A governess' lot is frequently, indeed, bitter, but its results are precious. The mind, feelings, and temper are subjected to a discipline equally painful and priceless. I have known many who were unhappy as governesses, but scarcely one who, having undergone the ordeal, was not ultimately strengthened and improved--made more enduring for her own afflictions, more considerate for the afflictions of others. The great curse of a single female life is its dependency; daughters, as well as sons, should aim at making their way through life. Teachers may be hard-worked, ill-paid, and despised; but the girl who stays at home _doing nothing_ is worse off than the worse-paid drudge of a school; the listlessness of idleness will infallibly degrade her nature.
Lonely as I am, how should I be if Providence had never given me courage to adopt a career, perseverance to plead through two long weary years with publishers till they admitted me? How should I be, with youth passed, sisters lost, a resident in a moorland parish where there is not a single resident family? In that case I should have no world at all. The raven weary of surveying the deluge, and with no ark to return to, would be my type.
As it is, something like a hope and motive sustain me still. I wish every woman in England had also a hope and a motive. Alas! I fear there are many old maids who have neither.
Thackeray, like many other Englishmen of note, came to America to lecture in order to make money. He had delivered lectures in London and in other towns in England on the _English Humorists_. Why not use his popularity in America as a means of acquiring a little fortune for the sake of his wife and two girls. "I must and will go," he wrote to his eldest daughter, "not because I like it, but because it is right I should secure some money against my death for your mother and you two girls. And I think, if I have luck, I may secure nearly a third of the sum that I think I ought to leave behind me by a six months' tour in the States."
Let us, in order to get a first-hand impression, read from letters that he wrote from America:
"The passage is nothing, now it is over; I am rather ashamed of gloom and disquietude about such a trifling journey. I have made scores of new acquaintances and lighted on my feet as usual. I didn't expect to like people as I do, but am agreeably disappointed and find many most pleasant companions, natural and good; natural and well read and well bred too, and I suppose am none the worse pleased because everybody has read all my books and praises my lectures (I preach in a Unitarian Church, and the parson comes to hear me. His name is Mr. Bellows, it isn't a pretty name), and there are 2,000 people nearly who come, and the lectures are so well liked that it is probable I shall do them over again. So really there is a chance of making a pretty little sum of money for old age, imbecility, and those young ladies afterwards.... Broadway is miles upon miles long, a rush of life such as I have never seen; not so full as the Strand, but so rapid. The houses are always being torn down and built up again, the railroad cars drive slap into the midst of the city. There are barricades and scaffoldings banging everywhere. I have not been into a house, except the fat country one, but something new is being done to it, and the hammerings are clattering in the passage, or a wall or steps are down, or the family is going to move. Nobody is quiet here, nor am I. The rush and restlessness please me, and I like, for a little, the dash of the stream. I am not received as a god, which I like too. There is one paper which goes on every morning saying I am a snob, and I don't say no. Six people were reading it at breakfast this morning, and the man opposite me this morning popped it under the table-cloth. But the other papers roar with approbation."