The Gentleman's Daughter (34 page)
Read The Gentleman's Daughter Online
Authors: Amanda Vickery
Both in company and alone, her commitment to sartorial propriety ran deep. Social discomfort is palpable in this terse but revealing aside: ‘Tom so cross, wo'd not let me have a cap out of the green room. I sat bare head a long time.’
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Evidently, Elizabeth Shackleton's pride in wearing clothes appropriate to her companions, environment and occasion went beyond a simple desire to impress.
Mrs Shackleton's concern for proper ceremony, or informality, expressed in things was not confined to herself. Elegant dress in women, if combined with wifely decorum, merited a pleasant reference from Mrs Shackleton. She had nothing but praise for her nephew's wife, Beatrix Lister, and their neat, tasteful and elegant home, ‘Chateau Marshfield’. She approved of various mansions she visited – ‘made a long stop to reconitre [Mr Lascelle's] fine and elegant building’ – and of the taste and civility of their owners – ‘Mr Clayton who was as civil as possible showed me his Grounds Canals Garden & the House.’
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Moreover, she was not an automatic critic of luxurious display. She had no quarrel with the glorious raiment of a local lawyer and his wife: ‘Mr [&] Mrs Wainman came in good time to dinner. A very Agreable woman Elegantly dress'd. Diamonds & Pearls on her head. She is half gone with Child. A very Happy couple they are. Had a Handsome Carriage, Handsome Horses, Handsome Liveries – dark blue trim'd with silver …’
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However, she was quick to call into question the sartorial motivation of those she disliked. Things which demonstrated dignity, civility and elegance in her friends, could in others just as easily represent foolish pretension. Fashionable dress worn by women she disliked was immediately taken to be proof of feminine conceit and inconsequence, as was the case with the unfortunate Miss Clough, who was airily written off as ‘a Fortune. A dressy person. Wears a very great Role.’
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Nor was her contempt reserved for women. By 1779 Elizabeth Shackleton suspected that a neighbour, Owen Cunliffe of Wycoller, had been gossiping about her. She vented her spleen in a description of his ostentation and pretension:
I knew that Cunliffe was at church this day in his Regementals, a
small
Captain, no Honour to the Royal Lancashire. Bro't his new Whiskey to Coln his new Man in his Elegant new Livery, red hair well powder'd,
two new Hunters. Can have a fortune by a Lady of £9,000 but thinks he deserves thrice that sum. – Cunliffe is too short too low – wants inches for a Captain.a Petit trop Petit Captain.
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When Sergeant Aspinall, a barrister on the northern circuit, acted against the interests of the Parkers of Browsholme and the Listers of Gisburne Park in the disputed Clitheroe election of 1781, Elizabeth Shackleton was furious. In her diary, she linked Aspinall's naked political ambitions with the architectural improvements recently undertaken at his seat, Standen Hall:
That scrubby, Mean, underbred, lowlived, Ungrateful, Covetous, designing, undermining, Stupid, Proud Aspinall and his Large Wife May come to repent … He
within
these 30 years wo'd have esteem'd it a
Great
Honour and been Big of the application of being styl'd recorder of Clitheroe. What a wretch to behave so vilely to his most obliging, generous, worthy neighbours, Browsholme & Gisburne park … [He] most probably thinks Mr Curzon's Purse will enable him to make a Portico or add a Venetian window to the Beauties of Standen. What nonsense is he. Tho' like such a breed as he comes off … such
Little Men
.
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Clearly Mrs Shackleton did not disapprove of finery and elegant surroundings
per se
, or indeed of social status expressed in things. None the less, accusations of materialism, pretension and covetousness provided useful ammunition for criticism of those who did not know their place, had slighted her in the past or she simply disliked.
When it came to her own things, on the other hand, her professions of their personal value and associations were lofty and sentimental, as one might expect. Things for Elizabeth Shackleton were rich with memory:
Wrote to my own dear Robert Parker, told him I was concerned I had told him I wo'd send the bible I had promised him, but that upon looking for it, found I had given it to my own dear Tom when he went to Winchester. But had sent him a good common prayer book [instead] given to me by Mr Cowgill of Emmanuel College, Cambridge who was there when his own good father was … I told him I would give him a ring that was made for my own dear mother, her hair under a crystal, the star round it all brilliants, worth ten guineas, which I beg'd he'd ever keep and wear for my sake … sent a piece of Brussels lace I promised him, desired he'd keep in remembrance of me.
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Even intrinsically mundane items testified to past relationships, or
commemorated past events: ‘My dear John gives me a full account of [Tom's] Wedding. Which letter I shall ever keep while I live.’ Gifts were valued in themselves and as material proof of the kind thoughts of others: ‘I esteem the ruffles very elegant and handsome, but what enhances the value to me is my dear Tom's most obliging remembrance.’ Ever after, a gift prompted pleasant memories of the donor and the moment of giving, ‘with his own dear hands’. Home-made presents were usually offered by women and were seen as time, labour and affection made concrete: ‘I had the pleasure to recieve from Dear Miss Parker … a pritty green Purse with Spangles, her own work which I much value.’
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Elizabeth Shackleton treasured items which had once belonged to people she loved, recording the wearing and mending of her mother's old shifts and the distribution of her first husband's clothing to his sons.
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Certain possessions literally embodied something of the original owner, like the ring incorporating her dead mother's hair. Doubtless it was with one eye on being remembered herself that Elizabeth Shackleton set about creating a new heirloom, making extensive enquiries, five years before she died, for a craftsman ‘who co'd do me an extreme neat Landscape in [my own] hair for my new Bracelet.’ She also had a bracelet made up of hair from the heads of her three sons ‘so as to shew all the hair distinctly’.
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Elizabeth Shackleton was not alone in ascribing meanings to inanimate objects. She drew on a shared awareness of the extra-material significance of things and in particular gifts. Tom and Betty Parker, for example, exchanged hair rings as love tokens during their courtship.
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(However, Betty Parker's offences included sacreligiously cutting up the lace which had once belonged to Elizabeth's own mother and being insufficiently appreciative of Elizabeth's gifts.) The regular exchange of produce and trinkets was a significant currency in elite sociability. Elizabeth's estranged brother Edward Parker signalled his forgiveness in a gift and she appreciated the beginning of the thaw when she received ‘a haunch of venison by the keeper of Bowland for which I gave him five shillings. This is the first present or taste I have had from Browsholme since I changed my name being six years.’
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Shared awareness of extra-material meaning is most explicit in the case of painted portraits, which carried the most powerful human resonances and demanded remembrance of the sitter. When Elizabeth's sons Tom and John Parker were at odds, Tom's wife symbolically removed John Parker's portrait from her drawing-room and returned it forthwith to Elizabeth Shackleton. The mother cherished the abandoned portrait and recorded, ‘On this day my own Dear John Parker's Picture was done up over the fire Place in the Parlour. I am truly Happy to see it there & think it dos great Honour to its Situation.’
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Things conjured the past and ensured continuity into the future. The completed purchase of large items of furniture, particularly in the last few years of her life, often occasioned a prayer, confided to her diary: ‘John Hargreaves of Coln Edge brought my new Mahogany square tea table. I like it very well. God Grant Mr S. & myself to have good & long use of it.’
68
Evidently, heavy furniture felt reassuringly permanent and substantial, yet its arrival prompted the ailing Elizabeth Shackleton to contemplate her own mortality, perhaps because furnishing a house was characteristically associated with the beginning of married life rather than its end; this is how she recorded a furniture purchase the year before her death:
[Arrived a] … new Mahogany Dining Table from Messrs Gillows from Lancaster – it came quite safe & well not the least damage or scratch. It is in three parts. The middle a square and two ends which are half rounds all put together makes an elegant Oval. The Wood very handsome. 16 feet all very strong and made neat it cost the table only £5 5s Packing 3s 6d in all £5: 8: 6. good luck to it. Good luck using it & hope we shall all have our Healths & do well.
69
The christening of a functional item was a private ritual: ‘I wrote this [her diary] upon our new Oak table the very first time I ever did write upon it or use it – Good Luck attend me …’
70
The recording of first usage is consistent with Elizabeth Shackleton's pronounced awareness of the passage of time and the importance of the past and her memories in her everyday life.
Elizabeth Shackleton's sense of the family history and the continuity which Alkincoats represented was brought to its fullest expression when Tom Parker finally claimed his full inheritance, two years after his majority: ‘Great alteration in this family … Tom was whole and sole master of Alkincoats.’
71
Quitting her marital home and household pre-eminence proved a drawn-out process. Mrs Shackleton immediately delivered all her diamonds and valuables into her son's hands. A year later she ritually handed over ‘the keys of the Buroe where he wo'd find all the keys’, a blatant act of resignation. Yet the final rupture did not come till 1779, when Tom married, at which point she definitively removed herself and her chattels to Pasture House: ‘They all saw me come off Bag and Baggage. am Happy to leave good old Alkincoats my once Happy Home to my own Dear Dear Dear Dear Tom…’
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This spectacular loss of status was one she was prepared for and rationalized in what historians have often interpreted as stock gentry terms: the continuity of the family and the line, the importance of old traditions and
the fundamental stability of the estate itself being of greater significance than any individual tenant. Thus, she deferred to and prayed for Tom and his new wife on their wedding day: ‘Grant them Health & long life, Prosperity & comfort. May they enjoy Domestick Peace … May Good old
Alkincoats
Flourish in every degree. Long may the Usual Generous Hospitality Flourish within & without those
Walls
that ever did.’
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Elizabeth Shackleton observed both the letter and the spirit of Robert Parker's will. Although she was miserable departing from her old home and experienced pangs upon its redecoration (‘My poor, good, old yellow room. Transmogrified indeed into Elegance …’
74
), she remained convinced of the importance of inheritance and perceived herself as a guardian of property entrusted to, and on loan from later generations of Parkers:
On this day I emptied all & everything belonging unto me out of my Mahogany Bookcase, Buroe & drawers. Given unto me by my own Tender, Good & most Worthy Father … My kind and most affectionate Parent. They were made & finish'd by Henry Chatburne on Saturday December the eighth one thousand seven Hundred and Fifty. I value them much but relinquish the valuable Loan with great Satisfaction to my own Dear Child Thomas Parker.
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Elizabeth Shackleton's records reveal the role of material things in a range of social practices. She presided over and performed the bulk of the day-to-day purchasing for her household and the maintenance of the goods therein. By extension, well-chosen and well-maintained possessions testified to her expertise and gratified her self-esteem. Eventually, many of these possessions served as currency in the mistress–servant relationship. Over and above their purely practical function, Elizabeth Shackleton's possessions both acted as crucial props in unobserved, intimate rituals and displayed her social status to the wider public. When slighted, she deployed the rhetoric of luxury and vanity to belittle the motives and material culture of her enemies. By contrast, her own world of goods was rich and complex. When self-consciously writing about her own possessions, she dwelt at length on their sentimental and talismanic associations. Growing frail, she contemplated the durability of the material in contrast to transience of flesh, hoping her heirlooms would guarantee remembrance. Ultimately, she drew reassurance from her belief in the continuity of the Parker family and estate and the importance of inheritance. Of course, Elizabeth Shackleton was a very privileged consumer. The very mahogany which carried family history down through time was itself an emblem of genteel status. Mrs Shackleton's property proved that she belonged to the local elite, and simultaneously distanced her from the likes of Betty Hartley Shopkeeper, but social differentiation through material possessions is a subtly different phenomenon to social emulation.
