documents previous to the Reformation, when the influence brought
to bear on the sex was almost exclusively monastic or clerical.
The great political and religious movement which Henry VIII. was enabled
by circumstances to carry through undoubtedly imparted a large share of
lay feeling and prejudice to the educational system; and this tendency was
promoted and strengthened during the short reign of Edward VI. by the
foundation of chartered schools throughout the kingdom for the instruction
of youth in grammar and other primordial matters.
II. But the progress thus made did not sensibly affect the other sex.
Girls still depended, as a rule, on the old methods and channels of
learning; the arts of reading, writing, and arithmetic formed the ordinary
routine and limit, unless an acquaintance with French, or even with
Italian, happened to be added as a special accomplishment. Very
occasionally a maiden of studious character was permitted to avail herself
of the tutor maintained at home for her brothers, as was the case of the
Honourable Mrs. North, a younger daughter of Lord North of Kirtling, who
learned Latin and Greek in this manner; and from Margaret Roper to Mrs.
Somerville, or indeed in the cases adduced by Ballard in his _Memoirs of
Learned Ladies_, there were from time to time even in the old days
splendid exceptions to the prevailing low level of female culture. But
under any circumstances, until the period arrived when ladies were
competent to undertake the tuition of ladies, all these matters
necessarily devolved, in the first place, on the mother, and finally on a
preceptor, who was necessarily a man, and most probably in holy orders.
His contribution to the development of character was exceedingly
preponderant, and was beyond doubt a most important factor in maintaining
and extending the power of the Church, and indemnifying the clergy for
the direct political influence of which the Reformation dispossessed them.
The Ladies' School or College may be considered a product of the acute
political distempers which accompanied the Civil War. Mistress Bathsua
Makins, who had been governess to one of the daughters of Charles I.--the
Princess Elizabeth--set up, after the fall of the King, an establishment
at Putney, to which Evelyn mentions that he paid a visit in company with
some ladies on the 17th May 1649; but I find no reference to this
institution in Lysons. A similar case existed somewhat later at Highgate;
and the admirers of Charles and Mary Lamb, at least, do not require to be
told that in the little volume called "Mrs. Leicester's School," 1809,
there are some interesting hints, both historical and autobiographical, in
relation to the old-fashioned seminary at Amwell. But, as a rule, these
agents in our later civilisation and social refinement, important as they
were, have left behind them few, if any, traces of their existence and
management. They bred those who were content to become, in course of
time, the wives and mothers of England, and to study the arts of domestic
life. In such are centred the strength and glory of the country; but their
careers, like "the short and simple annals of the poor," have escaped
literary commemoration.
"A Gentleman of Cambridge," as he styles himself on the title of an
English adaptation of the Abbé d'Ancourt's _Lady's Preceptor_, 1743,
defines the qualifications then thought necessary and adequate for a young
gentlewoman. He does not go beyond a thorough knowledge of English, an
acquaintance with French and Italian, a familiarity with arithmetic and
accounts, and the mastery of a good handwriting; and yet how few probably
reached this moderate standard a century and a half ago--nay, how few
reach it now!
In the time of the early Stuarts, the training of girls in English country
towns, if it is to be augured from that of the Shakespears at Stratford,
even where the parents were in good circumstances and the father a man of
literary tastes and occupations, was still extremely primitive and scanty.
The poet's elder daughter, Susanna, seems to have just contrived to
write, or rather print, her name; but Judith used a mark, and Mrs. Quiney,
whose son became Judith's husband, did the same.
Both the Quineys and the Shakespears were persons of substance and of
local consideration; and in this case, at any rate, the explanation seems
to be that such ignorance was usual, and did not prejudicially affect the
position and prospects of a gentlewoman.
The institution in England of elementary schools for girls only dates back
to the neighbourhood of the Restoration; but the number of establishments
long remained, doubtless, very limited, and the scheme of instruction
equally narrow. The frontispiece to Anthony Huish's _Key to the Grammar
School_, 1670, presents us with an interesting interior in the shape of a
girls' school, where the mistress is seated at a desk surrounded by female
pupils.
Goldsmith's _Poems for Young Ladies_, "Devotional, Moral, and
Entertaining," 1767, partly arose out of Dr. Fordyce's _Sermons for Young
Women_. The editor assures his fair readers that the Muse in this case is
not a syren, but a friend; and there is plenty of the religious element
in the volume. But there are, on the other hand, extracts from Pope's
_Homer_, stories from Ovid and Virgil, Addison's _Letter from Italy_, and
a selection from Collins's _Oriental Eclogues_. The source from which it
came was a guarantee that its pages would be agreeably and sensibly
leavened with matters not divine; it surpasses the average intellectual
nutriment provided for women a century ago. Dr. Goldsmith was a decided
improvement on Dr. Watts, and he could scarcely escape from being so,
whether he offered them his own poetical compositions, or, as in the
present case, merely exercised his judgment in selecting from the works of
others. No one can object to Pope's _Messiah_ or his _Universal Prayer_,
which constitute the prominent features in the devotional section, when
they are in such excellent company as Gay, Swift, and Thomson. But there
is nothing in this volume to have prevented the editor offering a copy to
either of the vicar's daughters.
The universal and unchanging aim of the ecclesiastical authority is
manifestly temporal, and Henry VIII. and his coadjutors, and their
immediate successors in the foundation of Protestantism, acted wisely in
making it part of their scheme to furnish the realm with public seminaries
based on an improved footing in the earliest endowed grammar schools,
which set the example to private individuals and corporate bodies.
These schools, which, as we know, had been preceded--and doubtless
suggested too--by that at Magdalen College, Oxford, and others framed on a
humbler scale or (like the City of London and St. Paul's) under different
auspices, opened the way to a partial secularisation of teaching
throughout England. The preceptors employed were more often than not
academical, unbeneficed graduates with a certain clerical bent; but the
Statutes laid down rules for the management of the Charity and for the
limitation of the subjects to be taught; and the scheme was assuredly at
the outset, and continued down to the last thirty or forty years--in fact,
within the recollection of the present writer--so narrow and imperfect,
that it supplied what would now be regarded as the mere groundwork of a
genteel education.
III. But a farther and still more important step toward the emancipation
of scholastic economy and discipline from Church control was taken when,
first in Scotland, and subsequently, and also in a more limited degree, in
England, after the union of the kingdoms, proprietary establishments were
opened for boys or girls only, or for boys and girls, where the religious
instruction, instead of being, as under the archaic conventual and Romish
system, the primary feature, became a mere item on the prospectus, like
Geography or History. This was the commencement of an entrance upon modern
lines, and struck a fatal blow at the monastic and academical ideas of
instruction, by widening the bias and range of studies, and liberating the
intellect from religious trammels.
The success and multiplication of these new institutions obliged the old
endowments to reform themselves, and to meet the demands of the age; and
the pressure was augmented, of course, by the concurrent rise of large
public gymnasia of a novel stamp, as well as by the development of some of
the already existing institutions conformably to the great changes in
political and social life.
The proprietary system, which had started by adopting, as a rule, the
mixed method, or rather by the reception of pupils of both sexes under the
same roof, was eventually, and, except so far as dame-schools were
concerned, finally modified in favour of the dual plan, and independent
colleges for young gentlemen and for young ladies were the result.
In these latter the drift is certainly more and more lay; and as knowledge
and culture spread, and the influence and fruits of masculine thought make
themselves more and more appreciable, the Church in England will gradually
loosen its grasp of the national intellect, and will probably owe to the
higher education of women its collapse and downfall.
The ladies of England have propped up the tottering edifice long enough,
and no one whose opinion is worth entertaining will lament the inevitable
issue. But whether the consequences of this vital movement will be
otherwise beneficial, it has scarcely yet, perhaps, been in active
operation a sufficient time to enable us to judge. If it involves the
sacrifice in any important measure of feminine refinement and dependence,
we shall be forced to confess that the help to be rendered by our
daughters and grand-daughters to the cause of intellectual enfranchisement
and victory will have been bought at a cruel price.
As the old foundations discovered it to be imperative to comply with the
growing philosophical temper in order to enable them to exist side by side
with the improved types of school and teacher, so the successful conduct
of ladies' colleges will become impossible in the future unless that
liberality of doctrine and sentiment in all matters connected with
theology which breathes around them and us is cordially recognised.
A spirit of disaffection to clerical guidance and clerical imposts has for
some time shown itself in Great Britain among those who are becoming, in
the natural course of events, husbands, fathers, and ratepayers; the
revolt of the other sex has also commenced; and the wise initiative of the
Board School in excluding the Bible and Catechism from their programme
must be ultimately obeyed by every school in the three kingdoms.
The Bible is for scholars, not for school-folk; and, as Jeremy Bentham
demonstrated nearly a century ago, the Catechism is trash.