The Gentleman's Daughter (62 page)

27
Consult Nichols, ‘Gillow and Company’, p. 9.

28
See LRO, DDB/72/123, 134, 137 (1753–4), J. Scrimshire, Pontefract, to E. Parker, Alkincoats.

29
LRO, DDB/72/223 (15 March 1768), B. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats. By contrast, Ann Pellet who was older and lived a more retired existence, satisfied herself with ‘great inquiries’ into the ‘reigning fashions’ on her niece's behalf, LRO, DDB/72/92 (11 June 1754), A. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Alkincoats.

30
LRO, DDB/72/257 (18 Sept. 1772), B. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats; LRO, DDB/72/192 (31 May 1766), W. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to same.

31
LRO, DDB/72/280, 284 (1775), B. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats; LRO, DDB Ac 7886/256 (17 Dec. 1748), A. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Browsholme; LRO, DDB Ac 7886/24 (n.d.), A. Parker, Royle, to E. Shackleton.

32
LRO, DDB/81/36 (1780), 21 April.

33
LRO, DDB/72/184, 280 (1765–75), B. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats.

34
LRO, DDB/72/92 (11 June 1754), A. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Alkincoats; LRO, DDB/72/285 (n.d.), B. and W. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to same; LRO, DDB/72/133, 147 (n.d.), J. Scrimshire, Pontefract, to same.

35
Home,
Upon Education
, p. 231.

36
See LRO, DDB/72/91 (1 June 1754), A. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Alkincoats; LRO, DDB/72/123 (22 Oct. 1753), J. Scrimshire, Pontefract, to same; LRO, DDB/72/285 (n.d.), B. and W. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to same; and LRO, DDB/72/288 (12 Nov. 1776), B. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to same; WYCRO, Sp St 6/1/50 (1 May 1746), M. Barnardiston to Mrs Stanhope, Leeds. That women were capable of sustaining an interest in fashion throughout the life-cycle is confirmed by N. Rothstein (ed.),
Barbara Johnson's Album of Fashions and Fabrics
(1987).

37
LRO, DDB/74/5 (n.d), Poem ‘Given Me by Mrs Parker of Marshfield’. Compare this with M. D. George,
Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum
(1942),
VII
, 1793–1800, 8569, 8570, 9491.

38
WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St 6/1/50 (17 Aug. 1743), M. Warde, Squerries, to Mrs Stanhope; HL, HM 31201, Mrs Larpent's Diary,
III
, 1799–1800, f. 149.

39
WYCRO, Sp St 6/1/50 (1 May 1746), M. Barnardiston to Mrs Stanhope, Leeds; A. Buck, ‘Buying Clothes in Bedfordshire: Customers and Tradesmen, 1700–1800’, in N. B. Harte (ed.),
Fabrics and Fashions: Studies in the Economic and Social History of Dress
(1991), pp. 211–37.

40
Weatherill, ‘Consumer Behaviour and Social Status’, p. 191.

41
Hall,
Miss Weeton's Journal
,
I
, pp. 33, 253, 122.

42
LRO, DDB/72/191 (3 April 1766), W. and B. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats. See also LRO, DDB/72/133 (n.d.), J. Scrimshire, Pontefract, to same: ‘I am sorry you have a tabby sac they do not make their Lustrings so genteel in negligées But don't ask my advice again
when the thing is over
’.

43
LRO, DDB/72/207 and 172 (1767), B. and W. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats. See also LRO, DDB/72/86 (21 March 1754), A. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Alkincoats.

44
LRO, DDB/72/684, 686 and 689 (1806–12), E. Parker, Preston and Selby, to T. Parker, Alkincoats; LRO, DDWh/4/80 and 131 (1816), A. Robbins, London, to E. Whitaker, Roefield.

45
LRO, DDB/81/26 (1775), f. 106; LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 187; LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 53; LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 17.

46
These generalizations are supported by LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 191; LRO, DDB/81/13 (1771), f. 8; and LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), fos. 14, 116, 123, 126, 213.

47
The ritual packing up of ‘Bag and Baggage’ is illustrated in LRO, DDB/81/13 (1771), fos. 32, 33, and LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 119. On the role of clothes as a bargaining tool, see LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), fos. 83–4.

48
LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 308.

49
The flourishing second-hand clothes business is reconstructed in Lemire, ‘Consumerism in Pre-Industrial and Early Industrial England’. Daniel Roche cites the Parisian trade in second-hand finery as evidence to support an emulation model of popular consumer behaviour. Predictably, covetous female servants are presented as the chief carriers of the emulation virus. See,
The People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the Eighteenth Century
(Leamington Spa, 1987). A more profitable approach to the issue of servants and clothes, considering the difficulties employers faced providing clothes that reflected both their own prestige and the dependent status of their employees, can be found in Buck,
Dress in Eighteenth-Century England
, pp. 103–19. For a tenacious servant, see LRO, DDB/81/29 (1776), f. 98: ‘Susan Harrison came here for her cloaths said if I shod not [let] her her wages wages 15s She wo'd have a Warrant for me by four this afternoon.’

50
See respectively, LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 118; and LRO, DDB/72/310 (16 March 1777), E. Shackleton, Alkincoats, to R. Parker, London. See also LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 148: ‘I am on this day 54 or 55 years old … I put on my new white long lawn Pocket Handchief mark'd E.2. red in Honour of this Good day.’

51
LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 73.

52
LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 223. See also LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 96, on the first use of ‘new Japan night Candlesticks’.

53
LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 221.

54
LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), fos. 154–5.

55
LRO, DDB/81/17 (1772), f. 85.

56
See LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 68; LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), fos. 87, 225, 235; LRO, DDB/81/10 (1770), f. 66.

57
LRO, DDB/81/39 (1781), f. 16(6).

58
LRO, DDB/81/17 (1772), f. 34. She could not resist mocking the ‘great talker’ Mrs Cunliffe for her elaborate coiffure and even her friend Mrs Walton ‘in high conceit with herself and long train’, see LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), fos. 179, 184.

59
LRO, DDB/81/23 (1774), f. 72.

60
LRO, DDB/81/39 (1781), fos. 31–2. Affected architectural features were a popular target for satire in this period, see Donald, ‘Mr Deputy Dumpling and Family’.

61
LRO, DDB/81/30 (1777), fos. 8–9. See also fos. 32–3.

62
LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 77; LRO, DDB/81/25 (1775), f. 107; LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 196; LRO, DDB/81/28 (1776), fos. 53–4.

63
For example LRO, DDB/81/19 (1773), f. 71.

64
LRO, DDB/81/27 (1776), fos. 47, 97–8.

65
LRO, DDB/81/31 (1777), f. 102.

66
LRO, DDB/81/13 (1771), f. 63. For the social significance of exchanges of game in landed society, see D. Hay, ‘Poaching and the Game Laws on Cannock Chase’, in D. Hay, P. Linebaugh, E. P. Thompson (eds.),
Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England
(1975), pp. 244–53.

67
LRO, DDB/81/39 (1781), f. 166. The painting officially belonged to Elizabeth
Shackleton, given by John Parker in 1776: ‘A more valuable gift he co'd not have bestow'd’: LRO, DDB/81/27 (1776), f. 18.

68
LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 40.

69
LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 202.

70
LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 261.

71
LRO, DDB/81/30 (1777), f. 40.

72
See respectively LRO, DDB/81/30 (1777), f. 40; LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 15; and LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 213.

73
LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 74.

74
LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 78.

75
LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 209.

76
Pennington,
Unfortunate Mother's Advice
, pp. 34–5.

77
LRO, DDB/72/179 (15 June 1764), B. Ramsden, Farm Hill, to E. Parker, Alkincoats. Bessy Ramsden was sufficiently versed in the language of envy and emulation to joke about the social impact of the Duchess of Devonshire's wax fruit ‘was I in a Longing situation I should certainly mark the little one with a Bunce of currance which I saw at the Milliners’. See LRO, DDB/72/280 (18 Dec. 1775), same to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats.

78
LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 116.

79
For example LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 263.

80
LRO, DDB/72/132 (16 May 1754), J. Scrimshire, Pontefract, to E. Parker, Alkincoats; LRO, DDB/72/254 (4 May 1772), B. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to same; LRO, DDB/72/122 (
c.
1761), A. Pellet, London, to same. On the remembrance of ‘dead as well as living friends’ and Mrs Pellet's ambition to raise a monument on the grave of her father, see LRO, DDB/72/94 (1754), same to same.

81
Jane Pedder of Lancaster minutely catalogued her son's possessions, enquired after the state of his shirts, promised him ‘some little present that you may say this come from London’, and charged him to preserve a book of pressed flowers exactly as his brother had left it, see LRO, DDPd/17/1 (29 Feb. 1786 and 16 April 1786), J. Pedder, Lancaster, to J. Pedder, Blackburn. An admirer of Miss Martha Barcroft's set a lock of her hair into a ring for remembrance and treasured the little box she had donated, see LRO, DDB/72/1407 (29 Sept. 1785), D. Lang, London, to M. Barcroft, Colne. Ellen Parker acknowleged the power of objects to plead remembrance in letters to her Colne aunts, see for example LRO, DDB/72/1194 (21 June 1817), E. Parker, Selby, to E. Moon, Colne, and LRO, DDB/72/1507 (29 May 1821), E. Parker, Selby, to E. Reynolds, Colne.

82
Hall,
Miss Weeton's Journal
,
II
, pp. 353, 331, 325.

83
Because of the lack of comparable case studies, it is as yet impossible to assess whether the attitudes here outlined are peculiar to the later eighteenth century. Similar research on the personal records of seventeenth- and nineteenth-century consumers might, after all, uncover similar findings. Gifts, for instance, were worn for the sake of the donor in the seventeenth century, see Crawford, ‘Katharine and Philip Henry’, pp. 52–3, and V. Sackville-West (ed.),
Diary of Lady Anne Clifford
, p. 44. Lady Anne Clifford also recorded re-threading a string of pearls given by her mother, the first day her daughter wore stays and later a coat, the associations of different rooms, and inviting a female visitor into her closet to look at her clothes, see pp. 42, 64, 66, 67, 82. Moreover, the evidence of wills suggests the sentimental associations of artefacts in the fifteenth century, see BIHR, Probate Register
VI
, fos. 227, 214; Register
III
, f. 523. I am grateful to Jenny Kermode for this reference.

84
This emerges from a comparison of men and women's wills from Birmingham, Sheffield and South Lancashire, 1700–1800 (personal communication from Maxine Berg), and from East Anglia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (personal communication from Susan Amussen and Christopher Marsh). This pattern has also
been remarked by historians of eighteenth-century America. Gloria Main notes that women's wills often contained loving descriptions of artefacts in contrast to the male focus on land. If men dwelt on their personalty at all, their comments were confined to a favourite animal or gun: G. Main, ‘Widows in Rural Massachusetts on the Eve of Revolution’, in Hoffman and Albert,
Women in the Age of American Revolution
, pp. 88–9. The possibility of a distinctively female attachment to household goods has also been raised by novelists, see H. James,
The Spoils of Poynton
(1897),
passim
, and G. Eliot,
The Mill on the Floss
(Harmondsworth, 1986), pp. 280–95.

85
This pattern of testamentary behaviour has been widely observed on either side of the Atlantic, see Davidoff and Hall,
Family Fortunes
, pp. 276 and 511; S. Lebsock,
The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784–1860
(New York, 1984).

86
See Norton,
Liberty's Daughters
(see n. 19 above), pp. 396–7. Norton compared the claims for compensation made by loyalist men and women exiled during the American War of Independence with useful results. Although the men consistently placed a precise valuation on their house and land, very few of the women were able to do so. By contrast, men submitted inadequate inventories of household goods, such as furniture, tableware and kitchen utensils, while the women could produce minute accounts. To Norton the contrasting lists submitted by men and women suggest not only discrete fields of knowledge, but different material priorities.

1
LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 167.

2
Quoted in Heal,
Hospitality in Early Modern England
, p. 6. This offers the most sustained and rigorous study of hospitality as a trope and a social practice. On the public aspects of the elite family in a patronage society, see Pollock, ‘Living on the Stage of the World’. For an explicit statement about the family as a public institution, see Amussen,
Ordered Society
, p. 36.

3
On the alleged walling-off of the nuclear family from kin, their withdrawal from the community, and the creation of architectural privacy, see Stone,
Family, Sex and Marriage
, pp. 149–80, 245–6. The rise of modern privacy is the framing premise of P. Ariès, A
History of Private Life
(1989).

4
On eighteenth-century survivals, see Mingay,
English Landed Society
, pp. 205–32; Beckett,
Aristocracy in England
, pp. 324–73; Jenkins,
Glamorgan Gentry
, pp. 196–216; Howell,
Gentry of South-West Wales
, pp. 182–4; and, despite the contradictory assertions in his earlier book, see Stone,
Open Elite?
, pp. 307–10. A comparable study of the sociability of rich Virginia planters is D. B. Smith,
Inside the Great House: Planter Family Life in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake Society
(Ithaca, 1980), esp. pp. 200, 217.