The Gentleman's Daughter (32 page)

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 another, 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: