Aristocrats Review

The Lennox sisters were born aristocrats, with links to the English peerage and cousins to the King himself. Their elite status, coupled with their vast fortunes and exclusive social circles, puts them in sharp contrast to the lower and middle class cultures of eighteenth century Britain. With access to the best of everything and plenty of servants to keep their houses in order, Emily, Sarah, Caroline and Louisa did not have a daily routine that corresponded to most Britons. Wealth did not keep them free of tragedy however, and the death of children, infidelity in spouses, and sickness upset their hopes time and again.
Though the eighteenth century ushered in manners and mores that came to be associated with the middle class, Aristocrats reveals the behavior of elites who had the luxury of dictating taste and style without the self conscious study of societal norms. Instead of policing their identities to correspond with gender norms and societal expectations, these women, secure in their social and financial status, easily transition between the so called separate spheres of eighteenth century life. Emily and Caroline were deeply invested and involved with their husbands political careers, though they did not consider themselves bluestockings or agitators for women’s equal rights. Whereas their non elite counterparts may have had to consult husbands or fathers before making large purchases, Emily, Caroline and Louisa spend with abandon based on their whims and desires with self assurance. While some eighteenth century middle class men and women were reading The Spectator for hints on how to acquire taste, the Lennox sisters were confidently displaying it in their dress, demeanor, and decor.
After marrying the richest man in Ireland, Louisa spent the next 25 years carefully decorating and enhancing the beauty of their palatial home with the very best furnishings, oil paintings, fabrics and furniture. Her sisters called this home-decorating process Louisa’s "business." A joke among the sisters, it revealed the impossibility of Louisa having a real business; not because of her gender but because of her class. Both the idea of earning money and the restraint of thrift were absent from elite lives. Emily’s marriage to Lord Kildare of Ireland brought a house worth forty-six thousand pounds and an income of fifteen thousand pounds a year from rents. Emily spent this and more, driving them into debt. By the 1770s, the Kildare’s owed nearly one hundred fifty thousand pounds. While Tillyard suggests that Lord Kildare became sexually excited by Emily spending money, there could be several other reasons she was so free with credit. The British aristocracy was often in debt, but since their credit was linked to their status as a peer, they could continue to buy and ignore the bills until they could pay them. By eighteenth century mores, it would have been very insulting for a shopkeeper to ask for cash payment from any person of means, and since the aristocrats had the upper hand in the social and political hierarchy of Britain, many nobles simply paid at their leisure. After shopping in London in 1757, Emily wrote Lord Kildare "My scheme is to pay my old bills only, and any of the trifling new ones; but it would be too much to pay all indeed. Besides the people here never worry one for money you know."
The elite status of the Lennox sisters is shown in many ways. Evidence of the "consumer revolution" in eighteenth century market economies comes to life in lists of household items and consumables. Many of the mass quantities of supplies purchased by Emily, Caroline and Louisa were luxury items. Tillyard reports Kildare’s alarm of "… the quantities of silk dresses, jewels, rolls of taffeta, yards of hand painted wallpaper, bundles of books and expanses of carpet" bought by his wife. It was not merely the acquisition of consumable goods, but the very attitude of the elite that marked their status. Instead of ordering books by title, Emily had a standing order with a bookseller to send her "all the new books" without concern for quantity and cost. Though the middle class congregated in coffeehouses and joined in the discussion of politics, the Lennox women continued to live life under the rules of the Ancient Regime, commingling with other nobles and never carrying cash.
The Lennox family charts a change in eighteenth century aristocratic behavior. The Duke and Duchess of Richmond had an arranged marriage, where they had learned to love each other out of duty. Caroline challenged this aristocratic notion of duty by eloping with Fox, a prominent politician but clearly middle class, with no royal blood. While the Duke rejects Kildare because of his Irish heritage, he objects more to Fox, who commits dishonor by stepping outside the bounds of an established hierarchy with nobles at the head. Richmond, who based his life on noble duty, was confused by the Whig values that allowed a man like Fox to marry up for his own political and financial gain. That he had talent did not matter; his blood was not good enough to mix with the Lennoxes.
Eighteenth century nobles and elites were transitioning into a public world while their middle class counterparts were attempting to domesticize communal space. Whereas the Duke of Richmond marries for duty, King, and country his daughters foray into the world of mutual affection and love without regard to aristocratic tradition. Each daughter has some generational (and personality) difference that influences her choice of husband and lifestyle, but all break with the wishes of their parents to honor their own desires.
Emily, as Lady Kildare, displays an interest in sex quite typical of stereotypes of the aristocratic woman. She ignores Kildare’s dalliances with the maid and jokes about taking a lover of her own. Caroline takes a more proprietary and middle class view of her husband, Fox, when she demands he not sleep with another social equal but limit himself to maids women of the lower class. This reveals sterotypes about lower class women’s sexual availability as well as the immoral and jaded aristocrats who seduce them.
Aristocrats, assembled from archives of entwined family letters over the course of seventy odd years, does much to illustrate eighteenth century elite life to modern readers. The cultural and sexual mores, the consumable goods and the marriage and life of Britain’s noble elites has been systematically reconstructed in chronological order from primary sources. Tillyard has added immensely to the understanding of the eighteenth century British aristocracy. At times perhaps too speculative, it nonetheless provides primary source evidence rich in political, economic, and gender based issues and is perhaps the most useful microhistory of eighteenth century cultural history yet to be written.In her biography of the Lennox sisters, Stella Tillyard reconstructs the lives of four eighteenth century women and their families through letters they wrote more than three hundred years ago. As a biographer, Tillyard gives herself more license than an historian would allow; often speculating on the feelings and emotions of her subjects that are not strictly obvious from the written record. In this case, however, Tillyard’s narration and clarifications knit the letters together into a cohesive whole, filling in spaces that might otherwise have left the reader wondering. The book is divided into five sections-the first two deal with the four sisters and their marriages to prominent (and not so prominent) men, and the last three with the general themes of their lives. The titles of the three thematic chapters are revealing; "Homes, Education, and Adultery" is followed by "Disaster and Renewal" and finally, "Old Age." Tillyard has subdivided the chapters with quotations from letters referring to events, and has added an appendix, several family trees, and color plates of portraits, facsimiles of the letters themselves, and photographs of the key properties owned by Lennox family. These additions are very helpful in the reading of the book, adding greatly to the understanding of the text.