The Gentleman's Daughter Page 17
Nevertheless, the supreme responsibility for babies and young children always devolved on the mother. When his children were around Ramsden found it difficult to think, work or write letters, witness his recorded speech when petitioned to write an overdue letter: ‘now Bessy says he how can you be so unreasonable: I that have always so much Busness upon my Hands; and besides you are always Bring[ing] your Brats in the way; that I cannot settel to any thing for them.’121 Similarly, William Gossip occasionally superintended at least some of his brood during his wife's absences, but he also recorded the disabling distraction of infantile needs: ‘Fathy is by me, & keeps such a perpetual Clack, that you must excuse me if I blunder. I can't get her to hold her tongue – at last we are silent …122 In the end, as he freely acknowledged, it was the unfailing consistency of Anne Gossip's ‘tender care’ (along with God's mercy) which stood between her blighted babies and eternity.
The inequities of labour notwithstanding, the letters of eighteenth-century parents demonstrate the all-important reality that men and women experienced with one mind. The shared emotional capital invested in children shines out of the letters men and women exchanged. In their children, men and women were tied indissolubly to each other. In them they saw blended blood and shared destiny. Ultimately, we see the shocking precariousness of that destiny. The death of a child was a grievous loss, in the face of which common catastrophe parents had little choice but to draw deep on their stoical reserves and attempt to submit like proper Christians. Announcing the death of the ‘rare thumping lad’ he himself had delivered twelve years earlier, Dr William St Clare told the unsuspecting father,
this, my dear Sir, must be considered as one of these afflicting trials, these awful warnings which are inflicted to remind us that the present is not intended to be a state of perfect happiness. There is nothing [I can write in] consolation which your own fortitude and Christian resignation will not more readily suggest.
The same belief in the sustaining power of a deliberate fortitude is found in comforting praise Walter Stanhope sent his wife Anne, who had lost three of her four children in infancy, ‘I am glad to find … that you have behav'd with prudence in these melancholy schemes, so as not to throw yourself down.’123 Again and again, parents struggled to resign themselves to their losses and to bear up under misfortune, clinging to the belief that their sacrifice fulfilled some divine purpose, that they had not surrendered their infants in vain. Mercifully, they did not see a child's death as a particular punishment for their own sins because the God who presided over the Georgian Church of England was not an especially wrathful deity. Instead, parents simply tried to accept a bereavement as a divine mystery. However, it would be wrong to suppose that the much-parroted language of resignation means that parents were easily reconciled to child mortality, then or earlier. Men and women brought exactly the same spiritual equipment to bear in the event of an adult's death. The bereaved were routinely urged ‘to submit with the greatest Resignation to whatever the hand of providence inflicts on us, & to persuade ourselves it is for our Good in some Respect or other…’124 When Abigail Gawthern lost her ‘dear Eliza’ to the whooping cough, she tersely recorded ‘it pleased God to release her, to the inexpressible grief of her father and mother’. In an addendum replete with unspoken pathos, she noted ‘she was two years and a half and six days old’. Maternal loss might be no less agonizing for the absence of hysterical expression, or the ‘sable trappings of woe’, for, as Mrs Gawthern herself later wrote, ‘heartfelt and unaffected grief turns with disgust from the hackneyed display of ostentatious sorrow’.125 If anything, the prevalence of the vocabulary of Christian endurance speaks to the unutterable power of parental grief, not to its weakness, suggesting rather the abysmal depths of misery into which men and women might sink if ever they relaxed their grip on the rafts of courage and resignation. Contemporaries feared the thundering force of parental grief, and maternal anguish in particular was recognized as a ‘species of savage despair’.126 Moreover, desolation could snuff out a mother's own life and her overlasting soul, so to survive grief was seen as an act of will. Thus, a studied fortitude was a crucial necessity once embarked on the parental course. For, as parents, men and women stood side by side, watching the unfathomable waters of providence lapping ominously and relentlessly at their undefended feet.
22 Title-page from Elizabeth Shackleton's Pocket Diary of 1776.
4
Prudent Economy
The Management of all Domestic Affairs is certainly the proper Business of Woman; and unfashionably rustic as such an Assertion may be thought, 'tis certainly not beneath the Dignity of any Lady, however high her rank, to know how to educate her children, to govern her servants, to order an elegant Table with Oeconomy, and to manage her whole family with Prudence, Regularity and method (1761).1
I must assert that the right of directing domestic affairs, is by the law of nature in the woman, and that we are perfectly qualified for the exercise of dominion, notwithstanding what has often been said to the contrary … Experience is wholly on our side; for where-ever the master exceeds his proper sphere, and pretends to give law to the cook maid as well as the coach man, we observe a great deal of discord and confusion … But when a woman of tolerable good sense is allowed to direct her house without controul, all Things go well; she prevents even her husband's wishes, the servants know their business and the whole family live easy and happy (1765).2
The Domestic oeconomy of a family is entirely a woman's province, and furnishes a variety of subjects for the exertion both of good sense and good taste. If you ever come to have charge of a family, it ought to gain much of your time and attention (1774).3
THE WRITERS OF ADVICE LITERATURE groomed genteel women for the exercise of power. The effective government of servants had long been seen as an essential duty. Women were tutored on the careful choice and moral regulation of servants, on the rewarding of the industrious and the expulsion of the immoral. They were told to sustain their sway through the exhibition of judicious reason, and were cautioned not to weaken their authority through capricious direction or over-correction. Like good kings, good mistresses had no favourites and did not stoop to familiarities. Instead, they were to exhibit that general courtesy and good breeding which generated universal respect and affection. On this depended the credit and happiness of a family. A virtuous female superintendent was an indispensable member of the genteel Georgian household.
For their part, gentlemen bestirred themselves to ensure that a kinswoman presided over their housekeeping. Thus, when Robert Parker lost his last close female relative in April 1748, among many letters of condolence, he received advice of a downright sort: ‘There's nothing for you now but marrying,’ wrote his friend and business partner, ‘don't think of keeping house with servants, in my opinion there's few to be trusted.’ But of his pressing domestic needs Robert Parker required no reminding. He had to cry off both entertainments and administrative duties for want of a housekeeper, because his grandmother's death ‘has left me a family to manage, which I am not ye least fit for & what to do with them and myself God knows.’ Within a month he had had enough: ‘I am already tired of Housekeeping, but don't know how to help it.’ Similarly, in 1742 the Lancastrian William Stout was heartily relieved to have his niece undertake the management of his household. His brother Josias Stout was served by their mother in this capacity, until she grew too infirm, when she ‘was urgent upon him to marry, he not being willing to keepe house with a servant’. The Yorkshire widower Thomas Birkenshaw made no bones of the fact that he needed a wife to run his household in the late 1770s as his servants were ruining him:
I found that servants and housekeepers were not to be trusted, I had no grandmother, no mother, no sister … upon whom I might rely, and who might in good measure, supply the place of a wife, in taking care of my children and looking after the concerns of my family. I had it not therefore, in my choice … to marry or not to marry. No imperious necessity, arising from
the state of my family, required me to get a wife as speedily as possible. During the state of my widowhood, for want of a wife in the house when I was absent, I had already suffered to my own knowledge, to the amount of forty or fifty pounds at least, by downright thievery, so that continuing as I was, I had no prospect before me but ruin.
Male desire to have a relative as housekeeper appears unabated in the later period, and indeed the Victorian widower's recourse to the services of his dead wife's sister was proverbial.4
Demonstrably, when gentlemen dabbled in the marriage market they hoped to procure a bride as prudent and economical as she was charming and genteel. The manufacturer Edward Parker had second thoughts about his favoured damsel, a Miss Holt, whom he had visited three times at home and gallanted to a play, when he discovered her extravagance. By contrast, the self-made William Gossip found in his bride an unpaid housekeeper as dutiful and continent as any paragon of Protestant prescription: ‘for sure no woman of your fortune was ever less expensive.’5 A clear appreciation of female management skills is apparent in a host of masculine manuscripts. When John Parker pleaded with his unmarried daughter to return from one of her jaunts in 1749, his increasing reliance on her superior administrative powers was made explicit:
Dr Child I shall be glad of yr Company at home for I know not how we goe on; for Peggy & Tom doe nothing but play the Foole togeather from morning to night & she is very heedless, & [what] with workmen & serv[ants] this house as I now grow into years is quite above my hand to manage therefore [should] be glad if I could draw myself into a narrow[er] compass & spend my remaining days in quiet & ease …
Similarly, when Anne Stanhope was away at her sister's, her husband Walter Stanhope grew impatient for her return, pleading his helplessness: ‘ye house does not look right without you & I am no way qualified for housekeeping.’ In fact, a strict division of authority was eagerly embraced by most genteel husbands. Witness William Ramsden in 1770, complaining of overwork during his wife's lying in: ‘I wish the next Week over that I may resign the Keys of my Office, for indeed most heartily am I tired of being both Mistress & Master.’ Indeed, cuckolded husbands who brought the common law action ‘criminal conversation’ against their wives' lovers, often claimed additional financial compensation for the loss of their house manager.6
As the mistress of a household, the genteel bride tasted of administrative power and exuded quasi-professional pride. While betrothed in the summer of 1751, Miss Elizabeth Parker of Browsholme anticipated her household responsibilities with officious excitement. Her letters were peppered with questions about Alkincoats, her future marital home, and she commissioned her friends and servants to bring her further information. She was particularly concerned with Robert Parker's rebuilding scheme and offered frequent opinions on the renovations. She asked to be informed of his design, and made specific suggestions: ‘Pray let no conveniency be lost that you can make by way of Cupboards & Closets, for they are usefull in a family …’ Throughout, she was opposed to false economies: ‘for I know by experience if repairs in old houses are not done effectually they are a continual expense.’ Miss Parker could not resist chivvying her betrothed about the pace of improvement, encouraging him to stick to his plans and avoid the distractions of company. ‘I am very angry with you to jaunt about at this rate. I imagine you have laid aside all thoughts of yr house. Tho' you neglect it, its much my care, which I esteem a pleasure.’ She grew proprietorial about Alkincoats, praying that God would grant prosperity to both the present owner and ‘the owner elect’, as she styled herself. In fact, her promptitude laid her open to mockery. When Miss Parker pointedly inquired of a Lancashire gentleman how he could think of inflicting his company on Robert Parker, hard at work at Alkincoats, the friend ‘made answer that I was a saucy Miss and wonder'd what business I had to give myself airs, for that my share at present in [Robert Parker's] house was no more than a Goose co'd sit in.’7 Impatience to wield authority over a household is palpable.
The status and satisfaction to be drawn from genteel housekeeping is clear from the praise paid the mistress by observant women, as here in an approving sketch of the young charmer who had induced her clerical lover to renounce a college fellowship to marry her: ‘Certainly his looks do her great credit – and her good sense knows how to become the prudent domestic Wife in which character she shines as much as when in her Boudoir surrounded by her various collection of shells, feathers, and paintings of her own performance.’8 The credit gained through housekeeping can also be judged by the regret at its passing. Resigning the post of mistress could be traumatic, as William Stout's mother found at Lancaster at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Though she herself had urged Josias Stout to marry, actually handing over the reigns of power proved unpleasant: ‘But when the young wife came to housekeeping, my mother thought to have some direction in that, more than the young wife (who had been her father's housekeeper) would allow; which made their mother uneasy.’9 Similarly, when Mrs Shackleton surrendered the management of Alkincoats to her daughter-in-law in 1779, she could not hide her pique and sense of rejection, as here when ostensibly disavowing any interest in possible mismanagement: ‘God knows what all their great big Maids are doing at Alkincoats in their absence. That is nothing to me.’ She could not refrain from belittling Betty Parker's efforts ‘in the housekeeping way’. Mrs Shackleton noted in May 1779 that Alkincoats was under poor stewardship, ‘all in sad Confusion’, and she held her daughter-in-law directly responsible: ‘I think Mrs P. should not molest [Tom's] things & Mrs P. to blame.’ Later the same month Betty Parker further alienated her mother-in-law, by offering her a damp bed with dirty linen on an overnight visit. Within a year, however, the new Mrs Parker began to redeem herself with conspicuously dutiful and dignified housekeeping. ‘My good Daughter is a most exceedingly Good Wife, she ruffled her Husband a shirt & always is Industrious and manages with prudent Oeconomy.’10 Like Elizabeth Shackleton, Betty Parker learned how to nourish her reputation through good housekeeping. Even letters from the missish Eliza Whitaker bespeak a gentlewoman's investment in, and protection of, her housekeeping role. Here she fishes for compliments from her young husband, hoping her invaluable contribution to the household and the happiness of its master will be missed:
I am only fearful of your being so much at your ease in the company of your friends that you will be in no hurry for my reappearance in my domestic capacity. I make no doubt but you are an excellent housekeeper, but as I do not wish you to become very knowing in that way as I am rather anxious about the good order of my maidens, be so good as to tell the coachmen to start in the curricle between 4 & 5 o'clock on Sat morning.11
Female management was an established institution with recognized symbols and ceremonies endorsed by both sexes. Yet for all that, female administration has received scant attention from the historians, perhaps because its most skilful exponents self-consciously expunged any impression of laborious attention. As Hester Chapone put it, ‘the best sign of a home being well governed is that nobody's attention is called to the little affairs of it’. By the mistress's sleight of hand ‘all goes on so well of course that one is not led to make remarks upon anything, nor to observe any extraordinary effort that produces the general result of ease and elegance that prevails throughout’.12 Were domestic details to obtrude, then the spell of regulation and refinement would be broken and those who advertised their pains were vulnerable to disdainful mockery. So it was that the Quaker Betty Fothergill, an opinionated journal keeper, derided in 1769 those women who made household management ‘their constant theme in all companies who are unfortunate to fall in their way’, and approved an acquaintance who, though a ‘a remarkable good manager of her family’, happily ‘does not make that parade with it others do whose whole knowledge is centred in domestic concerns.’13 The genteel housekeeper never went about her work with fanfare and bustle, but used art to conceal her industry. The advertisements of successful female management were subtle, possibly to
o subtle for the proper acknowledgement of posterity.
To be fair, historians have long recognized the contribution of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century elite mistress, only her enterprise is usually seen as another feature of the world we have lost. ‘At the beginning of the seventeenth century,’ observed Alice Clark, ‘it was usual for the women of the aristocracy to be very busy with affairs – affairs which concerned their household, their estates and even Government.’ The management of the country estate was often left to the mistress for months at a time, while the master was away at court, or at war. As a wedding sermon promised, a good mistress had much to offer. She is like a merchant's ship, for ‘she bringeth her food from far …’ This paragon is portrayed as energetic and enterprising: ‘thro her Wisdom and Diligence great things come by her; she brings in with her hands, for, She putteth her hands to the wheel … If she be too high to stain her Hands with bodily labour, yet she bringeth in with her Eye, for, She overseeth the Ways of her Household … and eateth not the Bread of Idleness.’ In consequence of the discipline of ‘productive’ and ‘creative’ work, these sturdy housekeepers were respected comrades, notable for their initiative, resourcefulness, bravery and wit. But not for long. By the Restoration, the spread of wealth meant that the ‘stern hand of economic necessity was withdrawn’ from elite housekeeping, so ladies could devote themselves ‘to spending money and the cultivation of ornamental qualities’. Creative housekeeping decayed, the mistress's skills atrophied, and the idle wife emerged in all her parasitic glory.14 Housekeeping became redefined as housework – that time-consuming drudgery which is best left to servants. Thus, between 1600 and 1850, it is often assumed, traditional housekeeping fell into a decline, thereby transforming prosperous housewives into inconsequential decorations and poorer respected workers into degraded skivvies.15