The Life of the Governess Continued: Agnes Porter

by Lauren Gilbert

The Governess

As we’ve already seen, governesses were a necessary feature in upper class households with children. The position came to be regarded as oppressive, socially ambiguous and somehow shameful. This is especially true of the Victorian era, when middle class and tradesman families who had acquired new wealth wanted governesses for their children as a sign of their new status (and to help their children move into a higher social sphere). In many ways, this created a new tension in that, at the same time, there was a plethora of unattached gentlewomen seeking employment who went to work for people whom they might never have considered a social equal. Within the household, a governess had the social strain of being kept “in her place” combined with the need to provide their female students with less intellectual stimulation and more accomplishments, creating a singularly isolated and intellectually arid situation. This is the situation from which JANE EYRE and her like was born. Miss Trimmer (see my previous post HERE.) and Miss Agnes Porter, today’s subject, had the advantage of being from an earlier generation. They grew up at a time when education for girls was not as restricted (even if only in their reading) and worked at a time when governesses were employed primarily by the aristocracy, so the issue of rank was already settled.

Fortunately, Agnes Porter left diaries and letters, which give us an opportunity to learn about her working life. However, we do not have as much personal detail as we could wish. Ann Agnes Porter was born on June 18, sometime around 1750-52 (exact year unknown) in Edinburgh, the oldest of 4 children (she had 2 sisters and a brother; her brother died young). Her father was Francis Porter, born about 1718. His parents having died when he was young, he was apprenticed at age 12 under his uncle, a woolendraper in Great Yarmouth. Although he completed his apprenticeship, he apparently had different ambitions; by 1750, he was an ordained Anglican clergyman living in Edinburgh and married to a woman named Elizabeth (maiden name unknown but of apparently better connections) and beginning his own family. It is important to note that, despite his beginnings in trade, by becoming a clergyman and marrying a woman of somewhat better status, he raised himself up to a higher social level. This allowed his daughters to be considered gentlewomen, an important consideration.

Although Mr. Porter does not seem to have held a permanent living for most of his career, he performed marriages and services and apparently continued his studies. Despite the fact he and his family seem to have relocated to Chelsea near London by about 1763, Francis Porter was awarded a Doctor of Divinity degree by Edinburgh University in 1765. He had also benefited from a series of inheritances from aunts, first in 1757, again in 1764 and again in 1765, inheriting money and property in Great Yarmouth, among other benefits. The family remained in the Chelsea-London area until about 1770. In 1778, he was given his own living at Wroughton, Wiltshire, as vicar. He died March 28, 1782 at Wroughton, living his widow and 3 daughters.

We know nothing of the education of Agnes and her sisters. There is no indication that she or her sisters were sent away to school; there is a strong probability they were educated at home. We don’t know what benefits Mr. Porter’s inheritances may have afforded the family prior to his death. As a clergyman, particularly one pursuing his own education, one assumes there were books in the households in which they lived. There is an indication that Agnes and her youngest sister Fanny were in Boulogne, France, for some time as girls; certainly, Agnes spoke respectable French as an adult. At some point, she must have had music lessons, as she played the piano and the harpsichord and sang. It is apparent she read widely, had an inquiring mind, and acquired the usual skills: the use of the globes (celestial and terrestrial), drawing, geography, etc.

Agnes spent some time in the household of a wealthy family named Ramey in Great Yarmouth. John Ramey, head of the household, may have been a friend or acquaintance of her father. She may have been in the household for at least part of the time as Mrs. Ramey’s companion, and was there at the time her father died in 1782. There is no indication of what happened to the property Mr. Porter had inherited in Great Yarmouth; he left little to his surviving family and, as the widow of a clergyman, Mrs. Porter had to leave the house that had come with the living. From this point, it was apparent that Agnes was going to have to support herself and her mother. Her first known position as a governess was in the household of a family named Goddard with several daughters later in 1782, which was located in Swindon, not far from Wroughton. She stayed there a short time, before moving on to the household of the 2nd Earl of Ilchester in January of 1784. She was then in her early thirties. Her salary was 100 pounds per year and she was provided with comfortable rooms of her own, including the use of a parlour.

Lord Ilchester’s family was wealthy and related to Lord Holland and Charles James Fox, one of the strong Whig families. Despite this, his wife and children spent most of their time at Redlynch in Somerset, rather than in London or at other more imposing estates. Lady Ilchester was the daughter of an Irish gentleman, and apparently the marriage was a love match. At the time Agnes Porter joined their household, Lord and Lady Ilchester had 3 daughters, and her arrival occurred just before the birth of a 4th daughter. Lady Ilchester, by all accounts, was a warm-hearted person who preferred life in the country with her children, and Agnes Porter became very attached to her. It appears that Miss Porter and Lady Ilchester became friends. A son and 2 more daughters were born. Sadly, Lady Ilchester died in June of 1790, shortly after the birth of her 6th daughter. Agnes Porter had the teaching of and a great deal of the care of the children. Lord Ilchester was involved with his children, particularly the older ones, taking them on visits from home and to his London home during the season.

Miss Porter’s teaching style seems to have been less reliant on learning by rote than by experience, reward and making the lessons fun. She heard their prayers and their lessons, took them for walks, supervised their play and read with them. This could involve a day lasting up to 16 hours, and occurred every day. Having an affectionate relationship with their mother and fondness for the children must have made things much easier for Miss Porter and the family (unlike the periodic tensions between Selina Trimmer and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and Elizabeth, the 2nd duchess). After the death of Lady Ilchester, Miss Porter was even more involved with the day-to-day care of the younger children. She genuinely liked teaching. She was also a sympathetic friend to the two older girls who were growing up and no longer required teaching as much as guidance.

During this time, Miss Porter was able to see friends, especially when in London. Her youngest sister Fanny Richards (who had married a clergyman) visited her at Redlynch. She sent money to her mother and younger sister Elizabeth, who lived with Mrs. Porter. She also corresponded with her sister Fanny. Agnes wrote and published a book of children’s stories in 1791. However, despite the many advantages of her position, she worried about her mother and wanted to spend more time with her which was difficult. She visited when she could, and was concerned about her mother’s health. Agnes was there multiple times in 1791, and again in July of 1792, when she paid her mother’s debts and arranged for more care for her (sister Elizabeth was apparently not a reliable caregiver, which added to Agnes’ worries). She was also anxious about an indigent old age, despite Lord Ilchester’s promise of an annuity of 30 pounds per year. She hoped for a marriage, and a home of her own, as that offered the most security.

In 1794, one of Lord Ilchester’s older daughters, Mary, married Thomas Talbot and moved with him to his home Penrice Castle in Wales. This was a wrench, as Lady Mary and Miss Porter were friends. They did however engage in correspondence. On June 8, 1794, Miss Porter’s beloved mother died. Then, in August of 1794, Lord Ilchester married again, to his cousin Maria Digby, a much younger woman. Although Miss Porter tried to be optimistic, the new Lady Ilchester did not warm to Miss Porter, apparently uncomfortable with Miss Porter’s affectionate relationship with her stepchildren. The birth of a son two years later to Lord and Lady Ilchester only exacerbated the tension, culminating in Miss Porter’s determination to leave the position in 1796, although restricted by her situation (where to go?). Fortunately, a friend, Mrs. Upchur, offered Miss Porter 100 pounds per year to come as companion, so Miss Porter was able to give her notice to Lord Ilchester, who was distressed to lose her. She moved in with Mrs. Upchur in September of 1797. She was in her mid forties and had been with them over a decade.

In March 1799, Mrs. Upchur died, leaving Agnes 100 pounds. Later in 1799, her friend and former pupil Lady Mary Talbot, now a mother herself, invited Miss Porter to come to Penrice to teach her children, also offering 100 pounds per year. This gave Miss Porter the opportunity to return to a country household with a congenial mistress and a second generation of children to teach. She remained with the family until she retired in 1806. Lord Ilchester had died in 1802, but he left many debts and an unclear will, so it took much time for the promised annuity to be paid. At some point in 1808, the payment of the annuity finally became reliable.

Fortunately, the Talbots continued to pay her 30 pounds per year after her retirement and she was able to go live with her married sister Fanny and her brother-in-law in Fairford, Gloucestershire. She periodically returned to Penrice to help out, and also visited London and Norfolk. At some point, she decided to leave her sister’s home (there is a suggestion that her brother-in-law’s evangelical beliefs were not compatible with her beliefs, and particularly her fondness for cards). Ultimately, she spent the last few years of her life comfortably in lodgings in Bruton, a happy situation near Redlynch where she had acquaintance and was able to enjoy a social life. Agnes maintained her correspondence with Lady Mary Talbot until she passed away in February 1814, in her early 60’s. She left approximately 2000 pounds, which she had settled with a will written in 1813, benefiting her sister Fanny and some cousins, and leaving a few other bequests.

Agnes Porter’s diaries give us many insights to her life and activities as a governess that we do not have with Selina Trimmer. She acknowledged herself as plain, but she retained her intellectual curiosity and strove to learn. She read books about education, tried to teach herself Latin, German and Italian, and continued to read widely during her life. She clearly had positions in the Ilchester and Talbot homes that allowed her privacy and a certain amount of freedom and paid her decently, allowing her to support her mother and to save something for herself. In spite of this, she was dogged by the uncertainty of her situation and the fear of being alone and poor in her old age. Throughout her career, as successful and satisfying as it was in many ways, Agnes Porter wanted to be married. She had her hopes raised and disappointed more than once well into her middle years. It’s no wonder that, after Lord Ilchester’s death, she pursued her annuity until it was resolved and paid regularly.


The information here is from the following sources:

Brandon, Ruth. GOVERNESS The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres. 2008: Walker Publishing Co., New York, NY.

Martin, Joanna, ed. A GOVERNESS IN THE AGE OF JANE AUSTEN The Journals and Letters of Agnes Porter. 1998: The Hambledon Press, London, England.

I highly recommend both books. Unfortunately, I found no portrait of Miss Porter in the public domain.


Image: The Governess by Emily Mary Osborne, 1860. Wikimedia Commons. HERE

Lauren Gilbert lives in Florida with her husband.  Her first published work, HEYERWOOD: A Novel, was released in 2011.  Her second novel, working title A RATIONAL ATTACHMENT in in process.  Visit her website HERE for more information.

Poison - hidden weapon of the Tudor wife

by Deborah Swift

The population of early modern England regarded poisoning as the most cowardly and unsporting method of murder:

of all murders poisoning is ye worst and most horrible 1. because it is secrett 2 because it is not to be prevented 3 because it is most against nature and therefore most hainous 4 it is alsoe a cowardly thing                                                                                  ~Sir John Coke

17th century poison cabinet or cunning woman's book

In 1663 Mary Bell was accused of killing her husband - six years earlier she had put poison into his food. This demonstrates one of the difficulties of poisoning - that it is an 'invisible' crime. Poison is a unique method of murder because it allows no self-defence, no chance for the victim to understand what is happening, and is often done secretly over a long time frame. Because poisoning involved planning and was done in cold-blood, it was perfect for those without social power. 

The servant classes, women and the weak were always the prime suspects in poisoning cases. Poisoning was a skill often linked to witchcraft - akin to the mixing of potions and charms. It was considered almost exclusively a wife's weapon because her main duty was to provision the house, and she alone was in charge of the cooking. Poison has always been linked with femininity.

In Tudor and Stuart England poisoning a husband or employer was seen as a kind of petty treason. This is because it challenged the husband's superiority, masculinity and domestic power. Men had a huge fear of being poisoned by their wives, but in actual fact there were very few cases. The cases that did come to light received enormous publicity, and poisoning was often featured in chapbooks of the time. In 1677 a pamphlet records a sixteen year old girl who admitted to poisoning her mother. Much was made of her treasonous behaviour, her cold-blood, her malice and wickedness, blurring the lines between witchcraft and murder.

Aqua Tofana, a poison, was known in Italy as 'inheritance powder' - a tool used by rich wives to murder their husbands. Supposedly Mozart died of Aqua Tofana poisoning. 

Right up until the Victorian era women had no legitimate outlet for violence in this society where men carried guns and swords and were allowed to use them in anger or to defend themselves from another's violent attack. Men's violence was seen as hot, the result of choler and anger; women's as cold, the result of bile and bitterness. Women could be beaten, within the law, but had little chance of retribution.

Men feared being poisoned because women were seen as harbouring a wickedness (thanks to Eve) that was waiting to erupt. In 1654 Jane Scales was supposed to have poisoned her baby. She said she had fed the baby sugar, but after the baby grew ill and died, the white powder was believed to be something far more sinister. Although she had no credible motive, she was found guilty, and the motive was malice or random wickedness.

The threat of the maidservant was equivalent to that of the wife. Resentful servants such as Liddy Wilson poisoned a whole household with ratsbane. Ratsbane was a common poison in this period, as was henbane, monk's blood, nightshade and arsenic. 

A 17th century peddler hawking his apothecary's wares

Poison was easy to obtain - there were no regulations governing its purchase, and many plants could be found wild. It was very difficult to detect once ingested, leading to physicians searching for 'signs' through an external examination. 'Signs' included altered skin colour, vomiting, strange bruising of the skin, even bleeding wounds. In 1662 the first autopsy to discover poison was performed on Anne Mennin by David Shevell and Charles Clerke. What the actual evidence was is not on record, but they pronounced that they had found 'the poison'. Nightshade berries perhaps?

In the case of Mary Bell, where it took six years to come to a verdict - the extra evidence was supplied by witnesses. Often witnesses were the main form of evidence. Margaret Armestronge said that the chickens ate Mary Bell's husband's vomit and they promptly keeled over and died. Such tales to bolster the evidence were very common and taken as tangible proof.

Because there was such fear of poison, the prevention and cure of poisoning was big business in Tudor and Stuart England. It was quite common to have mistakenly eaten poisonous roots, fungi or herbs, and physicians often diagnosed poison as the cause in the event that the patient deteriorated and their cures failed to produce better health. Add to this the nation's fear of poisoning, and you have a large market for peddling a cure.

Weird cures involved unicorn horn and Bezoar stones. A Bezoar stone (often from the Far East) was like a gallstone from the intestines of  a llama, goat or stag. The stone was said to detect and cure poison, and the stones were mounted like a jewel on a chain and dipped into drinks to counter the effects of poison. Queen Elizabeth I kept a Bezoar stone 'sett in golde hanging at a little Bracelett … The most parte of this stone being spent' implying that the Queen used it well.

17thC Bezoar stone mounted in gold

Needless to say, I shan't be dunking one of those in my morning coffee!

Sources

Murder in Shakespeare's England by Vanessa McMahon

The Recipes Project - cures for poison 

A Blast From the Past - Mike Dash's blog 

Early Modern England - Sharpe

chat to me on twitter @swiftstory

www.deborahswift.com

Aphra Behn ~ Audacious Playwright and Spy for King Charles II

by Diane Scott Lewis

Though the seventeenth century is not my usual area of study, in my continued search for early feminists, to satisfy the naysayers who insist that women never sought rights before the twentieth century, I came across an interesting subject—the first English professional female literary writer.

Aphra Behn (nee Johnson) was born in 1640, presumably near Canterbury. Little is known about her early life or education. Her father might have been a barber, yet Mr. Johnson was purported to be related to Francis, Lord Willoughby who commissioned him as lieutenant general of Surinam in 1663. Aphra may have traveled with him to Surinam where she met an African slave leader, whose story formed the basis for one of her most famous works, Oroonoko. Her father died soon after, and she returned to England. All this is still conjecture.

Though no records survive, she supposedly married a Mr. Behn in 1664, who conveniently died in 1665. However, it’s been suggested that she never married at all and took on the guise of a Mrs. for propriety’s sake.

She apparently had a Catholic upbringing—she once commented she was meant to be a nun—and had numerous Catholic connections, during a time of extreme anti-Catholic sentiments. She was a monarchist and held a deep sympathy for the Stuarts, and was dedicated to the restored King Charles II.

Charles II

In 1666, Aphra became attached to the court, possibly through the influence of Thomas Culpepper. After the Second Anglo-Dutch War broke out between England and the Netherlands, she was recruited as a political spy (66-67). She was to establish an intimacy with a regicide’s son, and report on the doings of English exiles who plotted against the King.

Her code name was Astrea, a name under which she later published several writings. But the King was notoriously late in paying her, and she served a stint in debtor’s prison. By 1669 an undisclosed source paid her debts and she was released from prison.

After that, Aphra seems to have given up on espionage. To earn money, she began to work for the theatre, the King’s Company, as a scribe. Poetry was her forte by this time, and she cultivated the friendships of many poets as well as playwrights. Her first performed play, The Forc’d Marriage, was produced in 1670. The play was a popular and financial success. This was followed by The Amorous Prince in 1671. In her works, she ranted against women being forced to marry. She also used her increasingly comedic plays to lampoon the Whig-controlled parliament, especially for denying the King funds.

In 1677, her most successful play, The Rover, was produced. Nell Gwyn, famed actress and mistress to the King, came out of retirement to play the lead.

Aphra’s plays became more and more sexually risqué, and she was accused of being a libertine. This perception was reinforced by her friendship with the Earl of Rochester who was infamous for his sexual escapades.

Her success in the theatre incited envy, and a woman in a traditionally male profession was vulnerable to attack. But Aphra continued writing. Her plays were generally popular, but her contemporaries criticized her for their rampant sexual content. Alexander Pope wrote of her:

The stage how loosely does Astræea tread,
Who fairly puts all characters to bed.

Her play, Like Father, Like Son, written in 1682, was a huge flop. The manuscript no longer survives, but Aphra was arrested for a libelous prologue. She was soon released. When the Company where she worked merged with another, playwriting grew non-profitable for her. She now turned to other forms of writing.

Her first book of poetry, Poems Upon Several Occasions, was published in 1684. She also published in 1684 Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister, a Roman à clef  loosely based on a contemporary affair, and she became a pioneer of the epistolary novel. Both works were enormously popular.

Charles II died in 1685 and was succeeded to the throne by his brother, the Duke of York, as James II. Aphra wrote a few plays after this, but in 1688 she penned the short novel for which she is chiefly known: Oroonoko, the story of a noble slave and his tragic love. It was the first English work in print to express sympathy for slaves—and it became an instant success.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 dethroned James II, the king Aphra supported. By this time she was quite ill. Her own descriptions of her malady, and cruel contemporaries’ vilifications, suggest she had severe rheumatoid arthritis.

She died on April 16, 1689, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey, where her stone still rests today in Poets' Corner — a huge honor for a woman playwright in the late seventeenth-century. 　

The first person ever to earn a living completely from her writing, Aphra Behn defied the system despite controversy, and lived a life outside the expected boundaries.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

My newest release is a romantic satire/farce that features a spitfire heroine who defies the limitations of the eighteenth century: The Defiant Lady Pencavel.

For more strong fictional women of the past, visit my website to check out my novels:

http://www.dianescottlewis.org


Sources:

O'Donnell, Mary Ann. "Aphra Behn: The Documentary Record."
The Cambridge Companion to Aphra Behn. Cambridge: CUP, 2004.
Blashfield, E. W. "Aphra Behn." Portraits and Backgrounds. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1917.
Salzman, Paul. "Chronology." Aphra Behn. Oxford University Press, 1994.