Aristocrats (24 page)

The poor came in early. Fruit sellers made their way to Covent Garden to buy fruit to sell on the streets of the City and the West End. Labourers arrived to look for work on building sites in Piccadilly or around Oxford Street where the city was growing rapidly up its shallow northern rim towards the villages of Hampstead and Islington. Going in they passed night-soil men carrying their fertilising loads away from the city to the nursery gardens and farms around.
As they arrived commercial London was coming to life, prostitutes and their clients were at last going home to sleep. The smell of meat and manure rose with the sun over Smithfield market in the east, joined above the old Fleet ditch by the marine odour from Billingsgate fish market. In Covent Garden fruiterers laid out their stalls as the last of the night’s revellers stumbled drunkenly by.

Haloed by dust in summer and soot in winter, the sun rose. The light filtered into the attics of Spitalfields falling on to Huguenot weavers as they bent their backs at the loom. On the floor below them prosperous merchants said prayers with their families. At street level the Spitalfields bird sellers opened up their shops. As covers came off rows of wicker cages, goldfinches and greenfinches, linnets and woodlarks drew their beaks from the warm haven of their wings and began another day in captivity. Soon afterwards in the narrow houses of St Paul’s churchyard, along Fleet Street and out into the Strand master printers and their compositors set to work. Pressmen put on their stiff ink-blackened overalls. From scores of open boxes the compositors plucked metal letters and punctuation marks, rapidly assembling them into words, paragraphs, pamphlets. Proof-readers checked finished copy. In another room, surrounded by stacks of paper from Holland and France, the pressmen inked the type with viscous leather lollipops. As they worked they read, commented and criticised, members of an unenfranchised but politically active group.

Round about ten o’clock government clerks sat down at their desks. Some were careful men who lived a life of orderly service. In sheet after sheet of paper they laid down the foundations of a bureaucracy, identifying themselves more with the nebulous processes of government than with the Crown whose nominal servants they were. With ink, words and figures they created a shadowy world; its civil lists, budget estimates and revenue figures were silently assuming a central place in national life. As these government offices opened, so
did the shops that served the wealthy. Apprentices in Ludgate Hill removed the wooden shutters from wallpaper emporia and mercers’ shops. In the Strand and St James’s booksellers unwrapped bulky parcels from continental publishers and checked their shelves for sufficient stocks of the latest novels and histories. From New Bond Street smells of lavender water, pomanders and expensive fragrances wafted from the doors of perfumeries over the open drains that transported soapy liquids slowly down to the Thames. In the streets post-chaises rumbled over the paving stones, rolling backwards and forwards on thick leather braces. Heavy delivery carts lurched behind. Phaetons and cabriolets bounced along towards Hyde Park. Chair-men lifting the closed leather boxes of sedan chairs twisted in and out. Above the clatter of wheels and the smack of hooves street sellers shouted and sang. All the time beggars and children huddled immobile in doorways and church porches and stared out at the cacophonous mass moving past them.

It was about this time of day that merchants’ wives, gentlemen and ladies of fashion set out for the shops. They were carried towards the city to buy wall coverings or cloth, to the jewellers of New Bond Street and Hatton Garden, the drapers and lacemen near Covent Garden and the book and print sellers of the Strand, St James’s and Ludgate Hill. Caroline and her sisters invariably went shopping in mid-morning, after reading, letter writing and (for some) accounting. ‘Let me have any order you may have,’ Caroline wrote to Emily in October 1764, ‘as I don’t at all dislike jaunting to town in a morning from Holland House at this season of the year, tho’ I detest it in spring or summer; but in winter ’tis an exercise that agrees with me.’ Caroline believed that commerce brought improvement; shopping, apart from being a pleasant pastime, was a rational exercise, a commitment to the civilising powers of trade.

Inevitably Emily sent large numbers of commissions. In 1759 Caroline sent to Ireland one set of chairs with damask
with which to upholster them, a ‘short dressed cloak’, an ermine gown, a taffeta gown, some china and a pair of silver buckles from Mrs Chenevix, a fashionable jeweller and ‘toy woman’ in Suffolk Street. She also sent a pair of pearl earrings as a present for Sarah. From Mrs Harriet Dunoyer, a bookseller in the Haymarket with whom Emily had an account, Caroline ordered several books that Dublin could not immediately supply, among them Voltaire’s
Candide
and
Orphan of China
, Clarendon’s
Memoirs
and the latest political pamphlets.

Caroline was far from the only person who executed commissions in London for Emily. When Kildare and the newly married Conollys came over in the same year, they too had long wish-lists from Carton. Almost as soon as she arrived in London, Louisa obediently set out on what was to prove a long and expensive search for a hundred and fifty yards of painted taffeta with which Emily planned to cover beds, windows and chairs in her principal bedrooms. ‘I have seen a vast number of taffetas which Louisa is looking out for you,’ Caroline wrote in May 1759. Kildare, watching the samples pile up, began to show alarm at the cost. ‘I am sorry to put my dear Emily in mind of anything which she don’t like to hear of. The great expense that all your commissions (which are very numerous) will come to is the occasion … The hundred and fifty yards of taffeta is a commission that people are surprised at and say they believe you don’t know what an expensive thing it is, and there is hardly any such thing to be got as even a hundred yards of the same pattern.’ But a week later he wrote in his customary blend of financial and sexual language, ‘the taffeta is bought by my desire’. Louisa added more prosaically, ‘Lord Kildare goes on Monday … He carries your painted taffeta in his own trunk and has paid sixty-five guineas for it.’ Emily had got what she wanted. ‘Since ’tis bought I must tell you I am out of my wits at the thoughts of being in possession of what I think the loveliest, sweetest thing in the world. You have no idea how delighted I
am at the kind manner in which you tell me it is bought. And now, my Jemmy, what do you think is the difference between this and the frightful Nassau damask they sell in Dublin? You wou’d not have thought that a very unreasonable demand; well, nine shillings a yard is what they ask here for that. Comes’
Commerce
, which I just now consulted to be certain of what I am going to say, tells me that 150 yards of that comes to £67:10s, and the sweet India taffeta stands us in £70:00; what a vast difference in beauty! And how little in the price! … In short it is as cheap
silk
furniture as one can have. I know you will smile at this, but ’tis really true.’

Occasionally desire ran faster than memory. Kildare wrote with some astonishment from London to Carton in 1766: ‘I was this day looking for glass cream pots and in Swallow Street I saw some that were bespoke by a lady about two years ago, and the man had them as the lady was gone to Ireland. Upon asking what lady it was he said Lady Kildare, so I supposed they were what you liked, desired he would pack up a dozen and send them to me.’

Once Emily’s gargantuan appetite for commodities had been temporarily satisfied, purchases had to be paid for. Kildare banked with La Touche in Dublin. Neither he nor Emily had a London banker so they had no ready source of cash in London. Commissions were often paid for in kind; some of Emily’s debt to Caroline in 1759 was repaid with a white lutestring gown, a length of green ribbon and buckles for Ste. Caroline also favoured soft Irish leather gloves which she ordered several dozen pairs at a time. None the less the balance was invariably in Caroline’s favour and since both were haphazard mathematicians, tended to remain so for months at a time. Only Louisa was a careful accountant, jotting down debts and credits in her household accounts and carefully settling bills with her sisters. In 1763, after a summer in London, she wrote to Sarah, ‘By the account I send you, you are indebted to me £0:3s:od, but I rather fancy I owe you £0:10s:od. For one article that I have put down £13:0s:od, I
am not sure whether it ought not to be £13:13s:od. In that case I shall owe you ten shillings. If its the other, the three shillings you know will be no matter.’

Although Emily or Louisa often asked Caroline or Sarah to find something in London which they themselves were unable to get in Dublin, shopping and spending were not entirely the province of women, as some contemporary commentators asserted. The world of goods was very roughly divided into two hemispheres of consumption. Women bought clothes for themselves and their children, and they were responsible for housekeeping and interior decoration. Men took care of goods that were used outside the house. They bought horses and tackle and in London it was they who went to Long Acre and ordered carts and carriages. Caroline waited for Kildare to come over to London before she ordered a carriage, evidently believing that he was a specialist in their design and purchase: ‘I have a pretty pair of spotted horses, and must have a pretty light chariot, which I hope Lord Kildare will give himself the trouble to bespeak for me when he comes,’ she wrote to Emily in 1760. Men and women alike bought furniture and books and both sexes bought presents of all sorts.

This rough-and-ready sexual division of purchasing varied from couple to couple. While Emily often commissioned quite expensive items from friends and relatives, Louisa habitually waited for Conolly’s approval. So, when Sarah planned a trip to Italy in 1766 (a trip she never actually made) Louisa sent a commission from Emily but delayed including her own until Conolly could be persuaded to part with the money. Emily ‘begged’ that Sarah would ‘lay out twenty guineas in any pretty little marble thing that strikes your fancy … For my part I will try to coax Mr. Conolly to let you lay out a certain sum in pretty things. This week is Curragh meeting, so I must wait till that is over, and if he wins, I will ask him to let me commission you.’

Even fashion, which fuelled a constant demand for luxury
goods, was not exclusively the interest of women, although women’s fashions changed more quickly than did men’s. But men were less likely than women to record their sartorial longings; loving descriptions of clothes were largely absent from their letters. For women who habitually wrote letters, clothing the body in language as well as dress was an essential ingredient of a chatty page. The very last act of dressing was describing the dress. Sarah excelled at this
coup de grâce
. In a long letter to Susan in the winter of 1765–66, she described the prevailing fashion: ‘To be perfectly genteel you must be dressed thus … The roots of the hair must be drawn up straight and not fruzzed at all for half an inch above the root; you must wear no cap and only
little, little
flowers dab’d in on the left side; the only feather permitted is a black or white sultane perched up on the left side and your diamond feather against it. A broad puffed ribbon collier with a tippet ruff or only a little black handkerchief very narrow over the shoulders; your stays very high and pretty tight at the bottom; your gown trimmed; … the sleeves long and loose, the waist very long, the flounces and ruffles of a decent length, not too long, nor so hideously short as they now wear them. No trimming on the sleeve, but a ribbon knot tied to hang on the ruffles. The men’s dress is exactly what they used to wear latterly.’

When Sarah or Caroline were looking for expensive items such as Sarah described to Susan, they would sally forth to finger and price material themselves. If they needed household goods other than silver or the finest china, they would send a servant on a preliminary sortie. Trusted servants like Caroline’s housekeeper Mrs Fannen took charge of all household goods, and Emily wrote directly to her when she needed crockery and china from London. Much shopping was also done from home. Dressmakers, tailors, booksellers and jewellers all took their wares to aristocratic houses, presenting themselves with samples and order books. ‘I diverted myself very much with making the shop keepers bring me all sorts of
pretty things to look at,’ Sarah wrote about a London visit in the mid-1770s. Tradesmen gave especially deferential service to aristocratic customers. As a quid pro quo for home visits and extended credit they used their elevated customers to advertise their wares and services. Such visits also provided convenient opportunities to bring bills which might have been unpaid for months at a time.

Most tradesmen and tradeswomen came in the morning, late enough to ensure that their customers were up, but not so late that they had left the house to dine out or were preparing to receive visitors themselves. Round about one or two o’clock people of fashion came home to dress for dinner. Business in the shops and workrooms of the city slowed down. Shops emptied gradually, pens and presses moved more slowly. Sometime after two o’clock, tradesmen and government officials left their cramped offices and followed their noses through meaty vapours to the chop houses and taverns. In workshops all around the town, masters and apprentices downed tools, clustered round tables and dined in their shops. Beer was delivered daily by brewers’ draymen, who decanted the frothing liquid from barrels into jugs; their food was produced by the household cook or brought in. Clerks and labourers, unable to afford a seat in a coffee house or tavern, dined upright on the streets, buying beer and pies from street sellers or shops that opened on to the pavement.

After the dinner hour the city slowed. Gentlemen made for their gardens and firesides, gathering themselves up for the climax of the day. Merchants, clerks and artisans marked time too. They knew they had several hours at desk or press before the evening was theirs. The rumble of traffic dimmed and the city waited for the streetwalkers and pimps whose appearance signalled the start of the evening and the beginning of the night’s entertainment.