The Gentleman's Daughter

by Amanda Vickery

  Even the possession of docile and devoted servants did not relieve genteel women of the obligation to labour in their households, although the ambiguity of elite commentary on the matter combined with the tendency to take the presence of servants for granted make it hard to ascertain with certainty how much physical drudgery a genteel mistress took upon herself. Elizabeth Shackleton's diaries, for instance, do not differentiate systematically between everyday tasks performed by her alone, tasks performed with the aid of servants, and those performed exclusively by servants under their mistress's supervision. Consequently, interpretations may vary of daily entries such as ‘spent the day cleaning and scowering’, though most readers would concede that to make such a statement, the mistress must have been closely involved in labour of this kind. Certainly, there is no evidence in the northern manuscripts to suggest a gentlewoman lost caste through heavy-duty housekeeping. In fact, Mrs Shackleton wrote most approvingly of hard-working ladies, as here in December 1780 at Pasture House: ‘Alice Waddington a most usefull Visitor. She strip'd of her Ornaments and best Attire & helpd washd & Iron.’54 Moreover, chronic staff shortages of the kind experienced by the Shackletons would have undermined even the most determined efforts to attain decorative idleness. No upper servant remained long enough to become truly accountable for the smooth running of the household and thereby relieve Elizabeth Shackleton of active supervision. A significant degree of co-operation between mistress and servants, markedly in food preparation and laundry, has also been noted in Meldrum's study of smaller establishments in early eighteenth-century London.55

  The genteel mistress was hardly engaged in back-breaking toil, nevertheless the pattern housekeeper was determined that all be clean, neat, regular, well ordered and economical, a determination which translated into energetic attention to household operations. To guarantee that household tasks were done well, the elite mistress had to be on hand to direct and assist. In order to judge the quality of the work performed, she herself had to know how to sew a straight seam, clean a piece of silver, churn good butter or harvest sweet vegetables. ‘The proper discharge of your domestic duties,’ argued Lady Sarah Pennington, necessitates ‘a perfect knowledge of every branch of Household Oeconomy, without which you can neither correct what is wrong, approve what is right, or give Directions with Propriety.’ Hence, Pennington urged her daughter, ‘make yourself Mistress of the Theory, that you may be able, the more readily, to reduce it into practice; and when you have a Family to command, let the Care of that always employ your principal Attention, and every part of it be subjected to your own Inspection’. Even Rousseau's meek Sophie, who gladly substituted for the domestics when necessary, had principally learnt their multifarious functions because ‘One can never command well except when one knows how to do the job oneself.56 Just as prudent economy had many branches, so an elite housekeeper understood many skills. Her reach embraced the ordering and cleaning of the physical household, the production of clothes and household goods, husbandry and provisioning, and the making and dispensing of medicine. Her responsibilities were wide-ranging even if her drudgery was minimal.

  The elite mistress managed her household property like a museum curator administering her collection, for the neatness and order of a house and furniture was a quintessential feature of genteel economy, a mark too reflective of character to be left entirely to the unexacting care of servants. Consequently, when Anne Gossip sent a box of new purchases home, she asked for the unpacking to be delayed until she could orchestrate it: ‘I had better be there when they are unpack'd ye can't know where to find anything.’57 Precise attention to the physical arrangement of the household is minutely documented in Elizabeth Shackleton's pocket diaries:

  On Saturday June the 14th I Bot of old John Pollard four yards & a half of Blanketing at 18 pr yd, cost 6s and nine pence It is marked 1771 W.J.G. I design'd it for Will's and Isaac's bed in the Gallery But afterwards thot it best upon consideration to let [it] be put upon the bed next the window in the Nursery. So I have marked it nursery.58

  When new commodities entered the household, whether bought, made or received as gifts, it was the mistress-housekeeper who decided their eventual destination. Mrs Shackleton often wrote of ‘putting things in their places’, ‘taking possession’ of cupboards and ‘regulating’ their contents. The diaries are littered with reminders of the whereabouts of individual items, and with ad hoc inventories of cupboards and boxes. When her sons left property in her willing charge, she wrote up minute catalogues in duplicate. She prided herself on safe, efficient storage and took palpable pleasure in her ample cupboards. In a well-regulated household, the mistress-housekeeper could literally itemize the physical contents of a house and knew exactly where to lay her hands on a particular object.59 Hence, when loyalist women petitioned the British government after the American War, they were able to present minute inventories of furniture, plate and kitchen utensils lost to the rebels, something most male claimants were unable to do – ‘a Variety of Articles’ being the best that one male refugee could recollect.60 How his wife would have sighed for those forgotten goods.

  Domestic inspection and reorganization was routine for the genteel housekeeper, witness Mrs Shackleton detailing the ‘regulation’ of her linen one November morning in 1768: ‘I removed the Chest out of the red room in the Gallery & took all the linnen out of the linnen draws over the fireplace into the nursery & put the linnen draws near the fireplace in the red room in the gallery as they stood to damp before.’61 Mrs Shackleton monitored the condition of the household goods and kept a record of breakages, wear and tear, the mending of broken bits and the regular servicing of utensils. In genteel households cupboards were well-ordered, sheets crackled with starch and the utensils shone, for chipped cups, blunt knives, dirty linen and domestic disarray were all visceral emblems of the slattern; they announced the presence of a neglectful, indolent and probably sluttish mistress to her shuddering guests. Conversely, when Boswell encountered a lady of quality who had sacrificed herself in marriage to a rich, greasy old man, he felt nauseated: ‘She looks to me unclean … like a dirty table-cloth.’62

  A well-regulated household was a clean household, for ‘nastiness’ would deprive a family of polite company. What exactly constituted an acceptable level of cleanliness in eighteenth-century terms is hard to assess, but it is apparent that even an undemanding definition assumed constant work. Although Alkincoats was refurbished in the 1750s and Pasture House was a completely new building, both houses were plagued by inefficient chimneys and leaking roofs. Mrs Shackleton engaged John Smith to sweep the chimneys (‘a most dirty do’), yet this did not remove the threat of dangerous fires in the store room and parlour chimneys, an occurrence reported in 1771, 1774 and 1775. Heavy rain also created chaos. With dismal regularity Mrs Shackleton awoke to find Alkincoats flooded with water, the fireplaces belching smoke and ‘a great deal of damage done’. The situation was no better at Pasture House: ‘A deluge at Barrowford, this house Every room smokes like a Kiln. The water runs down the Chinies and swims upon all the Floors.’63 Under such circumstances keeping an eighteenth-century household even moderately dry and orderly was an arduous and unending task.

  The work involved in meeting Mrs Shackleton's standards of cleanliness is suggested by her bulk purchases of castile soap and the variety of dusters and cleaning rags mentioned in the dairies, including ‘china cloths’, ‘a cloth for to wipe the leads’, ‘knife cloths’ and ‘tin cloths’. Reference is made to the intermittent whitewashing, cleaning out of rooms and polishing of plate in anticipation of visitors. Elizabeth Shackleton associated herself with laborious tasks: ‘I wash'd all the China Pots & c in the Store room which was extremely well clean'd out – a very troublesome Job am glad it is over so safe and well. It answers the pains and looks very clean nice and well …’64 But whether she actually got her hands dirty remains a mystery. Mrs Shackleton's use of the personal pronoun is ambiguous, witness three references to a common household task:
‘We scowered all the Pewter & cleand all the things in the Kitchen’; ‘We scowered all the Pewter cleaned Coppers & Irons’; ‘a very fine day. The maids scouring pewter’.65 In each case, Elizabeth Shackleton may have meant that while her maids toiled, she stood by to direct and encourage. But even if the role she performed was essentially supervisory, she was unquestionably an interventionist superintendent, who at the very least had her own ideas about the best way to scour pewter. Mrs Shackleton certainly led the battle to keep the dirt at bay and was mortified when overwhelmed: ‘such a house for dirt as I never saw. It quite hurts me to see this good old place so deplorably nasty.’ The public pride she drew from running a clean household can be inferred from her humiliation in defeat: ‘What a nasty drunken beastly house for a stranger to clean …’66 Cleanliness was powerfully associated with gentility. Nevertheless, the exemplary mistress who ensured the decent order of her house was expected to conceal her efforts behind cloak of gracious nonchalance, lest she radiate ‘the air of a housemaid’ and thereby discomfort her husband and her guests. Her aim was to contrive that a visitor took neatness and order for granted and remained blind to the scrubbing, washing and polishing she daily orchestrated.67

  Of all the tasks associated with ‘keeping house’, one of the most productive, in a simple economic sense, was the making up and maintenance of personal and household linens. The diligent mistress claimed this as part of her domain, although it was a domain whose boundaries were shifting in the course of the eighteenth century. At the turn of the seventeenth century it was common for women of the lesser gentry in the north to organise the manufacture of linen, and sometimes woollen cloth for household use. Gentry women would superintend the spinning of textile fibres into yarn by their female servants and contract with jobbing weavers in their neighbourhood to transform that yarn into cloth. This kind of self-provisioning only supplied a proportion of the household's textile requirements, with an emphasis on the coarser textiles, but it nevertheless constituted a significant responsibility for gentlewomen. There is no evidence of this kind of household self-provisioning of textiles in Elizabeth Shackleton's voluminous diaries, and it appears to have largely died out in other northern gentry households by the second half of the eighteenth century, as they came to rely entirely on an ever-expanding supply of shop-bought cloth.68 Gentlewomen were largely responsible for purchasing this cloth, and they continued to be responsible for processing it once bought, particularly for cutting out and sewing linen cloth into sheets and handkerchiefs, shirts and shifts. It should not be assumed, however, that this switch from partial self-provisioning to dependence on retail supply resulted in less work for gentlewomen. Time saved in organizing the manufacture of cloth may simply have been eaten up by shopping for larger quantities or more diverse qualities of cloth, by ever-more demanding standards of needlework, or by other tasks unrelated to textiles.

  As had been the case with household spinning at the end of the previous century, the elite mistress of the second half of the eighteenth century expected to administer more sewing than she performed herself, yet her own practical ability was vital to effective production. As Dr Gregory lectured the elite seamstress, ‘the intention of your being taught needlework, knitting and such like, is not on account of the intrinsic value of all you can do with your hands, which is trifling, but to enable you to judge more perfectly of that kind of work, and to direct the execution of it in others.’69 At Alkincoats, fabric was regularly bulk purchased, extra labour brought in and the family's new linen made up in enormous batches under Elizabeth Shackleton's supervision. But she herself sewed and labelled many ruffles, stocks, neckcloths and handkerchiefs for her menfolk and favoured servants, for a lady's plain-work was an attractive symbol of her dutiful ministration to the needs of her family. Sheets, pillowcases, blankets, towels and napkins for family and servants were all cut, stitched and labelled by Elizabeth Shackleton: ‘Made two pairs of sheets, one pair for the red room marked R.R. and a diamond, the other pair with a diamond red for my own bed.’ The first making was only the beginning of the story, many an afternoon was spent ‘busy mending old shifts, shirts and sheets’.70 Outdated or faded gowns were often unpicked to the original ‘whole breadths’ and ‘pieces’, and sent to be re-dyed in Manchester or London, while old linen was laboriously maintained and adapted. For Elizabeth Shackleton's was a thrifty regime, wherein every last scrap was utilized; a virtue she liked to broadcast. She reproved her improvident married son precisely for his failure to save fabric pieces: ‘I asked [Tom] for a piece of cloth to make me a Pincushion. He told me he had none. I said he sho'd keep bits. If they had not done so at Newton, how co'd the old Lady have made my own dear, nice, little [grandson] a pair of shoes.’71

  Long after her sons left home, they continued to avail themselves of her services both managerial and technical. John and Robert Parker wrote from London requesting eleven new shirts without a qualm, while Elizabeth Shackleton was more than happy to oblige her sons. She told Robin in 1774 that she ‘wo'd take particular care to have all his shirts done as he directed & desired his acceptance of the making of them’.72 Mrs Shackleton revelled in her ability to be useful to her sons, urging them to bring home any shirts that required mending. Her efforts to make recompense with John Parker after a damaging quarrel are suggestive of the wider uses of her skills: ‘I am Happy to have [John] here. Mended up slightly some shirts & night Caps, all his things much out of repair. God knows he will find it a great & expensive difficulty to renew them.’ Even when theoretically head of an independent household, Tom Parker continued to resort to his mother over the matter of linens: ‘Tom called … said he sho'd want a number of things in the Housekeeping way – Particularly Linnen. I might advise Miss Parker about things.’73 Thereby he acknowledged Mrs Shackleton's accumulated expertise and authority.

  Food was the most bountiful expression of genteel housewifery. Ladies recipe books, both printed and manuscript, detail a comprehensive interest in its production and processing. Elizabeth Shackleton was actively concerned with the running of the home farm. It seems unlikely (though not impossible) that Elizabeth Shackleton directed labourers in the fields, but she was still au fait with their labour. The letters she received from her first husband conveyed information about crops and livestock. In her widowhood, she ran the estate herself with the help of her brother's steward, and even after remarrying was directly involved in disputes with tenant farmers concerning their misuse of Parker land – contentious issues being the taking of rushes and timber, over-intensive ploughing and the laying of lime.74 In her diary she noted the rhythms of the farming year: ploughing, lime burning and laying, hay-making, mowing and threshing, lambing, calving, sheep shearing and so on. She also coyly recorded the matings of livestock: ‘A Mr Sheep came to visit our young Miss Lambs.’ Throughout the 1760s and 1770s Mrs Shackleton discussed the farm animals in very possessive terms, writing of her ‘little dandy cock and hen, which I value very much’, ‘my sweet little pigs’, ‘my good old handsome gander’, ‘my good profitable sow’ and so on, and reporting tasks like ‘set the old goose, March Wednesday ye 15th upon eleven eggs’. While such testimony is of limited value in ascertaining the full extent of her daily engagement in farm and estate management, it does at the very least confirm that this gentlewoman was no precious hothouse bloom withering at the first farmyard breeze. However, it may well be the case that her endeavours were usually concentrated in the immediate vicinity of the house. Abetted by her part-time gardener, Mrs Shackleton also tended a flower and kitchen garden, recording the prodigious yields of her apple and pear trees. When she moved to Pasture House, she sent away to a Pontefract nursery for moss, Provence and Portland roses, honeysuckles, gessamine and myrtles to establish her new garden.75

  The diaries contain no evidence that crops or livestock were sent to market. Most produce seems to have been absorbed by the family or given away, with the exception of butter, which Mrs Shackleton sold at between fivepence and sevenpence
per pound. Her customers were made up of neighbours, tenants and Colne traders. They either came directly to the dairy door to buy the butter, or had it sent by cart. Only occasionally was butter sent to Colne market to be sold. Looking in detail at butter sales in one year gives an idea of the scale of the dairying at Alkincoats. In 1776 Mrs Shackleton reported sending eight gargantuan pots of butter into the cellar. Of these, one pot was consumed by the family and the other seven were sold off at sevenpence per pound to neighbours. In all 496 pounds of butter was sold, bringing in £14 9s. 4d. in revenue. Thus, in relative terms, her butter trade was worth the annual wages of two to three maidservants.76 It was a significant enterprise.

  The complete and accomplished housewife was also an expert at the ‘The Art of Preserving, and Candying. Fruits and Flowers, and making all sorts of Conserves, Syrups, Jellies and Pickles’, as well as distilling and making artificial wines, perfumes, oils, musk balls and so on.77 Certainly, Mrs Shackleton's year was punctuated by seasonal pickling and preserving on a liberal scale. May saw the fermenting of gallons of cowslip wine, July the making of currant jelly and the bottling of cherries, September the pickling of literally hundreds of cucumbers, October the sousing of onions, the preserving of damsons and gooseberries, and the perfecting of several varieties of ketchup. In addition to the processing of produce, Mrs Shackleton supervised her menservants in the brewing of ale and small beer and her maidservants in the home-curing of ham.78 Stocking the larder with home-processed food and drink was the bread and butter of good housekeeping.