“All that I ever learned,” adds Mrs. Robinson, “I acquired from this extraordinary woman. In those hours when her senses were not intoxicated, she would delight in the task of instructing me. She had only five or six pupils, and it was my lot to be her particular favourite. She always, out of school, called me her little friend, and made no scruple of conversing with me (sometimes half the night, for I slept in her chamber) on domestic and confidential affairs. I felt for her very sincere affection, and I listened with peculiar attention to all the lessons she inculcated. Once I recollect her mentioning the particular failing which disgraced so intelligent a being. She pleaded, in excuse of it, the unmitigable regret of a widowed heart, and with compunction declared that she flew to intoxication as the only refuge from the pang of prevailing sorrow.” Mrs. Robinson remained more than twelve months under the care of Mrs. Lorrington, “When pecuniary derangements obliged her to give up her school. Her father’s manners were singularly disgusting, as was his appearance, for he wore a silvery beard, which reached to his breast, and a kind of Persian robe, which gave him the external appearance of a necromancer. He was of the Anabaptist persuasion, and so stern in his conversation, that the young pupils were exposed to perpetual terror; added to these circumstances, the failing of his daughter became so evident, that even during school-hours she was frequently in a state of confirmed intoxication.” In 1772, three years afterwards, when Mrs. Robinson was fourteen, her mother, Mrs. Darby, was obliged, as a means of support, to undertake the task of tuition. “For this purpose, a convenient house was hired at Little Chelsea, and furnished for a ladies’ boarding-school. Assistants of every kind were engaged, and I,” says Mrs. Robinson, “was deemed worthy of an occupation that flattered my self-love, and impressed my mind with a sort of domestic consequence. The English language was my department in the seminary, and I was permitted to select passages both in prose and verse for the studies of my infant pupils; it was also my occupation to superintend their wardrobes, to see them dressed and undressed by the servants, or half-boarders, and to read sacred and moral lessons on saints’ days and Sunday evenings.