The duchess seemed a quiet, commonplace woman, of gentle manners, with a countenance guiltless of much meaning, and in fact with no very distinguishing character about her. She fluently uttered some good-humoured every day civilities praising, among other things, the beauties of Brackingsley, for which it turned out that she had mistaken another place, and inquiring after a supposed near neighbour, whom Lady Jermyn had never seen. Her daughter was an old young lady, whose celibacy might be considered fixed. So writes Thomas Henry Lister in his first novel, Granby, published in 1826.
In the early 1800s the humble labourer in Armitage or Handsacre probably saw very little difference between themselves and the tradesmen or those with smallholdings (although I am sure that the skilled artisans brought in from the Potteries for the newly opened pottery would have had a different view). Maybe the labourer thought of the small farmer (yeoman) as a little different but they all met up in the local pub and knew the ins and outs of each other’s families. Most of them were related one way or the other if only by marriage.
They would have known the local clergyman, Henry Binfield, or the Rev. Francis Wilson who, in the late 1830s, had enough money to build the Running Hills estate, (later to become the Towers). They would have known the professional men like the lawyers – Thomas Birch for example who had bought Armitage Lodge. Some labourers would have worked for them in their fields or as servants and probably seen them at church. If they were chapel folk, like a lot were from the Potteries, they would definitely have met the Birch family who built the Congregational Chapel in Armitage as well as the Chapel in Yoxall. This ‘middle class’ is the world that Jane Austen wrote about – the minor landed gentry, the professional men and the country clergy.
The labourers would also have known of the ‘upper class’ because they would have been able to witness the baptisms of the Lister family, (who had built Armitage Park in 1760), and the marriage of Baron Ribblesdale (Thomas Lister) to Adelaide Lister (his second cousin) at St. John the Baptist church in 1828. As most, if not all, of Lister’s servants were brought in from far away places they would not have known much about the Listers though and probably did not realise that there was a bigger gulf between the upper class and the middle class than that between themselves and the middle class.
The aspiring middle class, epitomised by Josiah Spode IV who later bought Armitage Park, (now Hawkesyard), wanted to better themselves but there were plenty of pitfalls in joining High Society. How could they know the intricacies of such society? Which shops or suppliers to patronise? Where should you rent a house for the Season and indeed when does the Season start? (Or what is the Season?). Fortunately, some members of that society wrote novels about that sort of life so the middle class had a guide and, 200 years later, we too can learn what it was like to live in High Society. These books were seen as fashionable novels and became known as the Silver Fork genre and one of its best exponents was Thomas Henry Lister of Armitage Park.
Born in Armitage in 1800, he was educated at Westminster School followed by Trinity College, Cambridge, and then completed the ‘obligatory’ Grand Tour of the Continent and became part of the fast set. He followed up Granby with Herbert Lacy (1828) and then Arlington (1832). He was completely at home in the society about which he was writing. It was a clearly defined society of privileged men and women – aristocrats, politicians, hostesses, wits and dandies – who lived in a gilded world totally ignoring the ‘lower orders’. They lived their lives according to an unwritten code of manners and morals where gambling, duels and extra-marital affairs were commonplace. Lister knew and used all the vogue language and gives really clear picture of Society and is a pleasure to read.
Society had a clear annual round of activities which began with the Parliamentary session that by 1822 had moved back to February instead of the October start of fifteen or so years earlier. The difference now was macadamised roads, (particularly on new turnpikes), which had been invented in 1815 by John Loudon McAdam and provided for much-improved travel – faster and far more comfortable for stagecoach passengers – and this gave Parliamentarians the chance to spend their winter in the comfort or their own, (or someone else’s) home. Members of both Houses of Parliament were therefore back in London in February and when the fox hunting season finished at the end of March the rest of Society flocked to London. Although the west end of London began to become more lively it wasn’t until after Easter that the Season really began.
The Season lasted throughout April, May and June and more or less finished when Parliament went into recess in July but was officially over on 12th August when of course it was time for grouse shooting. During the Season literally every day was full of events e.g. opera, theatre, concert, horse racing, boat racing, cricket, balls, lawn tennis, breakfast parties and rides through the Parks. If you were a young lady from a titled family you would be introduced to Society as a debutante and enter into Society by being presented to the Monarch at Queen Charlotte’s Ball. Everyone who was anyone was there and apart from entertaining the upper classes whilst they carried out their political duties it also served as the ideal marriage market. Once presented, a prospective bride could attend fifty balls, fifty parties, thirty dinners and thirty breakfasts all in one season.
The Season was all about being seen and wearing the right clothes from the right suppliers. George Bryan “Beau” Brummell was an important figure in Society and for many years was the arbiter of men’s fashion. Lister satirises Beau Brummel with his Arthur Davison character in Arlington and Sir Gerald Denbigh describes Davison as ‘a pretty-faced, well-whiskered, walking machine, for the display of rings, chains, studs, and embroidered waistcoats; an overgilt piece of mere ballroom furniture, fitted out under the auspices of Stultz and Delcroix; affecting to think too, (the puppy!) which always makes coxcombry worse.’
To get an idea about how connected everyone was and what Society members got up to you only have to read a short section from Lister’s Herbert Lacy when a person is inquiring about the family of the eponymous Lacy who has just returned from his Grand Tour; ‘By the by, who are they, Mrs. Poole? “She was a Bellingham of the Upperville family; and as for the Lacy’s, they, you know, are as old as the flood, and very well connected, too. Sir William Lacy’s mother was Lady Mary Loftus, aunt of the mad Lord Loftus, whose wife ran away with Sir Clement Packworth, the brother of the man who shot Lord Cheadle, husband of the naughty Lady Cheadle, whose brother was that Colonel Blacke, who won so much from poor George Templeton, who had just entered his regiment, and whose sister made that unhappy low connection which we were lamenting the other day”.
After the Season was over, Society would leave London and return to their country estates possibly after a trip abroad or to a spa like Cheltenham or Bath. Then began the round of country house parties. These were not just Friday – Monday affairs but often lasted ten days or even longer if it was family who were visiting. The numbers of servants (indoors as well as outdoors) in a country house could be enormous – well over a hundred for the large estates – and each party would bring their own servants. A married couple would take a Lady’s maid and valet as well as a coachman and whoever else was needed to look after the coach and horses. Whilst visiting there would of course be hunting, (unless the frost or snow prevented it), or shooting or other outdoor activities, (unless it rained). Given the vagaries of the weather everyone would be trapped together quite often over the autumn and winter and have to entertain or be entertained.
Lister wrote of the boredom, although he would obviously call it ennui, at being trapped indoors by the weather in Herbert Lacy: ‘Nothing drives a party at a house in the country more completely to their resources than the rain. To kill time soon becomes more an important object, and various were the means devised. Music and billiards had their turn; some went to play at battledore and shuttlecock in the hall; others beguiled the house in ransacking albums and portfolios. Mr. Tyrwhitt, in despair, proposed écarté; and one of his sisters suggested that they should act charades; but these amusements were voted to be better resources for the evening. Some of the ladies worked a little, and some of the gentlemen tried to be useful; one helped to unravel silk, and another delivered his opinion upon colours and patterns. Luncheon came at last, and a great resource it was; for there was a change of pace, and something to do.’ [To save you some searching, écarté is an old French casino game for two players similar to whist, ‘battledore and shuttlecock’ is a forerunner of badminton and there were six semi colons in that passage].
In Granby he wrote tellingly of Society’s views of both religion and the ‘lower orders’. His Sir Thomas Jermyn stated ‘He thought religion was a good thing, and ought to be kept up, and that, like cheap soup, “it was excellent for the poor”. It made them deferential, industrious and good tenants who paid their rents on time. ‘It was at any rate worth encouraging in them’. Definitely a them and us society. Maybe somewhere in his books he writes something about a servant but they are invisible in his books as they were presumably in his life and Society.
In Herbert Lacy he acknowledges that Society is changing with the middle classes having so much money that they can marry into Society but clearly they don’t really belong: ‘It was a long, low, Italian villa, in the most recent state of incompleteness, built with veranda, and projecting roofs, and various contrivances to alleviate the intensity of that sun, which in this country so seldom shines, and having an airy insubstantial character, which was any thing but attractive in that most uncomfortable of all times, a cold day in Summer.’ He mocked them further when Lacy is asked if anything can be improved – “it will soon lose what is perhaps its only blot when that building is gone, which I see you are now pulling down.” “Pulling down! my dear Sir! those people are building it up – that is my new ruin – you don’t consider – one must have a ruin – surely you don’t object to that!”
Lister is a pleasure to read with very clear descriptions of people and places so you really get a sense of his times in the upper reaches of the country in the 1820s and 1830s.
References:
Granby, Herbert Lacy and Arlington by Thomas Henry Lister
Silver Fork Society by Alison Adburgham