The Gentleman's Daughter (11 page)

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.
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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’.
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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… .’
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

For the most part, Robert Parker presented himself in the role of the plain-speaking man of honour. Above all, he vowed his suit was sincere. He scorned flattery, dissimulation and the ‘Cant Phrases’ of his ‘great
neighbours
’, defining himself against those who revelled in empty language. Thus Robert Parker disavowed all claim to rhetorical skill: ‘But
why [should] I torture my Invention for Eloquence I shall never be master off; & I utterly disclaim all pretentions to [the] latter willing rather to be miserable for ever, [than] gain my happiness by unjust means… .’ The proof of his sincere affection lay precisely in his verbal restraint: ‘You will Injure me very much, if you do not think me a truer friend & admirer [than] any Romantic Lover.’
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Reticence as a rhetorical device had wide currency. The love-letters an Exeter surgeon George Gibson wrote to Anne Vicary in the 1740s could almost be mistaken for Robert Parker's. Gibson rejected ‘artifice and dissimulation’ and professed himself an enemy to ‘violent protestations’, while his ‘esteem and affection … was not produced of a sudden, but is the effect of a long and intimate acquaintance’. Similarly, Charles Pratt, a rising young barrister on the home circuit, emphasized the reason and moderation of his love for the heiress Elizabeth Jefferys at mid-century. He scoffed at romantic affectation, stressed his true love for a woman of sense and urged a resolute cheerfulness in separation.
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All three men drew here on a modish suspicion of rapturous and exaggerated emotion. The elevated ‘half Theatrical, half Romantick’ style of late seventeenth-century lovemaking had been effectively ridiculed by the influential Richard Steele in 1712. A man should bring ‘his Reason to support his Passion’ argued Steele, and in his own love-letters to Mary Scurlock he struck out against rhetorical excess: ‘I shall affect plainnesse and sincerity in my discourse to you, as much as other Lovers do perplexity and rapture. Instead of saying I shall die for you, I professe I should be glad to Lead my life with you. …’
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By 1740 a self-conscious affectation could be laid down in some quarters as an emotional law. ‘The Motions of an honest Passion, are regular and lasting…’, decreed Wetenhall Wilkes, ‘its Elegance consists in Purity, and its Transports are the result of Virtue and Reason. It never sinks a Man into imaginary Wretchedness, nor transports him out of himself; nor is there a greater Difference between any two Things in Nature, than between true Love, and that romantic Passion which pretends to ape it.’
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Violent raptures and extravagant praises were to be suspected, for flash-fires burned out fast.

Yet for all that Robert Parker disclaimed the hackneyed postures of overheated romance, he was not above striking melodramatic attitudes himself when circumstances absolutely demanded it. At the first refusal in April 1746, Robert Parker declared himself ready to undergo the ‘severest Pennance’ and assured his love ‘[Were] I to be plunged into the lowest Pit of despair, my Passion [would] still Emerge, all the Powers upon Earth are not able to stifle it. The Moon will sooner cease to move round her orbit, the earth round its axis than I to admire Pure Hippocrisie.’ When
Elizabeth Parker first admitted that Robert's affections were returned, the revelation had ‘so great Influence ovr my spirrits, [that] I [could] not help appearing in confusion’. So, after the fact, he summoned up some lyricism to convey his ardour: ‘the poet I am sure had not half [the] sense of my affliction [when] he says Parting is worse [than] death & c.’ And when his affair met with seemingly unconquerable reverses, as here when Elizabeth Parker broke off the secret engagement in 1746, he could be driven to headlong prose: ‘Our parting, Parky I must never forget, but [that] was nothing to [what] I have undergone since, upon [your] telling me we must never meet again upon [that] head. For God sake, Parky, write & comfort my spirits [with] hopes at least, till you are made happy in anothers arms.’
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His performance of the role of honest, plain-speaking, true lover was far from seamless, though he did manage to convey the impression that his lapses were the result of genuinely overpowering emotion not an expression of cynical flattery.

Crucially, he was sensitive to the flimsy purchase of a letter: ‘Consider, Parky, tho I have numberless well wishers, yet I have no Proxy no Advocate or Confidant near you in my Absence, nothing in the world but [this] slip of Paper, wch can but convey a Poor Epitome of my Passion.’ He brooded ‘upon ye danger of abs[cence]’. Therefore he reminded her again and again of that which was unwritten: the powerful assurances and reassurances of their secret ‘evening conferences’, which had so many times brought his affair back from the brink. His practice in the 1740s had been to visit Elizabeth Parker incognito after the Browsholme household was abed, tarrying with her for two or three hours, departing before dawn to complete the three-hour ride back to Alkincoats unrecognized.
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Once he even tried to engineer a secret nocturnal meeting when both were house guests at Kirkland Hall, but farcically was foiled by uncertainty as to which was her chamber. When despondency or doubt threatened to weaken Elizabeth Parker's resolve, Robert Parker rushed to her side to fortify it. With what face-to-face intensity he persuaded her of his good faith, we shall never know, but of its ultimate effectiveness we cannot doubt. The letter, in the end, was possibly not the most potent weapon in the artillery of his persuasions. But his protestations, whether written, verbal or perhaps even physical, are redolent of the gratifications for women inherent in courtship. In supplication, Robert Parker dramatized the power Elizabeth Parker had gained over him through love. As he said himself, ‘a more submissive Slave breaths not Vital air’.
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No wonder a woman might seek to prolong the season of her supremacy.

After the excitements of the wedding came the monotony of the marriage; for ‘Wedding puts an end to wooing …’ as the
Ladies Dictionary
dismally put it. Men got up off their knees and, metaphorically at least, women got down on theirs. The young bluestocking Elizabeth Robinson considered it a general rule that marriage turned the obsequious lover into the imperious husband. Richardson's Pamela was appalled at the ‘strange and shocking difference’ for brides when ‘fond lovers, prostrate at their feet’ were transformed into ‘surly husbands trampling on their necks’. While Arabella in the
Gentleman's Magazine
thought the engaged woman should be forewarned in plain English that ‘when she has entirely given up her Fortune, her Liberty and her Person into [her husband's] keeping, She is immediately to become a
Slave
to his Humour, his Convenience, or even his Pleasure, and that she is to expect no more Favour from him, than he in great Condescencion thinks fit to grant’.
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They had a point. The legal, institutional and customary advantages of manhood were legion, while a virtual industry proselytized the relative duties of the married female. ‘You must lay it down for a Foundation in general, That there is Inequality in the Sexes’ was George Savile's firm counsel in 1688.
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For all the sweet idealizations of gentle womanhood that the next century produced, few self-appointed moral pundits found another base upon which to ground a vision of marriage and family. Obedience remained the indispensable virtue in a good wife. Marriage may have been celebrated as a cosy partnership across a wide range of media, but it was still an unequal partnership in the eyes of most commentators. Genteel wives took it absolutely for granted that their husbands enjoyed formal supremacy in marriage. After all, even the haughtiest bride vowed before God to love, honour and obey.

However, it is possible to overstate the case. Even in the supposedly authoritarian seventeenth century, advice literature emphasized the
mutual
duties of husband and wife. Husbands were enjoined to offer kind consideration in return for wifely obedience and both partners were expected to conciliate and forbear. It is also worth noting that advice about the inner workings of these unequal partnerships was often written by inexperienced boys and bachelors who could claim no personal understanding of power behind closed doors.
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So how far real partnerships resembled the ideal hierarchy remains an open question. Historians who seek an answer have ultimately to wrestle with the complicated relationship of gender power and conjugal love. It has been argued for the seventeenth century that the actual balance of power in a particular relationship depended upon the interplay of a variety of factors: wealth, prior property agreements, relations with kindred, age, skills, personality
and attractiveness. The extent of conjugal compatibility and affection is seen to play a determining role in marital power relations. As Vivienne Larminie observed in the case of the Warwickshire Newdigate family, much depended upon a woman's ‘individual capacity to attract and therefore influence or dominate [her] husband’.
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Again and again, diaries, letters, wills and eulogies testify to the long-standing expression of love within marriage. Of course, the extent, or typicality, of warm conjugality even among the propertied cannot be established, but references abound in sufficient quantity to lead Keith Wrightson to posit ‘the
private
existence of a strong complementary and companionate ethos, side by side with, and often overshadowing, theoretical adherence to the doctrine of male authority and
public
female subordination’.
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This common-sense suggestion has much to recommend it, although it would be a mistake to see the existence of affection in marriage as
a priori
evidence for greater equality between the sexes. Defoe may have preached that ‘Love knows no superior or inferior, no imperious Command on the one hand, no reluctant Subjection on the other …’,
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but demonstrably, love could thrive within starkly unequal relationships. Certainly love sometimes empowered a woman to lead her husband by the nose, but it might just as easily encourage her to swoon submissively in his masterful arms. Love was no enemy to hierarchy; one need look no further than fairy tales for proof that inequalities of power might infuse a relationship with greater romantic and erotic charge. So even if Lawrence Stone's dubious assertion that love in marriage was on the increase could be proved, the impact of love on marital power relations would still be wildly unpredictable.