Tea at Trianon: Boarding Schools and Social Climbing

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Boarding Schools and Social Climbing

From Naomi Clifford at Geri Walton's:

For centuries, genteel girls and those of the ‘middling sort’ were educated at home, usually by their mothers or governesses, but in the latter part of the 18th century and into the early 19th, the number of girls’ boarding school proliferated. Not only were they seized on by aspirational parents eager to enhance their daughters’ accomplishments but they were also offered a new opportunity to lone, or otherwise unsupported, educated women: a career and an income.

The reasons for the popularity of these private fee-paying schools with parents are much as they are now: standards and social aspiration. Their daughters could learn refined skills such as harp-playing or figure-dancing in an environment where they would brush shoulders with their social superiors. A boarding school education was an investment. It increased a girl’s value on the marriage market and, should the worst happen (that is, she did not marry or the family’s finances collapsed) at least she would be able to support herself. She would have acquired an education that would enable her to find work as a teacher.

Of course, there was a huge range in the quality and type of education on offer. In the middle of the 18th century, the basic curriculum might be reading and needlework, but by the early 19th century grammar and literature (English and French), history and geography were on the curriculum. Often specialist teachers were contracted in. It was not unknown to offer Italian, classical mythology, natural philosophy, or household skills such as pickling, preserving and pastry-making. The annual cost of a boarding school education would be in the region of 12 to 20 guineas but that could rise to 80 to 100 in London or Bath, with additional subjects charged separately. (Read more.)