The Gentleman's Daughter (10 page)

Robert Parker's gratitude is also suggestive: ‘I can't too much extoll yr good nature in Pleading my cause in so moveing & Pathetick a manner to yr Papa.’
²⁸
Whatever John Parker's commands, it was widely recognized that his daughter's entreaties could sway him. A pathetic performance was designed to soften the stern certainties of patriarchal dictate. Nor was this daughter's influence unusual. The sponsors of Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1753 (which, among other things, outlawed the marriage of minors without parental consent) railed against paternal tenderness, deploring the fact that fathers were ‘too apt to forgive’ their eloping daughters, unable to bring themselves to inflict the appropriate financial punishment. By this view, the father's susceptibility to the influence of his girls was a social problem which threatened the preservation of property.
²⁹
The darling daughter was patriarchy's Achilles heel.

However antipathetic to modern sensibilities, female pleading (to entreat, to mould, to determine, to prevail) was seen as legitimate policy in a society habituated to hierarchical relationships. As Lord Halifax notoriously enlightened his daughter in 1688, ‘you have more strength in your
Looks
, than we have in our
Laws
, and more power by your
Tears
, than we have by our
Arguments
’.
³⁰
In fact, it was the exhibition of abject weakness which was the key to a successful petition. When letter-writing manuals spelled out the language to use on an obdurate father, vulnerability and sorrowing submission were all to the fore; a defenceless maiden professed herself poised to fulfil the most peremptory commands driven by ‘the most inviolable Duty to a Father, who never made the least Attempt before to thwart the inclinations of his ever obedient Daughter’.
³¹
The prospect of so much quivering helplessness was contrived to bring out the benevolent paternalist lurking in almost any patriarch. Consequently when an unappetizing marriage was mooted for Frances Burney in 1775, the appalled twenty-one-year-old ‘wept like an infant’, ate nothing all day and finally after supper threw herself at her father's feet, wailing ‘I wish for nothing only let me Live with you!’ Such tearful tactics were routine amongst the genteel. When Betty Atkinson wanted her uncle and guardian John Stanhope to give his consent to her marriage in 1766, she appealed to his pity and his affection, apologizing for her cowardliness in writing, not speaking: ‘but why should I be so fearful to the kindest of uncle's who never did refuse me anything I ask'd …’ Atkinson laboured her obedience throughout: ‘I … will rely intirely upon your judgement in this as well as all other cases.’ Although she favoured her Mr Jones above all other men, she assured her uncle, ‘I wou'd rather drag on life in Solitude than incur your displeasure’. Rather than remonstrating with her uncle, Betty Atkinson promised to comply unreservedly with his commands, even if it cost her a lifetime of drear unhappiness. Thus, her wretchedness would be on his conscience: could he live with such guilt?
³²
Not that these strategies of perfect, if miserable, obedience always met with success. Though Frances Burney got her wish, Betty Atkinson was denied, but then Charles Burney was an egotistical musician susceptible to flattery while John Stanhope was a flinty advocate on the northern assize circuit, finely attuned to, if not inured to the calculated phrases of petition and appeal.

12 ‘Modern Love: Courtship’, 1782.

13 ‘Modern Love: The Elopement’, 1782.

14 ‘Modern Love: The Honeymoon’, 1782.

15 ‘Modern Love: Discordant Matrimony’, 1782.

Trained as a linen-draper, not a lawyer, and noted for his paternal affection, the force of John Parker's determination eventually dissolved in his daughter's tears. Given Elizabeth Parker's vaunted ability to soften her father's authority, it remains a mystery why she had not prevailed with him before. Robert Parker had experienced ‘so many Obstinate refusals’ and despaired that the ‘Circumstances wch chiefly weigh [with] Old People are no better’.
³³
John Parker was unwilling to lose his only daughter and the sole mistress of his household to the Parkers of Alkincoats, the poorer, cadet branch of his own family. Although some suspicion of Robert Parker's character is apparent, the smallness of his fortune was the principal objection to him. As Robert ruefully reflected, ‘Every Parent takes [the] utmost care to marry his child [where there] is Money, not
considering Inclination wch is [the] only plea for Happiness … Yr Papa no doubt may marry you to one [that] will make large settlements, keep an Equipage & support you in all Grandeur Imaginable…’
³⁴
But no sudden windfall promoted this staunch swain in 1751. Nothing material had changed, so perhaps resolution had been previously lacking on Elizabeth's part. She may even have prolonged the courtship for strategic reasons, for the girl of the period was cynically advised to ‘keep herself at a genteel Distance, lest the Conquest afterwards might be reckon'd cheap’. She was continually warned against those ‘Easy Compliances’ that ‘extinguish the Desire of Marriage’.
³⁵
Perhaps Elizabeth Parker's delays even bespeak a reluctance for marriage itself. On the basis of the love-letters exchanged by nineteenth-century Americans, Ellen Rothman and Karen Lystra have both argued that it was common for women to secure an engagement, but repeatedly to defer the wedding. Moreover, Lystra found that betrothed women liked to throw several obstacles in a lover's path, eventually orchestrating some deciding crisis to test the mettle of their men and to reconcile themselves to the enormity of the commitment they had to make. Women as well as men had to survive the self-inflicted ‘crisis of doubt’.
³⁶
In Elizabeth Parker's case, defying her father went against the grain, while dutiful behaviour generated satisfactions of its own; what Ann Pellet described as ‘that peace and tranquillity of mind which is the result of all good actions’.
³⁷
Not that Elizabeth Parker wanted to lose her dashing suitor either. Indeed, for an extended period in the 1740s, she had been able to combine a thrilling, clandestine romance with the outward observance of her father's orders. She never took up Robert Parker's suggestions that they marry without consent. In short, she had not been forced to choose. She conceived of love and duty as countervailing principles. At the ripe age of twenty-five (already a few months older than the average bride),
³⁸
the threat of losing Robert Parker to another was worth an attempt to bring the two principles into equilibrium. She felt obliged ‘to collect all that little Rhetorick I am Mistress Off and have had a difficult task to satisfie my Duty and my love, not to please the one without offending the other. I hope to God I have now accomplished both and that it may be for our Happiness …’
³⁹

While the genteel girl of Georgian England may have enginereed delays and deferrals like her American cousin, all these had to precede the betrothal, thereafter it was in her interests for matters to be settled with the utmost expedition. Engagements which collapsed at the settlement stage tainted a woman's reputation, so publicity in the nervous months between the promise and the wedding was a mixed blessing for elite brides.
⁴⁰
As Hugh Kelly warned in 1767, ‘of all the stages in a woman's
life … none is more dangerous as the period between her acknowledgement of a passion for a man, and the day set apart for her nuptials’.
⁴¹
In Elizabeth Parker's case, cautiousness was compounded by Robert Parker's admission that he had been on the point of proposing to another. The wary maid had to be convinced of his sincerity. Only when she had gained preliminary consent from her father and negotiations were set in motion did she feel at liberty to make what Robert Parker called a ‘Generous & Polite declaration’.
⁴²
Elizabeth Parker conceded,

These early letters offer yet another illustration of that old historical cliché, the different meaning of honour for men and women. A gentlewoman's honour lay in the public recognition of her virtue, a gentleman's in the reliability of his word. Throughout the courtship correspondence Elizabeth played on Robert's honour; exhorting him to stand by his declarations and to behave like the gentleman he professed himself to be. Robert in reply, struggled to present himself worthy of Elizabeth's trust, ‘be assured [that] I have no Intention or design of making a bad use of the sincerity & Confidence you repose in me’, and in return for such a momentous favour claimed the least he could pledge was ‘good Nature [with] Sincere and Honourable behaviour’ for the rest of his life.
⁴⁴

A month after his written proposal Robert Parker received a formal invitation to Browsholme. At this key breakthrough, what Elizabeth Parker called ‘a revolution in our affair’, she wrote with excitement, ‘my Felicity … can better be conceived then represented and more may be learnt from your Imagination than my pen.’
⁴⁵
Thereafter, the lovers settled into a more assured period of courtship and Robert was free to visit Elizabeth at home. Negotiation was no less intense, but now the lovers presented a united front to the kindred. Elizabeth Parker still orchestrated all communication between her father and lover, warned Robert Parker to mind his behaviour to her friends and relatives, and continued to represent the couple's interest in the trudge towards settlement. ‘Pray my dear Parky’, urged Robert, ‘forward every thing [with] the greatest expedition.’
⁴⁶
In this second stage of courtship, the all-important family friends
had to be reconciled to the match – demonstrating that what Martin Ingrams has termed the ‘multilateral consent’ of all interested parties was still crucial to a successful conclusion.
⁴⁷
As representative of Elizabeth's maternal relatives, Aunt Pellet remained convinced that Robert was too modest a catch, repeating ‘her old argument that a Coach and 6 was preferable to a double Horse’. Only this time, Elizabeth Parker refused to submit: ‘Aunt Pellet seems miserable at my determination tho' hopes time may bring her to reason.’ Edmund Butler of Kirkland Hall, a respected elderly relative, who had killed off Robert's chances in the 1740s, continued to raise objections. Robert's gentlemanly stoicism was tried over the four months of negotiation. He was still nervous that ‘yr relations will twart me [with] every obstacle, will arm themselves [with] every real and imaginary obstruction to my happiness’, that his ‘Old & Worthy
Friend
’ Butler would represent his ‘character & Circumstances’ in such a ‘Lively Colour’ that all would be lost.
⁴⁸
However, by late summer the Butler camp (who seem to have had a candidate of their own) gave up resistence. As the end came into sight, agitated suspense evolved into pleasurable anticipation. Public recognition could now be welcomed.