She had nourished with her life blood and brought forth that little being into the world, at an expense of solicitude and of suffering of which we Husbands can probably form but an imperfect conception.1
Lord Jermyn, 1832
Childbearing in previous centuries has historically been viewed with a sceptical view of motherly affection, with historians such as Lawrence Stone assuming that because of the large number of pregnancies and the proliferation of illnesses which killed a large number of children, mothers did not care about their children in the same way, or were not affected by grief the same as their modern counterparts. Historians such as Amanda Vickery in The Gentleman’s Daughter and Judith Schneid Lewis in In the Family Way have looked more in depth at diary entries and letters from individual women and the circumstances in which they lived and reproduced. Not only have these studies disproved the works of Lawrence Stone but they have opened up our knowledge of what childbearing was like for the gentry over the past centuries.
In the nineteenth century the prospect of labour and the necessary outcome of childbirth would have been vastly different to how modern women anticipate it. Queen Victoria stated in 1859, when writing to her eldest daughter Victoria Adelaide, who had just married the German Emperor, Frederick III, ‘[childbearing] is indeed too hard and dreadful […] men ought to have an adoration for one, and indeed to make up, for what after all, they alone, are the cause of!!!’2 This perception of men being responsible for the begetting of a pregnant wife is an unusual perspective to have for the nineteenth century. Perhaps Queen Victoria’s superior position in respect of her husband caused some role reversal within their marriage, for in general it was considered the woman’s occupation to get pregnant and to provide her husband with an heir to the estate and family fortune as well as plenty of ‘back-up’ children.
For these aristocratic families, the most popular way for their estates and wealth to grow was through the family; heirs would inherit and potentially marry a young woman of good breeding and good fortune, whilst younger siblings would be obliged to marry well in order to advance the social standing of the family. Therefore, getting pregnant and producing a large, healthy family would have been one of the first ‘jobs’ a newly married young woman would have faced. Judith Lewis even states that for some women during this period, they would spend ‘many years – perhaps the best years – of their lives’3 pregnant or trying to get pregnant.
Amanda Vickery states that the average mother in the eighteenth century bore six to seven live children, noting also that gentry families and the peerage bore less than that number, with Hollingworth stating that noblewomen born 1800–1824 had on average four or five children.4 As the aim for childbirth was to produce a male heir, and at least one spare, in the event that female children be born first, families would simply keep reproducing until at least one male heir was born. However, Vickery’s statistics do not fit everyone within the aristocracy. Georgiana Howard, Harriet’s elder sister, had twelve children (all of whom survived to adulthood) to her husband George Howard, later to be 6th Earl of Carlisle, and so she spent the best part of twenty years pregnant, giving birth, and recovering. From within this incredibly strong pool of children were the future 7th and 8th Earls of Carlisle so Georgiana at least had the reward of knowing that she had done her part successfully.
However, some marriages were not so successful and could often put quite a lot of pressure on the shoulders of a young woman to produce the longed-for heir. Harriet and Georgiana’s mother Georgiana Devonshire is a classic example of a woman who had three children, but, due to the strained relationship she had with the 5th Duke of Devonshire, had she given birth to the longed-for son and heir in her first pregnancy, Harriet and Little G may not have existed at all.
Luckily though, women had a certain degree of freedom during pregnancy and there does not appear to have been any social taboo in appearing in society whilst pregnant. Indeed, as women often had back-to-back pregnancies, if socialising had been prohibited during pregnancy, almost no one would have been out in society. Aristocratic women would be very social, and even hosting and arranging events within their homes up to three or four weeks before their due date. For example, Lady Charlotte Guest arranged a concert at her London home on 13 June 1834 whilst in her ninth month of pregnancy. The event was a huge success but clearly busy and exhausting for the expectant mother who wrote ‘At the beginning of the evening I attempted to sit down […] but I was soon expelled from the seat by the crowd and obliged to stand at the top of the staircase.’5 Despite this exhausting event there were no immediate consequences from the concert and Lady Charlotte naturally went into labour just two weeks later. Indeed, Lewis notes that ‘had there been even the slightest question about the propriety of entertaining when so advanced in pregnancy, she certainly would not have arranged the party for that time’.6 Similarly, Harriet Leveson Gower, during the last trimester of her first pregnancy in 1810 travelled the country visiting the country estates of family and friends, visiting Staffordshire, Gloucestershire and Cheshire. So, clearly, it was completely normal for women in this period to be mobile and active even right up to the end of their pregnancies.
However, Lewis notes that ‘simply because aristocratic women enjoyed social and physical activity during their pregnancies, we should not infer that they were casual about their condition.’7 Indeed, in some ways they were even more cautious about pregnancy, but unlike modern pregnancies, aristocratic women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries sought help from their midwives or accoucheurs much earlier on in the pregnancy. An accoucheur was the contemporary term for a male midwife and in this period, there was a great increase in the number of male midwives both training as well as practicing within aristocratic circles.8 ‘Originally called in only to assist female midwives during an emergency, men gradually increased their presence at births, until, by the end of the eighteenth century, their participation in lyings-in was commonplace amongst the classes able to afford their services.’9 It wasn’t until 1858 when the General Medical Act was passed that accoucheurs had to register themselves and gained a licence allowing them to practice; before then, anyone who wanted to practice midwifery could do so, as long as they had the title of ‘gentleman’. The rather bizarre rule seems to have been introduced through a belief that, because an accoucheur dealt with the intimacy of pregnancy, a gentleman would be an appropriate person to be able to engage in the necessary processes and procedures without creating more embarrassment for the mother. The shift from a female to male medical person at a labour is discussed by Amanda Vickery who states, ‘the fact that these emergency practitioners soon eclipsed the traditional midwife at even straight-forward births amongst the fashionable, Adrian Wilson attributes to the desire of polite accomplished ladies who sought to distance themselves from the old-fashioned collectivity of midwives and gossips in the name of fashionable gentility.’10
When it came to selecting an accoucheur, it seems that most aristocratic women chose from a relatively small pool of gentlemen and usually appointed one based on a recommendation from either a family member or a friend. They also tended to remain with the same accoucheur throughout their childbearing career unless he died or retired from practice, at which time he would usually recommend a replacement. Sir Richard Croft is probably one of the most well known accoucheurs from this period due to his famous client list but also because of the catastrophic ending to his career when Princess Charlotte died in childbirth in 1817. Dr Thomas Denman was also an authority during the period who published many papers and books and also trained younger physicians.
Once the accoucheur had been selected, it was not unusual for them to move in with the family, living in the home so that they could be close at hand for the moment the labour began. They would sometimes move in up to three months prior to the ‘big moment’ and would help the family with other matters relating to the pregnancy such as diet, exercise and other general pre-natal care. Lewis states that both accoucheurs and aristocratic patients would have agreed ‘that living normally during pregnancy was often a good way of achieving their goals’ of healthy maternity. This meant that with the accoucheur living with the family, he would be able to get to know them very well and be able to assess their style of living and to suggest improvements. Lewis goes on to say that,
the medical approach [of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century] was a holistic one. An entire constitution or ‘habit’ needed to be cured, it was thought, rather than a particular ailment. The doctor’s knowledge of a patient’s constitution, rather than his understanding of a given pathological process, was the guarantor of medical success. Thus, the prolonged acquaintance of an accoucheur with his aristocratic patient was an asset in his ability to treat her successfully.11
This following section from Lewis’s book explains the different categories that an expectant woman’s health could be divided into from the perspective of the accoucheur, and it gives a comprehensive overview of the unique attitudes towards health in this period,
Human constitutions were diagnosed on a continuum ranging from weakness to plethora; good health was the happy medium. In the case of weakness, medical management strove to strengthen a patient through a regimen of cordials, exercise, an ample and nourishing diet, and bathing. Plethoric patients, in contrast to weak ones, were described as being of high colour and full of animal spirits. Thought to be a dangerous condition, plethora, or fullness as it was sometimes called, was believed to be caused by an excess of blood flowing to the afflicted part, thus creating pressure and an irritability which could result in fever.
Plethora was treated by the lowering system, which specifically aimed at weakening the patient. It was probably quite effective in doing that, if nothing else. Bloodletting by leeching or cupping was only part of the regimen. At the same time, the plethoric patient might be given an ‘opening’ medicine (or laxative) and a purgative to relieve the stomach of its contents. Patients on the lowering system could be expected to stay on a diet that denied them animal foods and anything else that might be construed as stimulating. Factors that affect the entire constitution, such as climate, air, rest, and diet, might also have a large role in establishing one’s health.
A woman could not expect a reprieve from such medical onslaughts on the grounds of pregnancy. Only a patient with a healthy and well-balanced constitution could expect to become pregnant.12
We can see that the perceived process for both getting pregnant and remaining healthy throughout pregnancy was viewed as a whole physical and mental approach to health. This is certainly different to what most people would expect from the period and indeed it is similar to the newer holistic approach to medicine which is gaining popularity in the twenty-first century medical world today.
Whilst all aristocratic women paid much attention to their health and activity during their pregnancies, in the latter weeks and months, the focus would shift and there would be a frenzy of activity as the family began to prepare for the labour and childbirth.
During the eighteenth century the act of childbirth was a public event. Lewis notes in her book that Lady Mary Coke reported in 1769, that ‘Lord and Lady Donegall passed by in their chaise […] the newspapers say she is come to Town to lie in’.13 Clearly the aristocracy giving birth was a large public event of which the modern comparison would be the recent pregnancies and births of the children of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. This public ritual surrounding the act of childbirth was also cemented by the fact that many women in the late 1700s actually chose to move to London in preparation for their labour. Amanda Vickery states that most genteel women, if they had a choice and were not surprised by an early labour at a country estate, chose to be confined at their London townhouses as they would be closer to the best physicians in the country.14 A London townhouse would be prepared for the imminent arrival; families may arrange for their own houses to be specially opened for the event or, if the aristocratic couple in question did not own their own London house, they may rent a house just for the period of the lying-in and the recovery which could by anything from two to four months. Even if the mother to be was already living in London, she would most likely change some of the rooms around in the house so that the labour could be undertaken in the most convenient manner. Interestingly Lewis states that:
English aristocrats did not, as is commonly thought, give birth in the ancestral bed where marriages were consummated and great lives came to quiet ends. The four-poster, where these events were supposed to have taken place, remained in the bedroom where it belonged. […] Into the newly arranged lying-in chamber was brought a fairly light-weight portable folding bed, especially designed for the occasion. It was constructed to make linen changes easier and to keep the patient easily accessible to the doctor.15
Childbirth was increasingly becoming a more private affair kept within the home and immediate family, and the public rituals of childbirth began to die out. Rituals of the mid- to late 1700s, such as laying fresh hay on the street outside the house and tying coloured ribbons on the knockers of the door to indicate the sex of the child, seem to have faded out when we get into the 1800s. As the nineteenth century wore on, many women chose to give birth at their country estates rather than in London as another way to keep the event private. In these instances, visitors to the estate would have to be invited by the couple and so they would be away from the London expectation of daily visitors who would come to ogle at mother and child.
Once all of these preparations had been made for the mother-to-be, there was nothing to do but wait for the labour to start. Whilst there is still some nervousness surrounding childbirth today, the knowledge of being able (usually) to give birth within a hospital or birthing centre, surrounded by medical professionals who are on standby to take over should there be any problems, alleviates many labour anxieties. However, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the medical technology and knowledge was vastly different, meaning the process of labour was seen in a very different way. Whilst women did have access to doctors and midwives, their ability to intervene in difficult births was certainly more limited than it is today. This could increase the sense of nervousness that women of this period, especially those giving birth for the first time, would have felt as they approached their due date.
Statistics surrounding childbirth would not have been published in the way they are today and there was no ‘one born every minute’ for mothers to refer to in preparation for their own labour. Vickery further states that ‘in any case, statistics, good or bad, were unknown to eighteenth-century women; they would have judged the possibilities on the basis of anecdotal report’.16 Instead of published statistics, what women relied upon was gossip and stories which would have circulated through letters and drawing rooms inevitably being embellished as they were passed from person to person.
Childbirth, whilst still risky even today with all of the modern medical expertise and equipment, was several times riskier in the nineteenth century and no one was exempt from potential difficulties or favoured with a guaranteed safe birth. Even the royal family could suffer terribly in childbirth. Whilst Queen Victoria delivered nine perfectly healthy children, and as far as we can tell never suffered a miscarriage or still birth, her cousin Princess Charlotte died aged just 21 shortly after giving birth to a stillborn son. This would have been particularly horrifying as the birth of a royal was, and still is to this day, highly anticipated, as well as the fact that she was attended by Sir Richard Croft who was thought to be one of the best accoucheurs at the time. Her story is a tragic but illuminating example of the type of story which would have terrified young mothers-to-be at the time.
Princess Charlotte was the only child and heir of King George IV, and may have become Queen of England instead of Queen Victoria had she lived past 1817. She had married in 1816 to Price Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the future King of the Belgians and in November of 1817 was reaching the end of her second pregnancy (her first pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage). The labour began on Monday 3 November and lasted for nearly fifty hours. At no point during this time did Croft or any other physician present at the labour intercept with any medical procedure. Whilst this seems unbelievable, it is important to refer back to the earlier point made regarding the thoughts of physicians at the time and how they viewed pregnancy and childbirth as something ‘natural’. Therefore, with this thought in their minds they would have been more inclined to let the labour take a natural course. Also, in a statement he wrote after the event, Croft stated that whilst her progression through her labour was slow, she was progressing and so they did not feel that she needed any medical intervention.
Sadly, after fifty hours of labour, Princess Charlotte did give birth but it was to a stillborn son. Whilst Charlotte initially appeared healthy after the birth, she did complain that the placenta, or afterbirth as it was known then, was causing her discomfort. Historians still debate what the cause of death was to this day however the following extract from the Croft papers, cited by Lewis, shows the devastating consequences that followed:
For the next two hours, Princess Charlotte appeared ‘as well as Ladies usually are, after equally protracted labours she talked cheerfully and took frequently of mild nourishment.’ A little before midnight, however, the Princess complained of a ‘singing noise in her head’ and of feeling sick. Croft gave her some camphor mixture which she quickly vomited. She then took some tea, appeared more composed, and slept for about a half hour. A little before one o’clock, however, she became very irritable and restless and may well have suffered convulsions. There were described by Croft as ‘spasmodic affections of the chest’. Her breathing became difficult, and her pulse irregular, Cordials, nourishment, antispasmodic medicine and opiates (inc. twenty drops of laudanum in wine and water) were given in an attempt to soothe and calm the patient. Their efforts were to no avail, and the Princess died about five-and-a-half hours after giving birth.17
It seems most likely that the Princess suffered from symptoms of preeclampsia, and although a post-mortem was conducted on the Princess’s body, Lewis states that court etiquette prevented an autopsy report from being published. Whilst this may not be entirely true, as other postmortems of the time were published, the sensitivity of this particular death may be the reason why her post-mortem results were not published at the time. This subsequently meant that without a definite answer for the public as to the reason for the Princess’s death, rumours began to surface regarding those who were present at the time. Richard Croft unfortunately bore the brunt of this blame and was significantly affected in his career as well as emotionally. Lewis states that ‘in February [of the following year, just three months after the death of the Princess] after attending a patient who died after a similar protracted labour, Croft killed himself.’18
Whilst this occurrence was horrific, and in the public eye due to the fact that it was a royal birth, childbirth was not always such a calamitous event and most women managed to proceed with an uncomplicated labour. We have a surviving account from Georgiana Devonshire of the birth of her first daughter Little G, which gives us another clear and intriguing account of childbirth for women in the late eighteenth century:
My mother and Dennis [her mother’s maid] supported me – Canis [the 5th Duke] was at the door and the Duchess of Portland [the 5th Duke’s sister] sometimes bending on me and screaming with me and sometimes running to the end of the room and to him. I thought the pain I suffered was so great from being new to me – but I find since I had a very bad time. Towards the end some symptoms made me think the child was dead – I said so and Dr Denman [Georgiana’s accoucheur] only said there is no reason to think so but we must submit to Providence. I had then no doubt and by watching my mother’s eyes … I saw she thought it dead, which they all did except Denman who dared not to say too much – when it came into the world I said only let it be alive – the little child seemed to move as it lay by me but I was not sure when all at once it cry’d. Oh god! I cry’d and was quite Hysterical. The Duchess and my mother was overcome and then cry’d and all kissed me.19
Whilst we cannot quite say this birth was uncomplicated, it did have a successful ending and Georgiana would go on to give birth to Harriet and William (known as the Marquis of Hartington, or ‘Hart’ until his succession as duke) just a few years later. Similar to this story and at the complete other end of the experience spectrum to Princess Charlotte, is the experience of Lady Charlotte Guest who in 1843, on the occasion of the birth of her eighth child, sent her husband and son off to lunch without telling them she was in labour.
However, I went to bed as soon as they had left me, and in a very few minutes Merthyr came up again to see why I had not followed them down. I tranquillized him as well as I could and he again sent out of the room, but only to be recalled almost immediately to see the eighth child to which, thankfully, I had given birth to with as little pain as I suppose it is possible to suffer on such occasions … she was born at a quarter past four pm. Being only three quarters of an hour from the moment of my having finished writing and dated my journal.20
Whilst births like these were as rare as the tragic death of Princess Charlotte, it does show that there were many different experiences to be had when it came to giving birth in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as there are still today.
Harriet and Granville Leveson Gower had five children; indeed, Harriet must have become pregnant only about a month after her marriage. This was not uncommon and would have been a great source of pleasure to both Harriet and Granville who were keen to have a family together.
By the time Harriet became pregnant with her first child, her sister Georgiana had already given birth seven times and so Harriet had both a reliable source for information about the processes of childbirth, and she also had a shining example of how well childbirth could go and how quickly a mother could recover afterwards. Betty Askwith writes about Harriet in this period and states that ‘G. was plied with requests for reassurance and advice […] “Is croft averse to medicine after as before one’s confinement? [Harriet used Sir Richard Croft, as her sister had done and her mother before that] and does he manage well at first? write me a true gossips letter upon this subject …”’21 Whilst Harriet clearly placed most of her worries and anxieties about her impending labour on to her sister, she also told her of the different ways in which she cared for herself throughout her pregnancy as well as how she was feeling throughout.
A letter from 3 August 1810 when she was six to seven months pregnant details a happy and healthy Harriet, ‘I get up early and walk in the Park and feel so strong and active that I can hardly believe myself to be with child, certainly for the first time these six months, I really have not felt so well since my marriage as I do now.’22 However on the 17 August 1810 Harriet again wrote to Georgiana and was clearly feeling the strain of carrying her baby as well as playing the society lady in her ‘eighth month with a little Hercules kicking me till I really can at times hardly forbear screaming. When I arrived here [at Badminton] a week ago I looked as if I was expecting to lay in every hour; the second day I was very unwell and bilious.’23
Whilst these later months of Harriet’s pregnancy provide brilliant insight into the thought process of a lady in pregnancy in the nineteenth century, there are also some fabulous titbits of information which are relatable even to a twenty-first-century mother. On the 22 August 1810, whilst Harriet and Granville are staying with his sister the Duchess of Beaufort at Badminton, she makes a wry and amusing observation of the Duchess’s parenting skills:
22 August 1810
The Duchess I think spoils hers [her children]; she suffers them to make incessant noise in the room with one and to be perpetually interrupting her when she is talking or reading, with questions or complaints. This either made my head ache or my temper boil half the day through, for I think the shrill loud voice of an indulged child cosa da morire [a cause of death]24
Clearly Harriet thought there was a lot to be desired in the Duchess’s childrearing skills and indeed throughout Harriet’s letters we do not see any mention of misbehaving children, although are not all parent’s glasses rosetinted when it comes to their own children?
As is perhaps usual with any woman expecting her first child, the unknown seemed to cause Harriet much anxiety and worry. We can see this in the letters she sends to Georgiana in the weeks leading up to her due date:
22 September 1810
I sometimes think of the event with the greatest philosophy, and sometimes with the greatest terror; when the last I cannot persuade myself that you have passe par la [been through it] and I long to have it confirmed by your own solemn assurances of it. Like all sceptics I am not easily persuaded and the seven [G’s confinements] which would to most minds appear sufficient proof, do not just now act upon my mind as such. Lady Anson has undergone twelve and makes very light of it, as far as talking goes.
In this letter to Georgiana, Harriet seems to be getting more fretful about the imminent birth, and in her next letter she appears to have done the nineteenth-century equivalent of googling childbirth and has informed herself of some of the potential complications. She combines that with her opinions of her doctor’s inadequacies (she had employed the services of Sir Richard Croft and another obstetrician Farquhar to attend to her medically during the later months of her pregnancy and labour) which, as she waits to give birth appear to increase her terror with each passing day:
Monday 24 September 1810
Every now and then I am in a deduced fright. You know nothing of the danger of the operation (of version) which is the flooding afterwards (ne vous deplaise) [do not displease you]. It is there where Croft invariably fails, as it requires prodigious skill and one may die of it in five minutes if the pulse is not properly watched and the proper remedies instantly administered. All the people he has failed with have died of this, and he knows no more how to treat a woman who has it, than the man in the moon. The alternative therefore if attended by him is to live if one has not it, to die if one has it, and the danger is so sudden that assistance cannot be procured from any other quarter. I have thought of hiding Sir H. Halford and Thynne in the two wings of my wardrobe, like statues in niches, for I think of Croft and Farquhar much as I do of vapour and vixen, and I shall expire of the fright of being left at their mercy.25
Harriet is clearly fretting about the risk of haemorrhage which I have mentioned before and doubts the competence of the men hired to care for her. She does mention a Sir Henry Halford who was the royal physician to King George II, George IV, William IV and a young Queen Victoria, and she also mentions ‘Thynne’ who may be Andrew Thynne the Irish lecturer on midwifery at St Bartholomew’s hospital and physician to the Westminster Lying-in Hospital.26 What isn’t stated in Harriet’s letters is why she didn’t employ these two physicians if those were the men she wanted to attend her. Then again, Croft and Farquhar were men who had been employed by ladies in her family for their labours, so she would have been more likely to trust them than to risk a new name and suffer as a result.
What we can see from these letters however is a young woman who is fearing the unexpected, unable to take the word of mothers who have given birth before her, and feeling totally out of control in terms of how she is looked after during and after labour. Luckily, this labour is successful and whilst in the early stages the child was laying in the wrong position and needed to be turned, Harriet commented some days later that ‘it is not at all unpleasant’,27 suggesting that far from the horror she anticipated, it appears she actually was lucky enough to have one of those elusive ‘quick births’.
Harriet had moved to Chiswick in London in the final weeks before her labour and as a result her brother Hartington was present at Chiswick when, on 24 October, Harriet gave birth to a daughter, Susan Leveson Gower. Hart wrote to Georgiana, who had been delayed at Castle Howard, and relayed the news,
Chiswick, October 1810
Harriet has happily made an end of her business and is none the worse and in high spirits. She did it five minutes after dinner and it was a providence that we had not all to leave her in possession of the dining room.
Bless you dear G. This is only a line to put you out of your suspense for it was not pleasant to think her unlike other people in her operations.
(In Harriet’s Hand):
Indeed, my dear G., it is not at all unpleasant, a miniature of the great operation. How free we all are;
Goodnight very dearest sister, parent of countless babes.
It seems like in this instance the fear of a difficult labour and worries over the skills of her accoucheurs were unfounded. Whilst the fear of the labour never fully diminished for Harriet, as we see in her subsequent letters, she becomes more practiced and used to the process in the next decade as she goes on to give birth to another daughter Georgiana ‘Dody’ Leveson Gower in September 1812, the son and heir Granville George Leveson Gower in May 1815 and William Leveson Gower in September 1816.
However, she would receive a shock in 1817, when she learned of the disastrous childbirth of Princess Charlotte under the care of the same male midwife that she, Harriet, had used for all her births – Sir Richard Croft. The shock of the tragedy is clear in her letters:
6 November 1817
We are all very anxious to hear of Princess Charlotte. I hope it is a boy this time.
8 November 1817
I feel quite unable to write upon any subject but one. We are all heartsick at this terrible event. Poor Princess Charlotte.
I have seen a letter from Lord Melville to Lord Harrowby – some thing [sic] in the position of the child was wrong, I believe, but from some of the symptoms it is supposed inflammation within much have taken place.
16 November 1817
I have been hearing a great many melancholy details of poor Princess Charlotte’s death. She bore her whole labour with a patience and courage that were quite heroic […] It is said that there was no-one [sic] cause sufficient to account for her death but that her whole machine and constitution was in so bad a state that she could not possibly have lived long
The event clearly left a lasting impression on Harriet who would have felt the connection to the princess through her own labours as well as the fact she had employed Sir Richard Croft. She was also due to have her fifth and last child Frederick Leveson Gower less than two years after this incident in May 1819, and whilst her initial letters to her sister Georgiana tell us that she is ‘rejoicing at being with child’,28 any thoughts or worries about the labour itself are sadly not recorded because Harriet’s primary correspondent, Georgiana, was in London with Harriet and so they had no need to write to one another.
Harriet and Granville also adopted the two Stewart children, the illegitimate offspring of Granville and Harriet’s Aunt, Lady Bessborough. Whilst it is suggested from Harriet’s letters that she did not mind the addition of the two eldest children into her household, the arrangement that was put in place suggests that Harriet only agreed to it on her terms. For their lifetime, Harriette and George Stewart did not know that Lady Bessborough was their mother. They knew Granville as their ‘guardian’, but there is no indication that they knew he was their father, and as far as we can tell from Harriet’s letters, knew nothing of whom their mother was. This is particularly distressing when you read about Lady Bessborough’s death in the second volume of Harriet’s letters by Virginia Surtees, when Harriet writes to her sister about how ‘affected’ Harriette is by the death of Lady B, but Harriet also acknowledges that the affliction would certainly have been worse had she known that the lady was actually her mother.
Whilst Harriet’s own unusual upbringing, alongside her father’s illegitimate children may explain why she was so understanding about bringing her husband’s illegitimate children into her household, it was also more common in those days than it would be now. Judith Schneid Lewis states that whilst adultery was tolerated so long as it ‘did not interfere with anything important, such as the inheritance of property’,29 children of affairs were generally treated differently – women were not allowed to keep their illegitimate children at home. Men with illegitimate children however could expect their children to remain with them, should their wife agree to it, and as we see with Harriet, those children could be integrated nicely into a home environment.
Whilst this is undoubtedly unfair for the woman, the prospect of divorcing her husband in order to either retain her lover, her illegitimate children or both could lead her to lose access to her legitimate children, as well as loss of reputation and economic security. We see this in the case of Georgiana Devonshire who was threatened with banishment from her three children and a divorce if she did not give up the illegitimate child she had to Charles Grey.
The two illegitimate children were introduced into the Leveson Gower household in 1812, when Susan was just 2 years old and Harriet was eight months pregnant with her second child, Georgiana. Their arrivals also coincided with Harriet and Granville renting their own country house, Tixal in Staffordshire, which allowed them to make a permanent home which could support the children. Betty Askwith suggests that Harriet noted to Georgiana that the children coming to Tixal was for a trial period, but she also notes that it was soon obvious in Harriet’s letters that the affection she felt for the little Stewarts meant the arrangement would become permanent. Indeed, the relationship between Harriet and Harriette Stewart seems to have been one full of affection and friendship as Harriet wrote to her sister not long after Harriette’s arrival that ‘she gains on me every hour,’ and just a year later she writes to Harriette herself ‘you do, my dearest love, contribute very much to my happiness and I love you very dearly.’30
It is incredibly hard to find anecdotal information about pregnancy and childbirth from this period, mainly because it was becoming a very private matter for women and families, and also because it concerned a lady at her most exposed and vulnerable and so it was not often spoken about in letters, periodicals or diaries. Some women of course did talk about it, such as Harriet and Lady Charlotte Guest, and it is these anecdotes which we are particularly grateful for because they give us an insight into how women of the period coped with pregnancy and childhood. Nevertheless, recording such an intimate period in one’s life was not usual and so aside from Harriet, the other ladies in this study did not record their experiences, so we can only document the children they did have and suppose that, as both Elizabeth and Mary had more than one child, they must have both had positive pregnancy and labour experiences.
Whilst Harriet and Granville are the only couple in this study who welcomed illegitimate children into their home, thereby increasing the number of children who depended on them, they are not the family who produced the most children. That title must go to the Duke and Duchess of Rutland who, over a twenty-year period between 1799 and 1820, welcomed ten children into their palatial home at Belvoir Castle.
In the present duchess’s book Belvoir Castle: 1000 years of Family Art and Architecture the duchess mentions that Elizabeth’s husband, the 5th Duke ‘left her to cope on her own at Belvoir for months at a time’ when he had to take part in his ‘regimental and public commitments’.31 She notes that during the first Christmas as chatelaine of Belvoir Castle, Elizabeth played host to a holiday party whilst she was four months into her first pregnancy and whilst the 5th Duke was in London. In two letters from Christmas Day and Boxing Day we can see that whilst she was probably succeeding in hosting the party currently residing at the castle, she was missing her husband enormously and emotions were clearly running high:
25 December 1799, Letter from Elizabeth to John Henry, I am at this moment expecting with the most anxious impatience, you dear most wicked man, a letter, which if it tells me that you are safe and well will make me if not quite happy yet much more so than I am at present, if I should not hear from you today I know not what I shall do …
I am almost sure you think of me sometimes; it was very cruel of you leaving me behind, but I have nevertheless some little idea that it was your goodness and affection for me which made you do it, and that though I must confess comforts me in some degree for the misfortune of not seeing and not being with you, for so long a time as a week must appear to me, although you told me it would be soon passed, yet I fear it will be a very very long one, and not at all a merry Christmas.
Boxing Day 1799, Letter from Elizabeth to John Henry, My eyes are too full of tears at this moment, to be able to see what I write, but surely you will excuse me, I cannot, really bear being so far from you; you will think me a very silly creature.
Elizabeth is clearly missing her husband and is certainly upset at being left alone on their first Christmas together whilst she is four months pregnant with her first child. We do not have the return letters from John Henry, but in a letter from October of that year he said, ‘nor is there any subject upon which I reflect with greater delight, than your constant affection for me’, which shows that the couple did have a very expressive relationship.
From letters between Elizabeth and John Henry from this time, we also know that Elizabeth did not want to labour her first child at Belvoir Castle, it still being in a state of disrepair and disorder. Instead she spoke of wanting to travel to London for her confinement, and it seems that this is what she did, at least for the first of her labours, because in May 1800, Caroline Isabella Manners was born in London.
Just eighteen months after the birth of Caroline, a sister, Elizabeth Frederica Manners joined the nursery, and although it is not recorded, it is probable that this birth also happened at the family’s London home. The births of her two daughters came close together, but then for the next three years there were no further pregnancies, which allowed Elizabeth to work on the improvements to Belvoir Castle. Then in 1804 Caroline, Elizabeth’s eldest daughter, died from a respiratory illness, perhaps tuberculosis or pneumonia at 4½ years old. This was a devastating blow for both Elizabeth and John Henry and rare surviving letters from this time show that they were prepared for Caroline’s death, her health being bad for some time, but were still shocked when it happened. It was another two years before another child was born, a third daughter, Emmeline Charlotte Elizabeth Manners. She was born in May 1806, the same month as Caroline’s birthday, and so it must have been an incredibly emotional birth for Elizabeth.
In June 1807 she gave birth to a son, George John Henry but, tragically, he died after just a few weeks. It was a further two years until Elizabeth was strong enough to have another child, either mentally or physically we do not know, although we can assume both. Her fifth child, Katharine Isabella Manners was born in February 1809 and, just eighteen months later, a sixth child and fourth daughter, Adeliza Elizabeth Gertrude Manners joined the family nursery. Both girls appear to have been born healthy and thrived in the nursery alongside their older sisters Elizabeth and Emmeline. In August 1813 Elizabeth gave birth to another son, whom she named George John Frederick Manners. As with most of the other births, we do not have any evidence of how healthy the child was at birth, although there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. Tragically, at just 10 months old, little George also passed away, and Elizabeth and John Henry were thrown into a pit of grief.
1814 proved to be a turning point for Elizabeth and John Henry in terms of their difficulty in producing a healthy male heir and in May 1815 Elizabeth gave birth to a healthy son, Charles Cecil John Manners who would, in time, become the 6th Duke of Rutland after his father’s death. Two more sons were to complete the Manners nursery, John James Robert Manners in 1818 and George John Manners, named after his two elder brothers, in June 1820. These two final pregnancies, whilst successful in producing healthy children, took their toll on Elizabeth and she spent much of her time at the family estate in Cheveley Park, recovering.
What we see when we look back on the years between 1801 and 1814, are events peppered with immense celebration and also immense tragedy. Previous historians have argued that because in previous centuries before contraception was invented, families had a large number of children, losses were felt less, and a mother could even forget the loss of a child by replacing it with another. This is absolutely incorrect, and we see this particularly with Elizabeth Manners who never forgot the children she had lost. As previously noted, when thinking about her death during a particularly nasty illness (although not the one that killed her), she requested that when she died she have a tomb with a monument of herself in white marble, embracing the children she had lost. Similarly, her husband John Henry, when completing the Elizabeth Saloon in her memory, had portraits painted into the ceiling decoration of Elizabeth and himself, as well as all of their children, including those who had died.
Mary and Justinian Isham had only three children. Considering the speed with which Mary gave birth to her children, as well as the large number of children that Justinian’s parents and grandparents had, it is rather unusual that Mary and Justinian only had three. Perhaps there were some complications arising from the birth of their youngest son and that prevented their ability to have more children, or maybe they were simply contented with the family size they had and so did not desire any more, we do not know.
Mary and Justinian married in May 1812 and it was almost two years later when they welcomed their first child, Mariette Isham in February 1814. Mary and Justinian were still living primarily with Mary’s family at Elm Park in Ireland, however, as we have noted with Elizabeth and Harriet, and as was most common at the time, Mary chose London as the place for her confinement. In 1774 the Isham family’s London house was 11 Wimpole Street, Cavendish Square, London. Mary’s family did not have a house in London and so it is most likely that, rather than renting somewhere especially for the birth, they used the Isham family home which may have still been at Wimpole Street.
Mary’s second child and first son Justinian Vere Isham was born at the family home Elm Park in Ireland in November 1816. We have no records to say why they decided to have the child there instead of London, indeed there is no surviving information to tell us if it even was a conscious decision. However, given the distance from London to Elm Park, especially as a sea crossing was required, means that we can more confidently state that the confinements in London and then Elm Park were planned. Perhaps Mary had been very lucky in her first labour and so felt comfortable giving birth a second time at home. Family events and personal reasons could have kept the young couple in Ireland in 1816 rather than travelling to London; Mary’s mother Deborah had died nineteen months earlier and her father was to die just ten months after the birth of the baby and so it is plausible to suggest that Mary and Justinian stayed at Elm Park to support the family and so Mary, as the eldest daughter, could look after her younger sisters and her father.
Mary’s father died in September 1817 and, in the following April, Justinian’s own father died at Lamport Hall. In September of 1818, presumably after observing the mourning period at Elm Park and ensuring all family matters were settled, the couple and their two children journeyed to Northamptonshire so that Justinian could take up his role as the 8th Baronet. Charles Edmund Isham, the couple’s youngest son, was the only child of theirs to be born at Lamport Hall just over a year later in December 1819, a year after they had moved to Northamptonshire. Again, it is curious that this time they chose not to journey to London for the birth, however if Mary had been lucky at Elm Park and had an easy birth, that would explain why she felt comfortable enough to give birth at home in Northamptonshire. Also, Justinian was not a member of parliament and so he was not required to go to London for the season, meaning they were more likely to be at their family home around the Christmas period.
Once the actual childbirth was over, the period of recovery could begin, and in some ways this was just as regimented as the period preceding the labour. The confinement certainly did not end once the child was born and the modern notion of giving birth in the morning and leaving hospital to go home in the afternoon would have been a horrific prospect to a nineteenth-century woman.
Whilst many of the rituals surrounding childbirth and recovery such as caudle drinking (where all the ladies of the house would sup from a communal cauldron a mixture of barley gruel with wine and spices) were starting to lose popularity by the 1770s,32 others, such as keeping the lying-in chamber dark and warm, seem to have persisted. In 1812 when Lady Maria Duncannon (wife to Harriet’s once supposed intended) began her confinement, her rooms were kept very dark and voices were kept soft and quiet. It was so comforting that Lady Bessborough, whilst visiting her daughter-in-law, stated that she could have fallen asleep quite comfortably.
Judith Schneid Lewis writes that ‘many letters of the period indicate that women’s eyes were unusually sensitive to light, probably as a result of continued darkness. All activities requiring their use were postponed, even until after the woman began moving about. She notes an interesting letter from Elizabeth Manners to her daughter Lady Elizabeth Drummond in 1825 after the latter had given birth to her first child, claiming she should let her husband read the letter aloud that she had sent ‘as it is not proper to read too soon’.33 The first letter written (by the new mother) was therefore an important point in the recovery process.34
On 25 October 1810, Harriet wrote a letter to her brother the Marquis of Hartington telling him all about the baby who, according to the letters, had been born just the day before.
25 October 1810
My little girl has begun dressing very fine; she is really beautiful with a presence like Lady Hertford [favourite of the Prince of Wales] […] The servants say to me ‘C’est milord, c’est absolutement milord’ [‘it is mi’lord’ referring to the child’s likeness to either her father or grandfather, it is not entirely clear], but I dare not yet be sanguine about it. Oh if you could know how adorable milord has been – but I will not embark upon that subject or trust myself to say one quarter of that I feel towards him.35
Whilst the letter is dated 25 October, it may be that Harriet dictated this letter rather than writing it herself. It could also be that the date is slightly wrong as the language and nature of the letter seems to hint at more time having passed than just one day. We also know that there are not many letters, if any, surviving after this one until June the following year as Harriet and Georgiana were in London together and so there was little need for Harriet to write. Furthermore, after her second birth on 23 September 1812, it was a whole month before the next letter appeared to Georgiana and the context of the letter suggests it may be the first she has written to her sister since giving birth,
23 October 1812
I am entirely recovered from my confinement, headache, weakness &c. and have had the ingenuity to catch a most dreadful cold and entirely to have lost my voice with hoarseness. Think how inefficient I must be here.36
This seems like a much more reasonable time for the recovery and suggests a more gradual movement out of the confinement chambers and back to regular rooms and routines.
The time during confinement after the birth was usually expected to be around a month and would have been the time when a mother, should she choose to, would breastfeed her baby. In the early decades of the eighteenth-century breastfeeding was done by a wet nurse, a young woman who would have been chosen to feed the child in its infancy. Amanda Foreman gives some context into breastfeeding in the period:
Women had used wet-nurses for over 700 years, and it was only recently that social commentators had begun to challenge the practice. The fashion of décolletage played a large part in discouraging breast-feeding. It was as important to have an attractive cleavage as it was to have clear skin and good hair. As soon as a pregnancy was over, women resorted to elaborate procedures to drive back the milk and reduce the size of the breasts. One remedy was to apply lint around the nipple, another was the use of hareskin treated with ointments. The various methods frequently caused infections and inflammations, and many women developed tumours as a result. Medical opinion held that a woman’s milk was converted blood, through which her characteristics, and her diseases, could be passed on to the child. In consequence, the criteria for a wet-nurse were extremely precise. A whole list of features barring women from wet-nursing: redheads or those with freckles or blemishes were automatically disqualified, for example. Height and intelligence were important factors too. The most highly sought-after wet-nurse was a woman in her early twenties, with clear skin, blue eyes, brown hair and a good disposition.37
It has also been suggested by Valerie Grosvenor Myer that ‘it seems to have been the custom to send tiny children away from home for a year or two, both in England and in France. French parents often sent a blank death certificate with the baby in case it died.’38
Harriet’s mother, Georgiana Cavendish, the 5th Duchess of Devonshire, breastfed all three of her children including Harriet and she is one of the earliest, and most notable examples of a breastfeeding mother in the aristocracy. Foreman notes that contemporary newspapers supported Georgiana’s parenting choices stating, ‘The Morning Post applauded her, remarking how sad it was “that females in high life should generally be such strangers to the duty of a mother, as to render one instance to the contrary so singular”.’39 Not only that, but she breastfed Little G and Hartington for an entire year which was almost unheard of. For Georgiana especially, who was so much in the public eye, breastfeeding was a statement not only to her family but to society as a whole, a maternal statement that proved she could be an excellent society hostess and an excellent mother at the same time.
By the time Harriet, Elizabeth, and Mary were starting their families in the early 1800s, breastfeeding had become more acceptable amongst aristocratic families, although it wasn’t commonplace and seems to have remained individual choice. Judith Schneid Lewis writes that ‘very short intervals that characterised [her study group] indicate that the majority of women probably did not nurse their own children.’40 Surprisingly, medical experts of the time urged women to breastfeed their own child, because they were aware of how beneficial it was for the baby. Also, attending to a practice such as breastfeeding could motivate the mother into a speedier recovery. However, sometimes the mother would be required to give up nursing a child herself if she was unable to provide enough milk or nutrients to the baby. In a letter to her grandmother on 26 August 1807, Harriet notes that Lady Duncannon had ‘been obliged to give up nursing as they were alarmed at the very great weakness of the child.’41 This suggests that breastfeeding was quite common amongst Harriet’s circle of female acquaintance, although it clearly was not accepted as something that they ‘must do’ as Harriet chose not to breastfeed any of her children and employed a wet nurse for all her babies. This again harks back to the nature v. nurture debate as, should Harriet simply be following the rule of her upbringing, she would have nursed her own babies. She chose not to, and so we see some differences in her personality which were separate from her own personal experience.
Confinement officially ended when the mother was ‘churched’ which was the final ritual in the process. Women would visit their local chapel where they would give thanks to God for the safe delivery of the child and their swift recovery. This was traditionally to be the first visit that a woman made out of the house, although many larger country houses had their own chapels inside such as at Belvoir Castle, Chatsworth and Castle Howard which meant the ritual could be performed in private. This change to a smaller more private churching ceremony within one’s own home meant that the ritual itself began to lose importance. The christening instead, where godparents were selected and parties could be held became increasingly important.
In 1807 Harriet mentions attending the christening of Elizabeth and John Henry Manners first son George John Henry Manners who was born on 26 June,
1 August 1807
I was at the Duchess of Rutland’s yesterday after her little boy’s christening. The King was Godfather, Lord St Helens stood for him. The Godmothers, the Dowager Duchess and Lady George Cavendish.42
We can see from this letter that the christening of children had become much more important than the churching ceremony and talk of whom one might select as godparents, or have the honour bestowed on them of a royal godparent, would have been important society news.
The christening was probably the last time one would hear about the children of aristocratic families, especially within wider social circles and in the newspapers, as they tended to be raised throughout their childhood away from society and in the company of nursemaids and governesses. In the late eighteenth century, Lewis notes that there was a shift in the lives of the aristocracy from living a purely public life, to a life which was increasingly private and more ‘together’ as a unit. This coincided with changes in breastfeeding and rituals surrounding public churching etc. Increasingly families were also taking a much more private approach to their children’s upbringing as well as their birth. One key example of this is the use of nicknames for children, which attached more sentiment and emotion to the relationship. We see this most clearly in the Cavendish family, where Georgiana Devonshire nicknamed all three of her children, and even Harriet nicknamed her own children, Georgiana for example was known as Dody.
Amanda Vickery also talks about the theory of the move from public to private spheres in her book The Gentleman’s Daughter, although it is clear that she does not agree with it as fervently as some other historians. In a nutshell, the theory is that during the late 1700s and first half of the 1800s there was a rise in the separation between the day-to-day worlds of men and women – men’s workplaces began to move away from the home and into offices, factories, cities and town centres. Homes, especially for the wealthy or well off, were moved further away from bustling centres into more rural and natural settings where it was a calmer and cleaner place to live. This resulted in a greater separation of men and women as the woman was more likely to stay at home and the man more likely to be in town or in the city working. This was the emergence of ‘separate spheres’43 and this coincided with the move from public to private. As the home and work lives were separated, what a family chose to share with the world outside the domestic space also began to change. Where men had conducted business and meetings at home where the lady of the house was involved in welcoming visitors into the house, a switch to conducting business within specific premises or within a town or city meant that women were more likely only to welcome friends and family to their homes. The home therefore became a more private place, less open to people. The rituals which had in previous centuries made the home even more public such as bedding ceremonies at weddings, public childbirth and the rituals of announcing a birth and the churching ceremony all began to decline in popularity as women became more used to their home being a private refuge away from prying eyes. This, however is a simplified explanation of what separate spheres were and whilst this move certainly did happen, it was more gradual over the decades and centuries than some historians claim, and it was caused by many different changes in society, economics, politics etc.
One aspect of a move to a more private sphere was the raising and education of children, particularly in the gentry and aristocracy. In the architecture of the country house, as we have seen in the previous chapter, children were moved into their own wing of a house, being given every provision they needed to be able to live, learn and grow in the comfort of their own home. They also increasingly had their own staff who would care for them and educate them. This reduced the need for younger children to have to accompany their parents everywhere that they went, although gentry and aristocratic children often moved with their parents to different estates across the country, and, even abroad, they had their own households so that their lives could continue as usual no matter where they were located. Parents were free to complete their public duties knowing their children were safely at home with their nannies and governesses.
A nanny is often portrayed as a soft, cuddly woman who was present to look after babies and small children, devoted to her brood and with less intellect than a governess; she was happy within her place and probably mixed a lot easier with the staff below stairs. The governess however was much different. Whilst children in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were often ‘fostered’ by other families (this means that they left home and moved to another country house where several children would be educated together, almost always boys), in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries children began to be educated at home with private governesses and tutors, before taking up formal education in their early teen years.
‘The 1851 census revealed that 25,000 women earned their living teaching and caring for other women’s children.’44 This occurred in part because there were a great many educated, middle class women whose families had suffered as a result of an economic slump in the early nineteenth century as a result of bank failures and the Napoleonic Wars. Those families required further income than they might have needed in previous decades and so the position of the governess was an attractive role for such women. They were neither working class so did not have to stoop to the perceived embarrassment of shop or factory work, but the role of a governess also allowed them to use the skills and education they had been given when being raised themselves as young ladies.
The Brontë sisters immortalised the position of governess within nineteenth-century literature, painting the aristocrat as a cruel master and mistress, however sometimes it could be the opposite. Sometimes, aristocratic families learned of cruel tutors and governesses, punishing their children and treating them harshly. This may be due to the ‘in-between’ nature of a governess in that they were not considered to be true members of the below stairs staff, often having their own bedroom adjoining the children’s nursery in the main part of the house, and eating their meals alongside the children. Neither though, were they considered part of the family and were not allowed to mix with the family except to bring the children to see their parents when requested, and to occasionally accompany the family on visits if the children were present. This in-between status meant that many governesses and nannies were rather isolated and that could result in them taking their frustration out on the children they were supposed to be looking after. They were also involved in the children’s education and so they might be more intelligent than a lot of the other staff within a household. This could create a sense of arrogance from some tutors and governesses, further isolating them from their peers and again leading to resentment of the children they were caring for.
Harriet seemingly suffered with a violent governess when it came to her own children. According to Betty Askwith,
Marie, the children’s maid, told Harriet that Mademoiselle Eward had frequently shaken little Georgy until her nose bled. […] the next day she made a full confession, avowing that her chief fault had been in attempting to take charge of very small children (poor little Georgy had been handed over to her at the age of four!) but that she now felt she would be able to control herself. Harriet was doubtful at first – ‘Her temper and her character are so violent that I fear her power of subduing them for any length of time’ – but a month later matters seem to have resolved themselves.45
You might wonder why Harriet did not fire Mdlle Eward and have her sent from the house; the reason it seems is that governesses were hard to find and Harriet had experience from her own sister Georgiana who, after firing her first governess, had much trouble in locating a new one. Luckily, it seems that after confronting the lady, Harriet had a much more positive experience with her, and there were no more incidents with the children. In fact, Mdlle Eward stayed with the family until all the children were grown up and there were supposedly many tears when the time came for her to leave the family.
A governess or a tutor was an important stage in a child’s upbringing in the nineteenth century – they taught their charges all the basics of education that they would need either in life or for when they started school. This was, as expected, determined by the gender of the child. Boys often went off to school as young as 7 or 8, and girls were left at home. For that reason, girls often spent more time under the instruction of a governess, learning different subjects as they grew. Reading, writing, arithmetic and languages would have been some of the staple subjects for a younger girl, however as she progressed into adolescence she might add history and geography but mostly her education would consist of learning to draw, to play an instrument such as the piano, and general deportment and how to behave as a lady. Learning to walk in the correct manner, to sit, stand, talk, eat and converse as a lady were all essential tasks that would improve a young lady’s chances of catching a husband and improving the standings of one’s family and so whilst it is not fair that female daughters were not allowed to go to schools alongside their brothers, they were not dismissed within the household, but were taught from an early age of their key role in the advancement of the family and in their own marriages when the time came.
Some young ladies were sent to ‘finishing schools’ where they would be further educated and taught all the different ways to act like a lady. The finishing school in the nineteenth century became a popular way to finish a daughter’s education and to give her a little extra finesse before she was launched into society. For between twenty and forty guineas per year a young lady could be sent to a number of reputable establishments across the country, many close to London, where the education she had gained at home would be broadened. At the time, they were known simply as ‘schools’ or ‘seminaries’, the term ‘finishing’ is a more modern description of the establishment which came around from the perceived result of having attended such a school.
When it came to choosing a school for one’s sons, it was both a significant choice to make as it said much about both the social and political standing of the family, but it was also relatively simple as there were only a certain number of schools which were deemed suitable for aristocratic sons. The obvious choice is Eton and we know that Eton was the school of choice for many generations of the Manners family, with most of the previous dukes being educated there, including John Henry and his sons.
Justinian and Mary Isham sent their eldest son Justinian Vere to Eton in September 1830, just short of his fourteenth birthday. It seems that before this, the children were educated either at a local school or by a private tutor. It is not clear why they chose Eton for Justinian, however as the forerunner of elite education for aristocratic children it would have been a good place for the young man to meet other young men of the same and higher standing as him and to make new friendships that would benefit him in adulthood when he inherited the baronetcy and estate. Justinian Vere spent four years at Eton school until the summer before his eighteenth birthday in 1804, the customary amount of time for an Etonian. Mary then notes in her diary that Justinian Vere travelled to Dublin but it does not say for how long. Perhaps he wished to visit his uncle and aunts and broaden his travel horizons for a while.
In 1804, just as Justinian Vere was preparing to leave Eton, his younger brother Charles Edmund was reaching the age that he too needed to go away to school. In a move that has not been explained in letters or diaries, Justinian and Mary chose to send their younger son to Rugby instead of Eton. There could be many reasons for this decision, Charles differed from Justinian Vere in personality and so perhaps they thought Rugby would be a better match for him; perhaps Justinian Vere hadn’t settled well at Eton or there had been incidents of bullying; perhaps Justinian and Mary did not have the available funds to support a second son through Eton, and as a second son Charles was not expected to inherit; perhaps, for the sake of allowing each child to flourish the best they can they separated them; or maybe they had simply heard from friends how good Rugby was as a school and decided to send Charles Edmund there instead.
Charles Edmund had been sent away to school at an earlier age than his elder brother, being sent to a school in Misterton in 1830, the same year that his brother went to Eton, although Charles Edmund was only 10 years old. There is no evidence as to why Mary sent both boys off to school at the same time, even though they were at different levels of their education; perhaps Mary and Justinian thought that Charles may be left behind in terms of his development if he was the only child still at home and so, for the benefit of improving his education and social skills, they decided to send him to Misterton before then sending him to Rugby.
In 1834 Charles moved from Misterton to Rugby and began the standard four years of public education that his brother had just completed. Justinian Vere on the other hand, having spent six months either in Dublin or travelling between Northamptonshire and London, began his university education at Christ Church College at Oxford. We do not know what he studied, but given his passion for astrology and philosophy, it is possible that he studied a classical subject. He was at Oxford for two years before embarking on what we would now call a ‘gap year’, although at the time it was known by a much grander name, ‘The Grand Tour’.
The Grand Tour was a period of about a year where a young gentleman or lady would travel across Europe from England through France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and other smaller European countries, learning about the culture, meeting people they would not have the opportunity to meet in England, and travelling on their own to gain maturity and independence. They were not quite alone as one would be now, for example Justinian Vere travelled with at least one valet, a manservant who would accompany him, help him with hotel arrangements and ensure that he was always properly attired. One of the major results of the grand tour, indeed the reason that it became so well known to historians in later centuries, is because of the amount of art, sculpture and furniture that young men and women brought back with them from the continent and their travels as well as the previously discussed impact on British architecture. Most English country houses today owe much of their art and sculpture collections to young men travelling and spending their parent’s money on the continent.
Charles Edmund, after his period at Rugby and a few years spent at Lamport, followed his brother to Oxford, although again he chose to go to a different college from his brother, attending Brasenose instead. Brasenose College in the nineteenth century, as described on the college’s own website, ‘had the reputation of being one of the wealthiest in Oxford and it had become the college of the country gentry, perceived as a place where the sons of gentlemen got a modicum of education and did a great deal of horse racing and fox hunting’.46 Charles would also tour the continent, but would do it some years later, after the death of his father and his brother. His collections of art, sculpture and furniture are still on display at Lamport Hall.
In his memoirs, Harriet and Granville’s son Frederick Leveson Gower talks about his education, stating that neither he, nor his parents took his education very seriously and whilst he enjoyed the time spent with several of his tutors, he did not learn too much and as such when he attended Eton he struggled,
At the early age of eight I was sent to Dr Everard’s fashionable school at Brighton which was called the Young House of Lords owing to most of the boys being related to the peerage, many of them future peers, and among them several Dukes. We were treated luxuriously, so much so that the Doctor, who was as improvident as he was kind, soon afterwards became a bankrupt and fled the country, his debts amounting to thousands of pounds. […] The drawback to the school was that we learned little, which at the time I did not much resent. In due course of time I was sent to Eton, where my life was not a very happy one and, unlike most Etonians, I do not retain a very pleasant impression of it.47
But we must not forget the daughters of the house. Elizabeth and John Henry had four daughters who were all similar ages, there being only nine years between the birth of the eldest and youngest. They would have been raised together within the Belvoir nursery and formed a close bond which lasted their lifetimes. They also doted on their little brothers. When the time came for each daughter to leave the nursery and to be presented at court, we see that they did not instantly find a partner and marry. Lady Elizabeth Frederica was 20 when she married Andrew Robert Drummond in 1821, Lady Emmeline Charlotte Elizabeth was 25 when she married Charles Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie in 1831, Lady Katherine Isabella was 21 when she married Frederick Hervey, 2nd Marquess of Bristol, and Lady Adeliza Elizabeth Gertrude was 38 when she married Reverend F. J. Norman. Whilst Adeliza’s marriage was unusually late, the other three daughters seem to have chosen to marry a number of years after their presentation into society. Perhaps it was the suggestion of Elizabeth who, whilst she was very happy within her marriage, would recall that first gloomy Christmas at Belvoir at the age of 19, when she was alone and carrying her first child, and preferred her daughters to be slightly older and more mature when it came the time for marriage and family.
Harriet and Granville’s daughters were both quite young when they married their husbands but his illegitimate daughter Harriette Stewart, being six years older than Susan, the eldest legitimate child, was married a number of years before her sisters. She met George Osborne, who would inherit the titles of 2nd Baron Godolphin and 8th Duke of Leeds, whilst living at The Hague with her parents. When Harriet and Granville moved to Paris, Harriette and George continued to live in the Netherlands, although following a difficult miscarriage they moved to Paris to be closer to her family and continued to move with the family in subsequent years. The marriage between Harriette and George was a happy one and they had seven children together between 1828 and 1842.
Susan and Georgiana Leveson Gower were to marry a number of years later, within a few months of each other. Harriet’s letters suggest that the two daughters were often coupled together in their later years, attending their first ball on the same night, being presented to society at the same time and even marrying in the same year, despite there being eighteen months between them in age. In 1833, Susan married George Pitt-Rivers, 4th Baron Rivers and Georgiana married Alexander Fullerton, who had worked closely with Granville in Paris for a number of years and continued to do so after his marriage.
Georgiana Fullerton became a very successful writer and novelist in her adulthood, writing a number of books, her most successful of which was Ellen Middleton, published in 1844.48 She also converted to Roman Catholicism, wrote several verses and religious pieces, and founded Saint Walburga’s School in Bournemouth which is still operating as a private school today and so she was an incredibly successful woman. Clearly, she was influenced by the strong personality and capabilities of her mother, and indeed we know that Georgiana and Harriet were close throughout their lives and often conversed together on matters of religion and study and so it is clear that Harriet supported her daughters career.
Having children was considered a serious occupation for women, and was probably seen more as a ‘job’ for the aristocracy for they relied upon ‘heirs and spares’ to ensure that primogeniture (the act of passing estates and titles through the bloodline to sons) continued. However, in the nineteenth century, women were starting to broaden their roles from simply wife and mother into other areas such as project manager and designer as we see with Elizabeth Manners and Mary Isham and political influencer as we see with Harriet. This makes the frequency of their childbearing even more admirable as they simultaneously bore children and continued to live full and busy lives, much as women do today, thus challenging perceived views of aristocratic women of the period. These women were mothers, managers and multi-taskers who bore the responsibility of raising the next generation.