WOMEN TEACHERS AND GIRL SCHOLARS
_A godly young Woman of special parts, who was fallen into a sad
infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason, which had
been growing upon her divers years by occasion of giving herself
wholly to reading and writing and had written many books. Her
husbande was loath to grieve hir; but he saw his error when it
was too late. For if she had attended to her household affairs,
and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of hir
way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men
whose minds are stronger, she had kept hir Wits, and might have
improved them usefully and honorably._
--History of New England. Governor John Winthrop, 1640.
While the education of the sons of the planters in all the colonies
was bravely provided and supported, the daughters fared but poorly.
The education of a girl in book learning was deemed of vastly less
importance than her instruction in household duties. But small
arrangement was made in any school for her presence, nor was it
thought desirable that she should have any very varied knowledge.
That she should read and write was certainly satisfactory, and
cipher a little; but many girls got on very well without the
ciphering, and many, alas! without the reading and writing.
There had been a time when English girls and English gentlewomen had
eagerly studied Latin and Greek; and wise masters, such as Erasmus
and Colet and Roger Ascham had told with pride of their intelligent
English girl scholars; but all that had passed away with the "good
old times." In the seventeenth century English gentlemen looked with
marked disfavor on learned women.
Sir Ralph Verney, who adored his own little daughters to the neglect
of his sons, and was tender, devoted, and generous to every little
girl of his acquaintance, wrote about the year 1690 to a friend:--
"Let not your girle learn Latin or short hand; the difficulty
of the first may keep her from that Vice, for soe I must
esteem it in a woeman; but the easinesse of the other may bee
a prejudice to her; for the pride of taking sermon noates hath
made multitudes of woemen most unfortunate. Had St. Paul lived
in our Times I am confident hee would have fixt a _Shame_ upon
our woemen for writing as well as for speaking in church."
Occasionally an intelligent father would carefully teach his
daughters. President Colman of Harvard was such a father. He
gave what was called a profound education to his daughter Jane. A
letter of his to her, when she was ten years old, is worthy of full
quotation:--
"MY DEAR CHILD:--
"I have this morning your Letter which pleases me very well and
gives me hopes of many a pleasant line from you in Time to come
if God spare you to me and me to you. I very much long to see
your Mother but doubt whether the weather will permit to-day.
I pray God to bless you and make you one of his Children. I
charge you to pray daily, and read your Bible, and fear to sin.
Be very dutiful to your Mother, and respectful to everybody.
Be very humble and modest, womanly and discreet. Take care of
your health and as you love me do not eat green apples. Drink
sparingly of water, except the day be warm. When I last saw you,
you were too shamefaced; look people in the face, speak freely
and behave decently. I hope to bring Nabby in her grandfather's
Chariot to see you. The meanwhile I kiss your dear Mother, and
commend her health to the gracious care of God, and you with her
to His Grace. Give my service to Mr. A. and family and be sure
you never forget the respect they have honoured you with.
"Your loving father.
"BOSTON, Aug. 1, 1718."
Jonathan Edwards was an only son with ten sisters. In 1711, when
he was eight years old, five of these sisters had been born. The
father, Timothy Edwards, went as chaplain on an expedition to
Canada. His letters home show his care and thought for his children,
girls and boy:--
"I desire thee to take care that Jonathan dont lose what he
hath learnt, but that as he hath got the accidence and about
two sides of Propria quæ maribus by heart, so that he keep what
he hath got I would therefore have him say pretty often to the
girls. I would also have the girls keep what they have learnt of
the Grammar, and get by heart as far as Jonathan hath learnt; he
can keep them as far as he had learnt. And would have both him
and them keep their writing, and therefore write much oftener
than they did when I was at home. I have left paper enough for
them which they may use to that end."
Conditions remained the same throughout the century. The wife of
President John Adams, born in 1744, the daughter of a New England
minister of good family and social position, doubtless had as good
an education as any girl of her birth and station. She writes in
1817:--
"My early education did not partake of the abundant
opportunities which the present days offer, and which even
our common country schools now afford. I never was sent to
any school. I was always sick. Female education, in the best
families, went no further than writing and arithmetic; in some
few and rare instances music and dancing."
On another occasion she said that female education had been
everywhere neglected, and female learning ridiculed, and she speaks
of the trifling, narrow, contracted education of American women.
Girls in the other colonies fared no better than New England
damsels. The instruction given to girls of Dutch and English
parentage in New York was certainly very meagre. Mrs. Anne Grant
wrote an interesting account of her childhood in Albany, New York,
in a book called _Memoir of an American Lady_. The date was the
first half of the eighteenth century. She said:--
"It was at that time very difficult to procure the means
of instruction in those districts; female education was in
consequence conducted on a very limited scale; girls learned
needlework (in which they were indeed both skilful and
ingenious), from their mothers and aunts; they were taught,
too, at that period to read, in Dutch, the Bible, and a few
Calvinistic tracts of the devotional kind. But in the infancy
of the settlement few girls read English; when they did they
were thought accomplished; they generally spoke it, however
imperfectly, and a few were taught writing."
William Smith wrote in 1756 that the schools in New York then were
of the lowest order, the teachers ignorant, and women, especially,
ill-educated. It was the same in Virginia. Mary Ball, the mother of
George Washington, wrote from her Virginia home when fifteen years
old:--
"We have not had a schoolmaster in our neighborhood till now
in nearly four years. We have now a young minister living with
us who was educated at Oxford, took orders and came over as
assistant to Rev. Kemp. The parish is too poor to keep both, and
he teaches school for his board. He teaches Sister Susie and me
and Madam Carter's boy and two girls. I am now learning pretty
fast."
The _Catechism of Health_, an old-time child's book, thus summarily
and definitely sets girls in their proper places:--
"_Query_: Ought female children to receive the same education as
boys and have the same scope for play?
"_Answer_: In their earlier years there should be no difference.
But there are shades of discretion and regards to propriety
which judicious and prudent guardians and teachers can discern
and can adjust and apply."
We seldom find any recognition of girls as pupils in the early
public schools. Sometimes it is evident that they were admitted at
times not devoted to the teaching of boys. For instance, in May,
1767, a school was advertised in Providence for teaching writing
and arithmetic to "young ladies." But the girls had to go from six
to half-past seven in the morning, and half-past four to six in
the afternoon. The price for this most inconvenient and ill-timed
schooling was two dollars a quarter. It is pathetic to read of a
learning-hungry little maid in Hatfield, Massachusetts, who would
slip away from her spinning and knitting and sit on the schoolhouse
steps to listen with eager envy to the boys as they recited within.
When it became popular to have girls attend public schools, an old
farmer on a country school committee gave these matter-of-fact
objections to the innovation. "In winter it's too far for girls to
walk; in summer they ought to stay at home to help in the kitchen."
The first school for girls only, where they were taught in branches
not learned in the lower schools, was started in 1780 in Middletown,
Connecticut, by a graduate of Yale College named William Woodbridge.
Boston girls owed much to a famous teacher, Caleb Bingham, who came
to that city in 1784 and advertised to open a school where girls
could be taught writing, arithmetic, reading, spelling, and English
grammar. His school was eagerly welcomed, and it prospered. He wrote
for his girl pupils the famous _Young Lady's Accidence_, referred
to in another chapter, and under his teaching "newspapers were to
be introduced in the school at the discretion of the master." This
is the first instance--I believe in any country--of the reading of
newspapers being ordered by a school committee.
There were always dame-schools, which were attended by small boys
and girls. Rev. John Barnard, of Marblehead, Massachusetts, was born
in 1681 and was educated in Boston. He wrote in his old age a sketch
of his school life. He says:--
"By that time I had a little passed my sixth year I had left
my reading school, in the latter part of which my mistress had
made me a sort of usher appointing me to teach some children
that were older than myself as well as some smaller ones. And
in which time I had read my Bible through thrice. My parents
thought me to be weakly because of my thin habit and pale
countenance."
The penultimate sentence of this account evidently accounts for the
ultimate. It also appears that this unnamed school dame practised
the monitorial system a century or more before Bell and Lancaster
made their claims of inventing it.
The pay of women teachers who taught the dame-schools was meagre in
the extreme. The town of Woburn, Massachusetts, reached the lowest
ebb of salary. In 1641 a highly respected widow, one Mrs. Walker,
kept a school in a room of her own house. The town agreed to pay
her ten shillings for the first year; but after deducting seven
shillings for taxes, and various small amounts for produce, etc.,
she received finally from the town _one shilling and three pence_
for her pedagogical work.
Elizabeth Wright was the first teacher in the town of Northfield,
Massachusetts. She taught a class of young children at her own
house for twenty-two weeks each summer; for this she received
fourpence a week for each child. At this time she had four young
children of her own. She took all the care of them and did all the
work of her household, made shirts for the Indians for eight-pence
each, and breeches for Englishmen for one shilling sixpence a
pair, and wove much fine linen to order. For the summer school at
Franklin, Connecticut, in 1798, "a qualified woman teacher" had but
sixty-seven cents a week pay. Men teachers who taught both girls
and boys usually had better pay; but Samuel Appleton, in later
life the well-known Boston merchant and philanthropist, was my
great-grandfather's teacher in the year 1786. His pay was his board,
lodging, and washing, and sixty-seven cents per week, and it was
deemed liberal and ample.
[Illustration: Elizabeth Storer, Twelve Years Old, 1738]
There were always in the large cities small classes where favored
girls could be taught the rudiments of an education, and there were
many private teachers who taught young misses. Boston gentlewomen
from very early days had a mode of eking out a limited income by
taking little girls and young ladies from country homes, especially
from the southern colonies and the Barbadoes, to board while they
attended these classes and recited to these teachers.
Many honored New England names appear among the advertisements of
those desiring boarders. Mrs. Deming wrote to her niece, Anna Green
Winslow, telling her of two boarders she had:--
"Had I time and spirits I could acquaint you of an expedition
the two sisters made to Dorchester, a walk begun at sunrise last
Thursday morning--dress'd in their dammasks, padusoy, gauze,
ribbins, flapetts, flowers, new white hats, white shades, and
black leather shoes (Paddington's make) and finish'd, journey,
garments, orniments and all quite finish'd on Saturday before
noon (mud over shoes) never did I behold such destruction in
so short a space--bottom of padusoy coat fring'd quite around,
besides places worn entire to floss, and besides frays, dammask
from shoulders to bottom not lightly soil'd, but as if every
part had rub'd tables and chairs that had long been us'd to wax
mingl'd with grease.
"I could have cried, for I really pitied em--nothing left fit to
be seen. They had leave to go, but it never entered anyone's
tho'ts but their own to be dressed in all (even to loading) of
their best. What signifies it to worry ourselves about beings
that are and will be just so? I can, and do, pity and advise,
but I shall get no credit by such-like. The eldest talks much
of learning dancing, musick (the spinet and guitar) embroidery,
dresden, the French tongue, &c. The younger with an air of her
own advis'd the elder when she first mention'd French to learn
first to read English and was answer'd, 'Law, so I can well eno'
a'ready.' You've heard her do what she calls reading, I believe.
Poor Creature! Well! we have a time of it!"
There is a beautifully written letter in existence of Elizabeth
Saltonstall, sent to her young daughter Elizabeth on July 26, 1680,
when the latter was away from home and attending school. It abruptly
begins:--
"BETTY:
"Having an opportunity to send to you, I could doe no less than
write a few lines to mind you that you carry yourself very
respectively and dutyfully to Mrs. Graves as though she were
your Mother: and likewise respectively and loveingly to the
children, and soberly in words and actions to the servants: and
be sure you keep yourself diligently imployed either at home or
at school, as Mrs. Graves shall order you. Doe nothing without
her leave, and assure yourself it will be a great preservative
from falling into evill to keep yourself well imployed. But with
all and in the first place make it your dayly work to pray
earnestly to God that he would keep you from all manner of evil.
Take heed of your discourse at all times that it be not vaine
and foolish but know that for every idle word you must certainly
give account another day. Be sure to follow your reading, omit
it not one day: your father doth propose to send you some
coppies that so you may follow your wrighting likewise. I shall
say no more at present but only lay a strict charge upon you
that you remember and practise what I have minded you of: and as
you desire the blessing of God upon you either in soul or body
be careful to observe the counsell of your parents and consider
that they are the words of your loving and affectionate mother,
"ELIZ. SALTONSTALL.
Present my best respects to Mistris Graves. Your brothers
remember their love to you."
Old Madam Coleman, who had somewhat of a handful in her grandson,
Richard Hall, during his school days, was given charge of his
sister Sarah, in 1719, to care for and guard while she received
an education. When Missy arrived from the Barbadoes she was eight
years old. She brought with her a maid. The grandmother wrote
back cheerfully to the parents that the child was well and brisk,
as indeed she was. All the very young gentlemen and young ladies
of Boston Brahmin blood paid her visits, and she gave a feast at
a child's dancing party with the sweetmeats left over from her
sea-store. Her stay in her grandmother's household was surprisingly
brief. She left unceremoniously and unbidden with her maid, and went
to a Mr. Binning's to board; she sent home word to the Barbadoes
that her grandmother made her drink water with her meals. Her
brother wrote at once in return to Madam Coleman:--
"We were all persuaded of your tender and hearty affection to
my Sister when we recommended her to your parental care. We are
sorry to hear of her Independence in removing from under the
Benign Influences of your Wing & am surprised she dare do it
without our leave or consent or that Mr. Binning receive her at
his house before he knew how we were affected to it. We shall
now desire Mr. Binning to resign her with her waiting maid to
you and in our Letter to him have strictly ordered her to Return
to your House. And you may let her know before my Father took
his departure for London he desired me peremptorily to enjoin
it, and my Mother and myself back it with our Commands, which we
hope she wont venture to refuse or disobey."
But no brother could control this spirited young damsel. Three
months later a letter from Madam Coleman read thus:--
"Sally wont go to school nor to church and wants a nue muff and
a great many other things she don't need. I tell her fine things
are cheaper in Barbadoes. She says she will go to Barbados in
the Spring. She is well and brisk, says her Brother has nothing
to do with her as long as her father is alive."
Hugh Hall wrote in return, saying his daughter ought to have one
room to sleep in, and her maid another, that it was not befitting
children of their station to drink water, they should have wine and
beer. The grandmother was not offended with him or the children,
but shielded the boy from rebuke when he was sent from one school
to another; said proudly he was "a child of great parts, ye best
Dancer of any in town," and could learn as much in an hour as
another in three hours. The bill for the dancing lessons still
exists. Richard's dancing lessons for a year and a quarter cost
seven pounds. Sally's for four months, two pounds. Four months'
instruction in writing (and pens, ink, and paper) was one pound
seven shillings and four pence. The entrance fee for dancing lessons
was a pound apiece. Sally learned "to sew, floure, write, and
dance." The brisk child grew up a dashing belle, and married Major
John Wentworth, brother of Governor Benning Wentworth. Good Brother
Richard writes:--
"I heartily rejoice in Sally's good fortune and hope Molly will
have her turn also, but it would not have been fair to let Sally
dance barefoot which I hear Molly expected would have been
done."
Sister Molly married first Adam Winthrop and then Captain William
Wentworth. The two sisters were left widows and lived till great old
age in the famous old Wentworth House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
both dying in 1790.
Mistress Agan Blair of Williamsburg, Virginia, married one Colonel
John Banister of Petersburg; her letters, even in old age, are full
of a charming freedom of description and familiarity of language,
even amounting to slang, which are very unusual in correspondence of
that day. They are printed in the _History of the Blair and Braxton
Families_. She writes to her sister, Mrs. Braxton, of the latter's
little daughter, Betsey, in the year 1769:--
"Betsey is at work for you. I suppose she will tell you
to-morrow is Dancing Day, for it is in her Thoughts by Day & her
dreams by Night. Mr. Fearson was so surprised to find she knew
so much of the Minuet step, and could not help asking if Miss
had never been taught. So you will find she is likely to make
some progress that way. Mr. Wray by reason of business has but
lately taken her in hand tho' he assures me a little practice is
all she wants; her Reading I hear twice a day. And when I go out
she is consigned over to my Sister Blair: we have had some few
Quarrels and one Battle. Betsey and her Cousin Jenny had been
fighting for several days successively & was threatened to be
whipt for it as often but they did not regard us. Her Mamma &
self thought it necessary to let them see we were in earnest--if
they have fought since we have never heard of it. She has
finish'd her work'd Tucker, but ye weather is so warm that with
all ye pains I can take with clean hands and so forth she cannot
help dirtying it a little. I do not observe her to be fond of
negroes company, nor have I heard lately of any bad words;
chief of our Quarrels is for eating of those green Apples in
our garden and not keeping the head smooth.... I have had Hair
put on Miss Dolly but find it is not in my power of complying
with my promise in giving her Silk for a Sacque and Coat. Some
of our pretty Gang broke open a Trunk in my Absence and stole
several Things of which the Silk makes a part. So imagine Betsey
will petition you for some. I am much obliged for the care you
have taken to get all my Duds together, I cannot find you have
neglected putting up anything for Betsey."
It will readily be seen from all these letters that whether the
little girl was taught at home or in a private school, to "sew,
floure, write, and dance" were really the chief things she learned,
usually the only things, save deportment and elegance of carriage.
To attain an erect and dignified bearing growing girls were tortured
as in English boarding schools by sitting in stocks, wearing
harnesses, and being strapped to backboards. The packthread stays
and stiffened coats of "little Miss Custis" were made still more
unyielding by metal and wood busks; the latter made of close-grained
heavy wood. These were often carved in various designs or with names
and verses, or ornamented with drawings in colored inks, and made a
favorite gift.
[Illustration: Carved Busks]
All these constrainments and accessories contributed to a certain
thin-chested though erect appearance, which is notable in the
portraits of girls and women painted in the past century.
The backboard certainly helped to produce an erect and dignified
carriage, and was assisted by the quick, graceful motions used in
wool-spinning. The daughter of the Revolutionary patriot General
Nathanael Greene stated to her grandchildren that in her girlhood
she sat every day with her feet in stocks, strapped to a backboard.
She was until the end of her long life a straight-backed elegant
dame.
Many of the portraits given in this book plainly show the reign of
the backboard. The portrait of Elizabeth Storer, facing page 98, is
perhaps the best example. It is authenticated as having been painted
by Smibert when the subject was but twelve years old, but she is
certainly a most mature-faced child.
Another straight-backed portrait, opposite page 108, is the famous
one immortalized in rhyme by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, that of
"Dorothy Q.," the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy. The poet's lines
are more simply descriptive than any prose.
"Grandmother's mother: her age, I guess
Thirteen summers or something less,
Girlish bust, but womanly air;
Smooth square forehead with uprolled hair.
Lips that lover has never kissed,
Taper fingers and slender wrist.
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade,
So they painted the little maid."
"Who the painter was none may tell,
One whose best was not over well;
Hard and dry it must be confessed,
Flat as a rose that has long been pressed.
Yet in her cheek the hues are bright,
Dainty colors of red and white;
And in her slender shape are seen
Hint and promise of stately mien."
It would be no effort of the imagination to stretch the poet's
"thirteen summers or less" to thirty summers.
[Illustration: "Dorothy Q." "Thirteen Summers," 1720 _circa_]
Of associate interest is the portrait of Elizabeth Quincy, her
sister, facing page 112. The faces, hair, and dress are similar,
but the parrot is replaced by an impossible little dog. Elizabeth
is somewhat fairer to look upon. Dorothy is certainly "nothing
handsome." On the back of the portrait is written this inscription:
"It pleased God to take Out of Life my Honor'd and dearly Belov'd
Mother, M^rs Elizabeth Wendell, daughter to Honble Edmund Quincy,
Esq^r. March, 1746, aged 39 Years." Her brother Edmund Quincy
married her husband's sister Elizabeth (thus the two Elizabeths
exchanged surnames), and Dorothy Q. married Edward Jackson.
The desire of girls and women to be ethereal and slender, delicate
and shrinking, began over a century ago, but reached a climax in
the early years of this century. To effect this, severe measures
were taken in girls' schools. Dr. Holmes wrote in jest, but in truth
too:--
"They braced my aunt against a board
To make her straight and tall,
They laced her up, they starved her down,
To make her light and small.
They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
They screwed it up with pins--
Oh, never mortal suffered more
In penance for her sins."
Though Madam Coleman, a Boston Puritan, told so proudly of her
grandchildren's dancing, that accomplishment, or rather integral
part of a little lass's education, had not been quietly promoted in
that sober city. In early years both magistrates and ministers had
declaimed against it.
In 1684 Increase Mather preached a strong sermon against what he
termed "Gynecandrical Dancing or that which is commonly called Mixt
or Promiscuous Dancing of Men and Women, be they elder or younger
Persons together." He called it the great sin of the Daughters of
Zion, and he bursts forth:--
"Who were the Inventors of Petulant Dancings? Learned men have
well observed that the Devil was the First Inventor of the
impleaded Dances, and the Gentiles who worshipped him the first
Practitioners of this Art."
Of course he could not be silent as to the dancings of Miriam and
David in the Bible, but disposed of them summarily thus, "Those
Instances are not at all to the Purpose." Preaching against dancing
was as futile as against wig-wearing; "Horrid Bushes of Vanity"
soon decked every head, and gay young feet tripped merrily to the
sound of music in every village and town. Dancing could not be
repressed in an age when there was so little other excitement, so
great physical activity, and so narrow a range of conversation; and
after a time "Ordination-balls" were given when a new minister was
ordained.
Dancing was a pleasant accomplishment, and a serious one in good
society. The regard of it as a formal function is proved by the
story the Marquis de Chastellux told of the Philadelphia Assembly.
A young lady who was up in a country dance spoke for a moment to a
friend and thus forgot her turn. The Master of Ceremonies, Colonel
Mitchell, immediately came to her side and said severely: "Give
over, Miss. Take care what you are about. Do you think you came here
for your pleasure?"
It was a much more varied art than is ordinarily taught to-day.
Signor Sodi taught rigadoons and paspies in Philadelphia; John Walsh
added the Spanish fandango. Other modish dances were "Allemand
vally's, De la cours, Devonshire jiggs, Minuets." Complicated
contra-dances were many in number and quaint in name: The Innocent
Maid, A Successful Campaign, Priest's House, Clinton's Retreat, Blue
Bonnets, The Orange Tree.
A letter from an interesting little child shows that dancing was
deemed part of a "liberal education."
"PHILADELPHIA, March 30, 1739.
"HONOUR'D SIR:
"Since my coming up I have entered with Mr. Hackett to improve
my Dancing, and hope to make such Progress therein as may answer
to the Expense, and enable me to appear well in any Public
Company. The great Desire I have of pleasing you will make me
the more Assiduous in my undertaking, and I arrive at any degree
of Perfection it must be Attributed to the Liberal Education you
bestow on me.
"I am with greatest Respect, Dear Pappa,
"Yr dutiful Daughter,
"MARY GRAFTON.
"RCHD GRAFTON, ESQ.,
New Castle, Delaware."
We have much contemporary evidence to show that music, as a
formulated study, was rarely taught till after the Revolution. But
there never was a time in colonial life when music was not loved and
clung to with a sentiment that is difficult of explanation, but must
not be underrated.
Dr. John Earle gives in his _Microcosmographie_, the character
of a Puritan woman, or a "shee-precise Hypocrite," saying "shee
suffers not her daughters to learne on the Virginalls, because of
their affinity with the Organs," yet I find Judge Sewall, a true
Puritan, taking his wife's virginals to be repaired. I supposed she
played psalm tunes on them. Spinets and harpsichords were brought to
wealthy citizens. Copies of old-time music show how very elementary
were the performances on these instruments. Listeners were
profoundly moved at the sound, but it would seem far from inspiring
to-day.
"The notes of slender harpsichords with tapping, twinkling quills,
Or carrolling to a spinet with its thin, metallic thrills."
[Illustration: Elizabeth Quincy Wendell, 1720 _circa_]
Even the "new Clementi with glittering keys" gave but a tinny
sound. Girls "raised a tune," however, to these far from resonant
accompaniments, and sung their ballads and sentimental ditties,
unhampered by thoughts of technique and methods and schools.
Many of these old musical instruments are still in existence. The
harpsichord bought for "little Miss Custis" is in its rightful home
at Mount Vernon.
By Revolutionary times, girls' boarding schools had sprung into
existence in large towns, and certainly filled a great want. One
New England school, haloed with romance, was kept by Mrs. Susanna
Rawson, who was an actress, the daughter of an English officer, and
married to a musician. She was also a play-writer and wrote one
novel of great popularity, _Charlotte Temple_. Eliza Southgate Bowne
gives some glimpses of the life at this school in her letters. She
was fourteen years when she thus wrote to her father:--
"HON. FATHER:
"I am again placed at school under the tuition of an amiable
lady, so mild, so good, no one can help loving her; she treats
all her scholars with such tenderness as would win the affection
of the most savage brute. I learn Embroiderey and Geography at
present, and wish your permission to learn Musick.... I have
described one of the blessings of creation in Mrs. Rawson, and
now I will describe Mrs. Lyman as the reverse: she is the worst
woman I ever knew of or that I ever saw, nobody knows what I
suffered from the treatment of that woman."
This Mrs. Lyman kept a boarding school at Medford; eight girls
slept in one room, the fare was meagre, and the education kept close
company with the fare.
The Moravian schools at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, were widely
popular. President John Adams wrote to his daughter of the girls'
school that one hundred and twenty girls lived in one house and
slept in one garret in single beds in two long rows. He says, "How
should you like to live in such a nunnery?" Eliza Southgate Bowne
wrote a pretty account of this school:--
"The first was merely a _sewing school_, little children and
a pretty single sister about 30, with her white skirt, white
short tight waistcoat, nice handkerchief pinned outside, a
muslin apron and a close cap, of the most singular form you
can imagine. I can't describe it. The hair is all put out of
sight, turned back, and no border to the cap, very unbecoming
and very singular, tied under the chin with a pink ribbon--blue
for the married, white for the widows. Here was a Piano forte
and another sister teaching a little girl music. We went thro'
all the different school rooms, some misses of sixteen, their
teachers were very agreeable and easy, and in every room was a
Piano."
She also tells of the great dormitory; the beds of singular shape,
high and covered; a single hanging-lamp lighted at night, with one
sister walking patrol.
Though the education given to girls in these boarding schools
was not very profound, they had at the close of the school year a
grand opportunity of "showing-off" in a school exhibition. Mary
Grafton Dulany wrote when thirteen years old to her father, from a
Philadelphia school:--
"I went to Madame B.s exhibition. There were five Crowns, two
principal for Eminence in Lessons, and Virtue. They were crowned
in great style in the Assembly Rooms in the presence of 500
Spectators."
Mrs. Quincy wrote of a school which she attended in 1784, of what
she termed "the breaking up":--
"A stage was erected at the end of the room, covered with a
carpet, ornamented with evergreens and lighted by candles in
gilt branches. Two window curtains were drawn aside from the
centre before it and the audience were seated on the benches
of the schoolroom. The 'Search after Happiness,' by Mrs. More,
'The Milliner,' and 'The Dove,' by Madame Genlis were performed.
In the first I acted Euphelia, one of the court ladies, and
also sung a song intended in the play for one of the daughters
of Urania, but as I had the best voice it was given to me. My
dress was a pink and green striped silk, feathers and flowers
decorated my head; and with bracelets on my arms and paste
buckles on my shoes I thought I made a splendid appearance. The
only time I ever rode in a sedan chair was on this occasion,
when after being dressed at home, I was conveyed in one to
Miss Ledyard's residence. Hackney coaches were then unknown
in New York. In the second piece I acted the milliner and by
some strange notion of Miss Ledyard's or my own was dressed
in a gown, cap, handkerchief and apron of my mother's, with a
pair of spectacles to look like an elderly woman--a proof how
little we understood the character of a French milliner. When
the curtain was drawn, many of the audience declared it must be
Mrs. Morton herself on the stage. How my mother with her strict
notions and prejudices against the theatre ever consented to
such proceedings is still a surprise to me."
All parents did not approve of those exhibitions. Major Dulany wrote
with decision to his daughter that he lamented the boldness and
over-assurance which accompanied any success in such performances,
and which proceeded, he deemed, from callous feeling.
These plays were merely a revival of an old fashion when English
school children took part in miracle plays or mysteries. In the
seventeenth century schoolmasters took great pride in writing
exhibition plays for their pupils. Dreary enough these acts or
interludes are. One forced all the characters to act "anomalies of
all the chiefest parts of grammar"--oh! the poor lads that therein
played their parts!