The Gentleman's Daughter

by Amanda Vickery

  Elizabeth Shackleton's diaries testify to the variety of ways commodities could be acquired. The Shackletons bespoke individual pieces (predominantly furniture and clothing) from Lancashire craftsmen and women. In the ordering of metropolitan goods, they relied principally on the taste and expertise of friends and relatives living in the capital. They commissioned goods on an ad hoc basis from neighbours and kin who happened to be visiting London or other polite centres, and went on intermittent shopping trips themselves to well-supplied northern towns, such as Preston, Warrington, Wrexham, Chester, Halifax and York. Local, everyday shopping was done in person in Colne, Barrowford, Burnley and Bradford, from retailers, producers and, very occasionally, hawkers. But Elizabeth Shackleton's social network was such that if she chose she could purchase fashionable metropolitan commodities with ease.

  So how fashionable were Elizabeth Shackleton's purchases? In colloquial usage, ‘being in fashion’ indicates a general accordance with the modes and manners of the times, but also more specifically signals the possession of this season's model. If what historians of demand mean by fashion is the close shadowing of metropolitan high style, then Elizabeth Shackleton's engagement with fashion was very uneven. Even if the focus is restricted to those categories of goods which were at the very core of the eighteenth-century fashion system – furniture, tableware and clothing – the extent to which fashion influenced her purchasing decisions was different in each category. Elizabeth Shackleton's diaries are peppered with details of countless purchases, sufficiently detailed to enable the analysis of her purchases by their place of origin.25 While household utensils, provisions and groceries were almost invariably obtained within the parish, furniture consumption was regional in scope. With the exception of one or two small pieces, all the new Shackleton furniture was purchased in Lancashire from craftsmen in Colne, Manchester and Lancaster. By stark contrast, the purchase of tableware was overwhelmingly biased towards the metropolis.

  Elizabeth Shackleton evidently put a premium on polite china and silverware. Precisely why she did so is not made explicit in the diaries, however the pleasure she derived from exquisite tableware (she was devoted to tea parties, enjoyed examining her neighbours' new purchases, and even recorded which women snapped up the china at local house sales) probably reflects female investment in mealtime ceremony and domestic sociability. For all that, Elizabeth Shackleton was no leader of fashion. Unlike her gowns, tableware was only infrequently renewed. Few bulk purchases were made and these were prompted by ‘necessity’ not the dictates of changing fashion – upon first marriage, remarriage, removal to Pasture House and in response to breakages. Moreover, the letters Mrs Shackleton received from proxy consumers do not suggest a relentless pursuit of ultra-fashionable wares. Relatives made her aware of current modes and sometimes fashion constrained her choices – the tea-tray of china she sought in 1754 could not be had anywhere because of the rage for tea-boards. Similarly, in the 1760s she had to make do with a candelabra decorated with Mars and Venus and not the branching flowers she requested, since the rococo had been superseded by neo-classicism in silverware design. Yet fashion also created unexpected opportunities for canny consumers. They had to decide whether ‘to pay the fashion’, since the preferences of the fashionable elite were seen to inflate the price of some goods and depress the price of others:

  the nanquen sort is most the present taste & consequently dearest, but as tis only blew & white … will not be thought so fine. However you may have a good, genteel, full sett (that is 42 pieces) for about 5 or 6 guineas – since the Beau Monde is chiefly for the ornamental China for Chimneys & brackets to adorn the room & sett out for entertainements …26

  Certainly, the genteel liked to buy their tableware in London, but there is no evidence that they burned to drink their tea from the same cups as a duchess. They were satisfied with ‘genteel’ tableware and flattered themselves that they were too sensible to be buffeted by the ever-changing winds of metropolitan taste.

  Commentary on changing furniture design in Elizabeth Shackleton's diaries is conspicuous by its absence. Old-fashioned pieces were not traded in for modish novelties; indeed furniture was bought once in a lifetime and expected to last for generations. The Gillows mahogany bought new for Pasture House was impressive but not ultra-stylish. Anyone who wanted high design would betake themselves to a London showroom not a Lancaster workshop.27 Thus, when periodically re-stocking Alkincoats and Pasture House with high-quality household goods, the Shackletons appear to have purchased commodities which, although broadly fashionable, were not in the highest style.

  24 Trade card of Phillips Garden, St Paul's Churchyard, London, c.1750. A well-dressed couple is portrayed discussing a purchase of plate with a shopman in the enticingly fashionable, gothicized interior of a London goldsmith's shop.

  25 Trade card of the London linen-draper Benjamin Cole, St Paul's Churchyard, London, c.1720. Throughout the eighteenth century, and probably long before, genteel women were accustomed to visit fashionable London shops unaccompanied by men. Here, well-dressed women, are shown poring over a display tray of lace placed on the counter by a female shop assistant. One woman customer sits on a chair near a pilastered doorway which opens on to a blazing fire in the back room. The interiors of fashionable shops were carefully designed to make shopping a comfortable and pleasurable experience.

  When it came to dress, however, Elizabeth Shackleton prided herself on being au courant with ‘the reigning fashions’. She had London newspapers sent up and regularly received informative letters from watchful friends in polite towns and London. These strategically located observers kept her posted on the modes and manners of ‘the fine folks’, ‘the people of distinction’, ‘the better sort’. Their ability to provide such bulletins varied according to season, sociability and the visibility of ‘the ladies of quality’. From Pontefract, ‘this Capital of Politeness’, Jane Scrimshire was best placed to answer Elizabeth's ‘important questions about Negligees’ when county families were in the town attending the winter assemblies.28 Similarly, in London Bessy Ramsden had to attend public functions and arenas such as pleasure gardens, theatres and assemblies in order to identify up-to-the-minute modes: ‘As for fashions I believe we must postpone them a little longer as it is too Early to tell what will be worn. I shall get all the information I can in the fashion way and let you know … excepting to the city assembly once this winter I have not been any where in Publick.’29 So far, a model of the transmission of taste based on emulation theory is confirmed. Bessy Ramsden regarded London as the ‘fountain head’ of fashion, exhibited by an elite minority in arenas of social display, and to be sure Mrs Ramsden was a passionate spectator of any glamorous exhibition, as her husband never failed to point out. In 1766, the Reverend smirked at his wife's determination to view the queen's birthday court from the gallery:

  Possibly you may suspect this to be Curiosity to see the Fine Folks; not a bit on't, but only to enable her [to atone] … with your Ladyship for her past sins of omission by sending a Letter cramm'd full with such Glitterings, Dazzlings, Diamonds and so forth, as will almost put out your Peepers unless fortifyd by a pair of Spectacles, with the Glasses blackened as when we look at the Sun in an Eclipse.30

  Bessy Ramsden was certainly a gossip and a lover of spectacle, yet she was not a straightforward emulator of the ladies of quality.

  Bessy Ramsden mocked those aspirants to the beau monde who made themselves ridiculous for the sake of fashion, like a Miss Price who spent an afternoon stabbing insects to produce the current ‘flea’ colour, or a young bride whose ultra-fashionable trimming of wax strawberries melted in front of the fire. She reported the absurdities of high fashion with relish, describing monstrously oversized bonnets, headdresses of such towering height that ladies were obliged to sit on the floor of their coaches, and the Duchess of Devonshire's habit of wearing a wax kitchen garden in her hair. Similarly, Ann Pellet laughed at the oversized hoops at court: ‘a lady who going by anothe
r, tost her hoop so high that it entangled with the Diam[ond] flowers, &c in the next Lady's Head and had not some officious Gentleman come to their assistance we know not of what Direfull consequence it might have produced.’ She enjoyed the discomfort of another unfortunate debutante who ‘made a false step and kick't up her heels, Hoop, and all’. Likewise, Anne Parker of Cuerdon dashed off saucy reports about the Lancashire quality on parade in Preston: ‘Miss Wall … [had] such an Enormous Quantity of Wool False Hair & c upon her Head that I Coud not help thinking if it was cut off t'woud Serve instead of a Wool Pack in the House of Peers for one of the Bishops to sit upon – poor Miss Wall. tis well she does not hear me for she wou'd not like perhaps to have a Bishops Bum placed upon her Noddle.’31 Bulletins like these satisfied Mrs Shackleton's curiosity and enabled her to feel pleasantly scandalized: ‘I recd a long and an Entertaining letter from Mrs Ramsden of the present Indecent, Fashionable meetings of the Conspicuous, Great Ladies of this Isle fie for shame.’32 Evidently Mrs Shackleton contemplated the beau monde with a mixture of tantalized fascination and delicious disapproval.

  26 ‘The Vis a Vis Bisected or the Ladies Coop’, 1776. This satirical image perfectly illustrates Bessy Ramsden's description of ladies being obliged to sit on the bottom of their coaches to accommodate their monstrous headdresses. Mrs Ramsden may have seen a print on this theme. She certainly lived only a brisk walk from the printsellers of St Paul's Churchyard.

  27 ‘The Lady's Disaster’, 1746, exposing the comic possibilities of large hoops. The theme is echoed in Ann Pellet's descriptions of embarrassing accidents with hoops in the same decade.

  While Elizabeth Shackleton's correspondents satisfied her general interest in fashion and the fashionable, they also answered specific inquiries concerning the making of negligées, nightgowns and sacks for wear in Lancashire. Her informants made suggestions based on a variety of criteria, recommending dresses that would be fashionable but also durable, versatile, attractive and appropriate to Elizabeth's age and modest height. Modes that originated at court might be rejected on aesthetic grounds – ‘very ugly for all they are the Queen's’, or in the name of modesty – ‘it would not be thought decent for a widow with Children to show so much nakedness’. Extreme vogues were thought best confined to the peerage, who were accorded a degree of sartorial licence – ‘the above is indeed the present tast and I am sorry to say much run in to by people of no rank’.33 On the other hand, new designs might be more readily adopted if considered ‘becoming’, ‘in character’, ‘prettiest for us Mothers’, ‘the Genteelest thing’ or ‘an Easy Fashion’, while fabrics were chosen according to the time of year, in colours that would last. Efforts were made to match outfit to occasion. In the 1750s Ann Pellet suggested a long sack with a hoop for a formal wedding visit because it would look ‘much more noble’.34 (Although hoops were increasingly outmoded in everyday wear, they were still worn at official functions and at court.)

  The relationship of fashion, age and decorum was hotly debated by the genteel. Traditional pundits held that ‘from a married woman engaged in family concerns, a more staid behaviour is expected than from a young woman before marriage; and consequently a greater simplicity of dress.’35 For her part, Ann Pellet was not altogether pleased to see ladies of ninety years of age parading in flounced negligées, while Bessy Ramsden thought polonaises inappropriate for matrons and Italian nightgowns unsuitable for the old. However, Jane Scrimshire believed that it was behind the times to force older women to renounce fashion: ‘I think I know you so well that I Can't help guessing at what thot will occur to you at this … [that] … a Marry'd Woman & a Mother of Children [should] talk of Dress but these my Dr Friend are Antiquated Notions & were you here you wo'd find Women of Sixty and Seventy just as anxious about [fashion] as formerly Girls were at 18.’ The letters of all three women suggest that it was not only the young who were expected to dress modishly, but that different fashions were thought appropriate for different age groups. Dresses that suited ‘the gravity of an elderly widow’ were thought ‘far [too] grave for a young wife’. Fashions were already targeted at ‘young and middel age Ladies’ as well as ‘Elderly people’.36

  28 ‘A lady in the Dress of the Year 1764’, from Elizabeth Parker/Shackleton's Pocket Diary of 1765.

  29 (above) ‘A lady in the Dress of the Year 1772’, and ‘Twelve of the genteelest Head-dresses of 1772’, from Elizabeth Shackleton's Pocket diary of 1773.

  30 ‘Ladies of Quality in the Most Fashionable Headresses’, from Elizabeth Shackleton's Pocket Diary of 1780.

  31 (facing page) ‘A lady in the full Dress of the Year 1775’, Frontispiece to Elizabeth Shackleton's Pocket Diary of 1776.

  32 ‘Ten Fashionable Head-dresses of 1786’, from the Ladies Own Memorandum Book (1787).

  Elizabeth Shackleton and her friends both kept abreast of London fashion and exercised considerable discrimination. Engagement with fashion involved complicated decision-making; some designs were accepted tout court, some adapted for use in Lancashire, and others rejected out of hand. Mrs Shackleton was not a slavish imitator of elite modes, nor a passive victim of the velocity of fashion, for passive victims rarely exhibit a sense of humour, witness a satirical poem she transcribed:

  Shepherds I have lost my waist. Have you seen my body?

  Sacrificed to modern taste, I'm quite a Hoddy Doddy.

  Never shall I see it more, Till common sense returning

  My body to my legs restore, then I shall cease from mourning.

  For Fashion I that part forsook where sages plac'd the belly

  Tis lost and I have not a nook for cheesecakes, tarts or jelly!37

  33 ‘The Rage or Shepherds I have lost my Waist’, 1794. A later version of the satirical poem that Beatrix Parker of Marshfield gave Elizabeth Shackleton in the late 1770s.

  34 Triptych, ‘Lady Torrington’, ‘Lady Archer’ and ‘Lady Waldegrave’, in Riding Dress, Full Dress and Undress, c.1777.

  How widespread was this equivocal relationship with high fashion? A desire for precise information about new modes was widespread. Women in the Whitaker, Barcroft, Dawson–Greene, Stanhope and Gossip networks all received regular fashion reports from female kin in the capital and polite urban centres. However, a certain disdain for the absurdity of metroplitan excess was de rigueur and a proper sense of the triviality of fashion was often paraded. The worldly Mary Warde, for instance, complained about the need to ‘sacrifice more time at the Toilet’ when in company, ‘which I allways think sadly spent …’, while Anna Larpent declared herself resigned to the bore of dressing: ‘a necessary tax on time.’38 Neverthless, most gentlewomen did aim at a general compliance with metropolitan fashion in clothes, although adaptation for local use, in keeping with the more relaxed decorum of the countryside, was very common. The toning down of aristocratic designs was often preferred to ‘a great deal of shew’; an impression which is confirmed by Anne Buck's case study of the consumer choices facing southern provincial gentlewomen.39 However, it does seems likely that this measured engagement with London fashion was peculiar to the cautious wives of genteel merchants, professionals and lesser gentry. Peers, plutocrats and upper gentry were sartorially much less inhibited (as were prosperous urban traders, according to Lorna Weatherill40), but many women were far more constrained. In her impoverished youth Ellen Weeton had suffered the ignominy of shabby garments, so her brother, a legal apprentice in Preston, could appear well dressed, and thereby lost several of her genteel acquaintances. In middle age she self-consciously adopted ‘a neat, plain style of dress’ consistent with her straitened finances and status as an unmarried governess. Although drawing puritanical satisfaction from her sartorial nonconformity, Ellen Weeton recorded the rude stares and ‘severe insults and mortifications’ she brought upon herself. In fact one of her friends refused to take her to church until she had ordered ‘something fit to appear in’ from the mantua-maker.41

  35 ‘Ladies in the Dress of 1786’ from the Ladies' Own M
emorandum Book (1787).

  36 ‘Fashionable Dresses’, from Carnan's Ladies Complete Pocket Book for 1802.

  Beyond its instrumental role, the exchange of information ‘in the fashion way’ had wider implications for feminine culture. Filling their letters with ‘Fashions, Flounces & Flourishes’, women shared doubts, advice and experience.42 Basic to female relationships was the exchange of consumer services. Both Bessy Ramsden and Ann Pellet willingly fulfilled Elizabeth's fashionable commissions for ‘tis allways a pleasure to serve our friends’, sustaining relationships over two decades without a single meeting. (‘Bessy is proud her Marketings gave Content … I verily believe she did her best and if at any time you would highly oblige Her, send Her a Shopping.’43) In a similar manner, Eliza Parker shopped for family and friends in Preston and York in the 1800s; Anne Robbins sent boxes of modish London clothes to her Lancashire nieces in the 1810s; and in the same decade Elizabeth Reynolds bought metropolitan goods on behalf of her female kin.44 In practice, fashion had far more significance for a woman's relationship with other women than for her relationship with men.