Governesses also had this weird in between status - not really part of the servants, but also not really on a level with the family that gets talked about a lot in any book about the Brontes.
Huh, I hadn't thought to make that connection, but having just read Dark Quartet, ...yeah.
I'm also reminded that Byron (the poet) was sexually abused by a nurse when he was ten or eleven. She was also a strict Calvinist who altered between punishing him, groping him and quoting the bible at him. It's not surprising adult Byron didn't care much for religion, and scandalized the country.
*blinks* My Brit Lit teacher didn't tell us that part! That's really... something. Definitely not surprising he didn't care much for religion, wow.
Re: Byron, here's the evidence, re the nurse May Grey. (Btw, google tells me that an entry on Byron by a Scottish tourist website - since Byron spent his early childhood in Aberdeen- calls her "Agnes Grey", which, speak of the Brontes. But really, it was May.) John Hanson had already been the lawyer of Byron's mother, and later was Byron's lawyer. Since Byron died at age 36, he survived him.
After Byron's death, the lawyer, John Hanson, informed Byron's friend John Cam Hobhouse, of the lustful attentions of his (Byron's) nurse. Hobhouse writes later:
When nine years old at his mother's house a free Scotch girl used to come to bed to him and play tricks with his person.
And Byron himself writes in Detached Thoughts (a serious of diary-like notes published years after his death under that title): in 1821: My passions were developed very early - so early, that few would believe me, if I were to state the period, and the facts which accompanied it.
John Hanson informed Byron's mother of May Gray's unacceptable conduct towards the young lord in a letter dated 1st September 1799, suppressing his knowledge of the sexual play:
... her conduct towards your son while at Nottingham was shocking, and I was persuaded you needed but a hint of it to dismiss her... My honourable little companion (Byron) ... told me that she was perpetually beating him, and that his bones sometimes ached from it; that she brought all sorts of Company of the very lowest Description into his apartments; that she was out late at nights, and he was frequently left to put himself to bed; that she would take the Chaise-boys into the Chaise with her, and stopped at every little Ale-house to drink with them. But, Madam, this is not all, she has even --- traduced yourself. (Prothero, Rowland E (ed), The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol I, p 17)
The two parter about Byron in which Johnny Lee Miller played Lord B. used this story - Byron tells it to his sister and lover Augusta (they were half siblings who didn't grow up together and only got to know each other as teenagers) in this excerpt (at 1.45) - at what is probably his most vulnerable moment in the two parter.
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Oster Wilhelmine readthrough - young Wilhelmine
Date: 2020-09-28 05:16 am (UTC)Huh, I hadn't thought to make that connection, but having just read Dark Quartet, ...yeah.
I'm also reminded that Byron (the poet) was sexually abused by a nurse when he was ten or eleven. She was also a strict Calvinist who altered between punishing him, groping him and quoting the bible at him. It's not surprising adult Byron didn't care much for religion, and scandalized the country.
*blinks* My Brit Lit teacher didn't tell us that part! That's really... something. Definitely not surprising he didn't care much for religion, wow.
Byron
Date: 2020-09-28 01:09 pm (UTC)After Byron's death, the lawyer, John Hanson, informed Byron's friend John Cam Hobhouse, of the lustful attentions of his (Byron's) nurse. Hobhouse writes later:
When nine years old at his mother's house a free Scotch girl used to come to bed to him and play tricks with his person.
And Byron himself writes in Detached Thoughts (a serious of diary-like notes published years after his death under that title): in 1821:
My passions were developed very early - so early, that few would believe me, if I were to state the period, and the facts which accompanied it.
John Hanson informed Byron's mother of May Gray's unacceptable conduct towards the young lord in a letter dated 1st September 1799, suppressing his knowledge of the sexual play:
... her conduct towards your son while at Nottingham was shocking, and I was persuaded you needed but a hint of it to dismiss her... My honourable little companion (Byron) ... told me that she was perpetually beating him, and that his bones sometimes ached from it; that she brought all sorts of Company of the very lowest Description into his apartments; that she was out late at nights, and he was frequently left to put himself to bed; that she would take the Chaise-boys into the Chaise with her, and stopped at every little Ale-house to drink with them. But, Madam, this is not all, she has even --- traduced yourself. (Prothero, Rowland E (ed), The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol I, p 17)
The two parter about Byron in which Johnny Lee Miller played Lord B. used this story - Byron tells it to his sister and lover Augusta (they were half siblings who didn't grow up together and only got to know each other as teenagers) in this excerpt (at 1.45) - at what is probably his most vulnerable moment in the two parter.
Re: Byron
Date: 2020-10-01 05:34 am (UTC)My passions were developed very early - so early, that few would believe me, if I were to state the period, and the facts which accompanied it.
Yeah, that... is something. I can see how that would shape someone, a lot.