The Gentleman's Daughter (21 page)

Either she drew on the widespread belief in the contraceptive power of prolonged lactation, or she acknowledged the conservative prohibition against intercourse while breast-feeding. Either way, she registered a desire to delay weaning and control her own fertility.
⁸²
Weaning, however, might also have been postponed for its own sake, for it was seen as an arduous transition, traumatic and very dangerous for the child and possibly hazardous for the breast-feeding mother:

Women were not unaware of expert opinion and fashion, yet the decision to commence weaning could be swayed by contingent factors. In 1756 Jane Scrimshire had Deb weaned before the six-month ‘minimum’ simply because she wanted the infant home. Women's ambivalence on the issue of weaning had not waned by the early nineteenth century, neither had the vagaries of circumstance. Ellen Weeton had her daughter Mary weaned earlier than she would have liked because of the nurse's uncivil conduct: ‘I am sorry to wean the child so soon, but the nurses conduct has been so very reprehensible, that I must part with her. She has behaved well to the child, and had she been but commonly civil to me in any degree trusty I
would have kept her some months longer’.
⁸⁴
In 1813, well aware of current medical opinion, Elizabeth Addison consciously delayed weaning her ten-month old baby boy. Perhaps she breast-fed in order to avoid another pregnancy, for her fears of childbirth were intense: ‘I nurse him yet,’ she declared, ‘notwithstanding the fashion of weaning at 3 or 4 months.’ Three months later, only outright conflict with medical authority forced her hand: ‘I have at last weaned [my little boy] much against my inclination,’ she reported, ‘but I was persuaded to it or at least ordered to do it, by Mr Shuttleworth when he attended John.’
⁸⁵
Whatever the timing, however, ‘the arduous task of weaning’, like teething, was a source of considerable anxiety to both parents across the eighteenth century, as indeed it had been in earlier centuries. Still these northern remarks offer considerable evidence to support the contention that infant feeding was an area of considerable female autonomy, women being prepared to resent and resist medical opinion which did not suit their own inclinations. As James Nelson complained in 1753, ‘the precise Term of a Child's sucking is a point much controverted, particularly among Ladies, but nothing ascertain'd’.
⁸⁶

In the elite family the care of and responsibility for young children fell principally to the mother, supported by a nursery maid. Even with the help of a servant, it is evident women found their responsibilities all-consuming, leaving little or no time for the pleasures and activities of spinsterhood or the honeymoon years. What is less clear, however, is the precise division of labour between a mother and nursemaid. It would appear plausible that maids performed the menial tasks such as cleaning, washing, making children's meals and sewing, while mothers amused, educated and disciplined their children. But here evidence is at its most fragmentary. Bessy Ramsden felt her nursery maid had enough to do without needlework, consequently she spent the evenings trying to catch up with her making and mending, and bewailed ‘it is not without Constant imploy that I can keep them out of Raggs’. Yet Bessy was undoubtedly an extraordinary employer. She fully expected her friends to expostulate, ‘What, don't her maids do the needel work?’
⁸⁷
In the 1780s Betty Parker employed a full-time nurse, who was supposed to be with the infant at all times, enabling the mother to continue a comparatively lively local social life. Half a century later Ellen Parker declared when a mother of one, ‘I have not a regular nurse girl, only an occasional assistant when busy’. But in the 1820s, with a growing brood of five she was forced into reliance on a regular maid, something which proved a chronic source of anxiety. She feared some women were too feeble to manage the turbulent spirits in her nursery, while others she suspected of neglect and outright cruelty when her back was turned.
⁸⁸

19 ‘Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales & her Infant daughter, attended by Lady Chomondely’, 1797. Royal maternity is celebrated in this image of the unfortunate Princess Charlotte as a babe in arms, born in 1796. The young princess died lingeringly in childbed in November 1817, aged twenty-one, an event that registered in the letters of countless ladies that year.

20 ‘Morning Dress’, depicting an affectionate mother and child, from
Ackermann's Repository of Arts
(1810).

21 ‘Goodnight’, 1808, depicting another indulgent mother.

This is not to imply that elite mothers spent only an amusing couple of hours each evening with their offspring. Nursemaids were seen as a supplement to the mother, not a replacement. Children were routinely described as companions and mothers took seriously their role as educators and entertainers. In the 1770s Bessy Ramsden was reported reading the new play to her brood and she presided over the staging of a play. In order to see how ‘her Bratts
behave
themselves’ and because she still had ‘a Taste for tweedledum & tweedle dee’, she accompanied them to children's parties and private balls and took ‘the tribe’ out on jaunts to Greenwich and Kensington. In fact, Mrs Ramsden claimed (not with unvarnished truth as it turned out) that for the sake of taking the children out into the sunshine, she had given up visiting entirely.
⁸⁹
Anna Larpent consciously saw herself as a teacher. She set aside ‘stated times for regular study even in infancy’; and devised a rigorous programme of domestic
reading for her yawning young sons. Countless afternoons were spent escorting them round educational exhibitions and panoramas. Larpent took issue with much fashionable educational theory, disagreeing with Maria Edgeworth on many points and boasting subsequently,

In the 1810s, although never believing she was ‘calculated for a School Mistress’, another Londoner, the widow Anne Robbins, taught her children reading, writing, spelling, Latin grammar, accounts and geography.
⁹¹
A complete maternal performance, from which many women drew much pride, could be intellectually as well as practically demanding.

Even for the employing classes, the social constraints of child-rearing were very real. If the different roles of men and women were discussed in relationship, men were associated with important matters and women with children: ‘I hear Mrs Parker is confined by the natural effects of matrimony and yourself by the workmen’, wrote Ned Parker to his cousin Robert Parker in 1754.
⁹²
Motherhood devoured almost all reserves of physical and emotional energy for, at the very least, a decade of a fertile woman's life. Ten years of Elizabeth Parker's life (
c.
1753–62) were absorbed by pregnancies and caring for children under five; Jane Scrimshire spent eleven years so employed (
c.
1751–61); and Bessy Ramsden thirteen (
c.
1763–75). All three women became poor correspondents for this period of their lives. Indeed, Jane Scrimshire prophesied in 1752 that Elizabeth Parker's long, witty letters would soon be a thing of the past: ‘therefore Dear Mad'm pursue it as long as you're able for I have a Strange Suspicion that when you become a Mother & a Housekeeper you'll be as bad as some other people …’ And sure enough Mrs Scrimshire was soon able to tease the young matron: ‘I am not at all surpriz'd you don't answer your Correspondents as punctually as you used to Do.’ But Scrimshire had to make similar amends herself, pleading maternal responsibilities: ‘I ought to have thank'd my dear Mrs Parker last post for the many Civilitys & favours we Recd at Alkincoats but a thousand Petits riens that happens in Familys prevented me giving myself that pleasure and you a Journal of our travels.’
⁹³
No born correspondent, Bessy Ramsden's letter-writing lapsed almost completely in the 1760s, since husband William was prepared to maintain the correspondence on her
behalf. William completed her half-finished letters and made her excuses: ‘Mrs R. was called up to her Nursery or she woud not have left off so abruptly.’ Her occasional letters are testament to constant domestic interruption: ‘My littel folks are making such a noise that I cannot tell what I write.’ It was not until 1773 that she felt in a position to contemplate devoting time to letter-writing:

In fact, motherhood was so well associated with a decline of social intercourse that a lazy, but unmarried correspondent was able to jest, ‘would you advise me to be married and then I can get my mother in law to write
all
my letters, for when I am Breeding, therefore consequently sick, it will be a good excuse to save myself the trouble’. Mary Warde complained when a distant correspondent mounted the altar: ‘it was very elegantly said by Orinda to Poliarchus that the Marriage of a Friend is the Funeral of Friendship.’
⁹⁵
Once embarked upon a maternal course, married women had only limited time and creative energy to invest in anything beyond household and kin; a point forcibly made by an extraordinary woman, Hester Thrale, when criticized for her incomplete record of Doctor Johnson's sayings: