St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-07-14
NEVER SEE PARENTS.

Raising English Aristocrats Left
Entirely to the Servants and
Teachers.
The children of the English aristoc-
racy are not brought up by their par
ents. Practically speaking, they do
not come into contact with their parents
at all until their childhood and youth
are passed, and their character is per-
manently formed. This applies, indeed,
not only to the English aristocracy, but
to all the grades of English well-to-do
life, says writer in the New York
World. An Englishman, indeed, has
children; but, unless he is very low
Englishman indeed (say a small shop
have ceased to be children. En-
gland is positively the only
country in this world, the writer
asserts, in which there is, for
respectable people," absolutely no do
nestle life until childhood, and, in most
cases, even youth, is passed. The Brit
ish nursery, SO far at least as boys are
concerned, is an institution at which
the whole neighboring cOntinent-nay,
even the adjacent island of Ireland
lift up its hands in wonder aghast. The
young foreigner lives and feeds with
his parents from the time he is old
enough to sit on chair and handle
fork. His father actually sees him at
breakfast. His mother is not too gen.
teel tie take him out for walk. When
he is sent to school it is to a school
round the corner, where he is easily get
at-able by those who have brought him
into the world, and he is certainly
never whole week at a time out of
their sight. In this way he grows
up rot merely to like his parents,
but to resemble them-in tastes,
at least, and disposition and
ways of thought. But in England,
more particularly in the high and
mighty circles, there is little or nothing
of this intimacy between parent and
child. The young nObleman, as soon
as he is born, is handed over to the
charge of servants; from them he passes
to the care of SchoolmasterS and college
tutors. 1t is not until he comes of age
(or pretty nearly that he meets his
father and mother upon terms of in
timacy, and then, probably having
spent all his early years under the
charge of people who work for their
living-peOple with an object of some
sort in life-people, in fact, with an eye
to the main chance-he finds his father
and mother, when at last he does come
to know them, rather frivolous, inane
and empty-minded.
The conclusion is certainly uneX-
pected, but suggests a new point of
view from which the English aristocracy
may be viewed. The writer is, how
ever, mistaken when he declares that
England is the only country in the
world where well-to-do children have no
domestic life. In the light of what |
have said, it will be seen that similar
condition of things is growing up here
and demands some consideration. That
this phase of social life is recognized
may be concluded from the fact that
story went the round of the clubs not
long ago relating how a society couple
who had been keeping up the fashion
able "trot' for some time, had
summoned the superintendent of the
nursery department to appear be-
fore them in their private apart.
ments, and inquired about the last
arrival. The solicitous father and
mother had been making calculation
with reference to the calendar, and were
of the opinion that the child must be
over year old and they would like to
see 1.-THE nurse became very much en-
barrassed, and at last faltered out that
the darling of the household had mys-
teriously disappeared two or three days
previously, and that detectives had been
employed to recover the lost property.
The effect of the communication may be
imagined. The mother experienced a
pang such as she had not known since
the last time her diamonds were miss
ing, and the agitated father instructed
the nurse to see that no expense was
spared in conducting the search, and TO
report as soon as any news was secured.
Then the father and mother, so the
story went drove off to the opera, and
tried to understand 1.-The Gotterdam-
merungO