Bringing Up Master

By John Skow

THE UNNATURAL HISTORY OF THE NANNY

by JONATHAN GATHORNE-HARDY 350 pages. Dial Press. $8.95.

Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy does not suppose that the institution of the nanny explains every last twitch and tweed of Englishness. But he does hold the reasonable view that the way a society cares for its young determines what the children, and thus the society, will be. And he believes no other group has insulated itself from its children quite like the British upper classes.

Becoming a nanny required a long, menial apprenticeship, beginning with a scrub brush on the nursery floor. In time, a girl with nanny-potential could move up to undernurse, then nurse, and finally full nanny. The author dates the flourishing of this system from about 1850, when the Industrial Revolution increased the wealthy class in England and pried a large population of potential servants loose from the land.

Victorian children, the author writes, were widely regarded as "little defective adults, sodden with original sin," which could only be squeezed out of them by cramping disciplines. One of nanny's first jobs was to institute rules and punishments regulating eating and elimination. All food on the plate had to be eaten, or it would appear at the next meal. Failure to perform potty at the proper hour (training began at six weeks) brought the certain retribution of laxative powder. Nannying appears to have provided parents with some peculiar satisfactions. As proof that the popularity of the system spread, the author has turned up a mid-19th century French newspaper ad asking for "Une gouvernante anglaise--methodes drastiques."

It would be startling if nannying had not had a marked effect on the English character. The celebrated English unflappability is capsulized in the answer given in 1940 to a frightened two-year-old who asked about the loud noises he was hearing. "Bombs, dear," said Nanny. "Elbows off the table." The last thing a very drunk nanny-generation Englishman does before passing out, the author reports, "is to stagger round his room, frequently falling over, trying to fold up his clothes, put shoe trees in his shoes and finally, now probably being sick but despite this, cleaning his teeth."

The nanny effect goes deeper than surface mannerisms, however. Gathorne-Hardy, British journalist and novelist (The Office), is convinced that it is largely responsible for the excessive shyness and the difficulty in forming relationships that he detects among upper-class Englishmen. He offers the following psychological explanation: the nanny was the child's main source of security and affection during the early years of development. But very often the nanny left the household when the child was still small, to be replaced by another nanny who might also leave. The child eventually learned to be extremely wary about giving love.

The author also speculates that nannying had something to do with the English penchant for masochism, as well as the Victorian supposition that upper-class women lacked strong sexual desires. He reasons--though not too insistently--that because the mother was a distant and ethereal figure, the child came to identify the pleasures of fondling with his working-class nanny. From this point it is only a short hop to the wobbly conclusion that the nanny was largely responsible for Victorian gentlemen taking their sexual desires to whores and shopgirls while having only the most perfunctory sexual relationships with their own women.

But no matter. This is, of course, social history amusingly and ruefully remembered. Nannying declined as a way of life when World War II drained away much upper-class English wealth. In addition, attitudes toward child rearing have become less rigid. True nannying exists now only among the unassailably rich (au pair girls, of course, do not qualify as nannies). Yet, reports Gathorne-Hardy proudly, the nanny is going down with all flags flying. He offers as proof the following set-to between two nannies that occurred not long ago in London near the Albert Memorial:

"The Pryce-Jones nanny had wheeled herself behind the memorial and sat down on an empty bench. After a while an older nanny appeared, pushing a pram on which was painted a small gold coronet ... At length the older nanny turned to the younger one, coughed, and said, 'Excuse me, Nanny, is your mummy a titled mummy?'

" 'Actually, no,' said the Pryce-Jones nanny.

" 'You will excuse my mentioning it, Nanny, but this bench is reserved for titled mummies' nannies, Nanny.' "

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