Elizabeth Appleton (c. 1790-1849)
'Society you are not to expect. This blessing is never tasted by you, excepting at the firesides of your own family and friends. The company with whom you mix are all either your superiors, or are those who consider themselves as such. Of marriage and domestic comforts you should banish every idea.'
Private Education; or A Practical Plan for the Studies of Young Ladies. With an Address to Parents, Private Governesses, and Young Ladies (1815), p. 28.
In the very year that Jane Austen published her novel Emma (1815), containing two of the most famous pen-portraits of English governesses in early nineteenth-century English fiction in the characters of Mrs Weston and Jane Fairfax, Elizabeth Appleton published her Private Education, a manual for the use of governesses, parents of daughters, and young ladies themselves. Appleton was particularly well-equipped to publish on this topic, since she had been employed herself as a governess. She dedicated her Private Education to the Countess of Leven and Melville, who, Appleton says, is 'an example both as a Mother and a Peeress of the Realm'. This work - a carefully considered plan of private, domestic education - made Appleton's name as an educationalist. Chapter XI provides a 'list of studies' for three fictional daughters. Ellen, sixteen and Ann, fifteen, 'may follow nearly the same course of study: the youngest, Susan, has a separate list, as she is but ten years.' The programme is remarkable in its closely time-tabled industry: the girls must be in their study by 7am, and work solidly until 3pm (young Susan, is allowed occasionally to 'run about a little for recreation'). 'Every pupil', writes Appleton 'has plenty to attend to, and yet not too much. Whatever it may be, she is expected to do her best: and she well knows that the more pains she takes the sooner she will finish her occupation, and more certain will be her enjoyments afterwards'.
This love of industry and order may be explained by the haphazard nature of Appleton's own education. Born into a large and respectable Bristol family around 1790, her father died in 1802. The family then suffered considerable financial hardship, and what E.H. Chalus, author of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for Appleton calls 'a peripatetic existence and perpetual instability'. According to Chalus, the impact on Elizabeth's education was considerable: she was educated at home by her mother, at a large day school in London, as a charity student in a school run by a relative and by a former governess in England and in Paris. When she became a governess herself, she must have had both positive and negative examples of current practice to draw on.
Appleton's description of how a governess must live her life is somewhat bleak: the governess must by definition lead a solitary existence, neither a true part of the family she works for, nor a member of the household servants. The consolation is that of duty served, and a job well done:
Let us not rate too highly our merits; but in all events, we well know that however others may neglect us, or even wound our self-love, we have no excuse for impropriety in our own conduct. You are well aware, that every state, from the regal to that of slavery, has its difficulties; to contend with them in the best possible manner is our duty. [...] I lament the mortifications and trials you endure, but I would have you sensible of the many comforts you actually possess. Food, the most excellent of its kind; wholesome and airy apartments; good beds upon which you may enjoy refreshing sleep, and the use of domestics, who, if you are gentle and kind, are generally ready to oblige you. Add to these, a salary of which you are never deprived, regularly paid, and with which you may purchase every article of clothing, and still possess a little purse towards a store. Think then, my friends, of these blessings, and be grateful. Conjure not up ideal misery, but strive to do your duty, and cultivate a contented mind.
Private Education; or A Practical Plan for the Studies of Young Ladies. With an Address to Parents, Private Governesses, and Young Ladies (1815), p. 28.
In the very year that Jane Austen published her novel Emma (1815), containing two of the most famous pen-portraits of English governesses in early nineteenth-century English fiction in the characters of Mrs Weston and Jane Fairfax, Elizabeth Appleton published her Private Education, a manual for the use of governesses, parents of daughters, and young ladies themselves. Appleton was particularly well-equipped to publish on this topic, since she had been employed herself as a governess. She dedicated her Private Education to the Countess of Leven and Melville, who, Appleton says, is 'an example both as a Mother and a Peeress of the Realm'. This work - a carefully considered plan of private, domestic education - made Appleton's name as an educationalist. Chapter XI provides a 'list of studies' for three fictional daughters. Ellen, sixteen and Ann, fifteen, 'may follow nearly the same course of study: the youngest, Susan, has a separate list, as she is but ten years.' The programme is remarkable in its closely time-tabled industry: the girls must be in their study by 7am, and work solidly until 3pm (young Susan, is allowed occasionally to 'run about a little for recreation'). 'Every pupil', writes Appleton 'has plenty to attend to, and yet not too much. Whatever it may be, she is expected to do her best: and she well knows that the more pains she takes the sooner she will finish her occupation, and more certain will be her enjoyments afterwards'.
This love of industry and order may be explained by the haphazard nature of Appleton's own education. Born into a large and respectable Bristol family around 1790, her father died in 1802. The family then suffered considerable financial hardship, and what E.H. Chalus, author of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for Appleton calls 'a peripatetic existence and perpetual instability'. According to Chalus, the impact on Elizabeth's education was considerable: she was educated at home by her mother, at a large day school in London, as a charity student in a school run by a relative and by a former governess in England and in Paris. When she became a governess herself, she must have had both positive and negative examples of current practice to draw on.
Appleton's description of how a governess must live her life is somewhat bleak: the governess must by definition lead a solitary existence, neither a true part of the family she works for, nor a member of the household servants. The consolation is that of duty served, and a job well done:
Let us not rate too highly our merits; but in all events, we well know that however others may neglect us, or even wound our self-love, we have no excuse for impropriety in our own conduct. You are well aware, that every state, from the regal to that of slavery, has its difficulties; to contend with them in the best possible manner is our duty. [...] I lament the mortifications and trials you endure, but I would have you sensible of the many comforts you actually possess. Food, the most excellent of its kind; wholesome and airy apartments; good beds upon which you may enjoy refreshing sleep, and the use of domestics, who, if you are gentle and kind, are generally ready to oblige you. Add to these, a salary of which you are never deprived, regularly paid, and with which you may purchase every article of clothing, and still possess a little purse towards a store. Think then, my friends, of these blessings, and be grateful. Conjure not up ideal misery, but strive to do your duty, and cultivate a contented mind.
