Aristotle tutored Alexander - for a while - and, I assume then also in his tenet that the Hellenes were superior to all  other peoples, which may have been true of himself but probably did young Alex no good whatsoever. This army of tutoring worthies who moulded the minds of many a future leader, did they, I wonder, really have telling influence beyond imparting knowledge?

Priscilla,

"This army of tutoring worthies who moulded the minds of many a future leader, did they, I wonder, really have telling influence beyond imparting knowledge?"

What do you mean by "did they, I wonder, really have telling influence beyond imparting knowledge?"
is "telling" substantial?
is "imparting" communicating?

Are you speaking about the question: Are the "great" (or rather influential people, otherwise would Hitler then be also among the "great" people) people more interfering in the world history than the strong tendencies (the great groundswells) or is it fifty fifty? Some state that the great tendencies were the cause of the birth of the great leaders, and if it wouldn't have been one particular leader, it would have been a look alike, as produced by the circumstances of that great tendency, groundswell...

Kind regards, Paul.

Oh dear paul! having to explain myself is never easy, you know. Telling means to me to have had an effect and imparting knowledge to mean dishing it out without influence - or so I mean in this context. others can leap in here and sort it further.

I thought the influence of private tutors of those who came to prominence for good or bad might be an interesting topic. There must have been some.

Could be a dangerous job - as Seneca found out to his cost.


For the ex-BBC board members - reckon E Nik could have given H. Stottle esq a lesson in how everything good was Hellenic - even the pre-Hellenic things.

George Buchanan was appointed one of the preceptors of the young King Kames VI in 1570. It was through his strict tuition that James VI acquired his scholarship. As the young king's senior tutor, "Buchanan subjected James to regular beatings, but also instilled in him a lifelong passion for literature and learning. Buchanan sought to turn James into a God-fearing, Protestant king who accepted the limitations of monarchy, as outlined in his treatise De Jure Regni apud Scotos."

Buchanan was a brilliant man, a superb Latin scholar: according to historian Keith Brown, Buchanan was "the most profound intellectual sixteenth century Scotland produced." He was a republican who wanted to surpass Knox's ideas and replace them with a sophisticated theory that fused the classical ideas of ancient Greece and Rome with Protestantism. According to John Guy, Buchanan's ideal was republican Rome: "He abhorred ideals of 'divine-right' monarchy and he dismissed the kings, popes and emperors of the Middle Ages as charlatans and tyrants". His influence, not just on young James, but on the politics of the next century was enormous.

He was also a nasty and extremely vicious old man. John Guy describes Buchanan's "Detectio Mariæ Reginæ (Detection of Mary Stuart)", as a masterly blending of lies and distorted facts, a work which was, according to Guy, "the most artful piece of character assassination ever devised in Scotland". The effect of this on young James - who was brought up to believe his mother was an adulterous whore who had plotted the death of his father - must have been profound.

PS Buchanan used regularly to read Livy with James' mother, Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary was always kind and courteous to Buchanan; she trusted him, as she did everyone, far too much. Mary does not seem to have benefited much from her studies of Roman history with this tutor, learning very little Latin, history or political wisdom from him. He obviously had little effect on her understanding, but it would seem that she - young, beautiful and generous-hearted as she was - had a great effect on him. Like Knox, George Buchanan hated this joyous and high-spirited young woman with a passion - as indeed he did everything she represented.

Private tutor or not, anyone involved in the education (directly or indirectly) of a young individual cannot fail to have some effect on the finished adult product. If you're asking for specific examples of some teachers who intentionally moulded the finished product and it all worked out as planned then I am sure some can be found, though I would wager none, if examined closely, can be held up as complete jobs. Buchanan is a good example of someone who gave it a good go, with practically no close family parent types being available to the young James Stuart who might contradict his grooming technique, but even then do we ascribe James' almost obsessive clampdown on sodomy when monarch, for example, to Buchanan's influence or to James' revulsion with his own sexual orientation? I'm sure a psychiatrist would find Buchanan in the mix there somewhere, but then a lot of James' own psyche too.

Marcus Aurelius thanked several of his educators in his memoirs, but none more so than Diognetus who, he said, taught him "to avoid passing enthusiasms; to distrust the stories of miracle-workers and impostors about incantations and exorcism of spirits and such things; not to go cock-fighting or to get excited about such sports; to put up with outspokenness; and to become familiar with philosophy" and "to write philosophical dialogues in my boyhood". Marcus learnt to distrust fanciful pronouncements, especially theological ones, and to employ philosophy as a means of staying rational. It seems to have produced a rather level-headed individual at the end of it all, which proved of benefit to far more people than just Marcus Aurelius himself. So that was a job well done then.

Re Seneca - John Harington (he of the "Metamorphosis of Ajax") claimed to have seen much of Elizabeth's "translating of Seneca's wholesome advisings", presumably the "Epistulae Morales", so perhaps even the long-dead need to be considered as influences?

Elizabeth probably owed some of that to her tutor Roger Ascham, one very intelligent innovation on his part being "double translation" which the young Elizabeth apparently enjoyed immensely, whether it be from Latin to Greek and English, or Greek to French and Italian, or any combination of these (plus a little Spanish and a lot of Welsh of course). This exercise demonstrates the caution one should employ when reliant only on one language, and it was a device she would often turn to her advantage when someone presented her with a dictum couched in any one of these languages, which she would then translate immediately back to them to demonstrate that one thought, and indeed one word, can have many interpretations when strained through translation.

Ascham, who maybe was a tad toady so whose praise for Elizabeth might need to be judged in that light, still paid her the highest compliment he could think of afterwards; "She is as intelligent as a man". We actually don't hear much about him after that.

Interestingly the tutor who Elizabeth herself is known to have praised most often was Kat Ashley, her very first teacher who taught her basic alphabet, reading and numeracy skills. Ashley however also introduced her pupil from as young as five to astronomy, geography, history, mathematics, French, Flemish, Italian and Spanish, not to mention needlework, embroidery, dancing, riding, and deportment. The two remained fast friends until 1565 when Kat died.

During Mary's reign Kat spent three months in the Fleet Prison for having "seditious books". She was released when it was demonstrated that none of them were in fact religious tracts, and one indeed was a translation by Elizabeth into French of a Greek translation of Arabic algebra. She was chastised for having induced Lizzie into undertaking such a suspicious exercise, but the magistrates - probably flummoxed by the evidence of two women way more intelligent than themselves - didn't really know how to proceed further and just sent her packing with a promise to stick to English in future. It's hard not to imagine the two women having a good guffaw about that afterwards.

nordmann wrote:

Interestingly the tutor who Elizabeth herself is known to have praised most often was Kat Ashley, her very first teacher who taught her basic alphabet, reading and numeracy skills. Ashley however also introduced her pupil from as young as five to astronomy, geography, history, mathematics, French, Flemish, Italian and Spanish, not to mention needlework, embroidery, dancing, riding, and deportment. The two remained fast friends until 1565 when Kat died.

During Mary's reign Kat spent three months in the Fleet Prison for having "seditious books". She was released when it was demonstrated that none of them were in fact religious tracts, and one indeed was a translation by Elizabeth into French of a Greek translation of Arabic algebra. She was chastised for having induced Lizzie into undertaking such a suspicious exercise, but the magistrates - probably flummoxed by the evidence of two women way more intelligent than themselves - didn't really know how to proceed further and just sent her packing with a promise to stick to English in future. It's hard not to imagine the two women having a good guffaw about that afterwards.

 
That is interesting ... in the numerous retellings of Elizabeth's story, Kat Ashley usually gets demoted to the role of "loyal but simple servant". For example, her prortrayal in the 1970s BBC drama series 'Elizabeth R', which, while generally not taking too many liberties, still has Elizabeth, when held under house arrest by her sister Mary, nearly undone by possible charges of treason, due to the "idle gossip" of Ashley and Elizabeth's other household staff (those few that she was allowed to retain. But from what you say Kat Ashely was more an educated older companion that just some other ladies' maid and was clearly intelligent enough to realise that all her conversations and movements were being recorded by Elizabeth's host/gaoler, Sir William Paulet*, and so she was highly unlikely to compromise either herself or Elizabeth through careless talk.

*EDIT - not Sir William Paulet, but Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, I think, or did I mean Sir Henry Bedingfield ... I'll just have to watch 'Elizabeth R' again.

Ashley's arrest was her second, she had also been caught up in the Thomas Seymour affair and like a lot of people of his acquaintance had been rounded up on suspicion of treason. Ashley however detested the man - especially his "flirting" with her pupil in Woody Allen style which had caused such domestic ructions. A deposition from her pupil confirming that Ashley had frequently advised against any contact with her "step-stepfather" saved her. In fact Ashley had approached Catherine Parr with a report about her new husband's highly sexual advances on the 14 year old girl, probably knowing that this action alone might lead to serious consequences for her and an end to her own relationship with Elizabeth. Hardly "gossip" but a very principled and selfless stand, I'd say.

Interesting stuff. Thank you. And which leads me to wonder then how Kat Ashley had been educated to such a high level.

We don't know - we're not even sure who her parents were. However her maiden name Champernowne has led people to believe she was a Devon lass, daughter of John, lord of Modbury manor. John was a great classicist himself and educated his daughter Joan to a high standard. The snag is that the official relationship between Kat and Joan is aunt and niece, even though Joan's position as lady in waiting in Henry VIII's court obviously predates Kat's later elevation to that office under Elizabeth. Joan was something of a bluestocking herself, confused the matter even more by addressing Kat as "dear sister" in a letter we know of, and then even more by being listed in geneaologies as daughter to Philip Champernowne. The truth is there were probably two Joans and Kat was related to both of them, one as aunt and one probably as cousin or even sister, though depending on which book you read or which geneaology website you consult you can basically take your pick.

Temp probably knows more about them - Philip hailed from Polsloe in Exeter and his son Arthur swapped residencies so he could take over the bigger Dartington Estate in Devon, which again confuses things as Sir John also had held the Dartington Estate prior to swapping it with Thomas Aylworth to avoid confiscation during a period when the family were risking Henry's disfavour. Arthur is officially listed as nephew to Kat, so the whole thing is very confused indeed.

My own bet is with Sir John. His library was renowned, and whether he was Kat's natural father, grandfather or uncle, or even if she ended up there as a ward in his household, and whether she was based in Polsoe or the larger Dartington Estate, this is definitely where she would have picked up a broad education, even if she largely taught herself, as well as her strong Protestant convictions, I reckon. The Champernownes were big into reformation, as the poor sods in Cornwall who tried to reintroduce the Latin bible were to find out in no uncertain terms.

Gilgamesh of Uruk wrote:

Could be a dangerous job - as Seneca found out to his cost.


For the ex-BBC board members - reckon E Nik could have given H. Stottle esq a lesson in how everything good was Hellenic - even the pre-Hellenic things.

Yes, Gil. I had endless discussions with him and he even briefly appeared briefly on the French Passion Histoire under another name and also endless messages in good French then. I asked him straightforwards if it was "him", because I recognized him by his "style".

And living in Thessaloníki near the new emerged ex-Yugoslavian state of Macedonia (FYROM- Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia- he said) he was exalting the old, the new and everything related matter to "his" Greece...

Kind regards, Paul.

Another important tutor who deserves a mention has to be Marcus Antonius Gnipho, and but for some extremely good fortune on his part early in life we might assume the whole of world history could well have panned out some other way. Born in the Roman part of Gaul in the late part of the second century BCE he was "exposed" as a baby - left out on wasteland shortly after birth to die of exposure to the elements. However he was "found" and adopted as a slave by a man we know only as Marcus Antonius (not that one) after whom he was therefore named, and who took him at some point with him to Alexandria. Crucially for global history, Marcus Antonius the owner insisted Marcus Antonius the boy receive an education there - then the single biggest reservoir of knowledge on the planet thanks to its location and its by then renowned libraries.

We don't know what happened Gnipho or his owner immediately afterwards but he turned up alone in Rome in his twenties, apparently now a free man, and landed a job as a tutor to the son of the dictator Marius's brother in law. This however wasn't quite as cushy an appointment as it sounds. Around this point Marius had basically gone stark raving mad, had begun executing people in their thousands who in his paranoia he suspected were plotting against him, had then effectively been brutally deposed by another rather paranoid dictator called Sulla, who had promptly embarked himself on his own, even bloodier, series of killing sprees. Gnipho must have been desperate for work or else steadfastly loyal to his new employers who were right in the firing lines of both despots for various reasons. The family's "pater familias" was indeed murdered by Sulla but they still managed to just about survive the new dictator's regime otherwise intact, complete with live-in tutor too, though desperately reduced in wealth.

The youth he educated through a standard curriculum involving Greek, rhetoric and philosophy, was not ungrateful for Gnipho's show of loyalty. After completing his education, and despite being almost broke, he helped Gnipho set up on his own, buying him a school in Rome.

Gnipho ran a strange school. His personal philosophy in which education was a right and not a luxury meant that he refused to charge fees to his pupils, though willingly took voluntary contributions from them based on what their families could afford. This policy allowed many to receive a free education of very high standard who otherwise could never have afforded it, and so popular was this offer that many "newly made men" and those who just wanted to be, despite their age and lack of funds, enrolled as students along with the children and youths.

That which marked Gnipho out above his rivals was his prowess in teaching rhetoric, then not only an academic discipline but considered essential for anyone even thinking about embarking on a career in public life. And thanks to Suetonius we know one of these wannabe "new men" customers who availed of this service and who never looked back afterwards: "Antonius Gnipho, vir doctus cuius scholam Cicero post laborem fori frequentabat." For the still not wealthy or generally known Cicero it was the equivalent of going to a very reasonably priced night school as a mature student, and there is no doubt that the unconfident yokel nicknamed "chickpea" must have thrived on Gnipho's instruction, so much that he went straight from graduating into a very successful law career, a job completely dependent on impressive oratory, reasoned debate and effective argument, and one that went so well for Cicero it saw him rise in meteoric fashion from bumpkin to senatorial status.

Gnipho's original private student we know also proved himself a dab hand at rhetoric himself in later life, again no doubt thanks to Gnipho's early training, and in fact we also know (from his equally impressive written memoirs) that for many years he was impoverished enough to be forced to survive on his wits and his rhetoric alone - Gaius Julius Caesar.

nordmann wrote:

 
Temp probably knows more about them...

I know no more than you about this interesting woman, nordmann. In fact I know less, as I was quite unaware of the Fleet prison episode.

That other young royal Tudor intellectual, Jane Grey, had a tutor named John Aylmer. He was a precocious young man - a brilliant classicist (weren't they all?) from Cambridge - who at 20 was appointed, in 1541, as chaplain to the Duke of Suffolk and as tutor in Greek to the Duke's alarmingly clever daughter, Jane.

Jane, if we ignore the sentimental Victorian stuff about her, actually had all the makings of a Protestant fanatic, odd given her love for, and extensive knowledge of, Greek philosophy. How much was this, I wonder, due to Aylmer's influence? He later became Bishop of London and he is best remembered for his pronouncement - made, one supposes, without the least trace of irony - that "God is English" (which always reminds me of Henry VIII's dramatic declaration: "I'm the King of England: when I pray, God listens!" Perhaps Aylmer, like Cranmer, sometimes unconsciously confused Henry with the Almighty). Aylmer, when he became a bishop, was notorious for his horribly harsh treatment of those who differed from him on ecclesiastical questions. A worrying influence on a young girl who was already that way inclined herself.

Jane, had she lived and reigned, could possibly have gone down in history as "Bloody Jane", with Mary Tudor being remembered as a Catholic martyr, "Merciful Mary". Who knows? Another great classicist, who tutored both the young Edward VI and Jane, John Cheke, once astutely observed of this clever young girl that it was "impossible to explain compromise to her". That was also true of Mary, of course.

There is also a rumour (not just from lady historical novelists) that the young Aylmer fell in love with his teenage pupil. Jane, unlike Elizabeth with Roger Ascham, would, one supposes, never be flirtatious, but she seems to have had, in her genuine love of scholarship and serious discussion, an affectionate relationship with both young Aylmer and Ascham. There is another story that, in the Tower of London before her execution, Jane would sing (accompanying herself on her lute) not just psalms, but a song with old "pagan" words, a song that had been set to music by William Cornysh. She, Aylmer and Ascham had sung You and I and Amyas together at Bradgate House (the manor that had been her grandfather's home) as they walked there and talked of their common purpose: "...to promote both the advancement of learning and the worship of God in the true way, divested of superstition."

Ah, "the true way" - God help us. I much prefer to ponder the strange, haunting words of the old song than to think about that dangerous avowal of religious intent:

You and I and Amyas,
Amyas and you and I,
To the greenwood must we go, alas,
You and I, my life, and Amyas...

I've tried to find the music, but I can't, but here are other songs from William Cornysh that perhaps Jane and Aylmer knew, including the delightfully titled "Trolly Lolly Loly Lo" (perhaps a bit too frivolous for that serious pair. Ascham would have liked it though).


http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/691b2e05-334b-42c9-b121-defae8f84cb3

Temperance wrote:

Another great classicist, who tutored both the young Edward VI and Jane, John Cheke, once astutely observed of this clever young girl [Jane Grey] that it was "impossible to explain compromise to her".

Edward VI was also tutored by Robert Cox. Cox was yet another Cambridge classicist, a staunch protestant who was involved in writing the Book of Common Prayer. Cox was also a close colleague of Cranmer, who as Archbishop, presumably had the ultimate say in the prince's religious education. Edward, like Elizabeth, was also taught modern languages: French, Spanish and Italian, by Jean Belmain, who as a Huguenot refugee from France was a zealous Calvinist. So between the four of them, Cox, Cheke, Cranmer and Belmain, it is hardly surprising that Edward also turned out to be so uncompromisingly Protestant. Had he lived longer he too might have been remembered as "Bloody" Edward. (And it was Edward's Will, changing the order of succession, which had opened the way for Jane Grey in preference to Mary).

And had both Edward and Jane lived - and married, as was once mooted - well, the mind boggles as to the sort of children they would have produced. Is fanaticism a gene that can be passed on?

Juan Vives was Mary Tudor's tutor. This well-known humanist influenced the princess's early education and Katherine of Aragon invited him to write a general treatise on the education of women. The work he produced had considerable influence on the education of high-born English women throughout the 16th century. An interesting man, whose ideas on the education of girls and of the poor were ahead of his time.

Strongly influenced by Erasmus was Juan Luis Vives, who, though of Spanish origin, spent his life in various parts of Europe—Paris, Louvain, Oxford, London, Bruges. His most significant writings were De institutione foeminae Christianae (1523; “On the Education of a Christian Woman”), De ratione studii puerilis (“On the Right Method of Instruction for Children”), De subventione pauperum (1526; “On Aid for the Poor”), and De tradendis disciplinis (1531; “On the Subjects of Study”).


https://www.britannica.com/biography/Juan-Luis-Vives


In education Vives achieved renown through such works as De ratione studii puerilis (completed 1523; “On the Right Method of Instruction for Children”) and De disciplinis libri XX (1531; “Twenty Books on Disciplines”), in which he advocated the use of the vernacular in schools, argued for the building of academies, and supported the education of women. Perhaps his greatest innovation was to recommend the study of nature for boys, applying the principle of induction from personal inquiry and experience that Erasmus had advocated for the study of Scripture and languages.



Vives also produced, in 1524, a collection of moral axioms and advice explicitly directed to a royal education. Satellitium sive Symbola, which he prefaced with a lengthy epistle to the Princess Mary. This work was later used in the education of both Prince Edward and of the Princess Elizabeth. Mary loved Vives' axioms, and one of her earliest actions when she became queen was to have her Great Seal struck with the legend Veritas temporis filia, a saying taken from Vives' collection.

Vives became May's Latin tutor in 1527, but he fell from favour (Katherine's) because he advised the queen that it would be both unwise and futile to offer resistance to her husband. Vives left England for good in November 1528.

All these thoughtful,  highly educated men and women, steeped in the classics and in theology - yet look at the messes they produced (even Elizabeth, on occasion).

Perhaps common sense is more useful than Plato, Cicero or Livy?

But I suppose Cromwell would aver that the best tutor - even if a long-distance one - was Machiavelli. But then again...

People who try to get Greek philosophy (and sundry other theoretical sciences) sandwiched into their existing religious biases and prejudices under the false science of theology then inevitably blame the philosophers when the whole thing goes predictably pear-shaped afterwards. It's the religious refusal to understand just what conjecture means which has led to a lot of these messes - from creating little ayatollahs like the royal kids above all the way down to blokes like Storr making a harmless few bob out of pointing out the bleeding obvious later regarding false certainties and just how pathological they can be.

So you're right that "common sense" would be a better alternative, if of course such sense also steers one away from prejudicially deciding the answer before the question has even been asked. "Learned" they may have been, and even on a par with Plato et al in terms of intellect, but as theologians they were already streets behind philosophers in terms of intelligence.

Even Thomas More?

              When an hatter
              Will go smatter
In philosophy,
              Or a pedlar
              Were a meddler
In theology,

              All that ensue
              Such craftes new,
They drive so far a cast,
              That evermore
              They do therefore
Beshrew themselves at last.


But I wonder how much influence the tutors really had. Perhaps little - and big - ayatollahs are born, not made.

Henry VIII's tutor was John Skelton. What went wrong there? I blame the mother (Henry's, not Skelton's).

Perhaps the royal tutor who had the most thankless task was poor old Frederick Gibbs, one of several teachers who failed dismally with the young Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales. Edward displayed all the characteristics of the miserable, bored and frustrated child/teenager from a hopelessly dysfunctional family: he threw chairs around the classroom, refused to do any work whatsoever and was a master of dumb insolence. Edward made ADHD into an art form; or was rather what we used to call in the old days a desperately naughty and very unhappy child. Gibbs couldn't cope with his royal pupil at all - but then who could have with mum and dad constantly hovering in the background, waving "educational plans" at one? Nothing worked with young Teddy, and all Albert's "rigorous programmes" came to nothing. Ironically, Edward turned out to be a reasonable monarch, as monarchs go - brilliant diplomat, especially with the French. He coped well with Mad Cousin Willy, too (who was his tutor?). Bit of an alcoholic and sex addict with a serious eating disorder, but otherwise OK.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were determined that their eldest son should have an education that would prepare him to be a model constitutional monarch. At age seven, Edward embarked on a rigorous educational programme devised by Prince Albert   , and supervised by several tutors...

Temperance wrote:

He [Edward] coped well with Mad Cousin Willy, too (who was his tutor?).

From wiki:

Wilhelm II, from six years of age, was tutored and heavily influenced by the 39-year-old teacher Georg Hinzpeter. "Hinzpeter," he later wrote, "was really a good fellow. Whether he was the right tutor for me, I dare not decide. The torments inflicted on me, in this pony riding, must be attributed to my mother."

His mother*, Vicky, was obsessed with his damaged arm. She blamed herself for the child's handicap and insisted that he become a good rider. The thought that he, as heir to the throne, should not be able to ride was intolerable to her. Riding lessons began when Wilhelm was eight and were a matter of endurance for Wilhelm. Over and over, the weeping prince was set on his horse and compelled to go through the paces. He fell off time after time but despite his tears was set on its back again. After weeks of this he finally got it right and was able to maintain his balance.

As a teenager he was educated at Kassel at the Friedrichsgymnasium. In January 1877, Wilhelm finished high school and on his eighteenth birthday received as a present from his grandmother, Queen Victoria, the Order of the Garter [which was nice!]. After Kassel he spent four terms at the University of Bonn, studying law and politics. He became a member of the exclusive Corps Borussia Bonn. Wilhelm possessed a quick intelligence, but this was often overshadowed by a cantankerous temper.

Then as second in line to the throne (after his father) and briefly Crown Prince, he came under the special tuteledge of Bismark. As Kaiser I don't think he acknowledged any intellect other than his own.


*PS - Willikins plight probably wasn't helped by his mother (Vicky, the first child of Victoria and Albert) being academically gifted. From the earliest age she was raised to be bilingual in French and English, and started to learn German at the age of just four. A six years she started formal lessons in arithmatic, geography and history, and just a few years later her father Prince Albert personally started to tutor her in politics and philosophy.

The irony though is that when married to the Prussian Crown Prince, Frederick, he was considered to have dangerously liberal sympathies and so was excluded from most Prussian Government decisions, while she was thought too much an Anglophile, as well of course being a woman. And since Frederick died after just 3 months on the throne, neither she nor her husband ever really managed to exercise their considerable political and diplomatic skills. When her son Willhelm took the throne he forced her into secluded retirement and completely shut her out from speaking publically or having any influence at all.

Both Charlotte and Anne Bronte worked as governesses, of course - and hated every minute of it. Anne Bronte's description of the horrors of the life in her Agnes Grey is particularly nightmarish. There were no Mr Rochesters for Jane or Anne in real life. That said, Anne Bronte made a great impression as an excellent teacher during her time with the Robinson family  (see below). Branwell Bronte, who was tutor to the son of the family, also made a great impression - or so we are told - on the aptly named Mrs Robinson. But there is more to that "affair" than meets the eye.


Anne obtained a second post as governess to the children of the Reverend Edmund Robinson and his wife Lydia, at Thorp Green Hall, a comfortable country house near York. Anne was employed at Thorp Green Hall from 1840 to 1845. The house appeared as Horton Lodge in her novel Agnes Grey. Anne had four pupils: Lydia, aged 15, Elizabeth, aged 13, Mary, aged 12, and Edmund, aged 8. Initially, she encountered similar problems as she had experienced at Blake Hall (her first position). Anne missed her home and family, commenting in a diary paper in 1841 that she did not like her situation and wished to leave it. Her quiet, gentle disposition did not help. However, despite her outwardly placid appearance, Anne was determined and with experience, made a success of her position, becoming well liked by her employers.

Chalotte wrote of her misery as the almost-invisible governess in her letters. Her solitude, intellectual frustration and her anger are revealed in barbs directed at her employers and pupils: 'I will only ask you to imagine the miseries of a reserved wretch like me - thrown at once into the midst of a large Family - proud as peacocks and wealthy as Jews,' she writes to Ellen Nussey from her first situation, spikily characterising her employer thus: 'Mrs Sidgwick is generally considered an agreeable woman - so she is I daresay in general Society - her health is sound - her animal spirits are good - consequently she is cheerful in company - but O Ellen does this compensate for the absence of every fine feeling of every gentle - and delicate sentiment?'


Bonnie G. Smith summarizes the misery of life as a governess in her Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700:

The governess in the nineteenth century personified a life of intense misery. She was also that most unfortunate individual; the single, middle-class woman who had to earn her own living. Although being a governess might be a degradation, employing one was a sign of culture and means . . . The psychological situation of the governess made her position unenviable. Her presence created practical difficulties within the Victorian home because she was neither a servant nor a member of the family. She was from the social level of the family, but the fact that she was paid a salary put her at the economic level of the servants.


Jane Austen has Jane Fairfax (in Emma) comparing the "governess trade" to the slave trade.

..."Excuse me, ma'am, but this is by no means my intention: I make no inquiry myself, and should be sorry to have any made by my friends. When I am quite determined as to the time, I am not at all afraid of being long unemployed. There are places in town, offices, where inquiry would soon produce something - offices for the sale, not quite of human flesh, but of human intellect."

"Oh! my dear, human flesh! You quite shock me; if you mean a fling at the slave trade, I assure you Mr. Suckling was always rather a friend to the abolition."

"I did not mean - I was not thinking of the slave-trade," replied Jane; "governess-trade, I assure you, was all that I had in view; widely different, certainly, as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to the greater misery of the victims, I do not know where it lies. But I only mean to say that there are advertising offices, and that by applying to them I should have no doubt of very soon meeting with something that would do."



The life was not quite like this:

PS

Twenty years after the publication of Agnes Grey Lady Amberly commented that "I should like to give it to every family with a governess and shall read it through again when I have a governess to remind me to be human."


Nursery crimes, anyone?

There are places to go - thus said Jane Fairfax. I think Queens College London began as a hostel for governesses between jobs. Later with tuition  added it evolved. Must look it up. It was a tough option for an educated girll and probably lonely in the social sense of belonging  somewhere mid-stairs. Male tutors may not have been resident. I asume Lord Mountjoy tutoring Henry V111 did not live in?

I was just about to say it, Temp, and your second post above confirms it. The Brontës' depictions of life as a governess caused a bit of a kerfuffle at the time akin to "exposé" journalism today in the popular media, and it fuelled a sort of consciousness awareness, especially among women, which eventually led to an early form of union for governesses in that agencies were set up which voluntarily ran a limited "welfare fund" for out-of-work members, which for many women deemed too old to continue in the profession (over 40 being the norm) the only thing that kept them from death's door.

Though in literary terms it had something of an opposite effect. Following the Brontës' stories' popularity a whole new genre of 19th century "chick lit" sprang up - a surprising amount of it written by men - in which the governess became the protagonist in stories that inevitably portrayed them in one of two ways. Either rescued from poverty by a male employer a la Prince Charming, or the evil seductress whose shenanigans almost ruin the male character (until he is miraculously rescued by a virtuous alternative). By the 20th century the genre had expanded to include gothic horror and fantasy, in other words the staple framework was now sufficiently established to be perverted into alternatives as diverse as "The Turn Of The Screw" or even "Mary Poppins".

What was generally absent from all this popular literature however - even that of the Brontës - was a narrative centred on their actual work with their charges, and plots which traced or examined their power and influence in the creation of young adults for whom often the only emotional contact with an adult during formative years, not to mention of course instructive learning, was with these women. Given that many of these were from upper middle class roots or higher in society a significant proportion of people whose emotional and intellectual capacities had been forged through private tuition must have ended up in positions of power with global implications. Literature, and indeed psychological study, has long tackled this with respect to boarding and public school education, but not that of the largely female-populated world of "home schooling".

And to a huge extent that world has now vanished into history - so we'll probably never really know.

EDIT: Crossed posts, P. Hostels for unemployed governesses were a whole other thing - little far removed from workhouses in how they ran. Though if Queens was set up after the 1840s it may have benefited from legislation whereby employers of governesses and private tutors paid into a welfare fund administered by the agencies for their upkeep.

Around 1910, a beautiful elder sister of my father -   then the youngest after thought in a large family - Lydia became the live-in music tutor in  the huge pile of an ancient, famous and noble House. The youngest son of the enobled one eloped with her to Italy - where, so the tale goes, she sang in opera and kept him. But when she fell ill he abandoned her. Eventually our family found out that she died there in poverty. Fifty years later I was friendly with a young woman abroad and when I leaned that she was a RT Hon of the noble family, told her the tale. It had clearly been washed from their history........... she was both shocked and angry (horror at a near miss relationship, probably) and she never spoke to me again.

My own family has some great skeletons in its cupboards, and there isn't one of us who doesn't like wheeling them out (even better when we find new ones). But I assume "noble" families have more to lose when the old bones and dirty washing are circulated for inspection, so tend to default to "clam up" mode immediately when they think they hear a cupboard door creak open.

Prince Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, the son of King James I of England, had Sir George Lauder of the Bass as a tutor. Henry was tutored in music by Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger. Adam Newton was Henry's tutor in England.