THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 15, 20 September 1842, Page 4

THE SCHOOLMISTRESS ABROAD.

IIY THOMAS noon.

The following 1 is ;i pleasant specimen of the epistolary style of a perfect governess —abroad for the first time :

“ My dear Miss Parfitt, ' • Under the protection of a superintending Providence, we have arrived safely at this place, which, as you know, is a seaport in the Dutch dominions— chief city Amsterdam. “ For your amusement and improvement, I did hope to compose a of our contimental progress, with such references to Gutlnie and the School Atlas, as mighty enable you to trace our course on the map of Europe. But unexpected vicissitudes of mind and body have totally incapacitated me for the pleasing task. Some social evening hereafter, I may entertain our little juvenile circle with my locomotive miseries and disagreeables; but, at present, my nerves and feelings arc too discomposed for the correct flow of an epistolary correspondence. Indeed, from the Tower Stairs to Rotterdam, I have been in one universal tremor and perpetual blush. Such shocking scenes and positions, that make one ask, twenty times a day, is this decorum ? can this, can this he morals ? But I must not anticipate. Suffice it that, as foreign travelling, it is my painful conviction, founded on personal experience, that a woman of delicacy or refinement cannot go out of England without going out of herself!

The very first step from an open boat up a windy ship side, is an alarm of modesty, exposed, as one is, to the officious, hut odious, attentions of the Tritons of the Thames. Nor is the steam-boat itself a sphere for the preservation of self-respect, if there is any feature on which a British female justly prides herself, it is a correct and lady-like carriage. Chapone, Mrs. Hannah More, and other writers on the subject. But how—let me ask—how is a deportment to be maintained, when one has to skip and straddle over cables, ropes, and other nautical hors d’ouvres —t# scramble up and down impracticable stairs, and clamber into inaccessible beds ? Not to name the sudden losing one’s centre of gravity, and falling in all sorts of unstudied attitudes on a sloppy and slippery deck; an accident that, I may say, reduces the elegant and the awkward female to the same level. You will he concerned, therefore, to learn that poor Miss Ruth had a fall, and in an unbecoming posture, particularly distressing—namely, by losing her footing on the cabin flight, and coming down, with a destructive launch, into the steward’s pantry. “ For my own part, it has never happened to me, within my remembrance, to make a false step, or to miss a stair; there is a certain guarded carriage that preserves one from such sprawling denouemens —hut, of course, what the hard calls * the poetry of motion,’ is not to be preserved amidst the extempore rollings of an ungovernable ship. Indeed, within the last twenty-four hours, 1 have had to perform feats of agility more fit for a monkey than one of my own sex and species. Par example! getting down from a bed as high as the copy-book cupboard, and, what really is awful, with the sensation of groping about with your feet and legs for a floor that seems to have no earthly existence. I may add, the cabin-door left a-jar, and exposing you to the gaze of an obtrusive cabinboy, as he is called, but quite enough for a man. Oh, je ne jamais !

“ As to the mer maladie, delicacy forbids the details ; but, as Miss Ruth says, it is the height of human degradation; and, to add to the climax of our letting down, we had to give way to the most humiliating impulses in the presence of several of the rising generation—dreadfully rude little girls, who had too evidently enjoyed a bad bringing up.

“ To tell the truth, your poor governess was shockingly indisposed. Not that I had indulged my appetite at dinner, being too much disgusted with a public meal in promiscuous society; and, as might be expected, elbows on table, eating with knives, and even picking teeth with forks! And then no grace, which assuredly ought to be said both before and after, whether we arc to retain the blessing or not. But a dinner at sea, and a dinner at school, where we have even our regular beef and butter days, are two very different things. Then to allude to indiscriminate conversation, a great part of which is in a foreign language, and accordingly places one in the cruel position of hearing, without understanding a word of, the most libertine and atheistical sentiments. Indeed, I fear I have been too often smiling complacently, not to say engagingly, when I ought rather to have been flashing with virtuous indignation, or even administering the utmost severity of moral reproof. I did endeavour, in one instance, to rebuke indelicacy; but, unfortunately, from standing near the funnel, was smutty all the while I was talking; and, as school experience confirms, it is impossible to command respect with a black on one’s nose.

“ Another of our cardinal virtues, personal cleanliness, is totally impracticable on shipboard ; but, without particularising, I will only name a general sense of grubbiness; and, as to dress, a rumpled and tumbled tout ensemble, strongly indicative of the low and vulgar pastime of rolling down Greenv/icli Hill! And, then, in

such a costume to land in Holland, where the natives get up the linen with a perfection and purity, as Mis#Ruth says, quite worthy of the primeval ages! That, surely, is bad enough —but, to have one’s trunks rummaged like a suspected menial —to sec all the little secrets of the toilette, and all the mysteries of a ft,male wardrobe exposed to the searching gaze of a male official! —Oh, shocking ! shocking ! “ In short, my dear, it is my candid impression, as regards forifgn travelling, that, except for a masculine tally-hoying female, of the Di Veruon genus, it is hardly adapted to our sex. Of this, at least, I am certain, that none hut a born romp and hoyden, or a girl accustomed to those new-fangled pulley-hauley exercise, the Calisthenics, is fitted for the hoisting evolutions of a sea voyage. And yet there are creatures calling themselves women, not to say ladies, who will undertake such long marine passages as to Bombay, in Asia, or New York, in the New World. Consult Arrowsmith for the geographical degrees.

“ Affection, however, demands the sacrifice of my own personal feelings, as my brother and my sister are still inclined to prosecute a continental tour. 1 forgot to tell you that, during the voyage, Miss Ruth endeavoured to parlcz Francais with some of the foreign ladies, but as they did not understand her, they must all have been Germans.

“My paper warns to conclude. I rely on your superintending vigilance for the preservation of domestic order in my absence. The horticultural department I need not recommend to your care, knowing your innate partiality for the offspring of Flora; and the dusting of the fragile ornaments in the drawing-room you will assuredly not trust to any hands but your own. Blinds down, of course—the front gate locked regularly at five p.m.; and I must particularly beg of your musical penchant a total abstinence on Sundays from the pianoforte. And now adieu. The Rev. T. C. desires his compliments to you, and Miss Ruth adds her kind regards, with which, believe me, my dear Miss Parfitt, your affectionate friend and preceptress, “ PIIISCILLA CIIANE. “ P. S.—l have just overheard a lady describing, with strange levity, an adventure that befel her at Cologne. A foreign postman, invading her sleeping apartment, and not only delivering her a letter on her pillow, hut actually staying to receive his money, and to give her the change. And she laughed, and called him her bed-post. Fi done ! Fi done /”