Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories

Transcription

1 Master and Servant Leading historian offers a fascinating and compelling account of love, life and domestic service in eighteenth-century England. The book, situated in the regional and chronological epicentre of E. P. Thompson s The Making of the English Working Class and Emily Brontë s Wuthering Heights, focuses on the relationship between a Church of England clergyman (the Master of the title) and his pregnant maidservant. This case-study of people behaving in ways quite contrary to the standard historical account sheds new light on the much wider historical questions of Anglicanism as social thought, the economic history of the industrial revolution, domestic service, the Poor Law, literacy, education, and the very making of the English working class. It offers a unique meditation on the relationship between history and literature and will be of interest to scholars and students of industrial England, social and cultural history and English literature. carolyn steedman is Professor of History at the University of Warwick. Her previous publications include Strange Dislocations: Childhood and the Idea of Human Interiority, (1995) and Dust (2001).

2 Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories Series editors: Margot C. Finn, University of Warwick Colin Jones, University of Warwick Keith Wrightson, Yale University New cultural histories have recently expanded the parameters (and enriched the methodologies) of social history. Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories recognizes the plurality of current approaches to social and cultural history as distinctive points of entry into a common explanatory project. Open to innovative and interdisciplinary work, regardless of its chronological or geographical location, the series encompasses a broad range of histories of social relationships and of the cultures that inform them and lend them meaning. Historical anthropology, historical sociology, comparative history, gender history and historicist literary studies among other subjects all fall within the remit of Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories. Titles in the series include: 1 Margot C. Finn The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, M. J. D. Roberts Making English Morals: Voluntary Association and Moral Reform in England, Karen Harvey Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture 4 Phil Withington The Politics of Commonwealth: Citizens and Freemen in Early Modern England 5 Mark S. Dawson Gentility and the Comic Theatre of Late Stuart London 6 Julie-Marie Strange Death, Grief and Poverty in Britain, Sujit Sivasundaram Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacific, Rod Edmond Leprosy and Empire: A Medical and Cultural History 9 Susan K. Morrissey Suicide and the Body Politic in Imperial Russia 10 Master and Servant: Love and Labour in the English Industrial Age

3 Master and Servant Love and Labour in the English University of Warwick

4 cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York Information on this title: C 2007 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2007 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library ISBN hardback ISBN paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

5 Clio loves those who bred them better horses, Found answers to their questions, made their things. W. H. Auden, Makers of History (1960) I ll be bound, you re saving and I m doing my little all, that road. Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)

6 Contents List of maps Acknowledgements page viii ix Prologue 1 1 Introduction: on service and silences 13 2 Wool, worsted and the working class: myths of origin 29 3 Lives and writing 47 4 Labour 66 5 Working for a living 87 6 Teaching Relations The Gods Love Nelly s version Conclusion: Phoebe in Arcadia 217 Bibliography 231 Index 257 vii

7 Maps I II Map of the Haworth, Slaithwaite, Huddersfield and Halifax region, adapted from John Aikin, A New View of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles Around Manchester (1795) Sketch map of the woollen and worsted producing areas of the West Riding, late eighteenth century, adapted from Pat Hudson, Proto-industrialisation (1981) page x xi viii

8 Acknowledgements I have had the kindest and most encouraging readers for this book at its various stages of production. Professor Ted Royle was an invaluable source of information about the eighteenth-century West Riding and its religious communities. He alerted me to sources, introduced me to the twentieth-century fiction the worsted field produced, and told me when I had Phoebe Beatson walking along the wrong road to Halifax. Above all I value his judgement that I had pulled it off that is, convinced him at least, that Nelly Dean from Wuthering Heights was (and is) a kind of historian. Professor Jeremy Gregory provided an equally acute reading and alerted me to new ways of thinking about the role of eighteenth-century Anglicanism in self and social formation. I am extremely grateful for his interest. Bertrand Taithe was encouraging, not only in his final reading, but of all the stories of love and labour that I brought home to all of them from Kirklees Record Office. Vicky Taithe provided extraordinary insight into the twenty-first-century West Riding woollen and worsted manufacture and the reproduction of everyday life for its workers. I was pleased that Terry Eagleton read my manuscript and was so taken with the idea of a West Riding Enlightenment (and that his Heathcliff might find a place in it). Without Peter Mack s conversation about teaching the classics in early modern England, I would not have been able to understand what I do of John Murgatroyd s life, teaching and writing. I am extremely grateful for his help (and all his conversation). A version of this book was completed before the award of an Economic and Social Research Council Research Professorship in 2004, to work on Service, Society and the State: the Making of the Social in England ; but at the revision stage so much of what I had learned during my first eighteen months of research on the new project has entered the final version, that I must acknowledge the support of the ESRC in completing it (ESRC RES ). I dedicate this book to Nan Steedman, in acknowledgement of her interest and involvement in these long-dead people and for always promoting the possibility John Murgatroyd might be the father of Phoebe Beatson s child. She was wrong; but counter-narratives are the most useful of things for any kind of writer. ix

9 P e n n i Haworth n e s Halifax P e Huddersfield n n Slaithwaite Chapel i n e s Map 1 Map of the Haworth, Slaithwaite, Huddersfield and Halifax region, 1795 x

10 R. Wharfe Ilkley Arthington Otley Heptonstall Keighley Sowerby Bridge Oakworth Haworth Oxenhope Denholme Halifax Ovenden Bingley R. Aire R. Calder Slaithwaite Elland Kirkheaton Bradford Cleckheaton Hipperholme Huddersfield Almondbury Gomersal Dewsbury Batley Hunslet Ossett Leeds Thornhill Fleckton Emley Wakefield R. Colne Honley Barnsley Map 2 Sketch map of the woollen and worsted producing areas of the West Riding, late eighteenth century N worsted area fancy woollen area woollen area heavy woollen area