Nurses and Governesses; surrogate parenting

'Parents were aware that the child could be a nuisance, and a whole hedge of servants, in addition to the complex guardianship of nursery and schoolroom, was necessary, not so much to aid the infant as to screen him off from his father and mother, except on such occasions as he could be used by then as adjunct, toy or decoration.'
(Osbert Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand! An autobiography, 1943, Vol. 1, p.92)

John Sargent, The Sitwell Family, 1900 (Wikipedia)
Edith, Sir George, Lady Ida, Sacheverell, Osbert

Though family life began to be, as it were, fashionable, in the 19th century, many parents did not, in fact, spend a lot of time actually with their children.
In the 19th century large households gradually developed a complete suite of rooms set aside for the children and their servants, usually at the top of the house.  Kenneth Clarke, born 1903, describes his as: 'behind a green baize door on the edge of the servants' wing.' (Kenneth Clark, Another Part of the Wood, 1974)

There would normally be a night nursery, a day nursery, possibly a schoolroom, and often all this plus bathrooms, scullery, governess's room and sick room, also used as a bedroom for visiting children.  This was the arrangement at Bear Wood, built 1865-74.  The owner, John Wood, proprietor of The Times  newspaper, eventually had thirteen children to fill this complex.
(Mark Girouard, The Victorian Country House, 1979, p.263-272)

Although parents were officially the ultimate authority, the nurses or governesses who took care of children most of the time would obviously be important figures in their lives.
As Eleanor Farjeon put it:
'The departure of the First Governess, like the departure of the First Nurse, creates a Nursery cataclysm.  They are The Nurse, The Governess, as our parent are The Parents.'
(Eleanor Farjeon, A Nursery in the Nineties, 1935, p.408)

Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)
Image: Alchetron)

It was usual for children to be gradually integrated into adult life in families such as these.  When they were little they often saw their mother for a short while in the morning, informally in the nursery, and would be brought down to the dining room for both parents and any guests to see them after dinner.  Elizabeth Grant, born 1797, has described the routine in her family in the early 19th century:
'When father was at home, all appeared at late dinner, or rather at the second course, in full dress, like the footmen.  We sat in a row - we four, little Mary and all, on four chairs placed against the wall - trained to perfect quiet...to hear and not to speak; but on the dessert appearing we were released, walked forward to receive a little wine, a little fruit, and a biscuit, and then to have our game at romps....'
(Elizabeth Grant, 1797-1888, Memoirs of a Highland Lady, the autobiography f Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, after Mrs. Smith of Baltiboys, 1911, p. 61.  Internet copy available, University of Toronto)

Lady Grant with her two children,
(University of Toronto, internet edition)

As the children grew older, they might join their mother at lunch unless, like most boys, they were away at boarding school.  Boys were usually sent away at about age seven. Girls were usually educated at home, and would gradually introduced to their mother's friends and private social circle before they officially 'came out' into society aged about seventeen.

As small children they spent their time with their nanny or nursery maids.  Improvements in prams and push-chairs made nannies and their little charges more mobile in the late 19th century, and a complex nanny-oriented social life developed in fashionable cities such as London, Brighton, Bath, Boston and New York.

Compton Mackenzie, who had an extraordinarily vivid and long memory, recalls what it felt like to ride in one of those early prams:
'I wonder if many people recall the sensation of riding in a 'pram' - that bump down from the pavement into the roadway and that bump up when the opposite pavement was reached.  One shot forward against the safety-strap as one bumped down, and backwards as one bumped up.  And then those ominous words "its coming on to rain", after which the hated hood was raised and the brass catches - or whatever they were called - were straightened with a click.  The world on either side of one was excluded...'
(Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times, Octave I, 1963, p. 91)

Nannies would congregate in the public parks with their charges; children's tea-parties were arranged.  There were strict hierarchies of importance, depending, in Britain, on the rank of one's charges or, in east coast America, on wealth or that great mark of social distinction, descent from the original Mayflower immigrants.

Hulton Archive

In that great nanny haven, Kensington Gardens, for instance, 'Untitled' nannies might not occupy certain benches.  This complex snob system was evolved more or less spontaneously by the nannies themselves.  Just as having a nanny for the children became a middle class mark of social arrival, so being in charge of the infant section of some distinguished house conferred social distinction on the nanny, who in her anxiety for her own status would often pass on an exaggerated idea of their personal importance to her charges
(see Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, The Rise and  Fall of the British Nanny, 1972, p. 197-204)

Several autobiographies mention those, to the children, rather boring nanny-organised occasions.
The most evocative account is the writer Virgina Woolf, of walks twice a day in Kensington Gardens:
'There was the Broad Walk, the Round Pond and the Flower Walk.  Then...there were two gates, one offosite Gloucester Road, the other opposite Queen's Gate.  At each gate sat an old woman.  The Queen's Gate old woman was an elongated, emaciated figure with a goat-like face, yellow and pock-marked.  She sold nuts and bootlaces, I think. And Kitty Mase said of her: "Poor things, it's the drink that makes them like that"...The other old woman was round and squat.  To her was attached a whole wobbling balloon of air-balls.  She held this billowing, always moving most desirable mass by one string...for a penny she would detach one from the bellying soft mass, and I would dance away with it...'(Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being, 1976, p.35)

'This is the old woman shown in Arthur Rackham's illustrations to Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, almost blown away by her enormous bobbing bunch of coloured balloons.  Periodically the walks were strewn with minute sea shells, and until the park keepers came with their roller and ground them down to powder, the children would rush up and down making collections, while their nanny sat conversing with other nurses on a circular bench under one of the big trees, generally on the subject of the misdoings of their respective charges.'
(F. Anstey, A Long Retrospect, 1936 p. 16)

J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens,
 illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1906
(Pinterest)

One of the few other diversions was sailing boats on the Round Pond, where one day Virginia Stephens' Cornish lugger sailed right to the middle and suddenly sank.
(Virginia Woolf, b. Virginia Stephens, op.cit. p.75)

At about five years old the children generally began to take lessons from a governess, and there was frequently  considerable rivalry between her and the nanny, generally won by the governess as the children inevitably grew into her sphere and out of that of the nanny.

This system meant that many children were practically brought up by nurses and governesses or tutors.  For only children it could be a lonely life.  Margaret Lane gives a sad picture of lonely little Beatrix Potter, later famous as the creator of Peter Rabbit, living in her well-regulated nursery with all her material needs provided for, playing with her doll Topsy, eating her daily cutlet and rice pudding, always the same, dressed up in muff and button boots to go for her daily walk, and almost forgotten.
(Margaret Lane The tale of Beatrix Potter, 1946 chapter 1)

Beatrix Potter aged 8 with her parents
(V&A)

However the nursery could also be a haven to which, like Leonard Woolf would look back to with nostalgia all their lives:
'I can still feel myself physically enfolded in the warmth and safety of the great nursery on the third floor of the house in Lexham Gardens, the fire blazing behind the tall guard, the kettle singing away, and nurse, with her straight black hair parted in the centre, and her smooth, oval peasant face, reading the Baptist Times or the visions of the opium eater (Confessions of an English Opium Eater, de Quincey)...and occasionally far off could be heard the clop-clop if a horse in a hansom cab or four-wheeler,...I never again found any safety and civilisation to equal that of the gas-lit nursery.'
(Leonard Woolf, Sowing, 1880-1904, Hogarth Press, 1960 p. 60-61, internet ed. available.  Somehow nurse had got hold of a copy of Confessions of an English Opium Eater and read it over and over again)

For many children in the American South their black Mammy epitomised the same security:
'None but a Southerner to the manner born can appreciate or imagine the tie that bound us of that old-time South to our dear black mammy, in whose capacious lap the little ones confided to her care cuddled in innocent slumber' says Mrs. Clay of Alabama in her memoirs
(A Belle of the Fifties...Memoirs of Mrs. Clay of Alabama...1853-66, 1905, p.211, e-book available)
As in many European families the children's black mammy frequently held a privileged position on the household long after her charges had outgrown the nursery.  How did those children reconcile their upbringing with slavery?  Is the role of Scarlett O'Hara's beloved black mammy in Gone with the Wind intended to point up this inconsistency? The Black American actress Hattie McDaniel, as  Mammy, won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in the 1939 screen version of Margaret Mitchell's book about slavery and the American Civil War.  As I write, August 2017, a theatre in Memphis has just cancelled its regular summer showing of the film, as romanticising slavery.

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara and Hattie McDaniel as Mammy,
Sleznick International Pictures, 1939)

Employing nurses to bring up children probably began with hiring wet-nurses to feed babies breast milk, which was pretty universal in any families that could afford one, and really only declined when bottled milk became available.

 By the 19th century, as the 1814 wage bill for Nunwell, a country house on the Isle of Wight, shows, the wet nurse had decreased in importance to a mere human milk machine.  This bill included a nurse, nurserymaid and under-nurserymaid, paid 18 guineas a year, 8 guineas and 8 guineas plus tea allowances.  The previous year there had also  been a wet nurse at 4/6 a week plus tea allowance.  Tea had now overtaken beer as the beverage of choice for nursemaids.
(Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, Nunwell Symphony, 1945, p. 179-80)

The whole organisation of the nursery was now under the direction of the head nurse, later called the nanny.  This meant that the nanny no longer had to be a young woman, and quite frequently a beloved nanny remained with the family for life, or even returned to nurse the children of her original charges.
Ruskin's nurse Anne had previously nursed his father, though it was more usually the mother's nurse who was retained, almost taking on the role of many grandmothers today.
Ruskin numbers Anne with his parents as one of the people he most loved.
(John Ruskin, Praeterita, 1900, Vol. 1, p. 34, internet ed. available)
This is very common.  R.L. Stevenson dedicated A Child's Garden of Verses to his 'Dearest Cummy':

'The angel of my infant life -
From the sick child; now well and old,
Take, nurse, the little book you hold.'

This nurse, Alison Cunningham, was a strict Presbyterian Covenanter who told him tales of Scottish history.  Many years later he said to her:
'"It's you, that gave me a passion for the drama, Cummie"
"Me, Master Lou,", I said; "I never put foot inside a playhouse in my life.""Ay, woman", said he, "But it was the grand dramatic way ye had of reciting the hymns."'
(Graham Balfour, The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1901, Vol. 1 p. 37, internet ed. available)

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) aged 7
(Wikipedia)

Such nurses could, of course, exercise a very powerful influence over their charges' future lives.
The seventh Earl of Shaftsbury, the great philanthropist, had an extremely unhappy childhood.
Shaftsbury scarcely saw his parents and attributed the formation of his strong religious faith and moral character entirely to Marie Millis the housekeeper who cared for him until he was seven.(Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftsbury, KG, 1886, Vol. 1, p. 51.  Internet ed. available)

Many children, however, divided their affection between nanny, whom they loved in an everyday way, and parents, particularly their mothers, whom they associated with treats, parties, glamour and excitement.  Winston Churchill give a classic comparison of the two relationships in My Early Life:
'My mother always seemed to me a fairy princess: a radiant being possessed of limitless riches and power...I loved her dearly, but at a distance.  My nurse was my confidant.  Mrs. Everest it was who looked after me and tended all my wants.  It was to her I poured out my many troubles, both now and in my schooldays.'
(Winston Churchill, My Early Life, 1930, p.18. internet ed. available.  Jennie Jerome, Lady Randolph Churchill, was a rather rackety American socialite.  Although she was a distant figure in Churchill's early life she became a close confidante and supporter when he was adult)

Winston Churchill aged 10, 1884
(BBC Archive)

As adults many people, like Leonard Woolf, described their mothers as adoring them, even when it is clear they only saw each other for a couple of hours each day.
 Possibly nannies acted as a kind of buffer state, taking on all the unpleasant, disciplinarian aspects of mother and leaving child and mother free to idealise each other.   (Leonard Woolf, op.cit, p.54)
Compton Mackenzie certainly seems to have rationalised his relationships this way.  His nanny does not seem to have been actually unkind, just strict, unimaginative, grumpy:

'Looking back on it now, I think that having to deal with unreasonableness in an elderly woman was a valuable preparation for life because it taught me very early to expect people to be stupid and to be agreably surprised when they were not.'
(Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times, 1963, p.38)

Annie Curry operated a system of rewards and withdrawal of privileges; perfectly normal, enlightened 19th century practise, which he bitterly resented:
'Apparently anything even mildly pleasant came under the category of treats.  It was a treat to walk on the grass in the Gardens; it was a treat to help to push Stella's perambulator; it was a treat to have the sponge floating beside him in the bath...'She tied their hands in bags at night to prevent nail biting, gave them nasty medicine, insisted they ate all their fat, and, probably unintentionally, terrified Compton Mackenzie with threats of being carried away by climbing coalmen:

'Michael caught his breath.
"Can coalmen climb?" he asked, choking at the thought.
"Climb like kittens," said Nurse.

A new bogey had been created, black and hairy with yellow cat's eyes and horrid prehensile arms.'
(Compton Mackenzie, Sinister Street, autobiographical novel, p. 20-21 and p.33)

Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy in his research discovered that few children had the misfortune to suffer genuinely cruel nannies.  Even those who did, he notes, rarely admitted to disliking them which is probably because they had become surrogate mothers, covered by the same taboos.  Cruelty and misery are more commonly associated with governesses who would often take charge of both boys and girls from about the age of five to seven when boys generally went as boarders to prep school.
J. Gathorne-Hardy, The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny, 1972, chapter 9)

Nannies in the park
(Pinterest)

The redoubtable Viceroy of India, Lord George Curzon's account of his governess Miss Paraman is particularly interesting since her evident effect on his character, and his future career, are so well documented.  Lord Curzon describes her physical and mental cruelty to him and his sisters.  She appears to have been quite sadistic; Lord Curzon later concluded she was probably insane:
'She made us trundle our hoops all alone up and down a place near the hermitage where were tall black fir trees and a general air of gloom of which we were intensely afraid.  She forced us to confess to lies we had never told, to sins which we had not committed, and then punished us savagely as being self-condemned.  For weeks we were not allowed to speak to each other or a living soul.  At meals she tool all the dainties for herself and gave us nothing but tapioca and rice.  I suppose no children so well born or so well placed ever cried so much, or so justly.'
(Leonard. Mosley, The End of an Epoch, 1960. internet ed. available)

Moseley sums up the effect on Lord Curzon:
'Thereafter, it could almost be said that he spent his life looking for stronger, more ruthless and more egotistic characters upon which he could bruise himself...'' and quotes Lord Kitchener's remark:
'There is only one thing that Curzon likes more than hurting others...and that is to persuade others to humiliate him.'  (Moseley, op.cit. p10) Against that, according to Wikipedia Curzon had a firm, happy marriage.  I don't know whether Leonard Moseley has any link to Oswald Moseley, but Wikipedia says two of Curzon's daughters, and his second wife, had affairs with him.)

Lord Curzon as a Hindu God
(Maratha Punch, 1899, Baksheesh!)

Similar experiences, though documentary evidence is sadly lacking, might help to explain the late 19th and early 20th century upper class passion for flagellation and other sexual games of humiliation.  Although there is also probably a connection with bullying and beatings inflicted at school, Steven Marcus in The Other Victorians notes that in such sexual fantasies the beater is a woman not a man, and the accompanying humiliations are often those of the nursery.

It is also suggested by Gathorne-Hardy that nursery maids sometimes prematurely aroused the sexual instincts of their charges, intentionally or not, leading, in later life, to strong sexual attraction to girls of their class.  No doubt many little boys sharing a room and sometimes a bed with their nurse maids made discoveries which could form the basis of adult fantasies, in spite of the nanny habit of undressing under their enormous, tent-like calico night-dresses.
Compton Mackenzie,. for instance, says he made his first innocent sexual exploration when put to bed with Ellen, one of the maids.  He woke in the middle of the night and 'started to explore the sleeping Ellen in the course of which I was astonished to find myself, like Dante once upon a time in a Selva Oscura (dark jungle) which I searched in vain for my own little appendage, and being greatly puzzled by not finding it anywhere...' (Compton Mackenzie, My Life and Times, p.162. )

(The pram society.com)

Lord Curzon (1859-1925) said that by the end of his career such cruelty as Miss Paraman's would be impossible since by that time the governess system had largely disappeared while it had become normal for children to spend. a great deal more time with their parents.  However, unless parents keep a close watch over their children the system is always open to abuse.  The novelist F. Anstey
(Thomas Anstey Guthrie, 1956-34) for instance, had a nurse stricter than his father liked. She believed children should eat everything set before them, and used to serve up any crusts left from supper at breakfast next morning until their father found out.  Anstey says:
'Somehow none of these petty oppressions, of which these are only instances, lessened our affection for Fanny; it never occurred to us that she was going at all beyond her authority.'
(F. Anstey, A Long Retrospect, 1936 p.15)

Kenneth Clark  (1903-1983) felt his parents' servants got back at their employers by being unkind to him as a small boy.
'They gave me uneatable food although they themselves lived off the fat of the land.  I remember a cheese so full of weevils that small pieces jumped about the plate; I remember branches of bitter rhubarb, sour milk, rancid butter - and, of course, nothing but obstinate silence.  It was an unconscious programme of revenge.'
(Kenneth Clark, Another Part of the Wood, 1974)
Children rarely have enough critical sense, lacking experience, to know that people are not doing their jobs properly.

Lack of parental control over the nursery and schoolroom could also work in the child's favour. Elizabeth Grant's father laid down extremely strict rules about diet, and a rigorous spartan regime, which was frequently relaxed by sympathetic nursery maids when he was not around.
(Elizabeth Grant, 1797-1888, Memoirs of a Highland Lady, the autobiography f Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, after Mrs. Smith of Baltiboys, 1911, p. 56.  Internet copy available, University of Toronto)

The Sitwells' nurse supplemented the children's plain diet with little treats of winkles and shrimps which she bought herself. (Osbert Sitwell, Left Hand, Right Hand, 1943 Vol. 1, p. 92)

Mother lays down the law to Nurse
(Pinterest)

Although Lord Curzon is right saying that by Edwardian times children of wealthy parents  saw a lot more of them than when he was a boy, far more boys were sent away to boarding school.  Since they were often sent away to prep school at seven school life was just as important as family life.