Early modern nobility has been traditionally viewed, even celebrated, as the cosmopolitan echelon whose cosmopolitanism entailed plurilingualism, travel, and a taste for imported luxurious items, among other things.Footnote 2 Only relatively recently it has become more pressing to inquire as to who worked behind the scenes and in the midst of these processes of increased transcultural connections and multilateral interactions and exchanges that now attract growing scholarly interest as an early phase of globalization. More specifically, we may ask who was employed in noble households to serve and assist the highborn “others” in acquiring refined language skills and manners. Historians have been drawn anew to these questions in response to dynamic developments in the fields of cultural anthropology, sociology, and gender studies that have paved the way to a better recognition of the often-neglected work in the household, including caregiving and upbringing, as “genuine work” and as an important part of both labor and migration history research.Footnote 3
Moreover, individual women in migration processes have long been overlooked by historians. This article thus seeks to contribute to a shift in perspectives as it analyzes the transcultural roles and economic situations of women professionals who moved from the French-speaking parts of Europe to the Habsburg lands of the Bohemian Crown (i.e., Bohemia, Moravia, and the so-called Austrian or Bohemian part of Silesia). While Merry Wiesner-Hanks recently highlighted migration and mixed marriages as important transcultural phenomena, mainly in the Atlantic world,Footnote 4 in this study I direct my attention further east and look at middling sorts of women migrants who joined noble households in the subaltern position of servants.Footnote 5
The Francization that swept across European elites throughout the long eighteenth century had many roots. The cultural trend-setting role of the French court, the expansion of publishing activities of the French Huguenot migrants after 1685, and the rise in prominence of French language in diplomacy and international relations are only a few major examples. Along with the long-term appeal of new patterns of sociability, these developments turned French into a marker of upper-class identities and aspirations.Footnote 6
This widespread Francophilia broadened professional opportunities for native French-speaking women, who were increasingly in demand as private teachers in noble families across Europe.Footnote 7 The rather discreet presence of these women, usually described as governesses or gouvernantes, has long been acknowledged but surprisingly poorly researched, especially as regards the period prior to the nineteenth century.Footnote 8 This may be the result of a double marginalization of these women, first during their lives and subsequently in archival systems. In early modern Europe, governesses faced marginalization as servants whose work was ascribed higher value than their personal lives. For example, the Prussian ambassador in Vienna, Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Schwerin (1678–1727), described family servants as “gens de rien” (mere nobodies), explicitly including the family physician who was a well-recognized scholar, royal physician, and trusted friend of his wife, Countess Schwerin.Footnote 9 Women's work was valued and recognized even less, and thus, although governesses were relatively educated and apt to produce substantial written records, their papers and personal belongings were rarely preserved. Moreover, when relevant historical records did survive, they were seldom explicitly noted in archival inventories because the archivists did not consider them of particular interest.
The potential of these archival sources for the study of the interplay of work, gender, migration, and cultural transmission calls for careful reappraisal. The early expansion of this occupation on the European labor market is particularly deserving of closer attention. From the perspective of migration history, French-speaking female private teachers represented an important stream of female professional migrants who were dispersed across Europe. This article focuses on its often-overlooked west-east direction. Moreover, it explores the complex process of making the Central European elites Francophone, with emphasis on its subaltern female actors, their transcultural lives, social practices, and textual representations.
Given the scarcity of archival records and the current pioneer stage of the research, it is important to include alternative sources. In my study, I will thus first look at the print production that thematized governesses. I will draw attention to the popularity of the gouvernante as a common character in literary texts, and particularly in theater plays published in the Habsburg monarchy in the eighteenth century. I will show how this strong literary presence contrasts with a lack of visibility in the archival records of actual French-speaking women who moved to the region to take up positions as gouvernantes. Throughout the study, my primary region of focus will be the Bohemian lands, for which I have collected new, previously disregarded sources.Footnote 10 I will draw attention to significant changes in the state legislature, particularly to the introduction of an inheritance tax, which seems to have increased the presence of gouvernantes in archival records since the late 1750s. I will then explore what these records reveal about female French émigré teachers’ backgrounds, professional trajectories, economic provision, and material culture. Subsequently, I will pinpoint these women's roles as intercultural and cross-class mediators and reproducers of sociocultural patterns.Footnote 11 In an effort to further nuance the time frame in question (i.e., 1750–1810), I will try to capture major shifts in attitudes toward the French language and French immigrants and point out changes in the labor market for governesses in the Habsburg monarchy. The outlined approach will allow me to bridge the usual gaps between cultural and socioeconomic histories and between textualist and material culture–oriented methodologies.
Representations of Governesses and Textual Transmission
Over the course of the eighteenth century, preserved historical library collections reveal that French gouvernante characters became a common presence on theater stages and in printed texts in the Habsburg monarchy. Some of these texts were brought directly from French-speaking parts of Europe; others were invented, copied, or adapted (usually with little or no attention to authorial and publisher's rights and privileges). Only five years after the publication of the sentimental comedy libretto La Gouvernante by French playwright Pierre-Claude Nivelle de la Chaussée (1692–1754) in Paris (1747), the same work was published by the court printer Jean Pierre van Ghelen in Vienna (1752). De la Chaussée's governess is a guardian of virtue, a confidante, and a companion to her noble charge.Footnote 12
A decade later, one could repeatedly encounter the comic opera Die Gouvernante in the theater repertoire across Central Europe. It first appeared in 1761 on stage in Prague in a play directed by the entrepreneur Johann Joseph Kurz (1717–84) and accompanied by the music of Franz Xaver Brixi (1732–71). Shortly afterward it was reenacted in Dresden by Pietro Moretti. Soon, it was taken over by another contemporary traveling director and collaborator of Kurz, Johann Joseph Brunian (1733–81), and staged in the Moravian capital city of Brno (Brünn).Footnote 13 These performances are well documented by librettos.Footnote 14 Nonetheless, we need to bear in mind that these printed texts provide only a glimpse of the doubtless numerous creative adaptations this opera comique underwent. The governess was represented as an older school mistress and with a young daughter of her own (Fiameta). She taught girls and young ladies French, proper manners, and needlework. On the stage she stood for dry rigidity and was an obstacle to her daughter's love and to young peoples’ freedom. She was, however, convinced to taste “Brandwein,” became intoxicated, and thereafter was the source of much laughter.
It seems that the perceived multifaceted “otherness” of a gouvernante made her a broadly accepted object of mockery and ridicule in theater plays. A careful look reveals signs of misogyny and of intercultural and social tensions in the literary representations of these women. While the comic opera genre allows the limits of usual social patterns to be breached and thus enables the presentation of a gouvernante character who is not in the service of a noble family but is instead self-employed and a parent; it also provides a means to question the governess's independence and ability to control herself. As the governess reveals herself susceptible to alcohol, order is restored by removing her as the blocking character from the scene (she is literally dragged away in a cart). A careful reading of these literary texts can thus point to language, gender, and class anxieties concerning governesses and provide insights into the subtleties of the sociocultural tensions female foreign educators faced, which hardly ever surface in the archival records.Footnote 15
One example of a play that passed from Paris to Vienna with very few changes is La Gouvernante. Comedie en Verse et Trois Actes, written by the French playwright Étienne-Francois Avisse (1694–1747) and published in Paris in 1731 and 1738.Footnote 16 Its central character is the gouvernante Jacinte, a long-term servant to an elderly master named Orgon, who is surrounded by people hopeful that they will receive his inheritance; Jacinte is one of them. The play was issued in print in French in Vienna in 1765.Footnote 17 As a French gouvernante in her homeland, Jacinte is not primarily a language teacher but rather a housekeeper and a caregiver. The play thus points to the often-overlooked historical roots of this occupation in household management.Footnote 18 Moreover, it reveals the important caregiving aspect in the work of a gouvernante, otherwise overshadowed by teaching tasks.
In the 1780s, a native of the south Moravian town of Mikulov (Nicholsburg), Leopold Huber (1766–1842) launched a series of educational comedies for children in Vienna. The libretto of his play New Year Gifts (Neuenjahrsgeschenke), published in Vienna in 1789, is situated in a noble household in which children, under the guidance of their Hofmeister and gouvernante, share their New Year's gifts with the poor, winter-stricken inhabitants of Vienna. In this play, the character of the governess is both integrated into the local context as she supports the Viennese poor and yet still marked as a foreigner by the fact that she masters French but speaks imperfect German (unlike the Hofmeister). This can be taken as a critical hint that she was thus unable to teach effectively by showing similarities and differences between the two languages. On the contrary, her charges explained to her the meanings of words and sentences:
GOUVERNANTE: “Cela est charmant! Die Komtesse fang die neue Jahr an, Geld herausgeb, und die handere Leut mit Geld heinnehm.”
MARIE: “Ja waren Sie nur da gewesen. La pauvre femme! Ihr Sohn ist gefroren.”
GOUVERNANTE: “Comment? Hir Kind ist gefror?”
MORITZ: “Gefror, ja so gefror, dass er nie wieder aufthauen wird.”
GOUVERNANTE: “Je n'en comprens rien. Hik hab kein rekt Begreif von der Sak.”
AMALIE: “Son fils est mort force de froid.”
GOUVERNANTE: “Comment mort! O Dieu! C'est affreux! La pauvre miserable! O Sie hab rek gut gethan, hir was zu schenken.”Footnote 19
The failure to understand and speak German correctly seems to have been employed as a literary tool to diminish the gouvernante's subversive potential in crossing a range of boundaries and conventions. The reversal of the usual education process (in children teaching their foreign governess) and the incorrect pronunciation serve here as the source of laughter. Moreover, as I will further develop in the text that follows, at the time when this libretto was published (1789), German-speaking middle-class women were increasingly employed as governesses in the Habsburg monarchy.
It seems easier to trace the migration and domestication of the literary character of the French governess than it is to trace the actual trajectories of French women who moved to the Habsburg monarchy seeking paid employment as private teachers. Unlike their literary representations, archival traces of actual governesses are exceedingly fragmentary. In the following section, I will attempt to assemble these fragments into a coherent mosaic.
Private Women Teachers on the Move
When discussing the archival evidence documenting the lives of gouvernantes, I draw particular attention to sources produced in the aftermath of individual governesses’ deaths that sought to record their possessions and bequests and to fulfill the requirements of a newly introduced state inheritance tax. In addition to egodocuments, family correspondence, and other historical records, these sources provide us with a clearer outline of the contours of governesses’ lives in the early phase of their growing popularity in the Habsburg monarchy.
In a bid to raise the financial means to pay off a growing government deficit and to help fund the ongoing military conflict with Prussia, one part of what might be called the global Seven Years’ War (1756–63), Empress Maria Theresa introduced a new form of taxation—the so-called inheritance tax (Erbschaftssteuer)—which took effect on 1 July 1759.Footnote 20 From that date onward, any inheritance, legacy, or gift gained from a living or deceased person other than one's parent, child, husband, or wife was subject to a 10 percent tax.
This new measure resulted in the more systematic documentation of various forms of inheritance, especially in relation to the moment of death, which was when most taxable property tended to emerge. State and local authorities collaborated to produce voluminous material, which included the originals and copies of testaments, probate inventories, quittances, and farewell letters. Many of these records, such as correspondence and last wills, fit the broader definition of so-called egodocuments and provide insights into the deceased individuals’ social networks, work conditions, material standards, and personal interests (such as literary tastes).Footnote 21
The inheritance tax applied to all property whose value was greater than 1,000 Rhenish florins, if donated during the donor's life (inter vivos), or higher than 500 florins in the case of postmortem inheritance. Upon a donor's death, all their debts—medical, administrative, and funeral expenses; pious donations; and bequests for the poor—were deducted and the remaining assets and liabilities carefully calculated to establish whether their value exceeded 500 florins and was thus subject to tax. Even holdings that were deemed just shy of the threshold of taxation were often carefully documented so as to avoid any suspicion of tax evasion.Footnote 22
This new tax significantly increased the chances that any substantial written documentation concerning a broad range of individuals would survive. I have managed to identify archival files on three French gouvernantes who were active in the last third of the eighteenth century and thus represent some of the earliest well-documented examples of these women professionals employed by noble families in the Bohemian lands. Their names were: Antonia de l'Espiliez (†1775), Colomba Bouquenet (†1776), and Marguerite Trognon (†1808). Moreover, these findings indicate that more systematic research into death duty–related personal records across the broader Habsburg monarchy is needed.
The circumstances in which these archival sources were produced result in them being mainly related to the last stages of the women's lives. We thus know very little about their early career decisions, processes of recruitment, and migration. The gouvernante career was not necessarily a professional path for childless women. Although most gouvernantes were called “Mademoiselle,” Colomba Bouquenet is described strictly as “Madame.” Prior to embracing her career as a governess, she was married and gave birth to at least one daughter, Agnes, who reached adulthood, lived in Paris, kept correspondence with her mother, and managed to have her mother's savings and selected belongings returned to Paris from the South Moravian chateau in Veselí nad Moravou through a family friend in Vienna, Catharine Clement.Footnote 23
One of the key prerequisites for gaining employment as a gouvernante was excellent command of refined French. Cultivated, idiomatic French served as a sociolect that distinguished the nobility from the lower social strata. Governesses were usually brought from French-speaking regions rather than chosen from the French diaspora, as contact with the authentic living language was preferred.Footnote 24 In the personal papers of the deceased Antonia de l'Espiliez (who is described as “Mademoiselle”) we learn that she had seven collateral heirs, probably siblings, in various towns of the Holy Roman Empire; she likely came from one of the linguistically mixed regions of the empire, such as Alsace or Lorraine. Antonia served in the family of Prince Heinrich Paul Franz von Mannsfeld (1712–80).Footnote 25 In the death register of St. Giles church in Prague Old Town she is described as “Prefecta juniorum commitissarum Mansfeldianarum” and is recorded as having died at fifty years of age. Her birthplace is not cited.Footnote 26
Somewhat more can be established about the origin and career of Marguerite Trognon (also described as “Mademoiselle”). We are fortunate that the parish priest František Herites, who buried her, entered a brief biographical note in Czech in the parish register of deaths at the parish church in Kotouň (Kotaun) in western Bohemia. If we trust this parish register entry, Marguerite Trognon was born in Lorraine, close to Metz, probably around 1734, and was thus seventy-four years old when she died in 1808. The entry indicates that she educated children in several noble families in Bohemia, and her last appointment was in the family of Franz Dominik Baron Janovský of Janovice (c. 1740–1807). At the Janovský family chateau in Oselce (Woseletz) she “raised in virtue” three young ladies and received a pension in her old age. The parish priest recorded her cause of death as old age, weariness of life, and apoplexy (Schlag).Footnote 27 The emphasis on virtue in women's education was part of a broader discourse and it recurs in the sources in various contexts.
Over the course of her long life, Marguerite Trognon seems to have adapted well to the Bohemian environment and embraced it as her home. This was probably conditioned by her lack of close relatives and by the dramatic sociocultural changes brought about by the French Revolution, which had a direct impact on the mobility and employment options of gouvernantes, as we will see in the following text. At approximately sixty-five years of age she accepted a lifelong pension at an outlying rural chateau belonging to the Janovský family in Oselce. Peter Burke has recently suggested that acquiring the local language was one of the tests of adaptation or assimilation.Footnote 28 In the case of governesses, the widespread use and prestige of French meant that they were not under heavy pressure to learn local language(s) quickly.Footnote 29 Moreover, Marguerite Trognon and Antonia de l'Espiliez, who came from the French-speaking regions of the Holy Roman Empire, probably arrived with prior knowledge of German, while Colomba Bouquenet had a textbook of German cursive in her private library. In the eighteenth century, Czech was largely a peasant language, which declined in status after the massive post–White Mountain emigration of non-Catholic nobility and burghers.
In Marguerite Trognon's case, her extensive charitable activities for the benefit of the local poor and other community members, her own servant (Magd), and other caregivers may be considered an indicator of her good adaptation to a region distant from her place of origin.Footnote 30 Among her belongings, Marguerite Trognon had substantial savings; her position enabled her to make choices about how to spend them, and she decided to spend them locally.
Despite living in rural western Bohemia, Trognon had ties to Vienna, where her uncle made a bequest for her. As the seat of the imperial court, Vienna seems to have served as a convenient hub not only for the governesses but also for those who sought to hire them. The center of the Habsburg monarchy abounded with French-speaking migrants, including tutors and governesses, and featured a broad spectrum of members of the French diaspora, such as goldsmiths, merchants, musicians, dancers, decorators, tailors, and hat and wig makers.Footnote 31
The central role of Vienna and other provincial capitals (Landeshauptstädte) as communication nodes in governesses’ hiring and the role of noble families’ recommendations in shaping the career trajectories of private migrant women teachers are clearly promising topics for further research. Recommendations seem to have been essential for the gouvernantes' career dynamics. For example, the letters written by Colomba Bouquenet's noble patrons upon her death reveal that she had served first for the Skrbenský family and then for the Chorinský family; these two families were related, and we may assume she was recommended personally.Footnote 32 A similar pattern is well known in the careers of male private teachers.
Governesses are important examples of migrant women who were not “followers” of their husbands. Traditional migration research long focused on pioneer men, who would be followed by women.Footnote 33 The study of private women teachers enables us to nuance the view and explore how they pursued one of the few professional career opportunities available to contemporary women of middling status. At the same time, governesses usually followed the families they worked for as they moved between residences, especially between town palaces and rural chateaux, observing seasonal mobility patterns.
While the archival material related to the inheritance tax enables us to learn about the lives of gouvernantes who do not feature prominently in other historical records, these death duty sources also entail certain limits. From the perspective of migration history, they omit women who did not die as governesses or retired governesses at their noble patrons’ residences; for example, women who perhaps re-migrated later in life, returning to their own relatives. From the sociocultural history viewpoint, these sources reveal almost nothing about their teaching activities as such. However, for this purpose we can resort to an example previously studied by Ivo Cerman. He drew attention to a governess with the surname Jenamy and an unknown first name who came from a French-speaking, presumably Catholic region, as she received her education in a convent. Around 1774 this young woman was hired by Marie Christine, Countess Dietrichstein, to serve as a governess to her five-year-old daughter Maria Theresia (1768–1821). The countess composed an instruction (Plan ou observation) that was influenced by contemporary principles of Enlightenment pedagogy and emphasized the “natural” talents and passions of a child. Primarily, the governess was expected to help the little girl to master French, but she was also to teach her Czech, which presupposes that she must have learned Czech herself and thus can be interpreted as an example of cultural hybridity and local adaptation. From the instruction it is clear that the governess also fulfilled the role of a caregiver (along with lower servants). She was present throughout the girl's daily schedule, which consisted of her reading, writing, and activities to prevent idleness. Not least of all, the governess was also responsible for the constant supervision of the girl's behavior, which was to be dutifully reported to her mother.Footnote 34
The instruction, particularly its last section, indicates that Countess Dietrichstein drafted it because she was dissatisfied with the young governess's performance, emphasizing that the governess had to yet gain the trust and respect of her daughter. The gouvernante was ordered to get to know her charge better and to show friendliness and patience.Footnote 35 The instruction thus demonstrates that although the nobility in the Habsburg monarchy significantly relied on middle-class, native French-speakers to reproduce social distinction, there was a subversive aspect in the role of the governess. As social actors of nonnoble background, governesses could clearly bring into their educational and caregiving work new aspects that were not always welcomed by their employers (although they may have gone unnoticed). The gouvernantes thus did not only reproduce social distinction in the strict sense but also subtly coshaped it.
Valuable complementary evidence on the mobility of governesses between the centers and provinces of the Habsburg monarchy can be found in the diarial family records written by the Silesian noblewoman Gabriela von Spens-Booden (1773–1808), which I coedited.Footnote 36 Gabriela noted down two consecutive stays of governesses at their family chateau in Kačice (Katschitz) in the Silesian duchy of Teschen. In the late stages of pregnancy with her seventh child, Gabriela entrusted her daughters to a governess named Franziska Falkenstein. As we can see, with the revival of the vernacular languages and literatures at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, French gouvernantes were joined by German- and, increasingly, English-speaking governesses, who either took turns or—in wealthier families—were employed simultaneously.Footnote 37 The diary entry by Gabriela von Spens-Booden reveals that “On 1 December 1805, Freile Franzl Falkenstein arrived to serve as a Gouvernante to our daughters; on 10 September 1806, she left for Ratibor.”Footnote 38 The day before Franziska Falkenstein's departure, a new governess arrived from Vienna. This time it was a woman with a French-sounding name, Jeanette Satur, and she was hired along with a cleric who served as Hofmeister: “On 9 September 1806, the Gouvernante from Vienna, Freile Jeanette Satur, joined us. On the same day Pater Joseph Kaul arrived from across the Prussian border; he left again on 14 February 1808 because he did not like the weather here in Katschitz. Freile Satur left on 16 March 1808.”Footnote 39
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Spens-Boodens's financial situation was troubled, which may help to explain why these family employees stayed only for relatively short periods, and, ultimately, why Gabriela decided to act as governess herself to her two older daughters, Zoe and Gabrielle, which she announced in her diary: “On 17 March 1808, I took up the office of Gouvernante for my girls, Zoe and Gabrielle; may God help me raise them to our joy.”Footnote 40
Gabriela von Spens-Booden was born as Sobková of Kornice, a member of high nobility, and she married below her status. The very fact that she described herself as a governess is indicative of positive appreciation of this relatively new and independent female profession, which seems to have coexisted with critical attitudes toward gouvernantes. Gabriela might have been influenced in her approach by the turn-of-the-century sentimental ideal of engaged motherhood. Moreover, at that time she was suffering from advanced tuberculosis and probably wished to spend more time with her daughters. She died seven months later, on 22 October 1808.
The death of a parent might well bring about changes in a family's strategies in regard to women's education. The widowed Emanuel von Spens-Booden hired a governess, Theresa Platz, who became his lifelong partner. Along with his debts, Emanuel's cohabitation with a governess damaged his reputation among his relatives and beyond. Gabriela's daughters were sent to the convent school of Notre Dame sisters in Pressburg (present-day Bratislava), which was very popular among the nobility, not least because the convent published textbooks and spiritual literature in French in Pressburg and Trnava (Tyrnau) and several native French-speaking nuns were always present.Footnote 41 The stays of Zoe, Gabrielle, and Marie at the convent school were financed by stipends that Gabriela's great aunt funded for noblewomen in need from the duchy of Teschen.Footnote 42
Governess Theresa Platz's officially unrecognized position as a long-term partner to her widowed noble patron points to ambiguities and tensions connected with the social status of the gouvernante as both a lady free from manual labor and also an employee. The paid employment of governesses is situated on the borderline between domestic service and a professional career; their work as educators was also closely connected with looking after children. The governesses’ education and the high status of French language and culture distinguished them from other servants. Governesses lived in close contact with their employers’ families, despite not being relatives. They were often not only teachers but also intimate companions to their charges, yet they depended on the goodwill of their employers. These circumstances created potential conflicts of social roles.
Marriage was an economic transaction, which was not easily attainable;Footnote 43 at the same time, it provided the only acceptable place for sexual contact. While governesses participated in the sociocultural world of the nobility, they could not enter into formally recognized marital union with members of the noble household. However, historical records occasionally suggest that these formal expectations were circumvented in practice.
Women who embraced the profession of a governess were often expected to move across long distances between their consecutive employments and sometimes between family residences. They were occasionally asked to accompany noble families on their travels. For example, in 1711 Wenzel Anton Count Chotek (1674–1754) took his daughters on a female version of a grand tour to Lorraine, during which a French governess accompanied them.Footnote 44
To be willing to take up employment in a distant region, far away from their former social structures, governesses had to be appropriately motivated. The lure of joining a noble household and thus of getting closer to the pleasures of high society may well have been at play but was not sufficient in itself. Economic provision was of key importance for the women, who hoped to gain economic independence by pursuing this professional path.
In the future, more material will certainly be needed to better appraise governesses’ economic situations during their careers and in retirement. Here, I attempt to draft the first preliminary contours. Governesses received an annual wage, which differed according to family standing, regions, the governess's competencies, and other variables; this and its development over time are of major importance, but very little can so far be asserted about them. As a certain hint we may mention that in the last third of the seventeenth century, Ferdinand Bonaventura, Count Harrach (1636–1706), hired a gouvernante for his daughter(s) at the sum of 100 florins per year.Footnote 45 In terms of provision, the board and lodging that came with the position was an important factor.Footnote 46
Documents related to Marguerite Trognon's retirement and death provide us with a very good overview of her incomes and living standards. There is no information on her wages because the documents focus on her actual recent situation. In the report on her assets made one day after her death (Nachlassenschaftsprotokoll), three sources of income are described on the basis of her papers: two of these were from the family by which she was last employed, and one was provided by her deceased uncle Johann Trognon.Footnote 47
On 24 October 1799, Baron Franz Dominik Janovský of Janovice and his three daughters, Marie, Agnes, and Christine, all probably former charges of Marguerite Trognon, secured a lifelong pension for their gouvernante, which consisted of 40 florins yearly and further support in kind: five Klafter of firewood and the usage of a flat with a kitchen and chamber. Three years later, the oldest daughter, Baroness Maria von Collard, née Janovský, provided Trognon with 60 florins yearly, divided into two installments to be paid on St. Gallus's and St. George's days. Baroness von Collard obliged her heirs to observe this duty and employed the rhetoric of gratitude as she explained the support was meant to “somewhat recompense and appreciate the attachment, loyalty, and affection the maiden Marguerite Trognon has always efficiently shown to me since my youth on.”Footnote 48
As her third source of income, Marguerite Trognon had the use of a testamentary bequest by her uncle, Johann Trognon, which came into effect on 22 January 1799. Johann Trognon secured the sum of 3,500 florins in the so-called Scottish Abbey of the Benedictines in Vienna, and his niece was to receive interest regularly upon quittance. A letter of authorization shows she had an agent (Sachwalter) in Vienna, Ferdinand Gemel von Flischbach, who was responsible for collecting her money regularly.Footnote 49
From Marguerite Trognon's last will, which is preserved in both French and German, we can deduce that she had a chambermaid whom she paid and who was to be awarded the equivalent of six months’ wages upon her death (“ses gage pour 6 mois”). She donated some of her belongings to her maid and her friends, so the inventory of her flat at the chateau in Oselce provides a somewhat limited insight into her material standard. It was furnished with a table, four chairs, two wash basin cabinets, one copper engraving, one bench, one chandelier, and one bed, which her maid was to receive upon her death. The interior was equipped with plenty of linge blanc (mainly chemises, kerchiefs, and napkins) and with remnants of garderobe, which were to be distributed to the poor.Footnote 50
We may conclude that Marguerite Trognon enjoyed comfortable conditions in her old age; this is supported by the fact that she left a broad spectrum of generous offerings to members of the local elites, such as the parish priest František Herites (to whom she bequeathed her pocket watch), and to the poor.Footnote 51 Marguerite Trognon seems to have followed closely what was expected of a good governess who taught not only a foreign language but also good manners, because she left a thank you letter to her patron, Baroness Maria Collard, whom she addresses as “my angel and the most beloved of my heart” (mon Ange et la plus aimée de mon Coeur). Beyond the conventional language of sentimentality, we may discern in her choice of words that she drew a certain degree of satisfaction from her profession and life path: “Your entire worthy family has contributed to making my life sweeter.”Footnote 52
Marguerite Trognon was well provided for. In fact, the cash found in her flat before it was locked and sealed amounted to 1,125 florins and 13 kreutzer, which was above the taxable sum of 500 florins. However, after substantial funeral, juridical, and administrative expenses and Marguerite's donations to local community had been deducted, the amount remaining was significantly reduced and exempt from taxation.Footnote 53
Antonia de l'Espiliez's inheritance tax inspection papers, though quite brief, enable a few valuable comparisons. Antonia left 549 florins and 30 kreutzer in cash. Moreover, she owned gold and silver—possibly in jewelry, which would be appropriate at the court of the prince of Mannsfeld—the value of which was estimated at 355 florins and 5 kreutzer. Overall, once again, the resulting sum of 904 florins and 35 kreutzer was above the taxable minimum. Funeral, juridical, administrative, and medical costs were carefully documented and deducted from the initial sum, along with a donation to the pious foundation for one hundred memorial masses. The remaining 426 florins and 45 kreutzer were exempt from inheritance tax and could be divided among Antonia's collateral heirs.Footnote 54
The economic situations of Marguerite Trognon and Antonia de l'Espiliez thus do not seem to have been very distant from those of the prosperous subjects that were the primary targets of the inheritance tax ordinance. The papers relating to Colomba Bouquenet reflect a somewhat different situation. It turned out she had direct heirs (although her employer was unsure of this at first). As a consequence, her property was not subject to any inheritance tax inspection. The meticulous documentation was undertaken, among other things, with regard to her relatives. The inventory of her belongings is quite detailed and was sent to her daughter Agnes Vachez in Paris.Footnote 55
Colomba Bouquenet died on 9 October 1776, after dispatching a letter to her daughter, and she was buried three days later in the south Moravian town of Veselí. The parish priest recorded her age in the register of deaths as fifty-two years and her profession as “informatrix illustris juventus Excellentissimi Domini Domini Comitis Francisci Chorinsky.”Footnote 56 Inheritance-related letters from her former employers describe her as “the old governess.”Footnote 57
Upon Colomba's death, it turned out that her employers at the time, the Chorinský family, did not have any reliable information about her relatives. Thus, although Colomba had maintained private correspondence ties, the personal aspects of her life were apparently not of much importance to her employer. Count Franz Johann Chorinský inquired of his brother, Ignaz Dominick, about the matter, and he in turn asked another nobleman, Karl Traugott, Baron von Skrbenský; these connections seem to indicate Colomba Bouquenet's previous service trajectory. Baron Skrbenský mediated contact with Catharine Clement, who had kept correspondence with Colomba and served in the household of Gabriele von Thurn, born Countess von Reisbach, in Vienna. In summer 1777, Count Chorinský took the suitcase containing Colomba's personal possessions in which her daughter had expressed interest to Vienna and had Catharine Clement confirm in a written acknowledgment bearing her personal seal that she had received a sealed suitcase and the sum of 148 florins for Colomba's daughter.Footnote 58
The preserved inventory of Colomba's possessions, encompassing clothing, textiles, and books, among other things, is extensive but probably not exhaustive. For example, we cannot exclude the possibility that she had supported her daughter, Agnes, and her family during the course of her life. It was also a common occurrence for people to appreciate the caregivers and medical specialists who assisted them in their last days. For example, the inheritance tax inspection papers for the Mannsfeld family's gouvernante Antonia de l'Espiliez reveal liabilities for a nurse and a surgeon. Colomba Bouquenet's inventory lists her remaining cash as 67 florins, 5 kreutzer, and 2 denarii. Moreover, at the time of her death, her employer owed her a further 81 florins and 15 kreutzer. This was the wage due to her “bis ad diem mortis,” but we do not know whether she received her wages on a monthly basis or what the yearly sum was.Footnote 59
Colomba Bouquenet owned a gilded silver pendant with an image of the Bohemian saint John of Nepomuk and a string of artificial pearls, known as “Wachsperle,” which were made using a technique invented by the Jacquin family rosary merchants in Paris in 1656 that involved filling hollow glass beads with wax and then coating them with pearl essence.Footnote 60 Her inventory further shows that she had a varied collection of clothing, lingerie, bonnets, and accessories (such as a pair of leather gloves and a straw hat). Moreover, three packets containing pieces of cloth, such as flax and silk, with ribbons and fine needlework, suggest that Colomba had been actively engaged in handicraft, specifically in sewing, mending, and embroidery.
The inventory further provides a rare glimpse into a governess's personal library. Colomba Bouquenet's collection of books consisted of seventeen titles, sixteen in French and one in German, namely Lehr Büchel Teutsche Schrift zu erlernen. While one of the French books was published in Paris, Etrennes Spirituelle dediées aux Dames (1758), most of the other French titles were published in Vienna. The majority of the Viennese prints are librettos of comedies, tragedies, and operas staged in Vienna in the 1750s and 1760s. This substantial collection of librettos might have been connected with the use of theater as a time-proven teaching method, capable of engaging children of various ages. In addition to cultivating language skills, theater performances provided the opportunity to invite guests and thus enabled young members of the nobility to socialize and practice acquired norms of behavior from an early age. In the second half of the eighteenth century, staging theater plays for private noble company was a much sought-after pastime. Franz Johann Chorinský's brother Ignaz Dominick Chorinský, who may have been Colomba's previous employer, had a private theater built at his chateau in Velké Hoštice (Gross Hoschütz) on the Moravian-Silesian border and had his own orchestra.Footnote 61
Theater plays were performed both in these rural chateaux and in the urban palaces where the nobility spent the winter months. Gabriela von Spens-Booden (mentioned previously) noted in her diary that on 12 February 1795 she was invited to the then Sprinzentein palais in Opava (Troppau) to see the comedy The Lost Son (Der Verlorene Sohn) with the following actors and company: “count Sprinzenstein, both his little sons, baron Luzello, baron Franz Beretzko, Herr von Schmidt, Herr Sommer and the count Sprinzenstein' clerk; the attending ladies were both comtesse Nandl and comtesse Jenny Chorinský; and Freile Claire von Toepffer.”Footnote 62 The host, Count Joseph Sprinzenstein (1755–1807), was married to Marie Anna Chorinský (1757–1852), the daughter of Ignaz Dominick Chorinský. Maria Anna might well have been one of Colomba Bouquenet's former charges, and they certainly moved in intertwined social circles. While governesses probably had some sort of access to the libraries of their employers, it was undoubtedly handy for them to have at least a modest selection of theater play librettos on their own bookshelves.
About one-quarter of Colomba Bouquenet's library was made up of religious titles. In addition to Etrennes Spirituelle, there was a Bible and a catechism. Moreover, one of the titles was an exclusive prayer book representative of the contemporary ideals of raising young noblewomen in the Habsburg monarchy, La journee chretienne de demoiselles pensionnaires de la Visitation S. Marie de Vienne.Footnote 63
In its title and foreword, this book refers to the authorial participation of the widowed Empress Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1673–1742), who founded in 1717 the convent of the Order of the Visitation in Vienna, an important center of Francophone education and socialization for noblewomen.Footnote 64 The presence of this book in the collection of a governess shows the close interconnection between the two major education models available to young noblewomen and embodied by convents and private teachers. The French prayer book closely associated with the pious dowager empress was clearly appreciated as distinguished reading well beyond the convent walls, as documented by Colomba's book inventory and many other preserved exemplars of the book.Footnote 65
Among Colomba Bouquenet's books we can further find two epistolary works by renowned female writers: the novel Lettres de Madame Du Montier by the French writer and governess Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont (1711−80) and the French translation of the letters of Mary Wortley Montagu, an English noble lady and traveler (1689−1762). There is also a sentimental novel, L'orpheline angloise ou Histoire de Charlotte Summers, a French translation of a work usually, though not securely, attributed to the English writer Sarah Fielding (1710−68), novelist Henry Fielding's sister. This popular novel can further be detected in the library at the Skrbenský family's Silesian chateau in Hošťálkovy (Gotschdorf), where Colomba had most likely served earlier in her career. However, the books in these two collections had different bindings (the Skrbenský exemplar had four parts bound in two volumes, whereas the list of works owned by Colomba Bouquenet registers three volumes out of four, with one missing).Footnote 66 Religious works, sentimental novels, epistolary works, and theater play librettos were standard components of contemporary noble libraries, and the governesses seem to have both shared and shaped demand for this gendered literature.Footnote 67
The outlined range of literature more or less complied with the contemporary discourse of virtue and ideas of appropriate reading for ladies. Governesses were expected to imbue their charges with virtue, but the very concept underwent considerable changes over the course of the eighteenth century. The former, primarily religious understanding of virtue was reassessed and increasingly underpinned by the search for new, more secular foundations of morality.Footnote 68 In the second half of the eighteenth century, in particular, the ideal of virtuous womanhood was broadened to accommodate guarded reading of sentimental novels and theater visits in addition to religious practices.Footnote 69 This development favored education by governesses over the model of convent education. Moreover, convent schools entailed relatively less direct parental control and potentially higher sanitary risks.Footnote 70 The private teacher model with French governesses seems to have enabled families to react more dynamically to the changing social climate, which was increasingly imbued with Enlightenment ideas, and to follow new trends in reading tastes and material culture and consumption. One can recognize this shift, for example, in the aforementioned educational plan composed in 1774 by Marie Christine, Countess Dietrichstein, for the French gouvernante she employed. Inspired by pedagogical principles promoted by Jean Jacques Rousseau, the countess instructed the convent-educated governess that she wished her daughter not to be raised as excessively devout (“ni une dévote, ni une bigote”) and in a rather natural way with a great deal of freedom.Footnote 71
As we have seen, theater play librettos highlighted the new character of a gouvernante and gradually found their way into libraries belonging to governesses and to the families for whom they worked. We may hypothesize about the perceived dissonance between the literary type of a gouvernante, portrayed as a dry, elderly guardian of female virtues, and the rather more varied everyday experience of governesses as prolific letter writers, mothers, employers of servants, unofficial partners, and financially well-provided donors, as substantiated by the archival evidence. Governesses’ positions as independent wage earners and participants in the elite culture entailed a significant subversive aspect. As indicated in the preceding text, we may see in theater plays attempts to neutralize that subversive potential by turning the governess figure into a source of laughter. The complex intercultural and social tensions concerning governesses were not disconnected from the situation in the labor market, as I will develop in the next section.
In Demand and Under Suspicion
The examples of gouvernantes I have been able to recover from historical records do not come from families of court aristocracy; rather, they were connected with relatively provincial noble families and can be regarded as evidence that to hire a governess was a common occurrence in noble households with small children and adolescent women in the second half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. We could say that governesses were in high demand. Moreover, current socioanthropological research inspires me to suggest that we might draw a parallel between present-day paid migrant caregivers and eighteenth-century governesses, who were and are both in demand and viewed with some suspicion.
Theater play librettos allow us to discern the gender, class, and language anxieties concerning governesses who were middle-class working women and foreign language speakers who crossed the boundaries of class. In printed media these French women teachers were subject to othering and criticism.Footnote 72 They were perceived as the source of potential bad foreign influences and disorder in noble households. One could say that governesses contributed to the elites’ outward displays of social distinction, but at the same time they were also part of discourses that revealed an aspect of moral panic because they raised undue suspicion and nourished imagined threats while downplaying the subordinate status of these women.Footnote 73 Parallels in biased representations of French governesses can be drawn with other European regions, particularly with Great Britain.Footnote 74
The previously analyzed examples of governesses who served in the closely interconnected Chorinský, Skrbenský, and Spens-Booden noble families seem to have been indicative of the changes in employment patterns and of a certain shift from the long-term or even lifelong hiring of a French native speaker to a short-term hiring of governesses who were more locally anchored. This change cannot be sufficiently explained by the possible effects of the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, or economic distress. Although the fear of the spread of revolutionary ideas from France was an important sociocultural factor, signals of a shift in attitudes toward the French language and foreign teachers can be observed much earlier.
Although the French language continued to serve as an indicator of social distinction, its status somewhat declined toward the end of the eighteenth century. It was increasingly complemented by English, as the wave of Anglophilia gradually took root, and by German, which also served as the main administrative language. Certain criticisms of French private teachers in general and doubts about their competencies can be recognized, for example, in the pedagogical work of Franz Josef, Count Kinský (1739–1805), Erinnerung über einen wichtigen Gegenstand von einem Böhmen, which was published in Prague in 1773. Specifically, in the chapter “On Tutors” (Von Hofmeistern), Kinský criticized that nobles paid less attention to recruiting tutors from Paris than to ordering horses from England. He advocated that local teachers should be given precedence if they proved better qualified, especially in fields like geography or the knowledge of the homeland (Vaterland). His discourse occupied a fragile ground between patriotism and xenophobia and probably voiced contemporary concerns that could strike a chord with his readership.Footnote 75 Kinský devoted only his penultimate, very brief chapter to “The Upbringing of the Other Sex” (Die Erziehung des anderen Geschlechts). He was rather skeptical that he could find a sympathetic ear, but he suggested that many of the postulates he had outlined for the education of young noblemen could be applied to ladies' upbringing, too: “Nevertheless, one could after all also apply many of the here outlined principles to the instruction of the beauties, if one could decide to renounce certain prejudices, which have become almost rules since they were followed for so long.”Footnote 76
Formal aspects of private women's education and training of potential governesses for these purposes received increased attention beginning in the mid-1770s. Particularly, the foundation of two state-supported secular institutions destined to educate new governesses paved the way for looming changes in the labor market in the Habsburg monarchy. In 1775 the so-called Offizierstöchter-Erziehungs-Institut was established in St. Pölten, and ten years later it moved to a dissolved Pauline friary in Hernals, on the outskirts of Vienna. It provided daughters of lower officers with new possibilities to gain training as governesses. The second institution, the Zivil-Mädchen-Pensionat, was founded by Madame Thérèse Luzac (née Chapelain) on permission by Emperor Joseph II in 1786 to prepare daughters of civil servants for careers as private teachers.Footnote 77 Göttingisches historisches Magazin, issued by the University of Göttingen professors Christoph Meiners and Ludwig Timotheus von Spittler, included a paragraph about both institutions in 1790. It announced that the Offizierstöchter-Erziehungs-Institut, supervised by Madame Zeh, housed forty students and the “perhaps too glamorous” pensionat of Madame Luzac housed thirty young women.Footnote 78 These new institutions markedly added to the diversification of the governesses' labor market. They broadened opportunities for local middle-class women and made formally trained women teachers better available for the first time in the Habsburg monarchy. The growing appreciation of German among the nobility further shaped the market for governesses, benefitting those who could speak refined German.Footnote 79
The revolutionary events in France raised a wave of emigration. Despite the initially rather moderate approach of Emperor Leopold II, the distrust toward émigrés from the regions under French rule gradually increased, and both nonnoble and noble migrants were subject to surveillance.Footnote 80 The fears of the potentially harmful thoughts and their spread by French immigrants, as well as the spread of anti-French sentiments, deepened in 1792 with the radicalization of the revolution and the onset of military conflicts with France. In 1793, Emperor Francis II prohibited instruction in French language by native speakers. The youth could be taught French only by teachers from the Habsburg monarchy. Furthermore, it was forbidden to import French books, and after January 1793, French refugees could stay only in Vienna or in provincial capitals (Landeshauptstädte).Footnote 81
Nobles interested in hiring French gouvernantes and tutors faced reduced options. They could, for example, employ second generation members of the French diaspora or use the services of French teachers who had arrived prior to the revolution, more specifically before 1790. This was also the case of the previously analyzed gouvernante Marguerite Trognon, who entered the service of the Janovský family before the French Revolution. French private teachers in the Habsburg hereditary lands who immigrated after 1790 had to ask for permission to stay and for the renewal of their teaching license. These were not to be granted, however, and the teachers were expelled. Nonetheless, we need to take into account that the nobility was in a position to successfully negotiate exceptions.Footnote 82
However, the situation in the Habsburg monarchy seems to have differed from that in Britain, where the numbers of French émigré widows grew considerably after 1789 and shaped the market for governesses in yet another direction. These diverging developments deserve a closer comparative study in the future.
The historical records and literature explored here have not only allowed us to analyze a significantly earlier phase in the development of governesses’ profession than had been previously researched but they have also enabled us to capture important long-term processes and changes with respect to immigration, the labor market, and intercultural contacts and transmissions.
Conclusion
The aim of this article has been to open the study of French governesses as women migrant professionals, intercultural and cross-class mediators, and emerging literary types in the Bohemian lands of the eighteenth century, and thus to contribute to a more inclusive view of gouvernantes across Europe. I have approached governesses as migrant women suspended in texts (which they produced and in which they were thematized) and in certain cultural as well as socioeconomic conditions. I have asked what these texts reveal about their sociocultural roles, material standards, and imagined lives.
The exceptionally high cultural status of the French language, which steadily grew for most of the eighteenth century, and its role as a distinctive elite sociolect broadened opportunities for middle-class native French-speaking women to support themselves outside of marriage by gaining relatively stable salaries abroad. I have drawn attention to previously disregarded sources, especially the inheritance tax–related records and printed sources. I have pointed out that the governesses’ own income and savings enabled them to act as patrons in local contexts (and beyond) and that the gouvernantes were active textual producers and donors who used their letters and gifts to build and maintain social ties, to come to terms with their transgressive experience, and to shape their memory. They employed their texts and their possessions to connect across geographic, social, and other distances and also across time. Further findings of other documents, such as letters or endowment instruments, that may have survived at other ends of communication lines would enhance our knowledge of the governesses’ sociocultural practices and economic conditions and provide insights into what work and independent wages meant to these women.
The very fact that they taught foreign languages, along with certain artifacts identified in the analyzed inventories, such as the pendant of St. John of Nepomuk, German cursive textbook, or “Wachsperle,” remind us that these gouvernantes were intercultural mediators and transcultural actors. Moreover, I argue that they need to be regarded as both educators and caregivers. They were employed to teach their charges refined language skills and manners according to their noble employers’ instructions and wishes. The examined sources suggest that the gouvernantes contributed in this role to the processes of reproducing social and cultural distinction as well as gendered discourses and practices. However, their border crossings on multiple levels also coshaped the social spaces in which they moved. These sources further support the view that the role of the governess was far more multifaceted than teaching alone. The role of these household workers as everyday care providers in a situation in which their charges had only limited contacts with their parents and with nonnoble people is obvious, but it has long been downplayed. Sociocultural anthropologists are increasingly interested in the underestimated gendered aspects of care, and research on governesses offers promising opportunities to historicize paid and unpaid caregiving in the household environment. Further research will be needed to refine the time frame of development and changes in the governesses' labor market. This article has shown a multiplicity of approaches to exploring these long underestimated “servants of Francophilia,” while also broadening the space for future comparative studies.
Veronika Čapská is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague. She is currently a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences and a participant of the COST Action Women on the Move (CA 19112). She held visiting fellowships at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge, and at the European University Institute in Florence. She has published broadly on early modern cultural history of Central Europe. Her current research interests include early modern transcultural history (history of mobilities, gift exchange, translation history, correspondence networks, etc.) and memory studies. She has also published on early modern personal writings, print culture, religious history, and visual culture.
