The Gentleman's Daughter (66 page)

83
LRO, DDWh/4/78 (1 May 1816), A. Ainsworth, Bolton, to E. Whitaker, Roefield; LRO, DDWh/4/74 (4 Aug. 1816), ‘A. B.’, Preston, to same.

84
In this manner, she lent out R. Nelson's
Feasts and Fasts
, B. Kennet's, The
Lives and Characters of the Ancient Grecian Poets
(1697), Echard's
Roman History
, J. Potter,
Archaelogia Graecae: Or the Antiquities of Greece
(1699), Fielding's,
Tom Jones
(1749),
The Curiosities of the Tower
and numerous copies of
The Spectator
. For her part, she recorded borrowing the first volume of Smollett's
Expedition of Humphrey Clinker
(1771) from Owen Cunliffe, two volumes of
Don Quixote
(1615) from Miss Beatrix Lister, four volumes of Richardson's,
Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady
(1748) from Mrs Walton and Shakespeare's history plays from her daughter-in- law Betty Parker: LRO, DDB/81/6 (1767), fos. 2, 71; LRO, DDB/81/7 (1768), f. 105; and LRO, DDB/81/22 (1774), f. 2.

85
WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St 6/1/50 (2.9 March 1741), M. Warde, London, to M. Warde, Hooton Pagnell; LRO, DDB Ac 7886/272 (28 March 1749), A. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Browsholme; LRO, DDB/72/132 (16 May 1754), J. Scrimshire, Pontefract, to E. Parker, Alkincoats; LRO, DDB/72/197, 173, 271 (1762–7), W. and B. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats.

86
Women in the Parker network who came of age in the 1740s and 1750s made no reference to a past schooling or old school-fellows. Nevertheless, Jane Scrimshire and Elizabeth Shackleton were clearly literate, literary and both spoke French; Bessy Ramsden on the other hand possessed only a rudimentary grasp of spelling and grammar. The writings of the two former suggest that, at the very least, they had benefited from the ministrations of a tutor or governess. When it came to the education of her own children, Jane Scrimshire recorded her young sons first day at school, but made no such reference for her daughters. Similarly, while Bessy Ramsden's sons were eventually enrolled at Charterhouse School, it appears her daughter Betsy was too useful around the house to be spared. A younger friend, Mrs Cooper of London, did write of sending her daughter Susan to school in the 1780s, though she resolved to keep her other daughter Kitty at home with her, specifically to serve as a personal companion. Outside the Parker network the same pattern is detectable in this period. No mention of formal schooling was made by Mary Warde of Squerries, Anne Stanhope of Leeds or Anne Gossip of Thorp Arch, although all three wrote well in the 1740s and 1750s, and Warde delighted in the London literary scene. While Jane Pedder of Lancaster sent her son John to Blackburn to be apprenticed to an attorney, her daughter Margaret continued to reside at home. As the daughter of a clergyman, Margaret doubtless had some access to a semi-formal education. In all probability, her trip to London in 1786 had a didactic function. Certainly, the journal she wrote of her visit has the unenthusiastic air of an exercise book. Of course, home tuition was not necessarily deficient relative to institutional schooling. The possible scope of an education acquired at home is demonstrated by the diaries of the Lancaster Quakeress Mary Chorley. From at least 1776 to 1779 the Chorley sisters received tuition six days a week from an unnamed ‘master’ and later ‘a mistress’; ordinarily, half the day was given over to lessons, the rest to chores and play. From the age of ten Mary learned history and geography; subjects taught by rote with the aid of a globe and lesson cards (‘Now we dream to get of our History of England cards’, ‘I said my geographical cards to my Aunt Lydia’). On a less systematic basis, she was also taught biology, logic and arithmetic. She read Roman texts in translation, sermons, edifying treatises, travelogues and novels. That the Chorley curriculum was such a hybrid of modern and classical learning is probably a function of the educational liberalism of old dissent. Yet mainstream femininity was reinforced in three key respects. Mary Chorley was as preoccupied with sentimental novels as any little Anglican; the fostering of genteel tastes and skills ran in parallel with her academic training; and lastly, female identity with the home and housekeeping was not broken. The available commentary from
the early nineteenth century gives the impression that a higher proportion of elite families were sending their daughters out of the house to school. By the 1820s the number of local academies for girls had mushroomed: Baines's Lancashire directory for 1824 registers the existence of two such schools in Clitheroe, one in Colne, four in Blackburn, one in Preston and six in Lancaster. Six schools for ladies in Bradford were advertised in Baines's Yorkshire directory of 1822, yet this development seems to have had only a very limited impact. No expansion in intellectual content is detectable in women's letters, while polite accomplishment is still in abundant evidence. Girls still remained in closer association with home than their brothers and were never sent as far afield to school. On girls' education in general, see S. Skedd, ‘Women Teachers and the Expansion of Girls' Schooling in England,
c.
1760–1820’, in Barker and Chalus,
Gender in Eighteenth-Century England
, pp. 101–25.

87
Houston, ‘Development of Literacy’. On the proliferation of magazines, see Fergus, ‘Women, Class and the Growth of Magazine Readership’, pp. 41–56; id., ‘Eighteenth-Century Readers in Provincial England’, Michaelson, ‘Women in the Reading Circle’; Ballaster, et al.

88
See LPL, MS 8754 (1779), 29 April; NRO, 2 DE/39/3/7 (19 Jan. 1771), Sophia Delaval, Grosvenor House, to Lady Susannah Delaval, Seaton.

89
Ramsden's efforts are recorded in LRO, DDB/72/213 and 193 (1766–8), W. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats. Mrs Shackleton mentioned periodicals in LRO, DDB/81/3 (1764), f. 49, and LRO, DDB/81/7 (1768), fos. 26, 32. A report on Mrs Shackleton's rabies medicine can be seen in Lumb and Place, ‘Extracts from the Leeds Intelligencer and the Leeds Mercury, 1777–1782’ (see n. 52 above) p. 19. It was the Whig
Leeds Mercury
which carried comment on her potion. For Mrs Shackleton's political reading, see LRO, DDB/81/11 (1770), f. 48; LRO, DDB/81/26 (1775), f. 8; LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 128.

90
LRO, DDB/72/168 (13 July 1775), A. Pellet, London, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats.

91
WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St 6/1/50 (25 July 1740), M. Warde, Squerries, Kent, to M. Warde, Hooton Pagnell.

92
WYCRO, Leeds, TA, Box 22/1 (26 Oct.
c.
1730), S. Gossip, York, to W. Gossip, London.

93
LRO, DDB/72/137, 154 (1756), J. Scrimshire, Pontefract, to E. Parker, Alkincoats.

94
WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St 6/1/50 (4 Oct. 1742), M. Richardson, Brierley, to M. Warde, Hooton Pagnell; LRO, DDB Ac 7886/24 (13 July), A. Parker, Royle, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats.

95
On spa seasons, see Borsay,
English Urban Renaissance
, pp. 139–42.

96
WYCRO, Leeds, TA 18/5 (11 June 1746), W. Gossip, Buxton, to A. Gossip, Skelton, and WYCRO, Leeds, TA 18/5 (20 June 1746), W. Gossip, Buxton, to same; and Lumb, ‘Extracts from the Leeds Intelligencer and the Leeds Mercury, 1769–1776’ (see n. 28 above), p. 75.

97
WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St 6/1/42 (9 July
c.
1727), B. Stanhope, Scarborough, to J. Stanhope, Bradford. Noted sea-bathers included John Shackleton, Tom Parker, Mary Chorley, Ellen Weeton and Charles Whitaker. For holidays in the 1750s the newly married Parkers of Alkincoats confined themselves to family visits to Browsholme, Skipwith and Pontefract. In the same decade the Scrimshires of Pontefract took holidays at Harrogate and Scarborough on health grounds and enjoyed frequent sojourns with their relatives the Tempests of Tong Hall, Bradford. In the 1760s and 1770s, the Ramsdens spent their summer vacations from Charterhouse School either touring the southern counties and coast in a post-chaise, or in rented accommodation in Dulwich, Enfield, Highgate or Islington. Letters written in the Barcroft and Whitaker networks reveal the ground gained by the seaside holiday in the early nineteenth century. In the 1800s Betty Parker booked the ‘best front lodging rooms’ in Blackpool for the month of August. In the same decade the newly married Mr and
Mrs Reynolds decamped to the Isle of Wight. In the 1810s the Whitakers and St Clares took summer lodgings at Lytham, the Ainsworths and Horrockses at Blackpool, and the London-based Robbins family at Sandgate. In the 1820s Edward and Ellen Parker took their Selby brood to lodge at Cleethorpes and Scarborough.

98
Cited in Corfield, ‘Class by Name and Number’, p. 44; LRO, DDB/72/1190 (11 May 1806), E. Reynolds, Bristol, to E. Moon, Colne.

99
LRO, DDB/81/20 (1773), f. 36; LRO, DDB/81/32 (1777), f. 8; LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 207; LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 6; LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 51.

100
LRO, DDB/81/27 (1776), f. 50; LRO, DDB Ac 7886/56 (8 and 9 Aug. 1776), ‘Memoirs of Oratorio’; LRO, DDB/72/286 (12 Oct. 1776), W. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats.

101
See, for example, Howell,
Gentry of South-West Wales
, pp. 175–7, and Jenkins,
Glamorgan Gentry
, pp. 241–4.

102
LRO, DDB/72/330 (Feb. 1775), Mr E. Parker, Otley, to Mr T. Parker, Alkincoats. On the Listers' sojourn in Pall Mall, see LRO, DDB/81/7 (1768), f. 35 and the Claytons in Bath, LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 14.

103
Goldsmith,
Richard Nash
, p. 21.

104
See, for example, LRO, DDB/72/684–5, 687, 690–91 (1804–14), E. Parker, Preston, to T. Parker, Alkincoats and Newton Hall; LRO, DDB/4/87 (20 Sept. 1816), W. St Clare, Preston, to E. Whitaker, Roefield.

105
LRO, DDGr C3 (22 April and 28 July), D. Ridsdale, Winsley, to Mrs Bradley, Slyne.

106
LRO, DDB/72/1496 (20 March 1800), B. Wiglesworth, Townhead, to E. Barcroft, Otley; Gibson,
George Woodward's Letters
, p. 73.

107
See respectively LRO, DDB Ac 7886/130 (2 Dec. 1746), J. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Browsholme; LRO, DDB Ac 7886/286 (18 July 1749), A. Pellet, London, to same; LRO, DDB Ac 7886/145 (7 March 1746/7), E. Parker, Piccadilly, to R. Parker, Alkincoats.

108
See respectively LRO, DDB/72/102 (24 Oct. 1755), A. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Alkincoats; LRO, DDB/72/174 (16 Sept. 1762), B. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Parker, Alkincoats; LRO, DDB/81/6 (1767), f. 28; LRO, DDB/81/32 (1777), f. 8.

109
Day,
Correspondence of Mary Delany
, p. 195. However, Fanny Burney noted in August 1768 at the age of sixteen, ‘I never was at a public assembly in my Life, at [school] balls I have been often, and once at a private Ball at an Acquaintance, where I danced till late in the morning’. See Troide,
Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney
,
I
, pp. 25–6. By contrast, in the 1770s the young Cornelia Knight enjoyed ‘the boisterous gaiety of Plymouth’ from as young as thirteen, but then ‘She was so very tall for her age that people tended to treat her like a young lady instead of a child, and at the assembly rooms she was obligingly partnered by her father's brother officers’; see B. Luttrell,
The Prim Romantic: A Biography of Ellis Cornelia Knight, 1758–1837
(1965), p. 35 (I thank Joanna Innes for these references). Similarly, in Haywood,
Betsy Thoughtless
, p. 17, the heroine's adventures began when she was ‘just entering into her fourteenth year, a nice and delicate time, in persons of her sex; since it is then they are most apt to take the bent of impression, which, according as it is well or ill-directed makes or marrs, the future prospect of their lives.’

110
Defoe,
Tour Through the Whole Island
, pp. 215–16.

111
LRO, DDB Ac 7886/82 (7 Jan. 1745–6), J. Aspmall, Preston, to E. Parker, Browsholme; WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St/6/1/58 (n.d.), J. Spencer, Cannon Hall, to Mrs Stanhope. Similarly, Mr Walmsley wrote from Carlisle in 1745, ‘Here is A Good Match for you … if you are not promised’: LRO, DDB Ac 7886/86 (18 Jan. 1745), R. Walmsley, Carlisle, to E. Parker, Browsholme.

112
LRO, DDB Ac 7886/211 (24 March 1747), Edward Parker, London, to R. Parker, Alkincoats; Robert Parker's annotations to LRO, DDB/72/483 (23 Aug. 1739),
Edward Parker, London, to R. Parker, Colne; LRO, DDB Ac 7886/286 (18 July 1749), A. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Browsholme.

113
WRO, D/D st C5/2 (8 Nov. 1727), R. Standish, Ingalstone, to Lady P. Standish, Standish Hall, Wigan.

114
An amorous advertisement in the
London Chronicle
for 5 Aug. 1758, wherein a young gentleman appealed to a young lady seen listening to the orchestra at Vauxhall is reproduced in Boulton,
Amusements
(see n. 48 above),
II
, pp. 27–8. Another example, from the
Public Advertiser
in 1761, purporting to be from a woman to a young gentleman spied at a ridotto is cited in Bayne-Powell,
Travellers
(see n. 61 above), p. 179. For Wortley Montagu's aside, see Halsband,
Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
,
I
, p. 201.

115
Stirling,
Annals of a Yorkshire House
, pp. 156, 158–9.

116
WYCRO, Bradford, Sp St 6/1/50 (6 June 1742), M. Warde, Squerries, Kent, to M. Warde, Hooton Pagnell; Browsholme Letters, uncat. (7 July 1743), J. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Browsholme.

117
Gibson,
Woodward's Letters
, p. 63.

118
Wollstonecraft,
Vindication
, p. 289.

119
Coventry,
Pompey, the Little
, p. 16; Haywood,
Betsy Thoughtless
, p.
II
; Anon,
Mixing in Society: A Complete Manual of Manners
(1869), pp. 137–8; LRO, DDB/81/32 (1777), ‘Introduction’.

120
WYCRO, Bradford Sp St 6/1/50 (22 May 1743), M. Warde, Squerries, to M. Stanhope, Horsforth; YAS, MD335, Box 26 (1789), List of the nobility and gentry who appeared at the assembly rooms in York.

121
LRO, DDB/72/224 (2 May 1769), W. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats.