Life as a Victorian Lady

by Pamela Horn

Overview

As a Victorian lady, what unspoken rules governed what you wore, how you spoke, and how you filled your time? This fascinating book takes you back in time to show you just how your day would be, and how it differed from lower class life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780752470658
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	09/16/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	555,609
File size:	269 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

Read an Excerpt

Life as a Victorian Lady

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By Pamela Horn

The History Press

Copyright © 2011 Pamela Horn
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-7065-8

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

From a twenty-first century perspective, the lives of Victorian ladies appear privileged and comfortable, cushioned against the harsher realities of life. Domestic staff performed much of the drudgery associated with household chores, and left mistresses time to enjoy leisure pursuits. Most were expected to find personal fulfilment within the home, as wives and mothers and as hostesses dispensing hospitality to guests. In 1855, the Revd Charles Kingsley in a Lecture to Ladies declared that a woman's 'first duties [were] to her own family, her own servants'.

It was women who made the 'ordinances and regulations' that governed polite society, through their power to give or withhold invitations and to choose on whom they would call or from whom they would receive calls. As the contemporary journal the Lady's Companion commented on 10 March 1900, while the male members of high society were willing to associate with an ill-educated millionaire, that was unlikely to apply to their female relatives. These would not visit the wife and daughter of such a man, or receive them in their home, if they lacked 'refinement and culture. The penniless daughter of an underpaid curate would (provided she were a gentlewoman) have the entrée into houses that would resolutely close their doors on the pretensions of the millionaire's family'.

It was to advise the socially inept on possible pitfalls that books of etiquette proliferated in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1866, for example, Etiquette for Ladies pointed out that in conversation 'the voice of a lady is ... always low and nicely modulated'. A provincial accent was to be avoided and the vocabulary carefully chosen to exclude words and expressions deemed vulgar in the 'best' circles. 'Don't utter exclamations such as "My!" ... They are VERY vulgar', it warned. Vulgarity, ostentatious conduct and conspicuous attire were to be eschewed at all costs, as was any involvement in public scandal. That included marital infidelity. When Lady Aylesford was divorced in 1878 on account of her adultery with Lord Blandford, her name was struck from guest lists and she was 'cut' in public. Interestingly, Lord Blandford suffered no such social sanctions.

Within the household, the general preoccupation with status and hierarchy was reflected in the way that the accommodation itself was divided among family members, guests and the domestic staff. Each had their own quarters, with the servants residing in the basement or the attics or in a separate wing, while the nursery and schoolroom were also located at the top of the house, where the noise of the children would not disturb the rest of the family. Many of the main rooms were split along gender lines, so that the morning-room, boudoir and drawing-room were regarded as female territory, while the library, study and smoking room belonged to the menfolk. As far as possible the servants were to remain out of sight as they went about their duties, by the use of a system of backstairs and back corridors. In this way family privacy would be preserved.

The concern about status and propriety also extended to what was seen as the appropriate attire for domestic staff. In April 1840 Anne Sturges Bourne, who lived on a small Hampshire estate, admitted to a friend that her mother was very unhappy 'abt. housemaids' bonnet caps & brooches, & the difficulty of drawing a line of what is smart & what plain'. But she recognised that when it came 'to a struggle of how much the maid may presume or the mistress forbid, there is little good done, & they wear smart things by stealth'.

Young unmarried girls were expected to be chaperoned when they went into public places or attended social functions. Hence Lucy Lyttelton, daughter of the 4th Lord Lyttelton, felt 'suddenly ... scampish' when in April 1861, at the age of about 20, she walked alone on the pier at Brighton. Two days later she attended an afternoon church service in the resort and 'having to walk back alone, I pretended to belong to two elderly ladies in succession, who I don't think found out they were escorting me'. Even in the mid-1890s the newly married American-born Duchess of Marlborough was surprised to discover it was considered improper for an English lady to walk alone in Piccadilly and in Bond Street, or to be seen in a hansom cab, while 'to visit a music-hall was out of the question'.

Gender differences applied, too, with boys being preferred to girls, especially in landed families. Lady Maud Cecil, oldest child of the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, was 'very much offended' when at the age of 3, shortly after the birth of her eldest brother, she overheard 'people say when addressing the baby, "It is a good thing it was a boy this time"'. From that time, she added drily, 'I began to look at life from a feminist standpoint.'

It was part of the same process that married women were expected to defer to their husbands when it came to taking decisions, although that did not always apply in practice. Independent-minded women, like Clara Paget, wife of a physician and teacher of medicine at Cambridge University, 'managed' both the male and female members of her family and looked after money matters. When she was away in Wales pursuing her antiquarian interests she sent instructions to her daughters in Cambridge by letter on how they should proceed. Clergy wives often shared in their husbands' parish duties, holding mothers' meetings, running clothing and coal clubs, and teaching in Sunday school.

Marriage was regarded as the only acceptable career for a gentlewoman, since paid employment was considered impossible if genteel status were to be maintained. The underlying attitude was made clear by a contributor to the Englishwoman's Journal of 1866: 'My opinion is that if a woman is obliged to work, at once ... she loses that peculiar position which the word lady conventionally designates.' Occasional sums might be earned, perhaps by writing articles for periodicals, but regular remuneration was out of the question. Only those spinsters fortunate enough to inherit a fortune or to be asked to manage the household of an unmarried brother or widowed father escaped the stigma of being regarded as marginalised nonentities, or mere 'old maids', when they reached middle age.

It was against this restricted view of the female role that Florence Nightingale railed bitterly when in the early 1850s she wrote of women who were

never supposed to have any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted ... and have trained themselves so as to consider whatever they do as not of such value to the world or to others, but that they can throw it up at the first 'claim of social life'. They have accustomed themselves to consider intellectual occupation as a merely selfish amusement which it is their 'duty' to give up for every trifler more selfish than themselves.

She herself escaped from that limited life shortly afterwards when she took up her nursing career. Perhaps fortunately, few other single women felt as strongly as she did about their narrow prospects.

Within this general framework, therefore, many Victorian ladies led a sheltered existence. But that did not mean that they were idle. Apart from performing their social duties, paying calls, writing letters, making visits, attending parties, balls, the theatre and art galleries, and visiting their dressmakers, mothers and older sisters often gave lessons to the younger children and, most importantly, wives supervised the smooth running of the household. They also did needlework, sketched, read, and played the piano, and within the limits of a restricted education, cultivated their character, mind and abilities to benefit those around them. Nearly all engaged in charitable work, often acting as links between rich and poor through their role as dispensers of aid to the needy. Margaret, Countess of Jersey, once told a friend wryly that the most appropriate epitaph for her tombstone would be, 'She Gave Away Prizes'. But most women welcomed the opportunity to help and to be useful.

Lady Colin Campbell, writing in 1893, noted other desirable attributes:

A true lady will be quite natural and easy in her manners, and this will have the effect of putting those at their ease who are in her company, whatever their station in life may be. She will shrink from all affectation and avoid all pretension, and never try, by any means, to appear other than she really is ... A quiet dignity will pervade all her actions.

Strong religious convictions and the exercise of moral influence were further characteristics of Victorian ladyhood. Such influence included the holding of daily family prayers, frequent attendance at church services, and, in some cases, a recognition of personal sinfulness, or what was considered sinfulness, and a constant struggle against it. This was true of the daughters of Lady Claud Hamilton, who suffered deep anxieties during their youth. In the autumn of 1863, 16-year-old Emma confessed that she would 'like to go among the poor more now, to do good ... But I am not fit to do the least thing in God's service while I am so wicked myself, but I think if I could venture to give bibles, it might not be too presumptious.' A little later her sister, Louisa, aged 22, admitted that when the family left Elton, their Cambridgeshire home, she had 'made a strong resolution to get ready for death ... Surely we ought all to live in a constant state of readiness for death – living each day as if the last, making use of every ... moment to send before us more treasures of good works.' Despite her forebodings, Louisa married in 1876 and lived to a ripe old age. Fortunately, the piety of most Victorian ladies was less gloomy than this.

Moral influence was important, too. In Castle Richmond (1860), Anthony Trollope commented on the necessity of having a female to head the domestic arrangements of a household because of the steadying and moralising effect of 'tea and small talk' on its other members. Hence in June 1853 the widowed Lady Carnarvon advised her teenage second son to avoid such 'ungentlemanlike, barbarous and corrupting' pastimes as 'ratting' and 'ferreting': 'there is always something very degrading to the mind when Man the master spirit looks on applauding & encouraging two lower animals to tear each other to pieces'. That did not apply to hunting and shooting since there 'Man ... takes his share in the sport ... the animal has a chance of escape and has the liberty of employing in self defence the powers given to him for that very purpose by his creator.' Nevertheless, her son should 'not allow [his] new friend the gun to occupy too much ... very precious time' and divert him from his other duties.

Not until the Victorian era was drawing to an end was there some loosening of the restrictions on female activities, as a small number of girls from genteel families began to enter higher education and to travel around unchaperoned, especially when engaged in charitable work. For older women, transport improvements, such as quicker trains and the construction of the underground railway in London, as well as the opening of department stores and tea rooms, made independent shopping trips attractive. As the Lady's World advised in 1886, readers could easily travel between London and Bath and back in a day in order to visit the capital: 'This is no small advantage when you have a day's shopping to get through, or winter gowns and mantles to be tried on at your favourite London modiste's.' Even in the 1870s Mrs Jebb went to London for a day's shopping by train from Cambridge, a journey of over 50 miles each way.

However, the cosseted existence of some of the younger women caused frustration among the more thoughtful. Cynthia Charteris, the future Lady Cynthia Asquith, summarised their feelings at the close of the century:

Our helplessness equalled our want of independence ... Everything was done for us. I was never so much as taught how to mend or wash – let alone make – my clothes. I couldn't even pack for myself. Of cooking I knew no more than of the art of navigation ... A woman who can't cook is a hopeless cripple at the mercy of anyone who can.

Yet it is important to remember that women's varying personalities – the assertiveness, self-assurance and arrogance of some, and the timidity or frivolity of others – undermine any view of Victorian ladies as uniformly demure and obedient, no matter how rigid society's rules might be.

CHAPTER 2

Growing Up

It was during the first two years of marriage that most upper-class women became pregnant and, especially in the case of landed families, there was pressure on them to produce a male heir as soon as possible. Early in 1896 the newly married Duchess of Marlborough remembered her first meeting with her husband's formidable grandmother, a few months after her wedding. Following 'an embarrassing inspection of my person', she fixed her cold grey eyes on the young Duchess and announced: 'Your first duty is to have a child and it must be a son ... Are you in the family way?' Feeling crushed and depressed by the encounter, she was glad to take her leave. In the event, her first son was born in September 1897, but those women who failed to bear a child felt this as a blot on their femininity. It could cause much unhappiness, as in the case of Lady Frederick Cavendish (the former Lucy Lyttelton). In February 1866 she attended two 'pretty baptisms' and was moved to tears, 'so foolishly did I long to see a baby of our own christened'. This was after about eighteen months of marriage; however, she was destined to remain childless.

In the early and mid-Victorian years wives, even in the 'best' circles, often had large families, at a time when both maternal and infant mortality were at high levels. Puerperal fever was a particular danger for new mothers, and the diary of Lady Frederick Cavendish is littered with references to friends who had died or suffered serious illness as a result of a confinement that had gone wrong. On 11 December 1866 she noted: 'A terribly sad thing has happened: the death of Lady Fortescue in her confinement, leaving 13 children the eldest only 18.' Lucy's own mother died in 1857, a few months after bearing her twelfth child in less than twenty years of marriage. She was only 44 and her two eldest daughters, Meriel and Lucy, had to try to take her place with the younger children. Towards the end of the century contraception became more widely accepted and family size consequently was reduced.

When a baby was born, much of the responsibility for its care was handed over to nursery staff, although the extent to which this happened depended on the mother's attitude. When Lady Ridley had her first two children in the early 1840s she not only breastfed them (as was customary at that time) but anxiously consulted her mother about the best way to look after them, even though she had a full-time nanny. Lady Leconfield wrote almost daily to her children's nurse when she was away from the family estate at Petworth, and received detailed accounts of their health and progress. She and the nurse were mutually concerned with the children's welfare and her letters were eagerly awaited in the nursery. When they were ill she helped to look after them.

However, in many cases children were brought up by the nurse until they reached the age of 5 or 6, when they began to have lessons with a governess in the schoolroom. Nurses not only had physical care of them but taught them good personal habits and manners. Often they became part of their charges' emotional life. Violet Maxse, whose parents separated when she was 5, regarded her nurse, Emma, as 'the keystone of our family arch'.

Nursery meals were plain and monotonous and were prepared separately from those for the rest of the household. Even in affluent families children were frequently dressed in simple, hand-me-down clothes. Although Frances Maynard, the future Countess of Warwick, had inherited a large estate at the age of 3, she spent her childhood in frocks cut down from her mother's cast-off dresses, 'so that they might not be too elegant for a young girl'. Toys were, however, usually plentiful and large gardens enabled children to play and romp in safety. Many had pets.

Mothers or older sisters sometimes gave lessons to the younger children, as Lady Leconfield did. She also played games with them and took them for walks. But governesses were recruited, too, perhaps to free a mother's time for other activities or to bring expertise unavailable in the family. Molly Bell, the daughter of a wealthy Teesside ironmaster, remembered with pleasure the music and French lessons given to her and her sister by their mother, and the history teaching of their stepsister, Gertrude. But the instruction provided by the governess was uninspiring. 'For more than ten years I was bored all the time,' she wrote later. On occasion, specialist teachers were brought in to give music and dancing lessons, or the girls attended outside classes. Gwen Raverat, the daughter of a Cambridge professor, remembered the drawing class she attended each week as 'the centre of [her] youthful existence', while the teaching given by a series of governesses was 'stupid' and uninteresting.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Life as a Victorian Lady by Pamela Horn. Copyright © 2011 Pamela Horn. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

1 Introduction,
2 Growing Up,
3 Etiquette and the Social Round,
4 Mistress of the Household,
5 The Role of 'Lady Bountiful',
6 Pleasures, Pastimes and Other Pursuits,