Too many daughters

In addition to the events I described last week, there were all kinds of other naughtiness happening in the family of Lady Susan Townley, where there were six girls looked after by two governesses:

My brothers’ tutor had a bad time, but so had our two governesses. The worst of it was that no alliance was possible between them, one being German, the other French. Their aim seemed to be to keep the two “schoolrooms” apart, that there might be no collision between its members.

This scheme of theirs it became our object in life to defeat. We used to get out of windows and perform the most extraordinary feats of roof-climbing to get access to each other. We exchanged surreptitious notes when we passed in the lanes, for, of course, no communication was allowed between the walking parties, making assignations in impossible places.

We even ran away – one of my sisters and I were gone for a whole day once. We took a train for the neighbouring watering-place and passed a blissful day on the sands, eating biscuits and jam, which provisions we had stolen with infinite difficulty from the larder.

When I was a kid, one of my most persistent fantasies was being one of many sisters and brothers, growing up in a wealthy household with several strict tutors and governesses. (The fantasy of an only child, I daresay.) I never thought that somebody really got to experience the sort of stern routines and wild hijinks that I imagined.

Running away for a day, to eat jam sandwiches on a beach is exactly the sort of thing I could see myself doing.

Of course, in my fantasies, my sisters and I got punished whenever we came up with clever schemes to fool the tutors. This didn’t make us behave better: we simply proceeded on to the next trick. Otherwise, there would be no more spanking, and I couldn’t live with that even in a fantasy world.