Charles Steele Bompas describes his Home Schooling 1837

 

 

Serjeant Buzfuz on a postcard c 1890s Click on image to magnify

 

This letter is written by the thirteen- or fourteen- year-old Charles Steele Bompas to his mother who has gone to visit her parents Joseph Tomkins and Anne Steele Tomkins at Broughton. He is being home-schooled in a Baptist family and the letter describes how he and his siblings’ Characters are scored each day against undefined dimensions. This could have been a method taken from a book or from his own mother’s school experience. But I can’t find a way of reading it which does not imply that you can lose points for things which are not your fault. The letter is written in a very good, clear hand and then cross-written by a governess or nanny, M Kennion, who I cannot trace.

Charles’s father was a London lawyer with the title of Serjeant Bompas who died in 1844. He lives on as the character of Serjeant Buzfuz in The Pickwick Papers; his signature Chas Bompas on this 1834 cross-written letter addressed to his wife is certainly flamboyant; it measures over four inches across on a sheet turned from portrait to ten-inch landscape format:

The acquaintance with Dickens arose from a connection between Bompas’s wife, born Mary Steele Tomkins (1793-1861), and a school friend of hers who became a proofreader for the firm of Bradbury and Evans, printers for Dickens’s original publisher Chapman and Hall and later his publisher as well.Mary Steele Bompas can be threaded into a circle of non-conformist female writers of whom the most important was Mary Steele (1753 - 1813) author of Danebury and Mrs Bompas’s aunt. But her namesake niece is recorded as the author of just one poem The Noises of Bath, written when she was thirteen and at that age corresponding with her aunt. In the letter transcribed below Charles mentions his much longer-lived brother William who became an adventurous Anglican missionary and bishop in north west Canada and is much written about.

Born in 1823, Charles Steele Bompas died in 1847.

Transcription

Addressed to: Mrs Bompas / Joseph Tomkins Esq Broughton, Nr Stockbridge, Hants.

Datelined: 11 Park Road March 4^th 1837

My dear Mamma

We were very glad to receive your letter which told us of your safe arrival but were sorry to hear you had lost your voice but I hope it will soon be well enough for you to go out. We are pretty well here my throat has been very uncomfortable these 1 or 2 last days so I do it with the stuff inside and out & it is rather better today. George has a little cold, Mary Jane, Sophia, Wiliam & Baby very well. Miss Kennion’s and Selina’s colds are better. Bendals face aches very badly somtimes [sic] Cousin Joseph has given a lot of such beautiful minerals, you cant think what nice specimens they are. Cousins are coming this afternoon.

Our characters today are Mary Jane minus 2 she lost one point because she was not in school yesterday afternoon at the proper time but she could not help it because Cousin Emma Skey was giving her her Music Lesson so she had, “loss of 1 point excusable” written under minus 2, her other characters were 6 – 0. George 2-6-2 he lost one because he had not finished his letter to you. Mine 3-6-2 I was ready but I had 1 taken away from me because I could not do my lessons because the others were not ready as we do our lessons together. I broke open the seal of the letter which I suppose you received the other day by mistake thinking it was for me [ his father is also Charles Bompas].

Please to give my love to Papa & Joseph

I remain

Your affec^te son

Charles Steele Bompas

PS Monday. Just as I had finished writing on Saturday morning Cousins came. Joseph was not very well. We all forgot to send this letter & the paper until it was too late. Our characters this morning were Mary Jane 6 – 0 George 4 – 1 Myself 4 – 1. Yesterday Bendall cut her thumb just at the bottom very badly indeed it kept bleeding all the morning when she moved it so after dinner she went to Uncle Joe’s [Dr Joseph Bompas]to show it him and he said that it was nothing except a bad cut & he told her how to bind it up. We are all pretty well.

 

Cross written by Miss Kennion:

 

My dear Madam

As Master Charles has not written a very long letter I shall add a few lines to say what I am sure will give you pleasure that your dear children have all been very good during your absence. The weather has been fine though cold so that they have had a walk every day and I am very thankful this week has passed without any increase of colds or any accidents. Dear little Selina and Sophie are gone today as it was pretty fine and much warmer to spend two or three hours with Mrs Hawkins – she called yesterday and said she was going to write to you therefore you will probably hear of them from her. I hope your cold is quite well and that you have been able to get out a little. Your sweet baby and little William will I am sure be very glad to see their dear Mamma again and indeed all treasures being to talk of your return with great pleasure and I sincerely hope you will find them as well as they are now. I took three eldest to Chapel twice yesterday and we had a coach in the evening as Master Charles [said] they had been accustomed to go with their Papa. Ann says she misses Master Joseph very much. I hope he is very happy and with respects to Mrs Tomkins and Miss Jane

I am my dear Madam

Your very obedient Servant

M Kennion

References

The anachronistic illustration is from a Tuck’s chromolithograph postcard; it has an undivided back which dates it to the late 1890s. The “Kyd” signature is that of Joseph Clayton Clark (1857-1937).

Mrs Bompas and her families of origin figure extensively in volumes 3 and 4 of Timothy Whelan’s edited library, Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (2011)

Wikipedia: William Carpenter Bompas (20 January 1834 – 9 June 1906) was an Anglican clergyman and missionary in northwest Canada, first Anglican bishop of the diocese of Athabasca, then of Mackenzie River, then of the Selkirk (Yukon) diocese as these dioceses were successively carved out of the original diocese of Rupert’s Land.