Robert Elgar Datlen

 

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When Miss Emmie was in Russia
English Governesses before, during and after the October Revolution
Report by Shaun Griffiths
Originated September 2004    Last reviewed December 2007

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The following report is based on the book “When Miss Emmie was in Russia” sub-titled “English Miss Emmie book coverGovernesses before, during and after the October Revolution” wriiten by Harvey Pritchard and published by Readers Union in 1977.

While this is the story of a particular governess, a Miss Emma Dashwood, who worked in Russia from 1911 to 1919, the title also represents quite a number of other English girls in a similar position, and their reminiscences are interwoven with her story. Illustrated with mono plates. Map endpapers. Hardback with dust wrapper. Near Fine/Very Good.
ANTIQBOOK (www.antiqbook.co.uk)

I have extracted passages from the book to help describe what life must have been like for Emma Datlen (daughter of Robert / Johannes) who is beleived to have been a governess to the children of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovitch Romanov during his exile in France and his later return to Russia.

INTRODUCTION
When I first learnt about Emma Datlen and her time as a Governess in Russia I thought it was a privileged and unique experience but I was wrong. There were a surprisingly large number of English, Scottish and Irish women who went to Russia as governesses. “There total number must be reckoned in thousands, for it was much less unusual to find a girl from Britain working as a governess in Russia before the Revolution than it might seem to us today.  Their story lasts almost exactly a hundred years.  It begins soon after the Napoleonic Wars and breaks off abrubtly in 1920, and it tells how the English governess gradually became established as a familiar institution in upper-class Russian society.”[1]

“The English governesses in Russia were unassuming people.  None of them would have seen anything admirable, let alone heroic, in the actions they performed on behalf of their Russian families during the years of the Revolution.  Nor would they have imagined that their stories might be fascinating in themselves, open our eyes in a new way to Russian society in those critical years, and often be more lively and amusing than the memoirs of the soldiers and diplomats.”[2]

HALF A CENTURY OF GOVERNESSES
“The 1860’s was the period of great foreign expansion of the English governess. A whole army of Englishwomen spread across the globe.  Paris had long been a happy hunting ground for the English Governess, while after 1870 Vienna became another favourite centre.”[3] Emma Datlen probably started her governess career in Paris, she would be in her twenties at this time and there were still thirty years plus before Grand Duke Paul was to father any children. We know that Emma went to Paris following a broken romance and it would be reasonable to assume that she went to Paris because she had secured a position as governess.

What made these Englishwomen uproot themselves, to leave their families and travel abroad? Harvey Pritchard explains that “the main driving force seems to have been economic necessity, the search for a respectable living. In England there were an abundance of Governesses and too few jobs. During the 1840’s, over one hundred governesses advertised daily in The Times for a situation, By 1850, 21,000 refined gentlewomen were registered as belonging to the most despised profession in Victorian England.  It was reported that a typical advertised vacancy received no less than one hundred and forty replies.”[3]

“Where did they come from, these refined gentlewomen, and why was their profession so grossly overcrowded?  It was overcrowded because it was the only respectable occupation open to a gentlewoman in Victorian England who needed to earn her own living, and who did not want to lose caste. (Ladies did not work; women did.)  They came from all parts of polite society, linked only by their poverty and their good breeding.  Daughters of poor clergymen – like the three brontė sisters – with those unfortunately large Victorian families, were early prominent among the ranks of the governesses, rubbing shoulders with the daughters of army officers who had lived beyond their means, or with young ladies from noble families fallen on hard times.  Any sudden family impoverishment was likely to produce new recruits to the ranks.  The head of the family dies prematurely; there are no pension schemes or Welfare State to catch those who are left behind; widow and daughters must immediately start earning their own living.  Or the breadwinner becomes incapacitated; or else, very commonly in Victorian England, his business fails and he is declared bankrupt.  And the ranks grew and grew, for only an occasional governess succeeded in escaping; once a girl had become a governess, her marriage prospects immediately plummeted.”[3]

“Their gentility was needed by the newly affluent in Victorian society, but because they were so numerous, they had no bargaining power.  They bartered their good breeding for a roof over their heads and a derisory salary.”[4]

“Given the overcrowded state of her profession, its poor financial rewards, the low regard in which she was held by her employers and by Victorian society generally, and the new competitive situation brought about by the advances in female education, it is not surprising that the eyes of the English governess turned further afield.”[4]

“In Russia the nobility was a much larger class than in England, because a title conferred on one person automatically passed to all his descendants; and to be able to say that she ‘taught in a noble family’ was bound to be a feather in her cap later on, if she decided to return to England.  With these families she enjoyed a much higher standard of living than she was likely to have experienced before.  Russian parents did not follow the English practise of keeping their children shut off at the top of the house away from everyone else.  As soon as the children were old enough to sit at table, they had most of their meals with their parents, and their governesses always accompanied them.  Even on festive occasions, or when visitors were present, governess and children were never excluded from the sumptuous meals.”[5]

“On top of all these advantages the English governess in Russia was also more handsomely rewarded than her counterpart at home, since the fierce competition for jobs was bound to keep salaries down in England.  In St Petersburgh, Moscow and other big cities she seems often to have been at liberty to augment her salary by giving private English lessons in her free time – something that could never have happened in England because of the long working hours.  Gifts from the family, and even legacies, might be on a lavish scale; she was able to save money towards a comfortable retirement in England or the South of France.”[5]

In addition to being better paid than their English counterparts, the Russian governess was more highly regarded. “At it’s best her position was that of an equal and member of the family, something that had not happened in England since the eighteenth century; and we shall hear of the English governesses attending important social functions on terms of complete equality with the other guests.  Even at it’s worst her position was still clearly differentiated from the upper servants.”[6]

THE YOUNGER GENERATION
In the 1890’s the desperate demand for work resulted with the formation of great numbers of governess agencies. “According to an article entitled ‘Robbing Governesses’, which appeared in The Lady on February 20th, 1890, many of them were thoroughly dishonest: governesses find to their bitter cost that a dozen agents to whom they apply ten at least are harpies, eager to prey upon their helplessness and inexperience, pocketing their hardly-earned fees, encouraging them in a vain hope, but never putting an hour’s work in their way.[7]

“Thus the incentive for a governess to look for work outside England seems even stronger than ever. At the same time the young girls coming forward to be governesses were drawn from a much wider variety of social backgrounds.  It is noticeable that from 1890 onwards a more varied type of English governess seems also to have been attracted to Russia.  She tends to be younger, more adventurous, not necessarily so dedicated to her profession.  There were more openings for women by this time, the label of governess was losing it’s Victorian stigma, and a girl was unlikely to feel that in taking a job as a governess she was sealing her future for the nest thirty or forty years and renouncing the possibility of marriage.”[7]
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References:
[1]  Introduction viii
[2]  Introduction ix
[3]  Half-a-Century of Governesses 30
[4]  Half-a-Century of Governesses 33
[5]  Half-a-Century of Governesses 34
[6]  Half-a-Century of Governesses 35
[7]  The Younger Generation 48
 


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