The Gentleman's Daughter

by Amanda Vickery

  [Therefore], Madam, to my Conduct & Character I only appeal but not insist upon, willing rather to submitt my self to [your] Compassion [from] yr Tribunal I must expect my doom … but dear Miss Parker, dwell long upon the Assurances I have given you, & upon the Secret protestations I have made of devoting my whole to yr Pleasure, of making it subservient to yr inclination & be assured that honour and sincerity was always my Intention.

  Respectfully he invoked the memory of intimacies and promises. Throughout he was at pains to demonstrate his sincerity and honour. As a stoic, he would bear her decision:

  give me some small returns of mutual affection, & the greatest Monarch on Earth will envy my Felicity, but if you are determined, (wch. I flatter myself you are not) in such a Manner as to render me [the] most unfortunate the most abject and Miserable Wretch in the Creation, I shall kiss the Hand [from] whence I recd the Blow.21

  Having stressed his capacity for self-control, he ended with a request that Elizabeth condescend to a clandestine meeting at eleven o'clock that night.

  A well-judged combination of threat and promise, the letter had the desired impact. No evidence survives of Elizabeth's private reaction, and the secret meeting was refused, but guarded encouragement was extended by letter. Although Elizabeth's reply was crisp, a disdainful reference to her rival indicated that Robert had hit his mark:

  Sir … As I intend to apply to my Father once more on yr account, will take the first opportunity of declaring my sentiments … when I know my father's resolution, will inform you. If you think this will be the Least delay to your present Intentions begs it may be no hindrance, but follow your Inclinations. I am sir your most obliged Humble Servant E. Parker.22

  This terse declaration did not satisfy Robert Parker. If Miss Parker was lukewarm or irresolute then there was little hope she would prevail. The ideal respondent declared herself ‘a warm and zealous advocate’ from the outset. Injecting some urgency into the proceedings, Robert promptly wrote again reminding her of

  how I am pressed by some Friends to wait upon another Lady and the necessity of doing it in such a Time … I know you will accuse me much [about] my forwardness; but consider dr. Parky, the Life I have [spent] for 3 years last past, consider my Necessity of having a partner in my Family; also [what] an advantagious thing now offers, & I dare venture to say you will think my Resolution just especially as I have no assurance but [what] you gave me yesterday …23

  Through emotional blackmail, Robert pressured Elizabeth to ‘determine in my favour’ and bring her powers of persuasion to bear: ‘It must be fm yr. Resolution & wont'd good nature [that] I must expect my Happiness or Misery.’ The identity of the other contender never emerges, perhaps she was fictitious, but, as Robert had intended, the spectre of the rival sufficiently stiffened Elizabeth's resolve. Four days later all is summarized in an innocuous note:

  I have spoke to my father who intends to desire your Company at Browsholme in a little time, he dos not seem so greatly averse to my Intentions as I imagined but when you meet you'll be better inform'd how matters are. I flatter myself you'll not make a bad use of this declaration, nor I be deceived in the good opinion I have of you.24

  This formal exchange of letters represents a terse debate with three issues in play: power, duty and honour. If power is defined as the ability to control individuals and events, an unsuitable lover who lacked influential kin was all but impotent. Under such circumstances, everything turned on the daughter's advocacy, so Elizabeth Parker had to be persuaded to use all her eloquence on her widowed father. This father–daughter axis was more than a commonplace of social commentary or a flattering opening gambit. Elizabeth Parker was a noted intercessor in family disputes. In 1753 London relatives called on Elizabeth to reconcile her father and brother, at odds over a settlement negotiation: ‘God will reward the glorious peace maker’, encouraged her Aunt Pellet: ‘[Your uncle] & all other friends think tis in your power (more than all them put together) to prevail with your dear pappa …’25 In recognition of Elizabeth Parker's skill in mediating patriarchal authority, her betrothed was prepared to take a secondary role in the protracted marriage negotiations: ‘The Management of this Affair I must leave entirely to you …’ In the course of their long amour, Robert Parker had often requested her advice and relied on her judgement: ‘[I] expect a Line in [the] meantime to know how our affair goes on, & likewise how I am to behave …’ He often appealed to her domestic statecraft: ‘do not fail using all arguments yr Rhetorick is master of in my behalf’, being certain that it must be from ‘yr good Management’ that success would ultimately issue.26 Exactly how Elizabeth Parker managed her father is hinted at in a reference to subsequent paternal obstruction: ‘My father … condemns me greatly to be in a hurry and it was with much difficulty that he let me write for my Cloaths, nay even the Morning he set out almost insisted on not sending my letter, and when he was so positive about it I began to fear that his [commands] would have got the better of my entreaties. But at last he consented …’27

  Robert Parker's gratitude is also suggestive: ‘I can't too much extoll yr good nature in Pleading my cause in so moveing & Pathetick a manner to yr Papa.’28 Whatever John Parker's commands, it was widely recognized that his daughter's entreaties could sway him. A pathetic performance was designed to soften the stern certainties of patriarchal dictate. Nor was this daughter's influence unusual. The sponsors of Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1753 (which, among other things, outlawed the marriage of minors without parental consent) railed against paternal tenderness, deploring the fact that fathers were ‘too apt to forgive’ their eloping daughters, unable to bring themselves to inflict the appropriate financial punishment. By this view, the father's susceptibility to the influence of his girls was a social problem which threatened the preservation of property.29 The darling daughter was patriarchy's Achilles heel.

  However antipathetic to modern sensibilities, female pleading (to entreat, to mould, to determine, to prevail) was seen as legitimate policy in a society habituated to hierarchical relationships. As Lord Halifax notoriously enlightened his daughter in 1688, ‘you have more strength in your Looks, than we have in our Laws, and more power by your Tears, than we have by our Arguments’.30 In fact, it was the exhibition of abject weakness which was the key to a successful petition. When letter-writing manuals spelled out the language to use on an obdurate father, vulnerability and sorrowing submission were all to the fore; a defenceless maiden professed herself poised to fulfil the most peremptory commands driven by ‘the most inviolable Duty to a Father, who never made the least Attempt before to thwart the inclinations of his ever obedient Daughter’.31 The prospect of so much quivering helplessness was contrived to bring out the benevolent paternalist lurking in almost any patriarch. Consequently when an unappetizing marriage was mooted for Frances Burney in 1775, the appalled twenty-one-year-old ‘wept like an infant’, ate nothing all day and finally after supper threw herself at her father's feet, wailing ‘I wish for nothing only let me Live with you!’ Such tearful tactics were routine amongst the genteel. When Betty Atkinson wanted her uncle and guardian John Stanhope to give his consent to her marriage in 1766, she appealed to his pity and his affection, apologizing for her cowardliness in writing, not speaking: ‘but why should I be so fearful to the kindest of uncle's who never did refuse me anything I ask'd …’ Atkinson laboured her obedience throughout: ‘I … will rely intirely upon your judgement in this as well as all other cases.’ Although she favoured her Mr Jones above all other men, she assured her uncle, ‘I wou'd rather drag on life in Solitude than incur your displeasure’. Rather than remonstrating with her uncle, Betty Atkinson promised to comply unreservedly with his commands, even if it cost her a lifetime of drear unhappiness. Thus, her wretchedness would be on his conscience: could he live with such guilt?32 Not that these strategies of perfect, if miserable, obedience always met with success. Though Frances Burney got her wish, Betty Atkinson was denied, but then Charles Burney was an egotistica
l musician susceptible to flattery while John Stanhope was a flinty advocate on the northern assize circuit, finely attuned to, if not inured to the calculated phrases of petition and appeal.

  12 ‘Modern Love: Courtship’, 1782.

  13 ‘Modern Love: The Elopement’, 1782.

  14 ‘Modern Love: The Honeymoon’, 1782.

  15 ‘Modern Love: Discordant Matrimony’, 1782.

  Trained as a linen-draper, not a lawyer, and noted for his paternal affection, the force of John Parker's determination eventually dissolved in his daughter's tears. Given Elizabeth Parker's vaunted ability to soften her father's authority, it remains a mystery why she had not prevailed with him before. Robert Parker had experienced ‘so many Obstinate refusals’ and despaired that the ‘Circumstances wch chiefly weigh [with] Old People are no better’.33 John Parker was unwilling to lose his only daughter and the sole mistress of his household to the Parkers of Alkincoats, the poorer, cadet branch of his own family. Although some suspicion of Robert Parker's character is apparent, the smallness of his fortune was the principal objection to him. As Robert ruefully reflected, ‘Every Parent takes [the] utmost care to marry his child [where there] is Money, not considering Inclination wch is [the] only plea for Happiness … Yr Papa no doubt may marry you to one [that] will make large settlements, keep an Equipage & support you in all Grandeur Imaginable…’34 But no sudden windfall promoted this staunch swain in 1751. Nothing material had changed, so perhaps resolution had been previously lacking on Elizabeth's part. She may even have prolonged the courtship for strategic reasons, for the girl of the period was cynically advised to ‘keep herself at a genteel Distance, lest the Conquest afterwards might be reckon'd cheap’. She was continually warned against those ‘Easy Compliances’ that ‘extinguish the Desire of Marriage’.35 Perhaps Elizabeth Parker's delays even bespeak a reluctance for marriage itself. On the basis of the love-letters exchanged by nineteenth-century Americans, Ellen Rothman and Karen Lystra have both argued that it was common for women to secure an engagement, but repeatedly to defer the wedding. Moreover, Lystra found that betrothed women liked to throw several obstacles in a lover's path, eventually orchestrating some deciding crisis to test the mettle of their men and to reconcile themselves to the enormity of the commitment they had to make. Women as well as men had to survive the self-inflicted ‘crisis of doubt’.36 In Elizabeth Parker's case, defying her father went against the grain, while dutiful behaviour generated satisfactions of its own; what Ann Pellet described as ‘that peace and tranquillity of mind which is the result of all good actions’.37 Not that Elizabeth Parker wanted to lose her dashing suitor either. Indeed, for an extended period in the 1740s, she had been able to combine a thrilling, clandestine romance with the outward observance of her father's orders. She never took up Robert Parker's suggestions that they marry without consent. In short, she had not been forced to choose. She conceived of love and duty as countervailing principles. At the ripe age of twenty-five (already a few months older than the average bride),38 the threat of losing Robert Parker to another was worth an attempt to bring the two principles into equilibrium. She felt obliged ‘to collect all that little Rhetorick I am Mistress Off and have had a difficult task to satisfie my Duty and my love, not to please the one without offending the other. I hope to God I have now accomplished both and that it may be for our Happiness …’39

  While the genteel girl of Georgian England may have enginereed delays and deferrals like her American cousin, all these had to precede the betrothal, thereafter it was in her interests for matters to be settled with the utmost expedition. Engagements which collapsed at the settlement stage tainted a woman's reputation, so publicity in the nervous months between the promise and the wedding was a mixed blessing for elite brides.40 As Hugh Kelly warned in 1767, ‘of all the stages in a woman's life … none is more dangerous as the period between her acknowledgement of a passion for a man, and the day set apart for her nuptials’.41 In Elizabeth Parker's case, cautiousness was compounded by Robert Parker's admission that he had been on the point of proposing to another. The wary maid had to be convinced of his sincerity. Only when she had gained preliminary consent from her father and negotiations were set in motion did she feel at liberty to make what Robert Parker called a ‘Generous & Polite declaration’.42 Elizabeth Parker conceded,

  after what has pass'd between us now I think I may own absence has not Lessen'd my esteem for you … I still trust to that honour, I always thot you [possessed] off, so do not deceive me it wo'd be an unpardonable crime as I assure you I have no view or desire but to be happy so if your sentiments are chang'd generously declare yourself for nothing sho'd tempt me to proceed in an affair of such material consequence if our inclinations varied in the least … P. S. Sure it is a needless caution to desire not to let anybody see this, I hope to see you soon.43

  These early letters offer yet another illustration of that old historical cliché, the different meaning of honour for men and women. A gentlewoman's honour lay in the public recognition of her virtue, a gentleman's in the reliability of his word. Throughout the courtship correspondence Elizabeth played on Robert's honour; exhorting him to stand by his declarations and to behave like the gentleman he professed himself to be. Robert in reply, struggled to present himself worthy of Elizabeth's trust, ‘be assured [that] I have no Intention or design of making a bad use of the sincerity & Confidence you repose in me’, and in return for such a momentous favour claimed the least he could pledge was ‘good Nature [with] Sincere and Honourable behaviour’ for the rest of his life.44

  A month after his written proposal Robert Parker received a formal invitation to Browsholme. At this key breakthrough, what Elizabeth Parker called ‘a revolution in our affair’, she wrote with excitement, ‘my Felicity … can better be conceived then represented and more may be learnt from your Imagination than my pen.’45Thereafter, the lovers settled into a more assured period of courtship and Robert was free to visit Elizabeth at home. Negotiation was no less intense, but now the lovers presented a united front to the kindred. Elizabeth Parker still orchestrated all communication between her father and lover, warned Robert Parker to mind his behaviour to her friends and relatives, and continued to represent the couple's interest in the trudge towards settlement. ‘Pray my dear Parky’, urged Robert, ‘forward every thing [with] the greatest expedition.’46 In this second stage of courtship, the all-important family friends had to be reconciled to the match – demonstrating that what Martin Ingrams has termed the ‘multilateral consent’ of all interested parties was still crucial to a successful conclusion.47 As representative of Elizabeth's maternal relatives, Aunt Pellet remained convinced that Robert was too modest a catch, repeating ‘her old argument that a Coach and 6 was preferable to a double Horse’. Only this time, Elizabeth Parker refused to submit: ‘Aunt Pellet seems miserable at my determination tho' hopes time may bring her to reason.’ Edmund Butler of Kirkland Hall, a respected elderly relative, who had killed off Robert's chances in the 1740s, continued to raise objections. Robert's gentlemanly stoicism was tried over the four months of negotiation. He was still nervous that ‘yr relations will twart me [with] every obstacle, will arm themselves [with] every real and imaginary obstruction to my happiness’, that his ‘Old & Worthy Friend’ Butler would represent his ‘character & Circumstances’ in such a ‘Lively Colour’ that all would be lost.48 However, by late summer the Butler camp (who seem to have had a candidate of their own) gave up resistence. As the end came into sight, agitated suspense evolved into pleasurable anticipation. Public recognition could now be welcomed.

  Our Gentlemen returned in high good humour, drank your health, wish'd our happiness, wondered at Butlers delay & said ten thousand kind things [which] you may believe was no small comfort to your faithful E. I'm in hopes our felicity is now begun and that we may find (as a recompense for what we have known) that LOVE like VIRTUE is its own reward.49

  Four months of intricate financial negotiation were brought to
a close on 21 September 1751, when the Parker marriage settlement was at last drawn up.50 This crucial hurdle cleared, the couple were married by special licence ten days later. A campaign of at least seven years duration had ended in well-won victory.

  The Parker courtship correspondence lays bare the power play that underpinned even a respectable gentry match. Even in the supposedly sentimental century, an estimable love-match could be subject to considerable delay and constraint, confirming the unhelpfulness of a sharp distinction between freedom and arrangement in matchmaking. Indeed, hardly a settlement is mentioned in Georgian social correspondence without comment on the dawdling pace of business; though few were as frank as Frederick Mullins, who protested in 1747 that ‘my taking of the charming Phoebe’ was unnecessarily delayed by the trustees of his marriage settlement. But then, they were ‘not so eager for a f—k as I am’.51 However, the Parker courtship was long even by contemporary standards. For years family and friends opposed the match on the grounds that Robert Parker was too dingy a prize. For his part Robert acknowledged their concern, but reasoned ‘The arguments … are very Natural, but in my Opinion not Satisfactory, because many things ought to be dispenced [with where there] is a mutual Passion… .’52 For her part, Elizabeth Parker equivocated and prevaricated, unable to bring herself to disoblige her father, but equally unwilling to let Robert go. Of course, in pursuing a clandestine courtship Elizabeth Parker could have claimed some impeccable literary models and may have been inspired by her reading to persevere. Moreover, prolonging an affair in secret was a not uncommon scheme for a daughter who lacked the rebelliousness for elopement.53 Wearing one's family down with tearful obstinacy posed limited risk to reputation and security. When at last John Parker relented, he must have abandoned all hopes that his daughter would marry a great gentleman. Perhaps the real test here was that set by the Parker family for Elizabeth. Seasons in London, Preston and Pontefract had not borne romantic fruit. The persistence of her affection could not be in doubt. In courtship Robert enjoyed more freedom of manoeuvre than Elizabeth. Although he could not guarantee acceptance, he was at liberty to investigate, choose and offer. What is more, the whimsical letters exchanged among bachelors suggest that matchmaking was seen as an adventure, an exhilarating test of luck and skill. Robert Parker grandly compared himself to the skilful mariner whose craft was only truly tried on a tempestuous ocean; and attested repeatedly that he welcomed difficulties as an opportunity to prove his mettle. In fact, Eliza Haywood suspected that the perseverence of many a male lover proceeded principally from ‘an ambition of surmounting difficulties’, not from passion at all.54 In short, courtship was an invigorating challenge to manhood. Unquestionably, men enjoyed greater rhetorical licence in the art and mystery of courtship. It was inappropriate for a woman to confess her sentiments until convinced of her suitor's intentions. Moralists deplored the pretender who tried to secure prior assurances of love before he made his offer – a cynical policy, aimed, it was said, at circumventing the woman's right to refuse.55 Elizabeth Parker's early letters reveal the circumspection required of an unmarried woman. Demure reticence was obligatory, all peacock display was expected of the male.