The Gentleman's Daughter (45 page)

56 An untitled illustration of two ladies in a phaeton, from
Heideloff's Gallery of Fashion
(1794).

A traditional, but enduring forum for genteel women's public lives was the established church. Women bulked large and opinionated in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century congregations, although for many apparently observant Christians a Sunday service offered a taste of the pleasures of this world as much as a prospect of the next, something which can quickly be deduced from advice to young women on their attendance: ‘Regard neither the Actions or Dress of others,’ urged lady Sarah Pennington, ‘let not your eyes rove in search of Acquaintance, but in the Time of Divine Service avoid as much as possible, all complimental civilities, of which there are too great an intercourse in most of our Churches; remember that your only business there is to pay a solemn Act of Devotion to Almighty God…’
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But compliments and felicitations would not be extinguished. Susannah Gossip met her friends ‘with all imaginable civility’ at church every day in York in the 1730s. Elizabeth Shackleton had exemplary religious credentials, having been confirmed into the Anglican church by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the Tower of London, but she still passed far more comment in her diary on who she met at church and how they looked, and on church-seating disputes, than on the content of the sermon. Mary Warde sacrilegiously invoked the country pulpit as a byword for ‘Dull Discourse’, and, of course, many a romantic fire was lit
by looks sizzling across the pews. A Mr Town in the
Connoisseur
revealed the voiceless but eloquent byplay of the congregation, when he sought to curtail the loud socializing of the theatre: ‘The silent courtship of the eyes, ogles, nods, glances and curtsies from one box to another may be allowed them the same as at Church, but nothing more.’
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We would be naive to ignore the social appeal of the local church, especially in those small towns and villages which lacked alternative public venues.

Even in the decades when Evangelical reaction was at its height, social considerations could weigh as heavily as the spiritual with genteel Anglicans. In 1805 in Nottingham Abigail Gawthern took strong exception to the new curate ‘a most disagreeable vulgar voice and a drunken man’, while Eliza Whitaker's circle offered running commentaries on pulpit performances in the manner of a theatre critic: ‘Isaac Austen preached at the old church this morning … he beat the cushions most unmercifully and had not a good voice.’
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In fact, the Horrocks sisters seemed to have toured the Preston churches on the look-out for the liveliest young man at the lectern. In clear contrast, serious study of sermons was made by Mrs Anna Larpent, who always assessed those she heard in terms of form, content and delivery and, if thought-provoking, reflected at length on their significance for her. But whatever motivation was uppermost, the letters written by Anglican women about their churches are suffused with the assurance of social ownership, although none of the women studied here condoned the indecorous spectacle of female preaching. Let Beatrix Lister's horrified response to what she termed a Shaker meeting in the 1770s speak for all the women of her stripe: ‘[the meeting] had preaching enough to satisfy any reasonable people. A woman that had folly sufficient to make herself ridiculous held forth about an hour. She was quite frantic & in my opinion so far from making me laugh that upon me it had a very different effect, after this we soon made our escape with a resolution never to visit the meeting again.’
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Genteel religiosity stopped far short of enthusiastic public exhortation.

The proper public expression of a gentlewoman's religious energy was the charitable association. Informal, individualized charitable giving was a long-standing aspect of elite stewardship, a Christian obligation entailed by the possession of property. Yet alongside this old tradition, often championed by devout women, grew up the great eighteenth-century associative charities directed by men, such as the Foundling Hospital and the Marine Society. Comparable charities and self-help associations sprang up in most prosperous provincial cities.
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Less is known, however, of the increasing number of provincial societies set up and run by women. In the absence of systematic research, scattered instances must suffice to suggest the potential range of early female associative life. Take the Bedale Ladies Amicable Society begun in 1783: essentially a self-help association set up to relieve its 123 members, in illness, disability and old age, it also offered the pleasures of participation in club life. A president and two stewards were appointed every six months, as was a clerk, ‘which may be male if thought proper by the society’, along with a standing committee of seven members to transact business. The members met on the last Saturday of every month, except December, between six and nine in the evening at rented club rooms and paid eightpence into the communal box. On club nights the ladies were each given a ticket which they could exchange for a glass of wine or a pint of ale. On feast days the members processed into church together to hear a sermon upon the occasion. All its members were demonstrably women of ‘sober life and conversation’, but some were in greater need than others. Doubtless the likes of the Honourable Mrs Pierce, Mrs Jane North and Mrs Ann Burgess (unlike those members rendered without a title) attended in a spirit of gracious patronage, or Christian responsibility, or even female solidarity, rather than financial expectation. Beyond its immediate monetary benefits, membership of such a society offered women the gratifications of institutional importance. By 1820 few were the provincial towns which lacked new public platforms for female right-doing. Certainly, archival evidence survives for female societies in York, Bradford, Leeds, Whalley, Wakefield, Carlisle, Workington, Hawkshead, Chester, Liverpool – and doubtless elsewhere.
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57 ‘A Nottingham Card Party’, 1797.

58 ‘A Polite Congregation’, 1797, depicting with satirical zest the unspiritual pleasures of church-going in a provincial town.

For the particular gentlewomen whose lives have been studied in detail here, involvement in a self-proclaimed society with the full panoply of officers, rule book and annuities was a comparatively late development. No such affiliation can be found in the records of Elizabeth Shackleton, Jane Scrimshire, Bessy Ramsden, Ann Pellet, Mary Warde, Anne Stanhope or Anne Gossip, but by 1819 the Southall circle were members of a society which mounted ladies’ booths at local bazaars, the proceeds to go the poor. In 1820 Mrs Tatham reported from Southall that ‘Miss Frith … is going to busy herself in a penny club’ that aimed to help clothe poor children. She stressed the novelty of this particular development, ‘This idea is from [Edmonton] where it has answered extremely well’, and the inherent possibilities for purposeful female recreation, ‘Mary likes occupation only in her own way – it gives a little consequence and will employ her mind which as she has nothing to do but for herself, may be of service.’
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In 1820 the sixty-two-year-old Mrs Anna Larpent was an officer and regular attender of her local female friendly society which was held in the parish vestry, was involved in the administration of a local school, operated a soup kitchen for poor children, did some workhouse and parish
visiting, and sewed simple items for ‘Mrs Porter's charity repository’. While Mrs Larpent had always been a devout, observant Christian, comparing the diaries she wrote in 1790, 1800, 1810 and 1820 it is striking how many more formal ‘opportunities’ she had ‘of being useful’ in her last years.
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Hence, while some historians have stressed the extent to which respectable women were marginalized in nineteenth-century associative life, what is more remarkable from the eighteenth-century perspective is the extraordinary explosion in the number of philanthropic ventures authored and administered by women. As F. K. Prochaska has concluded of the early nineteenth-century boom in ‘feminized’ philanthropy, ‘The welling up from below of female power produced, among other things, the rapid growth of district visiting, with its emphasis on the moral and physical cleansing of the nation's homes; the prominence of institutions for servants, widows and “ladies”; the application of the family system in orphanages, ragged schools and other institutions; and the expansion of children's charity.’
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The public lives and profiles of genteel women were certainly enhanced by the nineteenth-century multiplication of organizations which gave a little consequence.

Beside the improving society in eighteenth-century England, blossomed groups for the furtherance of particular literary, antiquarian or scientific interests, along with clubs set up for sheer conviviality. In 1750 the novelist Edward Kimber estimated that ‘perhaps Twenty Thousand people in London’ met every night at clubs. Although little substantive research has been done on participation in such societies, first impressions suggest that, formally at least, the majority of these were within the purview of men.
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However, at this early stage of research it would be unwise to pronounce too emphatically on the dearth of a public intellectual life for women. In fact, suggestive new research by Donna Andrew using newspaper advertisements has uncovered a hitherto unsuspected number of female debating societies and mixed debating societies operating in London in the 1770s, 1780s and 1790s. A bracing cocktail of debates was on offer, from the question ‘Does an uncorrupted Senator, or an able general, render the greatest Services to the State?’ (14 March 1780, Oratorical Academy, Mitre Tavern) to ‘Does the clause of Obedience in the Marriage Ceremony, bind a Wife to obey her Husband at all times?’ (12 November 1798, Westminster Forum).
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Not that women's public speaking met with universal approval:
The Times
of 1788 maintained that ‘the debating ladies would be much better employed at their needle and thread, a good sempstress being a more amiable character than a female orator’. To little avail: there were at least forty-eight sets of rooms in the metropolis hired out to mixed or ladies' debating societies in this period, Andrew finds.
However, debating societies in general, like combinations of all kinds, did fall foul of Pitt's ‘terror’ (the government-inspired persecution of political radicals) in the autumn of 1792; only societies debating non-political topics endured.
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Nevertheless, the popularity and scope of debating societies is suggestive of the potentialities of a public culture both rational and entertaining to which metropolitan women could lay claim. Further research must test the vitality of this culture in the provinces, although it is already clear that there were ‘female coffee-houses’ and conversation clubs sprinkled about the growing cities and resorts.
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It remains to be seen whether debating societies (male and female alike) revived in the more relaxed legal climate of the 1820s.

Interestingly, however, when we return to the particular genteel women who are our focus, intellectual societies are not referred to in letters and diaries until the early nineteenth century. It is plausible that provincial ladies attended local events such as the Leeds lectures on oratory in August 1776, or the Auricula Society's grand show at Wakefield in April of that year, but mentions of formal membership are missing. From the 1810s; however, it is another story. Book societies had been set up by Eliza Whitaker in Clitheroe, Alice Ainsworth in Bolton, by ‘A. B.’ in Preston and probably by Sarah Horrocks in the same town by 1816. A letter written by Alice Ainsworth in pursuit of a treasurer for her society, reveals that these female clubs incorporated formal (if unpaid) officers, and thereby echoed the organization of male associations. Taste ran not only to novels, but also to biographies, travelogues and improving tomes. Some societies were more serious minded than others; Alice Ainsworth's Bolton circle, for instance, sustained both a French and an English club and disdained popular literature, for, as she explained, ‘we do not tolerate the common novels of the day’. By contrast, ‘A. B.’ complained that her Preston society stocked little other than novels and altogether too few of those; she found both Mrs West and Madame d'Arblay's works disappointing.
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Female club life was in full flower in the provincial north by 1820.