Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope — Volume 1 by Unknown
page 16 of 372 (04%)


You have no idea how happy, year by year, as of yore, the little ones
seem--(for they will always be called so, though now Frances is as big
as me and amazingly handsome). Yet still they have not one moment of
time to themselves. They cram and stuff with accomplishments
incessantly, and they prison me in my room & won't allow me to pry
into the haunts of the Muses. Marianne and Anne have been learning to
paint for these last two years, and make (_I_ think) but slow
progress. Marianne never will have done (I wish I could be so
industrious). She is now beginning to learn the harp. They are both
learning to sing from some great star, which is only money and time
thrown away; & Isabella, Frances and Maria learn to dance of one of
the most celebrated Opera dancers. Isabella learns a new instrument
something like a guitar, called a harp-lute. Marianne and Anne, having
learnt French, German, Latin and Italian, are now at a loss to find
something left to know, and talk of learning Russian. They will be
dyed blue-stocking up to their very chins.


Allowing for the exaggeration of a schoolboy, the letter throws an
interesting light on the standard of education aimed at by those who,
despite the imputation to the contrary, had no pretension to belong to the
recognised blue-stocking coteries of their day. And the father of that
busy, happy circle, in the seriousness of his own life and aims, presented
the same contrast to many of his contemporaries which was reflected in his
family.

Fourteen years senior to his wife, and at this date in his fifty-seventh
year, Walter Stanhope had been M.P. respectively for his different
DigitalOcean Referral Badge