In 1844, the family hired Fanny Dürbach, a 22-year-old French governess.[9] Four-and-a-half-year-old Tchaikovsky was initially thought too young to study alongside his older brother Nikolai and a niece of the family. His insistence convinced Dürbach otherwise.[10] By the age of six, he had become fluent in French and German.[5] Tchaikovsky also became attached to the young woman; her affection for him was reportedly a counter to his mother's coldness and emotional distance from him,[11] though others assert that the mother doted on her son.[12] Dürbach saved much of Tchaikovsky's work from this period, which includes his earliest known compositions, and became a source of several childhood
