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Updated: June 15, 2025
All this was very un-English: truly I was in a foreign land. The morrow made me further acquainted with Mrs. Sweeny. It seems she had introduced herself to her present employer as an English lady in reduced circumstances: a native, indeed, of Middlesex, professing to speak the English tongue with the purest metropolitan accent. She received Mrs. Sweeny as nursery-governess to her three children.
Her letters to her husband had been written by her nursery-governess, engaged ostensibly to instruct the children; but in reality to act as amanuensis for the lady of the house.
While I hesitated what reply to give the girl awaiting my decision, I caught the sound of soft weeping from the top of this staircase, and presently beheld the figure of a young woman coming slowly down, clad in coat and hat and giving every evidence both in dress and manner of leaving for good. It was Miss Graham, a young woman who held the position of nursery-governess to the child.
Then followed her experiences as nursery-governess, her evening lessons under self-selected masters, and her ultimate rise to a higher grade among the teaching sisterhood. Next came another epoch. To the mansion in which she was engaged returned a truant son, between whom and the heroine an attachment sprang up.
Next day there was no wind, though it was still intensely cold, with a dull grey cloud threatening snow over the whole sky; but it was time for her to be up and doing, and she went out to seek for employment. She wandered about in a somewhat aimless way, until, in the Ladbroke Grove Road, she found a servants' registry-office, and went in to apply for a place as nursemaid or nursery-governess.
Maybright taught the girls herself, and the boys had a rather frightened-looking nursery-governess, who often was seen to rush from the school-room dissolved in tears; but was generally overtaken half-way up the avenue by two small figures, nearly throttled by two pairs of repentant little arms, while eager lips vowed, declared, and vociferated, that they would never, never be naughty again that they would never tease their own sweet, sweetest of Miss Wilsons any more.
If she had been Swiss, and so able to speak three languages incorrectly, she might have found a place as nursery-governess; as it was, the people in the registry offices grew tired of her and she was afraid to go to them too often. There was little for her to do in the house.
Mary had a tender, strong pity from the earliest age for the down-at-heel, over-burdened stepmother, which lightened her own load, as did the vicarious, motherly love which came to her for each succeeding fat baby. Mary was nurse and nursery-governess to all the family. Wistaria Terrace had one great recompense for its humble and hidden condition.
A prudent investment of the eight hundred pounds might, by this arrangement, feed, clothe, and in some sort educate Martha, Isabel, and Monica. To see thus far ahead sufficed for the present; fresh circumstances could be dealt with as they arose. Alice obtained a situation as nursery-governess at sixteen pounds a year.
Grundy, was Branwell's friend, and he missed it. Mrs. Oliphant ranges herself with Mr. Grundy and George Henry Lewes. But Charlotte's fun was soon over, and she became a nursery-governess again at Mrs. White's, of Rawdon. Anne was with Mrs. Robinson, at Thorp Green. Emily was at Haworth, alone. That was in eighteen-forty-one.
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