WANTED. A BORN LADY. None Other Need Apply.

Free Lance, Volume V, Issue 256, 27 May 1905, Page 6

WANTED. A BORN LADY. None Other Need Apply.

WANTED, Governess (lady by birth), for clergyman's family. Reply Clericus, Evening Post. QUAINT, isn't it ? It has been appearing daily for some time, and presumably one of two things is probable : (1) That "ladies of birth" are not rushing "Clericus' for a job ; or (2) there are no ladies available whose family ties will bear the scrutiny that would evidently be necessary before a female person would be allowed to train the infant minds suggested in the advertisement. Way back in the dim centuries there was a teacher of humble birth — a carpenter. He is supposed to be still the teacher of even clergymen, but he wasn't a "gentleman by birth " * # * You don't see many advertisements either at Home or in the colonies like this one, and you wouldn't get many answers to such an advertisement anywhere. Girls who are the> daughters of clergymen, lawyers, doctors, earls, or brewers may be "well barn/ but they are not necessarily "ladies. The possession of a family tree as big as a kauri, and as old, isn't presumptive evidence of any ability as a teacher. Thackeray wrote his "Book of Snobs" before that advertisement appeared, so wasn't thereby influenced. * * • The dictionary says • "A lady is a woman of gentle and refined manners." She isn't born with those manners. As an infant she yells like the child of a coal - heaver. The . child of the coal-heaver may have "gentle and refined manners" when she grows up, and the peer's daughter may run away with "William Brown, the coachman It would be better for a clergyman's family to have the services of the coal-heaver's daughter than those of the woman whose blood was too blue to allow her to from any more intellectual pursuit than bridge. * * * What a- light such an advertisement as the one above throws on the relation of some clergymen to society. It shows disdainful aloofnessi from the masses, and a distinct leaning to class. What have the clergy to do with the lowly born? How dare anybody without a family tree as much as write to> a clergyman ? What delightful prospects for the democracy of religious "revivalism" and the like ? Takes you right back to the arrant snobbishness exhibited to this day m many churches in England, which label several back seats m large letters "Reserved for the Poor." Let us hope there is no one in Wellington who is well-born enough to fill that position — no one with a family tree of requisite quality. But let us ask the Government, before it selects any more public school teachers, to ascertain whether they have Norman blood in their veins, or are entitled to bear a coat of arms or wear an eye-glass or affect a lisp. Consider the minds and morals of the children, and let their teachers be "real" ladies.