The Archbishop had very decided views on the training and education of children, and his wife also, as her _English Social Life_ shows, had thought much on the subject. One of the Archbishop's rules was that children should never learn anything by rote. "When Mrs. Whately and I first married," he observed on one occasion, "one of the first things we agreed on was, that should Providence send us children, we would never teach them anything they did not understand. 'Not even their prayers, my lord?' asked the person addressed. 'No, not even their prayers,' he replied." [1] Mary's education was conducted mainly by a governess, under the superintendence of her parents. Her brother, Archdeacon Whately, thus refers to her early life: "Our life in Ireland was on the whole a very retired one. For the greater part of our sojourn there we saw very little society, nor had my sisters a sufficient vent for a craving, which in some of them was very strong, for social intercourse and active work.... In early life she showed the germs of that vigour and energy of character for which she was afterwards so distinguished. In all our youthful games she was fond of taking the lead, and generally succeeded in obtaining it.... Like most young persons of a sanguine and imaginative temperament, she lived very much in an ideal future of her own creation.... It was well for my sister that we were not allowed in our younger days to read any unwholesome trash in the way of fiction. We were not indeed unduly restricted in works of imagination, but we read nothing which was foolish or sensational, and a higher taste than the taste for mere stories was cultivated in us. Mary Whately had a strong predilection for works of travels, history, and adventures. Perhaps these tastes were a foreshadowing of her future destiny, and prepared her for it." [2] Her sister adds, "Mary was from her earliest years ardent and impulsive, hot-tempered and generous. She was quick at lessons, and possessed of a retentive memory, though the active brain and lively imagination made schoolroom routine somewhat irksome to her." [3]
[Footnote 1: _Life of Archbishop Whately_, by his daughter, vol. 1. p. 62.] [Footnote 2: _The Fireside_ for 1889, pp. 817, 818.] [Footnote 3: _Life of Mary J. Whately_, by E.J. Whately, p. 10.]