Aristocrats (34 page)

Caroline, whose romantic life had been decisive and subversive, was relatively immune to the siren call of sensibility. Emily was not. When, in the midst of misery and grief after Ophaly’s death in 1765 she became dissatisfied with her life, she turned not to the storybooks and conventions of her youth, which might have prompted a low-key affair with an Irish peer, but to newer works which advocated romantic love and total, absorbing passion.
Clarissa
, in which the passion between Lovelace and the heroine oozes unexpressed beneath the surface, remained a novel that no self-loving woman would want to translate into her own life. But
La Nouvelle Héloïse
, which contained passages of genuine sexual abandon, was more capable of emulation. On Emily, for one, the story of the love between Julie and the tutor made a great impression.

After
La Nouvelle Héloïse
, Rousseau turned his attention to the education of young children and produced
Émile
, a semi-novelised manual of moral and practical education, subtitled prosaically
de l’Éducation, Émile
sets forth the way to bring a boy from babyhood to married life, with digressions upon the nature of humanity, society and religion. In some respects, Rousseau wrote in unbridled form what John Locke had advocated in his
Thoughts Concerning Education
of 1683; that, for the most part, people ‘are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education’. As Rousseau put it, ‘we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgement; Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.’ Education for Rousseau began at birth with the mother’s milk. Rousseau insisted that a mother’s place was by her children’s side and argued that women should forsake the drawing-room and the wider world for the nursery and the country, offering their children the love and support upon which family and thus national morality depended.

But there the mother’s role ended. Characteristically flinging out a premise which flatly contradicted his emphasis on nurture, Rousseau said that because women were shallow creatures governed by their passions, children should be handed over to tutors for education. Once isolated from the family the little boy will be taught reason, not by insistence and punishment but by example and experience. At the heart of Rousseau’s system was the axiom that children should ‘learn nothing from books that experience can teach them’. Complicated games were devised to teach boys mathematical, physical and moral truths. Rote-learning was forbidden. Books of all sorts, including the prayer book, were discouraged until nature’s lessons had been thoroughly learned.

In Rousseau’s time-consuming and intensive educational plan there was much that Caroline and Emily could endorse.
But there was much also that they disregarded. Rousseau’s hatred of the theatre where, he said, actors exhibited themselves for money and women for sex and money, fell on deaf ears. His diatribes against courts, assemblies, doctors and ‘learned and brilliant’ women, they managed (though not without some difficulty on Caroline’s part) to disregard. ‘I have just finished Rousseau’s Sur L’Éducation,’ Caroline wrote in August 1762, ‘there are more paradoxes, more absurdities and more striking pretty thoughts in it than in any book I ever read that he did not, write.’ But she baulked at Rousseau’s denigration of book learning, and thought his scheme of practical education wildly impractical, concluding in her tartest manner, ‘there is certainly a small objection to putting his scheme of education in practice, viz. that its impossible – there are a number of contradictions in his book but its immensely pretty.’

Emily thought so too. She took what she wanted from
Émile
and abandoned the rest. The elevation of the countryside, of games, exercise and loose clothing for toddlers fitted in both with her own practice and her wish to keep her children close at hand. Rousseau’s hatred of academies endorsed her decision not to send any more of her children away to school. Offering
Émile
as her model and justification, Emily decided to set up a school for her children at Black Rock on the coast south of Dublin. In 1766 the Duke of Leinster bought a bathing lodge close to the sea with several fields for hay making and gardening. Eventually some of the rocks by the water’s edge were blasted away to make a bathing pool and an alley was built for bowling. But at the beginning the children had to make do with unimproved nature, the sand and waves of the Irish Sea.

The house at Black Rock was ready for occupation in the summer of 1766. Emily called the house Frescati, perhaps after the town of Frascati outside Rome where fashionable villas clustered along the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Just as it was finished Rousseau himself fled Paris and made for England. Nothing if not wholehearted when her mind was set
on a project, Emily decided to offer him the post of tutor to Charles Fitzgerald and her younger children. She wrote to Rousseau, then holed up in Derbyshire in a state of advanced paranoia, and offered him ‘an elegant retreat if he would educate her children’. Rousseau declined her offer, leaving England in May 1767, pursued as much by demons of his own making as by real foes of his ideas. The Duke then hurriedly hired another tutor who was installed at Black Rock in January 1767. Although Louisa reported that ‘Charles has got a tutor who seems vastly good humoured and gentle with him’, the arrangement was unsuccessful and the Duke began to look among the teachers in Dublin for a replacement.

A few months later a candidate emerged, as unknown as Rousseau was celebrated. His name was William Ogilvie. Ogilvie was a Scot who had been working for some years as a teacher in Dublin. Recommended to the Duke of Leinster as a good classical scholar, mathematician and French speaker, Ogilvie was hired for Charles Fitzgerald at first but on the understanding that he would teach the younger Fitzgerald children as they became old enough to move to Black Rock.

Emily’s boys had had personal servants before, men to talk French and ‘be about them’, as she put it. But they had never had a tutor, and Emily was not sure what Ogilvie’s status within the household should be. Should he be given tallow candles for his room, which would indicate that, like previous companions to her sons, he was first and foremost a servant? Or should he have wax candles, as befitted a gentleman employee or friend of the family? Emily was undecided, but her friend, Lady Leitrim, who was with her when Ogilvie was announced, declared, ‘Oh moulds will do, till we see a little’.

At the beginning of 1768, Ogilvie and Lord Charles Fitzgerald were installed at Black Rock, pursuing a vigorous programme of Rousseauian exercise and less than Rousseauian book learning. In between digging in the garden, catching chickens, working in the stables and receiving visits from Louisa and his parents, Charles learned Latin grammar
and read Latin verse (laboriously translating that story of forbidden love, Pyramus and Thisbe, from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
). He read French (that old Lennox favourite
Gil Blas
), English history and, for amusement, Fielding’s
Tom Thumb
. Along with such school work Charles did drawing and sewing. He became so proficient at the latter that Emily said that he should become a master tailor.

As the brood at Carton and family confidence in Ogilvie grew, more and more children were taken over to Black Rock, and the girls were taught alongside the boys. By the end of the decade, Henry, Sophia, Edward and Robert were all there. A couple of years later Ogilvie also had Fanny, Lucy and Louisa.

The journey from Carton to Black Rock and back could easily be accomplished in a day with good horses, and Emily came over about once a week to check on her children’s health and progress. In the summer she often stayed for days at a time, particularly after Louisa and Tom Conolly bought the house (or ‘cottage’ as they called it) next door. In her absence, Ogilvie was a meticulous correspondent, writing once or twice a week from the study where he kept his books. Ogilvie wrote about everything: every ache, pain, boil and scratch; the children’s progress in learning or ‘business’ as he called it; their games and toys and the books he himself read in the evenings. Gradually his role expanded from that of tutor pure and simple. He became master of a whole household, running a dairy, laundry, stables and extensive gardens. He nursed the children when they were sick, and ran errands for Emily in Dublin, sending her books, clothing and advice about her health.

In between their visits, Ogilvie kept Emily and the Duke of Leinster informed about their children’s progress with a constant stream of notes. He loved the children and referred to them as if they were his own, writing in 1769, ‘Lord Charles and all my dear little folks are very well and business goes on uncommonly well. I have the honour to be, with greatest respect, your Grace’s most humble servant.’ Initially notes
from Ogilvie only survived as postscripts to the children’s letters. By 1771, however, Emily was carefully keeping everything that came from Black Rock.

There were two easy routes to Emily’s attention, children and books. Ogilvie could and did write constantly about both. He read voraciously in the evenings, sitting in his study with his wig off and a bust of Cicero gazing down on him. Details of his reactions were thrown into his accounts of daily life at Black Rock. He read Sterne in the early 1770s but found it heavy going, in contrast with Diderot, which he read ‘with more pleasure’. Fielding had his unqualified admiration and, although he thought Smollett pedantic and unpolished he enjoyed
Humphry Clinker
too. But it was upon Emily’s children that Ogilvie lavished the bulk of his attention, both during the day and in his evening letters. ‘Business goes on delightfully,’ he reported in 1771, ‘I shall say nothing of Latin, but they are improved much in their English and I give time and pains enough to French to expect they are the better for it. We likewise do geography and I make Henry draw every second day … The other days we learn arithmetic.’ Edward Fitzgerald, already at the age of eight a prolific letter writer and a favourite with his mother, added a few days later, ‘Oh, about geography, I have learned the lakes and mountains and seas and [rivers] of Europe since you were last here.’

One evening in the summer of 1771, Ogilvie sat down in his study and described the daily timetable at Black Rock. In the morning the children swam in the sea and then did school work until nine o’clock when they went next door to Louisa Conolly’s for breakfast. At ten or half past they came back and settled down to their school work until about one o’clock. Then they played croquet, bowls and other games, or dug in the garden until dinner time. On dull days they played chess while the little ones ran about. After dinner the children played and splashed in the sea until about five o’clock, when the older ones did a last hour or so of school work. At seven or half past seven they all trooped back to Louisa’s for tea and
supper and came back to bed at eight. For the rest of the evening, if he wasn’t going out to see friends in Dublin, Ogilvie could ‘settle to read’ and write his letters.

Sometimes, while other tutors – Mr Warren the drawing master or Mr Luck who taught fencing, dancing and deportment – were with the children, Ogilvie, sitting near by, described the scene. ‘Eddy is just eating a crust as long and thick as his arm. I stole a piece from him as he was drawing a square so he has laid down his pencil and says it is better to eat his bread first … He has begun his square again with a “now square, nobody’ll eat your bread”. Eddy is crying out, “O Monstrous O Monstrous; indeed I’ll never draw, there’s an end of it. Indeed Mr. Warren, I cannot draw it, there’s the truth of the matter for you. I must try again, I must try again.”’

Ogilvie did much more than preside over the children’s education. He took the boys fishing in the bay and to Dublin for the theatre. All the children dug their gardens with him, obeying Rousseau’s injunction to teach children the value of property by giving them land to till and make their own through cultivation. In summer they cut and made hay together. ‘We had very favourable weather for our hay, which was made up Saturday night. Your Grace was very right in imagining that dear Lady Lucy had been a very happy being in the midst of it, for she was so indeed. From four o’clock till after seven she never rested but was as busy at work with her fork pitching as any of us, the happiest, busiest face I ever saw. We shall cut our other field next Friday and Saturday so that it will be in the best order for hay making this day se’enight, when we hope your Grace will enjoy the pleasure of seeing them all tumble in the midst of it … They all desire a thousand kisses to their dearest Mama.’

Ogilvie never stood on his dignity with the Fitzgerald children. Acting as their nurse in times of sickness did not compromise his sense of manliness. He performed the most motherly, or nursemaidly, of tasks cheerfully, carrying the
toddlers to the beach in his arms, sitting beside them in the night if they had coughs or fevers and watching eagerly for the babies’ first steps and words. ‘We have been diverting ourselves with dear little Louisa attempting to walk in the nine pin alley. The wind throws her down poor little thing, and at every two or three steps she plumps down; but never hurts herself, for she is
so puissante par en bas
that her sitting part always comes first to the ground.’

Discipline accompanied jollity. Ogilvie was a consistent and careful disciplinarian, slow to intervene and moderate in his admonitions. If reason failed he sent naughty children to bed where they lay until dejection and boredom got the better of waywardness. If children apologised for their wrongdoing Ogilvie breathed a sigh of relief and allowed them up again.

Emily was far more capricious. Towards minor transgressions she was indulgent, allowing one of the toddlers to call her a ‘hag … and all she can think of that is abusive,’ adding, ‘’tis a dear thing and its naughtiness mighty pretty.’ But she could quickly lose her temper and order a beating. The children adored and feared her. When he was twelve, Charles Fitzgerald sat down and wrote his mother an abject apology after he misbehaved. Emily kept it, noting on the back, ‘Dr. little Charles’ penitent letter wrote quite by himself, 1768’. ‘My dear Mama,’ the letter ran, ‘I am very sorry that I have given you so much grief. I dun a great many things very improper and beneath a gentleman and below my rank. I am very sorry for my ill behaviour I have disobeyed you and Mr. Ogilvie Mama wich to be chure wass very improper. I own I am vastly distrest. I hope you will be so good as to forgive me. i give you my word and honour my dear Mama that I will never do such a thing again.’