Jane Ann Jonn, was born on the 13th of May, 1804, at Wolsingham, a market town and parish in the county of Durham, and about thirteen miles from that ancient and celebrated city. She was the fourth daughter of the Rev. Peter Jonn and Jane Deighton, his wife. Her father was curate of Wolsingham, and head master of the grammar school.
When about ten years of age, she got an appointment to Queen Charlotte’s school, at Ampthill, in Bedfordshire, a small town pleasantly situated, partly upon, and partly between two gentle acclivities, forty miles from London. The establishment being very select, and the other girls much older, she became a great favourite with them, and learned much from them. When the very plain, but rigidly virtuous queen, died at Kew, on the 17th of November, 1818, Miss Jonn, was sent by her father to a boarding-school conducted by Mr. and Mrs. Stables, at Hendon, near the village of Hampstead, Middlesex. Here she assisted in teaching, as well as received lessons from various masters; and whilst a certain amount of seclusion was secured by a suburban residence, London was close at hand: the working London with its inspiring life.
However well this boarding-school was carried on, we have no reason to believe that it made Miss Jonn a learned woman. Female education then, and sometimes even now, is simply a little outside polish. It does not teach to think; it does not develope mind; it does not confer power; it does not form character; it does not do anything to mould girls into the noblest types of womanhood.
After leaving the quiet retreat at Hendon, she was many years a governess in the family of the Rev. Mr. Huntly, of Kimbolton, in Huntingdonshire. This employment no doubt has recommendations, it certainly has serious drawbacks; among those that are inevitable is the effect of a lonely life on the governess. A great effort may be made to treat her as one of the family, but she does not really belong to it; and must spend the greater part of her time with young and immature minds, only varied by unequal association with the parents or grown-up brothers and sisters of her pupils. The society of her equals in age and position is entirely wanting, and the natural tendency of such mental solitude is to produce childishness, angularity, and narrow-mindedness. It must be a strong character indeed which can do without such wholesome trituration and the expansive influence of equal companionship, and this is just what a governess cannot have. She is moreover, always a bird of passage, and in this respect her position is worse than that of a domestic servant, who, besides being better remunerated and having the companionship of fellow-servants, may look forward to remaining in one family for life.
