The Gentleman's Daughter

by Amanda Vickery

  40 Notes from the Records of the Assembly Rooms of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1842), quoted in Morris, ‘Clubs, Societies and Associations’ (see n. 7 above), p. 403. See also H. G. Graham, The Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth-Century (1909), pp. 98–9; J. Ellis, ‘On the Town: Women in Augustan England’, History Today, XLV, no. 12 (Dec. 1995), P. 22; J. Timbs, Club Life in London (1866), I, p. 316 and 88.; P. Egan, Life in London (1821), pp. 295–6.

  41 In Westmorland it was noted that assemblies included both tradesmen and gentry, while at Tunbridge it was reported ‘all ranks are mingled together without distinction. The nobility and the merchants; the gentry and the traders’: Langford, Polite and Commercial People, pp. 101, 102. But in Derby it appears that ‘trade’ (by which I imagine they meant retail) was excluded. Similarly, a protest was raised in Romsey when the Southampton organist (and reportedly a shoemaker's son) took out a subscription to the local assembly in 1769: Brewer, Pleasures (see n. 9 above), p. 549. On dancing-masters' balls, read Fawcett, ‘Dance and Teachers of Dance’, and also his ‘Provincial Dancing Masters’.

  42 See WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St 6/1/50 (19 Jan. 1742), I. Crompton, Doncaster, to M. Stanhope, Horsforth; LRO, DDGr C1 (27 Sept. 1762), B. Wiglesworth, Townhead, to M. Greene; LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), fos. 67, 69; and LRO, DDB/72/1490 (29 Oct. 1795), C. Dickson, Berwick, to E. Barcroft, Otley; LRO, DDB/72/687 (16 July 1807), E. Parker, Preston, to T. Parker, Alkincoats; LRO, DDB/72/223 (n.d.), B. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats.

  43 WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St 6/1/50 (1 Dec. 1740), M. Warde, Squerries, Kent, to M. Warde, Hooton Pagnell.

  44 Haywood, Female Spectator, I, p. 298.

  45 Quoted in Jackson, Hull in the Eighteenth Century, p. 269.

  46 T. Smollett, Advice: A Satire (1746), p. 5, n. 30.

  47 LRO, DDB/64/14 (c.1808), Ellen Barcroft's Journal, f. 25.

  48 Ashton, Old Times, p. 217; W. Boulton, The Amusements of Old London (1901), I, pp. 93–4; Phillips, Mid-Georgian London (see n. 25 above), pp. 277 and 91. On the disturbing associations of the masquerade, see Castle, Masquerade and Civilization.

  49 LRO, DDB/72/251 (30 Jan. 1772), W. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats.

  50 LRO, DDB Ac 7886/218 (30 April 1748), J. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Browsholme.

  51 WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St 6/1/50 (4 Oct. 1742), M. Richardson, Bierley, to M. Warde, Hooton Pagnell; W. A. Abram, Memorials of the Preston Guilds (Preston, 1882), p. 81. The Richardsons of Bierley were an established county family in the West Riding.

  52 On the Lascelles's masquerade, see G. D. Lumb and J. B. Place (eds.), ‘Extracts from the Leeds Intelligencer and the Leeds Mercury, 1777–1782’, Thoresby Society Publications, XL (1955), p. 73. For Pontefract, see LRO, DDB/72/445 (2 Jan. c.1755), J. Scrimshire, Pontefract, to E. Parker, Alkincoats.

  53 Browsholme Letters, Browsholme Hall, Clitheroe, Lanes, uncat. (7 July 1743), J. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Browsholme.

  54 W. Wroth, The London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century (1896), p. 206.

  55 LRO, DDB Ac 7886/273 (25 April 1749), A. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Browsholme.

  56 WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St 6/1/58 (29 Aug. 1749), J. Spencer, Middle Temple, to M. Stanhope, Leeds.

  57 Wroth, Pleasure Gardens, p. 201.

  58 Borsay, English Urban Renaissance, pp. 350–54.

  59 Van Muyden, Letters of De Saussure (see n. 14 above), p. 48. For further commentaries, see Phillips, Mid-Georgian London (see n. 25 above), p. 45.

  60 Girouard, English Town, p. 146.

  61 R. Bayne Powell, Travellers in Eighteenth-Century England (1951), p. 180.

  62 Van Muyden, Letters of De Saussure (see n. 14 above), p. 81.

  63 Quoted Cruikshank and Burton, Life in the Georgian City, p. 23.

  64 LRO, DDB/64/14 (c.1808), Ellen Barcroft's Journal, loose page.

  65 LRO, DDB/72/308 (9 May 1780), E. Shackleton, Pasture House, to R. Parker, London.

  66 Halsband, Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, I, p. 75. That in the 1880s women contested established notions of the public and private, seizing urban pleasure in unprecedented ways, is the founding premise of Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight (see n. 8 above); E. D. Rappaport, ‘The Halls of Temptation: Gender Politics and the Construction of the Department Store in late Victorian London’, Journal of British Studies (1996), pp. 58–83, is also built on the assumption that shopping was not a legitimate public pursuit for respectable women before the 1880s. Doubtless the prospect of the female consumer out and about in the early to mid-nineteenth century raised considerable cultural anxiety, as female pleasure and consumerism had for centuries, but it would be mistaken to infer from this that respectable women had therefore abstained from shopping for fear of being taken for prostitutes. On the sophistication of shops in the eighteenth-century metropolis and the widespread recognition of shopping as a female cultural pursuit, see Walsh, ‘Shop Design and the Display of Goods’, and Bayne Powell, Travellers (see n. 61 above), pp. 60–61.

  67 Tucker, Instructions for Travellers (1757); Berchtold; Essay to Direct and Extend the Inquiries. For elaboration, see Ousby, Englishman's England, and Andrews, Search for the Picturesque.

  68 Consult LRO, DDB/81/4 (1765), f. 86; LRO, DDB/81/19 (1773), f. 59; LRO, DDB/81/26 (1775), fos. 132–7; LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 191.

  69 LPL, MS 8752 (1776), 11 Jan. and 26 March, LPL, MS 8753 (1778), 14 May, 2 June, 19 Nov.; LRO, DDPd/25/16 (c.1786), Margaret Pedder's Views, fos. 5, 6, 10, 15; LPL, MS 8757 (1793), 3,9, 15 Jan., 5 Aug.; LPL, MS 8758 (1796), 27 June, 30 July, 28 Oct.; and LPL, MS 8759 (1797), 25 Sept., 22 Nov., 31 Dec; LRO, DDB/64/14 (c.1808), Ellen Barcroft's Journal, fos. 8, 23 and loose sheets; LRO, DDWh/4/34 (1 Nov. 1813), A. Wright, London to E. Whitaker, Roefield.

  70 Pennington, Unfortunate Mother's Advice, pp. 15–16. On the same topic, see Wilkes, Letter of Genteel Advice, p. 41. However, I do not deny the reality of piety for many and, of course, female religiosity is a subject in itself. Consider P. Crawford, Women and Religion in Early Modern England (1993); D. M. Valenze, Prophetic Sons and Daughters: Female Preaching and Popular Religion in Industrial England (1986); G. Malmgreem (ed.), Religion in the Lives of English Women, 1760–1930 (Bloomington, Ind., 1986). None the less, the absence of religious fervour amongst northern Anglicans is striking and has been noted by experts in the field (personal communication Jan Albers). When Charles Whitaker reported ‘The Scotch appear uncommonly religious’, he betrayed an indolent Anglicanism common to many: LRO, DDWh/4/55 (7 May 1814), C. Whitaker, Edinburgh, to E. Whitaker, London.

  71 See respectively WYCRO, Leeds, TA 22/1 (1 May 1731), S. Gossip, York, to A. Gossip, Bath; LRO, DDB/81/11 (1770), f. 71; LRO, DDB/81/32 (1777), f. 103; LRO, DDB/81/33B (1778), f. 34; WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St/6/1/50 (4 Jan. 1749), M. Warde to M. Warde, Hooton Pagnell; LRO, DDB/72/47 (n.d.), R. Parker, Little Harwood, to E. Parker, Alkincoats: ‘Miss Clayton … yet has hopes of Mr Faulkner and her sister … tells me he looks at her in church and very complaisant’; The Connoisseur, 43, 21 Nov. 1754, p. 255.

  72 Henstock, ‘Diary of Abigail Gawthern’, p. 119; LRO, DDWh/4/49 (3 April 1814), B. Addison, Liverpool, to E. Whitaker, Roefield.

  73 YAS, MD 3,35/Box 95/xcv/i (c.1773), B. Lister, Gisburn Park, to T. Lister, House of Commons. Although the unconventional governess Ellen Wee ton thought that women should be encouraged to study divinity, she herself wondered ‘who would listen to a female divine, except to ridicule? I could myself almost laugh at the idea.’ See Hall, Miss Weeton's Journal, 1, p. 197.

  74 Andrew, ‘Female Charity in an Age of Sentiment’; Andrew, Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, NJ, 1989); Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England, pp. 178–83.

  75 NYRO, ZBA 25/1. In York, a Mrs Faith Gray and a Mrs Catherine Cappe were instrumental in the establishment and superintendence of a Spinning School (1782), a Grey Coat School for Girls (1785), and a Female Friendly Society (1788), see Gray, Papers and Diaries of a Yor
k Family, 1764–1839 (1927), pp. 54, 60, 67. The Carlisle Female Visiting Society was set up in 1803, and members engaged to search out the abodes of the wretched and supply their inhabitants with comforts. An Infant Clothing Society was set up in the same town in 1811. Similarly, Workington had an Infant Clothing Society (1811), A Blanket Society (1819) and a Dorcas Society (1818) which distributed 600 garments a year ‘mostly wrought by the fair hands of the contributors to this excellent charity’. See W. Parson and W. White, History and Directory of the Counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland (1829), pp. 308–9. In Hawkshead, a Female Union Society was instituted in 1798: LRO, DP 384/8 Rule Book of Female Union Society. Whalley boasted a Sisterly Love Society active from at least 1818: LRO, DDX 680/2/3. A Female Sociable Society was active in Wadsworth from at least 1810: WYCRO, Bradford, Tong MS 6/6, Membership Certificate. A society was active in Leeds from at least 1801: WYCRO, Leeds, Leeds Female Benefit Society, 6, and in Wakefield from 1805: WYCRO, Wakefield, C 281/7/10, Rules of the Wakefield Female Benefit Society. Chester had a lying-in charity founded in 1798: CCRO, DNA/1, Minutes of the Chester Benevolent Institution. Liverpool boasted a Ladies Charity for the Relief of Poor Women in Childbed (1796), The Female School of Industry (1818), The Friends' Female Charity School (1818) and The Ladies Branch of the Liverpool Auxiliary Society (1818).

  76 LRO, DDGr C3 (21 July 1819 and 6 April 1820), S. Tatham, Southall, to Mrs Bradley, Slyne.

  77 HL, HM, 31201, Anna Larpent's Diary, XI, 1820–21, f. 2, facing f. 4, facing f. 7, facing f. 13, f. 45, facing f. 51, f. 71 and f. 130.

  78 F. K. Prochaska, ‘Philanthropy’, in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, 1750–1950 (Cambridge, 1990), III, p. 386.

  79 Kimber, Life and Adventures of Joe Thompson, II, p. 7. For further discussion, see Borsay, English Urban Renaissance, pp. 133–7; Morris, ‘Clubs, Societies and Associations’ (see n. 7 above), passim; Money, Experience and Identity, pp. 98–152.

  80 Andrew, ‘London Debating Societies’, pp. 79, 383. Andrew finds that the societies of the 1770s concentrated on political and theological questions, with just a few topics of wider cultural concern. Morals, emotion and matrimony became more popular as debating topics later in the century, but the interest in religion and the state persisted.

  81 The Times, 29 Oct. 1788, quoted in Andrew, ‘London Debating Societies’, p. xi. On the suppression of political debate, see D. Andrew ‘Popular Culture and Public Debate: London 1780’, HJ, 39 (1996), p. 421, but see generally pp. 405–23.

  82 Beverley Lemire notes that the wife of a middling Manchester family attended a conversation club in the 1770s, see id., Fashion's Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1991), p. 110, and Catherine Hall finds evidence of women's participation in debating societies in the Midlands, but sees this as a fleeting phenomenon: Hall, ‘Victorian Domestic Ideology’. In Bristol, ladies were known to prefer morning to evening lectures: Barry, ‘Cultural Life of Bristol’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 135. In Bath there was a house by the pump room where the ladies could read the news and enjoy ‘each other's conversation’, a ‘female coffee-house’ where they could withdraw after general assemblies, plus lectures on arts and sciences laid on to amuse the ‘People of Fashion’, Goldsmith, Richard Nash, pp. 43, 45, 46. Smollett's Lydia Melford said the young were not admitted to the ladies coffee house at Bath, ‘inasmuch as the conversation turns on politics, scandal, philosophy, and other subjects above our capacity; but we are allowed to accompany them to booksellers shops, which are charming places of resort; where we read novels, plays, pamphlets and news-papers, for so small a subscription as a crown a quarter’: Smollett, Humphry Clinker, p. 40.

  83 LRO, DDWh/4/78 (1 May 1816), A. Ainsworth, Bolton, to E. Whitaker, Roefield; LRO, DDWh/4/74 (4 Aug. 1816), ‘A. B.’, Preston, to same.

  84 In this manner, she lent out R. Nelson's Feasts and Fasts, B. Kennet's, The Lives and Characters of the Ancient Grecian Poets (1697), Echard's Roman History, J. Potter, Archaelogia Graecae: Or the Antiquities of Greece (1699), Fielding's, Tom Jones (1749), The Curiosities of the Tower and numerous copies of The Spectator. For her part, she recorded borrowing the first volume of Smollett's Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (1771) from Owen Cunliffe, two volumes of Don Quixote (1615) from Miss Beatrix Lister, four volumes of Richardson's, Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) from Mrs Walton and Shakespeare's history plays from her daughter-in- law Betty Parker: LRO, DDB/81/6 (1767), fos. 2, 71; LRO, DDB/81/7 (1768), f. 105; and LRO, DDB/81/22 (1774), f. 2.

  85 WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St 6/1/50 (2.9 March 1741), M. Warde, London, to M. Warde, Hooton Pagnell; LRO, DDB Ac 7886/272 (28 March 1749), A. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Browsholme; LRO, DDB/72/132 (16 May 1754), J. Scrimshire, Pontefract, to E. Parker, Alkincoats; LRO, DDB/72/197, 173, 271 (1762–7), W. and B. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats.

  86 Women in the Parker network who came of age in the 1740s and 1750s made no reference to a past schooling or old school-fellows. Nevertheless, Jane Scrimshire and Elizabeth Shackleton were clearly literate, literary and both spoke French; Bessy Ramsden on the other hand possessed only a rudimentary grasp of spelling and grammar. The writings of the two former suggest that, at the very least, they had benefited from the ministrations of a tutor or governess. When it came to the education of her own children, Jane Scrimshire recorded her young sons first day at school, but made no such reference for her daughters. Similarly, while Bessy Ramsden's sons were eventually enrolled at Charterhouse School, it appears her daughter Betsy was too useful around the house to be spared. A younger friend, Mrs Cooper of London, did write of sending her daughter Susan to school in the 1780s, though she resolved to keep her other daughter Kitty at home with her, specifically to serve as a personal companion. Outside the Parker network the same pattern is detectable in this period. No mention of formal schooling was made by Mary Warde of Squerries, Anne Stanhope of Leeds or Anne Gossip of Thorp Arch, although all three wrote well in the 1740s and 1750s, and Warde delighted in the London literary scene. While Jane Pedder of Lancaster sent her son John to Blackburn to be apprenticed to an attorney, her daughter Margaret continued to reside at home. As the daughter of a clergyman, Margaret doubtless had some access to a semi-formal education. In all probability, her trip to London in 1786 had a didactic function. Certainly, the journal she wrote of her visit has the unenthusiastic air of an exercise book. Of course, home tuition was not necessarily deficient relative to institutional schooling. The possible scope of an education acquired at home is demonstrated by the diaries of the Lancaster Quakeress Mary Chorley. From at least 1776 to 1779 the Chorley sisters received tuition six days a week from an unnamed ‘master’ and later ‘a mistress’; ordinarily, half the day was given over to lessons, the rest to chores and play. From the age of ten Mary learned history and geography; subjects taught by rote with the aid of a globe and lesson cards (‘Now we dream to get of our History of England cards’, ‘I said my geographical cards to my Aunt Lydia’). On a less systematic basis, she was also taught biology, logic and arithmetic. She read Roman texts in translation, sermons, edifying treatises, travelogues and novels. That the Chorley curriculum was such a hybrid of modern and classical learning is probably a function of the educational liberalism of old dissent. Yet mainstream femininity was reinforced in three key respects. Mary Chorley was as preoccupied with sentimental novels as any little Anglican; the fostering of genteel tastes and skills ran in parallel with her academic training; and lastly, female identity with the home and housekeeping was not broken. The available commentary from the early nineteenth century gives the impression that a higher proportion of elite families were sending their daughters out of the house to school. By the 1820s the number of local academies for girls had mushroomed: Baines's Lancashire directory for 1824 registers the existence of two such schools in Clitheroe, one in Colne, four in Blackburn, one in Preston and six in Lancaster. Six schools for ladies in Bradford were advertised in B
aines's Yorkshire directory of 1822, yet this development seems to have had only a very limited impact. No expansion in intellectual content is detectable in women's letters, while polite accomplishment is still in abundant evidence. Girls still remained in closer association with home than their brothers and were never sent as far afield to school. On girls' education in general, see S. Skedd, ‘Women Teachers and the Expansion of Girls' Schooling in England, c.1760–1820’, in Barker and Chalus, Gender in Eighteenth-Century England, pp. 101–25.

  87 Houston, ‘Development of Literacy’. On the proliferation of magazines, see Fergus, ‘Women, Class and the Growth of Magazine Readership’, pp. 41–56; id., ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers in Provincial England’, Michaelson, ‘Women in the Reading Circle’; Ballaster, et al.

  88 See LPL, MS 8754 (1779), 29 April; NRO, 2 DE/39/3/7 (19 Jan. 1771), Sophia Delaval, Grosvenor House, to Lady Susannah Delaval, Seaton.

  89 Ramsden's efforts are recorded in LRO, DDB/72/213 and 193 (1766–8), W. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats. Mrs Shackleton mentioned periodicals in LRO, DDB/81/3 (1764), f. 49, and LRO, DDB/81/7 (1768), fos. 26, 32. A report on Mrs Shackleton's rabies medicine can be seen in Lumb and Place, ‘Extracts from the Leeds Intelligencer and the Leeds Mercury, 1777–1782’ (see n. 52 above) p. 19. It was the Whig Leeds Mercury which carried comment on her potion. For Mrs Shackleton's political reading, see LRO, DDB/81/11 (1770), f. 48; LRO, DDB/81/26 (1775), f. 8; LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 128.

  90 LRO, DDB/72/168 (13 July 1775), A. Pellet, London, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats.

  91 WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St 6/1/50 (25 July 1740), M. Warde, Squerries, Kent, to M. Warde, Hooton Pagnell.

  92 WYCRO, Leeds, TA, Box 22/1 (26 Oct. c.1730), S. Gossip, York, to W. Gossip, London.

  93 LRO, DDB/72/137, 154 (1756), J. Scrimshire, Pontefract, to E. Parker, Alkincoats.

  94 WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St 6/1/50 (4 Oct. 1742), M. Richardson, Brierley, to M. Warde, Hooton Pagnell; LRO, DDB Ac 7886/24 (13 July), A. Parker, Royle, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats.