Mary Smith, schoolmistress and governess; autobiographer, poet and journalist-reporter (1822-1889)

Mary Smith (Lisa Dillon), invented character from 2008 Cranford Chronicles

Dear friends and readers,

A couple of months ago I read Kathryn Hughes’s moving sterling account The Victorian Governess,

Cover based on painting, The Governess by Richard Redgrave (1840),

and there encountered Mary Smith (1822-1889) who wrote an autobiography of herself; I was so engaged by the tone and life of this woman as quoted by Hughes that when I found her text existed as a google book, I couldn’t resist buying and then devouring The Autobiography of Mary Smith, Schoolmistress and Nonconformist, a Fragment of a Life; With Letters from Jane Welsh Carlyle and Thomas Carlyle.

I just fell in love with this woman as strongly as I did the remarkable central woman journalist, Anthony Trollope’s beloved Kate Field, early this winter, and when I discovered my Mary wrote and published poetry, and this too was available as a google posthumously published book, Miscellaneous Poems, I sent away for it from GMU’s interlibrary loan.

Since reading both I decided to write a blog in her honor this evening, and lo and behold came across a short biography in Atlantic Monthly, June 1894, pp 838-840), and then learned that her poems have recently been republished in an edited annotated collection from Nineteenth-Century English Labouring Class Poets, edd. McEathron, Goodridge and Kossick.

Here we have the magic of the Internet, which has also brought me so many friends. How does the system work? Well there’s a small angel in each machine.

So first, Mary Smith’s life, then a few of her poems, and finally a few words on Kathryn Hughes’s fine achievement.

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Henry James’s mid-century unnamed governess played by Michelle Dockery (Sandy Welch’s Turn of the Screw, 2009)

Mary Smith writes eloquently of her life in terms hard to summarize to do justice to. She was a highly intelligent deeply moral young woman born to a dissenting shoemarker near Birmingham. It’s a story of continual hardship, derision of all her gifts, and exploitation. A typical phase of her life: she left a school she was teaching at in Scotby, Cumberland, where she was happy because of the landscape and people she worked for, to continue living with a family named Osborne whom she was attached to; she worked for another 3 years for them for no money and meagre food, not appreciated and finally driven off because someone in the family (probably the wife but hard to say) was jealous of her. She accompanies the family rather than live alone; again and again her being a woman alone is what does her in. She gets no respect that works in a effective way for her. Her life bears out bears out everything Kathryn Hughes says about lives of governesses in England in her The Victorian Governess — and more.

Her experiences as a governess finally drove her to open a school permanently — one she ran in Carlisle, UK, for 24 years. Here’s how it happened. She had been hired by a horror of a woman (cheap on food and clothes so she could show off to outsiders, cruel to servants in her niggardliness and with her commercial salesman husband such another as the grasping Mrs Mason and her hard philistine husband in Trollope’s Orley Farm) and has a hard time freeing herself. Reminds me of landlords today who hound tenants for the rent when they sign a year’s lease.

She then returned to Mr Osborne and his family. I’m beginning to suspect there was an implicit (not consummated) love affair; that would explain why repeatedly she is fired after sudden harsh treatments. The wife is never mentioned but there are apparently endless children.

So she opens a school again. Again blamed by Osborne for taking his clientele I suppose. But he goes out of business, and her school slowly flourishes while her strength holds out, and she has finally had the courage to introduce herself by letter to Jane Carlyle, who becomes a friend and in terms of feeling, just about adopts Mary as a surrogate daughter or niece.

Among the events gone over towards the last decades of her life in the book are her going to the Exhibition of 1861 with her brother. She does not like the train ride, not the Exhibition particularly (not fooled, and more interested by the spectators), but her exploration of London and the tourist world at the time.

In her forties she at last began to publish a little: she got involved in politics locally on the basis of going to lectures, becoming a reporter and writing short pieces others saw were astute: she sees the power-roots of the Crimean war, is an abolitionist, and implicit socialist. She had a small book of poetry published but this hurts more than it comforts: it costs her so much and only one notice.

I’m just compelled by her intense intelligent ethical presence and the remarks she makes about education (she’s right it’s easier to write if not corrected than read with understanding and harder yet to come up with interesting comments on reading) and character growth. How she loves the natural world. I see no sign of her reading Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, alas — or any other of the famous novels of the era (Julia Kavanagh also writes novels about governesses). Surely she would have mentioned it or one if she had.

Zelah Clarke as Jane Eyre (the 1983 BBC mini-series, a masterpiece)

I assume she had not money for a subscription to a library or to buy and was too hard worked for time — or maybe she feared her reader would not approve. Her style is felicitious. Her favorite author Emerson. She does read memoirs sometimes — from out of a local library. Probably she means some of her poems to be imitations of his.

I’m obviously not alone in being drawn to her. Beyond Jane Carlyle, the editors of Nineteenth Century Labouring Poets, and the people who bought us the google reprints, and Kathryn Hughes, Heidi Thomas, and Sue Conklin and Birtwistle, the creators of the BBC mini-series, Cranford Chronicles and Return to Cranford supposedly based on fiction by Elizabeth Gaskell used this real Mary Smith (played by Lisa Dillon) for a major character in the series. There is such a minor character in Elizabeth Gaskell’s fiction, but here she is made a major friend and companion-niece whno lives with Mattie (played by Judi Dench), the heroine from Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford as her young cousin; when Mattie loses much of her money, the mini-series Mary goes to London rather than stay and be a burden; she she begins to write for a living and we are told she works as a teacher (not clear whether governess or schoolteacher).

Again Lisa Dillon as Mary (from Cranford, see also still prefacing this blog)

This is a very fictionalized account of this woman’s life but some aspects of character in this series is taken from this autobiography. It provides the series with the one young woman who leaves town to build herself independence through a career in the modern way.

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Mary Smith’s poetry

I liked some of the poems very much. I think I have chosen three typical shorter ones. She writes in ballad stanzas most of the time. Her narratives remind me of Wordsworth and Smith’s protest poems; her familiar poems about her diurnal life some of Anna Barbauld’s poetry. Mary has one long old-fashioned narrative poem (8 line stanzas) called Progress where she tries to give a humane definition of what is progress.

*”The Snow Storm”*

A tale of the fells

The cotter’s children are at the pane,
Counting the flakes as they fall;
But the mother looks up the long white lane,
Anxiously over them all.

She sees the sun set round and red,
Behind the poplars bare,
And the white mist cover the old tower’s head,
And her heart is fill’d with care.

The shepherd’s dog clings to his heels,
As they silently speed through the snow;
And the carter follows with soundless wheels,
Bowing and bending low.

She sees it all, and her heart sinks low,
For her boy, who is scarcely eight,
Is over the fells, the quarries below,
Without either guide or mate.

He went at morn, when the sun shone out,
And the birds were twittering sweet,
And the brown hens chuckled and fluttered about,
And the road was alive with feet.

And now it is getting late and dark,
And not a star appears,
Nor chip of moon, which might serve as an ark,
In a night so dark with fears.

Yet she stands at the pane where she long has stood,
But now she has lost from her sight
The tower and the trees, and her chilling blood
Grows cold as the snow flakes white.

And her boy comes not, nor is there a sound
O’er all that waste of snow
Of human-kind; and with quick rebound
Her thoughts into actions flow.

And now she is over the moor, and has crossed
The brook and the grim white wood,
And has passed the tam all white with frost,
And the dam where the old mill stood.

And oft she has stood with strained ear,
And oft she has shouted wild;
But nought has come back to her heart but fear —
­No token of her child.

But the mother’s heart knows no despair,
And over that pathless deep,
Which the bravest heart might quail to dare,
She still her way doth keep.

Yet in vain she wanders! for in the drift,
Her boy, with clasped hands,
And eyes still calm, and still uplift,
A pallid phantom stands!

His fair hair, like a sweet dead flower,
Flies fitful in the blast,
And his parted lips, all void of power,
Are sealed with a silence fast.

And nevermore will his mother kiss
Those sweet cheeks here below,
For she lies-O heaven! in woe there’s bliss­
Untroubled in the snow.

*”On Hearing the Chimes of Carlisle Cathedral at Midnight”*

Do iron tongues articulate
Those soul·entrancing tones?
Or, has mute silence given leave
To the carved lips of stones ?

Those olden saints, with uplift eyes,
And visages so calm,
Those saints in the Cathedral porch,
Sing they this sacred psalm?

Or, has mysterious midnight
In vigil thought of Him,
And paused to celebrate that thought
In holy choral hymn?

As such, or as a chaunted prayer
From some far spirit sphere,
Or, as the voice of love, those tones
I can do nought but hear.

And yet they are the self-same sounds,
Which, like some gentle word,
Fall on the distracted ear of day,
Unnoticed and unheard.

Like voices long unregarded,
Till, in some dark sad hour,
They’re heard; ah! then we wonder
At their beauty and their power.

Oh, wond’rous chimes, peal evermore,
With rich cathedral swell,
From out the God-built towers of time,
More deep than tongue or bell.

And yet unheard! Oh, is it strange
We’re poor in thought, and sad?
Who hath an ear, knows that these tones
Make rich, and wise, and glad.

*”By the Fireside”*

Sitting once more by the fireside
Of the old paternal home,
As I often sit in memory
Pleasant phantoms go and come.

Hoary winter has descended,
Laid his white hand on the pane,
Flung his mantle on the orchard,
Darkened all the earth again.
,
And I sit there in my dreaming —
In the firelight’s gleaming light
­With the dear ones who in childhood
Made the winter darkness bright.

There are all the dear old faces,
All the forms both young and eld,
In their old accustom’d places,
As I them of old beheld.

Nor are looks of kindness wanting,
For I lean upon a chair,
From which eyes to mine responding
Ease my heart of all its care.

And a smile of love, long darkened
From my life, as in the past,
With a dear uplifting sweetness
Is once more upon me cast.

Words, too, follow, kind and tender,
Words I’ve often heard before,
But familiar still they render
The same blessing evermore.

For they bring back scenes of gladness,
Scenes of quiet household life;
Which remembered, soothe in sadness,
And make strong again in strife.

And though death has come between us,
Breaking bonds that were so blest,
In those scenes of love forever,
I find hope and joy and rest.

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Jodhi May as James’s unnamed governess (Nick Dear’s Turn of the Screw, 1999)

As for Kathryn Hughes, it’s a study which reveals the Victorian world to you through the governess figure, and (I think) shows that middling occupations today bear an uncanny resemblance to that of the governess at least when it comes to interviewing and getting the job. The best review I’ve come across is by Nancy Fix Anderson, published in Albion, 25:3 (1993):518-20. My only caveat is Anderson underestimates (why do people do this?) the harshness and abysmal poverty of the typical governess. That others were miserable, doesn’t discount hers. Also the sexual exploitation. Perhaps this is due to her not offering up the details (remember Blake).

The life of a governess very much compares with what Jane Austen’s Jane Fairfax and Emma and Elizabeth Watson dread, and Anne and Charlotte Bronte and Henry James’s governesses experience, not to omit the real life Jane Claire Clairmont, hitherto known mainly as Mary Shelley’s half-sister and one of Byron’s mistresses. Jane Fairfax is just the sort of person who ended up a governess, and the pattern of Jane Austen’s relatives’s lives shows that while she was not personally threatened (as far as we can tell), it was just such a woman of her class and education who would end up a governess or teaching at a school.

Ania Martin as the first Jane Fairfax, here an ignored and mortified Jane grateful for Mr Knightley’s courteous attention (1972 BBC Denis Constanduros’s Emma)

Diane Reynolds wrote on Austen-l:

From what I’ve read about governessing, including Agnes Grey, it was often a hard lot, filled with dawn to dusk labor and petty humiliations (obviously, it varied from home to home). I think to Jane Austen, it would have been a horror, because she would not have have time to write nor support for her writing–who would have taken her manuscripts to London, etc? Would her employers have been enraged that she was writing on “their” time? It would have been a form of death for her. I think there were huge differences between the work world then and now: now, we take “time off” as a given, we consider it “slavery,” when say a foreign-born governess, is made to work long hours without time off or overtime compensation (or social security) and we prosecute the perpetrators in highly-publicized cases that underscore a social consensus against such non-stop use of other humans. We see “stop and start” times, being “on and off” the clock as normal. But none of that was the case in Jane Austen’s time. From what I understand, at least in Victorian times (I don’t know if this holds for the Regency) there were more women seeking “positions” than there were positions ( a buyer’s market) and, as with slavery (which again, sometimes landed the enslaved in so-called (though I would not so call them) “good” positions (in fact, I think there was a book out some years ago in which a historian compared the lot of Southern slaves to Northern factory workers and determined that overall, the slaves had better conditions (!)) but slaves and governesses were essentially at the mercy of their employers. Obviously, a huge difference was that a governess could leave–at least in theory, though I imagine in practice, a single woman with no money would have little ability to leave the food, clothing and shelter of a governess position without another “situation” presenting itself. I would never liken it to “getting a job” today.

I concur strongly with Diane that for Austen it would have been a death-in-life — as would have court life and she uses strong words against life at court for any underlings (to the librarian). Everything we know (in print) by women who were governesses, and especially during the time women like Bessey Park Raines and Barbara Bodichon (mid- to later Victorian) show that the position of governess was disliked by most intensely — mostly because of the snobbery against the governess. how she was treated in a stigmatized isolating and often quietly humiliating way by her employers. The novels testify to this and a number of memoirs. Anthropologists tells us one of the worst experiences (and psychologists too) someone can have is to go down in status and have to stay among those whose status you had or shared or are above you and know it. People who are demoted at work in overwhelmingly numbers quit.

It’s this more than the drudge work, difficulty in coping which children who are also your employers (higher than you in status) and very low pay that made for the misery. Also (as I said about my mother-in-law) the long hours and lack of a private personal life — no courting (no sexuality allowed), no seeing your relatives and so on.

A member of WWTTA, Linda, put the center of the excruciation as Austen would imagine it (and Anne Bronte reveals) very well:

“Being a governess was a humbling–and intended by their employers to be a
humbling–experience. They were made to feel subservient and invisible. No acknowledgment of their intelligence or gifts was ever made. …”

In a collection of reviews of Jane Eyre by an upper class woman who identifies with the employer and we see that she is incensed to see the governess protest, sneers at the book, scorns the “whiner” (she just about uses that cruel word), and sees the book as incendiary radicalism.

Laurie Pyper as Jane Fairfax on her way to the post office (2009 BBC Sandy Welch’s Emma, the most recent incarnation)

Ellen