Regency Education -- The books they used to teach...

When I began to write my book The Education of Portia, I did a considerable amount of research on education of girls in Regency England. I read about governesses, dame schools, visiting masters, and boarding schools. I read about good schools with solid curricula and schools that taught only the trifling accomplishments that society required.

One thing that struck me however was the quantity of books--we would call them textbooks--that were available to teachers who really wanted to impart knowledge to their students. I like to think they are the books Portia Crossmichael, the headmistress of the Mansion House Establishment for Young Ladies, would have used. In fact, I had hoped to be able to slip in some of the remarkable titles in my writing of the story, but in the end, I couldn't do that. And I'm glad I didn't!

Mansion House Establishment for Young Ladies - Est. 1802

Nevertheless the books are worth considering. In the halls of Eton and Harrow, the classics were nearly all that was taught. In the broader world, and particularly in the Dissenting Academies, more subjects were pursued, and there were books to work from in every area, some specifically written for young ladies.

John Greig is a name that frequently appears as a writer of such textbooks; he is described as "a Private Teacher of Writing, Geography and practical Mathematics". The titles of his books are a joy in themselves:

The Young Ladies' New Guide to Arithmetic; being a short and useful Selection; containing, besides the common and necessary Rules, the Application of each Rule, by a Variety of practical Questions, chiefly domestic Affairs; together with the Method of making out Bills of Parcels, Book Debts, Receipts, etc. etc. -- For the Use of Ladies Schools and private Teachers.

Another of his titles goes into even greater detail:

An Introduction to the Use of the Globes, for Youth of both Sexes; particularly designed for Schools and private Teachers. Containing Definitions and Problems in Geometry; the stereographic Projection of the Sphere; the Rise and Progress of Geography and Astronomy; the Description of the principal Lines on the Globes, with the Application of them by Forty-six Problems on the Terrestrial , and Twenty-two on the Celestial, with the Use of the Analemma and sliding Hour-Circle, selected with Particular Attention; likewise a Representation and Epitome of the Solar System, Armillary Sphere, Comets, fixed Stars, Constellations, etc. To which is added, a Variety of curious, entertaining and useful Paradoxes; with some Questions and Answers by Way of Application.

 Both of these titles were listed in The British Critic of 1805, and seemed still to be in publication fifty years later. That is one noticeable feature of these texts, they were reprinted in multiple editions over long periods. Some had first appeared in the late 1700's, and were still in print more than seventy years later.

John Walker's "Elements of Geography and of Natural and Civil History" comprised of nine sections, all detailed on the title page, was first published in 1788. Portions of it were in use in "The new Pocket Cyclopedaedia" in 1813, and it was still around in 1850 when John Worcester referenced it.

Every topic was covered:

"The New London Letter Writer: containing various forms of epistolary correspondence in love, friendship, business, etc." by Samuel Johnson

"The New and Complete History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Peace of Paris, 1814, in Question and Answer" by Charles Lowndes

"A Grammar of Chemistry, wherein the Principles of the science are familiarized by a variety of easy and entertaining Experiments..." by the Rev. D. Blair (a pseudonym of Sir Richard Phillips)

Sir Richard was an prolific writer of educational texts. He produced "A Grammar of Natural and Experimental Philosophy"again under the name of Rev. Blair, "A Geographical View of the World, embracing the manners, customs and pursuits of Every Nation" under the name of Rev. J. Goldsmith, as well as "An Easy Grammar of Geography" under the same name. Finally, he published "The Universal Preceptor; being a General Grammar of Arts, Sciences, and Useful Knowledge" encapsulating all his previous work in one comprehensive volume.

Morals were well covered by the educational writers of the time. "The Blessings of Morality", "Minor Morals", "A Mother's Advice to her Absent Daughter" were among the many volumes published. Likewise, young ladies, and gentlemen, were encouraged by books like "Letters on the Improvement of the Mind" by Hester Chapone, and "Improvement of the Mind" by Isaac Watts.

There was no dearth of educational material, and really no excuse for a school or a governess to teach only manners, dance, needlework, a little French, and 'the use of the globes'.

The school advertised above seems to offer at least a modicum of solid education: writing, accounts and geography, in addition to music, dancing and drawing. I wonder if they used any of the texts I have mentioned!

'Til next time,

Lesley-Anne

Young Ladies' Academies - Regency Education Part II

My interest in Regency ladies’ academies all started with this picture. I found it in a family heirloom scrap album compiled in the mid-1800’s. The caption printed on the drawing reads:

Mansion House Establishment for Young Ladies

Hanley Road & Horsley Road

Established 1802

The address places the school in north London, the date places it firmly in the extended Regency period, but I have been unable to find any further information on it. When I found no facts on Mansion House School I was compelled to invent its story, and it became the basis for my book “The Education of Portia”.

My fascination with the picture led me to further research on the private schools for young ladies which abounded in the Regency era. In fiction the schools have been immortalized by Thackeray in Vanity Fair “Miss Pinkerton’s academy for young ladies”, by Dickens in his Sketches by Boz “Miss Crumptons’ Minerva House” and by Jane Austen herself in Emma with Mrs. Goddard’s school.

Schools, at the time, were generally for the well-born, or at least the well-to-do. Clients expected that their daughters would be instructed by ladies on how to become ornaments of society. Joyce Pedersen in an article in the Journal of British Studies1 states “The function of the lady who taught was not, then, so much to transmit expert knowledge as to serve as a model of elegance and moral rectitude for her pupils”.

These ladies were for the most part gentlewomen who had fallen upon difficult financial times, and they organized their establishments along the lines of a family household.

The quality of education in these schools varied widely. They accepted anywhere from five to thirty-five pupils, and taught as little as dancing, deportment and French, or as much as arithmetic, geography, history, and languages. There were no government regulations regarding the schools and there was no teacher training available for instructors.

Those few schools which seriously taught academic subjects had a considerable body of material with which to work. There was also a surfeit of moral instruction available, foreshadowing the ponderous rectitude of the Victorian era to follow the Georgian age.

Some of the books available to a schoolmistress with the wit and the inclination to actually educate her pupils included Lowndes’ History of England, John Grieg’s Young Ladies’ New Guide to Arithmetic, Walker’s Elements of Geography, “Letters on the Improvement of the Mind addressed to a (young) Lady” by Hester Chapone, and Brown’s Elements of English Education.

‘Academies’ in London and Bath patronized by the wealthy and noble likely emphasized the evanescent social skills which a young lady about to enter the beau monde required. They charged as much as 150 guineas a year. Provincial schools may have provided a more sensible, down-to-earth atmosphere which produced a happier, more content young lady for considerably less than half that price. In either institution a girl’s education may have depended more on her own inclination than on the classes her school provided. A studious young lady would always find a way to learn.

I often wonder whether the Mansion House Establishment was one of the ‘society’ schools or a more serious institute of learning. The story I created for it put it firmly in the latter category, and Portia the schoolmistress was one of those teachers of wit and discernment. But I’ll never really know what it was like and that, for me, is the charm of history.

‘Til next time,

Lesley-Anne

1 Pedersen, Joyce Senders. "Schoolmistresses and Headmistresses: Elites and Education in Nineteenth-Century England" The Journal of British Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1. (Autumn, 1975), pp. 135-162.