The Gentleman's Daughter (31 page)

23 ‘The Haberdasher Dandy’, 1818. Despite cultural preoccupation with the impulsiveness of consumer desire, most female consumers knew what they were about. Here the over-attentive male haberdasher fails to trick the calculating female customer into accepting short measure.

Women jealously guarded their role as family consumers, but men were hardly untainted by the world of goods and fashion; rather, men and
women were expected to consume different items and in different ways. When county business or commercial ventures took northern gentlemen to well-supplied or fashionable towns, they fulfilled their wives' commissions by proxy. They rarely returned from such trips without an additional parcel of toys, novelties and souvenirs. While Elizabeth Shackleton saw to the purchase of her sons' linens well into their twenties, they hunted for flashier items for themselves, expending much energy in pursuit of the perfect embroidered waistcoat for instance.
²⁰
Undoubtedly, men considered themselves skilful consumers of particular types of commodity. When the Ramsdens fulfilled their cousin's commissions in 1765, Bessy Ramsden bought the ‘Gowns, Caps, Ruffles and such like female Accoutrements’, while William was accountable ‘for the Wafers, Paper & Pocket Book’.
²¹
To be sure, the way spouses carved up their shopping lists must have varied from couple to couple – after all it would be remarkable if a schoolmaster had not been able to judge the quality of stationery. Similarly, John Parker's apprenticeship as a linen-draper and his subsequent endeavours in hosiery must have equipped him to deal in fashionable textiles and perhaps accounts for his growing importance to his mother as a proxy consumer in the later 1770s. The particularity of skill notwithstanding, it is surely significant that the remarkably uxorious William Ramsden was the only man in all the northern manuscripts who ever recorded going to market to purchase humdrum groceries. Other gentlemen, however, did occasionally concern themselves with the purchase and donation of higher status provisions, such as snuff, good tea, wine and barrels of oysters; and they were, of course, obsessively involved in the acquisition and distribution of game.

While husbands were not expected to interfere with the daily organization of household consumption, none the less it seems likely they retained ultimate sanction over extraordinary purchases requiring the outlay of considerable capital. For instance, in the once and for all furnishing of Pasture House in the 1770s, while Elizabeth Shackleton ordered small pieces of deal furniture from local craftsmen, it was John Shackleton who went to Lancaster to bespeak their mahogany dining-table and his name that appeared in the Gillows ledgers. Moreover, when her newly married son Tom Parker embarked on his first furniture-buying expedition, Elizabeth Shackleton recorded his departure with all the fanfare of a rite of passage: ‘Tom going from Newton to Lancaster to buy new Mahogany Furniture. God Bless & Prosper with Grace, Goodness and Health all my own Dear Children …’
²²
Although men bought many goods for themselves and certain commodities for the household, it was women who were principally identified with spending in the eighteenth-century imagination.
(Witness Eliza Parker teasing her father in 1796 from an auction, ‘my Mamma says you are getting money today and we are spending a little of it’.)
²³
The stereotypical distinction between the producing man and the consuming woman was endorsed by the regularity of female shopping. In sum, while substantive research on the differences between men and women's consumption remains to be done, the Lancashire manuscripts suggest the provisional conclusion that while female consumption was repetitive and predominantly mundane, male consumption was, by contrast, occasional and impulsive, or expensive and dynastic.
²⁴

Elizabeth Shackleton's diaries testify to the variety of ways commodities could be acquired. The Shackletons bespoke individual pieces (predominantly furniture and clothing) from Lancashire craftsmen and women. In the ordering of metropolitan goods, they relied principally on the taste and expertise of friends and relatives living in the capital. They commissioned goods on an
ad hoc
basis from neighbours and kin who happened to be visiting London or other polite centres, and went on intermittent shopping trips themselves to well-supplied northern towns, such as Preston, Warrington, Wrexham, Chester, Halifax and York. Local, everyday shopping was done in person in Colne, Barrowford, Burnley and Bradford, from retailers, producers and, very occasionally, hawkers. But Elizabeth Shackleton's social network was such that if she chose she could purchase fashionable metropolitan commodities with ease.

So how fashionable were Elizabeth Shackleton's purchases? In colloquial usage, ‘being in fashion’ indicates a general accordance with the modes and manners of the times, but also more specifically signals the possession of this season's model. If what historians of demand mean by fashion is the close shadowing of metropolitan high style, then Elizabeth Shackleton's engagement with fashion was very uneven. Even if the focus is restricted to those categories of goods which were at the very core of the eighteenth-century fashion system – furniture, tableware and clothing – the extent to which fashion influenced her purchasing decisions was different in each category. Elizabeth Shackleton's diaries are peppered with details of countless purchases, sufficiently detailed to enable the analysis of her purchases by their place of origin.
²⁵
While household utensils, provisions and groceries were almost invariably obtained within the parish, furniture consumption was regional in scope. With the exception of one or two small pieces, all the new Shackleton furniture was purchased in Lancashire from craftsmen in Colne, Manchester and Lancaster. By stark contrast, the purchase of tableware was overwhelmingly biased towards the metropolis.

Elizabeth Shackleton evidently put a premium on polite china and silverware.
Precisely why she did so is not made explicit in the diaries, however the pleasure she derived from exquisite tableware (she was devoted to tea parties, enjoyed examining her neighbours' new purchases, and even recorded which women snapped up the china at local house sales) probably reflects female investment in mealtime ceremony and domestic sociability. For all that, Elizabeth Shackleton was no leader of fashion. Unlike her gowns, tableware was only infrequently renewed. Few bulk purchases were made and these were prompted by ‘necessity’ not the dictates of changing fashion – upon first marriage, remarriage, removal to Pasture House and in response to breakages. Moreover, the letters Mrs Shackleton received from proxy consumers do not suggest a relentless pursuit of ultra-fashionable wares. Relatives made her aware of current modes and sometimes fashion constrained her choices – the tea-tray of china she sought in 1754 could not be had anywhere because of the rage for tea-boards. Similarly, in the 1760s she had to make do with a candelabra decorated with Mars and Venus and not the branching flowers she requested, since the rococo had been superseded by neo-classicism in silverware design. Yet fashion also created unexpected opportunities for canny consumers. They had to decide whether ‘to pay the fashion’, since the preferences of the fashionable elite were seen to inflate the price of some goods and depress the price of others:

Certainly, the genteel liked to buy their tableware in London, but there is no evidence that they burned to drink their tea from the same cups as a duchess. They were satisfied with ‘genteel’ tableware and flattered themselves that they were too sensible to be buffeted by the ever-changing winds of metropolitan taste.

Commentary on changing furniture design in Elizabeth Shackleton's diaries is conspicuous by its absence. Old-fashioned pieces were not traded in for modish novelties; indeed furniture was bought once in a lifetime and expected to last for generations. The Gillows mahogany bought new for Pasture House was impressive but not ultra-stylish. Anyone who wanted high design would betake themselves to a London showroom not a Lancaster workshop.
²⁷
Thus, when periodically re-stocking Alkincoats and Pasture House with high-quality household goods, the Shackletons appear to have purchased commodities which, although broadly fashionable, were not in the highest style.

24 Trade card of Phillips Garden, St Paul's Churchyard, London,
c
.1750. A well-dressed couple is portrayed discussing a purchase of plate with a shopman in the enticingly fashionable, gothicized interior of a London goldsmith's shop.

25 Trade card of the London linen-draper Benjamin Cole, St Paul's Churchyard, London,
c.
1720. Throughout the eighteenth century, and probably long before, genteel women were accustomed to visit fashionable London shops unaccompanied by men. Here, well-dressed women, are shown poring over a display tray of lace placed on the counter by a female shop assistant. One woman customer sits on a chair near a pilastered doorway which opens on to a blazing fire in the back room. The interiors of fashionable shops were carefully designed to make shopping a comfortable and pleasurable experience.

When it came to dress, however, Elizabeth Shackleton prided herself on being
au courant
with ‘the reigning fashions’. She had London newspapers sent up and regularly received informative letters from watchful friends in polite towns and London. These strategically located observers kept her posted on the modes and manners of ‘the fine folks’, ‘the people of distinction’, ‘the better sort’. Their ability to provide such bulletins varied according to season, sociability and the visibility of ‘the ladies of quality’. From Pontefract, ‘this Capital of Politeness’, Jane Scrimshire was best placed to answer Elizabeth's ‘important questions about Negligees’ when county families were in the town attending the winter assemblies.
²⁸
Similarly, in London Bessy Ramsden had to attend public functions and arenas such as pleasure gardens, theatres and assemblies in order to identify up-to-the-minute modes: ‘As for fashions I believe we must postpone them a little longer as it is too Early to tell what will be worn. I shall get all the information I can in the fashion way and let you know … excepting to the city assembly once this winter I have not been any where in Publick.’
²⁹
So far, a model of the transmission of taste based on emulation theory is confirmed. Bessy Ramsden regarded London as the ‘fountain head’ of fashion, exhibited by an elite minority in arenas of social display, and to be sure Mrs Ramsden was a passionate spectator of any glamorous exhibition, as her husband never failed to point out. In 1766, the Reverend smirked at his wife's determination to view the queen's birthday court from the gallery: