Early Professional Women in Northern Europe, c. 1650-1850 9781317146735, 1317146735

Citation preview

Early Professional Women in Northern Europe, c. 1650–1850

This book focuses on early examples of women who may be said to have anticipated, in one way or another, modern professional and/or career-oriented women. The contributors to the book discuss women who may at least in some respect be seen as professionally ambitious, unlike the great majority of working women in the past. In order to improve their positions or to find better business opportunities, the women discussed in this book invested in developing their qualifications and professional skills, took economic or other kinds of risks, or moved to other countries. Socially, they range from elite women to women of middle-class and lower middle-class origin. In terms of theory, the book brings fresh insights into issues that have been long discussed in the field of women’s history and are also debated today. However, despite its focus on women, the book is conceptually not so much focused on gender as it is on profession, business, career, qualifications, skills, and work. By applying such concepts to analyzing women’s endeavours, the book aims at challenging the conventional ideas about them. Johanna Ilmakunnas is acting professor of Finnish history at the University of Turku, Finland. Marjatta Rahikainen is a docent of social history at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen is a professor of Finnish history at the University of Turku, Finland.

Routledge Research in Early Modern History For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

In the same series: Social Thought in England, 1480–1730 From Body Social to Worldly Wealth A. L. Beier Dynastic Colonialism Gender, Materiality and the Early Modern House of Orange-Nassau Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline van Gent The Business of the Roman Inquisition in the Early Modern Era Germano Maifreda Cities and Solidarities Urban Communities in Pre-Modern Europe Edited by Justin Colson and Arie van Steensel James VI and Noble Power in Scotland 1578–1603 Edited by Miles Kerr-Peterson and Steven J. Reid Conversion and Islam in the Early Modern Mediterranean The Lure of the Other Edited by Claire Norton Plural Pasts Power, Identity and the Ottoman Sieges of Nagykanizsa Castle Claire Norton Witchcraft, the Devil, and Emotions in Early Modern England Charlotte-Rose Millar Early Professional Women in Northern Europe, c. 1650–1850 Edited by Johanna Ilmakunnas, Marjatta Rahikainen and Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen

Early Professional Women in Northern Europe, c. 1650–1850 Edited by Johanna Ilmakunnas, Marjatta Rahikainen and Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Johanna Ilmakunnas, Marjatta Rahikainen, and Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Johanna Ilmakunnas, Marjatta Rahikainen, and Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-4724-7134-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-57853-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figures List of tables List of contributors Acknowledgments   1 Women and professional ambitions in Northern Europe, c. 1650–1850

vii ix xi xv

1

JOHANNA ILMAKUNNAS, MARJATTA RAHIKAINEN AND KIRSI VAINIO-KORHONEN

  2 Midwives: Birthing care professionals in eighteenth-century Sweden and Finland

25

KIRSI VAINIO-KORHONEN

  3 Serving the prince as the first step of female careers: The electoral court of Munich, c. 1660–1840

43

BRITTA KÄGLER

  4 From mother to daughter: Noblewomen in service at the Swedish royal court, c. 1740–1840

69

JOHANNA ILMAKUNNAS

  5 Remarkable women artists: Flower painting and professional changes in Copenhagen, c. 1690–1790

91

ANNA LENA LINDBERG

  6 Performing women: The life and work of actresses in Stockholm, c. 1780–1850 MARIE STEINRUD

115

vi Contents   7 ‘Sister to the tailor’: Guilds, gender and the needle trades in eighteenth-century Europe

135

DEBORAH SIMONTON

  8 Independent managers: Female factory owners in the northern provinces of the Russian Empire, c. 1760–1810

159

GALINA ULIANOVA

  9 Urban opportunities: Women in the restaurant business in Swedish and Finnish cities, c. 1800–1850

177

MARJATTA RAHIKAINEN

10 Desirable qualifications and undesirable behaviour: Teachers in Swedish schools for poor children, c. 1780–1820

197

ÅSA KARLSSON SJÖGREN

11 Cross-cultural closeness: Foreign governesses in the Russian Empire, c. 1700–1850

217

OLGA SOLODYANKINA

12 Shaping middle-class and upper-class girls: Women as teachers of daughters of good families in the Baltic Sea world, c. 1780–1850

245

MARJATTA RAHIKAINEN

Select bibliography Index

265 273

Figures

4.1 Pehr Hilleström, Reading at Drottningholm Palace (Lektyr på Drottningholm), 1779. Oil on canvas, 74, 5 x 117 cm. Photo: Bodil Karlsson, Nationalmuseum, Public Domain (PD). 5.1 Georg Gsell, Maria Sibylla Merian, drawing, engraved by Jakob Houbraken 1717. Copyright Uppsala University Library, Sweden. 5.2 Maria Sibylla Merian, Flamed Tulips, signed ‘M. S. G.’, gouache on vellum. The Royal Danish Collection, Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen. Photo: Kit Weiss. 5.3 Johanna Marie Fosie, Nosegay, signed ‘Johanne Fosie 1754’, gouache, 21.1 x 15.8 cm. The Royal Danish Collection, Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen. Photo: Kit Weiss. 5.4 Johan Hörner, Johanna Marie Fosie, signed and dated 1758, oil on canvas, 37 x 29.5 cm. Private collection. Photo: Ole Woldbye/The Museum of National History on Frederiksborg Castle, Denmark. 5.5 Michael Keyl, Portrait of Johanna Fosie, drawing, Johanna Fosie’s Stambog 1747. Copyright Fotografisk Atelier, The Royal Library, Copenhagen. 5.6 Christian August Lorentzen, Portrait of Magdalene Margrethe Bärens, signed ‘Malet af C.A. Lorentzen 1786’, oil on canvas, 81 x 65.7 cm. The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The Academy Council, Copenhagen. Photo: Viggo Thorlacius-Ussing’s negative collection, Danish National Art Library. 5.7 Magdalene Margrethe Bärens, Basket of Flowers, signed ‘M.M. Bärens föd. Schäffer’, 1780, gouache, vellum stuck on panel, diameter 44 cm. The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The Academy Council, Copenhagen. Photo: Frida Gregersen. 6.1 The consumption of Sophia Magdalena Wäström based on her unpaid debts, 1805. 6.2 The consumption of Maria Charlotta Erikson based on her unpaid debts, 1840.

81 93 96 98

100 103

108

110 125 126

viii Figures   7.1 Trade card for Mary and Ann Hogarth, engraved by William Hogarth, c. 1725, from John Trusler, The Works of William Hogarth, vol. 2 (London: J. Sharpe, 1821).   7.2 Miss Isabella Morison, milliner and teacher, Aberdeen Journal 18 September 1769.   7.3 Milliners’ premises central to Aberdeen, Bath and Colchester. Plans © David Hastie.   9.1 Portrait of hotel and restaurant keeper Cajsa (Catharina) Wahllund (1771–1843). The National Museum of Finland, Helsinki. Unknown artist. Photo: Jan Lindroth. 10.1 The Reading and Industrial School (Läse-och arbetsskolan) in Uppsala 1784–1809. From the volume Upsala stads kämnärs-rätts protocoll rörande den i Krokens gård d. 18 juli 1809 upkomne. Eldswåda  . . . (Uppsala, 1809). Photo: Kungliga Bibliotektet, Stockholm. 11.1 Miss Jeffers, an English governess of the von Hahn daughters. Drawing by Ekaterina Zarudnaya-Kavos (1861–1917). Source: V.P. Zhelikhovskaia, Kak ia byla malen’koi. Iz vospominanii rannego detstva V.P. Zhelikhovskoi (Sankt-Peterburg: A.F. Devrien, 1908), 137. 11.2 Madame Pecqoeur, the French governess of Helena and Vera von Hahn. Drawing by Sergey Solomko (1867–1928). Source: V.P. Zhelikhovskaia, Moe otrochestvo (Sankt-Peterburg: A.F. Devrien, 1909), 191. 12.1 Portrait of Finnish school directress Sara Wacklin (1790–1846). Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki. Artist: Johan Erik Lindh, 1840. Photo: Hannu Pakarinen.

142 146 148 187

201

228

229 254

Tables

  3.1 Salaries at the Munich court, 1650–1800 52   6.1 The number of petitions of bankruptcy filed by actresses in Stockholm between the years 1780 and 1850 124   7.1 Premiums by trade group with selected trades 138   7.2 Gibbon, Reeve and Wood in Colchester 139   7.3 Mary Gibbon in Bath 140   8.1 Female-owned enterprises in Arkhangelsk, Vologda and St Petersburg provinces, 1795–1803 164 11.1 Women taking tests at St Petersburg University to obtain a certificate entitling them to teach in private homes, 1829–1834232

Contributors

Johanna Ilmakunnas is acting professor of Finnish history at the University of Turku, Finland, as well as a docent of European history at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests include material culture, consumption, lifestyle, credit, work and leisure, gender and elites in eighteenthcentury Sweden and France. Her publications include a major study of the lifestyle of Swedish eighteenth-century aristocracy, Ett ståndsmässigt liv: Familjen von Fersens livsstil (SLS & Atlantis, 2012), ‘Embroidering Women & Turning Men: Handiwork, Gender and Emotions in Sweden and Finland, c. 1720–1820’, in the Scandinavian Journal of History (2016) and A Taste for Luxury in Early Modern Europe: Display, Acquisition and Boundaries (Bloomsbury, 2017 – co-edited with Jon Stobart). She is co-editor of the Sjuttonhundratal – Nordic Yearbook for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Britta Kägler is a historian of early modern history with a special interest in regional and cultural history. She works as a research assistant and academic in the History Department at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany. Her research interests include social and cultural history, trans- and intercultural relations and economic history. To satisfy these interests, she has been working on early modern court culture and migrating musicians and has published widely on the subjects. She is currently focusing on building processes in the Baroque period. Åsa Karlsson Sjögren is professor of history at Umeå University, Sweden. Her primary research interests lie in women’s and gender history from legal, political and social perspectives. Her publications include ‘Gender and Urban Land in Swedish Towns’, in Female Agency in the Urban Economy: Gender in European Towns, 1640–1830 (Routledge, 2013), edited by Deborah Simonton and Anne Montenach; ‘Citizenship, Poor Relief and the Politics of Gender in Swedish Cities and Towns at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century’, in Gender in Urban Europe: Sites of Political Activity and Citizenship (Routledge, 2014), edited by Krista Cowman, Nina Javette Koefoed and Åsa Karlsson Sjögren; and ‘Negotiating Charity: Emotions, Gender, and Poor Relief in Sweden at the Turn of the 19th Century’, in the Scandinavian Journal of History (2016).

xii Contributors Anna Lena Lindberg, associate professor emerita of Lund University, Sweden, is an art historian who helped establish Swedish gender research. Her latest book, En mamsell i akademien: Ulrica Fredrica Pasch och 1700-talets konstvärld (A Singular Woman Artist in the Academy: Ulrica Fredrica Pasch and the eighteenth-century art world, 2010) was awarded the Gustavian Stipend by the Swedish Academy. Her anthologies introducing Anglo-American gender theory Konst, kön och blick (Art, Gender and Gaze, 1995, 2014) and Den maskulina mystiken: Konst, kön och modernitet (The Masculine Mystique: Art, gender and modernity) have been used extensively as university course literature in all of Scandinavia. Marjatta Rahikainen is a docent of social history at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She was on the editorial board of the Scandinavian Economic History Review from 1995 to 2002. She has published dozens of articles and edited a dozen anthologies (in English, German, Swedish and Finnish). Her publications include ‘On Historical Writing and Evidence’, co-authored with Susanna Fellman, in Historical Knowledge: In Quest of Theory, Method and Evidence, co-edited with Susanna Fellman (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012) and Centuries of Child Labour: European Experiences from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Ashgate, 2004). Deborah Simonton is associate professor of British history, emerita, at the University of Southern Denmark, fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and visiting professor at the University of Turku. She has long-standing interests in gender, skill and identity, and has published several works, including A History of European Women’s Work (1998), Women in European Culture and Society (2010) and a companion sourcebook and edited Routledge History of Women in Europe (2006). She leads the Gender in the European Town Network, and co-edited Female Agency in the Urban Economy: 1640–1830 (2013), Luxury and Gender in the Modern Urban Economy (2014) and Catastrophe, Gender and Urban Experience (2017). She is General Editor of The Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience (2017) and The Cultural History of Work, 6 vols. (2018). Olga Solodyankina is a professor of history at Cherepovets State University, Russia. Her research interests are in issues of gender, cross-cultural communications and women’s history, primarily foreign tutors and governesses working in the Russian Empire. Her monographs are in Russian, including Inostrannye guvernantki v Rossii (vtoraia polovina XVIII – pervaia polovina XIX veka) (Academia, 2007). Marie Steinrud is a cultural historian at Stockholm University. Her research interests cover elites, identities, gender and manifestations of power. She is currently working on a research project about ironmasters in Sweden in 1700–1900, focusing on how the ironmasters built a common identity

Contributors  xiii during this period. Her publications include her doctoral thesis, Den dolda offentligheten: Kvinnlighetens sfärer i 1800-talets högreståndskultur (Hidden Publicity: Female Spheres in the Nineteenth-Century Swedish Nobility, Carlssons, 2008), journal articles and book chapters on ironmasters and their manifestations of power, elite status, elite women’s lives and experiences in eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Sweden, as well as masculine ideals within nineteenth-century upper-class culture. Galina Ulianova is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Studies in Russian History of the 19th Century (Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow). Her work focuses on the themes of entrepreneurship, philanthropy, municipal self-government and the history of science and education in Russia in 1700–1917. Her publications include Female Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Pickering & Chatto, 2009); Philanthropy in the Russian Empire, 19th and Early 20th Centuries (Nauka, 2005, in Russian); Civic Identity and the Public Sphere in Late Imperial Russia (Rosspen, 2007, in Russian, co-edited with Bianka Pietrow-Ennker); and several academic articles published in the US, Germany and the UK. She has been a member of the Advisory Committee of Russian Studies in History (US) since 1997. Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen is a professor of Finnish history at the University of Turku, Finland. Her research interests and areas of expertise include eighteenth-century goldsmiths, artisans, female entrepreneurs, female servants and noblewomen. She has published widely on women’s history and urban history and has received several prizes for her research. Her publications include a study on midwifery in early-modern Sweden and Finland, De frimodiga: Barnmorskor, födande och kroppslighet på 1700talet (SLS, 2016); Sophie Creutz och hennes tid: Adelsliv i 1700-talets Finland (SLS, 2011); and ‘Everyday Politics: Power Relations of Urban Female Servants in the Finnish City of Turku in the 1770s’, in Female Agency in the Urban Economy: 1640–1830 (Routledge, 2013), edited by Deborah Simonton and Anne Montenach.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the Niilo Helander Foundation, which provided the editors with generous funding. In October 2015 the editors were able to organize a workshop at the University of Helsinki that was attended by the contributors to this volume. Discussions during the workshop, as well as comments made on draft chapters by colleagues and friends, helped us all to shape our arguments and present the book as a coherent entity. We are also grateful to Gyllenstiernska Krapperupsstiftelsen, which has supported the publication of the images in Anna Lena Lindberg’s chapter, and to the Swedish Research Council, which has supported Åsa Karlsson Sjögren’s work. Thanks also go to the Academy of Finland for its support of Johanna Ilmakunnas’s work for this volume within the project ‘Diligent aristocracy: Nobility, service and work in Sweden from the Great Northern War to the Napoleonic Wars’ (266059). We are also much indebted to the hundreds of scholars who produced the many articles and texts without which this anthology would not have materialized.

1 Women and professional ambitions in Northern Europe, c. 1650–1850 Johanna Ilmakunnas, Marjatta Rahikainen and Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen Europe of the 1650s was very different from Europe of the 1850s. In the mid-seventeenth century, Western Europe east of the English Channel, only just recovering from the Thirty Years’ War, witnessed the rise of the aristocracy and the absolutist state. In the mid-nineteenth century, Western Europe witnessed the end of the revolutionary era, the expansion of educated middle classes and the triumph of moneyed bourgeoisie, while in Eastern Europe the old order counterchecked the new one. After half a century of substantial scholarly work focusing on women’s history, we now know a great deal about what all this political, social and economic change indicated for women in different social conditions and settings. Recent scholarship has significantly enhanced our understanding of women’s daily life, work and occupations in the early modern and modern eras.1 Women’s work was fundamental on all levels of society: for women as individuals, for their families and communities and from the micro economy to the macro economy. Intensive research activity concerning economically active women has convincingly shown that despite all statutes, laws and established privileges that restricted or prohibited women’s access to several trades, women found numerous ways to circumvent them. No doubt there were men in whose interests it was to facilitate this in order to make business run more smoothly. Moreover, the very concepts of work and occupation have been thoroughly re-read, and scholars have questioned work as solely a source of income, discussing instead different conceptualizations of work and labour held by both contemporaries and scholars. Research on various verbal and cultural meanings of work has revealed new dimensions of female activity and work life. Women from all social strata described themselves as working, or their activities were described by others as work, even though the number and variety of sheer words varies in different sources from court records to letters and diaries to account books and advertisements.2 In this volume, we review women’s work from which they earned money and any other remuneration, such as board and lodging and for which they had received informal education or training or, more seldom, formal education. These are two aspects that could be considered to form professional

2  Johanna Ilmakunnas et al. ambitions or attitudes amongst Northern European women, c. 1650–1850. The cases discussed in the chapters of this volume review Europe north of the Alps and are drawn from a large area covering present-day England and Scotland, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Russia. With its substantial geographical coverage, the volume contributes to increasing scholarship on women’s work, occupations and professional activities; this research has recently flourished. Moreover, the chapters with their detailed case studies stress that women’s experiences, expectations and ambitions were shared across Europe. We aim to explore those activities by which women aspired to advance professionally as we might understand it today: education, training and skills development; even though the women we discuss in this volume might not have verbalized their work as professional endeavours, they had some ambition to succeed and it is worthwhile to apply such concepts as career, professional and professionalism as analytical tools in order to better understand and reveal women’s agency in the past. In early modern and modern Europe, many women worked to make a living for themselves and their families. However, a substantial number of women also aspired to deeper fulfilment in their work, be it more physical as in the work of milliners or deeply mental as in the work of female authors and journal editors or both physical and mental as in the work of actresses. These women negotiated their professional careers in societies that did not acknowledge women as legally, politically or financially independent. It is these early professional women that are the focus of this volume.

Professionals and professionalization In the traditional narrative of modernization, the major processes constituting the transformation of ancien régime societies into modern Western societies took shape since the mid-seventeenth century along with the emergence of modern sovereign states. The standard narrative included urbanization, industrialization, individualization, secularization, the emancipation of labour, vindication of the rights of women and, as a legacy of the Enlightenment, the institutionalization of sciences and education. After the Second World War, one more concept was added to the canon: professionalization, as it contributed to modernization especially after the mid-nineteenth century. The discussion about professions, professionals and professionalization was long dominated by its origin in the discourse in Anglo-American scholarly communities. Even the word ‘profession’, despite its Latin origin, was and is closely connected to its meaning and usage in English, as established centuries ago.3 In 1968, Talcott Parsons, the leading authority among postwar sociologists, methodologically contrasted university education associated with professionalization along ‘the English system’ with that of ‘the Continental system’.4 In the 1970s the characteristics of professionals as

Women and professional ambitions  3 presented by the British sociologist John A. Jackson served to justify academic intellectuals’ own professionalizing strategies: public rather than selfinterest; a service ideal; a code of ethics and ideology and an occupational focus on problems of universal social concern.5 Corresponding listings would become typical of the discussion about professions.6 Along with such an idealized image of the professional ran another in which professions were seen ‘in terms of their monopoly over certain resources (knowledge)’.7 Magali Sarfatti Larson, who limited her analysis to England and the United States, saw professionalization ‘as the process by which producers of special services sought to constitute and control a market for their expertise’.8 However, Sarfatti Larson and others9 who criticized sociological authorities confined themselves to discussing male professions only. Women were in focus only as teachers, nurses and social workers. In the 1930s, in their study about professions, A.M. Carr-Saunders and P.A. Wilson listed in the headings circa thirty occupations and only two of them were female: nurses and midwives. According to them, the professional status of midwives was at that time in England of very recent origin, while ‘[t]he vocation of nursing is becoming professionalized’.10 In the 1960s, Amitai Etzioni, the other post-war North American authority, defined teachers, nurses and social workers as ‘semi-professionals’ whose claim to full-fledged professional status was ‘neither fully established nor fully desired’.11 By the 1990s, ‘the sociology of professions’ had become dated.12 Sociologists envisaged the possibility of ‘a future wave of massive de-professionalization’, in the same way as monopolies in the past had been followed by demonopolization.13 In 2005, noting the deteriorated status of some professions such as nursing in the UK, Graham Cheetham and Geoff Chivers resorted to the historical parallel of informal learning in their vision of education in the twenty-first century.14 From the Anglo-American perspective, only autonomous practitioners of liberal professions could be true professionals, whereas civil servants and office holders employed by the state or any public authority lacked autonomy and therefore could not by definition be true professionals. In the heat of debate, two Anglo-American sociologists even exclaimed: ‘The moment that the state organizes, trains, and employs all the members of a profession, we can no longer speak of it as a profession’.15 From the continental European perspective, this reflected profound differences between Anglo-American political culture, on the one hand, and continental European ones, on the other. The controversy focused on the role of the state, seen quite differently in common law countries compared to Roman law countries. Hence, the French, German and Swedish historical perspectives were diametrically opposite to that of the United States and United Kingdom.16 In the French model, the role of the nation-state and its centralized bureaucracy had been crucial in the formation of (male) professions since 1800.17 Along the same lines, Linda L. Clark argues in her study on the rise of professional women in post-1830s France that from the early nineteenth century onwards, the

4  Johanna Ilmakunnas et al. centralized French state had a key role in forming professions and professionalization through certification requirements; furthermore, professions in the state bureaucracy were open also to women relatively early.18 Similarly, in the German historical experience the role of the state had definitely been central. In his study of the beginnings of modern professions in Germany, the North American historian Charles McClelland used many pages explaining the difference between Anglo-American and German concepts.19 The German historian Jürgen Kocka found the Anglo-American concept of ‘professions’ so incompatible with the German experience that he chose to discuss Bürgertum instead: ‘Professionalization theory developed out of English and American discourses and experiences; the Bürgertum approach is continental in origin’.20 In a more placatory tone, in his quest for definition for professions and professionalism in post-1800 Central Europe, the historian Konrad H. Jarausch argued: ‘While their importance varies according to the dynamics of a particular career, training, certifying, economic reward, social status, working practice, collective self-images, and group organization tend to recur as crucial areas of concern among Central European professionals’.21 Moreover, Christine Ruane has strongly discouraged the use of AngloAmerican model for studying professionalization in Imperial Russia. Nevertheless, in this discussion she is guilty of equating Western with AngloAmerican.22 She ignores the fact that Western Europe east of the English Channel was different from the Anglo-American world in terms of formal and informal traditions and institutions, such as the state, legal systems, public administration and social structures. Post-war sociological theories of professionals and professionalization that defined them in terms of formal higher education, market power and monopoly or closure strategies did not allow for any women professionals before the last decades of the nineteenth century, if even then. Although those studying the history of women’s professionalization have problematized this sociological tradition, they have, nonetheless, respected its core message. To take one example: historians studying women’s professionalization in Europe east of the Baltic Sea have refrained from decisively defining journalism as a new profession since it did not match the sociological criteria.23 Instead of challenging sociological theories that give men the monopoly on professionalization in the past, historians studying women’s professionalization tend to date it at the late nineteenth century, when education of girls in higher secondary schools expanded, women gained access to university education and certificates became a standard. In other words, in this research tradition women’s professionalization commenced when the criteria, until then only relevant for men, became applicable to women too. Sociologists and economists have conceptualized professions, professionals and professionalization far more than historians. Still, ‘professionals’ and ‘professionalization’ captured something that many historians have found useful, albeit only through a liberal interpretation of the concepts.

Women and professional ambitions  5 By applying a pragmatic interpretation of the concept ‘profession’, James A. Brundage has argued that in the early thirteenth century certain lawyers in Canon law in actuality ‘became full-fledged professionals’.24 Moreover, professionalization has served as an explanation for various changes in medieval and early modern societies, from the loss of penitent women’s options for catechising and other forms of active life,25 to the disappearance of women camp followers from the armies.26 It has also served as a catchword for fascinating cultural phenomena, such as ‘the professionalization of “Femininity” ’ in Gothic novels.27 In the same way as a number of other sociological concepts, ‘professions’ and ‘professionalization’ have drifted far from their Anglo-American origins and have been applied by historians as useful tools in analyzing and conceptualizing the European past. In this volume, we suggest some important new readings on women’s professionalization, occupations, work and agency in Northern Europe from the 1650s to the 1850s. Women could and did find ways for learning, training and practising as professionals in a number of occupations, which normatively were not open to women. For pioneering women within professions, we should look beyond and before the mid-nineteenth century and see women, who ‘displayed the traits of successful professionals: an ethic of service and pride in the mastery of knowledge and procedures required for positions of responsibility’, as Linda L. Clark summarizes.28 We suggest that there is reason enough to define for women professionals and, by extension, women’s professionalization such criteria that were relevant for women before the 1860s and 1870s that so often feature in the historical writing about women’s professions and professionalization. The contributions to this volume may be read as tentative explorations in this endeavour.

Professionals in their own right By discussing how economically active and professionally oriented women were educated, how they gained essential skills for their work, how they themselves found ways to negotiate their occupations, social status, collective self-images and identities, we aim to offer a better understanding of women’s daily lives across the early modern and modern urban economy and social tissue. The women discussed in this volume were professionals in their own right; they were women who aspired to improve their positions or to find better business opportunities. Furthermore, they invested in developing their qualifications and professional skills, took financial or other kinds of risks or moved to other countries in quest of better livelihood. In order to gain deeper perception on women’s professional ambitions in Northern Europe, c. 1650–1850, it is necessary to see women’s agency and professional activities more broadly than as simply their participation in male-dominated professions that was enabled through higher education or formal training. Since women’s education and training were mostly not institutionalized before the mid-nineteenth century, our focus is on women

6  Johanna Ilmakunnas et al. who otherwise gained skills and qualifications for their professions. Nevertheless, and importantly, women were also trained into professions earlier: in eighteenth-century Europe women entered into professional careers as trained midwives. Elite women’s career possibilities and professional ambitions were performed at royal courts, since aristocratic women had few or no other career possibilities before the late nineteenth century. Women’s aspirations in arts and letters led them to seek education and training outside institutionalized paths and opportunities within the performing arts opened careers that were both admired and questioned. Furthermore, in order to gain a broader picture of women’s professional aspirations, women as entrepreneurs and educators will also be explored across Scotland, Eastern England, the Baltic World and Russia.

The first scientifically trained professionals: Midwives Much research on the history of childbirth and midwifery has been done in England and the United States. However, in these countries, most attention has been focused on the struggle between midwives and male obstetricians. At the same time, this has partly simplified the understanding of the European past since that struggle has not played such a major historical role in continental Europe. Even today in the Netherlands and the Nordic countries, childbirths are the responsibility of midwives and pregnant women do not have a designated obstetrician as they do in the US and the UK. In the history of medicine, midwifery has mostly been discussed from the perspective of professionalization and medicalization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with special attention paid to ‘modern’ training reforms and improvements in the professional status of midwives. The Middle Ages and the early modern times have been seen as the opposite of these pursuits: ages of self-taught midwives.29 In this context, it is rarely thought that the formal training, professional communities and professional identity of European midwives have medieval roots. The oldest regulations related to midwifery originated in the medieval German cities. In France, the midwifery profession has been regulated since 1578. In Spain, England and Holland, midwives were licensed by the local administration, surgeons and the clergy. The city of Munich, in the German Duchy of Bayern, was the first to begin training midwives in a maternity clinic (1589), followed by the Hôtel Dieu hospital in Paris in 1630. Professional European midwives were licensed and had to take a professional oath. For example, the city authorities of the German city of Nuremberg administered the midwives’ oath from 1417 and this had become common practice throughout Europe by the sixteenth century.30 During the eighteenth century the trained and licensed midwives took part in the establishment of science in medicine. In continental Europe, there were several efforts to renew and develop the profession, especially as a profession for women.31 The studies in midwifery included practical training

Women and professional ambitions  7 under a master midwife, the reading of textbooks, anatomy lessons by the professor of surgery, as well as following the dissections of female bodies in the anatomy theatre.32 It was only in England that these challenges were responded to by training male surgeons to become professionals in obstetrics, at the same time weakening the status of English midwives, who had no formal training.33 Licensed midwives were expected to know how to read and write and professional literature in the vernacular language, not in Latin, has been written for them since the sixteenth century. Midwives also wrote and published books on midwifery themselves, with several editions printed over the years in certain cases. Very recently, there has been a new interest in early European professional midwives, especially in their books and diaries.34 Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen’s chapter ‘Midwives’ (Chapter 2) explores the first Swedish and Finnish professional midwives in the eighteenth century. It focuses on new information about the lives of these women and the sources used are more wide-ranging than before: they include Swedish official archives, population register documents, estate inventories and court minutes. The sources highlight aspects such as the characteristics and aptitudes of midwives, their studies in Stockholm, marriage, children, as well as their official duties as investigators of infanticides, rapes and sexual crimes. The object of the chapter is to suggest that licensed European midwives were uncommonly welleducated women compared to other women: they had pursued a training based on theoretical knowledge.

Elite career makers Until the mid-nineteenth century, women of nobility and gentility, in particular those of the highest levels of the aristocracy, had limited opportunities to enter occupational life, compared to women from other social groups. Nevertheless, the educated elite and aristocratic women played a key role in the intellectual life of seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe as salonières or political hostesses.35 As patrons of the fine arts and sciences, elite women had opportunities to favour the work of female artists and scientists; thus, they promoted their work.36 As for important European female scientists and philosophers, many of them came from well-connected noble families.37 These women developed their agency through careful education, constant development of skills and the cultivation of social practices; they used their talents, aspirations, and ability to bring together different people in conversation. Their influence was highly exclusive. Moreover, aristocratic and elite women’s scientific, political and cultural work required almost without an exception financial investments alongside investing social and cultural capital in their ambitions. However, in terms of financial remuneration, skilled elite women could pursue extra earnings by creating embroideries and other handicrafts for their kin or acquaintances, even though this type of activity was not considered as an occupation.38

8  Johanna Ilmakunnas et al. Hence, many of elite women’s interests and occupations were more amateur than professional in their nature. It is, however, important to stress that from the Renaissance to the beginning or mid-nineteenth century, the word amateur did not include the same dismissive notions as the opposite of a professional person as it conveys today.39 Nevertheless, elite women had a significant career opportunity, including prospects for advance, salary and connections to networks of their peers at the courts. Aristocratic and elite women held offices at royal, imperial and princely courts throughout Europe. Female courtiers were mainly appointed amongst highest-ranking elite families, which made a career at court a distinctive and sought after position of high status.40 At politically powerful and large royal courts such as the courts in Vienna, Versailles, Madrid and St Petersburg were more courtiers than in smaller courts such as those in Stockholm, Copenhagen and the German and Italian states.41 Furthermore, a politically weak court in England was smaller than its counterparts on the continent; thus, it offered career possibilities for a smaller number of aristocratic women than the courts of Versailles and Vienna.42 For aristocratic women, royal, imperial and princely courts were not only places of employment and marriage markets, but also vital spaces to cultivate family connections, patronage and cultural and political networks. Courts gave high-ranking elite women opportunities for a career of their own centuries before aristocratic women could enter the labour market and professional life more broadly. A career at royal or imperial court could last for decades and included for the most part monetary remuneration. Furthermore, an aristocratic woman had opportunities to move from one position to another; thus, she gained more prestige and responsibilities linked to her office. In her chapter ‘Serving the prince as the first step of female careers’ (Chapter 3), Britta Kägler explores to what extent working at the princely court of Munich could be seen as a starting point for a career for women from various social backgrounds. For aristocratic women the exclusive world of the court offered prospects of influence and power when unmarried, married and widowed. Furthermore, the offices at court supported women with a high salary. From the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century, the court also provided Catholic women with a platform for further economic and entrepreneurial activities, such as Countess of Fugger’s extensive involvement in tobacco manufacturing. In her chapter ‘From mother to daughter’ (Chapter 4) on female courtiers at the eighteenth-century Swedish court, Johanna Ilmakunnas explores how maids of honour and ladies-in-waiting were chosen and appointed and discusses the qualifications and skills required of them. She also untangles how aristocratic women established and outlined their careers as courtiers, describes the tasks and duties of female courtiers and shows how these women combined family life and career.

Women and professional ambitions  9

Women in the arts: Painters, writers and performers In European history from the 1650s to the 1850s, women’s impact on visual and fine arts, on the written and printed word, as well as on performing arts was monumental. Women’s contribution in fine arts and the growing number of women artists, authors, musicians, singers, composers and actresses in early modern and modern Europe testifies to these women’s ambitions, but also reflects changes in societies where the growing number of consumers of culture, who constituted the public for art exhibitions, theatres and music performances, also shaped the careers of women. Arguably, consumers who could afford to acquire paintings, musical instruments or books and who also wished to attend theatre and musical performances created more possibilities for female artists, authors and performers to grow in their field as acknowledged professionals whose work was respected and valued.43 Many women who made careers as professional artists and performers were born to families of artists, musicians, composers or authors or they married artists and received education and developed skills for their profession at home. However, in order to make a career and become professional within the visual arts, letters or performing arts, women had to surmount many obstacles. Until the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, many institutions such as academies of art or conservatories did not accept women as students and members, which closed the path to institutional education and recognition to women. However, it probably was more acceptable for women to become professional artists, authors or composers and make a career in these fields than within performing arts, because visual arts, literature and music composition could be accomplished without the maker stepping forward, under a pseudonym or anonymously, whereas engaging in performing arts required women to put themselves forward in public and perform with their own face and name. Indeed, much of the criticism of women’s artistic pursuits was about the negative image of women performing their work publicly. To embark on a professional career in any field necessitated taking an active role, which was presumably difficult or impossible for women if they did not have important support to back their ambitions either from their father, husband or other male relative. The exclusion of women is also visible in current scholarship, which, especially in the visual arts and music has often concentrated on exceptional individuals and canons of art, music and literature rather than women’s (and men’s) activities in the field more broadly, despite important recent scholarship exploring women’s agency within arts and literature not as exceptional individuals, but as examples of a wider phenomenon.44 The Royal Academies of Arts had only a handful of female members across Europe. Thus, many professional and active artists, both male and female, worked outside the institutionalized art world. Apart from making

10  Johanna Ilmakunnas et al. careers as painters, women worked as copyists and printmakers.45 Even though the lack of institutional recognition impeded female visual artists’ work, it did not prevent women painters from becoming extremely successful in their own time. In ‘Remarkable women artists’ (Chapter 5), Anna Lena Lindberg discusses female flower painters’ careers in Northern Europe c. 1690–1790 and stresses the importance of family connections, particularly the fathers’ importance in women’s education in the arts. She also argues that due to the founding of royal and imperial academies of art from the mid-seventeenth century and especially in the eighteenth century, arts education became institutionalized and moved away from workshops and homes. When this training occurred within families it was the core of artistic education and work for centuries; thus, after the founding of academies such as Royal Academy of Arts in Britain or Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in France, women and many men were marginalized from the art world and art market. Lindberg’s analysis of painters Johanna Marie Fosie (1726–1764), Magdalene Margrethe Bärens (1737–1808) and Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) shows women’s important role in the network of visual arts, sciences and art markets. In addition to the visual arts, women participated in book production and written culture in many roles as writers and translators. The majority of female writers began their careers by publishing anonymously or under a male pseudonym. In Britain women gained more recognition as professional writers from the eighteenth century onwards, when authorship was professionalized and the author’s status rose parallel with the economic success of writers accelerated by the demands of a growing market in literature.46 Women were active in creating new and extremely popular literary genres, such as the periodical press from Britain to Sweden, France and Germany, in which they wrote numerous articles, poems, instructions and other texts.47 Betty A. Schellenberg captures the essence of female professional writers when arguing that ‘none of these women’s careers could be unique, while collectively they represent something definably uniform: the female literary career’.48 Furthermore, women also worked in book production as editors and printers, stationers and booksellers, as well as patrons.49 In music, a distinction between professional musicians, composers and singers was as difficult as in other male-dominated fields that women aspired to enter. Even though music was a necessary part of an elite lifestyle and many women were highly accomplished, performing publicly was regarded nearly as a form of prostitution and female musicians had to fight against prejudices. In early modern and modern Europe, female musicians or composers were often daughters of composers, musicians or music professors, who supported their daughters’ education and ambitions. For performing artists, such as musicians, singers and actresses, it was harsh to maintain a career until old age, even though the slow commercialization of female music-making from the eighteenth century onwards gave more

Women and professional ambitions  11 opportunities to continue a professional career to middle age and beyond. However, the idealization of singers from the late eighteenth-century onwards changed public opinion on performing women and opened career prospects for female singers.50 From the 1660s onwards, women entered the performing arts and appeared on the stages of European theatres and operas, conquering a field that had previously been male, where men performed both male and female roles. Acting rapidly became a possible, though often morally questionable, career opportunity for gifted women. Actresses attempted to control their public image, in which sexuality and questionable morals linked to female actresses challenged their ambitions as professionals. Nevertheless, the emergence of a new bourgeois public sphere and respectable theatres for the growing numbers of bourgeoisie theatregoers helped also to establish respectable actresses.51 In her contribution ‘Performing women’ (Chapter 6), Marie Steinrud analyzes professional and successful actresses in Sweden from the 1780s to the 1850s. She argues that the actresses did not necessarily have a background in a family of performing artists or a theatre group, contrary to what has often been stressed by researchers. Instead, actresses in Sweden worked hard to gain a position as a famous and esteemed performing artist in an era when actresses were gradually accepted as professionals in their own right.

Entrepreneurs There have been many successful female entrepreneurs in the European past, but only a few are recalled today. They include Madame Clicquot, the ‘Veuve Clicquot’ of the champagne business of the early nineteenth century.52 As exceptional as she was in building up a large export-oriented enterprise, her decision to carry on her late husband’s business was not unusual as this was a typical way for women to enter the business world. It was also common to be introduced to a profession by a male relative. Moreover, north of the Alps the trade of selling alcoholic beverages was a common way for women to make a living, albeit rarely in an upmarket niche. Most women who made their living by independent work were selfemployed rather than entrepreneurs proper. Despite many restrictions and prohibitions on women’s rights to enter various trades and occupations, the changing social and economic circumstances and especially the emergence of consumer society, industrial capitalism and global trade constantly opened new opportunities for enterprising women. In general, widows could act more independently than married and unmarried women. In late eighteenth-century Sweden, a number of wholesalers’ widows managed businesses alone for years. In Stralsund in western Pomerania, merchants’ and wholesalers’ widows were engaged in numerous export and import transactions.53 In contrast, it seems that in Austria women confined themselves to retailing, though there were exceptions, most

12  Johanna Ilmakunnas et al. remarkably a woman in Salzburg who acted as a putter-out (Verlegerin) in proto-industrial bobbin-lace production.54 In Scandinavia and the German states, unmarried women earning their livelihood in their own right were in legal terms an anomaly until about the mid-nineteenth century. Such self-employed ‘masterless’ women did not have the right to use hired labour as entrepreneurs proper did, yet in towns and cities unmarried, economically active women were so numerous that for practical reasons, they were generally accepted as judicially competent in commercial transactions in the same way that widows were accepted. Britain was different in terms of formal institutions. A married woman’s right to trade independently was under certain circumstances possible as feme sole.55 However, many women, married and single, made a living as shopkeepers in the drapery and fashion business, for example.56 Women were also active as investors. Three unmarried sisters invested in a boarding school for girls where they worked as teachers but were at the same time engaged in other businesses.57 The expanding consumer market offered many new opportunities for urban women. In late eighteenth-century Nantes, in the words of Elisabeth Musgrave, ‘women took up unrestricted areas of work and pushed against legal barriers to other activities’.58 A parallel development in the wake of changing consumer preferences was felt even in the far north in Scandinavia.59 In due course, guild model production of consumer goods, including clothing, was profoundly transformed or entirely dismissed in all Europe.60 The dissemination of fashion among the population at large indicated opportunities for women. In her ‘Sister to the tailor’ (Chapter 7), Deborah Simonton shows that in eighteenth-century Europe milliners and mantua makers carved out a niche in the trades of sewing and dressmaking. She argues that these women could achieve a métier, a profession, as it was understood at that time. In the Russian Empire many women, among them noblewomen, grasped the new opportunities offered by early industrialization and became successful entrepreneurs. In Russia women were the first in Europe to gain full property rights in the late eighteenth century, first noblewomen and eventually women of moneyed classes.61 In ‘Independent managers’ (Chapter 8), Galina Ulianova describes how women manufactory owners managed their businesses in St Petersburg province and in the northernmost provinces of European Russia in the decades around 1800. These women were married, so she also discusses in the Russian context the idea of separate spheres. While increased commerce gave rise to new opportunities for women, the expanding leisure world of inns, taverns and coffee houses indicated for women many opportunities to make a living.62 Marjatta Rahikainen presents in ‘Urban opportunities’ (Chapter 9) women as innkeepers and restaurant keepers in early nineteenth-century urban Sweden and Finland. She suggests that respectable women in restaurant business were female parallels

Women and professional ambitions  13 to bourgeois men engaged in service businesses, so these women vindicate the concept of women entrepreneurs.

Educators After the Reformation and well into the eighteenth century, Europeans were intensively occupied by questions of the true faith. In Western Europe it was manifested in conflicts between Catholics and Protestants. Still, this struggle for souls turned into job opportunities in education for women. In France in the early seventeenth century, the religious order of Ursulines established boarding schools in which sisters (nuns) taught the girls; the first small private teacher training school for laywomen was established by 1672. Saint-Cyr, the grand French boarding school for daughters of noble families, established in 1686, did not begin as a religious school and the 40 women who taught the young girls were laywomen. It was only after Jansenists and Jesuits argued that the instruction was too worldly that Saint-Cyr was changed into an elite convent school with convent nuns as teachers.63 A century later the French Revolution reduced the role of the Church in education, which would also open new positions for laywomen.64 In Anglican England in the seventeenth century, there were boarding schools for girls headed by women. In such schools some women qualified for the teacher occupation. In England Puritans criticized girls’ schools for being too worldly. In the eighteenth century there were some highly respectable boarding schools, but better families in general preferred their daughters to be educated at home by governesses.65 The boarding school mistresses were, as contemporaries well understood, as much entrepreneurs as teachers.66 When the first public day schools for girls emerged in the 1870s, boarding school mistresses faced a declining market and reacted by defending education in a home-like milieu.67 In Austria and the German states that had both Catholic and Protestant families, there was a tacit competition between Catholic and Protestant women educators. On the Catholic side the women teachers in schools established by Englischen Fräulein enjoyed a good reputation. In the late eighteenth century, the ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution diminished the role of the Catholic Church and increased secular education, which also affected the training of women teachers. However, in Austria this proved temporal.68 In Protestant countries children were expected to learn to read God’s word, so there was a wide market for modest private schools teaching boys and girls the basics. Any respectable literate woman might make a living as a teacher. In charity schools and pauper schools, being literate did not suffice, as good teachers should also have other qualifications. Åsa Karlsson Sjögren discusses in ‘Desirable qualifications and undesirable behaviour’ (Chapter 10), in the context of urban schools for poor children in Sweden

14  Johanna Ilmakunnas et al. around 1800, the teaching profession and the qualities and knowledge that were required of good teachers. She asks how these qualities were valued, not least on the basis of the teacher’s gender. Well into the nineteenth century, European societies were extremely hierarchical and educational positions for laywomen mirrored and reproduced the social hierarchy. Women’s positions ranged from those as respected governesses of high-born young ladies to modest posts in pauper schools for instructing girls in needlework. Between the two extremes there was a large and heterogeneous group of women: some were employed as governesses, schoolmistresses and headmistresses; others made a living as self-employed running a little girls’ school in their homes, while the successful ones were directresses of their own prestigious private girls’ schools or boarding schools. The principal clientele of such educational facilities consisted of daughters of an expanding and vaguely defined social group that would later be known as the middle classes.69 The received image of nineteenth-century governesses is dominated by Victorian governesses in Britain.70 However, it must not be generalized to the position of governesses in Russian, German and Baltic German families. In fact, in Russia a very special kind of market for non-Russian women educators was created. As Olga Solodyankina describes in ‘Crosscultural closeness’ (Chapter 11), there were many efforts to control and improve the professional competences of governesses from the early eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century; by arranging tests for women who wished to be employed as governesses the authorities were complicit. German-style Mädchenschulen and Töchterschulen, day schools with a fixed curriculum for girls, anticipated the success story of secondary day schools for girls in twentieth-century Europe.71 Day schools for daughters of good families were established in Protestant towns and cities around the Baltic World in the early nineteenth century. In ‘Shaping middle-class and upper-class girls’ (Chapter 12), Marjatta Rahikainen connects this development to the professional competences of governesses and the emerging teacher training facilities for women. Taken together, they witnessed the development of professional attitudes among women educators.

Women’s professional ambitions in focus Much of the research on women’s work in the European past has for good reasons focused on poor women and women of popular classes who worked because they had to work. They have their counterparts in the present-day world among the women discussed by Martha Nussbaum in terms of a capabilities approach.72 The women in focus in this volume are discussed in another kind of framework: they are seen as early examples of women who may be said to have anticipated, in one way or another, present-day professional and career-oriented women. As their counterparts today, the women discussed here knew the importance of having the right kind of habitus and

Women and professional ambitions  15 mastering the right kinds of cultural and behavioural codes. Many of them had to cope with combining family life and professional ambitions. At the same time, many of them were able to grasp opportunities and have their ambitions realized; many were respected due to their professional skills and some were able to fulfil themselves as artists. Socially, they ranged from elite women to women of middle-class and lower middle-class origin. As is now well known, after substantial work in family and household history, many European societies have for centuries been characterized by a considerable number of women of bourgeois or higher social origin who never married or for other reasons had no male provider. Thus, it is only to be expected that numerous middle-class and upper middle-class women without a male provider feature in this volume too. Moreover, the empirical cases discussed above attest that professional ambitions were present irrespective of women’s marital status: having a husband and children did not stop women from pursuing their own professional endeavours. We have characterized the women discussed here as early professional women, albeit at times by a fairly liberal interpretation of the concept ‘professional’. They were professionally ambitious and many were career oriented or at least they strove for upward occupational mobility. What else characterized them? First, all of them were literate, able to read and write, which was far from common among women before the mid-nineteenth century. They all also probably knew basic arithmetic, though this is seldom evidenced in the sources available. Literacy was a key skill for women who entered occupations and careers that can be described as professional in early modern and modern Europe. The requirement of full literacy meant that early professional women came from middle- and upper-class families, because before the mid-nineteenth century, lower-class women were very seldom able to write, even though reading skills were more common. Formal education over the level of lower-secondary school was not available to women before the mid-nineteenth century. The one and only exception was the training of midwives and this was largely due to the fact that the emerging nation-states were concerned about insufficient population growth. To be accepted to midwifery training, women had to be literate. In fact, elite women had been educated by competent persons at home and then perhaps in respectable boarding schools or convent schools. Upper middle-class families emulated the elite pattern in the education of their daughters, but ordinary middle-class families could seldom afford governesses and expensive boarding schools for their daughters, while good day schools for girls were not generally available, so many women had only been taught by their parents at home. In many cases women who qualified as professionals in their field had acquired much of their knowledge by self-instruction by all methods and from all sources available to them. This was the case in particular as regards women who made their living as educators. Contemporaries did not judge female educators’ professional competence by certificates but by results,

16  Johanna Ilmakunnas et al. performance and accomplishments. Governesses, teachers and headmistresses of girls’ schools were compelled to market themselves again and again to potential employers or customers and therefore of necessity also maintained their professional qualifications and flexibly absorbed new ones. Another line of acquiring professional competence consisted of practical skills, handicrafts and all such arts and abilities that could be learned only by years of training. Formal apprenticeship was, as a rule, available to boys and men only, so women gained their competence in various other ways. Typically, women who mastered handicrafts had been born to an artisan family in the same field. This is how female painters and graphic artists learned the trade: they had fathers, brothers or other male relatives who were artists and could teach them all that a professional artist had to master. All girls learned the basics of sewing in their childhood, but only in a few countries, among them England, France and Holland, could girls become skilled artisans through formal apprenticeship; elsewhere they learned to master the trade through informal arrangements. The third line of acquiring professional competence consisted of what is today referred to as tacit knowledge and this was gained by work experience. Not only manufactory owners and restaurant keepers but also milliners, painters and other artists, self-employed teachers and headmistresses of private girls’ schools needed entrepreneurial skills. They all had to learn how to run a business in a sustainable way, profitably enough to provide themselves, their dependants and any other household members with a decent living. For this they had to attract new customers and advertise and market their products and services in a way that did not appear obtrusive. Similarly, women employed as actresses, governesses and teachers had to learn how to market themselves to potential employers in a convincing and respectable way. Moreover, women in responsible positions in large organizations, such as ladies-in-waiting at royal and princely courts and headmistresses of large schools had to learn managerial skills. Finally, everyone, at whatever level of hierarchy, had to build up a network of trusted friends, associates, supporters and patrons. Furthermore, many women worked under conditions in which they were supposed to appear as if not working. Only a sensitive observer understood that court dresses worn by women as required by absolutist monarchs from Louis XIV in France to Gustav III in Sweden and Nicholas I in Russia disclosed that women were on duty. Women in influential positions may have acted as if they had only an inoffensive role. Moreover, money was an issue that was not seemly for respectable young women to discuss openly with customers and employers. During the period under study, from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, the urban world proved to be more favourable for women’s professional pursuits than the rural world. On the one hand, only towns and cities provided the infrastructure that rendered possible princely courts, new entertainment and cultural facilities and large enough client potential for

Women and professional ambitions  17 the many services and products provided by women, from theatre performances and works of art to dressmakers’ workshops, restaurants and private girls’ schools. On the other hand, ‘the fluidity of urban environment’ may as such have created ‘opportunities for women to make progressive changes’, as Nazan Maksudyan suggests in the context of eastern Mediterranean cities.73 In conclusion, we suggest that professions, professionals and professionalization may serve as fruitful concepts for historians if understood as more complicated and context-bound phenomena than post-war sociological theories have presented. Sociological criteria did not allow for any female professionals in past centuries, but not many male professionals either. Medieval and early modern guilds may have had, mutatis mutandis, ‘the visible characteristics of the professional phenomenon’,74 yet craftsmen did not qualify as professionals. No member of the late medieval and early modern merchant elite, however efficient in market closure and proficient in the trade but lacking (formal) higher education, qualified as a professional by the criteria defined by late twentieth-century sociologists. The post-war sociological criteria for professionals and professionalization is no longer really valid in present-day occupational life. This leaves the field open to historians to develop concepts of professions, professionals and professionalization in a way that does justice to the past, to paraphrase Paul Ricœur.75 What would be relevant for such concepts in past centuries before higher education certificates became a standard?

Notes 1 See e.g. Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); Levebröd: Vad vet vi om tidigmodern könsarbetsdelning? eds. Benny Jacobsson & Maria Ågren (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2011); Sofia Ling, Konsten att försörja sig: Kvinnors arbete i Stockholm 1650–1750 (Stockholm: Stockholmia, 2016); Nancy Locklin, Women’s Work and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Brittany (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); Female Economic Strategies in the Modern World, ed. Beatrice Moring (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012); Sheilagh Ogilvie, A Bitter Living: Women, Markets, and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Nicola Phillips, Women in Business, 1700–1850 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006); Deborah Simonton, A History of European Women’s Work: 1700 to the Present (London: Routledge, 1998); Deborah Simonton, Women in European Culture and Society: Gender, Skill and Identity from 1700 (London: Routledge, 2011); Alison C. Kay, The Foundations of Female Entrepreneurship: Enterprise, Home and Household in London, c. 1800–1870 (London: Routledge, 2009). See also the home pages of research projects ‘Gender and Work’, accessed 29 June 2016, www.gaw.hist.uu.se, and ‘Women’s Work in Rural England, 1500–1700’, accessed 29 June 2016, www. earlymodernwomenswork.wordpress.com. 2 For recent scholarship on defining work, see e.g. Rosemarie Fiebrantz, Erik Lindberg, Jonas Lindström & Maria Ågren, ‘Making Verbs Count: The Research Project “Gender and Work” and Its Methodology’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 59 (2011), 273–293; Mark Hailwood, ‘How

18  Johanna Ilmakunnas et al. “Domestic” Was Women’s Work?’, accessed 9 June 2016, https://earlymodern womenswork.wordpress.com/2016/06/09/how-domestic-was-womens-work/; Johanna Ilmakunnas, ‘Adelns arbete och vardag på 1700-talets svenska herrgårdar: Johan Gabriel Oxenstiernas och Jacobina Charlotta Munsterhjelms dagböcker’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland 98 (2013), 156–184; Marie Steinrud, Den dolda offentligheten: Kvinnlighetens sfärer i 1800-talets svenska högreståndskultur (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2008), 136–171; Jane Whittle, ‘What Is Work?’, accessed 3 June 2016, https://earlymodernwomenswork.wordpress. com/2015/04/29/what-is-work-2/; Anna-Maria Åström, ‘Work and Working in the Savolax Manorial Society in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Ethnologia Fennica 30 (2002–2003), 52–62. 3 Rolf Torstendahl, ‘Essential Properties, Strategic Aims and Historical Development: Three Approaches to Theories of Professionalism’, in Professions in Theory and History: Rethinking the Study of the Professions, eds. Michael Burrage & Rolf Torstendahl (London: Sage Publications, 1990), 44–61. 4 Talcott Parsons, ‘Professions’, in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 12, ed. David S. Sills (New York: Macmillan Company & The Free Press, 1968), 536–547, quotation 542. 5 John A. Jackson, ‘Professions and Professionalization – Editorial introduction’, in Professions and Professionalization, ed. J.A. Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 3–15, quotation 4. For parallel approaches, see Hans Kairat, ‘Professions’ oder ‘Freie Berufe’? Professionales Handeln im sozialen Kontext (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1969). 6 For a summary, see Graham Cheetham & Geoff Chivers, Professions, Competence and Informal Learning (Cheltenham & Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2005), 6–13. 7 Jackson, ‘Professions and Professionalization’, 7. 8 Magali Sarfatti Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley & Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 1979), xvi – xvii, quotation 2, emphasis original. 9 See e.g. Terence J. Johnson, Professions and Power (London & Basingstoke: Macmillan & British Sociological Association, 1972). 10 A.M. Carr-Saunders & P.A. Wilson, The Professions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 117–125, quotation 121. 11 Amitai Etzioni, ‘Preface’, in The Semi-Professions and Their Organization: Teachers, Nurses, Social Workers, ed. Amitai Etzioni (New York: Free Press, 1969), v–vi. 12 Anne Witz, Professions and Patriarchy (London & New York: Routledge, 1992), 1. 13 Randall Collins, ‘Market Closure and the Conflict Theory of the Professions’, in Professions in Theory and History, 24–43, quotation 42. 14 Cheetham & Chivers, Competence and Informal Learning, 15–33. 15 Roy Lewis & Angus Maude, Professional People (London: Phoenix House, 1952), 70, quoted in Kairat, ‘Professions’ oder ‘Freie Berufe’?, 14. 16 For the Swedish perspective, see Christina Florin, ‘Multiple Identities: Female Professional Strategies in an Historical Perspective’, in The Scandinavian Middle Classes 1840–1940, eds. Tom Ericsson, Jørgen Fink & Eivind Myhre (Oslo: Academic Press, 2004), 199–215. 17 Gerald L. Geison, ‘Introduction’, in Professions and the French State, 1700– 1900, ed. Gerald L. Geison (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 1–12. 18 Linda L. Clark, The Rise of Professional Women in France: Gender and Public Administration Since 1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 11–29.

Women and professional ambitions  19 19 Charles E. McClelland, The German Experience of Professionalization: Modern Learned Professions and Their Organizations from the Early-Nineteenth Century to the Hitler Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 4–27. 20 Jürgen Kocka, ‘ “Bürgertum” and Professions in the Nineteenth Century: Two Alternative Approaches’, in Professions in Theory and History, 62–74, quotation 68. 21 Konrad H. Jarausch, ‘The German Professions in History and Theory’, in German Professions, 1800–1950, eds. Geoffrey Cocks & Konrad H. Jarausch (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 9–24, quotation 11. 22 Christine Ruane, Gender, Class, and the Professionalization of Russian City Teachers, 1860–1914 (Pittsburgh & London: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994), 5–11. 23 Jehanne M. Gheith, ‘Introduction’, in An Improper Profession: Women, Gender, and Journalism in Late Imperial Russia, eds. Barbara T. Norton & Jehanne M Geith (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2001), 1–25. 24 James A. Brundage, The Profession and Practice of Medieval Canon Law (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 26–27; James A. Brundage, The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: Canonists, Civilians, and Courts (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), 488. 25 Maiju Lehmijoki-Gardner, Worldly Saints: Social Interaction of Dominican Penitent Women in Italy, 1200–1500 (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1999), 173. 26 Jane Potter, ‘Valiant Heroines or Pacific Ladies? Women in War and Peace’, in The Routledge History of Women in Europe Since 1700, ed. Deborah Simonton (London & New York: Routledge, 2007), 270; Maria Sjöberg, ‘Stormaktstidens krig – och kvinnor: Något om betydelsen av perspektiv’, Historisk tidskrift 127:2 (2007), 203–223. 27 Diane Long Hoeveler, Gothic Feminism: The Professionalization of Gender from Charlotte Smith to the Brontës (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998). 28 Clark, The Rise of Professional Women, 302. 29 Eva Bergenlöv, Skuld och oskuld: Barnamord och barnkvävning i rättslig diskurs och praxis omkring 1680–1800 (Lund: Lunds universitet, Historiska institutionen, 2004), 360–363; Lena Milton, Folkhemmets barnmorskor: Den svenska barnmorskekårens professionalisering under mellan- och efterkrigstid (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2001), 119; Christina Romlid, Makt, motstånd och för­ändring: Vårdens historia speglad genom det svenska barnmorskeyrket 1663–1908 (Stockholm: Vårdförbundet, 1998), 53. 30 Robert Graves, Born to Procreate: Women and Childbirth in France from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 73–74; David Harley, ‘Provincial Midwives in England: Lancashire and Cheshire, 1660– 1760’, in The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe, ed. Hilary Marland (London & New York: Routledge, 1994), 30; Hilary Marland, ‘The “Burgerlijke” Midwife: The stadsvrodvrouw of Eighteenth-Century Holland’, in The Art of Midwifery, 192, 205; Teresa Ortiz, ‘From Hegemony to Subordination: Midwives in Early Modern Spain, in The Art of Midwifery, 99’; Merry E. Wiesner, ‘The Midwives of South Germany and the Public/Private Dichotomy’, in The Art of Midwifery, 83. 31 Margaret R. Hunt, Women in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2010), 101. 32 Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, De frimodiga: Barnmorskor, födande och kroppslighet på 1700-talet (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2016), 26–27, 88–92. 33 Milton, Folkhemmets barnmorskor: Den svenska barnmorskekårens professionalisering under mellan- och efterkrigstid, 119.

20  Johanna Ilmakunnas et al. 34 See, for instance, Pia Höjeberg, Helena Malhiems barnmorske lära år 1756 (Stockholm: Hälsopedagogik HB, 1995); Justine Siegemund, The Court Midwife: The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, ed. & tansl. Lynne Tatlock (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005); Laurel Tacther Ullrich, En jordemors berättelse: Barnmorskan Martha Ballards liv genom hennes dagbok 1785–1812 (Stockholm: Tidens förlag, 1992). 35 Elaine Chalus, Elite Women in English Political Life, c. 1754–1790 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005); Elisabeth Eger, Bluestockings: Women of Reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Ingrid Holmquist, Salongens värld: Om text och kön i romantikens salongskultur (Stockholm & Eslöv: Symposion, 2000); Antoine Lilti, Le monde des salons: Sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe sie`cle (Paris: Fayard, 2005). 36 Joy Kearney, ‘Agnes Block, a Collector of Plants and Curiosities in the Dutch Golden Age, and Her Friendship with Maria Sibylla Merian, Natural History Illustrator’, in Women Patrons and Collectors, eds. Susan Braken, Andrea M. Gáldy & Adriana Turpin (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 67–82. See also other essays in the same volume. 37 See e.g. Elisabeth Badinter, Émilie, Émilie: L’ambition feminine au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Flammarion, 1983); Paula Findlen, ‘Women on the Verge of Science: Aristocratic Women and Knowledge in Early Eighteenth-Century Italy’, in Women, Gender and Enlightenment, eds. Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 265–287. 38 Johanna Ilmakunnas, ‘Embroidering Women and Turning Men: Handiwork, Gender and Emotions in Sweden and Finland, c. 1720–1820’, Scandinavian Journal of History 41:3 (2016), 306–331. 39 See, e.g. Jean-Louis Jam, ‘Caylus, l’amateur crépusculaire’, in Les divertissements utiles des amateurs au XVIIIe siècle, ed. Jean-Louis Jam (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise-Pascal, 2000), 21–22. 40 See, The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-Waiting Across Early Modern Europe, eds. Nadine Akkerman & Birgit Houblen (Leiden: Brill, 2014); Das Frauenzimmer: Die Frau bei Hofe in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit, eds. Jan Hirschbiegel & Werner Paravicini (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000); Katrin Keller, Hofdamen: Amtsträngerinnen im Wiener Hofstatt de 17. Jahrhunderts (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005); Britta Kägler, Frauen am Münchener Hof (1661–1756) (Kallmünz: Michael Laßleben, 2011); Angela Rundquist, Blått blod och liljevita händer: En etnologisk studie av aristokratiska kvinnor 1850–1900 (Stockholm: Carlssons, 1989), 151–195; Kathryn Norberg, ‘Women of Versailles, 1682–1789’, in Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History, ed. Anne Walthall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 191–214; Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, Court Culture in Dresden: From Renaissance to Baroque (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002). 41 At the Russian Court: Palace and Protocol in the 19th Century, eds. Vyacheslav Fedorov & Marlies Kleiterp (Amsterdam: Hermitage Amsterdam, 2009); Jeroen Duindam, Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe’s Dynastic Rivals, 1550–1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Keller, Hofdamen; Kägler, Frauen am Münchener Hof; William R. Newton, La petite cour: Services et serviteurs à la Cour de Versailles au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2006); Fabian Persson, Servants of Fortune: The Swedish Court Between 1598 and 1721 (Lund: Wallin & Dahlholm, 1999); Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy, vol. I, from Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 42 K.D. Reynolds, Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). 43 See the essays in Women, Art and the Politics of Identity in Eighteenth-Century Europe, eds. Melissa Hyde & Jennifer Milam (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).

Women and professional ambitions  21 44 See e.g. Laura Auricchio, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard: Artist in the Age of Revolution (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2009); Jennie Bachelor, Women’s Work: Labour, Gender, Authorship, 1750–1830 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010); Betty A. Schellenberg, The Professionalization of Women Writers in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Mary D. Sheriff, Moved by Love: Inspired Artists and Deviant Women in Eighteenth-Century France (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004). 45 See e.g. Kemille Moore, ‘Feminisation and the Luxury of Visual Art in London’s West End, 1860–1890’, in Luxury and Gender in European Towns, 1700–1914, eds. Deborah Simonton, Marjo Kaartinen & Anne Montenach (New York & London: Routledge, 2014), 74–94. 46 Batchelor, Women’s Work; Schellenberg, The Professionalization of Women Writers; Linda Zionkowski, Men’s Work: Gender, Class, and the Professionalization of Poetry, 1660–1784 (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 47 See e.g. Margareta Björkman, Catharina Ahlgren: Ett skrivande fruntimme i 1700-talets Sverige (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2006); ‘The “Lady’s Magazine”: Understanding the Emergence of a Genre’, accessed 1 July 2016, www.kent. ac.uk/english/ladys-magazine/. 48 Schellenberg, The Professionalization of Women Writers, 6. 49 Helen Smith, Grossly Material Things: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 50 Pierre Dubois, ‘Profession: Siren – The Ambiguous Status of Professional Women Musicians in Eighteenth-Century England’, in The Invisible Woman: Aspects of Women’s Work in Eighteenth-Century Britain, eds. Isabelle Baudino, Jaques Carré & Cécile Révauger (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 147–160; Linda Maria Koldau, Frauen – Musik – Kultur: Ein Handbuch zum deutschen Sprachgebiet der Frühen Neuzeit (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2005); Claudia Schweitzer, ‘ “Das unter ihrem Namen gedruckte Stück. . ., ob es nun gut oder schlecht sei, ist von ihr; sowohl die Oberstimme, als auch der Bass und die Bezifferung”: Französichen Generalbassspielerinnen im 18. Jahrhundert’, Musik & Ästhetik 65 (2013), 45–51. 51 Lynn Matluck Brooks, Women’s Work: Making Dance in Europe Before 1800 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007); Séverine Lancia, ‘The Actress and Eighteenth-Century Ideals of Femininity’, in The Invisible Woman: Aspects of Women’s Work in Eighteenth-Century Britain, eds. Isabelle Baudino, Jaques Carré & Cécile Révauger (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 131–138; Felicity Nussbaum, Rival Queens: Actresses, Performance, and the Eighteenth-Century British Theater (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). 52 For a short biography of Madame Clicquot (née Nicole-Barbe Ponsardin, born 1777), see Women with Attitude: Lessons for Career Management, eds. Susan Vinnicombe & John Bank (London: Routledge, 2003), 3–6. 53 Christine Bladh, ‘Female Wholesalers in Stockholm, 1750–1820’, in Baltic Towns and Their Inhabitants: Aspects on Early Modern Towns in the Baltic Area, ed. Kekke Stadin (Södertörn: Södertörns högskola, 2003), 74–92; Daniel A. Rabuzzi, ‘Women as Merchants in Eighteenth-Century Northern Germany: The Case of Stralsund, 1750–1830’, Central European History 28:4 (1995), 435–456. 54 Gunda Barth-Scalmani, ‘Frauen in der Welt des Handels an der Wende vom 18. Zum 19: Jahrhundert: Eine regionalgeschichtliche Typologie’, in Unternehmerinnen: Geschichte & Gegenwart selbständiger Erwerbstätichkeit von Frauen, eds. Irene Bandhauer-Schöffmann & Regine Bendl (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000), 17–48. 55 Phillips, Women in Business, 23–68. 56 Alison Adburgham, Shops and Shopping, 1800–1914: Where, and in What Manner the Well-dressed Englishwoman Bought Her Clothes (London: Allen & Unwin 1964), 25–32.

22  Johanna Ilmakunnas et al. 57 Marion Marceau, ‘The Lee Sisters: Eighteenth-Century Commercial Heroines’, in The Invisible Woman, 161–172. 58 Elisabeth Musgrave, ‘Women and the Craft Guilds in Eighteenth-century Nantes’, in The Artisan and the European Town, 1500–1900, ed. Geoffrey Crossick (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 151–171; quotation 166–167. 59 Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, ‘Handicrafts as Professions and Sources of Income in Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century Turku (Åbo)’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 48:1 (2000), 40–63; Martin Wottle, ‘Opposing Prêtà-Porter: Mills, Guilds and Government on Ready-Made Clothing in Early Nineteenth-Century Stockholm’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 56:1 (2008), 21–40. 60 Simonton, A History of European Women’s Work, 47–57. 61 Galina Ul’ianova, ‘Merchant Women in Business in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries’, in Women in Russian Culture and Society, 1700– 1825, eds. Wendy Rosslyn & Alessandra Tosi (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007), 144–167. 62 Beat Kümin, ‘Public Houses and Their Patrons in Early Modern Europe’, in The World of the Tavern: Public Houses in Early Modern Europe, eds. Beat Kümin & B. Ann Tlusty (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 44–62. 63 Jean de Viguerie, L’institution des enfants: L’éducation en France XVIe – XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1978), 62–64, 128–140, 193; Michel Fiévet, L’invention de l’école des filles: des Amazones de Dieu aux VIIe et VIIIe siècles (Paris: Imago, 2006), 31–38, 61–69. 64 Rebecca Rogers, ‘Professional Opportunities for Middle-Class Women in Paris: Lay Schoolmistresses from 1820–1880’, in Women in Towns: The Social Position of Urban Women in Historical Context, eds. Marjatta Hietala & Lars Nilsson (Helsinki & Stockholm: SHS & Stockholms universitet, 1999), 110–124. 65 Josephine Kamm, Hope Deferred: Girls’ Education in English History (London: Methuen, 1965), 68–110, 134–146. 66 Christina de Bellaigue, Educating Women: Schooling and Identity in England and France, 1800–1867 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 74–82. 67 Dorothea Beale, ‘Home Life in Relation to Day Schools’, in Nineteenth-Century British Women’s Education, 1840–1900, Vol. V, eds. Susan Hamilton & Janice Scroeder (London & New York: Routledge, 2007 [1879]), 61–65. 68 Margret Friedrich, ‘Ein Paradies ist uns verschlossen. . . ‘: Zur Geschichte der schulischen Mädchenerziehung in Österreich im ‘langen‘ 19. Jahrhundert (WienKöln-Weimar: Böhlau, 1999), 71–92; Sabina Enzelberger, Sozialgeschichte des Lehrerberufs: Gesellschaftliche Stellung und Professionalisierung von Lehrerinnen und Lehrerer von den Anfängen biss zur Gegenwart (Weinheim-München: Juventa, 2001), 29–31, 65. 69 Rebecca Rogers, ‘Learning to Be Good Girls and Women’, in The Routledge History of Women in Europe Since 1700, ed. Deborah Simonton (London-New York: Routledge, 2006), 93–133. 70 Kathryn Hughes, The Victorian Governess (London: Bloomsbury, 2006); Alice Renton, Tyrant or Victim? A History of the British Governess (London: Weinfield & Nicholson, 1991). 71 James C. Albisetti, Schooling German Girls and Women: Secondary and Higher Education in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Girls’ Secondary Education in the Western World: From the 18th to the 20th Century, eds. James C. Albisetti, Joyce Goodman & Rebecca Rogers (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). 72 Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Women and professional ambitions  23 73 Nazan Maksudyan, ‘Introduction’, in Women and the City, Women in the City: A Gendered Perspective on Ottoman Urban History, ed. Nazan Maksudyan (New York & London: Berghahn, 2014), 5. 74 Larson, The Rise of Professionalism, 208. 75 Paul Ricœur, ‘Qu’il place son entreprise sous le signe de l’amitié ou sous celui de la curiosité, il est mû par le vœu de rendre justice au passé’, in Temps et récit III: Le temps raconté (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1985), 220; ‘Whether they [historians] put their work under the sign of friendship or that of curiosity, they are all moved by the desire to do justice to the past’, in Time and Narrative, Volume 3 (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 152.

2 Midwives Birthing care professionals in eighteenth-century Sweden and Finland Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen Midwifery is an age-old profession among European women. It is one of the earliest regulated and licensed professions available to women, dating back to the Middle Ages. The formal training, professional communities and professional identity of midwives all have roots in medieval Europe. Here the history of the licensing of the profession in Europe will be presented before more details about how midwifery progressed in Sweden and Finland are shown. Midwifery in Sweden was influenced by previous history in Europe, but it also had its own specific requirements and qualifications. In the twelfth century, European cities witnessed the emergence of two new channels of training: universities and craft guilds. Universities were places where lecturers with degrees directed the study of information written down in books; in other words, it was openly available knowledge; in principle it was accessible to any man able to read the language concerned. In contrast, guilds were communities in which apprentices followed master craftsmen and learned from them the professional secrets and tacit knowledge, which were neither written down nor to be disclosed to those outside the community. Medieval midwives, surgeons, blood letters, barbers and apothecaries were trained as craftsmen; they followed the work of an experienced professional and received training under their auspices for several years. Generally, in Europe, their work was regulated from early on by official provisions and guild regulations.1 The oldest regulations related to midwifery originated in the medieval German cities of Regensburg, Munich, Strasbourg, Frankfurt and Nuremberg. In France, the midwifery profession was first regulated in 1578, while in Spain, England and Holland, midwives have been licensed since the seventeenth century by the local administration, surgeons and the clergy. Professional midwives worked under licence and they had to take a professional oath as any craftsman would. For example, the city authorities of Nuremberg, Germany administered the midwives’ oath from 1417 and by the sixteenth century this had become common practice throughout Europe. As was the case with craftsmen, midwives could advertise their trade through a sign hung up on the wall of their house. Cobblers had a boot hanging outside their doors, tailors a pair of scissors and barbers a plate used for

26  Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen bloodletting. Midwives’ signs included a cherubic baby with fat cheeks, the delivery chair, which was indispensable in childbirth at the time, or the enema syringe, which was another item of childbirth paraphernalia.2 The city of Munich, in the German Duchy of Bayern, was the first to start training midwives in a maternity clinic (1589), followed by the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Paris in 1630. This practice was not adopted in the rest of Europe until the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason or the Age of Utility, when the learning of so-called useful skills was considered to be of benefit to women too. It was thought that the problem of high infant mortality could be tackled through improved training for midwives. These new ideas emerged about the same time in many places and spread rapidly throughout continental Europe. It was only in England that these challenges were addressed by training male surgeons to become professionals in obstetrics, at the same time weakening the status of English midwives, who had no formal training.3 In Spain, it was requested from 1750 onwards that midwives have medical training and degrees; consequently, specialized educational institutions for midwives were established in Madrid and Barcelona towards the end of the century. Likewise, the first publicly financed French courses for midwives were organized in the 1750s. In Paris, the course participants were instructed by a doctor of the medical faculty and studies included practical training under a professional midwife. In Denmark the education of midwives was organized from 1714; later, in 1787 they were trained in the maternity clinic in Copenhagen. In 1757, the German Duchy of Braunschweig issued an order whereby midwives had to be trained in both theoretical knowledge and practical skills. Obligatory studies included the female anatomy and physics under the professor of obstetrics at the surgical institute. The studies also incorporated the artisan-style practical training of old under the direction of an experienced midwife. In the spirit of the Enlightenment, schools for midwives were also established in northern Italy. To be admitted, the student had to be literate, able to memorize theoretical issues and attend lessons in anatomy. The studies concluded with an examination in midwifery. The Dutch examination in midwifery could be taken at either the surgeons’ guild, the Collegium Medicum or the Collegium Obstetricum.4 The midwife’s responsibilities included caring for women during pregnancy, childbirth and puerperium as well as the care of the newborn during its first days. Professional midwives had no right to choose their customers and had to should serve ladies of substantial wealth and the poor with the same dedication. Throughout Europe, trained midwives worked under official responsibility and besides their duties assisting with the actual childbirth, their tasks also included legal and even religious duties. They had to perform investigations and give testimonies in legal cases involving infanticide, rape or premarital pregnancy. Under the law, midwives were also in charge of emergency baptisms and many of them had some theological training for the sacrament of baptism. The Christian baptism could be

Midwives  27 performed only once; therefore, it was important that in an emergency baptism midwives were able to perform the ritual correctly. From very early on, Spanish midwifery textbooks described the content and performance of the baptism ritual. In sixteenth-century Protestant German communities, midwives were instructed by Lutheran priests as to the correct baptism ritual.5 The work of early midwives was a manual skill in the truest sense of the word. The hands were the instruments of a trained midwife and slender hands with fine fingers were thought to be ideal for assisting in childbirth. Midwives were also encouraged to avoid rough work in order to keep the skin of their hands soft and undamaged. Besides their hands, midwives used scissors or a sharp knife and linen thread for cutting and tying the umbilical cord, a syringe for administering an enema to the mother prior to delivery as well as a small tube, which was used for blowing air into the infant’s lungs, if necessary.6 In most countries, midwives were not allowed to use surgical instruments or perform any surgical procedures. Forceps deliveries as well as Caesarean sections were left to male surgeons.7 For a long time, trained midwives were the only women in Europe who were required to be fully literate, able to read and write. From the sixteenth century, professional literature for midwives was written in the vernacular languages, as they were not expected to understand Greek or Latin as were medical doctors who studied at university. Learned midwives also published books on midwifery, with several editions taken over the years in certain cases. Louise Bourgeois (1563–1636), the trusted midwife to the French queen Marie de’ Medici, published a three-part obstetrics manual in 1601–1609 based on her own experiences as a mother of three and a midwife working in Paris.8 In her book, Louise Bourgeois discussed not only childbirth and delivery but also female infertility, miscarriages and women’s and children’s diseases. In 1677, the leading midwife at the renowned Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Paris, Marguerite du Tertre de la Marche (1638–1706), published her manual of midwifery9 for students of the profession. This was the first medical textbook written by a European woman, and contained pictures of the female internal organs, the womb, the ovaries and the vagina. In 1690, the German midwife Justine Siegemund (1636–1705) published a midwifery guidebook,10 which focused on difficult deliveries and presented several novel medical procedures, such as the use of hands and loops of string to turn a foetus facing the wrong way in the womb. Siegmund spent her own career as the official midwife of the town of Lignitz and she also served as the court midwife for several German princes and princesses.11

The institutionalization of the midwife profession in the Kingdom of Sweden This chapter focuses on the educated and licensed midwives in eighteenthcentury Finland, which was the eastern part of the Kingdom of Sweden

28  Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen until 1809. During the period of the study this area was mainly rural with a small number of towns, often consisting of only a few thousand inhabitants. Nevertheless, the early history of professional midwives is a history of urban women, since the majority of licensed midwives lived and worked in towns or cities. Other healthcare professionals such as medical doctors, surgeons and apothecaries were also city-dwellers. In rural areas the training and employment of professional midwives was still considered to be one of the accoutrements enjoyed by the gentry and therefore a waste of money. Urban life differed from rural life in many other ways, too: the laws in Swedish cities differed somewhat from those in the countryside; the same applied to livelihoods and thereby employment opportunities and the population at large. During the period under study here, urban women, with the exception of the widows of the burghers or midwives, had no access to the artisan guilds or mercantile communities. Typically, they earned their living in small-scale businesses in a number of ways: peddling or petty selling; dispensing alcoholic beverages and serving food; providing accommodation; spinning, weaving, sewing, and providing textile care and offering cleaning services. As a rule, urban Swedish and Finnish women could legally manufacture and trade only in goods and services, the sale of which did not require burgess rights. The regulated training in burgess occupations was only given to boys and men. Women acquired knowledge and skills at home and in their service positions.12 There was only one exception to this male hegemony: the midwives. Midwives were always women but in spite of their sex or even marital status, they could obtain a profession regulated by the law. This profession also required formal training and examination. In Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, the midwifery profession and training was regulated from the late seventeenth century. As was the case elsewhere in Europe, Sweden began to pay attention to the high mortality of mothers and children during childbirth. At the same time, young men were dying en masse in the European wars and authorities began to worry about how to ensure sufficient population to keep the kingdom strong. Professional midwives, in addition to other means, were needed in order to reduce infant mortality. Midwifery was traditionally a woman’s job and it was probably for that reason that it was the first profession in which Swedish and Finnish women could be trained and obtain an official professional degree. These degrees combined validation by both medical and clerical authorities. Established in 1663 in Stockholm, the Collegium Medicum had as its task to examine and supervise medical doctors, surgeons and pharmacists, as well as midwives. In 1686, the Stockholm magistrates’ court issued a regulation concerning midwifery in the city that affirmed midwifery training lasting four years with appropriate matriculation and final examinations and professional oaths. Moreover, the Swedish Church Code of 1686 included a reference to midwives who should assist in emergency baptisms and the registration of children born out of wedlock. The Church Code

Midwives  29 required the clergy to instruct and test midwives in Christianity so that the midwives would be able to ‘perform an emergency baptism’ correctly. At Swedish district courts and courts of appeal, midwives should provide formal and authoritative testimony in fornication cases. A medical regulation passed in 1688 required that during their studies, midwives should also be present at dissections of women.13 In 1711, the Collegium Medicum issued a new, more comprehensive code of conduct for the midwives in Stockholm.14 After the Great Northern War (1700–1721), even other towns and rural parishes – mostly in vain – were urged to employ professional midwives. This was repeated several times during and after the 1750s as the Collegium Medicum strongly recommended that parishes and towns should employ midwives who had been trained in Stockholm. Officially, Swedish midwifery training only became nationwide in 1777 when midwifery regulations applicable to the entire kingdom (Sweden and Finland) were issued.15 In 1711 the first midwifery code of conduct set a wide range of requirements and expectations for the midwives. They had to be God-fearing, appropriate, patient and precise; furthermore, they were expected to be able to read and maintain a good name and reputation. The code also mentioned education lasting a period of two years, a midwifery examination, a professional oath, a certificate of study and a midwife’s sign to be hung on the doorframe as a sign to customers.16 The following code of conduct from 1777 added full literacy as a requirement for professional midwives: from this year onwards they had to be able to read as well write. Midwifery apprentices had to have given birth themselves; therefore, they could be either wives or widows and in good health, but they did not necessarily have to be very young: an age of thirty to forty was deemed suitable. Emphasis was placed on a shrewd acumen in order for the midwife to be able to handle difficult births, wherein the lives of the mother and child suddenly became endangered for some reason.17 Midwives had free rein to think for themselves.

Midwives: Competent and meticulous urban women who had given birth Throughout the eighteenth century, Swedish and Finnish women studied midwifery textbooks in Stockholm, attended both lectures by professors and dissections and practised deliveries under experienced midwives. To conclude their studies, they completed an examination at the Collegium Medicum and swore an official oath in midwifery.18 A total of 89 Finnish women received a midwifery qualification during the period 1711–1809. Especially the register of Swedish midwives of the period 1761–1818 in the Stockholm City Archives includes rich information about educated and licensed midwives who practised their profession in Sweden and Finland. This register contains information on 74 midwives who eventually were employed in the area of present-day Finland19 during the period 1761–1809.

30  Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen The information includes the name and age of the midwife, the profession of her husband and the examination date and locality where she practised her profession. The rolls also include information about the skills and character of these women: ‘A little bit stupid but good at nursing’ or ‘brave and learns quickly’ or ‘nice and much-loved’ or ‘a quick but careless nurse, has a good social capability’ and so on. According to the register, there were licensed midwives across Finland, from the northern city of Oulu/Uleåborg to the city of Loviisa/Lovisa in the south near the Russian border.20 Throughout Europe, midwives were expected to have their own personal experience of childbirth. Combined with a relatively young age, this meant that a large number of women selected for training as midwives were married younger mothers rather than old widows. Of Finnish midwives who went to Stockholm during the period 1761–1809, three-quarters (59 women) were married, fourteen were widows and one was divorced.21 This also indicates that women who definitely needed their own income – women who lived alone – were not selected to study as midwives. Instead, those in charge of admissions seemed to favour women with a stable and respected position in society, such as burgess women from urban areas. Midwifery studies were clearly not disguised aid for the poor, but aimed above all else to produce a skilled, professional workforce. It was not worth investing in expensive training for an older widow past her best working age, since she would not have as many years of work ahead of her as a younger woman would. The code of conduct put the optimum age for a midwife at up to forty years, but a large number of trained midwives were significantly younger. According to the midwife register, the average age of Finnish apprentices was thirty-three, but a considerable number of women were younger, concentrated in the twenty-six to thirty-two age range. As such, the majority of women had around ten years of married life behind them. Many midwives appear to have married at a younger age than many of their peers:22 both the marriage and the birth of their first child had taken place around the age of twenty. In Sweden, the youngest age at which women were permitted to marry was fifteen years, and a few midwives had married and given birth well under the age of twenty years. Sometimes there had been several marriages. In addition to the training, the work of a midwife was in many ways comparable to other craftsmen professions in the eighteenth century. It was from these circles that many a midwife had found her husband long before embarking on her own training. The occupation of the man did not seem to matter: Finnish midwives married smiths, glassblowers, painters, tailors, carpenters, jewellers, printers, weavers, cobblers, turners, furriers, tinkers, coopers, carriage makers, potters and glovers. Through their husbands’ and sometimes fathers’ occupation, many midwives belonged to the burgher estate (borgarstånd); therefore, they were part of a privileged minority in their society. Swedish and Finnish towns were centres of trade and handicrafts, but the majority of the urban population were maids, hired hands and other manual workers who were not part of the burgher class.23

Midwives  31 All married midwives had given birth to children and continued to give birth every couple of years as long as they were of a fertile age and the couple was healthy. Some women had more than ten children, but most commonly women had between four and nine children. We only know the entire child birthing history of twelve Finnish midwives and for each woman, the numbers indicate high child mortality. Of their 85 children, almost half – 40 girls and boys – died before they had turned fifteen and most of them died in early infancy from various poxes, whooping cough and stomach complaints. This means that the actual number of children in midwives’ families fell to below four.

Literate midwives In eighteenth-century Sweden, professional literature was considered an important part of midwifery training as it was ‘desirable for them [midwives] to be able to read in order for them to be increasingly able to familiarise themselves with their profession’.24 Professional midwives were required to be literate as they had to be able to read professional literature and, in their capacity as office holders, they had to be able to write and sign certificates given to courts and parishes. The literacy requirement made midwifery apprentices exceptional women as in eighteenth-century Sweden reading and writing were not often taught at the same time. The Swedish Lutheran church required all girls and boys of all social classes to learn to read religious texts: the Catechism, hymns and books of devotions; however, there was no law compelling them to write, since unlike reading, writing held no religious significance in Sweden. Therefore, the ability to write was a rare skill throughout the entire population. In the eighteenth century, lower-class women were seldom able to write; hence, the majority of women selected to study midwifery came from families that taught their daughters to write in Swedish from an early age. Of 74 trained and licensed midwives who were employed in Finland during the period 1761–1809, over half were from burgher, civil officer or military families (50 women). This is to be expected, since midwives were required to be literate in Swedish. Swedish was the language of administration and the educated classes and was also spoken as vernacular in Finland by all burghers, clergy and nobility, as well as some among the peasantry too.25 In August 1778, when the Finnish town of Uusikaupunki/Nystad publicly sought applicants for funded midwifery training, no less than five literate women applied. Of the women, master bricklayer Aurin’s wife Anna Cajander and burgess Hallberg’s wife Lisa Lindberg could write well, and burgess Grönström’s wife Anna Lisa Ruthén, master bookbinder Crusell’s wife Greta Lisa Messman and seaman Riga’s wife Eva Donckelberg could write to some extent. Only magistrate Lundeen’s widow Margretha Wång was entirely unable to write. All applicants were able to speak Swedish. In addition, they all had the necessary knowledge of Christian doctrine and led respectable, upstanding lives as required of midwives.26

32  Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen These aspiring midwives clearly had literary skills despite the case that the society of the time placed no such demand on them or even provided them with the opportunity to attend school. Who then, were they and what kind of background did they have? The eldest of the group, Margaretha Wång, was the daughter of a burgess from Uusikaupunki/Nystad. She spoke Swedish but could not write. Anna Ruthén, aged thirty-three, was also from a local middle-class family. She spoke Swedish and could write to some extent. The father of thirty-eight-year-old Elisabet Lundberg was also a burgess in the town. She spoke Swedish and was learning to write. Even Eva Donckelberg, aged twenty-seven, was the daughter of a burgess. She spoke Swedish and had some writing skills. Anna Cajander, aged thirty, was married to master bricklayer Adam Aurin and was fluent in Swedish and fully literate. The highest-born of the group was Margareta Messman, whose father, Berndt Messman, was a sergeant major and whose mother, Anna von Qvanten, was a noblewoman. Margareta spoke good Swedish and could write a little.27 As such, all midwifery candidates in Uusikaupunki/Nystad were either from the burgher estate or an even more privileged background and all were somewhat able to write, with the exception of the eldest of the group, Margaretha Wång. Uusikaupunki/Nystad had a school for small children founded in the seventeenth century. It was a modest school where children of the burghers were taught reading, writing, biblical history, arithmetic and geography. These schools sometimes accepted girls as well.28 It is possible that Anna Ruthén went to school there, as she was born in Uusikaupunki/ Nystad. However, it is more likely that all of the aforementioned women had learnt to read and write at home. At a general level, the example of Uusikaupunki/Nystad shows that Finnish burgess women were often able to write and as such belonged to the small literate minority in the eighteenth century. The modest level of literacy amongst these women comes as no surprise either, since even noblewomen had difficulties with spelling and the use of punctuation and capital letters.29 All above-mentioned women were able to speak Swedish, which was a requirement in order to attend school in Stockholm. It seems, however, that only Anna Cajander and Margareta Messman spoke Swedish as their mother tongue; they were said to speak fluently and flawlessly. Nevertheless, the native Swedish-speaking candidates were passed over and the youngest of the group was selected: in late 1778, the native Finnish-speaking seaman’s wife Eva Donckelberg travelled to Stockholm to study and completed her midwifery qualification in the Collegium Medicum on 16 April 1779.30 Despite the requirement of full literacy, only a few documents written by the midwives have survived. The midwives’ application documents for an office appear to have been written by a professional clerk. In Finland, there remains only one application written in Swedish by midwife Catharina Renaut herself, kept in the archives of the local city administrative court in

Midwives  33 Turku/Åbo. It stands out a little due to its misspelling and Latin letters.31 The Latin style was favoured by women of the upper class, who were familiar with the style due to their French studies. Men mastered the Gothic letters and style of writing that were also used in official Swedish documents of the time. Catharina Renaut was the widow of Pierre Renaut, a French-born language master who had taught French at the Royal Academy of Turku/ Åbo. Moreover, probate inventories contain a few of the midwives’ signatures: the names of Catarina Toppelia, Anna Maria Hammerin and Maria Christina Pelander. Pelander was the daughter of a merchant, Toppelia was the daughter of a master tailor, and Hammerin was the daughter of a seaman.32 In 1785, the town midwife of Linköping, Greta Blom, drew up her own description of childbirth, which is stored in the archives of the Collegium Medicum.33 Catharina Malhiem, the town midwife of Vänersborg in Sweden, was the daughter of a priest and wrote an entire textbook on midwifery.34

Studies in anatomy, obstetrics and forensic medicine I do not teach [the midwives] through words and discussion alone; instead, they are able to see the procedures themselves, as I have preserved the reproductive organs cut from a woman, that is, those organs [that] God has given to a person at birth, and above all [I have] ossa pelvim constituentia, or pelvic bones, the structure of which every midwife should be thoroughly familiar, as the foetus must pass through these bones. And I show how the foetus must be helped past these bones, as I have made for myself a stuffed infant with limbs of soft leather, with which I demonstrate all the procedures that a midwife may encounter so that she can practise her skills in advance as a soldier does before facing an enemy. [original in Swedish]35

This was written in Swedish by Stockholm’s city municipal medical officer Johan von Hoorn (1662–1724), who achieved wide publicity as a pioneer of midwifery training in Sweden during his lifetime. He studied medicine in the late seventeenth century at the universities of Uppsala, Leiden and Amsterdam and in England. In Paris, he studied the practicalities of childbirth under an experienced professional midwife, Madame Allegrain, in private Parisian homes. Women permitted von Hoorn to attend their births for a separate fee. At the advice of Allegrain, he supplemented his studies under the guidance of a Parisian surgeon, Monsieur Le Frad. Le Frad specialized in difficult births and von Hoorn learnt about turning the foetus as well as some rather violent extraction methods.36 Johan von Hoorn took advantage of the experienced professionals’ skills and actively corresponded with Justine Siegemund, a famous German midwife and author of a guide to childbirth. Hoorn even planned to translate Siegemund’s work into Swedish. As such, he published the first Swedish-language

34  Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen guide to midwifery, Den Swenska Wälöfwade Jorde-Gumman (1697) and began to give private lessons to midwives in Stockholm.37 Hoorn also took private female students in midwifery with him to difficult, abnormal births to which he was invited in his capacity as a medical doctor. In these situations, he instructed ‘how, in any emergency or difficult situation, midwives shall do their utmost to help the child come into the world healthy and alive’.38 He also wrote some of the most popular works midwifery guidebooks. They examined in detail the female anatomy, internal examinations carried out by midwives, the signs of pregnancy, miscarriages and natural, difficult and ‘unnatural’ births.39 In 1776 medical counsellor Jonas Kiernander (1721–1778) published the first guidebook in Swedish dealing with forensic medicine.40 At over 700 pages, the book was aimed at professionals who had to carry out or make decisions based on forensic studies; this included medical doctors, surgeons and professional midwives in addition to judges. From a midwifery perspective, Kiernander’s book contains information on the physiology and course of pregnancy, complications relating to pregnancy and birth and matters pertaining to the killing of newborn infants. From a cognitive perspective, the midwifery training was the most diverse and challenging the eighteenth century had to offer to Swedish and Finnish women. In 1729, the Stockholm city administrative court declared that the midwives who had arrived to take their oath . . . had not simply listened to public midwifery lectures, and read books on midwifery in Swedish, but they had also observed experienced midwives during several births and taken care of some births themselves without assistance, and had also completed the regular midwifery qualification. Therefore, each of them has managed to obtain plenty of both formal and private training in midwifery; as such, it is recommended that they swear the normal oath granted to them by the magistrate so that they might immediately place their hand on the book and take their oath, and they were given a written certificate to prove that they had sworn their oath . . . so they now have the freedom to freely and without obstruction to serve as privileged midwives and to place the usual sign on their dwelling [on the door frame].41 What did this indicate for all trained midwives? What did they know about pregnancy and birth? What could they do? Midwifery guides placed special emphasis on four skills: correct internal examinations, the skill to deliver the child’s head correctly, taking care of the afterbirth and turning a foetus that was in a difficult position. Of these skills, the first and last in particular were skills that untrained midwives or surgeons did not have, or which they did not traditionally perform. Trained midwives, on the other hand, were trained since von Hoorn’s time to turn transverse-position foetuses in the womb and to extract the foetus if the child could not be born normally. The

Midwives  35 midwife inserted her hand into the mother’s vagina, took the baby by the foot and pulled that out first. Then, using different holds, she would help to deliver the child’s lower body and then the head.42 Previously, the only method was to wait for the foetus to die whereupon a surgeon would cut it into pieces and remove them from the womb using a hook.43 Trained and licensed midwives were trained to be familiar with the female anatomy and to learn by name and appearance all internal and external female reproductive organs. The midwife had to know the hip bones, pelvic bones, tailbone and sacrum, which she would attentively study often using the skeleton, keeping their connection in mind. In addition to this, midwives also had to be familiar with the colon, bladder, vagina and womb, which in girls is the size of a large walnut and the shape of a pear, while in women it is the size of a small fist, and in women in the late stages of pregnancy it is like a swollen bag. A trained midwife knew that the vagina was full of folds so that it could expand without injury to accommodate the size of the foetus. The midwife also had to know the external reproductive organs: the labia, the urethra, the vulva, hymen and the perineum by name and appearance in order to be able to carry out the examinations required by the courts and to appropriately respond and name them if some of a violated woman’s reproductive organs were damaged, or if a doctor or official asked the midwife for advice.44 Carrying out internal gynaecological exams was a professional skill for a trained midwife. In early eighteenth-century Sweden, the internal examination was an odd procedure for which doctor Johan von Hoorn had to invent a Swedish term: ‘to examine the wife’ (undersöka hustrun). Hoorn instructed Swedish and Finnish midwives to use this procedure and appeared to have been the first medical officer in the country to carry out internal examinations on women.45 Otherwise, the method was used mostly by trained midwives. Untrained female helpers or surgeons who had received only apprentice (not academic) training as barber-surgeons would not carry out internal examinations until decades later.46 From 1753, midwives were trained at the Serafimlasarett hospital in Stockholm, which reserved two out of its eight beds for poor women in labour.47 There were, however, far too few births in the hospital for educational purposes. By 1760 only 107 children were born in its delivery rooms. The majority of practical experience was still obtained through home births in which midwifery students worked under an experienced professional midwife. In 1775 an entirely new institution, a general maternity hospital, was founded in Stockholm and became the new training site for midwifery students.48 By late 1798, the maternity hospital had cared for 7,283 mothers and had assisted in delivering 7,464 children.49 The maternity hospital’s birth journals recorded each mother who was cared for at the institution with a number. The documents recorded the mother’s arrival at hospital, the course of the birth, the time of the birth and the person assisting in the delivery of the child; most often the person responsible is marked as a more experienced trainee midwife. The health of

36  Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen the mothers and newborns was monitored while they were in the hospital and the birth journals recorded the mother’s bowel movements, the quality and quantity of postpartum discharge, the expression of milk and any possible complaints, as well as that the mother and child were well and healthy.50 The birth journals thus provide a good insight into how women gave birth in the eighteenth century and how a trained midwife was able to care for them during the birth and puerperal period. The Finnish widow of a merchant, Brita Uddman, trained in the maternity hospital from December 1784 to April 1785. During that time, she was responsible for 47 births. Of those women, 42 were unmarried and 28 were giving birth to their first child. On two occasions, she assisted in delivering twins. On the first occasion, the twins died in hospital, but the second set of twins was of sufficient weight and healthy. One premature baby also died soon after birth, while another child died from some sort of ‘convulsion’ at six days old. The other children left the hospital healthy. All of the women that Uddman cared for recovered well: they could breastfeed, they had normal after-birth bleeding and they took home healthy newborns. As noted in the birth journals: On 18 February, unmarried 22-year-old mother, first birth. Arrived at 5 a.m. Her waters had broken and she gave birth naturally at 9:30 a.m. to a live girl with the assistance of Madam Uddman. [On] 19 February, she had a bowel movement with the help of Epsom salts [magnesium sulphate]. Discharge is normal. On 21 February, plenty of milk in the breasts. On 23 February, the mother is doing well, milk is sparing, the child is doing well. On 25 February, the mother leaves with her healthy child.51 Anna Wetterblad from Rauma/Raumo was in Stockholm three years before Uddman and assisted in delivering 22 children between March and June 1782. Nineteen mothers were unmarried. Fourteen of them gave birth to their first child. Wetterblad did not assisted in delivering any twins, but on the first of May she helped a mother of a stillborn boy whose umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. The mother had ‘voluminous, green, foulsmelling’ discharge. The other children midwifed by Wetterblad and all of the women left the hospital perfectly healthy.52 To meet broader educational expectations, the problem of high infant mortality could be tackled even better through this improved training for midwives at maternity hospitals.

Midwives as authorized witnesses in courts of justice Midwives’ expertise was required not only in the delivery room, but also in the courtroom. For example, professionals from several areas, doctors, surgeons and midwives, would participate in investigations into the deaths of newborns. Medical doctors and surgeons often focused on the victim.53 It was the midwives’ task to investigate women who were suspected of having

Midwives  37 given birth to a dead, possibly murdered child conceived out of wedlock, but in some cases they also investigated the victim, the killed child.54 The Collegium Medicum emphasized that women who were not trained or who had not taken the midwifery oath, were not to be considered as authorized to give any evidence to the court of justice.55 The examinations carried out by the midwives and the written and oral statements they gave to the court tell of both their professional skills and their expertise. They accurately described the anatomical and physiological features of the women and children they examined and presented several possible causes and interpretations of what they observed. Surgeons, doctors and midwives were also called to examine possible victims of sexual violence and suspected rapists.56 One good example of a midwife’s medical expertise is recorded in the case of the corpse of a premature baby found in a manure heap at the Turku/ Åbo hospital, which was examined by city midwife Catharina Renaut. From a forensic medicine perspective, it was most important to distinguish any external signs of violence by examining the already decomposing skin, which Renaut was clearly able to do. She was able to accurately record the size of the small body, the stage of skeletal development and based on that information, estimated the age of the foetus to be around seven months. As such, she estimated that the child had died before birth. Based on the tearing in the captured and accused mother’s vagina and degree of swelling in the outer reproductive organs, Renaut deducted that the birth had been a sudden and rough miscarriage, not an infanticide. On the grounds of Renaut’s statement, the mother was released.57 Baroness Florentina Armfelt died in childbirth while delivering her first child at the Bystad manor in Askers, Sweden, after a long labour lasting seven days in May 1785. She was assisted by the Linköping city midwife Greta Blom and by regimental battle surgeon D. Wittkopf. Wittkopf was held responsible for involuntary manslaughter by the Collegium Medicum for the death of the Baroness. Greta Blom, on the other hand, gave the Collegium Medicum a written account of the event: I was invited to visit Baroness Armfelt at the Bystad mansion on 13 April; the Baroness was well until in the night between 13 and 14 May when a large amount of her waters broke, on the day of the 15, she complained of some minor and unnoticeable feeling; I examined [her] then and noticed [that] her womb had not dilated at all: she experienced painful labour pains in the night which lasted throughout the entire day of the sixteenth May, and in the evening, her womb had opened slightly, the pains continued on the seventeenth day, on the morning of the eighteenth day I noticed during an examination that the [uterine orifice] had opened to the size of a [silver] daler and the foetus was correctly positioned. On that day, the Baroness requested bloodletting, which Professor Vitkoph did not deem necessary as the pulse was not

38  Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen elevated. On these days, we administered several enemas which caused labour pains; after these days on the eighteenth day, the professor carried out an examination and said that the situation was as I described, and said that he wanted to take care of the birth himself, after which time I no longer carried out any examinations as I was forbidden from carrying out any procedures. On the night between the eighteenth and nineteenth of May, the pains continued but I was not called throughout the next day until the evening. At that point, the labour pains were fewer and the Baroness was sleeping a little. On the 20 day, the pains were not as frequent, but towards the afternoon they were more severe, [the Baroness] relieved herself, the fever continued throughout the whole night, at around two she experienced a chill that lasted for three quarters of an hour, followed by pain and aches in the legs, then the professor performed an examination and spoke with the Baroness in French, after this she was very fatigued and complained of a severe headache, which continued until half past three in the morning, whereupon she died quietly without giving birth and without any particular pain on death. This is what I can remember. Linköping 4 September 1785. Greta Elisabet Blom.58 Surgeon Wittkopf did not attempt to help the baby out from its dead mother by means of a Caesarean section, which the Collegium Medicum thought to be an extremely aggravating factor. The battle surgeon should also have tried to help his patient with forceps, but he did not. Wittkopf was declared to have acted in an unskilled, ignorant and even harmful manner, and the Collegium Medicum banned him from ever acting as an obstetrician again.59

Conclusion In the eighteenth century, the earliest midwifery training for Swedish and Finnish women came about in a profession that was encouraged to develop to solve the problems of high infant mortality. Men had traditionally not practised midwifery, so it fell to women to embrace this new profession. It was also one of the few ways a woman could achieve a certified occupation at this time. The female gender of professional practitioners did not prevent the connection of midwifery training targets with the eighteenth-century ideals prevalent in European science and political discussion, according to which new, useful knowledge was the primary source of a good life. In this case, women and men were encouraged to take the initiative in acquiring knowledge and using common sense, in accordance with the ideas of the Enlightenment. When planning or carrying out midwifery training, gender was not discussed at any point. Educators and decision-makers saw no problems or conflict in that the wives of upstanding men left their families to study in Stockholm, where they would complete a professional qualification, swear

Midwives  39 an official oath and thereby use their authorized societal power. In the eighteenth century, the official capacity of a city midwife was the same for women as was the role of the city surgeon applied to men. As office holders, urban midwives had their own salary and career. Trained and licensed midwives seemed to have boldly seized the opportunity for a professional career and income. They understood that full literacy was a crucial element for eighteenth-century professionalism. There are no signs that they would have found reading textbooks, attending lectures or meeting the qualifications to be impossible or undesirable for a woman. However, the training was almost certainly not easy, as the earlier literacy of almost all midwifery learners was limited to religious texts, the catechism, hymns and possibly the Bible. For this reason, midwifery textbooks set these women challenges other than literacy, since literacy scholars distinguish between various manners of reading depending on whether the text was religious or secular. The Bible, catechism and hymns were read repeatedly in the same manner and possibly by rote, whereas the secular literature and newspapers, which became common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were a different kind of reading experience: they were often personal choices and offered entirely new kinds of information.60 Midwifery textbooks provided information that was new, in all senses of the word. Today, having completed years of schooling and studies, we can read these books and easily find the information on human anatomy and wonders of nature to be self-evident and widely known. Swedish and Finnish midwives in the eighteenth century were able to read, write and count, but they did not have any previous knowledge that they could have applied to the content of the textbooks. Despite this, there are no signs to show that they would have shied away from reading the anatomy textbooks or any other educational materials provided to them. This chapter has examined the professional aspects of the early modern midwives’ training and work in eighteenth century Europe with a focus on Sweden and Finland. Trained midwives themselves emphasized their professional status and attempted to drive out untrained helpers from their territory. In doing so, they had the support of the authorities. The chapter has also shown that the skills of the midwives were based on theoretical and scientific knowledge, their training offered the opportunity to complete a professional qualification and their studies and work were independent and regulated by the law. The importance of both their training and work was justified by the good recovery of mothers and the health of newborns.

Notes 1 Robert Graves, Born to Procreate: Women and Childbirth in France from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 65; Hilary Marland, ‘The “Burgerlijke” Midwife: The Stadsvrodvrouw of Eighteenthcentury Holland’, in The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe, ed. Hilary Marland (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 195, 201; Teresa

40  Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen Ortiz, ‘From Hegemony to Subordination: Midwives in Early Modern Spain’, in The Art of Midwifery, 97; Merry E. Wiesner, ‘The Midwives of South Germany and the Public/Private Dichotomy’, in The Art of Midwifery, 36. 2 Graves, Born to Procreate, 73–74; David Harley, ‘Provincial Midwives in England: Lancashire and Cheshire, 1660–1760’, in The Art of Midwifery, 30; Merry E. Wiesner, ‘Early Modern Midwifery: A Case Study’, International Journal of Women’s Studies 6:1 (1983), 27, 29–30; Marland, ‘The “Burgerlijke” Midwife’, 192, 205; Ortiz, ‘From Hegemony to Subordination’, 99; Wiesner, ‘The Midwives of South Germany and the Public/Private Dichotomy’, 83. 3 Nadia Maria Filipponi, ‘The Church, the State and Childbirth: The Midwife in Italy During the Eighteenth Century’, in The Art of Midwifery, 163; Mary Lindeman, ‘Professionals? Sisters? Rivals? Midwives in Braunschweig, 1750–1800’, in The Art of Midwifery,179–180; Graves, Born to Procreate, 33–34; Marland, ‘The “Burgerlijke” Midwife’, 197; Ortiz, ‘From Hegemony to Subordination’, 99–101. 4 Nadia Maria Filipponi, ‘The Church, the State and Childbirth’, 163; Mary Lindeman, ‘Professionals? Sisters? Rivals? Midwives in Braunschweig’, 179–180; Graves, Born to Procreate, 33–34; Marland, ‘The “Burgerlijke” Midwife’, 197; Ortiz, ‘From Hegemony to Subordination’, 99–101; Ida Blom, ‘Den haarde Dyst’: Fødsler og fødselshjelp gjennom 150 år (Bergen: J.W. Cappelens Förlag, 1988), 23–26. 5 Filipponi, ‘The Church, the State and Childbirth’, 155; Harley, ‘Provincial Midwives in England’, 34, 36, 38; Marland, ‘The “Burgerlijke” Midwife’, 95; Ortiz, ‘From Hegemony to Subordination’, 101–102; Wiesner, ‘The Midwives of South Germany and the Public/Private Dichotomy’, 77–78, 85, 87. 6 Graves, Born to Procreate, 69. 7 Filipponi, ‘The Church, the State and Childbirth’,164; Marland, ‘The “Burgerlijke” Midwife’, 199. 8 Louise Bourgeois’s book had the title Observations de Sage-femme de la Reine. 9 Marguerite de la Marches’s book had the title Instruction familière et utile aux sages-femmes pour bien pratiquer les accouchements. 10 Justine Siegemund’s book had the title Ein höchstnöthiger Unterricht von schweren und unrechtstehenden Geburten. 11 Graves, Born to Procreate, 74, 83; Harley, ‘Provincial Midwives in England’, 34; Lindeman, ‘Professionals? Sisters? Rivals? Midwives in Braunschweig’, 178, 197, 180; Marland, ‘The “Burgerlijke” Midwife’, 201; Ortiz, ‘From Hegemony to Subordination’, 97. 12 Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, ‘Handicrafts as Profession and Sources of Income in Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Turku: A Gender Viewpoint to Economic History’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 48:1 (2000), 40–63. 13 Birger Lundqvist, ‘Det svenska barnmorskeväsendets historia’, in Svenska barnmorskor, ed. Birger Lundqvist (Stockholm: Svenska yrkesförlaget, 1940), 15–16, 19–20, 25. 14 Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, De frimodiga: Barnmorskor, födande och kropplighet på 1700-talet (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2016), 108–109. 15 Lundqvist, ‘Det svenska barnmorskeväsendets historia’, 41, 51. 16 Lundqvist, ‘Det svenska barnmorskeväsendets historia’, 41, 51. 17 Lundqvist, ‘Det svenska barnmorskeväsendets historia’, 48, 73. 18 Wilhelm Djurberg, Läkaren Johan von Hoorn: Förlossningskonstens grundläggare i Sverige (Uppsala: Lärdomshistoriska samfundet, 1942), 58–72; Pia Höjeberg, Helena Malhiems barnmorske lära år 1756 (Stockholm: Hälsopedagogik HB, 1995), 74–75. 19 The town of Hamina/Fredrikshamn was ceded to Russia in the Peace of Turku/ Åbo in 1743, but it is included in this study since one of the Stockholm-trained

Midwives  41 midwives worked there. Before 1809, Tornio/Torneå was not considered to belong to Finland. 20 Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, De frimodiga, 36. 21 Stockholms stadsarkiv (Stockholm City Archives), Barnmorskeläroanstalten, Elevmatrikel över barnmorskorna (The register of the Swedish midwives) 1761–1818. 22 Cf. Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, Käsin tehty – miehelle ammatti, naiselle ansioiden lähde: Käsityötuotannon rakenteet ja strategiat esiteollisessa Turussa Ruotsin ajan lopulla (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1998), 150. 23 Vainio-Korhonen, Käsin tehty, 24. 24 Lundqvist, ‘Det svenska barnmorskeväsendets historia’, 48. 25 Vainio-Korhonen, De frimodiga, 189. 26 Turun maakunta-arkisto/Landsarkivet i Åbo (Provincial Archives of Turku/Åbo), Uusikaupunki/Nystad församling, Protokoll från kyrkostämma 2 August 1778. 27 Landsarkivet i Åbo, Uusikaupunki/Nystad församling, Kommunionböcker 1769–1774, no page numbers, Jacob Crusell, Johan Hollberg, Greta Wång; Kommunionböcker 1780–1784, 42,123; Kommunionböcker 1785–1789, 33; Kommunionböcker 1790–1796, 42, 54; HisKi project, Genealogical Society of Finland http:// hiski.genealogia.fi/hiski/758fk3?en, Födda i Nystad 14 September 1738 and 3 September 1750; Vigda i Nystad 6 June 1758, 6 November 1765, 17 November 1765 and 20 November 1766; Vigda i Åbo finska församling 29 March 1778; Gerald Enckell, ‘Messman – en militärsläkt från Satakunta’, Genos 58 (1987), 188–208. 28 Sisko Wilkama, Naissivistyksen periaatteiden kehitys Suomessa 1840–1880luvuilla: Pedagogis-aatehistoriallinen tutkimus (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1933), 1–2. 29 Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, ‘Sisaruksia ja sukulaisia: Suomalaisten aatelisnaisten kirjeenvaihtoa 1600- ja 1700-luvulla’, in Kirjeet ja historiantutkimus, eds. Maarit Leskelä-Kärki, Anu Lahtinen & Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2011), 141–158. 30 Stockholms stadsarkiv, Barnmorskeläroanstalten, Elevmatrikel över barnmorskorna 16 April 1779. 31 Turun kaupunginarkisto/Åbo stadsarkiv (Turku/Åbo City Archives, Turku/ Åbo), Magistratens i Åbo allegater no. 116 / 1781. 32 Kansallisarkisto/Riksarkivet (Finnish National Archives, Helsinki), City of Oulu probate inventory microfilms, Probate inventory for Jacob Sjöström 17 November 1790 and probate inventory for Hedvig Huckert 28 December 1791; Town of Kokkola probate inventory microfilms, Probate inventory for Matts Imberg 19 November 1799. 33 Riksarkivet (Swedish National Archives, Stockholm) Collegium Medicums arkiv, Protokoll 17 October 1785, 262, 34 Höjeberg, Helena Malhiems barnmorske lära år 1756. 35 Cited in Djurberg, Läkaren Johan von Hoorn, 39, 73. 36 Djurberg, Läkaren Johan von Hoorn, 12–21. 37 Lundqvist, ‘Det svenska barnmorskeväsendets historia’, 28–30; Djurberg, Läkaren Johan von Hoorn, 33. 38 Djurberg, Läkaren Johan von Hoorn, 39–40. 39 L.W. Fagerlund and Robert Tigersted, Medicines studium vid Åbo universitet: Åbo Universitets lärdomshistoria I. Medicinen (Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1890), 65. 40 Jonas Kiernander, Utkast til Medicinal-Lagfarenheten. Domare til uplysning, läkare til hjelpreda och barnmorskor til underwisning i ämnen som röra människo-kroppen (Stockholm: Anders Jac. Nordström, 1776); Arno Forsius, ‘Oikeuslääketieteen kehitystä 1700-luvulla’. The article was completed in September 2013, accessed 7 June 2015, www.saunalahti.fi/arnoldus/oiklaak3.htm.

42  Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen 1 Cited in Lundqvist, ‘Det svenska barnmorskeväsendets historia’, 49–50. 4 42 Stina Bohman, Omsorg om livet: Spädbarnsdödlighetens förändring i Ådalen under 1800-talet (Ph.D. Diss., Uppsala universitet, 2010), 207; Pia Höjeberg, Jordemor: Barnmorskor och barnafödeskor i Sverige (Stockholm: Carlssons, 1991), 91–92; Höjebrg, Helena Malhiems barnmorske lära å 1756, 105–106. 43 Höjeberg, Helena Malhiems barnmorske lära år 1756, 105–106. 44 Johan von Hoorn, Siphra och Pua:Eller Hank-Bok För Barnmorskor . . . Tredje Uplagan . . . (Stockholm: Johan Georg Lange, 1777), 2–5. 45 Djurberg, Läkaren Johan von Hoorn, 170–171; von Hoorn, Siphra och Pua, 10. 46 Mona Rautelin, En förutbestämd sanning: Barnamord och delaktighet i 1700-talets Finland belysta genom kön, kropp och social kontroll (Ph.D. Diss., Helsingfors universitet, 2009), 270. 47 Wolfram Kock, Kungl. Serafimslasarettet 1752–1952: En studie i svensk sjukvårdhistoria (Stockholm: H. Halls Boktr, 1952), 85–86; Lundqvist, ‘Det svenska barnmorskeväsendets historia’, 51. Meanwhile in the kingdom, there was a heated dispute amongst university-trained doctors and the surgeons’ guild. In 1761, the surgeons’ guild aimed to take control of the Serafiimilasarett’s obstetrics professorship, but the Collegium Medicum rejected this move with rather coarse language: “For where and when has he [the surgeon] obtained the necessary skills [for this task], for he spent his youth selling spices and making clocks before moving on to surgery?” Lundqvist, ‘Det svenska barnmorskeväsendets historia’, 51, 54. 48 Kock, Kungl. Serafimslasarettet 1752–1952, 85–86; Lundqvist, ‘Det svenska barnmorskeväsendets historia’, 51, 54. 49 David Schultz von Schulzenheim, Tal, om den offentiliga Vården, i hänseende til Folkets Seder och Helsa, samt de Fattigas Lifbergning, hållet för Kgl. Svenska Vetenskaps-academien vid praesidii nedläggande, andra gången, den 30 januarii, år 1799 (Stockholm: Joh. P. Lindh, 1801), 142. 50 Stockholms stadsarkiv, Barnmorskeläroanstalten, Förlossningsjournaler 3 March 1785. 51 Stockholms stadsarkiv, Barnmorskeläroanstalten, Förlossningsjournaler 18–25 February 1785. 52 Stockholms stadsarkiv, Barnmorskeläroanstalten, Förlossningsjournaler 15 March25 June 1782 and 26 December 1784–8 April 1785. 53 Eva Bergenlöv, Skuld och oskuld: Barnamord och barnkvävning i rättslig diskurs och praxis omkring 1680–1800. Lund: Studia Historica Lundensia (Diss.), 367–386; Anu Koskivirta, ‘Parantaja, kuolinsyyntutkija ja syyntakeeton murhaaja: Välskäri-kirurgi Geissen veriteko yhteisöllisen kriisin kuvastimessa’, in Makaaberi ruumis: Mielikuvia kuolemasta ja kehosta, ed. Jari Eilola (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2009), 296–305. 54 Kongl. Hofrättens Bref. . . då dödt Foster finnes, men obekant är, hwilken det framfödt och å lön lagt 12.2.1755. 55 Otto E.A. Hjelt, Svenska och finska medicinalverkets historia 1663–1812: Del 1–2 (Helsingfors, 1891–1892), 492–493. 56 Vainio-Korhonen, De frimodiga, 149, 159–160. 57 Turun kaupunginarkisto/Åbo stadsarkiv, Magistratens i Åbo protokoll 7 December 1768, 2041–2042. 58 Riksarkivet (Swedish National Archives, Stockholm) Collegium Medicums arkiv, Protokoll 1785, 262–263. 59 Riksarkivet (Swedish National Archives, Stockholm) Collegium Medicums arkiv, Protokoll 17 October 1785, 12 January 1786 and 2 February 1786. 60 Minna Ahokas, Valistus suomalaisessa kirjakulttuurissa 1700-luvulla (Helsinki: Suomen Tiedeseura, 2011), 36–37, 61–62, 180–181.

3 Serving the prince as the first step of female careers The electoral court of Munich, c. 1660–1840 Britta Kägler The most influential European courts consisted of several thousand people: the princely family and its extended household. The household included nobility, court staff, civil servants, and furthermore envoys, emissaries and other temporary visitors like foreign nobility. Additional guests could be admitted to court just for the day, thus most courts were places of lively turnover, global careers and a place for the international exchange of both male and female servants and officeholders. The court formed a strict social hierarchy. Noble officials and even those who regularly attended court without a formal function took part in early modern decision-making processes. Although lower-ranking servants were not called courtiers, serving at court was considered a great honour at any level. The court gave lower-ranking servants, noble servants and officeholders the chance to elevate their social rank. Their closeness – or distance – to the ruler was an important indication of the status they held within court society. At the same time, it was an indication of their potential influence at court. Serving the princely family formed the foundations for the majority of careers at court. A close connection to the court was perceived as essential for inclusion amongst the social elite.1 As Johanna Ilmakunnas explains below, duty and service were key concepts within the early modern court society.2 Personal access to the ruler and his family was subtly mediated through a sequence of rooms. Before the private rooms lay several antechambers. Access to these rooms depended on rank, office and favour with the ruler.3 The ruler held the power to transform a person’s rank and status and could bestow numerous privileges. By attracting the attention of either the monarch or his wife, servants could achieve a higher rank or receive extra payment. This phenomenon can be seen in several European courts. This chapter concentrates on the Wittelsbach Court in Munich. During the late sixteenth century, the Bavarian court comprised a mere 500 people and did not rank highly among European courts. Even though there were only a few court offices available, these positions were not particularly sought-after by Bavarian nobles. Until the beginning of the seventeenth century, the nobility tended to avoid serving at court, as the salary was low.4 However, during

44  Britta Kägler the seventeenth century, in an attempt to keep up with the imperial court in Vienna and other leading European courts, Munich’s court increased in size and importance.5 The Thirty Years’ War can be regarded as a turning point for the Bavarian court. After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, many Bavarian aristocrats faced huge debts. The turmoil of war had devastated rural estates and destroyed the economic and financial basis and means of many noble Bavarian families. Serving at court offered them a much-needed source of income and even became attractive for the upper nobility as well.6 Both the lower and upper nobility flocked to the court and by 1648 approximately two-thirds of the Bavarian aristocracy held seats in the legislative assembly of Bavaria. Consequently, the courtly elite reflected the hierarchical structure of the aristocratic society. The oldest noble families were at the top, followed by the lower and new nobility.7 Thus, Munich’s court was composed of a mix of social classes.8 After overcoming the political and economic challenges of the Thirty Years’ War, the Bavarian elector (Kurfürst) Ferdinand Maria and his Turinese wife Henriette Adelaide, developed a European court life that had much exchange with courts in northern Italy. But it was their successors – Max Emanuel and Karl Albrecht – who established such an ambitious court that contemporary travellers best described it as a separate city within the city of Munich.9 Both Ferdinand Maria and his son Max Emanuel hoped to succeed as Holy Roman emperor and to gain some of the territories belonging to the Habsburg dynasty.10 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the court already had up to 1,560 officials. Quite unlike the famous French court in Versailles, which required the presence of almost all of its noble courtiers, the Bavarian electors could not accommodate the majority of their cour­ tiers. It was therefore a special privilege to be granted a bedchamber or even an office inside the residence. Although recent research has predominantly centred on courtly careers and positions of trust within court and state administration, studies tend to focus only on a small circle of Bavarian noble families and their male descendants.11 Furthermore, studies have often neglected the lives of women working and earning a living at court.

Noblewomen at court In early modern Bavaria, approximately 10 per cent of the employees at court were women.12 Most of these women were bourgeois, not aristocratic; and most of them were employed as musicians or singers in the court chapel.13 Numerous other women were employed in the court kitchen:14 cooks, herb specialists, dishwashers, maids or kitchen ancillaries. Although in the middle of the seventeenth century of the twenty-five cooks at the Wittelsbach Court only one was female. The running of courtly kitchens was later reorganized;15 the various tasks in the court kitchen that were formerly done by unspecialized cooks were differentiated into specialized jobs. Based on this development, in the middle of the eighteenth century there were far

Serving the prince  45 more opportunities for cook maids to assist in the kitchen. They had their own tasks in the sugar bakery and were responsible for depluming birds or washing and drying the dishes.16 These sorts of servant-like offices were mainly only open to women outside of the aristocracy and from lower social classes. For the honorary positions such as the honorary offices of maids of honour (Hoffräulein), ladies-in-waiting (Hofdamen) and court mistresses (Hofmeisterinnen), certain social requirements had to be met. Only aristocratic women of Catholic faith were eligible for prestigious court offices in Munich. Usually these offices were filled by women from prestigious German families and were chosen by the electress (Kurfürstin) herself. Nevertheless, only unmarried women could become either a lady-in-waiting or a maid of honour in duty.17 Although the unmarried noblewomen had formed a sort of noble court ‘academy’ comparable to those of the pages, by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries their duties were mainly ceremonial and they were the constant companions of the electress.18 Hence, they served for only a few years, before later marrying and leaving court service again. Other more superior positions also required a specific marital status. Only widows were allowed to hold the highest rank among female courtiers: chief court mistress. A chief court mistress was responsible for all other female courtiers, including the governesses of the princely children and the court mistress, who was in charge of unmarried maids of honour and ladies-inwaiting and responsible for their conduct and service.19 This chapter aims to discuss the role of women who performed court service in early modern Bavaria. Can the roles of noblewomen at court be considered professional? Did female courtiers achieve a form of salary and how accurate is the common belief that women’s main role in court life was merely to keep the electress company or to impress visiting dignitaries? By concentrating on the often-neglected field of female career, this chapter shows that noblewomen could overcome their family’s rank and status by gaining the ruler’s support and favour. Some women established themselves as agents for the benefits of their own family whilst others even launched their own business, making use of family networks and the knowledge they gained at court. This chapter has drawn on archival documents and both published and unpublished sources. Annual account books from the years 1556 to 1800 provide precious and crucial information on the number of women at court, their salaries and their additional stipends as well as their individual progression in court service. Together alongside correspondence, decrees, regulations and a few existing court journals,20 material is substantial enough to reveal general patterns both in female court service at the Munich court and at other early modern German courts too. Recent studies have shown that the entourage of Electress Maria Anna (died 1665) was composed predominantly of Frankish and Swabian noble families; considerably weakly represented were Bavarian families like

46  Britta Kägler Törring or Preysing.21 Taking a closer look at the household of Electress Henriette Adelaide (died 1676) we can see that members of foreign aristocracies eventually gained more influence at the Bavarian court. For example, the Countess Felicitas Wolkenstein22 from South Tyrol played a major role within the female household of the Bavarian electress for decades. The electress’s entourage was composed of aristocratic and untitled attendants and the Countess of Wolkenstein was the highest-ranking noblewoman in the female household. The court was responsible for the basic maintenance of the women’s rooms, where noblewomen and their maids used to live (Frauenzimmer),23 as well as for duties relating to the court ceremonial. Untitled servants fulfilled domestic duties and this facilitated the smooth running of the daily routine.24 On the other hand, aristocratic officeholders shaped the ecclesiastical and secular life at court. These officeholders enabled the electresses and princesses to be the main characters of court life. Surrounded by numerous bustling female servants, the electresses and princesses could give an even greater impression.25 However, there were only four offices available to noblewomen. The elector’s service personnel were grouped into households. These households were arranged according to whether their duties involved serving the elector, the electress, or other members of the princely family (princes, princesses, second-born family members, etc.).26 Female members from aristocratic families could serve as a lady-in-waiting to the electress. The offices available for noblewomen included the positions chief court mistress, court mistress (deputy of the chief court mistress), maid of honour and lady-inwaiting. Clearly, the nature of the court offered to men far more possibilities than to women27 and women’s employment opportunities were restricted. While aristocratic and/or well-trained men were able to choose between a career at court, working in administration or serving in the military, noblewomen had one sole choice: to serve at court. Moreover, the few court positions that were open to women also necessitated a certain marital status; according to the Munich court model, maids of honour and ladies-in-waiting could not be married, while court mistresses were usually widows. This meant that positions for noblewomen at court were bound to a particular stage in life and such a concept of a career at court, where one constantly rises in the hierarchical order, was impossible. Noblewomen could be appointed lady-in-waiting, but from this position, they could not be promoted to be court mistress or even chief court mistress of the electress’s household. Promotion prospects were very limited and determined by the husband’s rank. Except for female officeholders, the husband or father usually defined the status of a wife or daughter. A ranking of female members of the court from the seventeenth century lists the wives of the twenty-five highest court officials and the presidents of the central authorities as well as ladies-in-waiting. This listing of aristocratic female court members (Verzeichnisdes hochadeligen Frauenzimmers)28 begins with the wives of the highest court officials, whereas the highest female officials – the chief court mistress

Serving the prince  47 Countess Fugger and the court mistress Countess Portia – hold positions five and six. Clearly, a woman’s rank at court was ultimately determined by her husband’s power. However, for the fifteen unmarried ladies-in-waiting, they are grouped by their term of service, not by their noble rank or their family affiliation.

Requirements for careers at court In comparison to the number of women serving at court, the number of female employees was small. This meant that the female workforce was tightly knit and had a close relationship with the electress. Consequently, female officeholders maintained a considerable influence on the daily running of court. Such an influence was not available to male officeholders as they held far less access to the inner apartments of the electress. Ladies-inwaiting were always required to attend the electress or her adolescent daughters, who held their own household from the age of ten.29 The duties of the ladies-in-waiting would vary depending on the special interests of the electress, daily routines and visiting celebrities. Typical tasks included the performing according to the court’s ceremonial, attending church service in the wake of the electress, waiting on her at the table and being present for audiences, masques and dances at court. Thus, female courtiers had leading roles in the lavish court entertainments and were effectively representatives of the Munich court: female courtiers played music for visitors, danced on stage, rode and hunted with the electress.30 Alongside fulfilling their regular duties, female officeholders would also receive a certain number of days off. While on duty maids of honour, ladies-in-waiting and court mistresses had to take an active part in the early modern ritual of dressing and undressing the electress. They were also required to care for the electoral wardrobe, for example, renewing embroideries, etc. Furthermore, female courtiers were also sometimes required to complete secretarial tasks, especially reading or writing correspondence on behalf of the court. Yet the question remains: to what extent was working at the court a starting point for female careers? In current research, the term ‘career’, in the context of early modern courts, mostly refers to men. However, it was also possible for women to begin a career if they managed to obtain a position of trust close to the prince or the princess. Female careers and promotion prospects, whether as an unmarried lady-in-waiting or as a widowed chief court mistress, depended on their social position within the nobility. There was thus a great variety of female careers. To achieve a successful career, women not only had to win the honour and respect of other nobles and the royals themselves but they also had to rise in the hierarchical order at court. However, a woman’s career success in the early modern Bavarian court should not be judged by the number of different positions she obtained, but by a clear rise in the influence of her position at court. When noblewomen held an office at court, their salary was

48  Britta Kägler not needed to provide for a family. Moreover, a clear ‘career progression’ at court was unusual for women; far more important was their presence at court. It was seen as an honour to work at court and serving rendered a fitting training for unmarried ladies-in-waiting. Nevertheless, some could say that women’s work at court justifies the title ‘career’, too. When dealing with women’s careers at court, certain important characteristics about their employment must be considered. Donald E. Super defines a career as nothing more than ‘a sequence of positions occupied by a person during the course of a lifetime’.31 This definition implies that climbing hierarchical steps is not as important in a career but rather it is the sequence of positions that plays the main role. Whether these positions are paid or not, or if the employment merely serves as a training position is of minor importance. Alongside the upward movement that often defined the careers of men at court and within state service, the English term ‘career’ also includes a downward and sideward movement. This more ‘convoluted’ career route can be said to correlate with the different positions occupied by women at court. Women’s career paths show breaks, detours and a more roundabout route through employment and thus require a more dimensional terminology. In contrast to male employees, who could prepare themselves with a university education for a career at court or in the state service, female officeholders had different reasons for working at court. They desired family contacts and an official rank amongst the nobility. A court office could be the crowning glory of a woman’s career at court; however, it was by no means the only possible high point in her life. Whilst widowed court ladies were allowed to continue their service until death, the term in service was limited for unwed noblewomen. Nonetheless, this court position heightened the influence of their family and their own influence in later life. As already discussed, service at the electress’s court or with the elector’s children brought not just a regular salary and a range of additional bonuses, but also the chance to recommend relatives for service at the court or to achieve a rise in rank. In this respect, it is not surprising that an office at court was considered a high honour and a ‘well spring of symbolic capital’.32 To work in the electorate’s heart or even to occupy a chamber in the residence allowed the officeholders to turn this ‘well spring of symbolic capital’ into real profit.33

Support and favour Only after acceptance to court were noblewomen able to establish a personal relation with the electress and to follow their own agenda. Being intimate with members of the Wittelsbach dynasty was of great value. The electress was the most powerful advocate for female officeholders at the Munich court. The electress’s opinion was highly regarded among her contemporaries and her ‘interference’ in stately affairs and political decisionmaking processes was a perfectly usual and acceptable occurrence.

Serving the prince  49 For example, Electress Henriette Adelaide placed a son of the Turinese noble Gianbattista of Altezzano in her Munich household and helped to award him with the Mauritius medal.34 Many other Turinese nobles, who married within the electorate and did not return to Savoy, also received endowments and signs of favour from Henriette Adelaide, who strongly favoured her Italian countryman to the other nobles at the court in Munich. One Piedmont noble family, the Counts Broglia di Casalborgone, was shown considerable favour by the electress and Pier Luigi, who from 1644 had already been Seneschal at the court in Turin, became crown equerry and master of the household (Obersthofmeister) for the three princesses upon his arrival at the court in Munich. His daughter also served as lady-inwaiting in the Bavarian electress’s household for years. Another example is the Marquese della Marmora; when she married in 1655, she obtained an endowment of 2,500 florins from Munich.35 Further examples of Turinese nobility favoured by the electress include the Turinese Gioana La Perusa, who got married in Munich, or the Turinese lady-in-waiting Paola Gromis, who got engaged with Hector Schad, a chamberlain to the Bavarian elector.36 The patronage of the electress can not only be seen in the context of wedding feasts, but she could also show her support by bestowing individuals with extravagant gifts. Immaterial favours ranged from elevations in rank to special services of honour. Such favours were given to those who were allowed to enter even the most private chambers of members of the Wittelsbach dynasty. A particularly honourable service was carrying the princely child to be baptized. The diary of Maria Theresia Gombert37 has survived in extracts and depicts a dispute from the year 1734. During the three earlier christening feasts in the years 1725, 1727 and 1728, the governess had carried the child out of the chambers of the electress into the chapel to be baptized. This task was performed by the Baroness of Lerchenfeld, who back then was in charge of the princely newborns. The baroness regarded this responsible and trustful duty as a sign of special favour – and this it certainly was.38 When in August 1734 the youngest daughter of the electoral couple was to be baptized, the elector suddenly decided to obey the traditional ceremonial rules. These rules stated that the chief court mistress ‘[should] carry Her(e) Serene Highness the princess out of the room of the electress in childbed into the antechamber where she had to hand over the baby to another aristocratic noblewomen on duty’.39 Gombert writes in her diary that Baroness Lerchenfeld was extremely disappointed and felt overlooked. The governess underlined that a few years ago she was allowed to carry Princess Therese, Prince Joseph and even the newborn heir of the dynasty into the chapel to be baptized, and she was unwilling to pass this honour to the chief court mistress.40 This is an example of the sorts of inconsistencies seen at court. Courtly traditions were often ignored if the elector or the electress decided to bestow a patronage on a particular favoured individual. In the particular case of Baroness Lerchenfeld, the traditional rules were followed. No patronage

50  Britta Kägler was shown and there is no proof of the elector using this baptism to bestow a particular favour on an individual. The diary of Maria Theresia Gombert brings to light new information. These old writings about the etiquette of the Bavarian dynasty illustrate that the elector did not intended to do wrong by his esteemed wife’s chief court mistress. However, tension in court life over these sorts of decisions was often inevitable. The hierarchy of the court offices, the social hierarchy of the aristocracy and the traditional written rules sometimes had to surrender to the ‘hierarchy of favour’.41 Ultimately, the final decision lay with the elector; he upheld complete power over court life. Favours were not only given to aristocratic members at court. Special rules were applied to esteemed – untitled – women. This could include large favours like granting salary bonuses in addition to a woman’s regular pay. It could also include provision of free board and lodging or the right to use courtly apartments. One particular example from 1751 refers to the court gardener’s widow in Berg. In this small place at the shore of Lake Starnberg, the court gardener Matthias Hailler died in January 1751. He left behind his wife and their six young children. As the salary was only paid four times a year, the family had already received Hailler’s salary for the first quarter. In the case of the widow Maria Anna Hailler, the following arrangement on 28 April 1751 enabled her to make ends meet. The widow was required to officially overtake her husband’s duties despite having no special gardening qualification herself. The court also remembered the couple’s eldest son, Franz Simon Hailler. He was to receive training abroad to become a gardener.42 Thus, it was kept in mind that the widow should still receive the salary of her dead husband until her son could step in as the professional court gardener himself. Maria Anna Hailler could also decide freely whether to manage the tasks herself or whether to delegate them to an external gardener. As soon as her eldest son had completed his training and returned to Bavaria, he should follow his father and take up the post as gardener of Berg’s castle. His substantial salary also enabled him to care for his mother and his five younger siblings for the rest of his life.43 Maria Anna Hailler’s son was away for four years, and during this time she received a regular payment of 190 florins every three months. It was only in 1755 that her son returned from France and consequently took up the post as court gardener.44 This position had been held free until his return. In addition to the earlier salary of his deceased father, he was promised to receive a further special gift of 95 florins per family member and this enabled him to support the extended family.45 Yet, such arrangements for widowed spouses and grieving families were a rare occurrence at the Munich court. Individual cases such as this arrangement for Maria Anna and Franz Simon Hailler should be regarded as the exception; such treatment was rather a sign of favour to the widow after her husband’s long and loyal service to the royal household. Between 1650 and 1750, the court account books provide evidence for only ten other similar cases46 in which the widows or grieving family members

Serving the prince  51 received more than a simple compensation or alms. Regular retirement rates were on the other hand a more common phenomenon. These rates were sometimes even maintained when the widows receiving these sorts of pensions took up an employment that provided her with her own regular salary, e.g. if a widow was given the possibility to begin or continue with a position at court. Maria Clara Dame of Freyberg received a yearly pension of 1,000 florins, which was disbursed by the court cashier’s office. On 24 July 1744 she was officially nominated chief court mistress of Electress Maria Antonia Walburga’s household. She therefore received a regular salary alongside an already sufficient pension.47 In effect, she received an impressive total of 2,000 florins and thus earned the same amount as her male colleagues. However, more often than not, the court cashier’s office refused to continue paying a pension as soon as a regular salary was received.48

Honorary offices and regular payments Even though noblewomen often held honorary positions at the court, they would also receive a regular salary like all other court servants. The salary was paid every three months and their income depended on the women’s tasks and was also influenced by the frequency of their time on duty. Ladies-in-waiting had a sort of duty rota according to which they had to fulfil services every two weeks on an alternating basis. Their responsibilities included lever et coucher at the morning reception and the daily retiring to bed. Only court mistresses were on duty at all times as they were responsible for the organization of the court, the supervision of the unwed ladies-in-waiting and were also the electress’s main support during ceremonial and day-to-day life. Consequently, the chief court mistress received a significantly higher salary than other female officeholders. Taking a closer look at female officeholders’ salaries can prove interesting. In fact, even during the early modern period, women working at court were already familiar with rotas, tax deduction and paydays. By analyzing the court account books, it is possible to evaluate the employment structure at the court in Munich. These books have been perfectly preserved and it is thus possible to see the types of positions people occupied and how much they were paid during the seventeenth and eight­ eenth centuries. In addition to names and salaries of all women employed at court, some records – especially records from the eighteenth century – also contain information about the beginning and the end of court employments. Often the records even give insight into the reasons as to why particular employment contracts began or came to an end. Typically, if a maid of honour or a ladyin-waiting was to leave court it was often due to marriage; death was highly unlikely. Only occasionally, a maid of honour or a lady-in-waiting may have joined a convent.49 These court account books also include marital status – for female employees the maiden name, as well – and taxation amounts. From the middle of the

52  Britta Kägler Table 3.1  Salaries at the Munich court, 1650–1800 Occupational title

Salary 1650s – 1720, florins

Salary 1720s – 1800, florins

Female chamber servant (Kammerdienerin) Chamber woman (Kammerfrau) Lady-in-waiting (Hofdame) Maid of honour (Kammerfräulein) Court mistress (Fräuleinhofmeisterin) Chief court mistress (Obersthofmeisterin)

100

130

200

220

400 400

400 400

450

c. 660

600

c. 2,000

seventeenth century until 1726, when Elector Karl Albrecht began to be more sparing with money, ladies-in-waiting received a quarterly salary of 400 florins each (see Table 3.1). The women of the bedchamber and the women responsible for washing the electress were paid 200 florins, whereas ordinary maids who had no personal contact with the electress earned a mere 100 florins; thus, for example, they earned more than carpenters but less than master craftsmen, who typically received an annual wage between 150 and 200 florins. The salary of the former (wet-) nurse and the woman of the bedchamber of Electress Henriette Adelaide show, however, that longstanding service in a position of trust could lead to an increase of salary. Two examples of this are Violante Dormiglia, a former wet-nurse of the electress, and Angela Vernony, the long-time governess. Both came from Turin to Munich and were part of the electress’s Italian entourage. They remained at the Munich court until the death of Henriette Adelaide. Until 1676 they were part of the household of the electress and until 1677 they belonged to the princely household of the Wittelsbach children,50 and their salaries remained constant.51As they aged, both women received a growing number of gratifications. A further special case can be shown by the gratuities bestowed to men and women of short stature. ‘Dwarfs’ belonged to the royal household as a matter of course until the seventeenth century and very often they were not only the centre of attention but they also had a close relationship with the princes. Despite performing the same tasks as the chamber valets, their salary was sometimes two or three times higher.52 For instance, from 1715 the Munich court paid the female ‘chamber dwarf’, Josine Paston, a salary of 375 florins for twelve years. These salaries are of course considerably less than the quarterly salary of the chief court mistress. Yet, out of all those working at court, dwarves’ salaries fluctuated the most. Alongside board and lodging for both them and their maidservants, the fourteen court mistresses who worked for the electoral couple at the Munich court between 1652 and 176553 obtained a yearly salary of 450 florins.

Serving the prince  53 During this period, Baroness Perusa, chief court mistress of Electress Maria Antonia, received 500 florins, and after 1696 her salary was increased along with a general increase in the salary of all the other officeholders. In her case the payment was even doubled from 500 florins to 1,000 florins and she also received board and lodging. Even though this increase in payment applied to the whole entourage in Brussels, where the elector and his wife resided by then, one particular woman received a rather exceptional deal: as well as receiving common meals at court, Violanta Simeoni was also given a further 600 florins every year to support her when she left service. Added to this were another 400 florins for her husband and an additional 350 florins to cover her living expenses. The main difference between her salary and the salary of the other court mistresses was that she also received an extra two litres of wine and another 400 florins a day in order to enable her son to continue his studies, presumably at the University of Ingolstadt.54 Altogether, the account books show clearly that Violanta Simeoni was favoured with an immense salary of up to 2,432 florins quarterly. This amount nearly equals the salary of a chamberlain or the privy councillor of the Munich court. Indeed, the chief court mistress was one of the highest income-earners in the female household and typically received a basic salary of 600 florins until the 1660s. After 1660, her salary fluctuated due to economic difficulties faced by the electress, alterations in the expenditures of court life and newly introduced tax limitations varying between 400 florins in 1669 and 8,000 florins for the women at court in Brussels.55 The rise in salary corresponded with the increasing expenditures in court life and by the royal household. While the chief court mistress of Max Emmanuel’s first wife received 600 florins for meals and drinks as well as to cover the expenses of her own two servants, the Baroness of Puchheim was paid 2,364 florins a year. However, her deputy in Brussels, who served Max Emanuel’s second wife, received the highest salary that a Bavarian court mistress between the years 1650 and 1850 has ever achieved. Every three months she was paid 8,000 florins. Such a large salary was never achieved by another court mistress during the early modern period in Bavaria. Yet, even after the economizing measures were taken in 1726–1727, payment of the highest-ranking court officials always remained above the 600 florins that was disbursed during the first half of the seventeenth century. Electress Maria Amalia’s chief court mistress obtained a basic salary of 884 florins in the year 1728. An additional 2,100 florins to allow for food increased this; and she received fixed gratifications to account for days of special religious importance in the Catholic calendar. For example, she received 350 florins on festive days like the saints’ days of special importance for the Catholic court society, 200 florins for phlebotomy and a further 350 florins as a St Niclas’s gift, comparable to the modern Christmas allowance. Altogether, these additional payments add up to a yearly 3,904 florins – a vast amount.56 From July 1744, the chief court mistress, Maria Augustina Kinsky, received an additional ring-fenced, tax-free bonus of 800 florins a year (since

54  Britta Kägler July 1744). This meant that her sickly daughter could be better nursed.57 Individual cases like this one show that it is difficult to make general assumptions about salaries at the Munich court. Although the payments of the maidservants remained constant, the salaries of titled officeholders could range dramatically. The elector could order a sharp increase in the salary of a governess or a court mistress or he could also provide an additional fixed payment in the form of so-called ‘benefit of clemency’. Then again, a close personal relationship between officeholders and the elector or the electress could lead to a rise in salary or other capped payments. The court account books only show substantial reductions in pay during times of crisis. These account books not only provide a good picture of working life, but the records also enable us to learn more about provision for the elderly. Unsurprisingly, the payments were generally higher than later pensions. After a closer look at the account book from the year 1756, we can see how the salary of the chief court mistress was composed and how her salary was related to the pension received earlier. After the death of the deputy of the former chief court mistress, Baroness of Thürheim, the widowed Baroness of Hundt was employed in order to serve in the household of the electress. Her salary was composed of a regular pay of 427.30 florins and the special payment of St Niclas amounted to a further 100 florins. Another 135 florins enabled her to afford her own female servant and have enough wax candles for the evening hours and dark winter months. According to the court treas­ ury, this results in a sum of 662 florins.58 However, the financial bonus of 162 florins59 may not have been the main incentive that encouraged women to apply as court mistress (or not). Far more important was the substantial rise in rank both within court society and beyond this inner circle. The court mistress was a position of honour. In a society in which honour played the most important role, holding a high position within the household of the electress could not be outweighed by money. After all, court mistresses were deputy to the chief court mistress and thus covered for their superior’s absence;60 they had unlimited access to the inner circle and private chambers of the electress and stayed in close daily contact to the princely family. These privileges constituted the core of the social hierarchy.

‘Status chances’ or, who may pass through the door first? According to Norbert Elias, those living within court society were constantly forced to ‘race against status rivals’.61 Thus, issues of hierarchical rank within court society could lead to open rivalry. These conflicts were particularly volatile with respect to the antechamber of the elector or the electress. In these antechambers not only was it revealed who had the greater access to the elector or electress, but it was also clear who took precedence before whom.62 The right of access to the chambers of the female household was strictly regulated at all times. Craftsmen were given specific timetables

Serving the prince  55 that stated when they were allowed to carry out their work within the chambers of the female enfilade. However, these craftsmen should in no way walk in and out of the electress’s chambers, especially not during mealtime – although there are comically some examples of this occurring.63 Except for craftsmen nobody was allowed to enter the apartments of the female household without prior announcement. This rule typically applied to all sorts of proceedings at the Munich court. For instance, an instruction announced in 1718 by Electress Therese Kunigunde for her court mistress, Baroness Hundt zu Lautterbach, states: ‘Especially no one of the cavaliers shall be allowed to attend dinner with one of the women or enter one of their rooms without the explicit permission of ours [i.e. the Bavarian electress]’.64 The chief court mistress also had to ensure that the ladies-in-waiting were never seen to be alone in the company of a man and that they were always accompanied by a third person.65 The women’s chambers were closed in the evening.66 It was not until the next morning that they were opened again by one of the women staying inside. Usually it was the court mistress who was responsible for this. The rules that applied to the electress’s chambers were also true for the chamber of the princesses. Only selected maids of honour and ladies-in-waiting had regular access. On several occasions, these instructions reinforced the rule that doorkeepers must not let anyone into the rooms of the princess without an explicit allowance to do so.67 According to court hierarchy, the rights of access to the royal chambers were defined for every single office within female households. This served to minimize cases of doubt as far as possible. Cohorts were therefore told not to enter the inner rooms of the electress or princesses; they had to await further instruction outside the door instead. These cohorts were also explicitly prohibited from playing cards in one of the antechambers as a means of passing time.68 Even more complicated were certain duties of the chamber servants who had to store the candles used daily in the electress’s chambers. Every evening the chamber servants were obliged to carry the nightlights until the doorstep. There the candles were handed over to ladies-in-waiting on duty or one of the chambermaids.69 The next morning the candles had to be taken back again, but the chamber servant always had to remain in front of the door and thus outside of the electress’s private chambers. Depending on office, and in the case of the female household depending on sex too,70 access to particular antechambers was either prohibited or allowed in line with the ceremonial and the functional hierarchy of the servant. Access was only authorized upon a special permission of the electress; in her absence, the permission of the electress’s chief court mistress71 was acceptable too. Consequently, the electress could give her permission as a sign of favour, but it is also clear that the highest officials were in the position to influence who could access particular chambers because of their close relationship with the electoral prince or princess.72 As a result, aristocrats could use their favour with the elector for their own ends.

56  Britta Kägler Especially within the electress’s private chambers, officeholders or even whole families benefited from having female family members who held influential offices serving the electress or the widow of an elector. This is also true for those working in the female household in the middle of the eighteenth century and later. Madame von der Wahl, wife of the electoral envoy at the Imperial Reichstag, Frank Xaver Count von der Wahl,73 was for instance regarded as the princely favourite at the Munich court in the second half of the eighteenth century. This meant that within the circles of other legates and envoys it was advised to keep on good terms with the entire von der Wahl family.74 Based on favour, gratefulness and honour, the court system of early modern times allowed individual officeholders to improve their position at the Munich court. Yet, sources do not always suggest that every single aristocrat’s main ambition was a mere elevation in rank. The aristocracy depended on the court; they sought after courtly offices in order to underline their social status. The electress on the other hand needed women from the high nobility to work for her in order to emphasize her sovereign representation and power. Interests of the respective estates and the sovereign were thus intertwined; the system of favour and grace was bilateral.

Fugger investments: Serving at court as entrepreneurial gateway Some women even gained attention outside the court service. For instance, after making quite a fortune, Ursula Mayr established a foundation trust between 1626 and 1628. This provided several scholarships for students who were studying at the Ingolstadt University. The scholarship dispensed the chosen individual with 2,000 florins in 1626, and another 5,320 florins two years later. From its establishment onwards, the courtly accounts regularly record this fund under the heading ‘Scholarships’. It is indeed worth noting that one of the most important private endowments in the history of the first Bavarian university is traced back to a woman who served at court. Other female officials also had remarkable means. Whilst Ursula Mayr used her funds to establish a foundation for students in need, the chief court mistress, Anna Maria Countess Fugger, invested in her own interest to gain a monopoly in the early modern tobacco business. In Bavaria, the right to collect taxes on tobacco was leased in the period between 1675 and 1717 in line with the French model.75 Although it was mainly merchants who invested money in growing companies, Anna Maria Countess Fugger was one of the first members of the court to also invest and secure a share in the tobacco taxing business. Tobacco farming, curing and processing was labour-intensive. The constant popularity of tobacco consumption and the increasing value of tobacco led to a rising interest in the tobacco business, which seemed to be profitable throughout Europe.76 Seven years later, the widowed countess, who clearly tried to defuse the gathering financial crisis during the exile of the elector, from 1705 to 1715,

Serving the prince  57 sold her shares, although she still had immense debts.77 However, her proximity to the court proved useful. Following the end of the tobacco business, Anna Maria of Fugger constantly lobbied for her debts to be cancelled. Her argument was that the cancellation of the leasing contract happened so suddenly that her manufacturer still had 1,000 florins worth of tobacco in stock.78 Throughout these negotiations, the countess highlighted her contacts and networks at the court and made clear that she would not be deterred. By the end of 1720, the baroness had been waiting for her disbursement for nearly two years; she thus contacted the court treasury again.79 Her letter to the court treasury in December 1720 began with the statement that she had heard rumours about the court chamber intending to appease her with something other than cash.80 The former chief court mistress relied on her lasting contacts within the court society to pressure the court treasury and she made it quite clear that she would not be discouraged. In the summer of 1720, the court treasury proposed that she accept a bond as a form of payment instead of cancelling her debts. Aware that this was a poor exchange, the baroness refused. The Princely Council recorded in a report on 26 July 1720 that she would not accept a bond as she knows all too well about the financial situation. Due to the lack of money such a bond would not even have been worth the paper it was printed on.81 Although Anna Maria Fugger’s former duties at court as chief court mistress were never mentioned explicitly in the court records, keeping in touch with court officials and members of the court society is clear in her own written correspondence. For example, she refers to information she received at court in a letter to the Court Chamber. This shows that the foundation for her career as a ‘businesswoman’ was laid in her time at the court in Munich. Entrepreneurial activities like those of Countess Fugger were rare, yet not unique. However, usually it was the electresses themselves who attempted to take entrepreneurial steps. Such business undertakings were no doubt facilitated because the electress had more money to spend and she had European-wide networks to rely on. In the eighteenth century, Electress Therese Kunigunde invested some of her dowry in underground mining in the southern parts of Bavaria, where the oldest German saline works was operated in Reichenhall (district Berchtesgadener Land).82 Investing in salt pits and saline works was not particularly venturesome as Bavaria was not rich in coal and iron, whereas external salt trade was a secure commodity in the eighteenth century.83 Bavarian exports were mainly crops and livestock; artisanal products played a minor role. The electress chose a safe investment for parts of her dowry. Unfortunately, the documents do not reveal whether the electress was financially successful. However, written records from the beginning of the nineteenth century are far better and they show how another Bavarian electress tested her entrepreneurial skills. Maria Leopoldine of Austria-d’Este was forced to marry Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria in 1795. The aging elector was fifty-two

58  Britta Kägler years older than his young wife.84 It is self-evident that she survived her late husband by decades. As a young widow, she retired to Berg Castle at Lake Starnberg, where she was materially secure. Her huge dowry consisted of money (100,000 guilders per year), estates and an incontestable, privileged position as dowager. Such a situation put her in an indefeasible position within Bavaria.85 Although at that time, dealing with goods, estates and money was considered indecorous and inadmissible for both women and members of the upper nobility, Maria Leopoldine’s position as a dowager gave her the freedom to pursue business matters of a different kind. In fact, she managed to become exceptionally wealthy. Her biographer points out that she proceeded systematically. Initially, she bought the Manor of Stepperg and acquired the basic principles of manor and forest management.86 Like no other woman before her, Maria Leopoldine exploited her connections at court. As a result, she convinced Joseph Utzschneider to act as her financial counsellor and professor in economics; Utzschneider was not just anyone – he had been the financial advisor at court. Together, he and Maria Leopoldine founded several companies, among them a tannery, a leather factory, a brewery and they also had a hand in vinegar production.87 Besides having excellent counsellors, Maria Leopoldine not only dealt with steers, barley, malt, lard and wine, but she speculated successfully by exporting her own crops and importing cheaper barley from Austria. Here she took advantage of her noble birth. For example in 1835, she was made exempt from paying import taxes simply because she was a member of the princely family.88 Maria Leopoldine grew fond of completing trading transactions and was constantly on the road, from one livestock market to the next or from one fair to another. Her success in business was clearly rendered possible by radical changes in travel. The early nineteenth century saw a ‘transportation revolution’;89 the speed and scale of journeys advanced considerably during this period. Maria Leopoldine realized the importance of domestic locomotive manufacturing industries for the changing markets and invested in railway shares.90 Emerging transportation technologies like railroads, steamboats and the building of canals could make a significant impact on the ways of business. She was an open-minded, almost modern woman who was publicly viewed as a professional businesswoman. Unsurprisingly, the dowager also faced prejudice and dissatisfaction both from the nobility and her townspeople. They did not want to accept her trading ambitions. Maria Leopoldine wanted to stop trading small livestock and selling crops as these provided only a very small profit. She wanted to achieve more, and contemporary affairs made this possible. Due to the Napoleonic Wars Bavaria was in financial strains. Fundamental changes had happened between 1799 and 1818. Several reform efforts, including a radical secularization of the religious orders and the enactments of a constitution, created a framework for broader social transformations. As parts of Franconia and Swabia were annexed by Bavaria, its state territory became

Serving the prince  59 significantly larger. Because of this, the population increased. Hence, the middle class (Bürgertum) gained strength. Also the peasant lower classes increased in number, confronting the state with new problems.91 Former properties of secularized ecclesiastical territories92 were in the possession of the Bavarian state, which was now trying to sell these lands at radically reduced prices. Buying these secularized properties and executing daring financial operations, Maria Leopoldine was able to amass a considerable fortune. Unfortunately, at the time contemporaries condemned this professional woman as miserly and sneered at the joy she took from running her own successful businesses. The general public considered her to be lacking in femininity and noble dignity.93 However, on the whole, Maria Leopoldine must be seen as a strikingly independent woman for her time.

Marriage markets Unlike the dowager’s investment in stocks, working at court was the most prestigious environment for early modern professional women. Interestingly enough, the court was presumed to be anything but part of the commercialized culture. In Munich the court mistresses had a far bigger scope for action than the unmarried youthful maids of honour and ladies-in-waiting. As discussed earlier, the superiority of the court mistresses was often due to their age, experience and position. They were able to regulate the access to the electress’s chambers by distracting her with assigned tasks and showing support or distaste towards other third parties in order to influence the electress’s decisions.94 Achieving honour was the main motive for women who held an office at court. However, the court society also served as a significant matrimonial market for both men and women within Bavaria itself and beyond its borders. Finding a future husband befitting one’s rank was, for the female courtiers, not only a courtly opportunity but rather a duty.95 Marriage strategies were decided by an individual’s status. Courtiers were required to find a partner who held an equal social status or was potentially from an elevated social hierarchy. Marriages of convenience thus were the most typical form of marriage.96 Failing to secure a promising marriage at court would have been an affront to one’s family.97 Yet, to what extent could marriage be regarded as a career aim? Were single women able to influence their marriage anyway? Nowadays marriage, starting a family and maintaining a successful career are often viewed as incompatible. If we understand ‘career’ as a sequence of various steps that serve as a form of social advancement which is independent from a set and named job title or position, a successful marriage can be regarded as an important step in the lives of noblewomen. Matrimony promised greater freedom, independence from the parental home, and last but not least an alternative to living at a monastery.98 Just as particular

60  Britta Kägler offices were tied to marriage or widowhood, changes in a family’s social standing brought new tasks for aristocratic women, e.g. married aristocratic women were required to manage their own household. Ladies-in-waiting retired from their court office but they still held authority in areas outside court. In addition, marriage offered foreign courtiers the chance to integrate into Bavarian courtly society. As discussed earlier, the Turinese ladies-inwaiting to Electress Henriette Adelaide married Bavarian noblemen at the beginning of their professional careers.99 Both spouses benefitted from these connections and were continually supported by the electress even after the marriages. These Italian ladies-in-waiting were thus accepted by the Bavarian aristocracy. Through their husband and by maintaining contacts among courtly circles, they were given the chance to aim for their own official career in court. The electress’s will included a detailed register of her bequeathed possessions. This verifies that Electress Henriette Adelaide stayed in contact with her previous ladies-in-waiting, even though they had married and retired from their offices several years ago.100 Contacts between the electress and her Italian confidants were hence not lost. The testament of Henriette Adelaide considered Anastasia Catharina von Törring-Jettenbach, who later married and became Lady Nogarolin, with the same values as the Countess Preysing, who remained an active lady-in-waiting at court.101 Even the heirs of the longstanding chief court mistress, Countess Felicitas Wolkenstein, were taken into account. At the beginning of their potential career, a chamberlain could highlight a desire for a career in court or state service by marrying a woman within the close entourage of the electress. The women’s position within the courtly female household enabled the marriage to take place at court in the presence of the electoral couple. A steady and long-lasting relationship was often seen between retired officeholders and the electress.102 The career of a young aristocrat could thus be promoted through marriage to a former lady-in-waiting; such internal court marriages were beneficial to both spouses and provided career opportunities to both the groom and the bride.

Conclusion Women were drawn to court for a variety of reasons. Having the chance to serve the electress, influence political decisions and represent their family were not the only attractions. As previously discussed, only a small number of female employees attained a position of trust. To have a close relationship with the electress was only possible for members of her aristocratic entourage: two maids of honour (Hoffräulein), up to six ladies-in-waiting (Hofdamen) and at most two court mistresses (Hofmeisterinnen) could be waiting on the electress. Yet, one of the crucial findings of this chapter is certainly that attending to the electress meant more than just keeping her company. Female courtiers had significant functions at court, being part of

Serving the prince  61 the lavish court entertainments or raising and educating the young Wittelsbach children. Furthermore, female courtiers can be seen as representatives of the court as well. Maids of honour and ladies-in-waiting played music for visitors, danced on stage, rode horses, hunted with the electress, attended lever and coucher as well as public dinners and performed other tasks that aristocratic court servants had to fulfil.103 Alongside accomplishing these regular duties, it is important to keep in mind that female courtiers received a regular salary just as every male courtier did. Therefore, court service provided a platform for a far wider range of activities. Female officeholders invested in developing their qualifications and professional skills; some of them even moved to other countries when a princess married abroad and was allowed to bring some familiar companions and servants. Usually this kind of relocation went along with a promotion and meant a huge career step. It is not surprising that the noble networks at court attracted the social elite. Courtly life formed the heart and soul of the country. Munich’s early modern electoral court employed a variety of female officers, from diverse social and geographical backgrounds and with a range of educational abilities. For all of these women, the court of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was not only a place of employment but also a marriage market and a vital place to cultivate family connections and patronage networks. Women could successfully advance their career at court by obtaining a position of trust close to the prince or princess. Based on their own fortune, female courtiers could outgrow their own family’s background. In her own interest, Countess Anna Maria Fugger, for instance, invested in the tobacco industry and secured a share in the tobacco taxing business. For a number of early modern women, it was not only political power, service and a desire to represent and increase the influence of their families that attracted them to court. A court career offered a platform for further economic and entrepreneurial activities. Women who had served at court for several years could gain a first-class education, high-status networks and the chance to marry into one of the well-respected and prestig­ ious noble families whose dependents served at court, too. Furthermore, female courtiers had a high chance of staying in close contact with the ruler’s family, thereby sustaining an influence on courtly decisions and state administration. What made them early modern ‘professional women’ are basically two concurring factors: on the one hand aristocratic women who worked at court had the opportunity to independently earn a salary, develop their own network of contacts and, to a certain extent, further their education. On the other hand, their work environment enabled these women to decide for themselves which way their lives should go. It is characteristic of the time between 1650 and 1850 that these women were able to choose between a life with family and children or a job, at least after getting married and having children, when their household responsibilities could be put aside. To conclude: Serving at court was an initial step for early modern professional women who wanted to earn a living in a socially and culturally

62  Britta Kägler respectable manner. As courtiers, they had the chance to gain strong influence within the royal household. They could explore new possibilities without transgressing the social expectations and conventions of their time.

Notes 1 Mark Hengerer, ‘Court and Communication: Integrating the Nobility at the Imperial Court (1620–65)’, The Court Historian 5 (2000), 223. 2 See Chapter 4, Johanna Ilmakunnas, ‘From Mother to Daughter’, in this volume. 3 Referring to rights of access at court, see Karin J. MacHardy, War, Religion and Court Patronage in Habsburg Austria: The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Political Interaction, 1521–1622 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), 156; Hengerer, ‘Court and Communication’, 224; Fabian Persson, Servants of Fortune: The Swedish Court Between 1598 and 1721 (Lund: Wallin & Dalholm, 1999), 45, 162–163, 175–178; Robert O. Bucholz, The Augustan Court: Queen Anne and the Decline of Court Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 153–154; Ronald G. Asch, ‘Introduction: Court and Household from the 15th to the 17th Century’, in Politics, Patronage and the Nobility, eds. Ronald G. Asch & Adolf M. Birke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 4–5. 4 Maximilian Lanzinner, Fürst, Räte und Landstände: Die Entstehung der Zentralbehörden in Bayern 1511–1598 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck& Ruprecht, 1980), 134–135, 190–194; Rainer A. Müller, Universität und Adel: Eine soziostrukturelle Studie zur Geschichte der bayerischen Landesuniversität Ingolstadt 1472–1648 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1974), 17–18. 5 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Bavarian court consisted of ‘well over a thousand persons who revolved around the elector and his family’. Samuel J. Klingensmith, The Utility of Splendor: Ceremony, Social Life, and Architecture at the Court of Bavaria, 1600–1800 (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 8. 6 Margit Ksoll, Die wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse des bayerischen Adels 1600– 1679: Dargestellt an den Familien Törring-Jettenbach, Törring zum Stein sowie Haslang zu Haslangkreit und Haslang zu Hohenkammer (Munich: Beck, 1986), 209–210. 7 Maximilian Lanzinner, ‘Zum Strukturwandel des altbayerischen Adels in der Frühen Neuzeit’, in Staat und Verwaltung in Bayern: Festschrift für Wilhelm Volkert, eds. Konrad Ackermann & Alois Schmid (München: Beck, 2003), 170–174. 8 Lanzinner, Fürst, Räte und Landstände, 189–190. 9 Stefan Pongratz, Adel und Alltag am Münchener Hof: Die Schreibkalender des Grafen Johann Maximilian IV. Emanuel von Preysing-Hohenaschau (1687– 1764) (Kallmünz: Verlag Michael Lassleben, 2013). 10 At least Karl Albrecht accomplished to become emperor in January 1742. 11 Maximilian Lanzinner, ‘Imperiale più cheducale? Der Münchner Hof um 1650’, in Studien zur politischen Kultur Alteuropas, ed. Axel Gotthard (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2009), 221–249; Dorothea Diemer & Peter Diemer, ‘Hans Rottenhammer und der Münchner Hof’, in Hans Rottenhammer (1564–1625), ed. Heiner Borggrefe (München: Hirmer, 2008), 36–54; Andreas Otto Weber, ‘Hofmarken der Münchner Patrizier’, Neuburger Kollektaneenblatt 160 (2012), 135–149. 12 However, a significant rise or a sudden decline in the total number of the court staff resulted in short-term shifts in the relation of male and female employees. Britta Kägler, Frauen am Münchener Hof (1651–1756) (Kallmünz: Verlag Michael Lassleben, 2011), 44–45.

Serving the prince  63 13 Britta Kägler, ‘Early Modern Musicians Across Europe: A Close Look at Munich in the 18th Century’, in Music Migration in the Early Modern Age: People, Markets, Patterns, Styles, ed. Vjera Katilinić (forthcoming in 2017). 14 Except for sommeliers, cooks, bakers, cookmaids and assistants laying the table. 15 Catharina Sauerlacher, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (BayHStA), Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 691, fol. 199v. 16 Vogl [Vogel] and Anna Maria Pernbach in the court kitchen, Maria Anna Mayr assisting the dessert bakers or for example Elisabetha Kritter, who was depluming birds professionally. BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 770, fol. 281r – 292v. 17 This is especially interesting, because ladies-in-waiting at the Swedish court were exclusively married (or widowed) women. See Chapter 4, Johanna Ilmakunnas, ‘From Mother to Daughter’, in this volume. 18 Klingensmith, Utility of Splendor, 10. 19 Kägler, Frauen am Münchener Hof, 55, 71; Stefanie Walther, ‘ “Tatkräftige Mutter” oder “plage”? Hochadelige Witwen und ihre Verortung innerhalb des Familienverbandes’, in Fürstliche Witwen in der Frühen Neuzeit: Zur Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte eines Standes, ed. Ulrike Ilg (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2015), 27–39; Gesa Ingendahl, ‘Precarious Life: Widowhood in Early Modern Discourse and Practice’, Out of the Tower: Essays on Culture and Everyday Life, eds. Monique Scheer, Thomas Thiemeyer & Reinhard Johler (Tübingen: TVV, 2013), 199–217. 20 See Pongratz, Adel und Alltag am Münchener Hof. Besides Tobias Schmid is currently doing research on Theodor Baron of Ingenheim: Tobias Schmid, ‘The Diary of Baron Ingenheim: An Aristocratic Life in Bavaria at the End of the 18th Century’ (Ph.D. Diss., Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Dissertation advisor: Prof. Dr. Ferdinand Kramer). 21 Margit Ksoll, ‘Der Hofstaat der Kurfürstin von Bayern zur Zeit Maximilians I’, Zeitschrift für Bayerische Landesgeschichte 52 (1989), 59–69. 22 Countess Felicitas Wolkenstein, née Felicitas von Spaur, married Count Johann Wolkenstein in 1636. 23 The German term Frauenzimmer occurred since the fifteenth century, originally denoting a woman’s chamber at court. The meaning shifted towards being used collectively for the noblewomen living in these chambers at court; and sometimes it is used for their female servants as well. In early modern German the term means both the sequence of rooms at court and the women living in it. 24 These included civil servants and the staff of the court kitchen, the court cellars and the court stables. 25 See Martin Scheutz & Jakob Wührer, ‘Dienst, Pflicht, Ordnung und “gute policey”: Instruktionsbücher am Wiener Hof im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert’, in Der Wiener Hof im Spiegel der Zeremonialprotokolle 1652–1800: Eine Annäherung, ed. Irmgard Pangerl et al. (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2007), 16. 26 The number of households changed with births, deaths and marriages. See Klingensmith, Utility of Splendor, 8; Kägler, Frauen am Münchener Hof, 48–49, 57–71. 27 Sybille Oßwald-Bargende, Die Mätresse, der Fürst und die Macht: Christina Wilhelmina von Grävenitz und die höfische Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Campus-Verlag, 2000), 40. 28 BayHStA, Geheimes Hausarchiv (GHA), Hofhaushaltsakten 400, c. 1665–1676. 29 Kägler, Frauen am Münchener Hof, 46, 122. 30 Especially Maria Amalia was famous for her female entourage hunting in the woods around Munich and endangering their porcelain skin, because they had to join the electress, a passionate huntress, and were exposed to bad weather conditions frequently.

64  Britta Kägler 31 Donald E. Super, ‘A Life Span: Life-Space Approach to Career Development’, Journal of Vocational Behavior 16 (1980), 282. 32 Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, ‘Symbolische Kommunikation in der Vormo­ derne: Begriffe – Forschungsperspektiven – Thesen’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 31 (2004), 489–527; Theorizing Rituals: Topics, Approaches, Concepts, eds. Jens Kreinath, Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (Leiden & Boston); Stausberg, Theorizing Rituals: Topics, Approaches, Concepts, eds. Jens Krei­ nath, Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2006). 33 Kägler, Frauen am Münchener Hof, 404–405. 34 Ibid., 410. 35 Carlo Maurizio Fapoto, BayHStA, GHA, Korrespondenzakten 668a (unpublished manuscript, 1877), 286, 288–289. 36 Ibid., 287; Roswitha von Bary, Henriette Adelaide: Kurfürstin von Bayern (München: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1980), 255. 37 Maria Theresia von Gombert was a chambermaid of Electress Maria Amalia. BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 784 (Household of Electress Maria Amalia, fol. 93r – 104r). She died in November 1745. Franz Xaver Zettler, ‘Was sich im Jahre 1734 ereignete: Tagebuch des Fräuleins Maria Theresia von Gom­ bert’, Altbayerische Monatsschrift 5 (1905), 89. On the lack of court diaries of the Wittelsbach see Ferdinand Kramer, ‘Piety at Court: The Wittelsbach Electors in Eighteenth-Century Bavaria’, in Monarchy and Religion: The Transformation of Royal Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. Michael Schaich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 283–316. Such court diaries have survived for other courts like the House of Wettin in Dresden. Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, Court Culture in Early Modern Dresden: From Renaissance to Baroque (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). 38 Zettler, ‘Tagebuch des Fräuleins Maria Theresia von Gombert’, 93. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 These included promotions of courtiers, which had been endorsed by Electress Therese Kunigunde in 1715 (BayHStA, GHA, Hofhaushaltsakten 460, fol. 1r.). 42 BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 792, fol. 218r – 219v. 43 Ibid., fol. 218r – 219v. 44 BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 796, fol. 220r. 45 Ibid. 46 In the majority of cases, the daughters of a deceased court trumpeter, a court veterinarian or a court gardener were hired as chambermaids or ancillary in the court kitchen. (BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 797, fol. 179r.) For other examples see BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 762, fol. 95v (Agnes, daughter of a trumpeter at court); No. 765, fol. 85v (Maria Ursula Jäger); No. 770, fol. 291v (Maria Francisca Öffner); No. 787, fol. 208v (Elisabetha Pirman, daughter of an upholsterer at court; Maria Francisca Ruos) and No. 788, fol. 115v (Maria Carolina Blondeau, daughter of a chamber forager at court). 47 BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 784, fol. 117r; BayHStA, GHA, Oberst­ hofmeisterstab 2017 (1609–1799). 48 Kägler, Frauen am Münchener Hof, 413. 49 Kägler, Frauen am Münchener Hof, 110. For similar results at the imperial court in Vienna see Katrin Keller, Hofdamen: Amtsträgerinnen im Wiener Hofstaat des 17. Jahrhunderts (Wien: Böhlau, 2005), 66; Katrin Keller, ‘Ladies-in-Waiting at the Imperial Court of Vienna from 1550 to 1700: Structures, Responsibilities and Career Patterns’, in The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-waiting Across Early Modern Europe, eds. Nadine Akkerman & Birgit Houben (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2014), 73–97.

Serving the prince  65 50 BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 714, fol. 44r; BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 715, fol. 35v. 51 At this time it was a quarterly salary of 392 florins and 46 kreutzer. 52 BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 755, fol. 130r (Josine Paston) and No. 756, fol. 41r (Elisabeth Maz). 53 BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 727, fol. 35v. 54 Ibid. 55 The Bavarian Elector was appointed as governor of the Spanish Netherlands during the Spanish War of Succession in 1691. As a result of this, parts of the Bavarian court society moved to Brussels, including the entourage of his second wife Electress Therese Kunigunde. Ludwig Hüttl, Max Emanuel, Der Blaue Kurfürst (1679–1726): Eine Politische Biographie (München: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1976), 207–213. 56 BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 768, fol. 76r; No. 733, fol. 30r; No. 734, fol. 27r; No. 741, fol. 29r. 57 Referring to Countess Maria Augustina Kinsky, née Countess Palffy von Erdödy, BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 784, fol. 139r. 58 BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 797, fol. 83r. 59 Previously she had received 500 florins. 60 BayHStA, GHA, Hofhaushaltsakten 511. 61 The binding of the king through etiquette and status chances: see Norbert Elias, The Court Society, transl. Edmund Jephcott (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 127–157. German original Die höfische Gesellschaft (Darmstadt & Neuwied: Herman Luchterhand Verlag, 1969); French edition La societé de cours (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1974). On Elias’ theories see also Dennis Smith, Norbert Elias and Modern Social Theory (London: Sage, 2001), 161. 62 BayHStA, GHA, Hofhaushaltsakten 400; BayHStA, GHA, Hofhaushaltsakten 399. For similar conflicts, see Maren Bleckmann, ‘Suppliken zu Rangkonflikten an den Herzog ‘von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert’, in Formen der politischen Kommunikation in Europa vom 15. bis 18. Jahrhundert: Bitten, Beschwerden, Briefe, eds. Cecilia Nubolaand & Andreas Würgler (Bologna & Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2004), 95–115. 63 BayHStA, GHA, Hofhaushaltsakten 511. 64 Ibid. 65 Instruction, 11 July 1747, BayHStA, GHA, Hofhaushaltsakten 638. 66 Ibid. 67 Similar restrictions have been proven for most European courts. Queens, electresses and princesses usually had to be served by female courtiers. In Portugal noblemen had for example no access while the queen was dining. See Annemarie Jordan, ‘Queen of the Seas and Overseas: Dining at the Table of Catherine of Austria, Queen of Portugal’, in Mesas reaiseuropeias: Encomendas e Ofertas, ed. Leonor d’Orey (Lisbon: Instituto Português de Museus, 1999), 16–17. 68 Ibid. 69 Ibid. 70 BayHStA, Geh. HA, Hofhaushaltsakten 361, 371, 372, 376, 377, 379, 391, 401, 409, 410, 496, 504, 510, 511, 512 and 638. 71 Her male counterpart, the master of the household (Obersthofmeister), was also accountable; important was simply whoever of them was available. 72 Stephan Selzer & Ulf Christian Ewert, ‘Ordnungsformen des Hofes: Einleitung’, in Ordnungsformen des Hofes: Ergebnisse eines Forschungskolloquiums der Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, eds. Ulf Christian Ewert & Stephan Selzer (Kiel: Residenzen-Komm. der Akad. der Wiss. zu Göttingen, 1997), 14.

66  Britta Kägler 73 Franz Xaver von der Wahl (1723–1791) was Bavarian legate at the imperial Reichstag in Regensburg (1767–1775), Ernst Schütz, Die Gesandtschaft Großbritanniens am Immerwährenden Reichstag zu Regensburg und am kur(pfalz-)bayerischen Hof zu München 1683–1806 (München: Beck, 2007), 328 (supplement). 74 Ibid., 328 (supplement): ‘you must invite them at times & live well with all the family’. 75 In France the tobacco monopoly was leased in 1674. It served the Elector of Bavaria as a model for his own financial reform. In 1675 Elector Ferdinand Maria led entrepreneurs lease shares of the Bavarian tobacco monopoly as well. Michael Nadler, Der besteuerte Genuss: Tabak und Finanzpolitik in Bayern 1669–1802 (München: Utz, 2008), 47; Jacob M. Price, France and the Chesapeake: A History of the French Tobacco Monopoly, 1674–1791, and of Its Relationship to the British and American Tobacco Trades, vol. 1 (Ann Arbor & Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1973), 17–19, 21. 76 Recent research points out that tobacco farming also led to an intensification of the slave trade. See Charlotte Cosner, The Golden Leaf: How Tobacco Shaped Cuba and the Atlantic World (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2014). 77 Staatsarchiv München (StAM), Herrschaft Toerring-Seefeld 37 (Tobacco depths of the deceased Countess Anna Maria Fugger, 1734–1739). 78 BayHStA, GR Fasz. 1544, No. 11 (Countess Fugger to the Munich Court Chamber, 15 May 1720). 79 Kägler, Frauen am Münchener Hof, 434–436. 80 Ibid. 81 BayHStA, GR Fasz. 1544, No. 11 (Court Chamber report by Johann Georg Jobst, 26 July 1720). 82 Barbara Kink, Handwerk in Altbayern (Spätmittelalter/Frühe Neuzeit), published 17 September 2014; in Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, accessed 4 August 2016, www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/Lexikon/Handwerk in Altbayern (Spätmittelalter/Frühe Neuzeit). 83 Recently shown in Martin Ott, Salzhandel in der Mitte Europas: Raumorganisation und wirtschaftliche Außenbeziehungen zwischen Bayern, Schwaben und der Schweiz, 1750–1815 (München: Beck, 2013). 84 The marriage was arranged with the hope that it would result in a son and heir for the Wittelsbach dynasty. But Maria Leopoldine rejected any (sexual) contact with her husband and offended him by taking several lovers, among them the future heir Maximilian Joseph of Palatinate-Zweibrücken and one of the most influential Bavarian ministers of his time, Maximilian von Montgelas. See Sylvia Krauss-Meyl, Das ‘Enfant terrible’ des Königshauses: Maria Leopoldine, Bayerns letzte Kurfürstin (1776–1848) (Regensburg: Pustet, 2002), 68. 85 Ibid., 248. 86 Ibid., 245. 87 Ilse Mackenthun, Joseph von Utzschneider: Sein Leben, sein Wirken, seine Zeit: Ein Beitrag zur bayerischen Wirtschaftsgeschichte (München: Stadtarchiv, 1958), 139. 88 Ibid., 245–256. 89 Rick Szostak, The Role of Transportation in the Industrial Revolution: A Comparison of England and France (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991); George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1951). 90 Krauss-Meyl, Das “Enfant terrible” des Königshauses, 261–262. 91 Ferdinand Kramer, ‘Bavaria: Reform and Staatsintegration’, German History 20 (2002), 354–372, especially 372. 92 Prince-bishoprics, prince-priories, prince-abbeys and imperial abbeys. 93 Krauss-Meyl cites for instance Madame von Hruby: Krauss-Meyl, Das ‘Enfant terrible’ des Königshauses, 272.

Serving the prince  67 94 Katrin Keller, ‘Frauen in der höfischen Gesellschaft des 17. Jahrhunderts: Amtsinhabe und Netzwerke am Wiener Hof’, published 13 December 2005. In zeitenblicke 4 (2005), 32. accessed 4 August 2016, www.zeitenblicke. de/2005/3/Keller/index_html. 95 Referring to the imperial court in Vienna see Mark Hengerer, Kaiserhof und Adel in der Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts: eine Kommunikationsgeschichte der Macht in der Vormoderne (Konstanz: UVK-Verlag-Ges., 2004), 560. 96 Barbara Kink, Adelige Lebenswelt in Bayern im 18. Jahrhundert: die Tageund Ausgabenbücher des Freiherrn Sebastian von Pemler von Hurlach und Leutstetten (1718–1772) (München: Komm. für Bayer. Landesgeschichte, 2007), 97; Barbara Kink, ‘Im Ehstandt lebt man froh und fein . . . Adelige Haushaltsführung des Freiherrn Sebastian ‘Joseph von Pemler von Hurchlach und Leutstetten (1718–1772) im Hochzeitsjahr 1763’, in Adel und Zahl: Studien zum adligen Rechnen und Haushalten in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. Harm von Seggern (Ubstadt-Weiher: Verlag Regionalkultur, 2000), 269–288; Peter-Michael Hahn, Kriegswirren und Amtsgeschäfte: ferne adlige Lebenswelten um die Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts im Spiegelbild persönlicher Aufzeichnungen (Potsdam: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 1996), 10; Keller, ‘Frauen in der höfischen Gesellschaft’, 1, 9, 15. 97 Hahn, Kriegswirren, 10. 98 Albeit for an earlier period, Barbara J. Harris argues very similar for English aristocratic women in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. See Barbara J. Harris, English Aristocratic Women (1450–1550): Marriage and Family, Property and Careers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). 99 Paola Cristina Gromis married the courtier Hector Schadt; Anna Maria Agliè di San Germano married one of the most respectable Bavarian noble dynasties, Maximilian Ferdinand Graf von Törring-Seefeld. Anastasia Catharina von Törring-Jettenbach married BaiardinoNogarola. (StAM, Herrschaft ToerringSeefeld, Lit. C1, No. 26 (Marriage contract for Anna Maria Agliè di San Germano and Count Maximilian Ferdinand Törring-Seefeld, 12 February 1667). 100 BayHStA, GHA, Korrespondenzakten 668, fol. 5v. 101 Countess Henriette Adelaide Preysing, lady-in-waiting from 1674 until 1682. BayHStA, Kurbayern Hofzahlamt, No. 712–720; BayHStA, GHA, Korres­ pondenzakten 668, fol. 5v. 102 Hengerer, Kaiserhof und Adel, 50–57, 81–82; Keller, ‘Frauen in der höfischen Gesellschaft’, 9, 13. 103 Especially Maria Amalia was famous for her female entourage hunting in the woods around Munich and endangering their porcelain skin, because they had to join the electress, a passionate huntress, and were exposed to bad weather conditions frequently.

4 From mother to daughter Noblewomen in service at the Swedish royal court, c. 1740–1840 Johanna Ilmakunnas

From early modern to modern Europe, a number of noblewomen were occupied with various tasks at royal courts.1 Both male and female courtiers added splendour to the power of a sovereign, especially in ceremonies that cemented royal authority and made it visible for elites and the common people alike. Courtiers served as an audience or even performed different roles during ceremonies and rituals such as coronations, weddings of heirs apparent, christenings of royal offspring, funerals and royal banquets. They may also have been called upon to be present for openings of the Riksdag and parliamentary sessions, theatre and opera performances, as well as royal hunts. In addition, the image of sovereignty was disseminated and distributed to subjects and across borders to the courts of other countries through visual and material objects such as coins and engravings portraying the sovereign and his or her deeds. Processions through capitals or other cities were an important part of the use of royal power through ceremonies and brought the sovereignty closer to its subjects.2 Paintings and engravings of ceremonies and festivities at court depicted not only the sovereign, but also his or her courtiers, who were both actors and spectators of ritualized royal power. Among them noblewomen held a distinguished role. Throughout Europe, courts formed an important political and social sphere, and women were an essential part of this sociability and the power structures of royal courts. The royal court was also a professional arena for nobles, both men and women, who served in a number of offices and had a variety of tasks in royal households. In the societies of ancien régime, the world of the court, ‘ce pays-ci’,3 was a fundamental part of the culture, ideology and world view of the nobility. The relationship between the sovereign and the courtiers was interdependent: for the sovereign, courtiers were vital for the outer appearance and functioning of the royal court.4 Perhaps even more importantly, through keeping influential aristocrats at court, the monarch controlled the nobility and its aspirations for power. This is especially visible in countries with absolutist regimes, such as France or Spain, whereas in Britain the nobility exercised considerable power at the parliament and was thus less dependent on the royal court

70  Johanna Ilmakunnas and sovereignty. For the nobility, royal, imperial and princely courts formed a place and space of obligations, power structures and influence. From the point of view of courtiers, it is necessary to understand the importance of the ideas of duty and service for the nobilities in early modern and modern Europe. Serving the sovereign was an obligation, a responsibility which was not to be avoided.5 For a noblewoman, the most obvious way to gain dutiful aristocratic agency was to act as a lady-in-waiting at the royal court. For some women a career at court was a serious obligation, while others sought service at court as it opened opportunities for acting in a meaningful position. Many noblewomen did not even consider occupations other than a career at court, unless they married and concentrated on the role of wife and mother or became influential social and political hostesses.6 Rapid social changes during the late eighteenth century and nineteenth century, including the evolving separation of home, work and leisure and opening new occupational opportunities for elite women, were not an issue for high-ranking noblewomen appointed as maids of honour or ladies-inwaiting in the same way as for women at other levels of society.7 Women’s work in early modern Europe has been widely studied,8 as well as elite women’s growing opportunities in labour markets from the late nineteenth century.9 The important role of aristocratic women and their actual cultural and political agency at early modern and modern royal courts is widely acknowledged.10 Female courtiers’ service and tasks at royal, imperial and princely courts have also interested scholars, even though female courtiers’ activities have often been studied as part of royal households or as a purely decorative element of royal ceremonies rather than examined as individual careers and elite women’s work.11 In this chapter, I discuss noblewomen in the service of the Swedish royal court from the 1740s to the 1840s. Until the late nineteenth century, noblewomen had limited possibilities to act in public and work for their living and for a long time a career at court was the only respectable occupational opening for noblewomen, especially for those from the highest aristocracy. For them, serving the monarch and working at royal court was a meaningful occupation, a representative activity which could be turned into a career with working time, salary and opportunities for advancing to a higher position. Noblewomen’s approach towards their work at court could be characterized as professional, even though professions and professionals were perhaps more often linked to high offices in administration or to the activities within liberal professions, medicine, law or trade and the training at the universities they required.12 Noblewomen’s work at court was a profession that was restricted within their social circles and required certain qualifications and skills. These were required through careful education, which was a typical way to gain access to a profession for many centuries. Noblewomen learned the court profession from previous generations at home, at court and in society. The skills and knowledge required in the profession were transmitted from mother

From mother to daughter  71 to daughter within aristocratic families, much in the way that professions were passed from fathers to sons as artisans, merchants or officers. Particularly families with powerful political, economic and cultural connections sought to enter their sons and daughters to the profession of a courtier; thus, they would have an influential office at royal or princely court. However, not all noblewomen who aspired to a position at royal court were selected, even though they could have had the required connections, skills and qualifications. In her study on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century English aristocratic women Barbara J. Harris argues that aristocratic women’s careers should be seen from the world view of the contemporaries, as ‘a person’s course or progress through life, especially a vocation that is publicly conspicuous and significant. . . . Understanding aristocratic women’s activities as careers underscores the full extent and political significance of their contribution to their families, class, and society’.13 This is equally important for our understanding of elite and aristocratic women’s career prospects and work in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, be it at royal, imperial and princely courts or other domains such as women’s activities as political hostesses or patrons of artists and scientists. My chapter takes a case study approach and follows the careers of individual women, in order to better understand their occupations at the eighteenthcentury Swedish royal court as work and a career, whether short or long. It has to be stressed that, even small in numbers, the selected women offer us a representative sample of the highly exclusive world of female courtiers. Examples of noblewomen and their careers are drawn from the 1740s to the 1840s. This period has been chosen more because of the life cycles of the women studied than because of political or historic periodization, even though the explored period covers an era of political, economic and societal changes from the election of Adolf Fredrik of Holstein-Gottorp (ruled 1751–1771) as the crown prince of Sweden in 1743 to the end of the Napoleonic Wars, as well as the wake of industrialism and parliamentary changes in the midnineteenth century. First, the structures of the Swedish royal court, as well as the opportunities for noblewomen to become courtiers will be discussed. Next, I will focus on the qualifications required from a potential maid of honour, a position that preceded appointment to the prestigious office of a lady-in-waiting. After discussing the admission to a court career and the length of it, I will review female courtiers’ work and duties, as well as their salary and remuneration in order to better understand the significance of the service at court for elite women’s career, work and profession.

Noblewomen in the structure of the Swedish royal court Before the early eighteenth century, the structure of the Swedish royal court, its organization to different households for the members of the royal family,

72  Johanna Ilmakunnas as well as the officeholders, including noblewomen, are mapped relatively thoroughly.14 We also know the importance of the service at court for late nineteenth-century aristocratic women.15 Whilst the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Swedish court has evoked extensive scholarship, it has been concentrated more on the royals and the importance of court life for sovereignty and monarchy16 rather than on the experiences and tasks of aristocratic courtiers.17 Before the early eighteenth century the Swedish court was organized after the German pattern, which meant that the court was relatively small in size and less hierarchical than the seventeenth-century French or Spanish courts. In the seventeenth century, Sweden was an absolutist state and the monarchy was strong. The role of the nobility was crucial for Swedish state building during the seventeenth century, when the modern state was created with the support of newly ennobled office holders. Furthermore, the ennoblements juxtaposed old and new nobility, creating conflicts that were also reflected in the royal court.18 Within the nobility, frictions diminished its political power and aided the monarch to consolidate absolutism. However, absolutism was abolished by law in 1719, which had an impact on court life especially in the early eighteenth century. Then the court life was relatively quiet, because King Carl XII (ruled 1697–1718) was unmarried and on military expeditions most of the time. Thus, the organizational structure of the court and royal households altered little between the late sixteenth century and the mid-eighteenth century. From the 1740s onwards, the Swedish court followed French court ideals, especially with regard to cultural activities, but the economy, size and structure of court offices continued to follow the German system. The new Crown Prince of Sweden, Adolph Fredrick of Holstein-Gottorp, who was elected as the heir apparent in 1743, and his spouse from 1744, Crown Princess Lovisa Ulrika of Prussia, chose as the marshal of the court Count Carl Gustaf Tessin (1695–1770), former Swedish ambassador in Paris who was acquainted with French royalties, aristocracy and court life.19 Tessin’s personality and connections to the French court and culture had an enormous impact on the Swedish court life, which he dominated together with Lovisa Ulrika in the 1740s. However, the political power of the Swedish monarchy was relatively weak during the period called by contemporaries the Age of Liberty (1719– 1772).20 This had its impact on the mid-eighteenth-century court, which often has been studied as a scene for pleasure and play without exploring the power structures behind the apparent lack of political power. On the other hand, the absolutist reigns (1772–1809) of King Gustav III (ruled 1771–1792) and King Gustav IV Adolf (ruled 1792–1809) were characterized by the growing importance of the ceremonial and political role of the court.21 Hence, political intrigues were permanent among the royals, the court and the ruling classes when sovereigns with loyal courtiers tried to aggrandize

From mother to daughter  73 the political power of the ruler. Lovisa Ulrika’s ambitions to augment the power of the sovereign were also reflected at her court as crown princess, queen and dowager queen.22 Gustav III appointed as ladies-in-waiting the wives and daughters of his political adversaries; thus, he diminished the influence of the noblemen in opposition.23 The splendour of royal manifestations of power as well as the privileges of the nobility decreased throughout the nineteenth century alongside the growth of the bourgeoisie. It has been argued that the Swedish royal family became more bourgeois during the nineteenth century because of the increasing societal valuing of domesticity and family life over ceremonious public life.24 A career at the royal court, though much sought after, was an option only for a small group of noblewomen. Compared to other European courts in Versailles and Vienna, Berlin and Madrid, the Swedish court was relatively small; thus, it could offer careers only to a small number of noblewomen. For instance, in the late-eighteenth century, at the court of Queen Sofia Magdalena, a chief court mistress (överhovmästarinna), court mistress (hovmästarinna) and nine ladies-in-waiting (statsfru) were appointed, but no maids of honour (hovfröken).25 Compared to France, from which the ideals of court society came to the eighteenth-century Swedish court, this was a small number. From the mid-seventeenth century to the French revolution, French queens had an average of thirty female attendants in their households and most of them were either from the aristocracy or lower nobility.26 However, from 1775 to 1790 the number of all officeholders, aristocrats and commoners, at the court or the Swedish queen varied from fifty-three to sixty-six persons.27 In Sweden, as elsewhere, most of the noblewomen who made a career at court came from the highest aristocracy and titled nobility with longtime connections to the court. Aristocratic women considered high court offices as their privilege, especially those of lady-in-waiting (hovdam, statsfru) or court mistress and chief court mistress (hovmästarinna, överhovmästarinna),28 which only married women could hold. The highest-ranking offices were the monopoly of aristocratic women, but short-term offices, such as the prolific role of maid of honour, could be held by those from less grand families, thereby opening the palace door to less privileged young women.29 Thus, the royal court in Stockholm also offered opportunities to daughters of the provincial nobility. At early modern and modern European courts, the offices were mostly occupied for life, which emphasizes the exclusive nature of a court career. The ladies-in-waiting did not change when the new ruler was crowned. If the dowager queen lived, she kept her own court and her courtiers. After the death of the dowager queen, the ladies-in-waiting either retired or continued in the service of the new queen or empress. They transmitted knowledge of the royal family, ceremonies and traditions to new consorts, who often came from abroad and had to leave their personal courtiers behind when marrying into a foreign royal, imperial or princely family.

74  Johanna Ilmakunnas

Qualities and connections of a maid of honour and a lady-in-waiting In order to achieve the inner and outer appearance of a maid of honour or lady-in-waiting – indeed, the appearance of a lady of rank – members of the nobility educated their daughters with great care. Until the early nineteenth century, most of the aristocratic families in Sweden educated their daughters at home.30 During the nineteenth century it became customary for the nobility to send their daughters to fine boarding schools.31 In aristocratic culture, the role of the mother was vital in passing the knowledge of the world of the court from generation to generation. The transmittal of social knowledge and skills in high society was the responsibility of mothers and other female relatives, whereas fathers were responsible for the formal education of both boys and girls. Young girls learned at an early age how to behave, please and act at various social events, such as visits, balls, assemblies, masquerades or in spa resorts and at country houses. In aristocratic circles, girls’ education in conversation (mostly in French), in dancing, drawing or fine embroidery, as well as their moral and ethical education, aimed for the gracious, modest, tasteful behaviour and aristocratic sociability essential at court.32 Occasionally, girls of the Swedish nobility had an opportunity to hone their manners and skills in society in France, at court in Versailles and in the salons of aristocracy in Paris. France was not only the model for court life, but also an important political ally for Sweden.33 The Swedish envoy in Paris acted as an intermediary between the Swedish and French courts. The envoy played a key role in presenting Swedish aristocrats at court in Versailles and in the salons of Paris because he was a family member or friend of a number of Swedish aristocrats. Swedish noblemen travelled relatively often to France and for years many of them acted as officers there. Swedish noblewomen travelled more rarely to France and abroad. However, in eighteenth-century Sweden, there were a few elite women who spent time in France in their youth and who were appointed at court and made a career as courtiers upon their return to Sweden or later. Three of them were Baroness Charlotta Fredrika Sparre (1719–1795, married von Fersen), Countess Hedvig Catharina De la Gardie (1732–1800, married von Fersen) and Countess Carolina Juliana Anna Ulrika Lewenhaupt (1754–1826, married Lewenhaupt). Their careers will be discussed in more detail here. Charlotta Sparre and her brother Carl travelled to Paris together with their relatives, Countess Ulla Sparre and her husband, Count Carl Gustaf Tessin, the Swedish ambassador extraordinary in Paris 1739–1742. Ulla and Charlotta Sparre were presented at court in Versailles by the Queen Marie Leszczyńska’s lady-in-waiting, Princess Montauban. Connections to the French court and Swedish envoy also opened to Charlotta Sparre the doors to the salons of Parisian societies, where she was much admired for

From mother to daughter  75 her esprit and grace. Together with the Tessins she went to the opera and theatre, masquerades, balls, suppers and other events. Tessin frequented literary and intellectual circles in Paris and was himself an important patron of artists.34 This all gave Charlotta Sparre opportunities to familiarize herself with French court life and the world of Paris salons before she and Ulla Sparre travelled back to Sweden in 1741 because of Tessin’s financial straits.35 The time in Paris and her connections there distinguished Charlotta Sparre from most of the elite women aspiring for an appointment at court in mid-eighteenth-century Sweden. Hedvig De la Gardie also lived for some time in Paris in the 1740s. She and her elder sister Brita had moved from Stockholm to Paris with their mother, Countess Hedvig Catharina Lillie, after the death of their father in 1741. In Paris the family lived quietly, especially compared to Hedvig Lillie’s previous role as political hostess and important facilitator for her husband’s political career in Sweden.36 Since Hedvig De la Gardie did not participate in social life in Paris or in court life in Versailles, her time in France was notable mainly for her acquisition of better skills in French, which was an essential aristocratic lingua franca and de facto the language of Swedish court of the eighteenth century. Another noblewoman, Carolina Lewenhaupt, was born in Alsace/Elsass, where her father, Count Adam Lewenhaupt, served as an officer, as did many Swedish noblemen in the eighteenth century. She was educated in France, which facilitated her admission to a career at court, first as a maid of honour, later as a lady of the bedchamber and lady-in-waiting at the courts of the Queen Sofia Magdalena and Duchess Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte.37 Nevertheless, we know more about the education of Charlotta Sparre’s and Hedvig De la Gardie’s daughters than their own upbringing, even though it is clear that Baroness Sparre’s connections to the Tessins shaped her manners, appearance and politeness and facilitated her admission to the court career. Charlotta Sparre’s five daughters and Hedvig De la Gardie’s two daughters were educated at home in Stockholm, where they had French or Frenchspeaking governesses. Later they presumably followed the lectures of their brothers’ and male cousins’ tutors, because they all lived nearby each other, were close relatives and their fathers seem to have shared some of the costs of educating their offspring.38 Even so, in the 1770s, Duchess Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte, Gustav III’s sister-in-law and later Queen Charlotte, wrote in her political journal that the education of Charlotta Sparre’s daughters was not what one would have required from a lady of their status and rank.39 Her sharp words were presumably derived from her antipathy towards one of the daughters, Augusta von Fersen, a lady-in-waiting and a long-time lover of the duchess’s spouse. In his diary Chamberlain (kammarherre) Baron Gustaf Johan Ehrensvärd gives another view of Charlotta Sparre’s daughters, praising their beauty, liveliness, elegance, politeness and generosity.40 Hedvig De la Gardie’s daughter, Sophie von Fersen (1757–1816, married Piper), who was then 17, followed her mother, who led the Swedish

76  Johanna Ilmakunnas delegation that travelled to Eutin in northern Germany in the summer of 1774 to escort to Sweden Princess Charlotte, future spouse of Gustav III’s brother, Duke Carl. Countess De la Gardie was then chief court mistress at the court of the Swedish queen and after the royal marriage Sophie von Fersen became maid of honour and later, in 1786, court mistress at Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte’s (as she was called in Sweden) court.41 A careful education in addition to personal qualities and family connections was essential for a noblewoman of a family aspiring for a court office for a daughter. It was not unusual that the daughters of aristocratic families became familiar with the royal court from their childhood. An appointment, especially an appointment that continued for several years, was most often available for young girls whose parents or relatives had close connections to the royal court. Young noble girls were appointed as maids of honour more often in honour of their parents or other relatives than because of their own qualities. However, personal qualities of the maids of honour should not be underestimated. In a world where birth, politeness, sensibility, wit, grace and beauty were highly valued, the personal qualities of these young girls also helped them in one of two possible paths for aristocratic women in this period: finding a suitable match in marriage or combining such a match with a career at court. While some of the noblewomen who made a career at court never married, most of them did, for the right marriage also aided them in ascending the court hierarchy. In the lives of young noblewomen, presentation at court became a ritual transition from the world of home to the world of court. After presentation at court, young ladies had entered high society and left childhood and adolescence behind them. Some of them soon married and moved to the estates of their spouses, while some of them were appointed as maids of honour for a longer period. Connections and social status as well as personal qualities were required before a young lady could be appointed at court. However, in some cases young ladies from families with lower status and position were appointed as a supreme favour to the girl’s family.

Admission to a court career and the length of the career Charlotta Sparre entered her career at court in 1744. She was in the Swedish delegation that travelled to Berlin in order to accompany Princess Louise, the future crown princess of Sweden, to her new homeland. Count Carl Gustaf Tessin led the delegation and had presumably personally chosen Sparre as one of the unmarried noblewomen in the delegation. As was customary when a foreign princess married into the royal family of another country, Princess Louise had to give up her Prussian maids of honour after her arrival in Sweden because of their connections to the Prussian court. She chose new ones from amongst the Swedish aristocracy. Charlotta Sparre’s nomination as a maid of honour showed respect for Carl Gustaf Tessin, whom Lovisa Ulrika (as was her name in Swedish) held in high regard. Moreover,

From mother to daughter  77 Charlotta Sparre’s personal qualities played a key role in the nomination, which was the beginning of a long career at court.42 Maids of honour were generally between seventeen and twenty years of age and were typically appointed until they married. Marriage and career at court also intersected in the lives of Charlotta Sparre, Hedvig De la Gardie, Carolina Lewenhaupt and their daughters. In February 1748, Charlotta Sparre married chamberlain (kammarherre) and master of the hunt (hovjagmästare) Count Carl von Fersen (1717–1786). Maids of honour were not allowed to marry without permission and in February 1747 Baroness Sparre asked Crown Princess Lovisa Ulrika for permission to marry Fersen.43 Since life at the court of King Frederic I was relatively stagnant, a marriage of a maid of honour was anticipated with enthusiasm. In addition, the court paid for a generous part of the wedding arrangements.44 In the 1770s, three of Charlotta Sparre and Carl von Fersen’s five daughters were presented at court, appointed as maids of honour and married to men from the aristocracy and held offices at court. Ulla von Fersen (1749–1810, married first von Höpken and then von Wright) and Augusta von Fersen (1754–1846, married Löwenhielm) both made in their turn a career at court as courtiers and as ladies-inwaiting. Their sister Sofia Charlotta (1751–1774, married Lewenhaupt) was a maid of honour before her marriage in 1773 and death the following year.45 In 1752 Hedvig De la Gardie married Count Axel von Fersen (1719– 1794), brother to Carl von Fersen. She was appointed as a lady-in-waiting in 1778, presumably because her spouse was one of the most important political leaders of the aristocratic opposition against King Gustav III. Thus, the king wished to engage at court a lady-in-waiting with powerful connections, personal qualifications and family ties to influential families of nobility. Her two daughters were also presented at court and began their own careers in the 1770s; Hedvig von Fersen became a lady-in-waiting in the household of Queen Sofia Magdalena and Sophie von Fersen was first a maid of honour and then a court mistress at the court of Duchess Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte. Furthermore, both married into aristocratic families and their husbands held court appointments.46 Because of the marriages, the turnover of the maids of honour was noticeable, while the ladies-in-waiting were generally appointed for their lifetime. This led to a situation in which new appointments for ladies-in-waiting opened rarely. In Sweden, during the 1740s and 1750s at the royal household of the Swedish Crown Princess Lovisa Ulrika and from the 1770s to the 1790s at the royal households of Princess Sofia Albertina and Duchess Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte, several maids of honour as well as ladies-inwaiting were employed. From the 1770s to the 1790s, Queen Sofia Magdalena had at her household only married ladies-in-waiting and one lady of the bedchamber.47 Female royals had in their households both female and male courtiers, whereas male royals had only male courtiers. The sense of duty, service and obligation were explicit for the courtiers and had an impact on the choices noblewomen made concerning their

78  Johanna Ilmakunnas appointments or careers at court. The chief court mistress (överhovmästarinna) and court mistress (hovmästarinna) were as a rule on duty at all times, whereas the ladies-in-waiting served in a three-month rota. Noblewomen who made a career at court in the second half of the eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth century were all married. There were, however, a few maids of honour who never married but because of their personal relations to royals remained in their court careers throughout their lives. As married women, most of the ladies at court had children. In many cases, the husbands of ladies-in-waiting also held an office at court, as did Charlotta Sparre’s husband and the husbands of their daughters. When on duty, ladies-in-waiting inhabited royal palaces where they had their own apartments, whereas their children and husband, if not courtiers on duty at court, resided elsewhere.48 At royal and imperial courts, an ambitious lady could work for issues and activities in which she was interested or found important. She might have political, social or cultural ambitions or a sense of duty to the sovereign and royals. On the other hand, a well-placed woman could help family members obtain good positions at court, in the civil administration or the army. However, most important of all, she would desire to make good marriage matches for her sons and daughters. In addition, in Sweden in the second half of the eighteenth century, ladies-in-waiting such as Carolina Lewenhaupt and sisters Ulla and Augusta von Fersen, performed at court in opera, theatre and concert performances and were, according to contemporaries, skilled actors and singers.49 The appointment of courtiers was personal and not hereditary at the Swedish court. However, as the examples of Charlotta Sparre, Hedvig De la Gardie and their daughters illustrate, most of the female courtiers had relatives at court at some point in time and presumably powerful courtiers expected their children and relatives to be named to influential positions at court.50 In 1800 Baroness Hedvig Amalia Charlotta Klinckowström (1777–1810, married first Möllersvärd, then Trolle-Wachtmeister) was appointed as a lady-in-waiting at the court of Queen Fredrika. Her parents were the marshal of the court, Baron Ture Leonard Klinkowtsröm, and the lady-inwaiting, Countess Hedvig von Fersen. Baroness Klinkowström’s maternal grandmother, Hedvig De la Gardie, had been a lady-in-waiting and her aunt Sophie von Fersen had been the chief court mistress at the court of Duchess Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotta. In addition, her other relatives, Charlotta Sparre and Carl von Fersen and their daughters Ulla and Augusta von Fersen all held or had held offices at court and were very influential at court and in society more widely.51 When keeping in mind that at the Swedish court there were nine ladies-in-waiting, of which only three were on duty at the same time, the careers at court were held in an exclusive small circle which only occasionally admitted new members in the form of maids of honour, from among which the future ladies-in-waiting were selected.

From mother to daughter  79 Royal treatment continued for these women even after their terms of service. In the late-eighteenth-century Swedish court, deceased ladies-in-waiting were buried either with pompous ceremonials dictated by the rigid court etiquette or quietly in the presence of only the nearest family of the deceased lady, depending on the wishes of her family.52 Chief court mistress at Queen Sofia Magdalena’s household, Countess Ulrika Eleonora Strömfelt (married Sparre), died in April 1780. Born in 1724, she had spent her whole life in court society. Her mother had also been chief court mistress. She was herself twelve years old when she was appointed in 1739 as a maid of honour in the household of Queen Ulrika Eleonora. Later on, at the court of Queen Lovisa Ulrika, she and her sister Agneta Margareta were appointed as maids of honour in 1744, at the same time as Charlotta Sparre. In 1748 Countess Strömfelt became a lady of the bedchamber (kammarfröken). No transition from one role to another was guaranteed; a possible career at court could be occasionally destroyed if royal favourites turned from grace to disgrace. In the autumn of 1752, Ulrika Strömfelt left her position because she was not content with the treatment she received from Queen Lovisa Ulrika and maid of honour Countess Ulrika Eleonora von Düben (1722–1758, married Bielke).53 Presumably she resigned for political reasons since the queen’s and Countess von Düben’s political ambitions differed from hers. Countess Strömfelt, unlike Countess von Düben, did not support the politically ambitious queen in her desire to increase the power of the sovereign.54 Countess Ulla Sparre resigned her post as chief court mistress of the queen in December 1752. She left the court because her husband Carl Gustaf Tessin, the grand marshal (övermarskalk), governor of the crown prince and previous favourite of the queen Lovisa Ulrika, was disgraced.55 Despite her previous resignation from Queen Lovisa Ulrika’s court, Ulrika Eleonora Strömfelt was appointed in 1777, at the age of fifty-three, to the position of chief court mistress in the household of Queen Sofia Magdalena. Thus, the countess had served three queens over a period of 44 years.56 Stately and sumptuous, her funeral was designed by King Gustav III, who had great talent in making ceremonies and theatre for all kinds of occasions, felicitous or lugubrious as Count Axel von Fersen noted dryly in his memoirs. Despite the magnificent funeral ceremony, the countess was already forgotten by the next day when the king appointed a new chief court mistress (överhovmästarinna), Charlotta Sparre, and a new court mistress (hovmästarinna), Countess Hedvig Catharina Ekeblad (1746–1812, married Piper and niece to Hedvig De la Gardie).57 When Charlotta Sparre died in 1795, Hedvig Ekeblad’s career at court continued when she was appointed at the queen’s household as chief court mistress.58 Charlotta Sparre’s daughters Ulla and Augusta resigned from their posts as ladies-in-waiting at the court of the queen in 1795, shortly before the death of their mother.59 However, the reasons behind Ulla and Augusta von Fersen’s resignations remain obscure, because there are no sources that provide further details.

80  Johanna Ilmakunnas

Work and duty It can be argued that in the history of royal courts the most important task of the courtiers was to consolidate and manifest the power of the sovereign through sumptuous ceremonies and lavish everyday court life (see Figure 4.1). However, women’s tasks and duties at court can and should be characterized as work because they were very much seen as such by their contemporaries.60 Ladies-in-waiting had generally more tasks than maids of honour and their duties had more the character of work than maids of honours’ duties. Genteel women’s occupations at royal courts varied according to which household (king’s, queen’s, emperor’s, empress’s or other members of royal, imperial and princely families) they belonged; to the season; to which of the royal palaces the court was sojourning; to the number of ceremonies and to the personality of the sovereign as well as to the personal qualities or skills of female courtiers. Although ladies-in-waiting dealt with everyday practical issues and served as companions to the female royals, they were also important figures in the daily life at court, managing and organizing many of the practical issues for the queen and other female members of the royal family. The life at court offered courtiers ceremonies and festivities, sociability and culture, intrigues and quiet days and there was also frequent travel between different royal residences. Court was a stage on which both married and unmarried noble ladies could act for various purposes. The intrigues around the sovereign and the succession played an important part in the lives of the aristocratic families. Ladies-in-waiting competed with each other for status, favours, political power and offices for their husbands, brothers and other male relatives, as the examples of Charlotta Sparre and Hedvig De la Gardie above show. Accumulating and manifesting the splendour of the court and sovereign was perhaps the most visible of the duties of ladies-in-waiting. In addition, the everyday chores of the ladies-in-waiting varied from helping with royal correspondence, organizing queens’ or princesses’ philanthropic work, engaging in conversation, reading to the royals, playing cards with them or accompanying them on promenades. They also had to care for and choose jewellery for various occasions and they took care of the train or mantle in ceremonies, although one of the queen’s chamberlains carried it.61 Ladies-inwaiting arranged balls or suppers for the queen and organized illuminations, music and dances. In eighteenth-century Sweden, the court was the nexus of cultural life and especially theatre and opera flourished under Queen Lovisa Ulrika and her son King Gustav III. Courtiers performed at the theatre and opera performances and other entertainments took place. Many ladies-in-waiting were accomplished actors and singers, having practised music, dance and bodily control since early childhood. Ladies-in-waiting Ulla and Augusta von Fersen, Hedvig Ulrika De la Gardie (1761–1832, married Armfelt), Caroline Lewenhaupt and Maria Aurora Uggla (1747–1826,

From mother to daughter  81 married Ehrengranat) acted in several theatre pieces performed at court and were all regarded as skilled actors.62 Ladies-in-waiting were considered the highest-ranking women in Sweden. They had admission to the queen’s apartment at all times and all of them were present at public audiences and at ambassadors’ audiences, which can be seen as a visible sign of their rank. The chief court mistress and the court mistress, the highest-ranking women at court, had the power to introduce anyone to the queen who wished to meet her. The ladies-in-waiting on duty followed the queen wherever she went, saw to her needs and her accessories and informed male courtiers such as the lord chamberlain (överkammarherre) when the queen needed them. Compared to male courtiers, ladiesin-waiting and maids of honour were fewer at the Swedish court. They numbered only eleven, of which the chief court mistress and the court mistress and three ladies-in-waiting were on duty at the same time. The queen also had between ten and twelve male courtiers at her court, whereas the court of the king was distinctly larger.63

Figure 4.1 Pehr Hilleström, Reading at Drottningholm Palace (Lektyr på Drottningholm), 1779. Oil on canvas, 74, 5 x 117 cm. Photo: Bodil Karlsson, Nationalmuseum, Public Domain (PD). The summer palace interior by the court painter Pehr Hilleström depicts an ordinary day at court. The courtiers wear the Swedish National Costume, designed by King Gustav III, sitting on the sofa on the left. The queen and female courtiers wear the black court dress; Queen Sofia Magdalena wears the silver and gold court dress. The queen and female courtiers are engaged in handiwork. Chief court mistress Countess Charlotta Sparre is on the Queen’s left. In front of the mirror is a bust of Empress Catherine II of Russia, to whom the painting was to be sent as a present.

82  Johanna Ilmakunnas Connections grew from subordination to bonds of friendship; there were frequently ties between royals and court mistresses or ladies-in-waiting. Most likely these female friendships offered support and solace in the court’s hierarchical world where both courtiers and royals were rarely alone and most of the time were controlled by strict etiquette. The friendship between Sophie von Fersen and Duchess Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte, from the 1770s until Sophie von Fersen’s death in 1816, is an example of this kind of mutual intellectual bond.64 Countess von Fersen already knew the duchess in 1774, when she participated in the entourage, led by her mother Hedvig De la Gardie that escorted the young princess to Sweden to be married to Prince Carl (later King Karl XIII). Sophie von Fersen was appointed as maid of honour at the duchess’s court before her marriage in 1777. Later, she acted as chief court mistress at the duchess’s court.65 The hierarchy at court gave women substantial power. As mentioned above, at the Swedish court the chief court mistress, and in her absence the court mistress, could choose who was presented to the queen and when. The chief court mistress and court mistress were on duty at all times, whereas nine ladies-in-waiting served three at a time on a three-month rota. The ladies-in-waiting were allowed to organize their time of service themselves.66 This gave them possibilities to better arrange family life or duties towards their families and husband’s estate outside the court. However, combining family life and service at court was demanding. After two or three years as maids of honour and profitable marriage some of the women withdrew to the country houses for their childbearing years and returned to the court later. Most of the maids of honour who married into aristocratic families also participated at court life as part of aristocratic sociability after their marriage, without holding an office or other official position. Some of these noblewomen continued their court careers while having young children, whereas some of them re-entered the court career only after raising their children. Despite aristocratic women’s duties in educating children and a growing interest in motherhood, child care and breastfeeding in the second half of the eighteenth century, not all ladies-in-waiting at Swedish court retreated from court life during the early childhood of their offspring. Charlotta Sparre was nominated as court mistress in 1760, when her five daughters, born between 1749 and 1759, were young. Unlike Countess Sparre, her sister-in-law Hedvig De la Gardie was appointed as a ladyin-waiting in 1778, when her youngest child was sixteen. Countess De la Gardie’s daughter Sophie von Fersen had small children, born between 1778 and 1785, when she was nominated the chief court mistress in 1786.67 Of Charlotta Sparre’s daughters, the oldest ones preferred court life to family life and motherhood, whereas the two youngest ones never wished to enter a career at court.68 For example, in November 1779, Countess Sparre’s daughters Ulla and Augusta von Fersen travelled to Stockholm to briefly

From mother to daughter  83 visit their children whom they had not seen for three months. At court their absence of five days was regarded, according to the chamberlain Ehrensvärd, as long and courtiers welcomed the ladies-in-waiting with open arms when they returned from their domestic duties.69 However, there were also female courtiers who withdrew from their offices presumably for family reasons. For instance, Carolina Lewenhaupt’s daughter Carolina (1782–1851, married Sparre), mentioned earlier, was appointed as a lady-in-waiting in 1811 at the court of Queen Charlotte. She served until 1818, when her second daughter was born. After her reassignment she gave birth to three more daughters.70 In the mid-nineteenth century Countess Vilhelmina ‘Mina’ Lewenhaupt (1817–1899, married Bonde) was asked to accept the appointment as a chief court mistress in Queen Lovisa’s household. She was at the time running the family estate and wanted to personally dedicate herself to family life and business. However, her sense of duty was even stronger and she accepted the queen’s request. As a chief court mistress Countess Bonde had exceptional freedom to decide herself when to work at court and when to dedicate herself to her family. When absent from court, she delegated her duties to the ladies-in-waiting.71 Duties towards family, husband and children, loyalty and service to the sovereign, as well as personal ambitions and preferences were arguably all issues for married noblewomen aspiring for an office and a career at court. The examples above show a growing tendency towards domesticity by the mid-nineteenth century: in the mid-eighteenth century aristocratic women seem to have generally given the career at court more emphasis than daily family life (of which social life was an essential part), whereas by the midnineteenth century aristocratic women could even have had an opportunity to discuss their working conditions and working hours when appointed at court. This did not, however, mean that the role of a mother in educating her daughters to ladies of rank and courtiers, and thus transmitting the profession of a female courtier to the next generation was less important in the eighteenth century. Connections and education through the example of a mother were maintained through correspondence and with the help of father, governesses and female relatives during the periods when mothers were on duty at court. Within the aristocratic culture the importance of kinship and family relations helped in the education of the children if mothers were absent because of their work. Clearly, however, noblewomen had to navigate between the demands of a family and career. There was not a uniform strategy or a standard court career. The women made different decisions and choices, as, for instance, in the family of Charlotta Sparre and Carl von Fersen, where both parents made a career at court despite a growing family and small children. In their case, three of five daughters also entered a court career, whilst two daughters chose another path as mistresses of their homes and estates.72

84  Johanna Ilmakunnas

Salary and remuneration The courtiers in most European courts received lodging, a salary, generous presents and other benefits in compensation for their services. Through emblems and luxurious presents, the maids of honour and ladies-in-waiting made their status at court visible to all. At the same time, these objects could be seen as part of the monarch’s use of symbolic power. In Sweden, maids of honour were entitled to a salary, a clothing allowance, an apartment or other lodging in the royal palace, candles, firewood and food. All of this gave them independence from parents and family. Furthermore, the prestige and economic independence, even if relative, gave young noblewomen genuine prospects to consider a career at court for a lifetime. In the mid-eighteenth-century, maids of honour had a yearly salary of 400 silver dalers, while ladies of the bedchamber received 600. The salary was relatively high and can be compared to the salaries of noblemen serving at court: masters of the hunt had 1,000 silver dalers a year and pages were paid 140. Comparison with the pages – young noblemen often from families with limited social and economic resources – reveals the high position of the maids of honour in the hierarchy of the courts and royal households. The court mistresses and ladies-in-waiting had a high salary, equivalent to the highest male courtiers: 900 silver dalers for a court mistress.73 The ladies-in-waiting also had an apartment or rooms in the royal palace, meals, carriages and servants.74 An appointment at court gave noblewomen their own income and own space, even though sometimes they had to wait for their salaries for years and the apartments in royal residences were cramped. However, the salary was significant more symbolically than practically, because the high costs of court dresses, accessories and entertaining at court fell to the courtiers themselves. Therefore, other ways of rewarding noblewomen’s service at court were possibly even more significant. Expensive jewels, elegant boxes, fans or a larger apartment were remunerations that made the status and royal grace of a lady-in-waiting visible to everyone at court. Furthermore, personal friendships with rulers and members of royal and imperial households could also be considered a reward in the world of courtiers, even though the friendship probably seldom blossomed through deliberate calculation. Despite a salary and the monetary and symbolic value of gifts courtiers received, the female courtier and her family also had to provide a significant financial investment in order to maintain a career at court. The outer appearance, clothes, accessories and material surroundings were expensive and the courtiers were supposed to add the splendour of the court with their own means. Moreover, advancement from a lady-in-waiting to court mistress and chief court mistress was neither rapid nor gratuitous. Charlotta Sparre served twenty years as court mistress before advancing in 1780 to

From mother to daughter  85 chief court mistress at the household of the queen. Carl von Fersen paid 90 riksdalers for his wife’s career advancement.75

Significance of the service at court for elite women’s career, work and profession The royal court was central to the lives of European nobles and aristocrats in many ways. The court career of an elite woman could begin in adolescence and continue until old age if death did not intervene. Some of the maids of honour were appointed as ladies-in-waiting directly after wedding ceremonies organized and paid for by the court, while some ladies interrupted their career at court for a few years after getting married and having children, only to continue it when family duties could be put aside. Generally, for female courtiers a career at court came before obligations to family life until the nineteenth century, when the growing importance of the private sphere and family had an impact on such careers and elite women’s professional aspirations. This led to the growing importance of maids of honour for aristocratic families. The daughters of aristocratic families could serve a relatively short period – sometimes no more than six months – as maids of honour at court, then achieve enormous social and cultural capital in the form of a suitable marriage, connections and personal status. Especially for women belonging to the highest aristocracy, as did all the women discussed above, the court offered a public or half-public sphere where they had an official position and prospects to use their social capital however they chose in various ways. Some of the ladies-in-waiting were engaged in political and social life, while some had intellectual or artistic interests. From maid of honour, to the chief court mistress, a noblewoman’s career at court could continue for decades and terminate in the last manifestation of both royal and noble status and female agency at court: a grand funeral. Whilst many of the ladies-in-waiting who made a long career at court resigned before they were too old to maintain their duties, many of them were ageing at court together with the royals to whose households they had been appointed as young girls. At court, an ambitious noblewoman could engage in political or cultural activities and act in her own right on an institutional level despite her gender. Moreover, an office at court could also offer noblewomen a career with their own income and prospects for advancement. Several ladies-in-waiting kept their occupation for decades, and their careers survived changes of rulers and successions. They also often transmitted their profession to their daughters, who also held offices at court. Furthermore, ladies-in-waiting increased the power and magnificence of the sovereign; they represented the royal lineage through their service and their social connections within and outside the royal court. Whilst the eighteenth century saw the birth of new

86  Johanna Ilmakunnas public and semi-public sociability at opera houses, pleasure gardens and art exhibitions, royal courts remained important arenas for noblewomen, who arguably had more opportunities for agency at courts than within the emerging bourgeoisie public sphere, where women were restricted to roles as spectators and their sphere of agency was domestic.

Notes 1 On noblewomen as officeholders at European courts, see the chapters in The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-Waiting Across Early Modern Europe, eds. Nadine Akkerman & Birgit Houben (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2014); Barbara J. Harris, English Aristocratic Women, 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Katrin Keller, Hofdamen: Amtsträngerinnen im Wiener Hofstatt de 17. Jahrhunderts (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005); Sharon Kettering, ‘The Household Service of Early Modern French Noblewomen’, French Historical Studies 20:1 (1997), 55–85; Britta Kägler, Frauen am Münchener Hof (1661–1756) (Kallmünz: Michael Laßleben, 2011); K.D. Reynolds, Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). See also Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History, ed. Anne Walthall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 2 For the use of royal power through visual media, see A Kingdom of Images: French Prints in the Age of Louis XIV, 1660–1715, eds. Rémi Mathis, Vanessa Selbach, Louis Marchesano & Peter Fuhring (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2015). 3 William R. Newton, La petite cour: Services et serviteurs à la Cour de Versailles au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2006), 12. Newton correctly criticizes the concept of the ‘court society’ as being too inflexible to describe an institution that was more a world than a society. See also Norbert Elias, The Court Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983). 4 See, for example, The Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics and Culture Under the Ancien Régime 1500–1750, ed. John Adams (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999); Bernard Hours, Louis XV et sa cour: Le roi, l’étiquette et le courtisan (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002). 5 On the Swedish nobility’s ideology of serving the sovereign, see Johanna Ilmakunnas, Ett ståndsmässigt liv: Familjen von Fersens livsstil på 1700-talet (Helsingfors & Stockholm: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland & Atlantis, 2012); Charlotta Wolff, Noble Conceptions of Politics in Eighteenth-Century Sweden (ca 1740–1790) (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2008). 6 Johanna Ilmakunnas, ‘Career at Court: Noblewomen in Service of Swedish and Russian Royals, c. 1750–1850’, Women’s History Magazine 72:2 (2013), 4–11; Johanna Ilmakunnas, ‘Hovdamer och hovfröknar i 1700-talets Sverige’, Historiska och litteraturhistoriska studier 82 (2007), 17–47. 7 Angela Rundquist, Blått blod och liljevita händer: En etnologisk studie av aristokratiska kvinnor 1850–1900 (Stockholm: Carlssons, 1989), 151–195. 8 For a useful summary, see, for example, Deborah Simonton, Women in European Culture and Society: Gender, Skill and Identity from 1700 (New York: Routledge, 2011). 9 See, for example, Linda L. Clark, The Rise of Professional Women in France: Gender and Public Administration Since 1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Anne Ollila, Jalo velvollisuus: Virkanaisena 1800-luvun lopun Suomessa (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1998); Anne Ollila, ‘Die

From mother to daughter  87 Zeit der weiblichen Angestellten’, in Arbeitsam und gefügig: Zer Geschichte der Frauenarbeit in Finnland, eds. Marjatta Rahikainen & Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen (Berlin: BWV-Berliner Wissenschfts-Verlag, 2007), 153–169. 10 Elaine Chalus & Fiona Montgomery, ‘Women and Politics’, in Women’s History: Britain, 1700–1850: An Introduction, eds. Hannah Barker & Elaine Chalus (London & New York: Routledge, 2005), 217–259; My Hellsing, Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte: Hertiginna vid det gustavianska hovet (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2015); Paul Keenan, ‘The Functions of Fashion: Women and Clothing at the Russian Court (1700–1762)’, in Women in Russian Culture and Society, 1700–1825, eds. Wendy Rosslyn & Alessandra Tosi (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 125–143; Keller, Hofdamen; Kettering, ‘The Household Service’; Britta Kägler, Frauen am Münchener Hof; Jacques Levron, Les inconnus de Versailles: Les coulisses de la Cour (Paris: Perrin, 2009); Anne MartinFugier, La vie élégante ou la formation du Tout-Paris 1815–1848 (Paris: Perrin, 2011); William R. Newton, La petite cour; Reynolds, Aristocratic Women; Angela Rundquist, Blått blod och liljevita händer; Ulla Tillander-Godenhielm, ‘De ryska kejsarinnornas finländska hovfröknar, hovdamer och statsdamer’, Gentes Finlandiae IX (2001), 57–95. 11 Excellent accounts on women’s activities at courts are Keller, Hofdamen; Kettering, ‘The Household Service’; Britta Kägler, Frauen am Münchener Hof; Newton, La petite cour; Reynolds, Aristocratic Women, 188–219 and Rundquist, Blått blod och liljevita händer; see also, Jeroen Duindam, Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe’s Dynastic Rivals, 1550–1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Even though Duindam examines who attended court, offices they held and courtiers’ daily activities, he sees the courtiers more as an entity of the royal or imperial household rather than as individuals who made careers at court as office holders. Kathryn Norberg is notably critical towards scholarship on Versailles, which too often ignores gender and women’s agency. See Kathryn Norberg, ‘Women of Versailles, 1682–1789’, in Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History, ed. Anne Walthall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 191–192. 12 See Chapter 1, Ilmakunnas, Rahikainen & Vainio-Korhonen, ‘Women and professional ambitions in Northern Europe, c. 1650–1850’ and Chapter 7, Simonton, ‘ “Sister to the tailor” ’, in this volume. 13 Harris, English Aristocratic Women, 5–6; cf. Kettering, ‘The Household Service’, 56. 14 Fabian Persson, ‘Living in the House of Power: Women at the Early Modern Swedish Court’, in The Politics of Female Households, 345–363; Persson, Servants of Fortune: The Swedish Court between 1598 and 1721 (Lund: Wallin & Dalholm, 1999). 15 Rundquist, Blått blod och liljevita händer. 16 Scripts of Kingship: Essays on Bernadotte and Dynastic Formation in an Age of Revolution, eds. Mikael Alm and Britt-Inger Johansson (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2008); Beth Hennings, Fyra gustavianska studier (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1967); Lena Rangström, En brud för kung och fosterland: Kungliga svenska bröllop från Gustav Vasa till Carl XVI Gustav (Stockholm: Livrustkammaren and Atlantis, 2010); Henrika Tandefelt, Konsten att härska: Gustaf III inför sina undersåtar (Helsingfors & Stockholm: Svenska litteratursällskapet & Atlantis, 2008). 17 On noblewomen at the eighteenth-century Swedish court, see Ilmakunnas, ‘Career at Court’; Ilmakunnas, ‘Hovets damer’. See also Hellsing, Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte. 18 Persson, Servants of Fortune. See also Svante Norrhem, Kvinnor vid maktens sida: 1632–1772 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2007); Svante Norrhem,

88  Johanna Ilmakunnas Uppkomlingarna: Kanslitjänstemännen i 1600-talets Sverige och Europa (Umeå: Umeå University, 1993). 19 Olof Jägeskiöld, Lovisa Ulrika (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1945), 75–84. 20 Jonas Nordin, Frihetstidens monarki: Konungamakt och offentlighet i 1700-talets Sverige (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2009); Charlotta Wolff, ‘Aristocratic Republicanism and the Hate of Sovereignty in 18th Century Sweden’, Scandinavian Journal of History 89:2 (2004), 358–375; Wolff, Noble Conceptions of Politics. 21 Mikael Alm, Kungsord i elfte timmen: Språk och självbild i det gustavianska enväldets legitimitetskamp 1772–1809 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2002); Tandefelt, Konsten att härska. 22 Elise M. Dermineur, Gender and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Sweden: Queen Louisa Ulrika (1720–1782) (London: Routledge, 2017). 23 Ilmakunnas, Ett ståndsmässigt liv, 118, 128. 24 Rangström, En brud för kung och fosterland, 299–397; Per Sandin, Ett kungahus i tiden: Den bernadotteska dynastins möte med medborgarsamhället ca 1810–1860 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2011). 25 Överkammarherrens journal 1778–1826: Ett gustavianskt tidsdokument, eds. Mikael Alm & Bo Vahlne (Stockholm: Kungl. Samfundet, 2010), 426–429. 26 Norberg, ‘Women of Versailles’, 194. 27 Hellsing, Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte, 25. 28 The translations of hovmästarinna and överhovmästarinna follow the translations presented by Fabian Persson, see Fabian Persson, ‘The Courts of the Vasas and Palatines, c. 1523–1751’, in The Princely Courts of Europe: Ritual, Politics and Culture Under the Ancien Régime 1500–1750, ed. John Adams (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), 276–278, Persson, ‘Living in the House of Power’; Persson, Servants of Fortune, iii–v. Hovmästarinna and överhovmästarinna have also been translated as mistress of the robes, see Ilmakunnas, ‘Career at Court’. 29 Cf. Jessica Parland-von Essen, ‘Adelsdöttrarnas adolescens 1780–1799: Från flicka till fröken och fru’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland 86:2 (2001), 221–237. 30 Ilmakunnas, Ett ståndsmässigt liv, 65–69; Jessica Parland-von Essen, Behagets betydelser: Döttrarnas edukation i det sena 1700-talets adelskultur (Hedemora & Möklinta: Gidlunds förlag, 2005). 31 Rundquist, Blått blod och liljevita händer, 71–75; Henrika Tandefelt, ‘Kvinnoliv under trehundra år sedda genom Sarvlax arkiv’, in Sarvlax: Herrgårdshistoria under 600 år, ed. Henrika Tandefelt (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2010), 75–76; Göran Ulväng, Herrgårdarnas historia: Arbete, liv och bebyggelse på uppländska herrgårdar (Uppsala: Hallgren & Björklund, 2008), 144; Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, Sofie Munsterhjelmin aika: Aatelisnaisia ja upseereita 1800-luvun Suomessa (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2012), passim; Anna-Maria Åström, ‘Sockenboarne’: Herrgårdskultur i Savolax 1790– 1850 (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1993), 261–267. 32 Parland-von Essen, Behagets betydelser. See also Soile Ylivuori, Women’s Bodies and the Culture of Politeness: Creating and Contesting Gendered Identities in Eighteenth-Century England (unpublished Ph.D. Diss., University of Helsinki, 2015). 33 On relations between France and Sweden in the eighteenth century, see for example Charlotta Wolff, ‘L’aristocratie suédoise et la France dans la séconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle’, Histoire, économie & société 29 (2010), 56–67; Charlotta Wolff, ‘The Swedish Aristocracy and the French Enlightenment circa 1740–1780’, Scandinavian Journal of History 30:3–4 (2005), 259–270, doi:10.1080/03468750500279632. 34 See, for example, Carl Gustaf Tessin: Kulturpersonen och privatmannen, 1695– 1770 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 1995).

From mother to daughter  89 35 Ilmakunnas, Ett ståndsmässigt liv, 204; Sigrid Leijonhufvud, Omkring Carl Gustaf Tessin I (Stockholm: Norstedt & Söners Förlag, 1917), 91–97; Gustaf Lundberg, ‘La Charmante Rose: Carl Gustaf Tessins nièce’, in Vision och gestalt: Studier tillägnade Ragnar Josephson, eds. Mårten Liljegren, Sven Sandström & Ragnar Josephson (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1958), 149–174; Wolff, Vänskap och makt, 191–193. 36 Wolff, Vänskap och makt, 42, 57–58. 37 Adelsvapens genealogi Wiki, ‘Lewenhaupt’, accessed 11 August 2016, www. adelsvapen.com/genealogi/Lewenhaupt_nr_2; Gerd Ribbing, Gustav III:s hustru: Sofia Magdalena (Helsingfors: Söderström, 1958), 247, 261, 298–299; Gerd Ribbing, Ensam Drottning: Sofia Magdalena 1783–1813 (Helsingfors: Söderström, 1959), 269. 38 Ilmakunnas, Ett ståndsmässigt liv, 66–69. 39 Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte, Dagbok, 1, 1775–1782, ed. and transl. Carl Carlson Bonde (Stockholm: Nordstedt, 1902). 40 Gustaf Johan Ehrensvärd, Dagboksanteckningar förda vid Gustaf III:s hof, 1, ed. E.V. Montan (Stockholm: P.A. Norstedt & Söners Förlag, 1878), 107–108, 231; Gustaf Johan Ehrensvärd, Dagboksanteckningar förda vid Gustaf III:s hof, 2, ed. E.V. Montan (Stockholm, P.A. Norstedt & Söners Förlag, 1878), 13, 139–140. 41 Ilmakunnas, Ett ståndsmässigt liv, 125–126; Hellsing, Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte, 29–52; Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte wrote her political journal in the form of a monthly letter addressed to Sophie von Fersen. 42 ‘Lovisa Ulrika to Fredrik II, 31 August 1744’, in Luise Ulrike, die schwedische Schwester Friedrichs des Großen. Ungedrukte Briefe an Mitglieder des preußischen Königshauses I. 1729–1746, ed. Fritz Arnheim (Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1909), 65; Ilmakunnas, ‘Hovets damer’, 20. 43 ‘Lovisa Ulrika to Sofia Dorotea, 24 February 1747, 6 February 1748’, in Luise Ulrike, die schwedische Schwester Friedrichs des Großen. Ungedrukte Briefe an Mitglieder des preußischen Königshauses II. 1747–1758, ed. Fritz Arnheim (Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1909), 18, 97. 44 Ilmakunnas, ‘Hovets damer’, 36–40; Ilmakunnas, Ett ståndsmässigt liv, 225–226. 45 Ilmakunnas, Ett ståndsmässigt liv, 77, 118; Adelsvapens genealogi Wiki, ‘von Fersen’, accessed 11 August 2016, www.adelsvapen.com/genealogi/Von_ Fersen_nr_56. 46 Ibid., 117–118. On Sophie von Fersen’s agency at court, see also Hellsing, Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte. 47 Ilmakunnas, ‘Hovets damer’, 20–23, 30; Överkammarherrens journal 1778– 1826, 426–429. 48 Ilmakunnas, ‘Hovets damer’, 40. 49 Carl Forsstrand, De tre Gracerna: Minnen och anteckningar från Gustaf III:s Stockholm (Stockholm: Hugo Gebers Förlag, 1912); Ribbing, Gustav III:s hustru, passim; Ribbing, Ensam Drottning, passim. 50 Cf. the French court, where an ‘unwritten law of inheritance’ directed the nominations of ladies-in-waiting, governesses and ladies of bedchamber, all reserved for noblewomen. See Norberg, ‘Women of Versailles’, 198–199. 51 Adelsvapens genealogi Wiki, ‘Klinckowström’, accessed 10 August 2016, www. adelsvapen.com/genealogi/Klinckowström_nr_262; Ilmakunnas, ‘Hovets damer’, 20–21. 52 Ilmakunnas, ‘Hovets damer’, 40–43. 53 Axel von Fersen, Riksrådet och fältmarskalken m. m. Grefwe Axel von Fersens Historiska Skrifter, 2 (Stockholm: Nordstedt, 1868), 48. 54 See Brita Plank, Kärlekens språk: Adel, kärlek och äktenskap 1750–1900 (Göteborg: Göteborgs universitet, 2014), 75–76, http://hdl.handle.net/2077/35436.

90  Johanna Ilmakunnas 55 Jägerskiöld, Lovisa Ulrika, 164, 177–178; Marie-Christine Skuncke, Gustaf III – Det offentliga barnet: En prins retoriska och politiska fostran (Stockholm: Atlantis, 1993), 46–51, 172–177. 56 Ehrensvärd, Dagboksanteckningar, 2, 173–174; Ilmakunnas, ‘Hovets damer’. 57 Axel von Fersen, Riksrådet och fältmarskalken m.m. Grefwe Axel von Fersens Historiska Skrifter, 4 (Stockholm: Nordstedt, 1869), 220; Adelsvapens genea­ logi Wiki, ‘Ekeblad’, accessed 11 August 2016, www.adelsvapen.com/genealogi/ Ekeblad_nr_71. 58 Adelsvapens genealogi Wiki, ‘Piper’, accessed 10 August 2016, www.adelsvapen. com/genealogi/Piper_nr_46. 59 Adelsvapens genealogi Wiki, ‘von Fersen’, accessed 11 August 2016, www.adels vapen.com/genealogi/Von_Fersen_nr_56. 60 On noble concepts of work, see e.g. Johanna Ilmakunnas, ‘Adelns arbete och vardag på 1700-talets svenska herrgårdar: Johan Gabriel Oxenstiernas och Jacobina Charlotta Munsterhjelms dagböcker’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland 98:2 (2013), 156–184. 61 Ilmakunnas, ‘Career at Court’, 6; Ilmakunnas, ‘Hovets damer’; see also Hellsing, Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte, passim. 62 Ilmakunnas, Ett ståndsmässigt liv, 174–175; Marie-Christine Skuncke & Anna Ivarsdotter, Svenska operans födelse: Studier i gustaviansk musikdramatik (Stockholm: Atlantis, 1998), 55. 63 Överkammarherrens journal 1778–1826, 424–429. 64 On friendship between Sophie von Fersen and the duchess, see Hellsing, Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte; see also, My Hellsing, Hovpolitik: Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte, hovliv och politik i det sena 1700-talets Stockholm (Örebro: Örebro universitet, 2013). 65 Hellsing, Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte, passim; Bengt Hildebrandt, ‘Sophie Piper’, Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon (1956), accessed 10 August 2016, www.nad.riksar kivet.se/sbl/Presentation.aspx?id=15287; Ilmakunnas, Ett ståndsmässigt liv, 125. 66 Överkammarherrens journal 1778–1826, 428. 67 Adelsvapens genealogi Wiki, ‘von Fersen’, accessed 11 August 2016, www.adels vapen.com/genealogi/Von_Fersen_nr_56; Adelsvapens genealogi Wiki, ‘Piper’, accessed 10 August 2016, www.adelsvapen.com/genealogi/Piper_nr_46. 68 Forsstrand, De tre gracerna, 35–36. 69 Ehrensvärd, Dagboksanteckningar, 1, 412, 417; Ilmakunnas, ‘Hovets damer’, 40. 70 Adelsvapens genealogi Wiki, ‘Sparre’, accessed 24 August 2016, www.adels vapen.com/genealogi/Sparre_nr_11. 71 Ilmakunnas, ‘Career at court’, 8; Rundquist, Blått blod och liljevita händer, 154–158. 72 Cf. Ilmakunnas, Ett ståndsmässigt liv, 118. 73 Ilmakunnas, ‘Hovets damer’, 32–34; Ilmakunnas, Ett ståndsmässigt liv, 120–125. 74 Persson, Servants of Fortune, 160; Rundquist, Blått blod, 159, 165–168. 75 Ilmakunnas, Ett ståndsmässigt liv, 124.

5 Remarkable women artists Flower painting and professional changes in Copenhagen, c. 1690–1790 Anna Lena Lindberg1 Flower paintings have in some sense always existed. But it was in seventeenthcentury Europe that they reached their zenith. As trade expanded, attractive goods could be offered, including exotic plants from India and the Far East. Blooms previously unheard of such as tulips were introduced to the European market. These became incredibly popular and their prices rocketed as demand grew. The sums paid for tulip bulbs reached record levels and caused frenetic gambling before the bubble burst.2 However, the longing for novelties such as roses, hyacinths, lilies and carnations, which today are considered neither unusual nor luxurious, endured, although on a smaller scale. At the same time there was great demand for works depicting these luxurious articles. Given what we would consider today the enormous prices paid for the flowers themselves, flower pieces often cost less.3 Still life painting, including flower pieces, as an independent genre coincided with a key period in the birth of consumer society; increasing numbers of works were produced.4 Floral still lifes were fashionable throughout Europe and found their way into royal collections as well as the homes of the emerging bourgeoisie. Denmark was no exception. This prospering market kept not only men but quite a few women artists busy. The focus of this study will be placed on three female painters with lifelong careers who were regarded by their contemporaries as professionals: Danish native-born Johanna Marie Fosie (1726–1764) and Magdalene Margrethe Bärens (1737–1808) side by side with Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), who lived in Germany and Holland. Works of those early modern artists, acquired in their lifetime, can still be seen in leading art collections in Copenhagen. However, to me the most interesting thing regarding these painters is not primarily related to flower painting as such. It is the fact that put together, comparison of their different careers exposes a general process of change within the art world, in which gender distinctions became more and more obvious, as artisans running studios based on household economy and the competence of family members were replaced by artists in the modern sense, trained at art academies. This process brings a number of questions to the fore. What possibilities, for instance, existed for these three artists to

92  Anna Lena Lindberg acquire skilled training and to earn their living? Where did they find their patrons and their clientele? Did they dare take risks in order to fulfil their ambitions? Insight into the similarities or differences between their professional experiences as well as their works may offer new approaches to what happened both to them and to the art world in which they acted. Visual as well as verbal sources, ranging from portraits and art works to contemporary biographies, will be used to discuss the success and failures of the three individual artists. My gender perspective provides the unifying theme and guides the enquiry.

Maria Sibylla Merian’s network of family ties Flower painting reached its peak during the lifetime of Maria Sibylla Merian. Her fame rests on two pillars: as a visual artist and as a scientific researcher. When young, Merian developed an intense interest in insects, in how they came into existence, the minutest details of their appearance, what they lived on and above all how they turned from caterpillars into chrysalises before finally emerging as finished individuals. She was described as an infant prodigy who at the age of thirteen was already fully occupied in collecting silkworms and other insects and recording them in images. This is all the more remarkable given the contemporary ignorance of insects in particular, regarded by most people as creatures that arose spontaneously from mud or piles of rubbish.5 Merian’s biography amply confirms the importance of early modern families for both artistic training and for careers.6 As the daughter of the Swiss-German engraver and publisher Matthäus Merian the elder, Maria Sibylla Merian belonged to an artistic lineage based in Frankfurt am Main, with roots in a number of European metropolises. An important predecessor was her step-grandfather, the graphic artist and publisher Johann Theodor de Bry from Liège. She grew up, therefore, surrounded by artists and publishers in a Frankfurt that was the centre of graphic production. Her education within her family, which centred on the household, was typical of the period. Since her mother was remarried to the still life painter Jacob Marrel, Merian was able to take part in classes together with her stepfather’s other pupils. Here she learnt all that was needed by an early modern artist. How, for instance, to grind pigments and mix them with binding agents (a necessity as factory-made paints belonged to the future). She practised drawing by depicting living plants and by copying the works of others in dialogue with earlier generations of artists. The floral still lifes of her stepfather Jacob Marrel as well as Johan Theodor de Bry’s copperplates of vases of flowers were available as models and she could easily tap the expertise of her half-brothers Caspar and Matthäus while she was learning the craft of engraving plates of copper to produce prints and gaining an insight into the methods used by her family of publishers to market them.7

Remarkable women artists  93 At the end of her life, Maria Sibylla Merian’s occupational portrait, drawn in Amsterdam by her stepson Georg Gsell, summarizes her career (Figure 5.1). Whether commissioned by Merian herself or her family, it represents a self-aware artist and scholar who carries her years with dignity. Through features like dress, gestures, attributes, style and background, signals are given about the sitter.8 Her status as a scientist is made clear by

Figure 5.1 Georg Gsell, Maria Sibylla Merian, drawing, engraved by Jakob Houbraken 1717. Copyright Uppsala University Library, Sweden.

94  Anna Lena Lindberg a pile of books next to her, and the globe. Merian’s professional identity as an artist and engraver are indicated by the attributes around her, like the tools in the shape of a pair of engraving needles placed next to the urn and by her own works. The magnificent environment emphasized by a baroque drapery and her garments and the fontange, the high tiara-like headdress in fashion, enhance her standing. Emphasis is also placed on her ancestry through the emblem of her father Matthäus Merian’s publishing company on the wall with its auspicious stork carrying a snake in its beak. The statuette below with two allegorical figures, Minerva with a helmet on her head – the goddess of wisdom and patroness of arts – and Fama blowing her trumpet, is calling attention to Merian’s credits.9 With a distinct gesture Merian points towards herself and her own significance and at the same time invites the viewer to take note of the flowering plant in front of her. Here, in my view, a couple more clues are presented to what was specific about the artist’s career, namely her infatuation with the motif of metamorphosis. One clue is the classical motif on the urn in which the plant has been placed, decorated with two running figures. This is probably an allusion to the myth of Apollo’s pursuit of Daphne in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in which the god almost catches his victim before she is transformed into a laurel. Such transformation dramas occupied Merian throughout her life, in the shape of insect larvae turning into chrysalises and butterflies, like the one fluttering at eye-level in the portrait. The other clue is the plant in the urn, which on closer inspection comprises two different species: a sweet potato, twining round the handsome parakeet flower. This combination is also represented by Merian in Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium from 1705, the work that culminated her career, which describes individual insects at every stage of development and how they feed on the plants that support them, thus illustrating the symbiotic conditions of nature at the micro level.10 The plant motif in the copperplate portrait offers a coarser version of Merian’s own elegant image in Metamorphosis, in which the sweet potato’s red tendrils (and blue flowers) climb like a reptile around the thicker stem of the parakeet flower, with its large leaves and orange blooms. One could say that Merian’s accomplishments as an artist-scientist explain her current position as an ecological forerunner. But let us move to Copenhagen to take a comparative glance at some of her earlier works.

The Rosenborg Florilegium It is vital for the career of any professional artist to be represented in authoritative collections. The elegant royal summer palace of Rosenborg in Copenhagen, erected in the early seventeenth century, is today the home of a number of such collections. One of the towers houses a selection of flower paintings in gouache (opaque watercolour) on parchment by Maria Sibylla Merian. We know from the earliest inventory that already in 1696 there were 50 works by Merian in the castle.11

Remarkable women artists  95 Maria Sibylla Merian’s comeback today as a celebrity was triggered by a host of scholars, some of whom have taken an interest in the collection of flower pieces known as The Rosenborg Florilegium. To the best of my knowledge, the first of them in an international context was the zoologist and insect researcher Katharina Schmidt-Loske.12 However, flower pieces that also include insects form the exception in the Rosenborg Florilegium, where the predominant motifs are bulbous plants, perennials such a tulips, lilies, narcissi and other species. Here, in other words, Merian is still primarily a flower painter. Two of the watercolours in the collection are signed ‘M.S.G.’ or ‘M.S. Gräffin geb: [née] Merianin’. The surname Gräffin is the feminine form of Merian’s name after her marriage to the painter and publisher Johann Andreas Graff. But as she started to use her maiden name again after her separation from Graff in 1685, these signed paintings at least can be dated with certainty.13 Among the watercolours in the Rosenborg collection, the one that is signed with the initials M.S.G. is representative for the artist (see Figure 5.2). The two tulips of the popular flamed variety with stripes that occupy the entire image are depicted in painstaking detail. Most of the petals in the bloom with yellow striations that has opened out facing us are in full blossom; only a slight impetus is needed for the two last ones to unfold. The smaller tulip striped in red, which is viewed from the side, is taking longer to bloom. Not even its leaves are at rest – they twist outwards and upwards. It is perhaps this typical, ongoing dynamic that makes Merian’s images so vivid and special. But the differences in size and colour mean the tulips lack links to each other or to their setting, in sharp contrast to pictures produced later on. These tulips have not grown on the same plant and we cannot see where they have taken root. The aim is outright decorative. Such flower motifs could be lifted out separately to be adapted for any other pattern. The Rosenborg paintings call attention to Merian’s floral still lifes in her two earliest books, both entitled Das Blumenbuch (The Book of Flowers) in 1680 to be included in an omnibus edition, Neues Blumenbuch (The New Book of Flowers).14 Merian describes the purpose of the publication to convey ‘utility and pleasure’, addressing learned nature and art lovers as well as those who want to copy her images of flowers and to women who embroider.15 Pattern books were typical of the period. Unlike today, copying was totally accepted. Art historian Sam Segal has discussed Merian’s own artistic models both within her family and elsewhere. One of them was Nicolas Robert, court painter to Louis XIV in France. Robert’s influence is palpable according to Segal, for instance in the design of the garlands of flowers in Neues Blumenbuch. Segal also points out that the different sections of the flower book were not published first-hand as volumes but as series of engravings. Black-and-white prints were sold for less than those that had been coloured. It could easily be imagined, Segal writes, that individual popular images were sold in large editions.16 Others have thought along the same lines when it comes to the origin of the Rosenborg Florilegium. Ella

96  Anna Lena Lindberg

Figure 5.2 Maria Sibylla Merian, Flamed Tulips, signed ‘M. S. G.’, gouache on vellum. The Royal Danish Collection, Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen. Photo: Kit Weiss.

Reitsma calls to mind the similarities between some of these watercolours and the images in Neues Blumenbuch and her conclusion, to use Reitsma’s own somewhat harsh words, is that the collection is a ‘ragbag’.17 Her comment points to the fact that Merian was a self-supportive entrepreneur,

Remarkable women artists  97 who throughout her life did business with her own art works as well as with paints, preserved butterflies and reptiles in order to finance her own publications.18 But how did the Rosenborg Florilegium end up in Copenhagen? Merian’s access to well developed social networks contributed to her career and probably did so in this case as well. In addition to the artists in her family with links throughout Europe and her many contacts among botanists, scientists and collectors, her religious affiliation to the pietistic Labadist movement was also important. Reitsma’s hypothesis is that the physician Hendrik van Deventer, a Labadist sympathizer, was involved in circulating Merian’s paintings. As the children of the Danish king Christian V suffered from rickets, Deventer, who had a reputation of being able to cure the disease, was invited to Rosenborg several times around 1690 and was successful. Perhaps Deventer took Merian’s watercolours of flowers with him to earn money for the Labadist colony in Wieuwerd where Merian stayed while she first settled in Holland. Or did she herself accompany him on some of these journeys?19 So far, unfortunately, there is little to substantiate this apart from guesswork.

Johanna Marie Fosie at Rosenborg Castle Johanna Maria Fosie is, like Merian, represented in the Rosenborg art collection. Exactly how Fosie’s twenty-five gouaches ended up at Rosenborg is today unknown. Perhaps her paintings had already formed part of the royal collection at the palace of Christiansborg, from where it was evacuated after the major fire in 1794.20 As presenting art works to those in power was a common strategy at the time, they might have been obtained as gifts from the artist. Actually, Fosie is known to have practised this social rule at least at one occasion when paying her respects to king Frederik V on his birthday in 1757 with a still life with fruit, for which he had expressed his gratitude with a hefty gratuity.21 Fosie’s subjects in the Rosenborg collection vary from floral still lifes to landscapes, hunting scenes and genre paintings of peasants playing boule or dancing and were often influenced by popular graphics after seventeenth-century Dutch masters like Adrian Ostade or contemporary French artists like Edmé Bouchardon. This correspondence was something she herself pointed out by writing the names of her models on the back of her works. In other words, Fosie has not attempted at all to stand out as unconventional or autonomous in a modern sense but is typical of the period in which accounting for predecessors was not yet looked down upon. During her lifetime, Johanna Marie Fosie’s conveniently sized still lifes and flower pieces became quite popular with the bourgeoisie, perhaps sometimes chosen as a substitute for more impressive oil paintings, which for economic reasons were out of reach.22 Her poetic nosegay in bright colours and tied by a pink ribbon, including a butterfly resting on the leaf of a flamed tulip, provided a perfect match for bourgeois taste at

98  Anna Lena Lindberg

Figure 5.3 Johanna Marie Fosie, Nosegay, signed ‘Johanne Fosie 1754’, gouache, 21.1 x 15.8 cm. The Royal Danish Collection, Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen. Photo: Kit Weiss.

the time. Its small dimensions (21.1 x 15.8 centimetres) and gilded frame made it easy to fit in anywhere (Figure 5.3). Fosie’s bouquet is in fact reminiscent of two bunches of flowers in Maria Sibylla Merian’s Neues Blumenbuch, intended to serve as examples for copying or embroidering. But I am not claiming here that it must have been Merian’s works that Fosie glanced at, merely that they were both rooted in the same representational tradition.

Remarkable women artists  99

Familial training Johanna Marie Fosie had grown up in a family surrounded by artists. Her father was the miniaturist and engraver Jacob Fosie, who acted as drawing master at Søkadetakademiet (the Royal Danish Naval Academy) in Copenhagen. During his time military education comprehended drawing as well as watercolour painting, needed, for example, for producing maps. The Fosie family home on Østergade in the centre of Copenhagen was a meeting place for artists and art lovers. This is where Jacob Fosie gave lessons in drawing outside the naval academy to interested visitors for free and he was the one who taught his four children the gouache technique and the craft of engraving. Of the four Johanna Fosie soon stood out as the artistic family’s ‘coming woman’. At the age of sixteen she mastered the art of copper engraving, in the following year she made her first independent picture ‘drawn from nature’ of the festive decoration of her family’s house on Østergade at the time when the whole of Copenhagen was celebrating the marriage of the crown prince Frederik and his bride Louise.23 While employed as drawing master her father extended his educational accomplishments by publishing two textbooks, one made up of engravings to serve as models and to which Johanna Fosie contributed.24 Among Jacob Fosie’s other accomplishments were his musical commitment as organist at Holmen Church in Copenhagen, his introduction to Denmark of the technique of copperplate engraving, his mastery of languages – he understood Latin and spoke English, German, French and Italian fluently – and his election as a member of the Art Academy in Florence.25 While teaching he frequently met the cadets socially outside the naval academy, as one of them testifies in his diary. In an entry for 24 May 1749 we are told that two cadets went home with their teacher and were allowed to see Johanna Fosie’s paintings. Five years later there is another entry: ‘On 1 January 1754 I went to Herr Fosie’s home and saw a large number of his paintings, which were very beautiful, most of them sketches by his youngest daughter Miss I. Fosii – in watercolour’.26 Johanna Marie Fosie had her portrait painted in 1757 by a friend of the family, Johan Hörner, in a setting that affirms her status as professional artist (Figure 5.4). The heavy pillars and a drapery to the left could hardly have been found in her own studio but were justified as indications of prestige. This is a reminder that ‘portraits of the middle class could take on the attributes of portraits of rulers, attempting by association to elevate their sitters’.27 Features like the globe and the small bust resting on the pile of books on the table in front of the artist confirm her education and learning and the landscape in the background opens out on to the great world. The sitter’s rococo attire, including the flower ornament as a finishing touch on the head and the proud stance emphasized by her stays, contribute to the impression of a successful professional woman. Fosie has chosen to be represented in the act of performing her artistic occupation, a brush in her

100  Anna Lena Lindberg

Figure 5.4 Johan Hörner, Johanna Marie Fosie, signed and dated 1758, oil on canvas, 37 x 29.5 cm. Private collection. Photo: Ole Woldbye/The Museum of National History on Frederiksborg Castle, Denmark.

hand, her gouache paints and a glass of water next to her and her gaze directed towards the viewer. But there are no clues indicating her qualifications as a skilful engraver as well, maybe because this occupation was more closely related to craftsmanship and by then seen as less attractive. The year

Remarkable women artists  101 was 1758, the same year in which she would be thirty-two and was to marry a clergyman. Regarding technique there is a crucial difference between Johanna Marie Fosie’s ideal, occupational portrait and the previous one representing Maria Sibylla Merian (Figure 5.1). The Merian copperplate engraving was reproduced several times and has been printed in quite a few books and designs, either in black-and-white or hand-coloured in various ways, and therefore reached a large audience, whereas the Fosie oil painting was commissioned by her family, where it still remains, so that it did not of course promote public interest in its subject. Nevertheless, if Merian to the very end stood out as a woman who was conscious of how to market herself, the same goes for Fosie. Generally eighteenthcentury women married much earlier than at thirty-two and Johanna Marie Fosie’s late matrimony seems to indicate that she was keener on her career. That Fosie continued to pursue her independence as an artist even when married and as a mother is shown by the sketchbook she left behind with studies of flowers, birds, berries and fruit in Den Kongelige Kobberstiksamling (The Royal Collection of Graphic Art) at Statens Museum for Kunst (The National Gallery of Denmark) in Copenhagen.28

Johanna Marie Fosie at the centre of a circle of European artists In the middle of the eighteenth century Danish art was dependent on immigrant artists. The nominations of Swedish Carl Gustaf Pilo as director of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and court painter in 1741 and of the French sculptor Jacques Saly in 1754, the same year as the academy was officially founded, was therefore not exceptional. But alongside the representative art demanded by the court and aristocracy, Jacob and Johanna Marie Fosie’s cabinet pieces in the form of small-format paintings were able to meet the less pretentious needs of the local bourgeoisie.29 Besides the distinction between professional and amateur was not yet as clear-cut as it would appear in the nineteenth-century art world. It has been suggested for instance by art historian Christian Elling that the Fosie family entertained a circle of artists and writers in their home, that they held a salon in the French style: ‘It is worth pointing out that Johanne Fosie’s home on Østergade has been a meeting place for a not insignificant section of the capital’s literary and artistic elite. The young woman painter has in fact “kept a salon”, probably the first bourgeois artistic one in Copenhagen’.30 Elling’s hypothesis about the salon is based on a wellknown alba amicorum (a friend book), an album with poems, sketches and watercolours, dedicated to Johanna Fosie. These albums were not a new phenomenon. In the 1670s Maria Sibylla Merian had added to the tributes in the form of pictures with dedications to two recipients in albums of this kind.31 They traced their roots to student circles and the aristocracy but

102  Anna Lena Lindberg underwent a revival from the middle of the eighteenth century as part of the period’s cult of friendship.32 Fosie’s album, today in Det Kongelige Bibliotek (The Royal Library) and its manuscript collection in Copenhagen, contains not only pictures but often also a poem or some other friendly greeting from members of the capital’s cultural establishment.33 These include the Fosie family’s neighbour Carl Gustaf Pilo, who presented a fastidious self-portrait in brown, black and grey, and Johan Hörner, who was to paint Fosie’s portrait and whose greeting took the form of a studio interior in chalk and charcoal. The contributions to the album date from 1747, when Johanna Fosie was twentyone years old, to 1758. Her mother had died five years before the album came into existence. It would have been natural for Johanna, who stood out as the talented artist in the family, to take over the role of hostess in the home.34 Considering the size of their social circle, it does not seem incredible that their home functioned as a venue for social gatherings of the capital’s artistic elite. Apart from Hörner and Pilo several other well-known artists are represented in the album, such as the academy professor and court engraver Johan Martin Preisler as well as the sculptor Simon Carl Stanley, also professor, whose sketch of a musical ensemble implies that musical performances formed part of these social events. But did these guests gather in the Fosie family’s home at the same time so that we really dare talk about a salon being held? Salon is a concept that can be defined in different ways. It refers architectonically to a large room or saloon used for entertainment and receptions, something adopted by the bourgeoisie but on a smaller scale. In addition this word also describes, as here, a group of people or a gathering that meets more or less regularly. Often conversations with the guests, both men and women, about art, literature and music, were conducted by the hostess.35 The salon offered a female counterpart to the clubs and associations that arose at the same time among bourgeois and progressive aristocratic men in learned societies, coffee houses and Masonic lodges.36 The participation of women can be described from a twofold point of view: on the one hand they could find opportunities to fulfil themselves and develop social skills and a career; on the other they brought the opportunities that women did not have access to, such as formal education, into the open.37 The Fosie family’s imposing home with its sixteen rooms certainly provided the space for receptions. And if we dare to determine that the contributions to the album derive from a salon, its date, around 1750, was by Scandinavian standards early. One argument to confirm that there really were gatherings is, however, that several of those that figure in the album were obviously part of a network of artists who knew each other well. The engraver Michael Keyl, who has sketched a waist-length portrait of Johanna Fosie, had come to Copenhagen from Nuremburg, where he had been a student of Johan Martin Preisler, the same Preisler who also contributed to the album. Keyl’s

Remarkable women artists  103 portrait of Fosie is positioned as an oval picture in, again, an imposing setting, a niche in the wall surrounded of four pillars (see Figure 5.5). The portrait is flanked by two putti holding wreaths of laurel and in front of it stands the allegorical figure Pictura, the muse of painting. This image also contains one of the album’s gallant poetic tributes in verse, the same as the one that Pictura is in the process of presenting to the object of this praise.

Figure 5.5 Michael Keyl, Portrait of Johanna Fosie, drawing, Johanna Fosie’s Stambog 1747. Copyright Fotografisk Atelier, The Royal Library, Copenhagen.

104  Anna Lena Lindberg There is not one maiden Equal to Mistress Fosie In the whole of Copenhagen; She alone can claim That through her art she merits An immortal name.38 In spite of overstatements like this being characteristic of the time, Johanna Marie Fosie apparently was well esteemed among her colleagues. How regularly the salon may have taken place we cannot know, but the entries in the album cover a period of twelve years, from 1747 to 1758. Another thing that in my opinion supports the idea of a salon is that in addition to his duties as a teacher at the naval academy, Jacob Fosie, as already mentioned, gave free lessons in drawing three times a week in his home. It was therefore certainly customary for the Fosie family to often receive guests. If in the future it turns out that the salon hypothesis is incorrect and that the album should be compared to a commonplace book or poetry album, the fact still remains that Johanna Marie Fosie was part of a circle of professional artists.

‘Remarkable women’ The tradition of the salon can be traced back to the seventeenth century whereas the interest in ‘remarkable’ women who had made their name through their own writings or other intellectual or artistic pursuits is much older. Ever since antiquity, selected women had been listed in catalogues or reference works, the so-called gynaecia (from gynaeceum, the female section of a house). Around 1700 these catalogues began to be written in the vernacular languages instead of Latin, which gave rise to greater interest and more frequent citations. Among the Scandinavian countries Denmark accounts for a particularly large number of gynaecia. The first one in Danish was published in 1753 by Friderich Christian Schönau, Samling af Danske Lærde Fruentimmer, som ved deres Lærdom og Udgivne eller efterladte Skrifter have gjort deres Navne i den lærde Verden bekiendte (Collection of Danish learned women, who by their scholarship and published or posthumous works have made their names known in the world of learning). On the title page of Schönau’s gynaeceum, we already encounter Johanna Fosie’s signed vignette and her version of a learned woman in action. The setting is an imposing library with weighty volumes ranged along the tall bookshelves. The woman is depicted in profile. Seated, with a smile on her lips, she writes with a quill in a large book, wearing a foot-length dress and a light bonnet on her head, garments that traditionally indicate intellectual status.39 With few exceptions, this genre was dominated by male writers, as praising oneself would be considered shameful or even barefaced if done by a woman.40 Friderich Christian Schönau’s entries are full of footnotes and

Remarkable women artists  105 offer texts that deal more with his own erudition than that of the illustrious women. For anyone who overcomes the challenge of reading the foreword to the first volume it becomes clear that Fosie’s engraving was specially commissioned by Schönau for this work: ‘The well-born and for the art of drawing particularly famous Miss JOHANNE MARIE FOSIE has had the grace to produce a beautiful Copperplate to decorate my work, which deserves all the more to be valued as it is the work of a woman . . . ’.41 Fosie is lauded on several pages where she is described not only as famous but also as unique: ‘. . . the only one in the art of drawing in our age that we Danes can praise ourselves for and match with foreigners. I doubt and can scarcely believe that in the memory of man any of her sex have surpassed her, but perhaps there are those who can be compared with her’.42 Reading Schönau’s opinion that Fosie was the only domestic female artist worth noticing we have to recall that her fellow painter Magdalene Margrethe Bärens, born in 1737, was still too young to offer competition in the 1750s. Actually, all our three artists can be found in the next Danish gynaeceum from 1793–1795, a work entitled Billedgallerie for Fruentimmer (Picture gallery for women) by Hans Jørgen Birch. Here their relative positions are the opposite of what they would be for posterity. While the biography and the then ongoing artistic career of Magdalene Margarethe Bärens, both success stories and setbacks, occupies no fewer than 44 pages in the first volume, Johanna Marie Fosie is given a scant two pages in an appendix to the second part, in which Maria Sibylla Merian receives a discerning presentation of just one page.

Magdalene Margrethe Bärens’s professional strategies It is not a long way from the palace of Rosenborg to Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi (The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts) on Kongens Nytorv. The Academy’s art collection includes a few flower pieces by our third artist, born Magdalene Margrethe Schäffer, whose married name Bärens was the name she made for herself. Two of the paintings are ‘reception pieces’, which means that they were submitted to the academy by the artist in connection with her election in 1780 as its first female member. In Stockholm the portraitist Ulrica Fredrica Pasch had gained the same distinction a few years earlier.43 Bärens, unlike Merian, Fosie and Pasch, did not grow up in a family of artists. Her father was Johann Hermann Schäffer, master of the royal stables, where he devoted himself to breeding horses. But he could also draw. His knowledge of the anatomy of horses and the patterns of their movements meant that he could provide important assistance to the French sculptor Jacques Saly, who had been commissioned by King Frederik V to create an equestrian statue for Amalienborg Plads. Saly, as mentioned earlier, was to be influential in the artistic life of Copenhagen and became professor and director of the academy. While Jacques Saly visited her family Bärens was able to discuss her pictures with the eminent artist, who,

106  Anna Lena Lindberg although admittedly a sculptor and not a flower painter, took her out into her parents’ garden and corrected her studies on the spot. According to her contemporary biographer Hans Jørgen Birch, Saly was the only person that Bärens considered she had learnt anything from. But she was also able to meet Hans Clio, one of the academy’s teachers, at the school for freehand drawing, who offered corrections.44 On the other hand, Bärens as a woman was refused admittance to the academy’s regular classes. Not until 1888, after many years of opposition, did the Danish Academy of Fine Arts open a special art school for women.45 What was in fact possible in terms of professional careers for early modern women has often been ignored. However, success cost the women artists no less than their male counterparts. Maria Sibylla Merian’s accomplishments came at the expense of hard work and called for courage to jeopardize her social reputation in seeking a divorce, choosing to move from Germany to Holland and Amsterdam and, above all, literally risking her life for her research in the inhospitable climate of Surinam. Magdalene Margrethe Bärens displays in her career completely different but again daring strategies for establishing herself as an artist and attaining financial security. After marrying the judge Johan Georg Bärens in 1761 she gave birth to four children and for some years devoted herself completely to her family. But at the age of forty she returned to painting. Like Johanna Fosie, Bärens had developed an influential network of fellow artists. Among those that encouraged her were the Danish portraitist Vigilius Eriksen, famous as court painter to Catherine II. And it was the two Academy professors Johan Martin Preisler and Andreas Weidenhaupt who in 1779 proposed her as a candidate for agreé (acting member), which in the following year enabled her to become an elected member.46 Magdalene Margrethe Bärens had several strings to pull in order to establish her career. Like Fosie and many other artists of the day she turned to the monarchy. The year 1780 was not only an important year for her personal career but also for the city of Copenhagen and for Denmark’s international relations. By now the royal power lay in the hands of the dowager queen Juliane Marie and this was the year in which she became involved in a long correspondence with her kinswoman on the Russian throne, Catherine II. The apparent motive for beginning to write to each other was concern about mutual relatives. Meanwhile, however, their countries had become involved in negotiations about an attempt initiated by Catherine II to guarantee the neutrality of shipping during hostilities.47 One of the key figures that paved the way for Bärens’s career was therefore her fellow painter Vigilius Eriksen, who had painted celebrated portraits of both Catherine II (1762) and Juliane Marie (1776).48 Perhaps he was the one who had inspired Bärens to contact the two rulers. At any rate the outcome of the election of Bärens as a member of the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts was her assignment by Juliane Marie as royal flower painter, a post that in addition to its prestige resulted in a gift of a silver tea service. A few years later, in 1786, Bärens

Remarkable women artists  107 sent two paintings to Juliana Marie’s ‘beloved sister’ Catherine II, as she was addressed in the letters to St Petersburg. A bold manoeuvre that this time, besides the honour and the glory, also earned her a large gold medal and a sum of money as a sign of the Russian Empress’s appreciation.49

The inspired artist Magdalene Margrethe Bärens’s success is reflected in her portrait, still to be seen together with those of other members in the academy collection (Figure 5.6). The painter was the portraitist and later on director Christian August Lorentzen, who depicted several of Bärens’s fellow members, still on view in their eighteenth-century surroundings. During this period portraits played an increasing role in institutional structures, due to greater specialization in activities such as law and medicine or in the art world. Portraits received and hung in academic meeting-places, like in this case the Cupola hall, affirmed and strengthened group identity.50 It was evidently vital enough for Bärens to appear in this public context for her to present her portrait as a gift and she was no doubt involved in the outcome. Its size, more than twice that of Fosie’s portrait, coincides with the grand setting. Its gilt frame is surmounted by a sign with an inscription confirming that we are viewing an established member who has held a royal appointment as flower painter since 31 March 1780. Adding labels like this had been commonplace since the fifteenth century as reminders of particular events and suggests a high degree of importance.51 Concerning the neutral background in this classicist portrait there is an obvious difference from the two earlier representations in which props like columns and draperies indicated a baroque influence. To the left, the painting on an easel proclaims Bärens’s area of specialization in floral still lifes. Her clothes, a silk dress with a veil over her powdered hair, are modern, given the period and her status. In her hand she is holding a drawing-pencil, an implement comprising a shaft in which a piece of chalk or charcoal could be inserted. The situation seems improvised. She is supporting her drawing on a sketching case and her concentrated gaze at the motif that has caught her attention depicts an artist at the moment of inspiration, unaware of the viewer. Inside the walls of the academy it is not the work of the hands that counts most but the work of the mind. Probably the boldest move Magdalene Margrethe Bärens made in her career was her attempt to break through in London. The origin of this idea was that an English physician had agreed to sell two of her paintings and they went for a high price. Bärens took a collection of works and moved to England together with her husband without the help (just like Merian earlier) of any travel grant or other public support. To begin with there were financial setbacks, for instance heavy duties to import her paintings.52 On the other hand, there were openings too. Birch describes in his biographical entry in Billedgallerie for Fruentimmer (Picture gallery for women) how

108  Anna Lena Lindberg

Figure 5.6  Christian August Lorentzen, Portrait of Magdalene Margrethe Bärens, signed ‘Malet af C.A. Lorentzen 1786’, oil on canvas, 81 x 65.7 cm. The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The Academy Council, Copenhagen. Photo: Viggo Thorlacius-Ussing’s negative collection, Danish National Art Library.

Bärens took part in an exhibition together with London’s leading neoclassical painter and academy member Angelica Kauffman. A reviewer in The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser in 1790 appointed Bärens as not only the equal of Kauffman but even outshining ‘the famous Marien’ [sic], that

Remarkable women artists  109 is, Maria Sibylla Merian, who was represented at the British Museum.53 But in addition to the financial problems, competing with England’s leading flower painter Mary Moser may have been uphill work. Sales remained low and the attempt to break into the English market turned out to be a fiasco. After a couple of years Bärens had to admit defeat and returned to Copenhagen heavily in debt but set to continue her career as a flower painter, which she did. What was it that the educated eighteenth-century audience were able to appreciate in Magdalene Margrethe Bärens’s compositions? Then as now, the important thing was to have access to valid frames of reference. For the initiated audience instructions like the following one told the reader what to be looking for: A floral still could be neat or rough, so long as the brushwork was lively. Its blooms, if it was to please a classicist, should not be faded or withered. It should present a convincing illusion of three dimensions, and its colours should be carefully balanced to that end. The chiaroscuro should be unified, so that the flowers could stand out with more power. There should not be too many flowers, or the visual impact would be lost. The flowers should display a deal of variety, in order to interest the eye.54 This aesthetic connoisseur’s perspective may seem simple but it does not, after all, exclude the botanical, scientific, religious or existential aspects that were also in play. Bärens’s reception pieces from 1780, both with ‘basket with flowers’ as the motif, conformed to a well-known tradition of which there were innumerable variations (Figure 5.7). To know about works by her predecessors gave the onlooker a comparative reference frame. Her still lifes, painted in gouache on parchment, depicts cultivated flowers, like roses or tulips, in contrast to the lily of the valley, for instance, which grows wild. The combination of blooms shows to begin with that Bärens has no ambition to portray natural phenomena. Tulips, narcissi and bell hyacinths do admittedly bloom in the spring but roses and Turk’s-cap lilies do not blossom until the summer. In other words we are looking at an imaginary composition. So that she would have models all year round, the botanically skilled Bärens acquired a herbarium and she also worked from sketches, when there were no living examples available. Her composition emphasizes individual flowers by portraying each of them, as suggested by the guide above, from different angles. The leaves, all in shifting and different green colours accentuated by thin, white lines underline differences as well between the plants. The brilliance of her colours is enhanced by her choice of the neutral background. In spite of her established position during her lifetime, Magdalene Margrethe Bärens was soon to be forgotten. Like other women artists’ posthumous reputation, hers became marked by changes in society regarding

110  Anna Lena Lindberg

Figure 5.7 Magdalene Margrethe Bärens, Basket of Flowers, signed ‘M.M. Bärens föd. Schäffer’, 1780, gouache, vellum stuck on panel, diameter 44 cm. The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, The Academy Council, Copenhagen. Photo: Frida Gregersen.

gender. A parade example is that Bärens’s contemporary fame as ‘the first and greatest Danish flower painter’ disappeared in favour of a later painter, Johan Laurentz Jensen, who was instead installed in her place as the author of the genre and proclaimed ‘The father of Danish flower painting’.55 Bärens herself, like Fosie, slipped out of the collective memory and is not mentioned at all today.

Conclusions As the boom of the early modern European market for floral still lifes reached Copenhagen, the result was an increased interest in the works by both women and men devoted to this genre. Drawing on visual as well as

Remarkable women artists  111 written sources, this overview has intended to uncover the contemporary standing of three early modern female artists represented at leading art collections like those of the Rosenborg Castle or The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. It has shown firstly that there is evidence of important social networks which helped the artists to establish the right contacts to market their paintings. Their professional strategies involved risk taking as well, like moving abroad. In order to dispose of their works they followed current social rules and turned to collectors and buyers within artistic and scientific communities (Maria Sibylla Merian) as well as approached members of royal families or clients among the bourgeois (Johanna Marie Fosie and Margarethe Magdalene Bärens). Marriage and having children was not a hindrance to their lifelong careers. Secondly, a mutual experience characteristic of the period for the three of them was their early training based upon familial conditions. In Merian’s case artistic competence and publishing knowhow were acquired within a household economy, in Fosie’s and Bärens’s cases experienced tuition or mentorship was conveyed by their fathers. But as signalled in the beginning of my chapter, a crucial change was close at hand. Once based on workshops, familial training was being replaced by classes offered at the academies of art, free of charge for men but excluding women. The significance of gender for an artistic career became conclusive and was fixed for many years to come. Although the three artists discussed here were born within a short span of just about one hundred years and all of them were seen as distinguished artists by their contemporaries, the future art world was to treat them differently. Merian’s double entrance to flower painting, both artistic and scientific, has aroused new interest today caused by her pioneering, ecological attitude, whereas the genre of flower painting as such became disdained and disregarded, one reason for the present neglect of Fosie and Bärens. A final remark: I have used a significant space to discuss pictures, especially the portraits that represent each of the three artists at the height of their careers: Maria Sibylla Merian, who points to herself and her radical conception of nature’s interactive conditions; Johanna Marie Fosie, her brush in her hand hard at work on one of her popular cabinet pieces; and Magdalene Margarethe Bärens, depicted as a member of The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts with an inscription on the frame proclaiming her qualifications in words. This choice was not motivated by any exceptional aesthetic qualities of the pictures. It was made because here we have to do with instances of early modern advertising, which tell us a great deal about what was expected from artists at the time. At stake is not only three different ways of approaching flower painting (Merian through her scientific interest, Fosie with decorative bouquets and Bärens with botanically accurate still lifes in the tradition of the great continental painters). Approaching early modern art this way represents a challenge for art history and our understanding of how the present world of art came about.

112  Anna Lena Lindberg

Notes 1 The author wishes to thank the following persons for their support: Camilla Windfeldt Cadell, The Academy Council, The Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen; Peter Kristiansen, Rosenborg Castle – The Royal Danish Collections, Copenhagen; Helena Persson, The Botanical Garden, Lund University; Erik Westengaard, The Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle. 2 Paul Taylor, Dutch Flower Painting, 1600–1720 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1995), 10–15. 3 Taylor, Dutch Flower Painting, 115. 4 Julie Hochstrasser, Still Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2007), 1. 5 For contemporary beliefs about insects see Katharina Schmidt-Loske, Die Tierwelt der Maria Sibylla Merian (Marburg: Basilisken-Presse, 2007), 24. 6 Bibliographical details have been taken passim from the growing literature about Merian, see, for instance, Elisabeth Rücker, Maria Sibylla Merian 1647–1717 (Nürnberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 1967), 7–16; Maria Sibylla Merian 1647–1717: Künstlerin und Naturforscherin, ed. Kurt Wettengl (Ostfildern: Hantje Cantz Verlag, 2013 [1997]); Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-century Lives (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). 7 Cf. Rücker, Maria Sibylla Merian, 8. See also Schmidt-Loske, Die Tierwelt der Maria Sibylla Merian, 30, proposing that the model for Merian’s Neues Blumenbuch (1680) was a flower book by Merian’s step-grandfather Johann Theodor de Bry under the title of Florilegium renovatum et auctum (published in 1641 by Matthäus Merian the elder). 8 Cf. Shearer West, Portraiture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 71. 9 Perhaps this is a wink to a statement by Merian’s friend Joachim von Sandrart, calling her Minerva, see s Joachim von Sandrart, Teutsche Academie der Bau-, Bildhauer- und Mahler-Kunst, verbessert von I.I. Volkmann, I – VIII (Nürnberg: 1769–1775), II. Theils III Buch, 339. 10 The folio volume published by the artist in Latin as well as Dutch is a record of Merian’s expedition in 1699–1701 to Surinam (previously Dutch Guyana) in South America. 11 An extract from this disappeared inventory was printed by Hans Holck, ‘Det kongelige Kunstkammer paa Christiansborg Slot samt Rosenborg Slots Inventarium fra Høystsalig Kong Christian den Femtes Tiid. Kiøbenhavn 1775. p. 95 nr. 6’, as quoted by Peter Kristiansen in his unpublished manuscript of three pages ‘Maria Sibylla Merian og Rosenborg’, received by the author 27 August 2013. 12 Cf. Schmidt-Loske, Die Tierwelt der Maria Sibylla Merian, based on her doctoral thesis, Bonn university 2004. 13 Mogens Bencard, ‘Merian på Rosenborg’, in Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), eds. André Klein, Nancy Klomp & Mogens Bencard (København: Rosenborg, 1983), 18. 14 Ella Reitsma, Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters: Women of Art and Science (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2008), 98. 15 Merian writes in her foreword: ‘Damit solches so wol [sic] zum Nachreissen und Mahlen/ als dem Frauenzimmer zum Nähen/ und allen Kunstverständigen Liebhabern zu Nuss und Lust dienstlich sehn möchte’, Maria Sibylla Merians “Neues Blumenbuch” (Nuremburg, 1680): Begleittext zur Faks.-Ausg. nach dem Ex. der Sächsischen Landesbibliothek zu Dresden, ed. Helmut Deckert (Leipzig: InselVerl., 1966), pages unnumbered. 16 Sam Segal, ‘Maria Sibylla Merian als Blumenmalerin’, in Maria Sibylla Merian, ed. Wettengl, 72. 17 Reitsma, Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters, 98.

Remarkable women artists  113 18 Elisabeth Rücker, ‘Maria Sibylla Merian: Unternehmerin und Verlegerin’, in Maria Sibylla Merian, Wettengl, 255. 19 Reitsma, Maria Sibylla Merian & Daughters, 101. See also Trevor John Saxby, The Quest for the New Jerusalem: Jean de Labadie and the Labadists, 1610– 1744 (Dordrecht & Boston: M. Nijhoff Publishers, 1987), 265–266. 20 Jørgen Hein, ‘Frederik V som samler: Kunsthåndverk fra det første Christiansborg: Om privat og offentligt i enevældens kongelige arv’, in Søfart, politik, identitet, tilegnet Ole Feldbæk: Søhistoriske skrifter XIX, ed. Hans Jeppesen (København: Falcon, 1996), 263. 21 Susanne Aasted & Erik Westengaard, Borgerkunst – hos familien Fosie på Østergade omkring 1750 (København: Københavns Bymuseum, 1977), 14. This exhibition catalogue is listing the Fosie family’s works and introducing a solid biography. 22 Aasted & Westengaard, Borgerkunst, 19–20. 23 Aasted & Westengaard, Borgerkunst, 7–20, passim. 24 Jacob Fosie’s textbook Lære Klude eller Prøver paa Kaaber, slibe Grunde etc. (1743) holds engravings by his students to serve as models and his Tegne A.B.C. for unge Mennesker (1753) contains instructions on how to draw complicated figures. 25 Aasted & Westengaard, Borgerkunst, 8. 26 Quote from naval cadet Peter Schiønning’s diary 1732–1813 by Jakob Seerup (28 November 2014), transcribed for Seerup’s Ph.D. thesis Søkadetakademiet i oplysningstiden (København, 2001), published in Marinehistoriske skrifter (København, 2001): ‘Den 1. Januar 1754. Var ieg hos Hr. Fosie og saa en stor Mængde af hans Malerier, som var meget smukke, de fleste tegnet af hans yngste Daatter I. Fosii – I Vandfarver.’ 27 West, Portraiture, 86. 28 The pictures in Fosie’s sketchbook are dated 1743–1759. 29 Aasted and Westengaard, Borgerkunst, 19–20. 30 Christian Elling, ‘Om nogle arbejder af Johan Hörner’, Kunstmuseets Aarskrift XXIV (København, 1937), 46–55, see 49: ‘Det er værd at bemærke, at Johanne Fosie’s Hjem paa Østergade har været Mødestedet for en ikke ringe Part af Hovedstadens litterære og kunstneriske Elite. Den unge Malerinde har i Virkeligheden “holdt salon”, vist den første borgerligt-kunstneriske i København.’ 31 Werner Taegert, ‘ “Dess Menschen leben is gleich Einer Blum”: StammbuchAquarelle der Maria Sibylla Merian”, in Maria Sibylla Merian, Wettengl, 88–93. 32 Christina Sjöblad, ‘Släktens krets och vänskapens tempel’, Nordisk kvinnolitteraturhistoria 1, eds. Elisabeth Møller Jensen, Eva Hættner Aurelius & AnneMarie Mai (Höganäs: Viken, 1993), 263–264. 33 Cf Johanna Fosie’s Stambog 1747–58, digitised by The Royal Library Copenhagen, www.kb.dk/e-mat/mas/130019390439.pdf. 34 Aasted & Westengaard, Borgerkunst, 12. 35 Karen Klitgaard Povlsen, ‘Den litterære salons historie og genrer’, in Nordisk salonkultur: Et studie i nordiske skønander og salonmiljøer 1780–1850, ed. Anne Scott Sørensen (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1998), 19. 36 Ibid., 27. 37 Ibid., 18. 38 ‘Der er ingen Pige/ Jomfrue Fosies Lige/ udi hele Kiöbenhavn; Hun er den allene/ som ved Kunst fortiene/ det odödelige Navn.’ Johanna Fosie’s Stambog 1747– 58, 37. 39 Cf. discussion in Anna Lena Lindberg, En mamsell i akademien: Ulrica Fredrica Pasch och 1700-talets konstvärld (Stockholm: Signum, 2010), 63–67. 40 Marianne Alenius, ‘Om alla slags berömvärda kvinnopersoner: Gynaeceum – en kvinnolitteraturhistoria’, in Nordisk kvinnolitteraturhistoria 1, 217–232, passim.

114  Anna Lena Lindberg 41 Friderich Christian Schönau, Samling af Danske Lærde Fruentimmer, som ved deres Lærdom og Udgivne eller efterladte Skrifter have gjort deres Navne i den lærde Verden bekiendte (Kiøbenhavn 1753): ‘Velædle og af Tegne-Konsten i Særdeleshed berømte Jomfrue JOHANNE MARIE FOSIE haver til dette mit Verks Ziir behaget at forfærdige en smuk Kaaber-Plade, som fortiener des meere at sætte Priis paa, efterdi den er gjort af et Fruentimer.’ pages unnumbered. 42 Schönau, Samling af Danske Lærde Fruentimmer: ‘. . . den eeneste i TegneKonsten udi vor Alder, som vi Danske have at roose os af, og kunne sette mod Fremmede. Jeg tviler paa, og neppe kand troe, at nogen af hendes Kiøn i Mands Minde haver overgaaet hende, men kandskee de, som med hende kunde sættes i Ligning.’ (foreword), pages unnumbered. 43 Lindberg, En mamsell i akademien, 23. 44 Hans Jørgen Birch, Billedgallerie for Fruentimmer, I (Kiøbenhavn 1793), 238. 45 F. Meldahl & P. Johansen, Det kongelige akademi for de skjønne kunster 1700– 1904 (København, 1904), 500–503. Only in 1920 women were allowed to take part in life studies classes together with men, see Dansk kunsthistorie: billedkunst og skulptur, 3, eds. Torben Holck Colding et al. (København: Politikens forlag, 1972), 15–16. 46 Birch, Billedgallerie for Fruentimmer, 245–246. 47 Mette Skougaard, ‘Et familieanliggende: Dronning Juliane Marie og Kejserinde Katarina den Stores brevveksling om de brunsvigske hertugbarn’, in Danmark og Zarernes Rusland 1600–1900, Exhibition catalogue (Frederiksborg Castle, 2013), 22–30, passim. 48 Both portraits are today in the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen. 49 Birch, Billedgallerie for Fruentimmer, 248, 254. 50 West, Portraiture, 86. 51 Ibid., 54. 52 Birch, Billedgallerie for Fruentimmer, 250–253. 53 Ibid., 265–266. Unfortunately the relevant issue of The Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, No. 5250, 1790, is missing, as the author’s enquiries have revealed, from all the Scandinavian university libraries as well as the British Library, Yale University Library, the Library of Congress in Washington and the American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia. 54 Gerard de Lairesse, Groot Schilderboek (Haarlem, 1740), quoted in Taylor, Dutch Flower Painting, 100. 55 Barbara Scott, ‘Johan Laurentz Jensen: The Father of Danish Flower Painting’, Apollo: the magazine of the arts for connoisseurs and collectors, November (1987), 337: ‘Although Jensen’s own claim to be regarded as the father of Danish flower painting is not disputed, this article is the first to be devoted to his work’. See also Ingvar Bergström, ‘Johan Laurentz Jensen: Father of Danish Flower Painting’, Catalogue no 1 (London: Verner Åmell Ltd, 1989), pages unnumbered.

6 Performing women The life and work of actresses in Stockholm, c. 1780–1850 Marie Steinrud

At the house of Brita Olofsdotter, widow after private Knagg, a soldier in the army, at the centre of the city of Vänersborg in the south of Sweden, another widow had rented rooms during the 1840s.1 She stated that she had been married to a French man, but she was commonly known under the name Mrs Stenberg. Towards the end of her life, she was considered ‘miserably poor’ and in that state she ended her days in July 1847.2 Not many knew then, that the odd, smelly and poorly dressed woman who offered the children in town lessons in French was Lisette Stenberg, the actress the famous writer and journalist Gustaf Abraham Silfverstolpe had appointed ‘one of the greatest actresses the world had ever seen’.3 Not quite fifteen years later, about 1,100 kilometres south, in the German town of Düsseldorf, another famous Swedish actress died. It was Maria Charlotta Erikson, who after a successful career at the Royal Theatre had retired and during the 1840s moved to Düsseldorf, where one of her sons, born out of wedlock, studied the art of painting.4 Two actresses, two different fates, two women’s lives. They were almost contemporary, but their lives took different turns. Lisette Stenberg died alone and poor, Maria Charlotta Erikson was at the time of her death still an esteemed talent, famous and celebrated. At first sight, few things bind these two women together. Looking more closely at their life stories, many more similarities appear, similarities they shared with other actresses in the decades before and after the turn of the century 1800 in Stockholm. In this chapter, I focus on five actresses at the theatres in Stockholm between 1780 and 1850. In addition to Lisette Stenberg (1770–1847) and Maria Charlotta Erikson (1794–1862), the actresses are Ebba Jeanette Morman (1768–1802), Sophia Magdalena Wäström (born 1778) and Christina Wilhelmina Enbom (1804–1850). Their achievements on stage and their position in society make them interesting today, as individuals with an agency of their own, but also as representatives of women with a profession, let alone one of the less respected. The aim of this study is to analyze actresses’ living conditions from the 1780s to the 1850s with the five women as a basis for the discussion. The chapter is divided into three parts, chronologically following the women from cradle to grave. The first part deals with the women’s

116  Marie Steinrud background and upbringing. Which social stratum did they come from and did they receive any education prior to their debut as actresses? The second part focuses on their professional situation. What kind of actions did they take to cope with a profession considered to be improper? What were their strategies to ensure success? The last part deals with the lives of the actresses after their active years. How were their livelihoods and financial situations? How did their lives change after their professional years were over? The five women’s lives have been the framework during the collection of data that forms the basis for this chapter. I have followed them throughout their lives and to some extent also their parents, husbands and children. The sources are few and contain only pieces of information, as is the case for the vast majority of the individuals in history. It is only after their debut as actresses that their lives were more recorded, and even more so if their acting was a success. The material consists mainly of information from church records and censuses, legal documents and probate inventories, but also more personal material has been used, like memoirs. The contents of the documents vary, but the common factor is they all concern the lives of the five actresses or with them related individuals. The basis of the study consists of a life cycle perspective, even if there is some emphasis on the time the actresses were active in their profession. With a microhistorical approach, both the individual and the structural perspective will shed light on the living conditions for the actresses during this period. What was possible to do for women in general and actresses specifically during this period, and how did the individual actress combine her own will with the boundaries of society?5 An individual’s possibility to choose their own life and career will depend on factors like position in society, ethnicity, geographical belonging, age and gender. In addition to this, different cultural understandings in a specific society will determine the life cycle and ability to choose a life path.6 The microhistorical approach will make it possible to challenge the general history of this time. The North American historian Charles W. Joyner calls this method ‘asking large questions in small places’, thus also emphasizing the fact that the studied group needs to be well defined and small to ensure the intensive historical investigation.7 Research on actresses during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often focuses on the biographical facts of the women, often well-known actresses, their life and work, reviews and performances, often spiced with scandals of their life and their appearances, clothes and looks. This is not surprising, since sources are scarce and the pieces of information about the life of the actresses are few. The working conditions of the actresses are also at the centre of studies, discussing an ability to make ends meet as well as the actresses’ exposed and vulnerable position in society.8 Lately, studies focusing on these women as professionals, as working women, have been published. Both Tracy C. Davies’s study of Victorian actresses in Great Britain and Ingeborg Nordin Hennel, in her dissertation about the actresses at

Performing women  117 the Royal Theatre in Sweden, focus on the more ordinary actresses’ living and working conditions during the nineteenth century.9

Women’s work on stage Women have always worked and have always had working lives and careers, whether it has been focused on wage labour in a more traditional sense or unpaid work within their own household. In this chapter, I will study these actresses as professional women. How women’s work and working life in history has been regarded depends on how the term ‘work’ is defined. Many definitions are focused on a way to make a living, thus emphasizing the payment, a wage or salary. In many cases this excludes women’s work in the home, and it also blurs the fact that what can be considered work is not only a question of gender, but also of position in society and social status.10 Women and performance on stage has a winding and complicated history in Europe. During the latter part of the seventeenth century, more and more women appeared on stage after the ban had been lifted. This does not mean that women did not perform before that, rather than their performance was of a private kind in a controlled environment, an amusement widely spread among the upper classes. For a woman to perform in front of a paying public, on the other hand, meant to be linked to ‘public women’ in society and the connections between acting and prostitution were never far away.11 Lisette Stenberg, Ebba Morman, Maria Charlotta Erikson, Christina Wilhelmina Enbom and Sophie Magdalena Wäström were all actresses – a choice of profession that hardly was socially accepted for decent women during this period. The cult of true womanhood included virtues such as piety, purity, domesticity and submissiveness. And it was what the true woman should devote her attention to.12 Theatre life of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is often described in contradictory terms. On the one hand, the glamorous is pointed out, with glittering laughter, well-made costumes and beautiful plays. On the other hand, the actors’ low social status is highlighted, the draughty stages and the paltry payment. To choose a profession involving acting, dancing or singing during this period meant everything but social status. The profession was regarded with suspicion, and women of the theatres were considered fallen and sinful. This general opinion lived on for a long time, although different types of education and theatre schools were founded and better working conditions and retirement opportunities were also implemented. The actor is also during this period becoming more of an artist, and as such she (or he) should possess something special, a kind of vocation and calling that made it impossible to become anything but an actor. Even if the interest in the theatre was great in Sweden in general, and in Stockholm in particular, the actor’s social position was insecure and filled with ambiguities and double standards. Most affected by this were the women, the actresses. Some actresses were admired and also praised by their contemporaries. Their

118  Marie Steinrud success made it possible for them to make a fortune and have a good life on their income from the theatre.13 Contemporary plays offered few women roles, which led to many women performing in breeches roles, where they took on a man’s role.14 This caused debate and the general idea was that women performing in breeches roles would lose their femininity. Until the mid-eighteenth century, a woman in trousers was illegal and long after the church frowned upon the women performing in this kind of clothes, where her legs as well as her behind could be imagined.15

The theatres of Stockholm The theatres in Stockholm during the last decades of the eighteenth century and first half of the nineteenth century are closely connected to the Swedish King Gustav III. He wanted to establish a Swedish theatre with a Swedish theatre company, performing in Swedish. He reformed and improved conditions for actors and theatres. The public theatres in Stockholm at the turn of the century 1800 were first and foremost two; the Royal Opera (Kungliga Operan) at Gustav Adolfs torg and Arsenalteatern, also named Kongliga Mindre Teatern (The Royal Smaller Theatre) at the Makalös palace in Kungsträdgården, a park in central Stockholm.16 The reason for this meagre selection was of course the royal monopoly on theatres, introduced in 1798 as an effort to protect the newly established national theatres from competition. This monopoly remained active until 1842.17 Another leading theatre was the New Swedish theatre (Nya svenska teatern),18 active from 1784 to 1799. This was a private theatre and one of the most popular theatres during the Gustavian era. Until the foundation of the Royal Dramatic Theatre (Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern) in 1788, this was the only established dramatic theatre staging plays in Swedish. The theatre was managed by father and son Stenberg, Petter (1719–1781) and Carl (1752–1813).19 Someone who opposed the royal monopoly was the captain in the army, Anders Lindeberg (1789–1849), the husband of Christina Wilhelmina Enbom. He was a journalist and writer and criticized the royal monopoly in several publications. He himself wanted to start a private theatre, but was not permitted to do so. In 1834 he wrote the Swedish Parliamentary Ombudsman and questioned the king’s intentions and accused him of acting in his own interest and against the law. Lindeberg was detained and accused of lese-majesty, a crime of violating majesty, promptly convicted and sentenced to death. The verdict was changed to three years in prison, a sentence Lindeberg refused to accept, wanting the first verdict to be executed. In order to escape the increasingly troublesome and embarrassing situation, the government granted amnesty in commemoration of King Karl XIV Johan’s arrival in Sweden. The increasingly farcical trial with its aftermath made Lindeberg a famous man.20 However, this did not mean that his request to start a private theatre was granted, and in the end he decided to go ahead and in November 1842 he opened the ‘New Swedish Theatre’ in

Performing women  119 Kungsträdgården in Stockholm. His actions contributed to the abolishment of the royal monopoly. Lindeberg had for a long time suffered from financial troubles and after a short time, he was forced to give up his theatre.21 The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theatres in Stockholm were one of the very few milieus all social classes in society had access to. The theatre was not only a place to observe actors on stage, the horseshoe-shaped auditorium had excellent spots to be observed and of course to observe. The seating in the auditorium also revealed the hierarchies of society. The further away from the scene, the lower your rank was in society as a rule. And the theatres were well attended. Here you could amuse yourself, closely observe and scrutinize the rest of the audience and there were always a chance to exchange information and gossip.22

The demimondaines In the play from 1855 of Alexandre Dumas Fils, a comedy with the name Le Demi-monde, the leading character, Baroness Suzanne D’Ange, belongs to that questionable stratum of the Parisian society full of women whose husbands are never seen and whose reputations are damaged after having ‘affairs’ with other men. The term ‘demi-monde’ refers to this ‘half-world’, where a group of people lived an extravagant lifestyle, with fine food, expensive clothes, jewellery and pleasure-seeking. The women were often called demimondaines, and the smartest of them invested their wealth for the future, when their beauty no longer worked as an asset for them. Others ended up in poverty and destitution, having exhausted all their assets and saved nothing for old age. The demimondaines were associated with inappropriate behaviour, and their conduct was contrasted with the behaviour of the ruling class or with traditional bourgeois values – even if they most likely would want to associate themselves with people from the upper classes. Drinking (or even drug use), gambling, high spending, a constant pursuit of fashion and sexual promiscuity became qualities for a woman with the label demimondaine.23 These qualities recur in the discourse of the actresses in Stockholm during the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. In her study of Swedish actresses during the first half of the nineteenth century, Nordin Hennel also studied their social background. About onethird of the individuals she studied had a background with clear connections to the theatre and many of the actresses had no known father (and in some cases mother) and had grown up in an unstable environment. This, plus the fact that actresses did not come from the upper classes like the nobility and the clergy, or from families of farmers, indicates that the social position of actresses was weak. In contrast to France, Nordin Hennel shows that in Sweden the theatrical profession did not run in families. Rather, other factors were important, such as a vulnerable existence as a child and a proximity to others active within the theatre.24 This image agrees with the background of the five women that are in the centre of this study. Strictly

120  Marie Steinrud speaking, only two of the actresses in this study came from seemingly sound and orderly conditions, with married parents where the father had an occupation. Erikson, Enbom and Morman were all the result of extramarital relations, even if the father of Morman acknowledged the paternity and also stated that he was engaged to Morman’s mother, a relationship that was as close to a marriage you could come at this time.25 At least one of the women, Maria Charlotta Erikson, grew up in an environment where the theatre was present in everyday life. A number of sources state that the French violinist and leader of the orchestra at the Royal Theatre, Pierre Joseph Lambert (1745/47–1807), or perhaps his son, was the father of Erikson.26 Lambert was a member of Jacques Marie Monvel’s (1745–1812) troupe and the home of Lambert was a common retreat for actors and musicians.27 At the time of Erikson’s birth, her mother, Christina Halling, was employed in the household and the connection to Lambert is perhaps not surprising. Regardless, the world of theatre must have been close at hand for both mother and daughter, who already as an elevenyear-old girl was accepted as a theatre pupil.28 A couple of years after her birth, her mother married a valet, Emanuel Ericsson, and Maria Charlotta Erikson grew up with her stepfather’s family name.29 She made several trips to Paris with the purpose of studying performance and at the age of eighteen, she married the chorus master Johan Fredric Wikström (1779–1865), a marriage that lasted for ten years, resulted in four children and ended in a divorce in 1821.30 Ebba Jeanette Morman, born illegitimate to a servant and his fiancée, also married at an early age.31 She debuted in 1791 at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, and then married Johan Brolin, a civil servant in the army. Even if they soon began living separately they remained married until 1802. During the divorce Brolin was accused of infidelity and he admitted that he had had an affair with a young servant woman, an affair that resulted in a daughter.32 Ebba Jeanette Morman had then already initiated a relationship with the famous actor Carl Schylander (1748–1811) and about six months after her divorce they married. The marriage lasted only about one-and-ahalf months before she died of consumption, a sickness that also killed her husband nine years later.33 Both Maria Charlotta Erikson and Christina Wilhelmina Enbom were accepted as pupils in a theatre school as young children and were thus raised within the theatre. The idea of a national school for the performing arts was born during the time the national theatre of Gustav III was discussed. He himself was inspired by the theatres in Paris in 1780 when he engaged two singers, Carl Stenborg and Lars Lalin, to accept pupils.34 From the 1790s and onwards, several boarding houses in Stockholm accepted pupils and students were taught singing, declamation and the performing arts as well as reading and writing. Several different studies show however, that life in these ‘theatre schools’ was hard and contemporary documents bear witness to complaints against these boarding schools, ranging from allegations of

Performing women  121 negligence of the students’ health (bad housing conditions, poor diet and the lack of proper clothes) to criticism of their moral upbringing.35 Despite this, many parents were tempted to enroll their children at theatre schools. The opportunity for education and a possibility to earn a living was attractive, and especially for girls, the prospect of an income was an important factor.36 How the other three women, Stenberg, Morman and Wäström, started their careers as actresses is unknown. Peter Marcus Stenberg, the father of Lisette Stenberg, was at the time of his death in debt for his daughter’s musical lessons.37 Her father was an up-and-coming civil servant at the Royal Customs (Kungliga Tull Directionen). Stenberg lost her mother as a child and shortly after their move to Norrköping, her father passed away.38 Lisette Stenberg moved more or less immediately to Stockholm, where she promptly joined the theatre. Probably also Wäström had some kind of musical education before her arrival in Stockholm, when she with her younger sister took up a career at the Royal Opera.39 Their father was an organist and schoolteacher. Wäström seems to have moved back and forth between Stockholm and her parents’ house some 50 miles from Stockholm between the years 1805 and 1812.40 For many actresses, the choice of profession was a tactical one offering women a career and a way to marry ‘upwards’ in society. For the, in many cases, poor parents, this was a way out of poverty for the younger generation. The children were given an education and an opportunity to train for a future career, which in turn could provide them with access to a completely different social sphere than that which they came from.41 Nordin Hennel also points to the fact that some of the actresses ended up as more or less official mistresses to both royals and nobles and could therefore live under significantly more secure financial conditions. Some of the more famous actresses were Sophie Hagman (1758–1826), who lived with the brother of Gustav III, Prince Fredrik Adolf, for fifteen years and Emelie Högqvist (1812–1846), who had a long relationship with Oscar I and Hanna Styrell (Stiernblad) (1842–1904), whose association with Karl XV was a wellknown public secret.42 Nevertheless, this fate was not common; the lives and existences of actresses are rather described as hard and laborious. When their active years were over, a life in poverty often ensued.

To make ends meet The public side of life for an actress started with her debut, commonly in her twenties, and reactions from the audience and reviews in the papers were closely monitored. Many of the stories of the more successful actresses follow the same pattern; she is an instant success, is offered chances to perform in different plays and gets parts that will enhance her career, her fame leads to an extravagant lifestyle and she ends up in poverty when her youth and beauty fade.

122  Marie Steinrud The life of Lisette Stenberg follows this pattern closely, with some smaller divergences. In 1789 Lisette Stenberg debuted at Stenborg’s theatre. Operettas and comedies, but also different dramas were the repertoire of that time and her first performance was the lyrical drama Arlequin sultane favorite.43 Stenberg was an instant success. Stockholm’s newest actress was also a skilled singer and did several difficult song performances. She often played the part of the seductress, and she was perhaps the first actress in Sweden who performed in a breeches role in 1790, when she played le Marquis Razilli in Bertin d’Antillys play L’Anglais à Paris. Stenberg’s popularity seemed to rise at the same rate as scandals lined her life. Her financial problems caused her to take risks and she soon ended up in trouble with the law.44 In contrast to Stenberg, who sometimes seemed to act in despair, especially Enbom and Erikson acted in carefully prepared ways to reach higher positions within the theatre. Erikson worked hard to develop her acting and travelled to France during the late 1830s to study performance and acting, a time when she already had finished her more active year as an actress. It was after these travels she performed in her most famous roles and attained a higher level of her art, according to the audience and the critiques.45 In biographical notes over actresses’ lives, their conduct and behaviour towards other actresses are often mentioned. Competition between them was hard, a situation that often forced women to take a stand for themselves against their competitors. These situations are described as somewhat humorous and hide the fact that women worked hard to land a part in a play they thought would enhance their career. One example of this is Enbom, who is often described as ‘temperamental’. The scandals her temper caused were many and in The Marriage of Figaro 1838 (or 1839), where she played the role of the countess, Henriette Widerberg, who played Susanna, entered the stage prematurely and deprived Enbom of her applauds. Thereafter the two started a verbal fight on stage, which both amused and vexed the audience.46 For Enbom, the appreciation from the audience was vital, for her self-esteem as well as for her career. Actresses relied on their visibility to remain in the minds of both audience and theatre managers. Neither marriage nor childbirth constituted determining factors for their career. Being a mother could also be a useful opposition to those accusing actresses of a low morale; faithfulness (to a husband or a lover), nursing skills and maternal feelings could enhance her career.47 Both Morman and Erikson worked during their marriages, but Enbom was an exception. She started as a pupil at the Royal Dramatical Theatre in 1819 and debuted on stage in 1823 but stopped already in 1825, when she married Anders Lindeberg. This was something that surprised many, since she had shown great talent at an early age. The marriage ended in a divorce five years later, some saying it was her close relationship to the famous seducer Édoard Du Puy, leader of the orchestra at the theatre, opera singer, ­composer and actor that caused it.48 Erikson, who had her great breakthrough when playing Ofelia in 1820, worked as an actress from 1812, the same year as

Performing women  123 she married. The following six years she gave birth to four children while performing at the theatre.49 An actress’s personal life affected her ability on stage. This becomes evident if they were to end up in difficulties. Stenberg was very young, just a teenager, when she got into financial troubles for the first time. Her colleague Wäström, living under similar circumstances, was in her mid-twenties, but the similarities end there. Stenberg was an orphan without any family or protectors, while Wäström had her father rushing to her side trying to settle the matter.50 To have a network was one of the more important factors in the success of an actor’s career, both on stage and off. Actresses during this period did not make as much money as actors. Not only the wage differed, but also the flitpeng, a kind of overtime allowance based on how and how much they performed and their wage.51 The wage was also based on two different systems; as an employee you could either have your wage based on the income of the theatre or you could have a fixed wage. During the first half of the nineteenth century, many actresses based their income on how much money the theatre earned. Since the wage also varied from one year to another, it is not easy to give an accurate report of the actresses’ incomes. In 1820, wages for theatre employees could differ from 2,000 riksdaler per annum to under 500, but women did not get up to the higher amounts. Rather, they earned somewhere around 500 to 1,000 per annum, with some exceptions.52 Enbom stated that she earned 800 riksdaler per annum in 1843, which would have put her in the group of well-paid actresses.53 Those numbers should not, though, be regarded as universal for actresses. The span was wide; some actresses earned less in a year than others did in a month. Some actresses managed to negotiate a raise in their wages; others struggled on the edge of poverty and had difficulties making ends meet. Some actresses also received extra money for their wardrobe, but that was more the exception than a rule. Rather, to earn more money, actresses had other strategies. Some of them took on extra work like extra performances or taught in theatre schools or had private students; others accepted extra appointments.54 Many actresses received gifts from admirers, like food, clothes and jewellery. These gifts could be lavish, amounting to no inconsiderable sums. Some actresses also ended up in sexual relationships with admirers, who would pay for their expenditures. These relationships could lead both to ruin and success for actresses. In the memoirs of the famous actress Henriette Widerberg (1796–1872) she describes her life and the benefactors she had, with some of whom she also had long-term relationships and in some cases she even had children with them. She describes their lavish gifts and how they invited her to stay at their mansions and summer residences. This is also something that can be seen in the life of Stenberg, who several times managed to escape the law thanks to the efforts of her benefactors.55 Erikson, who in 1821 divorced her husband, during the 1820s and 1830s had a male protector and benefactor providing for her in different ways. She gave birth

124  Marie Steinrud to two sons in 1829 and 1831, Carl Fredrik and Carl Alfred. The younger would later move to Düsseldorf together with his mother.56 To attract and handle these benefactors was not an inconsiderable part of being an actress. This did not mean, however, that they always had an intimate relationship with their admirers, but the mere reputation of one actress having an affair augmented the group’s reputation as one of dishonest and loose women. Another way to increase your wage was the practice of giving a recett, a benefit performance where the profits was granted someone performing in the play. These benefit performances could be very important for actresses.57 Stenberg, for instance, gave one in May 1797, when she had filed for her second bankruptcy. Where the money went is unclear, but it probably did not end up in the hands of her creditors. One thing is obvious, the more actresses worked and performed in difficult roles, were visible and showed talent, the more commissions they got. And thus they also increased their wages, overtime allowances and benefit performances. Organization within the theatre during this time rested upon the fact that actors and actresses were entrepreneurs to a high degree, running their own businesses. They themselves needed to provide costumes for different roles, coiffures, shoes, makeup and accessories. This often-heavy expenditure could be a burden that followed actresses during their careers and sometimes put them into more serious debt. All of the five women in this study applied for bankruptcy on at least one occasion during their active years (Table 6.1). To go into bankruptcy meant that a person as an individual no longer could fulfil the obligations they had to their creditors. Not being able to pay one’s debt was not uncommon in a society where the credit market was more convoluted than today. This did not mean, however, that filing for bankruptcy was not stigmatized on an individual level.58 The procedure started with an application to the court, with a request to waive all her or his property to the creditors together with an explanation of what had led to the application. The creditors were then summoned to a meeting where they could present their demands on the debtor. In these applications, it is possible to see their liabilities and debts as well as their assets and means and it is evident that the actresses’ main debts were to tradesmen and merchants selling fabrics, clothes and accessories.59 Table 6.1 The number of petitions of bankruptcy filed by actresses in Stockholm between the years 1780 and 1850 Name

Number of bankruptcy filings

Ebba Jeanette Morman (1768–1802) Lisette Stenberg (1770–1847) Sophia Magdalena Wäström (b. 1778) Maria Charlotta Erikson (1794–1862) Christina Wilhelmina Enbom (1804–1850)

2 4 1 1 1

Performing women  125 This has been interpreted as the women being wasteful and extravagant, wanting beautiful things they could not afford and spending money they did not have. Especially Lisette Stenberg, who filed for bankruptcy four times (1784, 1789 and twice in 1794), was often accused of being a squanderer and of being wasteful with money, treating herself to expensive clothes, jewellery, shoes and fancy dinners.60 Consulting her bankruptcy files, she also seems to have lived in poor conditions, with few pieces of furniture and almost nothing else than things she could carry with her, like clothes and different types of accessories. Despite her successes, she seems to have lived very much from hand to mouth, not saving for the future. This distinguishes her from Erikson, who seemed to live a more orderly life, despite the fact that she filed for bankruptcy. She was then forty-six years old and stated that it was first and foremost the costs of keeping her wardrobe that had caused her financial problems. Another fact the file for bankruptcy reveals is that she had not paid for the support of her children after the divorce. One of her biggest creditors was her former husband, who had custody of the children.61 All the bankruptcy files tell almost the same story of the financial lives of the actresses. The fact that they needed to provide for costumes on their own seemed to have caused financial problems for all of them. Maria Charlotta Erikson is one of those who expressed this most clearly in the bankruptcy file she handed in 1840, and studying the other bankruptcy files a clear pattern emerges, a pattern that also reveals the actresses’ consumption. Between 85 and 95 per cent of their liabilities is fabrics, clothing, accessories, shoes and trinkets.

Food Objects Fabrics Accessories For the home Clothes

Figure 6.1 The consumption of Sophia Magdalena Wäström based on her unpaid debts, 1805.

126  Marie Steinrud

Fabrics Accessories For the home Clothes

Figure 6.2 The consumption of Maria Charlotta Erikson based on her unpaid debts, 1840.

It is not possible to get a complete picture of the actresses’ consumption from their bankruptcy files, but it is possible to see a pattern. Two of the actresses, Wäström and Erikson, came from different backgrounds, were of different ages, and had different careers and family situations. Their financial situations were totally different, in other words. The two diagrams (Figures 6.1 and 6.2) illustrate their liabilities divided into six categories: food, objects, fabrics, accessories, for the home and clothes.62 About half of the debts of Wäström came from buying (and not paying for) fabrics, but also clothes. About a quarter of the fabrics was made out of silk, velvet and silk serge. Wäström also had some unpaid debts from buying food, like coffee beans, sugar, candy and pastries. Her consumption shows many similarities with Erikson’s. She also had a lot of unpaid debts from buying fabrics, clothes and accessories. Professional craftsmen like barbers, shoemakers and tailors are on the lists of creditors, but tradesmen selling furniture, carpets, curtains and china or cookware were seldom creditors.63 As stated earlier, this has been interpreted to prove the image of the extravagant actress, a demimondaine wanting and needing things. But this can also be understood as the actress investing in her career. To be able to perform in a beautiful costume, in hair and makeup that enhanced their beauty and showed the audience as well as the theatre management that they took their work seriously could lead to more, and more complex, work. And the more you could take part in different plays at the theatre, the more your visibility increased, the more money you could make and the higher you could climb on the career ladder. The famous Henriette Widerberg writes in her memoirs about her early days as

Performing women  127 an actress, when her mother, then managing her career, only provided her with the cheapest and ‘ugliest’ clothes, and had her use and re-use her costumes many times, until they were completely worn out. She was ashamed over her unattractive and badly fitting clothes, and in some cases states that they hindered her in performing and doing her best in different roles.64 With this perspective, actresses’ consumption is both necessary and logical. The list of creditors in the bankruptcy files also reveals that actresses were granted credit at almost the same tradesmen and shopkeepers in Stockholm. Actresses were also given credit again and again, in spite of the fact that they did not pay what they owed.65 These tradesmen and shopkeepers were popular and well-known features of the capital city and a lot of their customers came from the theatres, but also from other groups in the city. The actresses could act as living mannequins, showing the public what kind of goods were desirable and modern – and where to buy them. They acted as display windows, advertising fabrics, clothes, trinkets and objects like feathers, purses and fans. To give an actress credit was associated with risk, but it was also a way of investing in advertising.66 In contemporary press, the bodies of actresses were observed and gazed upon to the same extent as their acting skills. The importance of their appearances can be detected in many ways. Their talent was of course important, but also how they looked and how they carried themselves was discussed upon their recruitment to the theatres.67 It was important that actresses managed their beauty in order to be able to secure their future within the world of theatre. Being beautiful meant not only to be gifted with a pleasant appearance, but also to possess knowledge of how to maintain and enhance it. The right kind of clothing, makeup and hairdos could be crucial, both on stage and off. This is made evident in reviews of Ebba Jeannette Morman. In contemporary texts, she is described as ‘long and lean, with a long and narrow face, pointed chin and black brown eyes, in which a gloomy fire was burning. On the cheekbone the pale skin seemed thinly stretched. Her appearance thus fitted perfectly to her genre, which exclusively was the diabolical one’. The more esteemed roles of Morman were in general negative female roles, especially as witches or poison murderesses. The more severe her consumption – tuberculosis – got, the more of these kinds of characters she played. And she was at the peak of her career a couple of years just prior to her death in 1802. Her sickly and haggard face helped her in many ways to get parts, even if they all were in a special genre.68 Maria Charlotta Erikson’s appearance is judged in the same way, and often together with the mentioning of her talents as an actress: Le joli son de voix de Mme Ericson, sa sensibilité touchante et sa grace naturelle, en font une comédienne tres aimée. L’élegance de sa toilette est en parfaite harmonie avec sa taille svelte avec ses bras moélleux et ses jolis pieds.69

128  Marie Steinrud In this quote the importance of enhancing the appearance with the right kind of clothing is illustrated. Erikson is described as a beautiful woman, dressed in equally beautiful clothes. And, in this, the clothes and costumes are judged and reviewed, just as much as the looks. Of course a special look was sought after; it was a special kind of femininity that led to success. Christina Wilhelmina Enbom was during her active years derided for her ‘mannish looks’,70 whereas Lisette Stenberg was praised for her ‘amiability’.71 The actresses’ looks were something they needed to augment in various ways. This linked their appearance with their ability to dress in an appropriate way. It is not surprising that it was fabrics, clothes and accessories which constituted the biggest items of expenditure for actresses, especially as they had to pay for their own theatre costumes, makeup and hairdos with the wage they received from the theatre.72 Worth pointing out is the fact that the most successful actresses were idolized. They could, as well as other professional women at this time, be the subject of poems and songs about their beauty and skills. The more popular women also had pastries, perfumes and snuff named after them. This also made them into goods, and as goods you could buy them, or at least pieces of them, you could own them and consume them. This is an interesting contrast to the often-condemned existence that surrounded them and suggests that the actresses began to have more of a celebrity status. The economic impact this had on the lives of actresses was also very real; the struggle to be visible was helped by this type of marketing.73

Later life The ageing actress often had to endure taunts and sneers, scorns and ridicule, both from the audience and younger colleagues. Maria Charlotta Erikson was the only one of the five actresses who took up teaching after her active years. Wilhelmina Christina Enbom, whose voice over the years became more strained and forced, was eventually made to take a background position, sometimes even in the chorus. Her former husband, Anders Lindeberg, often rushed to her side, defending her. They seemed to have become friends during the years after their divorce. She often had to endure ridicule, and the public joke about her performances was that no one but the former husband of Enbom could stand ‘the former voice of the former Mrs Lindeberg’.74 Enbom then directed her energies more towards the dramatic theatre, giving up on her singing. Already during the 1830s, she had financial problems, and in 1835 a beneficiary performance was given in her honour. This did not help and during the following years she lived in modest circumstances. She was given a small pension and her son helped her financially until she died in 1880.75 As we have seen, Stenberg died ‘miserably poor’, and so did Sophia Magdalena Wäström, who filed for bankruptcy in her twenties and struggled with poverty for many years to come, probably for the rest of her life.

Performing women  129 During the 1830s, she was living with her daughter in poverty, sometimes on a landlord’s charity. Mostly she lived with fellow former actors and actresses who took her in knowing the difficulties of the profession.76 This shows the importance of a professional network for actresses, which the fate of Henriette Widerberg also emphasizes. She too ended up in poverty, trying to make a living out of selling Sicilian soap. The famous actress Emelie Högqvist came to her rescue, providing her with money and food on several occasions. When the first ‘retirement plans’ for theatre employees were established, they were in many ways a relief for actresses. They could invest part of their surplus and be granted some kind of security for later life. Emelie Högqvist was one of the actresses who managed to make her fortune grow, and the fact that she in her relationship with the Crown Prince, later King Oscar I, bore him two sons, helped both her popularity and her fortune. She helped many actresses who had ended up in poverty.77 Erikson had patrons helping her as well, among others the man she had a long-term affair with after her divorce and with whom she had two sons. Stenberg’s fate after her active years as an actress is most interesting. She was, as also Wäström, someone who early in their careers disappeared from Swedish theatre stages. Stenberg’s fate after leaving Stockholm is in many ways fascinating and she seems to have walked a tightrope with the police when she was accused of stealing clothes and pawning them. She then left Stockholm and travelled around in Germany and France.78 Three of the five actresses had children.79 Erikson had children out of wedlock, as did Wäström, while both of Enbom’s children were born during her marriage to Anders Lindeberg. Professional acting was not an obvious choice for the children of the actresses in this study. In reality, it was only the youngest daughter of Maria Charlotta Erikson, Gustava Amalea, who had collaborations with the theatre. She and her husband both acted, and he also translated a great number of plays. Unfortunately, they did not achieve any success.80 The children of both Erikson and Enbom ended up in respectable professions and married respectable men. Wäström’s daughter disappears from the sources during the 1830s and her fate is unknown.

Performing women In the introduction, the last years of Lisette Stenberg were introduced. The stories about her life are many; she is said to have made a pact with the devil, to have had relationships with many men and it is said she was a runaway, leaving home for the uncertain life on stage. She was also said to have been seduced as a young girl, seeking refuge at the theatre, the only place willing to accept her, a fallen woman.81 She was in many respects the perfect demimondaine, a woman living in a half-world between the prostitutes and the honourable, without belonging to any of the groups.82

130  Marie Steinrud People in general had very shifting opinions about public theatres during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. On the one hand, their popularity increased; on the other hand harsh criticism towards the theatre was expressed, critique focusing mostly on morality. And in this, the actress was far more a target than her male colleagues. In public consciousness, the actress became a symbol of depravity, destructivity and irresponsibility. This image is also valid for the five actresses who are the focus of this study. The majority of the women came from a socially vulnerable background, as children of relationships outside marriage or as orphans. They had nothing or very little to lose to enter the stage as actresses. But the fate of the five actresses in this study also shows that they by no means were victims of circumstances. Rather they were businesswomen, providing for themselves and their families. Nevertheless, they had problems surviving on their wages and often ended up in financial trouble. For some of them, their financial problems lasted the rest of their lives. The actresses built networks with other actresses, which could be difficult, since they also had to compete with each other. The more successful actresses also paid attention to their retirement. Erikson started a career as a teacher after her active years, but she was somewhat of an exception. Stenberg and Wäström suffered poverty, as well as Enbom, who was supported by a small pension and by her son. In the lives of these actresses, the boundaries between femininity and masculinity, between private and public, were eliminated. This conflicted with the notion of the true woman, living a life of modesty and humility. She was thus challenging society in several ways. She was her own boss, planning and performing in her own life. In many ways, they rebelled against contemporary society of their time, but also against the will of our days to place them firmly in one social group. Rather, the actresses needed to know how to move from one end of the scale to the other, performing on and perhaps also off stage. The actresses in this chapter were all professional women, working and earning a living, providing for themselves and their families. They were all active actresses primarily at theatres in Stockholm. They were also all active professionals during a time when theatre in Sweden changed from being a profession for foreign actors to becoming a national concern. They made decisions to improve their career opportunities and they were aware of how to navigate within their profession.

Notes 1 Landsarkivet i Göteborg (GLA) (Provincial record office, Gothenburg),Vänersborg, A1: 17 (1845–1855). 2 GLA, Vänersborg, A1: 13–17 (1839–1855). Cf. Johan Flodmark, Stenborgska skådebanorna: Bidrag till Stockholms teaterhistoria (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1893), 21–22.

Performing women  131 3 Georg Nordensvan, Svensk teater och svenska skådespelare från Gustav III till våra dagar: Förra delen 1722–1842 (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1917), 73. 4 Stig Torsslow, ‘Maria Charlotta Erikson’, in Svenskt biografiskt lexikon (SBL), Bd 14 (1953), 363. Cf. Christer Topelius, ‘Maria Charlotta Erikson. Stil-BehagKvickhet’, in Nya teaterhistoriska studier, ed. Agne Beijer (Stockholm: Föreningen Drottninholmsteaters vänner, 1957), 238. 5 Kari Skrede & Kristin Tornes, ‘Hva er et livsløpsperspektiv?’, in Studier i kvinners livsløp, eds. Kari Skrede & Kristin Tornes (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1983), 9–21. 6 Ibid., 9–11, 22. 7 C.W. Joyner, Shared Traditions: Southern History and Folk Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1999), 1. See also Birgitta Svensson, ‘Utan stora berättelser finns inga små’, in Axess 5 (2006), 25–6. 8 Julius Bab, Die Frau aus Schauspielerin: Ein Essay (Berlin: Oesterheld & Co, 1915); Julius Bab, Das Theater im Lichte der Soziologie: Unveränderter Nachdruck der Ausgabe von 1931 mit einem Geleitwort von Alphons Silberman (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1974), 108. See also the theme volume ‘Women in Scandinavian Theatre’, in Nordic Theatre Studies: Yearbook for Theatre Research in Scandinavia, vol. 1, 1988. 9 Tracy C. Davies, Actresses as Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture (London & New York: Routledge, 1991); Ingeborg Nordin Hennel, Mod och försakelse: livs- och yrkesbetingelser för Konglig Theaterns skådespelerskor 1813–1863 (Hedemora: Gidlund, 1997). 10 About how women’s work has been defined in history, see Susanna Hedenborg & Ulla Wikander, Makt och försörjning (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2003); Ulla Wikander, Kvinnoarbete i Europa 1789–1950: Genus, makt och arbetsdelning (Stockholm: Atlas, 1999). See also Marie Steinrud, Den dolda offentligheten: Kvinnlighetens sfärer i 1800-talets högreståndskultur (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2008), 137–139. Cf. Sofia Ling, Konsten att försörja sig: Kvinnors arbete i Stockholm 1650–1750 (Stockholm: Stockholmia, 2016), 19–23. 11 Kirsten Pullen, Actresses and Whores: On Stage and in Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 22–30; Felicity Nussbaum, Rival Queens: Actresses, Performance, and the Eighteenth Century British Theater (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 8. 12 Barbara Welter, ‘The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860’, American Quarterly, 18 (1966), 151–174. Cf. Eva Helen Ulvros, ‘Salongsdamer och husmödrar: Människoöden inom sydsvensk borgerlighet under 1800-talet’, in En blick från sidan: Genusforskningen under tre decennier, eds. Linda Fegerström & Maria Nilsson (Eslöv: Gondolin, 2005), 65–78. 13 Nordin Hennel, Mod och försakelse, 158–160. See also Elizabeth Howe, The First English Actresses: Women and Drama, 1660–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 19–23; Rosamond Gilder, Enter the Actress: The First Woman in the Theatre (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), especially Chapter 1, 1–17. 14 And, of course, the opposite was especially common before the ban was lifted. During the eighteenth century, it faded but was by no means uncommon. Carl Schylander, the husband of Ebba Jeanette Morman, was during the 1790s called ‘one of the best actresses in Stockholm’, a title he was given for his roles as old women, witches and gossips (Herman Hofberg, ‘Schylander, Carl Gabriel’, in SBL (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers förlag, 1906), 446. See also Tiina Rosenberg, Byxbegär (Stockholm: Anamma, 2000), 22–24. 15 Jonas Liliequist, ‘Kvinnor i manskläder och åtrå mellan kvinnor: Kulturella förväntningar och och kvinnliga strategier i det tidigmoderna Sverige och

132  Marie Steinrud Finland’, in Makalösa kvinnor: Könsöverskridande myt och verklighet, ed. Eva Borgström (Stockholm: Alfabet/Anamma, 2002), 63–123. 16 Barbro Stribolt, Stockholms 1800-talsteatrar: En studie i den borgerliga teaterbyggnadens utveckling (Stockholm: Liber, 1982), 11–13. 17 Stribolt, Stockholms 1800-talsteatrar, 15–18. 18 Nordensvan, Svensk teater och svenska skådespelare, 24–26, 72–73. 19 Johan Flodmark, Stenborgska skådebanorna: Bidrag till Stockholms teaterhistoria (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt, 1893), 3–15. 20 Stribolt, Stockholms 1800-talsteatrar, 18–20. 21 Nils F. Holm, ‘Anders Lindeberg’, in SBL, Bd 23 (1980/81), 339. 22 Stribolt, Stockholms 1800-talsteatrar, 15–17. See also My Hellsing, Hovpolitik: Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotte som politisk aktör vid det gustavianska hovet (Örebro: Örebro universitet, 2013), 49, 67, 92. 23 Joanna Richardson, Courtesans: The Demi-Monde in Nineteenth Century France (Edison: Castle Books, 2004), 1–4, 34, 63. 24 Nordin Hennel, Mod och försakelse, 56–57. 25 Stockholms stadsarkiv (SSA) (Stockholm City Archives), Svea Livgardes livbataljon, C: 4 (1765–1784). Nils-Arvid Bringéus, ‘Bröllopsseder i Sverige: En översikt’, in Kulturen: En årsbok till medlemmarna av Kulturhistoriska föreningen för södra Sverige (1993), 22–56. 26 SSA, Adolf Fredriks kyrkoarkiv, C1b:1 (1755–1798); Topelius, ‘Maria Charlotta Erikson’, 187–188. 27 Gunhild Karle, Kungl. Hovkapellet i Stockholm och dess musiker 1772–1818 (Uppsala: TryckJouren, 2001), 110–114. 28 Torsslow, ‘Maria Charlotta Erikson’, 363. 29 After her stepfather’s death, she is titled his daughter in his probate inventory (SSA, Stockholms rådhusrätt, EIIa: 2: 405). 30 SSA, Hovkonsistoriets protokoll, 21 September 1821; Riksarkivet (RA) (The Natiolal Archives, Stockholm), Justitierevisionens utslagshandlingar, 18210724; SSA, Stockholms rådhusrätt, F1A: 609 (probate inventory Wikström). 31 SSA, Svea Livgardes livbataljon, C: 4 (1765–1784). 32 SSA, Stockholms domkapitel, A1:154 (18020309); SSA, Södra förstadens kämnärsrätt A3A: 92 (18020202). Brolin was also convicted of adultery. 33 Hofberg, Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon, 446. Nordensvan, Svensk teater och svenska skådespelare, 63. 34 Nordin Hennel, Mod och försakelse, 63. 35 Ibid., 71–73. 36 Ibid., 58. 37 Landsarkivet i Vadstena (VaLa) (Provincial record office, Vadstena), Norrköpings rådhusrätt och magistrat, F1aaa: 39. 38 Johan Flodmark, Lisette Stenberg: Konturteckningar ur ett äfventyrligt lif (Stockholm: Stockholms Dagblads tryckeri, 1896), 4. See also VaLa, S:t Olai, C1:6, and the probate inventory of Peter Marcus Stenberg. 39 Uppsala landsarkiv (ULA) (Provincial record office, Uppsala),Veckholm, A1:3, 4, 5 (1790–1811). 40 ULA, Veckholm, A1: 5 (1805–1811). 41 Nordin Hennel, Mod och försakelse, 62–67. 42 Lars Elgklou, Kungliga gunstlingar och favoriter (Stockholm: Interpublishing, 1984), 50, 68, 110. Cf. Nordin Hennel, Mod och försakelse, 8–10. 43 Written by Jean-François Letellier (F.A. Dahlgren), Förteckning öfver svenska skådespel uppförda på Stockholms theatrar 1737–1863 och Kongl. thetatrarnes personal 1773–1863 med flera anteckningar (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & söner, 1866), 132.

Performing women  133 44 Flodmark, Lisette Stenberg, 5, 7–8. 45 Frans Hedberg, Svenska skådespelare: Karakteristiker och porträtter (Stockholm: C. E. Fritzes, 1884), 24. 46 Birgitta Lager, ‘Christina Wilhelmina Enbom (g. Lindeberg)’, in SBL, Bd 13 (1950), 493. 47 J.D. Phillipson, ‘The Inconvenience of the Female Condition: Anne Oldfield’s Pregnancies’, in Stage Mothers: Women, Work, and the Theatre, 1660–1830, eds. Laura Engel & Elaine M. McGirr (Bucknell: Bucknell University Press, 2014), 43–62. 48 About Du Puy, see Åke Vretblad, ‘Jean Baptiste Edouard Louise Camille Du Puy’, in SBL, Bd 11 (1945), 545. About their relationships, see Magnus Jacob Crusenstolpe, Medaljonger och statyetter: Drag ur vår vittra, konstnärliga och politiska verld (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1882); Topelius, ‘Maria Charlotta Erikson’, 197–198. 49 Wilhelmina Stålberg & P.G. Berg, Anteckningar om svenska qvinnor (Stockholm: P. G. Berg, 1866), 131. 50 For Wäströms bankruptcy file, see SSA, Magistraten och rådhusrätten, C5a: 8. 51 Ami Lönnroth & Per Eric Mattsson, Anders Lindeberg: Mannen som höll på att mista sitt huvud för sin kärlek till teatern (Stockholm: BoD, 2011), 29. 52 Nordin Hennel, Mod och försakelse, 118. Same pattern can bee seen with the Victorian actresses, see Davis, Actresses as Working Women, 24–35. 53 SSA, Enbom bankruptcy file, see Magistraten och rådhusrätten, C5a: 13. Cf. Nordin Hennel, Mod och försakelse, 119. 54 Nordin Hennel, Mod och försakelse, 117–121. 55 Flodmark, Lisette Stenberg, 15. 56 Topelius, ‘Maria Charlotta Erikson’, 209. 57 Nordin Hennel, Mod och försakelse, 115–120. 58 Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998), 194; Margot C. Finn, The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 153. 59 This is in line with what Nordin Hennel has found for her study Mod och försakelse, 11. 60 See for example her bankruptcy file from 1794, SSA, Magistraten och rådhusrätten, C5a: 7. 61 About their divorce, see RA; Justitierevisionens utslagshandlingar, 18210724; SSA, Eriksons bankruptcy file, Magistraten och rådhusrätten, C5a: 13. 62 ‘Accessories’ includes items like lace, ribbons, plumes, buttons and makeup. ‘Objects’ contains things like pipes, tobacco pouches, combs and small hand mirrors, while ‘For the home’ refers to items that are strongly associated with home décor, such as quilts, carpets, curtains and furniture. 63 This must not be interpreted as if they did not buy these items. They could also have been denied credit with those tradesmen, or they paid them in time. But the fact that they are seldom listed as creditors is worth mentioning. 64 H.S. Widerberg, En skådespelerskas minnen: Sjelfbiografi (Gävle: A.P. Landin, 1850), 8, 24. 65 Clare Crowston, ‘Family Affairs: Wives, Credit, Consumption and the Law in Old Regime France’, in Family, Gender, and Law in Early Modern France, eds. Suzanne Desan & Jeffrey Merrick (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 75–79. See also Johanna Ilmakunnas, ‘The Luxury Shopping Experience of the Swedish Aristocracy in Eighteenth-century Paris’, in Luxury and Gender in European Towns, 1700–1914, eds. Deborah Simonton, Marjo Kaartinen & Anne Montenach (New York &London: Routledge, 2015), 115–131.

134  Marie Steinrud 66 This is also a matter of trust, as Muldrew (The Economy of Obligation, 182) points out. The credit market had no alternatives to credit that was based on trust in others. 67 Nordin Hennel, Mod och försakelse, 55–61. See also Nussbaum, Rival Queens, 76. 68 Nordensvan, Svensk teater och svenska skådespelare, 63. See also Nils Personne, Svenska teatern från Gustaf IIIs död till Karl XIV Johans ankomst till Sverige, 1792–1810 (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1914), 130. 69 Marianne Ehrenström, Notices sur la literature et les beaux arts en Suède (Stockholm: De l’imprimerie d’Eckstein, 1826), 45. 70 Orvar Odd (Oscar Patric Sturzen-Becker), Grupper och personnager från i går (Stockholm & Köpenhamn: Trier, 1861), 162. 71 Flodmark, Lisette Stenberg, 6. 72 Nordin Hennel likens the actresses with self-employed business owners. Nordin Hennel, Mod och försakelse, 115–119, 455–456. 73 Nordin Hennel, Mod och försakelse, 264–266; Nussbaum, Rival Queens, 45–46. 74 Odd, Grupper och personnager från i går, 165. 75 SSA, Lager, ‘Christina Wilhelmina Enbom (g. Lindeberg)’, 493, see also her probate inventory, Nedre borgrätten, 1880-III-189. 76 Elisabeth Charlotta Spångberg was born in 1817 and is sometimes called Wäström’s daughter, niece or foster daughter (see SSA, Census records; 1831 (Ladugårdslandet övre), 1832 (Ladugårdslandet), 1833 (Adolf Fredrik). Probably she is her daughter, born out of wedlock. The two disappear during the mid-1830s. Perhaps they moved from the city. 77 Odd, Grupper och personnager från i går, 210. See also Vivi Horn, En fjärilslek: Emelie Högqvists levnadssaga (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1942). 78 Flodmark, Lisette Stenberg, 19–23. 79 During 1798, Stenberg spent almost a year in Denmark. Some sources have suggested that her stay there had some connections to childbirth, but there is no evidence of such. 80 Topelius, ’Maria Charlotta Erikson’, 239. 81 Flodmark, Lisette Stenberg, 11–12. 82 Nordin Hennel, Mod och försakelse, 262–273.

7 ‘Sister to the tailor’ Guilds, gender and the needle trades in eighteenth-century Europe Deborah Simonton

Milliners, and their sisters the mantuamakers, modistes and marchandes de mode, were skilled artisans, businesswomen and tradeswomen. During the eighteenth century, they commandeered the high-class sewing that set fashion and created stars of their most famous, like Rose Bertin, milliner to Marie Antoinette. They populated the growing towns of Europe and used their design and business acumen to create a virtual profession out of a handicraft. They also encountered resistance from guilds and guildsmen who tried to retain control over commercial sewing, and certainly from the bespoke and honourable end of the needle trades. They also confronted slander from commentators who saw them acting on the fringes of female respectability. This chapter will explore this group of commercial ‘professionals’ as they carved out a niche in the world of sewing and dressmaking before the advent of confection in the next century. It will also argue that these women could achieve a métier, a profession in the terms of the eighteenth-century urban world. Our modern world normally perceives professions through association with the ‘ancient’ liberal professions, especially law, medicine and the church. These professions have deep roots and are usually thought to require specialized training, training that was largely open only to males. While we identify them as university careers, we should remember that medicine and law both could be accessed via apprenticeship. Nevertheless, these apprenticeships and ‘traineeships’ were open only to men, who then populated the heavily male world of the recognized professions. Sewing presents a series of similar but different issues about professional status. Tailoring, tapestry and other related fields were also largely male, but not necessarily regarded as professional. Indeed, they were key artisanal crafts, steeped in guild traditions that utilized every means possible to protect their property of skill. Women were also identified as ‘sewers’, and sewing was regarded as an essential female milieu based in the home, taught at home and identified as a key attribute for a good wife. So the question is how did the ‘goodwife’ become the professional seamstress with cachet and status.

136  Deborah Simonton

Professionalism and sewing A key construct of professions is the idea of exclusion, that there are barriers to overcome and entrance requirements to meet. All else follows from this. In the case of artisanal crafts, the added notions of skill and the ‘mysteries’ of the trade were important.1 In most towns the tailors were one of the key guilds with a say in the management of the urban economy, often linked to town governance and associated with standing and prestige in corporate communities. Thus in Aberdeen, tailors were one of the Seven Incorporated Trades with civic rights and position, and in Kingston upon Thames, similarly, they were one of the four foundation guilds with a central role in managing the urban economy and ‘gatekeeping’ to ensure that untrained and ‘unskilled’ men did not enter the craft.2 It goes almost without saying that women were considered ‘untrained’ by these guildsmen. Women, especially family, worked in workshops, assisting and doing small low-status tasks, but their presence was rarely acknowledged. Towns in France operated slightly differently. According to Hafter, the system of privilege that structured Old Regime France ‘carried within itself pockets of opportunity’ and flexibility that, paradoxically, enabled some women ‘to break through the web of restrictions’ and to participate in the market economy as official members of exclusively female or mixed guilds.3 Largely women were not members of the tailleurs d’habit guilds before the royal edict of March 1673, enacted by Louis XIV and his contrôleur général (minister) of finances Colbert, which required all unincorporated trades to form guilds as government policy deliberately opened up the guilds. It also became easier for women to set up their own guilds, and in several towns, such as Rouen, Lyon and Paris, they did so in an array of garment-related trades. In several French cities, it also became easier to become members of mixed guilds.4 The king abolished guilds in 1776 but reinstated them in 1777, opening all of them to women. Thus in La Rochelle, where no female guilds existed, women flooded into the tailleurs’ guild, either by choice or compulsion.5 The importance of training and the need to articulate a sense of skill and status was not lost on women. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, men comprised the majority of dressmakers, milliners, modistes and marchandes de mode (fashion merchants) across Europe. So was the related trade of staymaking. As the mantua became popular, women began to command a niche within the ‘professional’ sewing trades. Alongside this, they also claimed a role as milliners and marchandes de mode. Increasingly records of towns show women setting up shop, advertising their wares and claiming a place in this world, so that by the end of the century millinery and mantuamaking had become a female trade, the ‘Sister to the Tailor’, as Robert Campbell dubbed mantuamakers.6 The terms milliner and mantuamakers are distinctively English, and nationally specific. ‘Milliner’ is not used in France while marchande de mode and modiste are almost never used in Britain, except to associate ‘Frenchness’ with fashion.7 Milliners, or modistes and marchandes de modes represented

‘Sister to the tailor’  137 the top end of the needle trades, often not ‘making’ anything but serving as the premier ‘fashionistas’, decorating clothing and hair and assembling hats and other decorative items. However, they sometimes made dresses, especially the newest fashion, the mantua, introduced from the end of the seventeenth century. It was a loose-fitting dress often described as ‘blown together’, which disguises the high-quality skill and expertise required. Milliners also hired mantuamakers for their shops to give a complete service to their customers. Mantuamakers similarly played a significant role in the creation and promulgation of fashion, though they covered a wide spectrum, from the fashionable end to the small-town dressmaker. An army of seamstresses, or couturiers, ribbon weavers, lacemakers and staymakers supported these trades and produced many of the goods they utilized.8

Training and apprenticeship: Making a professional Training was an important step in claiming this space. It was not necessary to be in a guild to serve an apprenticeship. In England and Scotland, a simple legal contract, an indenture, defined the terms of the apprenticeship. This contract was an agreement between apprentice (or her parents) and the mistress, sometimes master, which specified the commitment of each party. Traditional apprenticeship, i.e. male, began at age fourteen and lasted until twenty-one, when the boy became a ‘man’. As Darnton says, through this process, he ‘felt he was entering an estate’, he was becoming somebody.9 As a system, apprenticeship also operated for girls, though by the eighteenth century it was more important in France and Britain, Ogilvie saying that girls were no longer apprenticed in Germanic regions, and I have found none in Denmark. Nineteen per cent of apprentices were girls in Geneva, though increasingly after about 1700, girls were not apprenticed. In the Netherlands, Danielle van den Heuvel suggests that although girls were apprenticed, as in England, the value of this was less than for boys and therefore they appear in smaller numbers. In England, female apprentices in Essex and Staffordshire constituted 9 per cent of craft apprentices, about 2 per cent in Warwickshire and 5 per cent in Wiltshire, but were almost invisible in Kingston upon Thames; in Scotland, none were found.10 However, similarly in France, seamstresses utilized apprenticeship as a route into the profession. Clare Crowston’s thorough account of the seamstresses of France provides a detailed picture of the role of apprenticeship in the trade. From 1675, apprenticeship was a formal prerequisite for entry into the guild, and on average 419 new apprentices began training each year between 1746 and 1759. With a guild population of over 2,000 and approximately 1,200 apprentices training at any one time, they were probably the largest group of male or female apprentices in eighteenth-century Paris.11 Millinery and mantuamaking were almost exclusively female by the second half of the century. In the English counties of Essex and Staffordshire, these two trades alone accounted for a quarter of privately apprenticed female trade apprentices with the period of training averaging four years.

138  Deborah Simonton The prestige of these trades becomes apparent when we see that only five parish girls went to mantuamaking and one to millinery from these counties between 1750 and 1799. Mercery, although seen as a ‘male’ trade, probably also took girls for millinery and dressmaking. Millinery drew higher premiums (training fees) of £25 to £75, while mantuamaking required £12 on average, still a relatively good premium (Table 7.1). Mercery, in fact, drew higher premiums for the four girls registered, and it is highly likely that family businesses and connections were involved. In comparison with boys, these premiums are significant since few families paid these high premiums for boys either; 85 per cent of all premiums were less than £25, while 70 per cent of masters or mistresses received less than £15.12 Apprenticeship mattered most for girls when they were acquiring a métier, and those in towns like Colchester, Chelmsford, Wolverhampton, Bath and Stafford clustered in the needleworking trades, especially mantuamaking and millinery. A completed apprenticeship enhanced a girl’s chances of good employment in the more exclusive and high-status trades. In Colchester, three linked firms of milliners and mantuamakers, Gibbon, Reeves and Woods, demonstrate not only the networks that the trade created but also the role of apprenticeship (Table 7.2). Mary Gibbon, originally from Sudbury in Suffolk and the wife of a dissenting minister, worked as a milliner and mantuamaker in Colchester from at least 1753. In 1754, she took Mary Wood as an apprentice; then in 1760, she apprenticed Mary’s sister, Sarah, and Elizabeth Reeves. The Reeves had come to Colchester in 1754 on the death of their father, also a minister, and by 1760 Lucia Reeves, together with her sisters and mother, was running a milliners shop in Colchester’s High Street. Lucia and Hannah took a series of apprentices between 1761 and 1771, while sister Clara registered one in 1775, primarily in millinery and with the very high premiums only a prestigious shop could command.13 Though the firm continued in partnership with the Woods sisters, as we shall see below, no further apprentices were recorded in the national register of taxes paid on premiums. Hannah Reeve, Lucia’s mother, witnessed Christopher Gibbon’s will in 1759, and he died in 1760. Mary was his sole legatee, but after his death she moved to Bath. Once there, she continued her millinery business, taking a further twelve apprentices over the next ten years, beginning in 1763 (Table 7.3). Table 7.1  Premiums by trade group with selected trades

Trades All trades Mercer Mantuamaker Milliner

Average premiums in £

Number of cases

Girls 13.76 35.00 11.77 27.57

Girls 590 4 210 133

Boys 18.10 50.89 5.00 15.00

Total 17.94 50.58 11.73 27.39

Boys 12,635 202 1 2

Total 13,225 206 211 135

Source: Simonton, ‘Education and Training’. These figures exclude parish and charity apprenticeships, which often did not require a premium.

‘Sister to the tailor’  139 Table 7.2  Gibbon, Reeve and Wood in Colchester Year

Mistress

Apprentice

Term (years)

Fee

Trade

1753 1754 1754

Mary Gibbon Mary Gibbon Christopher Gibbon & Wife Mary Gibson Mary Gibbon Mary Gibbon Mary Gibbon Mary Gibbon Mary Gibbon Mary Gibbon Lucia Reeve Lucia Reeve Lucia & Hannah Reeve Lucia Reeves Lucia Reeves and Co. Lucia Reeves and Co. Lucy Reeves Lucia Reeves Lucia Reeves Lucia Reeve and Co. Lucia and Sarah Reeve Lucia Reeve Clara Reeve and Co.

Tryphosa Smith Mary Wood Drusilla Colman

3 3 2 or 3

£25 £25 £30

Milliners Milliners Milliners & Mantuamakers

Ann Barnard Ann Yeats Elizabeth Reeves Sarah Wood Elizabeth Hawkins Henrietta Colman Sarah Newman Ann Slapp Sarah Child Charlotte Hopsack

7 3 3 2 2 3 3 2 3 7

£30 £31, 10 £31, 10 £21 £31 £31, 10 £31, 10 £20 £30 £20

Mantuamakers Milliners Mantuamakers Mantuamakers Mantuamakers Milliners Mantuamakers Milliners Milliners Spinners & Mantuamakers

Catherine Pyke Isabella Wilkinson

3 3

£15, 10 £30

Milliners Milliners

Fanny Bateley

3

£31, 10

Milliners

Frances Humphry Susannah Saranke Ann Eliza Dennis Eliza Drage

4 4 3 3

£42 £40 £42 £42

Milliners Milliners Milliners Milliners

Sarah Baker

4

£52, 10

Milliners

Ann Francis Charlotte Dunkely

4 5

£45 £42

Milliners Milliners

1755 1758 1760 1760 1761 1761 1761 1761 1762 1762 1765 1765 1765 1767 1768 1768 1769 1770 1771 1775

Source: Public Record Office, Inland Revenue, Registers of Apprentices, IR1.

Apprenticeship data, newspaper advertisements and insurance records indicate clearly that these needle trades offered the prospect a genuine occupation and good future for some girls.14 Fifty-six per cent of English apprentice mistresses were mantuamakers and milliners, showing that it was important for the status of the trade to conduct business utilizing a wellunderstood mode of training. With apprenticeships, the high-status sewing trades could create barriers and mimic the exclusion rights of male guilds and trades, like the tailors. They could argue that they too had a métier, and that what they offered to customers was of a different order than simple domestic sewing. They could claim the cachet of a profession.

140  Deborah Simonton Table 7.3  Mary Gibbon in Bath Year

Mistress

Apprentice

Term (years)

Fee

Trade

1763 Mary Gibbon Sukey Martha Hitchcock 1764 Mary Gibbon Sarah Gainsboro 1765 Mary Gibbon Hannah Wills

5

£42

Milliner

7 5

* £20

1765 Mary Gibbon Mary Stevers 1767 Mary Gibbon Mary Beaman

5 2

£42 £31, 10

1767 1767 1769 1770 1770 1773

6 7 4 5 2 7

£50 £12 £40 £12, 12 £40 £20

1773 Mary Gibbon Elizabeth Best

1

£31

1773 Mary Gibbon Mary Paget

5

£90

Mantuamaker Milliner & Mantuamaker Milliner Mantuamaker, etc. Milliner, etc. Mantuamaker Milliner Milliner, etc. Milliner Milliner & Mantuamaker Milliner & Mantuamaker Milliner

Mary Gibbon Mary Gibbon Mary Gibbon Mary Gibbon Mary Gibbon Mary Gibbon

Mary Carrey Elizabeth Barnard Mary Brown Theodosia Langham Sarah Lucas Elizabeth Paget

Source: Public Record Office, Inland Revenue, Registers of Apprentices, IR1. * She was probably a niece. There was no fee, but Stamp Duty (tax) was paid at the same level as the others.

A ‘good trade’ Contemporaries clearly believed that millinery, and to a lesser extent mantuamaking and dressmaking, were good trades for women. They saw them as a step above the labouring or workingwoman that largely peopled the towns. As Penelope Lane argued, the milliner stood at the apex of the clothing trade and had sufficient remuneration for her endeavours to make it a good proposition for women of ‘considerable social standing’.15 Guides to the trades published in Britain echoed this point. In 1747, Robert Campbell published The London Tradesman, a guide for parents on apprenticeship. He was somewhat damning of the profession, as we shall see, but he acknowledged that women needed knowledge of fashion and that ‘they make vast profits on every article they deal in’.16 In 1761, Joseph Collyer was more charitable in advising parents on trades for their daughters. He claimed that girls with the right qualities of gentility and literacy and with some ‘fancy and imagination’, will ‘hardly fail of procuring, in this branch of business, a comfortable and genteel support; I know of none fitter for the daughters of numerous families, where the parents live handsomely, yet have no fortunes to leave their children’.17 The later Book of Trades declared:

‘Sister to the tailor’  141 ‘In the milliner taste and fancy are required, with a quickness in discerning, imitating, and improving upon the various fashions, which are perpetually changing among the higher circles’. In the plate included with the text, the author says: ‘The business of a MILLINER, and the articles which she makes up for sale, are very well displayed’.18 She is fashionably if modestly dressed and with her wares properly displayed. From Paris, Louis Sébastien Mercier echoed these views, firmly siting the milliner in the worlds of business and fashion that could only be achieved by women of some social standing: There is no one as serious as a fashion shopkeeper, selling puffs and putting hundredfold meanings into flowers and gauzes. Every week you can see a new form and shape of hats. In this line of business, the invention makes its author famous. Hems and seams receive a profound and heartfelt respect for the happy geniuses that make the advantages of their beauty and figure vary.19 Parents, families and women also saw millinery as a prestige and appropriate occupation and recommended it to girls of ‘good family’. Lawrence Sterne, the author, suggested it for his sister, while painter William Hogarth’s mother and two sisters were milliners (Figure 7.1). Mary Gibbon was the favourite sister of the renowned artist Thomas Gainsborough, and married a professional, Reverend Gibbon. Similarly, Hannah Reeve was the widow of a minister, and her daughter Lucia married a church organist turned wellknown bass opera singer, Frederick Charles Reinhold, while Clara became a noted author. Amy Erickson’s study of milliners and their apprentices in the London guilds similarly demonstrates that the eighteenth-century millinery business could be an attractive, respectable and prosperous career choice for women.20 Rose Bertin, Marie Antoinette’s milliner was one of the best known until the Revolution swept away the fashion for which she was known together with her celebrity. According to Lady Frances Crewe, who visited Bertin’s magasin de modes in 1786, She sat upon a sort of Throne, at least an elevated Chair in the Centre of a [large] Room surrounded by Persons of all Ranks and Denominations. who were listening to her Dictates upon the important Article of Dress. – She was herself decorated too in much more splendid Manner than the rest, having her Fingers covered with large valuable Rings, such as are in great Vogue at present, and having, in short, Watch. and Chains, and Trinkets of infinite Value spread all over her.21 When the marchandes de modes of Paris incorporated in 1776, they elected Bertin as the guild’s first mistress, and she gained the right to dress the lifesized fashion doll that toured the mercantile centres of Europe advertising

142  Deborah Simonton

Figure 7.1 Trade card for Mary and Ann Hogarth, engraved by William Hogarth, c. 1725, from John Trusler, The Works of William Hogarth, vol. 2 (London: J. Sharpe, 1821).

French fashions. She dressed women all over Europe, and had a staff of forty employees, plus dozens of subcontractors and suppliers. By 1778, Bertin’s power at the court led the press to style her France’s ministre des modes, or ‘minister of fashion’, underlining her position as a trusted favourite royal adviser and an icon of French fashion to other countries.22 She also illustrated the potential of power and status that other milliners who operated on a smaller stage might achieve on a local scale. These were the trades where women were most likely to form corporations, and in France, where it was possible to establish female guilds, they did so, operating much like male guilds in claiming exclusions, protecting their skill and creating

‘Sister to the tailor’  143 an all-female milieu, which mirrored that of the tailors. Michael Sonenscher noted that women rarely were given a trade identity in terms of the law. Forming corporations was one route which did gain them rights of their own, but the ability to do so was limited, and was primarily possible in France, usually in trades coded female, including milliners and seamstresses. But the role of Parisian seamstresses suggests the possibilities. The guild mistresses were largely relatively prosperous minor entrepreneurs, and included single, widowed and married women.23 Crowston argues that guildswomen strongly supported the corporate system, which gave them concrete economic benefits and better legal rights and they used the privileges and structures to protect their trade. In female guilds, they gained a corporate identity and a notion of female honour that derived from the female nature of their trades and the independence that it allowed them to enjoy. These women scorned the skills of women who worked in patriarchal workshops, and took pride in their legal and professional autonomy, much as male tailors did.24 And yet, women did not regularly join corporations, and many towns like Nantes and La Rochelle did not have women’s guilds. In Clermont-Ferrand after 1776, needlewomen proudly declared themselves free of guild control and resisted tailors’ attempts to bring them into their corporation, as they had in England and Bologna.25 They were, indeed, ‘sister to the tailor’, and recognized the importance of building this corporate and professional identity.

Conducting business The way such women conducted their profession was integral to how they furthered their position and demonstrated to the public their perception of themselves as professional women. They operated their shops as ‘businesses’, as single women, continuing to run them as wives and, in Mary Gibbon’s case, as widows, for many years. The large and successful millinery firm run by Lucia Reeve with her sisters and mother in Colchester, and later with the Wood sisters, is a prime example. Lucia completed her apprenticeship and married in 1763, and ran the firm until 1773, continuing to use her given name.26 The Woods sisters took over the shop until 1776, when together Woods and Reeves established a partnership. From 1765 to 1780, this firm occupied extensive premises at 16–17 High Street. In apprenticeship indentures, Lucia styled the company ‘Lucia Reeves and Co.’ and deliberately positioned their business in the world of fashion. The joint advertisement of spring 1777 illustrates this. They had just returned from London and advertised a new assortment of millinery and pointedly commented that their mantuamaker had ‘informed herself of all the latest alterations’. They also ‘requested the favours of Miss Edwards’ customers as she was leaving off business’.27 This allusion to London was quite deliberate, since London represented the peak of the fashionable world, and provincial women were keen to ‘buy into’ this world of fashion. Essex

144  Deborah Simonton lies adjacent to London and there was regular traffic between the towns of Suffolk and Essex. Lucia, through her husband, also operated in the fashionable London scene, since he went on to become a favoured singer with Handel, performing opera and then becoming a regular singer at the Marylebone Gardens.28 Advertisements and trade cards, like the Hogarth’s above, provide a window into the ways such women conducted business. They listed their goods, often in interminable detail, they claimed an association with the fashionable world and they emphasized their own qualities, knowledge and skill. These women understood the growing importance of print culture. There was an increasing literate and commercial culture, and competition increased as well. It was no longer possible to count on word of mouth and the community around you for business in a high-class trade in a town of any size. Around twenty-one separate millinery firms operated during the century in Colchester, a town of about 11,000 people.29 In the second half of the eighteenth century, approximately twelve operated in Aberdeen (probably an underestimate), a town of around 16,000, but by 1824, the first trade directory documented at least sixty-six, 35 per cent of all female businesses listed and by far the largest group of women recorded.30 In Glasgow, Catriona Macleod found only two entered in a directory of 1783, but by 1823, the trades of milliner and dressmaker combined numbered thirtythree and placed them second behind grocers, about 30 per cent of the women’s trades.31 Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell points out that in part natural shifts in eighteenth-century fashion caused the milliner’s gradual heightened importance. The rococo aesthetic of the 1730s and 40s brought a vogue for profuse trimmings and accessories. In the late 1760s high, padded hairstyles came into fashion, and milliners stepped in to decorate them with everything from ribbons, flowers and feathers to birdcages and miniature ships. These were quite literally the pinnacles of the marchande de modes’ art.32 Further, the growth of millinery and mantuamaking, in addition to reflecting changes in the trades themselves, built on the growth in demand, largely from middling and elite consumers. Letters and account books make it obvious that these purchasers sought out fashion and to them fashion simply did not exist in the parochial rural world – it was urban and cosmopolitan, not rural and parochial. Thus high-class needle trades were pre-eminently urban. There was a concomitant increase in advertising, and by the 1780s advertisements appeared on front pages of newspapers. Some issues of the Aberdeen Journal have a full page of adverts on the front and back pages with the news sandwiched in between. By 1761, 74 per cent of the York Courant was advertisements. Along with the surge in newspapers, advertisements were an important part of the growth of print culture. They could be read

‘Sister to the tailor’  145 almost as avidly as the news. They used all sorts of devices to draw in customers offering gifts, testimonials, a few images; they paraded as ‘notices’ as well as readily identifiable advertisements for the wider array of goods and services. As one commentator noted, I look upon them as pieces of domestic intelligence, much more interesting than those paragraphs which our daily historians generally give us, under the title of home news . . . the advertisements are filled with matters of great importance, both to the great, vulgar, and the small.’33 They were part of an increasingly ‘commercialised culture.34 Importantly advertising was perceived as a very public mode of communication, quite different from the use of networks and personal acquaintances.35 It also posed problems for women because of the shifting meanings of business, public and gender. It could be perceived as too overt, too ‘public’ and potentially indiscreet. But as Hannah Barker shows, women readily advertised their wares, positioning themselves not only in the worlds of commerce but also in the discourses of polite society.36 These women turned to advertising to promote their businesses, drawing on the civility of their businesses and their good personal and business reputations, which were key for the millinery firm. Their advertisements reflect this concern with taste, and are extraordinarily detailed. For example, in Aberdeen the Misses Ramsay and McKenzie regularly placed incredibly detailed advertisements, and offered the sorts of goods which suggested quality and luxury. They also used commercial language to represent the business side of their enterprise, claiming their rates were reasonable, while they referred to ‘commissions from the country’. And they used the language of business to assure their customers that they ‘may depend on being served with the utmost Punctuality’.37 They promoted the attractiveness and uniqueness of their goods, but they also used deferential language while establishing their reliability and punctuality in fulfilling orders. Similarly, Isabella Morison advertised the establishment of her business in September 1769 (Figure 7.2). Although she advertised her teaching skills, she took care to establish a connection with fashion, offered reasonable terms, and referenced her training through apprenticeship and her connection with London. In drawing a link to the fashionableness of their skills and products, these women used any device they could to claim style, elegance and association with polite society, often linked to the ‘fashionable’ metropolis. A common ‘shorthand’ for British women was to claim a link with London or Edinburgh, the centre of their political and social universe. Thus, the Reeves and Woods sisters did so, as we saw above, while Morison drew attention to the fact she had served a five-year apprenticeship in London. ‘She hopes her customers will find her properly qualified’.38 The creative abilities of these women were essential to their trading position, and they recognized

146  Deborah Simonton

Figure 7.2 Miss Isabella Morison, milliner and teacher, Aberdeen Journal 18 September 1769.

the commercial importance of aligning themselves with urban centres of fashion. In Turku (Åbo) in Finland, we can see the same sort of linkage to the metropolis with its cachet of fashion and ‘modernity’. In 1791, a Turku/ Åbo milliner had goods ‘newly arrived from Stockholm’, while in August of 1797 ‘an honourable woman from Stockholm addressed herself to the ‘respectable citizens of the city [Åbo]’, and in December, Mrs Lindeström said she ‘was newly arrived from Stockholm’.39 Location was also important in conducting these businesses. Campbell warns against apprenticing girls to what he calls ‘your private Hedge Milliners; those who scorn to keep open shop, but live in some remote Corner’.40 His concern was for chastity and debauchery, but the point is well made. Not only for reputation, but to establish a suitable professional shop, a

‘Sister to the tailor’  147 woman had to be in the fashionable districts and to be where passing trade and exclusive customers would come. And it was important also to establish a shop and not work from home. To do so would diminish the cachet of the trade and resemble ‘just another woman sewing at home’. In Glasgow, Catriona Macleod found numerous tradeswomen, including milliners, on King Street, which housed some of the most expensive shops: Mrs Harvie worked on King Street in the mantua-making trade in the early 1780s, as a married woman until 1783 and as a widow thereafter. At the same time, the Logan sisters were established there as milliners, Mrs Neilson ran a grocer’s shop and Miss Semple let lodgings.41 Amy Erickson plotted the location of forty-five milliners’ shops in mideighteenth-century London, showing them to be clustered in expensive premises around the main market streets of the capital, which they shared with wealthy merchants.42 Position mattered. Therefore, Isabella Morison was located on the east side of the Gallowgate near the New Street of Aberdeen – this placed her in the commercial heart of the town (Figure 7.3). However, within months she moved her premises to the Head of Shiprow, actually closer to the centre of town and no longer indicated that she was working ‘from her lodgings’.43 Other milliners, like the partnership of Ramsay and Mackenzie, who lodged upstairs from another milliner, Miss Forbes, also were located on ‘the Nethergate, Aberdeen, fronting the Well’, which put them a few steps away from the main square of Castlegate, which was the commercial centre.44 The Reeves had prestigious accommodation on Colchester’s High Street, and John Bensusan-Butt, noted authority on Colchester, says they were at the ‘best end of the High Street’ where ‘only an upholsterer and a fashionable inn are rated higher than the milliners Reeve and Wood’ (Figure 7.3).45 When Mary Gibbon moved to Bath she began keeping a lodging house, as well as her active millinery business.46 The choice of Bath was important, because this was the leisure resort par excellence in the years she was there. There were probably family connections, since her husband had originally come from Bath. But to locate in Bath was to have a ready clientele, and the number of her apprentices confirms the size and activity of her firm. She was also very well positioned physically as her very impressive house, designed by John Wood as a classic Georgian town house, was located opposite the Abbey and virtually adjacent to the Pump Room, where she opened her shop as well as letting rooms (Figure 7.3). When her brother, artist Thomas Gainsborough, stayed with her in Bath before moving there himself, he used a room facing the southwest corner of the Abbey as his studio and retained it as his showroom. Susan Sloman notes that it was one of the most expensive houses in Bath. Mary Gibbon’s wares may well have appeared in his early Bath portraits, since in the fashionable world, her business

Figure 7.3 Milliners’ premises central to Aberdeen, Bath and Colchester. Plans © David Hastie.

‘Sister to the tailor’  149 could complement his.47 This also placed her in the heart of the emerging Georgian town in the central shopping and promenading area. Retailing had traditionally been located beyond the Marketplace and into Northgate, Cheap Street, Abbey Churchyard and Stall Street. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, purpose-built shops selling luxury goods had been constructed along what became the Orange Grove, adjacent to the churchyard where Gibbon worked. These had large windows and a broad stone pavement outside. By the mid-1720s, it had expanded into a shop-lined promenade extending from Abbey Churchyard through Wade’s Passage and ending at Terrace Walk.48 An observer noted in 1725 that ‘the streets though narrow have many handsome shops . . . The Chief walk for the Ladyes and Gentlemen, is one pav’d with freestone . . . on one side are Limes planted, on the other very handsome Toy shops like those in London’.49 In the 1740s, retailers moved into the newly constructed area around North Parade and Pierrepont Street with its Palladian shop fronts, and in the 1760s they also shifted into the upper parts of the town, along Bond Street and Milsom Street, north of Gibbon’s shop.50 Her prominence was captured in the New Bath Guide, 1766: ‘Whether thou in Lace and Ribbons/Choose the Form of Mrs Gibbons’.51 Position therefore, was an element in establishing businesses as genteel as well as professional. It marked not only a successful business, but also it made business sense in that a good location brought the right sort of customers and increased the potential of success.

Challenging the tailors Men long claimed the bespoke needle trades and the skill and status of the trade, even when they were not especially prosperous. It was about corporate identity and their position within the world of the guild. They prided them selves on their training, their guild traditions, including apprenticeship and mastership, and disassociated themselves from women who sewed at home.52 For their own credibility and status, it was important to maintain this distinction, both from homework and therefore also women who to them represented the unskilled end of the trade. In this way, men commanded the trades of dressmakers, milliners and modistes for much of the century. Thus, these professional and skilled businesswomen who sewed commercially rapidly came into competition and conflict with men. The mantuamakers especially challenged the prerogatives and privileges of tailors. As Jennifer Jones explained for France: Three of the most important rivalries in the fashion trades occurred between female seamstresses (couturières) and male tailors (tailleurs) . . . In addition a new category of female fashion merchants, the marchandes de modes, challenged the monopoly of several groups of clothing workers, including seamstresses, tailors, linen drapers, and hairdressers.53

150  Deborah Simonton Many men held their positions as members of tailors’ and associated guilds where there is no doubt that they played a ‘gatekeeping’ role. However, they were most concerned about the top end of the sewing trades. Women had long sewed for a living, but often were restricted to women’s undergarments and children’s clothing, and most tailors’ shops also offered work to women in various stages of the process, theoretically under male supervision. The number of women who practised without admission to guilds is unknown, and guilds turned a blind eye to those whom they regarded as no competition. But the incursion of women into the male preserve of ‘skilled’ dressmaking with the shift in to the mantua, which required potentially less ‘tailoring’, and the heightened importance of millinery to fashion trends, led to tensions across Europe that reshaped tailoring and the professional status of high-class seamstresses. The attempts to control female mantuamakers certainly came about partly because of the shift in fashion, but the tailors also fought to retain their privileges in the face of men who were outside their control and who had not ‘properly’ served their time as apprentices and journeymen with a freeman of the guild. This tension then was also part of the shifting character of the town, whereby enterprising men could create niches in the economy, in the face of corporate pressure.54 Male guilds acted to control or exclude women from what they perceived as encroaching on their position and prerogatives. In Britain, the struggle over the mantua led eventually to demands that women join the guilds. Milliners seem to have been tolerated from the outset, however, and there is no evidence of the same sort of challenge to women in milliners’ shops, unless disguised as mantuamakers as the terms could in fact be quite slippery. In Oxford, staymaking and boning was a masculine occupation; however, with the arrival of the mantua, which required little fitting, women became the mantuamakers. Ironically, the male response was to try to force them to join the guild, which they refused to do. Similarly in York, the old established drapers’ companies lost the battle to keep women from setting up as mantuamakers, dressmakers and milliners. In these cases, where technical skill was no obstacle, male guilds tried hard to create one.55 One strategy employed in Aberdeen was not to exclude women, but to limit the amount of cloth they could use or the persons they could clothe. The historian of the Aberdeen Incorporated Trades, Ebenezer Bain, noted: ‘The tailors claimed the monopoly of making all kinds of garments, both male and female, and. . . it was only after a keen struggle that the craftsmen granted women even the partial privilege of making certain articles of female attire’.56 He declared it a ‘very knotty problem’ for the tailors, which ‘filled them with dismay’.57 In France, female guilds existed in Paris and Rouen between 1652 and 1776, encompassing trades like seamstresses, etc. And a few provincial guilds emerged while women sometimes joined men’s guilds.58 La Rochelle had no all-female guilds, but in small numbers women had a presence in the modistes, merciers and tailoring guilds as widows, wives and singletons. In 1760, Helen Poupelin applied to the modistes to

‘Sister to the tailor’  151 open a linen and marchande de modes boutique, the only woman among the four extant records. Among thirty-eight merciers, three women gained permission to practice, all in the 1780s. Records of the tailleurs were similarly overwhelmingly male, yet as the century progressed, several women gained admission.59 However, timing is important: while some women were admitted before Turgot’s abolition of the guilds in 1776, like Elizabeth Robert on 27 June 1707, most entered later. The royal Edict of 1777 opened the guilds to women and a deluge of enterprising women, single, married and widowed, applied and gained admission as an extant list from 1788 shows.60 This suggests that numerous women had been working ‘informally’ without rights of membership, some probably with husbands. This opportunity allowed them to claim some cachet of guild membership, again a marker for professional as opposed to amateur or casual workers. In La Rochelle, the documentation employed explicitly male language, while women were listed quixotically as ‘messieurs’, and we cannot assume that this was necessarily a peaceful merger. As in other towns, admission brought income to the tailors’ guild and allowed them some control over what needlewomen were doing. The fact that there is a second small bulge in female admissions in 1783 suggests that there may have been another suppression of unregistered practitioners.61

Sex, seduction and sewing Milliners were represented as well dressed, carrying the tools of their trade as they moved from client to client, and as sexually attractive, perhaps indeed even explicitly seductive.62 And there is no doubt that there was liminality to this profession and a ‘dark side’, as implied above. Robert Campbell was the most unambiguous and outspoken critic, and while historians acknowledge that he was misogynist, he does reflect a view of milliners. First he argues that these young women, always assuming they were young, were targets of men. The vast Resort of young Beaus and Rakes to Milliner’s [sic] exposes young Creatures to many Temptations, and insensibly debauches their morals before they are capable of Vice. A young Coxcomb no sooner is Master of an Estate, and a small Share of Brains, but he affects to deal with the most noted Milliner: if he chances to meet in her Shop any thing that has the Appearance of Youth, and the simple Behaviour of undesigning Innocence, he immediately accosts the young Sempstress with all the Raillery he is Master of, talks loosely, and thinks himself most witty, when he has cracked some obscene Jest upon the young Creature.63 He claims that the shop mistress must accept this because she wants the business and will instruct the apprentice to put up with his behaviour.

152  Deborah Simonton So in the first place he places the blame on the men, but also on her lack of protection and the damaging climate to her innocence. However, he claims: ‘I am far from charging all Milliners with the Crime of Connivance at the Ruin of their Apprentices, but fatal experience must convince the Public, that nine out of ten of the young Creatures . . . are ruined and undone’. But he continues, turning the argument around saying that she becomes accustomed to this sort of conversation, and a survey of prostitutes will show ‘I am persuaded, more than half of them have been bred Milliners, have been debauched in their Houses’.64 He dissembles here, because ‘Whether then it is owing to the Milliners, or to [the] Nature of the Business’ he is convinced that the dangers are so ‘manifest’ that parents should not put their daughters to apprentice to milliners. As this runs counter to much of accepted practice and understanding and against the view that millinery was a good and appropriate profession even for middle-class girls, it is hard to take this as fact. It was, instead, part of a larger discourse against working women of any class. Collyer, writing a few years later, similarly shows concern about the girls’ vulnerability. He believes that The girl, designed for this employment, ought to have a genteel person, and be capable of ready address . . . These qualifications, joined to a strict modesty and justice, will hardly fail of procuring, in this branch of business, a comfortable and genteel support.65 These were precisely the attributes that would indeed suit a young woman for dealing with a genteel public. But in a less strident tone than Campbell, he also points out: But the young women put to this employ should have their minds strongly tinctured with a high idea of the dignity of chastity; for in this, as in almost all shop-keeping businesses, they will be exposed to the attempts of designing men; many of whom glory in one of the most shameful acts of baseness, that of betraying to ruin heedless and unwary innocence.66 He continues, warning the girls about joining in with the ‘young spark who makes loose allusions or impudent jests’.67 In many respects this is a realistic warning, because young men did frequent these shops, maybe to purchase presents or even something for themselves, ‘since the beau and fine gentleman has his Solitairs or Stock, his Watch or Canestring from the pretty Milliner’.68 Certainly women in seasonal urban trades were vulnerable since they were subject to periods of slack employment and low wages, and they appeared to have a narrower range of options than men in similar seasonal trades. Thus in millinery advertisements, ‘women negotiated most carefully between

‘Sister to the tailor’  153 the competing claims to skill, reputation, fashion and price’.69 Their adverts reflected gentility in the way they positioned the work and its location. And clearly the subtext to both of these accounts was that not all young women became successful High Street milliners. Mantuamakers were especially vulnerable because their trade covered a wider gamut and many were working-class seamstresses. While it was a good business enterprise for the able and well-capitalized employer, prospects were much less promising for the less fortunate and employees; for many it became a pauper trade. Robert Campbell stressed to parents the need to provide adequately for daughters since wages for ‘underworkers’ were very poor. In spite of ‘vast profits’ made by mistresses, they ‘yet give but poor, mean Wages to every Person they employ under them’.70 Mantuamakers, usually capitalized for less than £100, also paid poorly. The variation in premiums of between £2 to £31, illustrates the range within the trades. Mantuamakers could earn a good living, but journeywomen and those without the ability to set themselves up merged with the sweated end of the trades, often working as seamers, frequently in degraded trades and tasks, such as many women in glovemaking and stockingmaking.71 According to Campbell, journeywomen ‘may make shift with great Sobriety and Oeconomy to live upon their Allowance; but their Want of Prudence, and general Poverty, has brought the business into small Reputation’. He warned that pay was frequently so low as to make prostitution the alternative.72

Sister to the tailor Historians have been revisiting the image of the ‘working woman’, arguing that that we need to reconsider the role many of these women played in both occupational and commercial culture. Hannah Barker argues that businesswomen were central to urban society and to the operation and development of commerce in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.73 Like Barker, Nicola Phillips and Christine Wiskin have challenged the pessimistic picture of working women that depicts an image of poverty and lack of agency, as have the authors in Female Agency in the Urban Economy, who argue that despite gender barriers and legal constraints, female activities were far from minimal or marginal. By exploring the strategies adopted by individual women to work within the system, we learn not only about constraints but also about opportunities available in the urban environment. Moreover, female roles and attempts to overcome and manipulate their specific situations reveal that women were vital participants in urban culture and contributed to changes during the long eighteenth century.74 Penelope Lane also argued that women’s business activities were important for maintaining their position and in acquiring the trappings of status.75 This chapter contends that milliners, and to a lesser extent mantuamakers, grasped all opportunities available to them to position themselves

154  Deborah Simonton as professional genteel women in the worlds of business. As others have maintained, business is both private enterprise and a public activity, while the press was, in Habermas’s terms, an important medium through with the public was able to imagine itself.76 How did a woman portray herself and her activities using public devices like advertising and build a business reputation while retaining a feminine one? In examining milliners and mantuamakers, it is clear that these could be good trades and both could be recommended for girls and women of genteel standing and character. Milliners in particular stood the better chance of establishing themselves and of claiming a métier or profession. While they were working women, they were not necessarily ‘working class’. They also had the opportunity and often the ability to ensure their trade was more than that, that it was professionally run, that it was seen as expertly, efficiently and discreetly run. These were resourceful women who utilized the opportunities available to them to operate in a business-like manner. They deliberately used the language of business, playing on the civility of their profession, taking advantage of training, especially so-called male strategies like apprenticeship, drawing on print culture and carefully positioning their business in the fashionable streets to construct a business, a métier and a profession. They, indeed, became ‘sister to the tailor’ while mid-century millinery was ‘no male trade’.77

Notes 1 Deborah Simonton, ‘Apprenticeship: Training and Gender in Eighteenthcentury England’, in Markets and Manufactures in Early Industrial Europe, ed. Maxine Berg (London: Routledge, 1991, reissued in Routledge Revivals, 2013), 227–258. 2 See Ebenezer Bain, Merchant and Craft Guilds: A History of the Aberdeen Incorporated Trades (Aberdeen: J & JP Edmond & Spark, 1887); Kingston upon Thames Register of Apprentices, 1563–1713, ed. Anne Daly (Guildford: Surrey Record Society, 1974). 3 Daryl M. Hafter, Women at Work in Preindustrial France (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), 1. 4 James B. Collins, ‘The Economic Role of Women in Seventeenth-Century France’, French Historical Studies 16 (1989), 436–470; James R. Farr, ‘Consumers, Commerce and the Craftsmen of Dijon: The Changing Social and Economic Structure of a Provincial Capital (1450–1750)’, in Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France, ed. Philip Benedict (London: Unwin and Hyman, 1989), 134– 173; Elizabeth Musgrave, ‘Women and the Craft Guilds in Eighteenth-Century Nantes’, in The Artisan and the European Town, 1500–1900, ed. Geoffrey Crossick (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 151–171. 5 Archives municipales de La Rochelle (AMLR), HH 18: Tableau des Maîtres Tailleurs & Frippiers en neuf & en vieux de la Communauté de la Ville de la Rochelle, 1788. 6 Robert Campbell, The London Tradesman (London: T. Gardner, 1747; reprint edition, Newton Abbot, England: David and Charles (Publishers) Ltd, 1969), 227. See Anne Montenach, ‘Gender and Luxury in Eighteenth-century Grenoble’, in Luxury and Gender in Eighteenth-century European Towns, 1700–1914, eds. Deborah Simonton, Marjo Kaartinen & Anne Montenach (London & New York: Routledge, 2014), 39–56.

‘Sister to the tailor’  155 7 On terminology see Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, ‘The Face of Fashion: Milliners in Eighteenth-century Visual Culture’, British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Journal 25 (2002), 158. On the development of the mantua, see Avril Hart, ‘The Mantua: Its Evolution and Fashionable Significance in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in Defining Dress as Object, Meaning and Identity, eds. Amy de la Haye & Elizabeth Wilson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 93–103. 8 On milliners, mantuamakers and other sewing trades see Clare Crowston, Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675–1791 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001); Jennifer Jones, Sexing La Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France (Oxford: Berg, 2004); Amy Louise Erickson, ‘Eleanor Mosley and Other Milliners in the City of London Companies, 1700–1750’, History Workshop Journal 71 (2011), 147–172; Hafter, Women and Work in Preindustrial France; Nicola Phillips, Women in Business, 1700–1850 (London: The Boydell Press, 2006); Chrisman-Campbell, ‘Face of Fashion’, 2; Louisa Cross, ‘The Display and Trading of Fashionable Dress and Its Impact on Women in Scotland’s Growing Urban Centres, c. 1780–1825’, in Women in Eighteenth-Century Scotland: Intimate, Intellectual and Public Lives, eds. Katie Barclay & Deborah Simonton (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 233–252; Daniel Roche, The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Régime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Musgrave, ‘Women and the Craft Guilds’. 9 Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (London: Penguin, 1991), 91. 10 Sheilagh Ogilvie, ‘How Does Social Capital Affect Women? Guilds and Communities in Early Modern Germany’, American Historical Review April (2004), 335; E. Monter, ‘Women in Calvinist Geneva, 1550–1800’, Signs VI (1980), 200; Danielle Van den Heuvel, Women and Entrepreneurship: Female Traders in the Northern Netherlands c. 1580–1815 (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2007), 53; Public Record Office (PRO), Inland Revenue, Registers of Apprentices, IR1. 11 Crowston, Fabricating Women, data, 298–299; on apprenticeship see chapter 7. 12 Deborah Simonton, The Education and Training of Eighteenth-century English Girls (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Essex, 1988), Chapter 5, Appendix 5.6, Appendix 5.7.4, 5.8.1; Simonton, ‘Apprenticeship, Training and Gender’, 244–246. 13 Colchester People: The John Bensusan Butt Biographical Dictionary of EighteenthCentury Colchester. Second edition, Vol. 1, ed. Shani D’Cruze (privately published, 2010), 286; PRO, Inland Revenue, Registers of Apprenticeship, IR1. 14 See for example, Nicola Pullin, ‘Business is just Life’: The Practice, Prescription and Legal Position of Women in Business, 1700–1850 (Ph.D. thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London, 2001). 15 Penelope Lane, Women in the Regional Economy: The East Midlands, 1700– 1830 (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Warwick, 1999), 124. 16 Campbell, The London Tradesman, 208. 17 Joseph Collyer, The Parents’ and Guardians’ Directory (London: 1761), 195. 18 The Book of Trades, or Library of the Useful Arts (London: Tabart & Co., 1806) 19 Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Le tableau de Paris, I (Hamburg & Neufchatel, 1781), 290–293. 20 Erickson, ‘Eleanor Mosley’, 151. 21 British Library Add. MSS 37826, f.1–14. 19–119, Wednesday, 18 January 1786, quoted in Chrisman-Campbell, ‘Face of Fashion’, 162–163. 22 Kimberley Chrisman-Campbell, ‘Rose Bertin’, http://fashion-history.lovetoknow. com/fashion-clothing-industry/fashion-designers/rose-bertin

156  Deborah Simonton 23 Michael Sonenscher, Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics and the Eighteenthcentury French Trades (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 66. 24 Crowston, Fabricating Women, 408–409. 25 Dora Dumont, ‘Women and Guilds in Bologna: The Ambiguities of “Marginality” ’, Radical History Review 70 (1998), 4–5, Musgrave, Women and the Craft Guilds’; S.D. Smith, ‘Women’s Admission to Guilds in Early-Modern England: The Case of the York Merchant Tailors’ Company, 1693–1776’, Gender & History 17 (2005), 99–126; Mary Prior, ‘Women and the Urban Economy: Oxford, 1500–1800’, in Women in English Society, 1500–1800, ed. Mary Prior (London: Methuen, 1985), 93–117; Deborah Simonton, ‘Toleration, Liberty and Privileges: Gender and Commerce in Eighteenth-century European Towns’, in Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience, general ed. Deborah Simonton (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 33–46. 26 She met Reinhold when he took up the position as organist at St Peter’s in Colchester, the year she began her apprenticeship. The reason for the break in her working life is not yet known. 27 Ipswich Journal, 10 April 1777, 17 May 1777; Colchester People. 28 He was renown for his rendition of ‘Ruddier than a Cherry’ from Acis and Galatea, the Gentleman’s Magazine saying ‘with finer effect than any man ever did’, Obituary, 1815. 29 Drawn from Colchester People and PRO, IR1. 30 A Directory for the City of Aberdeen and Its Vicinity, 1814–5 (Aberdeen: D. Chalmers & Co. 1824). 31 Catriona Macdonald Macleod, Women, Work and Enterprise in Glasgow, c.1740–1830, (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2015), 43–44. 32 Chrisman-Campbell, ‘Face of Fashion’, 159. 33 Fog’s Weekly Journal, 1736. 34 John Brewer, ‘ “The Most Polite Age and the Most Vicious”: Culture as Commodity, 1660–1800’, in Consumption of Culture 1600–1800: Image, Object, Text, eds. Ann Bermingham & John Brewer (London: Routledge, 1995), 341–361, especially 346–353. 35 See Phillips, Women in Business, 203–204. 36 Barker, The Business of Women, 72–89; see also Deborah Simonton, ‘Claiming Their Place in the Corporate Community: Women’s Identity in Eighteenth-Century Towns’, in The Invisible Woman: Aspects of Women’s Work in Eighteenth-Century Britain, eds. Isabelle Baudino, Jacques Carré & Cécile Rávauger (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 108–109. 37 Aberdeen Journal, 22 June 1767. 38 Ibid., 18 September 1769. 39 Åbo Tidningar 11 January 1791, 28 August 1797, 11 December 1797. 40 Campbell, The London Tradesman, 209. 41 Catriona Macleod, Women, Work and Enterprise, 1. 42 Erickson, ‘Eleanor Mosley’, 158. 43 Aberdeen Journal 18 September 1769, 4 June 1770. 44 Ibid., 22 June 1767. 45 Colchester People, 132. 46 Christopher Anstey, The New Bath Guide (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010 [1766]), 193. 47 Susan Legouix Sloman, ‘Artists’ Picture Rooms in Eighteenth-century Bath’, Bath History 6 (1996), 139–143. The house was destroyed in 1892 on the discovery of the Roman Baths in 1892. 48 Trevor Fawcett, Bath Entertain’d. Amusements, Recreations & Gambling at the 18th – Century Spa (Ruton: Bath, 1998), 95–97. See Diane Russell, Businesswomen in Bath and Cheltenham c.1800–1852 (M.Litt., Bath Spa University, 2016). I am grateful to Diane for sharing her research in progress.

‘Sister to the tailor’  157 9 Quoted in Fawcett, Voices of Eighteenth-Century Bath (Bath, 1995), 27. 4 50 Fawcett, Bath Commercialis’d, 95–97. 51 Anstey, The New Bath Guide, 97. 52 Deborah Simonton, ‘Threading the Needle, Pulling the Press: Gender, Skill and the Tools of the Trade in Eighteenth-century European Towns’, Cultural History 1:2 (2012), 180–204. 53 Jones, Sexing La Mode, 80. 54 For example, see Aberdeen Journal, 26 May, 23, 30 June, 1 December 1783. 55 Smith, ‘Women’s Admission to Guilds’; Prior, ‘Women and the Urban Economy’. 56 Bain, Merchant and Craft Guilds, 253. 57 Ibid., 256. 58 The structure of guilds is relatively complicated, and indeed so is women’s inclusion. See the discussion in Clare Crowston, ‘Women, Gender and Guilds in Early Modern Europe’, IRSH 53 (2008), Supplement: 19–44; Simonton, History of European Women’s Work, 47–56; Simonton, ‘Toleration, Liberty and Privileges’; Erickson, ‘Eleanor Mosley’. 59 Archives municipales de La Rochelle (AMLR), HH 14: Corporations. Merciers. Modistes; HH 18: Tailleurs: Reglements et statuts des maîtres tailleurs d’habit, marchandes drapiers et chaussetiers de la ville de La Rochelle (La Rochelle: Mesnier, Imprimeur du Roy, 1753), art. XX. 60 AMLR, HH 18: Tableau des Maîtres Tailleurs & Frippiers en neuf & en vieux de la Communauté de la Ville de la Rochelle, pour l’année 1788 (La Rochelle: P. L. Chauvet, 1788). 61 Simonton, ‘Toleration, Liberty and Privileges’. 62 Campbell, ‘Face of Fashion’. 63 Campbell, London Tradesman, 208. 64 Ibid., 209. 65 Collyer, Parents’ and Guardians’ Directory, 194–195. 66 Ibid., 195. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 69 Phillips, Women in Business, 220. 70 Campbell, London Tradesman, 206–208, 227. 71 In Odense, Denmark, reams of women worked as seamers in the sweated end of glovemaking, a key industry in the town. Similarly in tailoring, there were differences between those at the top end asking £77 with an apprentice and those at the sweated end taking only £1, 15s. Simonton, ‘Apprenticeship: Training and Gender’. 72 Campbell, London Tradesman, 227. 73 Barker, The Business of Women, 2. 74 Christine Wiskin, ‘Urban Business Women in Eighteenth-Century England’, in On the Town: Women and Urban Life in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Rosemary Sweet et al., (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 87; Female Agency in the Urban Economy, Gender in European Towns, 1640–1830, eds. Deborah Simonton & Anne Montenach (London: Routledge, 2014), 12. 75 Lane, ‘Women in the Regional Economy’, 10. 76 See Phillips, Women in Business, 203–204. 77 Campbell, London Tradesman, 227.

8 Independent managers Female factory owners in the northern provinces of the Russian Empire, c. 1760–1810 Galina Ulianova For some decades the issue of women’s economic role in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has attracted increasing interest on the part of historians in both Europe and the United States.1 The geographic and temporal scope of books and articles is broad, spanning Europe and North America and ranging from the sixteenth to twenty-first centuries. An important milestone was reached in 1987 with the publication of Family Fortunes by Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall. This volume deals with such fundamental issues as the ‘separate spheres’ and gender system in the English middle strata.2 The authors’ conceptual approaches to the history of property relationships between men and women attracted many followers and provided further discussion. For example, Susie Steinbach declares that although ‘the notion of separate spheres (also known to historians as domestic ideology, and to 18th-century and 19th-century Britons as domesticity) was the dominant gender code of the late 18th and early 19th centuries’, dominant does not mean universal, and ‘domestic ideology was prescriptive, not descriptive, and its influence was largely confined to the middle classes’.3 Some studies raised important questions about gender in the history of business.4 The monograph Women and Business Since 1500: Invisible Presences in Europe and North America? by Béatrice Craig is a lively and engaging work that deserves an important place in contemporary social history studies.5 Historians of the family, gender and female entrepreneurship will find much of interest and importance in this book. Craig’s work offers a useful discussion of how to define and distinguish the elusive, overlapping ‘various explanatory frameworks’ such as separate spheres and gender ideologies. In her conclusion entitled ‘Women in Business: An Enduring Presence’ the author wrote: ‘Creators who grew their firm joined a more conventional type of business-women: the successor. Like the women who ran merchant houses or manufactories in the early modern period, successors owed their positions to the accident of their birth or their marriage choice, had acquired their skills informally and normally been deputy husband. Their function was not solely to run the business – but to keep it in the family’.6

160  Galina Ulianova In recent years historians have increasingly concentrated on the history of women’s property rights.7 The historiography has been enriched by dozens of studies of various aspects of inheritance in cities and in rural areas. The discourse on the property rights of women gave rise to interest in the sources of their incomes and wealth, and particularly those specific to the group of female entrepreneurs whose personal wealth or property was created as a result of their activities outside of their domestic circle. As an outcome of the development of this research area there are several important publications in which various regional and national female entrepreneurship models were presented.8 The anthology The Marital Economy in Scandinavia and Britain, 1400–1900 discusses the issues of channels of property transfer and economical partnership.9 Later, in the anthology Women, Business, and Finance in Nineteenth-century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres it was suggested that one should be guided by the basic principle that ‘the separate spheres ideology was but one among many forms of gender identity coexisting and overlapping in nineteenth-century Europe’.10 This chapter offers an investigation of the issue of female entrepreneurship in the northern provinces of the Russian Empire during the last third of the eighteenth and at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In this era the core of female entrepreneurs’ wealth consisted for the most part of inherited property. My study focuses on female entrepreneurship in manufacturing and on biographies of factory owners. Statistics confirm that female entrepreneurship in manufacturing was rather widespread. In my monograph Female Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth-Century Russia (2009) I argue that the female owners of enterprises were representatives of various social strata – primarily those of the land-owning aristocrats and merchants. I have identified two patterns of management of manufacturing enterprises, conventionally named as ‘noble’ and ‘merchant’. They differed, first, by the method of succession to an enterprise, second, by the style of management and third, by the importance of the manufacturing enterprise as a life-supporting resource for the family of the owner. Noblewomen had an advantage in resources such as land, real estate and, frequently, serf labour force. By contrast, merchant women, who represented the first or the second (and extremely rarely, the third) generation in their families who had chosen business as their occupation, could rely on their own capital only. On average, the capital of those merchant women was smaller than that of their noble counterparts. The merchant proprietresses used the labour of free hired workers. In a noble economic unit centred on the manorial estate, manufacturing enterprises were one of the elements of infrastructure. Incomes from such enterprises could, to a certain degree, compensate for the low marketability of agricultural production, especially in bad harvest years. In a merchant business, the enterprise was the major source of income received by the merchant or meshchanstvo family.11

Independent managers  161 The two different groups thus developed quite distinct entrepreneurial strategies. In the case of noble-type ownership the proprietress more often than not distanced herself from the process of production, while in that of merchant-type ownership the proprietress had to regularly visit the production premises and to go carefully into the details of purchasing raw materials and equipment, recruiting the workers and marketing finished products. My research has been confined to a small group of female entrepreneurs active during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in three northern provinces of the Russian Empire. There is no complete information on women entrepreneurs for the period under consideration, although it is known that a number of major and minor enterprises belonged to women. In the period 1795–1803, there were seventeen manufacturing enterprises in Arkhangelsk, Vologda and St Petersburg provinces that were owned by fourteen female entrepreneurs. This sample was selected on the basis of a wide range of sources covering the period from 1763 to 1810 and indicating these women’s economic activity, social status as well as the benefits received from family and social networks. The discussion below thus forms an attempt to discover features of the ownership and managerial skills of the Russian female entrepreneurs. The study is based upon data derived from examination of the factory’s half-year accounting reports from 1795 to 1803 in the Archive of Ancient Acts in Moscow (RGADA), and various published sources, including the all-Russia roster Register of Manufactories,12 testaments, dowry contracts and genealogy books. Let us consider in some detail the peculiarities of Russian legislation regulating women’s property rights. In Russia free-born women were brought up with the notion that a female had to be as competent as her male counterpart in tackling financial issues and carrying out trade and real estate transactions. This was also true of women belonging to all of the economically active social estates (soslovie): noblewomen, female merchants and meshchanki (the lowest stratum of urban population). Michelle Marrese, in her monograph on the noblewomen’s control of property in Russia, noted that ‘by the nineteenth century noblewomen featured in roughly 40 percent of real estate transfers, as sellers and investors, throughout Russia’.13 The paradox of the legal status enjoyed by women in the Russian Empire from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century consisted in the fact that, while playing the traditional social role of wife, mother and hostess, they could simultaneously have the independent status of a property owner and business manager.14 The right to conduct commercial activity was legally secured for women in the legislation: in accordance with the laws concerning persons of the merchant profession, on the death of the owner, the management of his business was to pass to his widow. Very often, even when the sons were commercially quite experienced, family businesses were formally and de facto headed by the widows. Another variant was to bequeath the management of the firm to the daughters if there were no male

162  Galina Ulianova heirs; the law stipulated that in such cases daughters had to be unmarried. Nevertheless, even after marriage, the female head of the firm continued to manage the business on her own.15 Women also enjoyed the same property rights as men. By a law adopted in 1753, wives were permitted to ‘sell their own property without the consent of [their] husbands’.16 Each of the spouses could own and independently acquire new separate property (through purchase or gift, by inheritance or any other legal means). Moreover, spouses could enter into certain legal relationships with each other involving transfer of property, as if they were unrelated persons.17 Adele Lindenmeyr writes as follows: ‘Russia’s patriarchal family law imposed severe restrictions on women’s autonomy’, while at the same time ‘its property and inheritance law protected the rights of women’. She characterizes this dichotomy as ‘one of the most intriguing paradoxes in Russian history’.18 William G. Wagner was the first contemporary historian who addressed the issue of separate property on the basis of Russian material.19 Further progress in our understanding of the nature of women’s property rights became possible owing to the books by Michelle Lamarche Marrese, Lee Farrow and Katherine Pickering Antonova.20 In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the right of independent ownership of property was the most important factor that definitely shaped the Russian woman’s gender role in entrepreneurship and household structures because of the ‘patterns of ownership being closely related to patterns of control’, as Leonore Davi­ doff and Catherine Hall stated as regards the English middle class.21

Three northern provinces: Statistics and economic outlook The specific features of entrepreneurship in the northern provinces of the Russian Empire were largely determined by their proximity to the seas, the abundance of forests and the use of the labour of free peasants and serfs. Arkhangelsk (Archangel) and Vologda provinces were the largest ones in the Russian Empire, as their territory covered the northern parts of European Russia from the Finnish border in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. A significant part of these lands was occupied by forests and swamps, interlaced with numerous rivers. These waterways provided good opportunities for the development of trades and industries. St Petersburg and Arkhangelsk were situated on the shores of the Baltic Sea and White Sea, respectively; both of these cities had major seaports receiving Russian and foreign ships. According to Anton von Poschmann, who was both a traveller and a writer, at the turn of the eighteenth century the seaport at Arkhangelsk annually received up to 250 foreign and 1,400 Russian ships.22 Poschmann noted that the entire territory of Arkhangelsk province was densely covered by navigable rivers, their total number amounting to 1,094 and that of lakes to 2,914; the seashore offered conveniently situated bays and other natural harbours. Thus, the geography of

Independent managers  163 the two provinces boded well for the development of inland and sea navigation. In 1802, Arkhangelsk province had eleven towns, some 3,600 big and small villages and a population of about 185,800. In the mid-nineteenth century its population already numbered 282,000.The population of the city of Arkhangelsk amounted to about 9,600 in 1842.23 Economically, Vologda and Arkhangelsk provinces were strongly tied to each other. In The description of Vologda province (1846) it was stated as follows: ‘In a country where vast spaces and sparse population make it difficult to establish and maintain man-made routes of communication between settlements situated at long distances from one another, the existence of many rivers, big and small, and navigable for most part, should be considered, of course, to be a special favour from nature. . . . It is they that channel the rapid floe of industrial life in Vologda province’.24 In 1775, Vologda province had a population of about 313,500. ‘Vologda’s merchants traded with Holland, England, Denmark, Norway, Hamburg, Lübeck . . . and also with Siberia up to its borders with of China and Kamchatka’, noted Ivan Pushkarev in the mid-nineteenth century.25 In 1833, Nikolai Brusilov, the governor of Vologda province, stated in his book An Experience of Describing Vologda Province that Vologda had 14,410 inhabitants, 57 brick residential buildings and 1,301 wooden ones and 52 brick churches and two wooden ones. At Vologda, a total of 43 manufacturing enterprises were operating, and commerce was conducted in 328 shops.26 In 1838, the population of Vologda province was 720,000.27 In the mid-1840s, Vologda, with its 13,000 inhabitants, had up to 70 various manufacturing enterprises, including tanneries, silk, worsted yarns, tanning, cotton-spinning and tallow-melting works and mills.28 The population of St Petersburg province was 367,200 in 1785 and 971,500 in 1847. The population of the city of St Petersburg amounted in 1800 to 220,000 and in 1818 to 386,000.29 In 1773, St Petersburg province had 64 manufacturing enterprises, at the beginning of the nineteenth century 110 and in 1825 as many as 209.30 In the vast area covered by the three northern provinces, the most developed manufacturing industries included timber, paper, textiles, rope-making and leather-dressing.

Women industrialists: Biographies and statistics The examination of manufactory accounting reports held at the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA) has enabled me to identify fourteen female owners of seventeen enterprises located in the three northern provinces: three women in Arkhangelsk province, one woman in Vologda province and ten women in St Petersburg province. The social composition of the group reveals the predominance of factory proprietresses who were members of the nobility (ten persons); three women represented the merchant families and one woman was meshchanka (a woman from the lowest stratum of the urban population).

164  Galina Ulianova Aggregate figures for the number of female-owned manufacturing enterprises, the social and marital status of the owners and other important parameters are given in Table 8.1. Table 8.1 Female-owned enterprises in Arkhangelsk, Vologda and St Petersburg provinces, 1795–1803 Owner, her social estate, marital status, ethnic origin

Enterprise

Year of foundation

Number of workers

 1. Elisaveta Verderevskaia, née Izvekova, noblewoman, wife of a state councillor, Russian  2. Anna Brümmer (1767 – after 1804), noblewoman, wife of a military officer, German  3. Marfa Kokina, meshchanka, widow, Russian

sawmill, Arkhangelsk province

1790

serfs (the number is not specified)

flour mill and sawmill, Arkhangelsk province

1768

serfs (the number is not specified)

tannery, Arkhangelsk province

3 hired workers

 4. Nadezhda Shergina, née Kolesova (1765 – after 1803), merchant’s wife, Russian  5. Barbara Cholle, merchant, French

writing-paper mill, Vologda province

before 1796, established by Marfa’s husband Grigorii Kokin 1767, established by Nadezhda’s grandfather Feodor Kolesov

 6.  Baroness ReginaLouise von Freedricksz, née Christineck, (1735– 1821), wife of the court banker to the Empress Catherine II, German  7. Domna Yuferova, wife and later widow of a merchant, Russian  8. Elena Rehbinder, née von Stackelberg (1744–1806), wife of a Lieutenant General, German

26–36 (16 ‘bought’ peasants and 10 to 20 hired free workers) 4 hired workers

gold and silver foil works, St Petersburg two glass and crystal works, St Petersburg province

before 1794 1774, 1794

hired workers (the number is not specified)

silk brocade mill, St Petersburg province two distilleries, St Petersburg province

1787

11 hired workers

before 1795

serfs (the number is not specified)

Independent managers  165 Owner, her social estate, marital status, ethnic origin

Enterprise

Year of foundation

Number of workers

 9. Countess Sarah Eleonore Stenbock Fairmore (1740–1818), noblewoman, wife of a general, Scottish

distillery, St Petersburg province

before 1795

serfs (the number is not specified)

10. Anna Rykachova (1767–1811), noblewoman, wife of a Major Lermontov, Russian 11. Elisaveta Anichkova, noblewoman, Russian 12. Agafia Korsakova, née Konovnitsyna (1748–1826), noblewoman, rich landowner, Russian 13. Maria Khvostova, née Möller (c. 1765–1795), noblewoman, wife of the high-ranking government officer, German 14. Agafoklea Poltoratskaia, née Shishkova (1737–1822), noblewoman, wife of the privy councillor, Russian

distillery, St Petersburg province

before 1795

serfs (the number is not specified)

distillery, St Petersburg province

before 1795

serfs (the number is not specified)

distillery, St Petersburg province

before 1795

serfs (the number is not specified)

distillery, St Petersburg province

before 1795

serfs (the number is not specified)

distillery, St Petersburg province

c. 1780

serfs (the number is not specified)

Let us consider in some detail these enterprises in female ownership. In Arkhangelsk province, Anna Brümmer owned a flour mill and sawmill, Elisaveta Verderevskaia a sawmill and Marfa Kokina a tannery. The biographies of those women are outlined in some detail below. The wife of a military officer, Anna Brümmer (1767 – after 1804), of German descent, owned two enterprises at Petrozavodsk, a town in Arkhangelsk province. The sawmill and the flour mill (est. 1768) had the most primitive equipment. The sawmill consisted of ‘two frames for sawing planks’, and the flour mill of ‘two mill bricks and eight mortars for pounding’.31 The Brümmers had been

166  Galina Ulianova known in Russia since the seventeenth century, when several representatives of that family from the northern Holstein were hired for military service in Russia. Later on, they were granted landed estates in Livonia and Estonia. Anna-Kristina Brümmer was the daughter of Baron Friedrich Brümmer, the owner of Alt-Kalzenau Castle,32 and the wife of Russian army Major OttoWilhelm von Modrach, originating from Bavaria. The couple had a son, Andrey, born in 1801. The noblewoman Elisaveta Verderevskaia, the wife of a state councillor, owned a sawmill in the vicinity of Petrozavodsk. The sawmill, established in 1790, produced planks ‘from pine trees and fir trees’.33 In 1797, Elisaveta’s husband, Nikolai Verderevskii (1753–1797) was Vice-Namestnik34 of Olonets province. He had previously held a number of administrative positions in Novgorod and Tver provinces. The couple had three children. Elisaveta was the daughter of colonel Izvekov, a landowner in Tver province. The sawmill had been established as an additional source of income for the family. After the tragic death of her husband, who committed suicide in 1797, the widowed Elisaveta Verderevskaia continued to run the family sawmill. In Arkhangelsk province, only one female manufactory owner out of the three belonged to the unprivileged meshchanstvo estate. Marfa Kokina’s tannery was situated in the small town of Pinega. The enterprise occupied a 13.8-by-8.5-metre timber house and was equipped with four tanning vats. The tannery was operated by three hired workers of peasant origin. In 1800, it produced 978 pieces of leather to the value of 2,090 roubles.35 Leather production was a rather complicated technological process which required various raw materials to be purchased. Untanned hides were supplied by local peasants, dyes and alum were bought in Arkhangelsk (sandalwood for dyeing was imported from India via England), and lime was bought within a 50-kilometre radius of the tannery. The technology of leather production consisted of tanning and blue dyeing with sandalwood dye. Having inherited the tannery from her husband Grigorii, Marfa managed it herself with the assistance of her son Akim, who wrote the accounting reports submitted to the Department of Manufacturing in St Petersburg. According to the surviving reports, Marfa coped relatively well with her responsibilities and supervised the production activities of her enterprise on a daily basis. The two female owners of sawmills were the daughters and wives of representatives of Russia’s highest social stratum. Elisaveta Verderevskaia was the wife of a high-ranking official sent from St Petersburg to exercise administrative control over an important province. It is possible that they decided to start as enterprise owners and to get involved in business because they clearly perceived the bright prospects of the lucrative timber business. One of the prominent researchers of Russian industry, Pavel Liubomirov, affirmed that the rapid development of the sawmill industry in Arkhangelsk province (from five enterprises in the 1760s to twelve in 1802) was

Independent managers  167 directly related to timber exports to Europe via the ports of Arkhangelsk and Vyborg.36 In the eighteenth century, Russia adopted a number of strict laws against illegal logging and established the forest service (Forestmeister Office), an institution designed to protect Russian forest resources. The fact that both Verderevskaia and Brümmer were permitted to establish sawmills indicates that forest concessions in Karelia could indeed be obtained if the applicants knew someone who could pull right strings in St Petersburg’s corridors of power. By contrast, Marfa Kokina, who was a member of the lowest freeborn stratum, had to rely solely on her own wits when selling her tannery’s products on the free market. The next one is an example of an enterprise inherited from a father. Nadezhda Shergina (1765 – after 1803), who features in the documents as a ‘Tot’ma merchant’s wife’, owned a writing-paper mill in Vologda province. It should be noted that the paper mill was held by Nadezhda in her own right, independently of her husband. Her husband, merchant Grigorii Shergin, originated from Tot’ma’s first-guild merchant dynasty trading with China.37 By the end of the eighteenth century, the town of Tot’ma was an important commercial centre with a population of 3,000 and 18 brick churches. The ethnographer Petr Chelishchev wrote that ‘the major market of the merchants and meshchane of this town is Siberia and Kamchatka’.38 The main goods traded by them were ironware (such as knives, axes, nails and guns) manufactured in the Russian north, bartered with local natives for valuable furs which were then resold in China. The sums of money raised from that trade were used for purchasing tea and spices from Chinese traders. According to the ‘Report on the state of paper mills’ submitted to the Department of Manufacturing in 1803, Nadezhda Shergina’s paper mill was situated at a distance of 236 versts (251 km) from Vologda, in the village of Termenga surrounded by dense forest. The paper mill was originally established in 1767 by Nadezhda’s grandfather Feodor Kolesov, who had already in 1756 founded an ironworks in the same locality. When the local iron ore deposits were depleted, Kolesov went over to paper production. His new business occupied the premises of the former ironworks. In 1785, he sold the paper mill to his son, the rich merchant Matvei Kolesov.39 According to The city residents’ book of Vologda for 1792, Matvei owned three houses, nine shops and five enterprises (three brickworks, one ironworks and one paper factory).40 In 1790–1792, he held the position of Vologda’s city mayor. After Matvei’s death in 1795, the paper mill was inherited by his eldest daughter Nadezhda. The Termenga works was situated on the land rented on a permanent basis from court peasants (dvortsovye krest’iane) under an obligation to pay a fixed annual rent.41 The mill was operated by sixteen ‘bought’ peasants and ten to twenty hired free workers, and it occupied two spacious buildings. It produced writing paper of ‘various numbers’, blue and white ‘sugar’ paper (for packaging sugar-loaves) and grey wrapping paper. The products were bought by ‘private people’.42

168  Galina Ulianova When studying women’s entrepreneurship, special attention should be given to the issue of personal participation of the female owner in the managing of the enterprise without turning over the managerial function to her husband or her son, or to a hired manager. Most informative in this regard are the half-year reports that every enterprise in Russia had to submit to the Department of Manufacturing in St Petersburg. In the case of the Shergina paper mill the report for the first half-year of 1797 was personally signed by Nadezhda Shergina, who was literate. The report informed the Department, among other things, on the work done by servants in order to upkeep the owner’s quarters at the factory, which indicates that Shergina regularly visited her enterprise. The next report was signed by Nadezhda’s husband Grigorii. In the two subsequent years the production was managed on a daily basis by a hired manager, Petr Dudorov, who signed the corresponding four half-year reports. In 1800, Dudorov was replaced by steward (prikashchik) Seliverst Demidov. It also appears from the reports that in the second half-year of 1800 Nadezhda Shergina became a widow – in the July report she is called ‘a merchant’s wife’, in the December report ‘a merchant’s widow’. Having lost her husband, she evidently could not continue to manage the factory, which indicated making regular visits from Tot’ma where she lived to Termenga either by road (about an 120-kilometre-long route through dense forest) or water (a 240-kilometre-long route). In 1801, the enterprise was offered for sale at auction, where it was purchased by two Vologda merchants, the Martianov brothers. Now let us turn our attention to the female industrialists of the capital St Petersburg and St Petersburg province. One of the outcomes of the uneven regional development of industry was that female entrepreneurship progressed most actively in the capital-city province. In the late eighteenth century and during the first half of the nineteenth century, St Petersburg ranked second after Moscow among Russian cities with the strongest economies. Its population was multinational, with a large percentage (up to 10 per cent) of Germans whose ancestors had arrived in Russia during the reign of Peter I (Peter the Great) and in particular during the reign of Catherine II. After the establishment of St Petersburg’s seaport by Peter the Great, the city attracted ever-increasing numbers of immigrants from the Baltic Sea region. According to the reports submitted to the Department of Manufacturing in 1795–1802, there were eleven women-owned manufacturing enterprises in St Petersburg and St Petersburg province. Nine of them belonged to eight noblewomen and two to female merchants. Let us cast a glance at the character of these female-owned businesses and reconstruct, wherever possible, the biographies of the owners. Barbara Cholle was the owner of a gold and silver foil works in St Petersburg. The enterprise, operated by four hired workers, produced gold and silver foil to the value of 1,000 roubles per annum. The demand for foil was high because it was used for gilding and silvering church domes, furniture and the interior decorations of great houses and palaces. According to the

Independent managers  169 enterprise’s accounting reports, ‘all these goods are sold here in the city to private people’.43 In these documents, Barbara Cholle is called ‘the wife of a native of France’. The occupation of her husband Stefan Cholle is unclear. In any case, Barbara Cholle managed her factory without anybody’s assistance.44 Baroness von Freedricksz owned two glass and crystal works in the Shlisselburg district of St Petersburg province, not far from its border with Vyborg district, which in 1812 was annexed to the Grand Duchy of Finland. Regina-Louise von Freedricksz, née Christineck (1735–1821), was the wife of Ivan Freedricksz (1723–1779), the court banker to the Empress Catherine II. Her husband was of Dutch descent, or according to other sources, of Swedish or Finnish descent. Regina-Louise was born in Russia into a St Petersburg German family. She had nine children by her marriage with Baron von Freedricksz. In 1773, Baron von Freedricksz purchased huge country estates near Lake Ladoga, including the lands known as ‘Murjanselkä’ with a farm called Irinovka (it was named after the baron’s wife Regina, whose name in Russian was pronounced ‘Irina’). The baron built there a manor house where he received and entertained guests. In addition, he founded an ironworks, a peat-extraction enterprise and a dairy farm. His wife set up a glass and crystal works on the river Marya in 1774, and twenty years later, as her business was thriving, she founded another one at the Irinovka farm.45 The two glassworks produced window glass of the amount of 400 crates per annum (a crate contained twenty sets of 97-by-15-centimetre glass sheets) to the value of 24,800 roubles. It was noted in the report that ‘the fineness [of the glass] is the very best’. The workers were hired (their number is not specified). After her husband’s death, Regina-Louisa chose to lease the factories to her former hired managers. One glassworks was leased by the German ‘master glass maker’ Franz Nachmann, the other one by his brother Sebastian Nachmann. From 1804 onwards, they were joined by a female entrepreneur, a merchant’s widow Anna Erofeeva, who was in partnership with Sebastian Nachmann. It may be assumed that Sebastian ran the factory, while Anna supervised the sales. So we can see that in this case both the owner and the lessee were women. In 1812, the elderly Baroness von Freedricksz sold her landed estate Irinovka together with its glassworks, which survived until 1912. Domna Yuferova, the wife and later widow of a merchant from the town of Sofia in St Petersburg province, was the owner of a luxury silk manufactory, founded in 1787. Anna’s husband Nikifor Yuferov (1748–1790) was a second-guild merchant. In 1797, the manufactory produced 728 metres of brocade and 1,065 metres of ‘fleur’, a transparent silk fabric. Throughout 1796, the manufactory produced goods to the value of 15,000 roubles.46 The report for 1797, signed personally by Domna Yuferova, who was literate, offers detailed information on the state of affairs at her factory. It was equipped with eight weaving machines and employed eleven persons who were either meshchane or peasants from St Petersburg and

170  Galina Ulianova Vologda provinces. The production process was supervised by the ‘master’ Trofim Isaev, a merchant from Sofia.47 The manufactory produced white striped brocade with silver threads, glacé (a textured silk brocade) with ‘silver mouches’, gold brocade with multi-colour little flowers – pink, green and blue, and striped ‘fleurs’ – pink, green and white. The available information about Yuferova’s enterprise shows it to have been operated on a sound financial basis and under the constant control of its owner, who was flexible in adjusting its products to the demands of the current fashions and its customers’ tastes. The one branch production that was the nobility’s monopoly was distilling of alcohol. The state exercised special supervision over the production of alcoholic beverages. In Russia there was a system whereby alcohol was exclusively bought by the Treasury, whereas alcohol distillation and vodka production were performed by private distilleries under orders issued by the Treasury. The reports on all distilleries were submitted to the Imperial Cabinet (the office for managing the properties belonging to the emperor). In 1795, seven out of the nineteen distilleries then existing in St Petersburg province were owned by noblewomen. All these distilleries were situated on the country estates of their owners and were operated by their serfs. The raw materials used in production were never purchased; their only sources were the estates’ fields, orchards, vegetable gardens and forests. The produced alcohol was purchased by the Treasury on a guaranteed basis, while some was left at the producers’ disposal ‘for their household use’. Below is a brief description of these enterprises. Elena Rehbinder (1744–1806), the wife of a lieutenant general, owned two distilleries at her Voiskovitsa farm near Gatchina. In 1795, the volume of distilled alcohol amounted to 4,190 vedros48 (52,375 litres), of which 4,000 (49,200 litres) were ‘given to the Treasury’ and 90 (1,107 litres) were left for household use. Elena Rehbinder owned 799 serfs.49 Elena was born Baroness Wilhelmine Helene von Stackelberg. Her husband was General Reinhold Johan von Rehbinder, an eminent public person during the reign of Catherine II, a diplomat and later governor-general of the Vice-regency of Belorussia and governor of Nizhny-Novgorod and Penza provinces. They had nine children. Countess Sarah Eleonore Stenbock (1740–1818), who owned 237 serfs, had a distillery in Novoladozhskii district. It produced 750 vedros of alcohol per annum, of which 650 were sold to the Treasury.50 Sarah Eleonore was the only daughter of the Russian General-in-Chief Count William W. Fairmore, who had come to Russia from Scotland. She was married to Jakob Pontus Magnus Stenbock, a Russian general, a descendent of a noble Swedish family, and had eight children with him.51 Anna Rykachova, the wife of a major and the owner of 128 serfs, had a distillery in Luga district with an annual output of 1,030 vedros (1,000 for the Treasury and 30 for her household needs).52 She had six children. The distillery of Elisaveta Anichkova, who owned a country estate and 128 serfs,

Independent managers  171 produced 50 vedros per annum for her household consumption.53 The distillery established by the rich landowner Agafia Korsakova (1748–1826) on her Verkholiane country estate produced 200 vedros for the Treasury and 30 for household needs.54 After her brother’s death at the age of twenty-one, Agafia became the only heir of her father Grigorii Konovnitsyn, and so inherited substantial land estates and 3,000 serfs. She was married at the age of sixteen and had four children. According to memoir writers, Agafia was not only an energetic businesswoman, but also a society beauty and loved to dance at balls. The distillery of Maria Khvostova, who owned 360 serfs, produced exclusively for her own household needs 60 vedros per annum.55 Maria was the daughter of General Bernhard Siegfried Möller, of German descent and governor of Kolyvan province in 1779–1785. She was married to the high-ranking government officer and writer Vasilii Khvostov. During her nine-year-long marriage she gave birth to seven children, of whom only two survived. She died while giving birth to her seventh child at the age of thirty. The largest female-owned distillery in terms of volumes produced belonged to Agafoklea Poltoratskaia, née Shishkova (1737–1822), the wife of an active privy councillor. In 1795, her distillery produced 26,300 vedros (323,490 litres), of which 26,000 were sold under a contract ‘to the Treasury’, including 19,000 vedros ‘to the Court Office’, which was responsible for providing for the Imperial Court. The fact that Poltoratskaia was able to obtain a long-standing contract with the Treasury testifies to her connections in high circles and with the Imperial Court as well as to her own vivid enterprising character. Agafoklea Poltoratskaia gave birth to twenty-two children. She was also known as an autocratic mistress of her estates. Her granddaughter wrote in her memoirs: ‘She was so clever and efficient that, as the owner of 4,000 serfs, many works, manufactories. . . [she] run all her affairs herself, without a general manager, through her stewards’.56 The memoirist recalls that her grandmother’s management style was strict and sometimes stubborn. Poltoratskaia seldom left her Gruziny estate in Tver province, where she lived in a resplendent palace (designed, as a tradition has it, by the famous Italian architect Rastrelli). She ‘would spend wintertime in bed, managing all her impressive business affairs from amongst the pillows, while in the summer she would oversee work in the fields’. She installed her bed in a large hall decorated with rose marble. Such was her winter headquarters where she received her stewards and gave them instructions. Poltoratskaia’s biographers note that towards the end of her life she owned 13,000 serfs and her wealth was constantly on the rise. Her husband held the post of director of the Court Capella Choir in St Petersburg and had nothing to do with running the family business because, as their granddaughter wrote, ‘the energetic personality of [my] grandmother overshadowed his personality’.57 The business acumen of Agafoklea Poltoratskaia is manifest in her will written at the age of 82, in which she distributed her property among her many children and grandchildren, with detailed lists of

172  Galina Ulianova large and small villages, names of serfs, various structures, forests, empty land plots and monies.58 The activities of the female distillery owners shared many features. All these women were country estate owners, with their own sustainable economies. Their husbands held high posts in the country’s military and civil service hierarchy. They all were married and had children. It can be pointed out that the establishment of distilleries not only provided a source of steady income (when the produce was sold to the Treasury), but was also an important source of products for household consumption, as alcohol distillates, beside being used as part of beverages, were also used for food conservation (in vegetable and mushroom preserves) and for medicinal purposes (disinfection and treatment of internal diseases). It also became a fashion, as the supplies to the Treasury not only generated an additional income, but also gave the female distillery owners a sense of involvement in broad government and public networks.

Conclusion Our analysis of the manufacturing enterprises by the social estate (soslovie) of their female owners shows that among fourteen proprietresses of seventeen enterprises ten noblewomen owned thirteen enterprises, three female merchants each owned one enterprise and the only woman of the meshchanstvo estate also owned one. During the period under consideration, the situation was characterized by the predominance of female owners who had inherited property and businesses from their husbands and parents. Ownership of manufacturing enterprises can be subdivided into two types, conventionally denoted as ‘noble’ and ‘merchant’. In a noble economic unit centred on the country estate, enterprises were one of the elements of complex infrastructure. In a merchant (or meshchanstvo) business, the enterprise was the significant source of family income. Each of these two types offered its own securities and risks. For instance, the noblewomen had access to state contracts. In the northern provinces of the Russian Empire noblewomen were predominant owners in the distilling of alcohol, in glass and crystal industries, writing-paper manufacturing and in wood and timber processing. Their enterprises were located in rural areas and made use of considerable financial and manpower resources accumulated by several generations of rich dynasties of noble families. Female merchant owners of manufacturing enterprises were predominant in the textile and leather industries and in gold and silver foil rolling. Female merchant owners’ enterprises were often set up by their husbands and then passed to wives by last wills. Merchant enterprises used the labour of free hired workers. It should be noted that close to the merchant type were the enterprises owned by meshchanki, who played an important part in the leather and rope industries. The analysis of the northern provinces regional model confirms the relevance of a ‘segmented sphere’ paradigm of female entrepreneurship in the

Independent managers  173 Russian Empire. During the period under consideration, propertied women in Russia were able to make use of their equal rights with men, be it property rights or the right to get engaged in business and independently manage their enterprises.

Notes 1 Angel Kwolek-Folland, Incorporating Women: A History of Women and Business in the United States (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998); Alastair Owens, ‘Property, Gender and the Life Course: Inheritance and Family Welfare Provision in Early Nineteenth-Century England’, Social History 26 (2001), 297–315; Deborah Simonton, ‘Gender, Identity and Independence: Eighteenth-Century Women in the Commercial World’, Women’s History Magazine, 42 (2002), 4–13; Women, Business, and Finance in Nineteenth-century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres, eds. Robert Beachy, Béatrice Craig & Alastair Owens (Oxford & New York: Berg, 2005); Nicola Phillips, Women in Business, 1700–1850 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006); Evguenia Davidova, Balkan Transitions to Modernity and NationStates: Through the Eyes of Three Generations of Merchants (1780s – 1890s) (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2013). Jeanette M. Fregulia, ‘Stories Worth Telling: Women as Business Owners and Investors in Early Modern Milan’, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10:1 (2015), 122–130. 2 Leonore Davidoff & Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780 to 1850. Second edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 3 Susie Steinbach, ‘Can We Still Use “Separate Spheres”? British History 25 Years After Family Fortunes’, History Compass 10:11 (2012), 826. 4 Maxine Berg, ‘Women’s Property and the Industrial Revolution’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24:2 (1993): 233–250; Michelle L. Marrese, A Woman’s Kingdom: Noblewomen and the Control of Property in Russia, 1700–1861 (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 2002); Maria Ågren, Domestic Secrets: Women and Property in Sweden, 1600–1857 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). 5 Béatrice Craig, Women and Business Since 1500: Invisible Presences in Europe and North America? (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 6 Ibid., 190. 7 See Women and Their Money, 1700–1950: Essays on Women and Finance, eds. Anne Laurence, Josephine Maltby & Jeanette Rutterford (London: Routledge, 2008); Ågren, Domestic Secrets; Ariadne Schmidt, ‘Generous Provisions or Legitimate Shares? Widows and the Transfer of Property in 17th-century Holland’, The History of the Family: An International Quarterly 15 (2010), 13–24; Margareth Lanziger, ‘Women and Property in Eighteenth-Century Austria: Separate Property, Usufruct and Ownership in Different Family Configurations’, in Female Economic Strategies in the Modern World, ed. Beatrice Moring (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), 145–160. 8 Hannah Barker, The Business of Women: Female Enterprise and Urban Development in Northern England 1760–1830 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Alison Kay, The Foundations of Female Entrepreneurship: Enterprise, Home and Household in London, c.1800–1870 (London: Routledge, 2009). 9 Amy Louise Erickson, ‘The Marital Economy in Comparative Perspective’, in The Marital Economy in Scandinavia and Britain 1400–1900, eds. Maria Ågren & Amy Louise Erickson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 3. 10 Robert Beachy, Béatrice Craig & Alastair Owens, ‘Introduction’, in Women, Business, and Finance, 9.

174  Galina Ulianova 11 The term meshchanstvo (meshchane) designated in Russia the lower groups of the city population: the petty tradesmen, craftsmen and the like. Meshchanki were women from the meshchanstvo. See Dictionary of Russian Historical Terms from the Eleventh Century to 1917, comp. Sergei G. Pushkarev, eds. George Vernadsky & Ralph. T. Fisher Jr. (New Haven-London: Yale University Press, 1970), 60. See also Manfred Hildermeier, Bürgertum und Stadt in Russland 1760–1870: Rechtliche Lage und Soziale Struktur (Köln & Wien: Böhlau, 1986), 437–456. 12 Vedomost” o manufakturakh v Rossii za 1813 i 1814 gody (Sankt-Peterburg: Tipografia Pravitel’stvuiushchego Senata, 1816). 13 Marrese, A Woman’s Kingdom, 117. 14 The legal status of female entrepreneurs is described in detail in Galina Ulianova, Female Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth-Century Russia (London: Pickering & Chatto Publishers, 2009), 10–12. 15 Svod zakonov (Sankt-Peterburg, 1899), tom IX, No. 541. 16 Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii. Sobranie I, (Sankt-Peterburg, 1830–1843 hereafter PSZ I), tom XIII, No. 10111. 17 Ibid., tom XL, No. 30472. 18 Adele Lindenmeyr, Review of Marrese, ‘A Woman’s Kingdom’, Journal of Social History 38:2 (2004), 553. 19 William G. Wagner, Marriage, Property, and Law in Late Imperial Russia. Second edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001 [1994]). 20 Marrese, A Woman’s Kingdom; Lee A. Farrow, Between Clan and Crown: The Struggle to Define Noble Property Rights in Imperial Russia (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004); Katherine Pickering Antonova, An Ordinary Marriage: The World of a Gentry Family in Provincial Russia (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 21 Davidoff, Hall, Family Fortunes, 277. 22 Anton von Poschmann, Arkhangelskaia guberniia v khoziaistvennom, kom mercheskom, filosoficheskom, istoricheskom, topograficherkom, fizicheskom i nravstvennom obozrenii (Sankt-Peterburg: 1802), 40. 23 Statisticheskie tablitsy o sostoianii gorodov Rossiiskoi Imperii, Velikogo Knia­ zhestva Finliandskogo i Tsarstva Polskogo (Sankt-Peterburg: 1842), 2. 24 Ivan Pushkarev, Opisanie Vologodskoi gubernii, Chast’ 1 (Sankt-Peterburg: 1846), 5. 25 Ibid., 29–31. 26 Nikolai Brusilov, Opyt opisaniia Vologodskoi gubernii (Sankt-Peterburg: 1833), Annex. Statistical Table. 27 Vologodskie gubernskie vedomosti, 3 (1840), 19. 28 Pushkarev, Opisanie Vologodskoi gubernii, 31; Statisticheskie tablitsy, 4. 29 Statisticheskie tablitsy, 32. 30 Istoriia rabochikh Leningrada: 1703–1917 (Leningrad: 1972), 53, 73, 76. 31 Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (hereafter RGADA), f. 277, op. 16, d. 12, l. 11–12. 32 Alt-Kalzenau, today Veckalsnava, Latvia. 33 RGADA, f. 277, op. 16, d. 12, l. 11–12. 34 In the imperial period, a namestnik of the emperor was like a viceregent or viceroy. The statutes concerning provincial administration (Uchrezhdeniia dlia upravleniia gubernii) of 1775 intended that each province be headed by an imperial namestnik’. See Dictionary of Russian Historical Terms, 66. 35 RGADA, f. 277, op. 2, d. 953, l. 1–4. 36 Pavel G. Liubomirov ‘Iz istorii lesopil’nogo proizvodstva v Rossii v XVII, XVIII i nachale XIX v’, Istoricheskie zapiski (1941), 222–249. 37 Olga A. Naumova, ‘Totemskoe kupechestvo v XVIII – XIX vekakh’, Tot’ma: istoriko-literaturnyi almanakh, tom 1 (Vologda: 1995), 306–314. 38 Petr Chelishchev, Puteshestvie po Severu Rossii v 1791 godu (Sankt-Peterburg: 1886), 190.

Independent managers  175 9 RGADA, f. 277, op. 16, d. 3, l. 43–44. 3 40 State Archive of Vologda Province (GAVO), f. 14, op. 1, d. 572, l. 141–142. 41 RGADA, f. 277, op. 2, d. 1686, l. 2. 42 Ibid., op. 16, d. 15, l. 3–4; d. 16, l. 4–6. 43 Ibid., d. 46, l. 56–57. 44 Ibid., d. 9, l. 29–30. 45 Ibid., d. 2, l. 51–52. 46 Ibid., d. 46, l. 29–30. 47 Ibid., op. 2, d. 856, l. 4–5. 48 Vedro (pail) is equal to 12.3 litres (3.25 gallons). 49 RGADA, f. 1239, op. 3, ch. 111, d. 59173, l. 3–4. 50 Ibid., l. 4–5. 51 See Alexei B. Lobanov-Rostovskii, Russkaia rodoslovnaia kniga, tom 1 (SanktPeterburg: 1895), 453–458. 52 RGADA, f.1239, op. 3, ch. 111, d. 59173, l. 4–5. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., l. 5–6. 55 Ibid., l. 6–7. 56 Anna Kern, Vospominania. Dnevniki: Perepiska (Moskva: 1989), 115. 57 Ibid., 118. 58 Russian State Library, Manuscript Division (Otdel rukopisei RGB), f. 233, op. 6, d. 75, l. 1–5.

9 Urban opportunities Women in the restaurant business in Swedish and Finnish cities, c. 1800–1850 Marjatta Rahikainen The travelling and pleasure-seeking world gained from the general development in eighteenth-century Europe. Despite regional wars, travelling became safer and easier as new roads were built and old ones improved, while stagecoach services were expanded and new inns established. At the same time public entertainments flourished as never before and the moneyed interests invested in the new urban lifestyle with coffee houses, restaurants, well-appointed spas and imitations of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in London. The fashionable world, a medley of aristocratic and bourgeois high societies, gained new venues in the new opera houses built around Europe on the model of the opera house in Paris. This world was badly shaken but not destroyed by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.1 The Age of Revolution, to use Eric Hobsbawm’s apt labelling, witnessed the rise of a self-confident bourgeoisie. In British society it included both the moneyed and professional establishment, whereas in German societies the Bildungsbürgertum, the part of establishment whose male members enjoyed higher education, was superior to the Wirtschaftsbürgertum, the moneyed bourgeoisie engaged in trades and industries.2 In the field of politics and economy the bourgeois self-confidence was largely male and as such conservative rather than dynamic. The role left for women in this narrative was that of the rich heiress and celebrated beauty who would crown the success of the bourgeois man. However, men cannot alone have sufficed for the rise of the class, but the decorative lady of the bourgeois home was an imitation of the ancien régime salonière rather than a female parallel to the new bourgeois man. I suggest that for the bourgeoisie to rise as a class, ordinary middleclass women must have shared some of the enterprising Streber mentality of bourgeois men. However, there were not many business opportunities available for respectable women who wished to improve their share in the world or to promote their family and children. Almost all that would have been worth aiming at was for men only, at least in terms of laws, statutes and established customs. However, the entertaining world of inns, taverns, eating houses, coffee shops, restaurants, spas and promenade parks was in many respects a late-comer and therefore had fewer vested interests and lower entrance barriers than other urban trades and industries.

178  Marjatta Rahikainen Women as innkeepers, tavern-keepers and coffee-house keepers were a visible part of social life in eighteenth-century urban Europe. However, such places were often avoided by respectable women and may even have been forbidden for women, which suggests that women who made their living as innkeepers and in related business may have had a black mark against them, perhaps at times with good reasons. Even so, women who ran inns may have been of some importance in their neighbourhood, since inns served as informal communication centres.3 In the course of time any stigma associated with woman innkeepers was lessened.4 I would reason that for this to happen, there must have been at the grass roots individual women who ran their inns, taverns, coffee houses and other similar businesses without discrediting themselves and their profession. Coffee houses may have been forerunners in making the profession respectable. Eighteen-century cafés were centres of public life for men, institutions where noble and bourgeois men read newspapers and discussed politics. These were places for men; in Venice, for instance, women encountered in or near cafés were to be punished. In Paris the first women customers entered cafés during the Revolution and after 1800 cafés gradually became places that even respectable women could visit. The threshold proved lowest in open-air cafés located in fashionable promenade gardens and the next step was taken into elegant cafés with separate rooms for ladies.5 Around the turn of the nineteenth century and in subsequent decades, women were found in such service trades in Swedish and Finnish towns and cities. In the following I will discuss enterprising women whose skills as innkeepers, restaurant keepers and experts in wines and cooking exemplify their professional ambitions; in more general terms these women exemplify female entrepreneurship.6 I begin with a brief presentation of Scandinavia around the year 1800 as it appeared in the eyes of foreign visitors. I will then discuss in terms of formal and informal institutions women’s opportunities to maintain themselves in the restaurant business and the like in early nineteenth-century Sweden. Next I will present three women who were successful in the restaurant business in early nineteenth-century Finland. The first one, Eva Falck, was responsible for catering when the king and queen of Sweden made an official visit in Turku (Åbo) in 1802. The second one, Cajsa Wahllund treated the fine retinue with a banquet when the Russian governor general took his office in Helsinki (Helsingfors, Gel’singfors) in 1831. The French Revolution was not felt on the northern shores of the Baltic Sea, but the Napoleonic Wars stretched there, with consequences for Eva Falck and Cajsa Wahllund. The third one, Hedvig Astenius, ran from the 1820s to the 1840s the best inn in Porvoo (Borgå), a small town that served as rest stop for virtually everyone travelling to or from St Petersburg along the northern coastline of the Gulf of Finland. I suggest that respectable women in the restaurant business were female parallels to bourgeois men who were engaged in service businesses. When all went well, women managed their inns and restaurants in a way that

Urban opportunities  179 demonstrated a professional approach to the trade; thus, they anticipated modern female entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, their trade, though successfully run, was so close to the services provided by servants in the domestic sphere that it was unthinkable to contemporaries to place respectable restaurant keepers, whether male or female, on an equal footing with their respectable customers. This nineteenth-century attitude may have left its mark on historical writing.

Destination Scandinavia In the 1790s the more peaceful Scandinavian countries became attractive destinations for voyagers, as the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars made travelling in continental Europe hazardous. The visitors to Scandinavia included Mary Wollstonecraft, Giuseppe Acerbi and Edward Daniel Clarke, all of whom wrote about their observations and impressions. They had varied experiences of Swedish roads, inns and hospitality. The quality of inns at stagecoach stations varied from tolerable to shoddy and neither Gothenburg nor Stockholm had more than one or two.7 Mary Wollstonecraft, who travelled in Scandinavia from April 1794 to July 1795 with her little daughter and a nurse, was met with great hospitality by peasants and their wives. However, in Gothenburg she was ushered by an officious customhouse officer into ‘a most comfortless’ inn.8 The only inn that Acerbi found when arriving in Stockholm late in the evening had been sold by its former French owner to a Swede ‘who knew not how to manage it’.9 The world of entertainment in Stockholm had not much to offer for such widely travelled men as Giuseppe Acerbi and Edward Daniel Clarke. The Garden of Promenade, the local version of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, had ‘but little resemblance to those in England’, Clarke thought. In Acerbi’s words the garden was ‘an humble imitation of that near London’. The local theatre and opera did not fare much better in their opinion. According to Acerbi and Clarke, the best that Stockholm in 1799 offered a foreign visitor was la Société, The Society, an exclusive club then housed in a private palace where waiters in livery served excellent but reasonably priced dinners and suppers provided under the management of a Frenchman.10 This aristocratic venue for the male establishment was in 1800 challenged by the moneyed elite, the prominent merchants and manufacturers, who established a new club, Sällskapet, which was distinctly bourgeois. With time the Sällskapet grew quite influential, so the right to enter it was decades later was felt to be a privilege by a Frenchman. In 1800 the Sällskapet contracted Madame Stahre, wife of an innkeeper, for two years to be the manageress of its restaurant. She was followed by a male restaurateur, but in 1804 Madame Büeck took over. Assisted by two maidservants, she should serve dinners and suppers for club members and in addition serve them from eight in the morning to midnight tea, chocolate and bouillon (coffee was forbidden by sumptuary laws). In the early 1830s, the club had a

180  Marjatta Rahikainen male steward and a female cook, who was asked to adhere to Swedish cuisine; at times this position was held by Madame Löfgren, at other times by Mademoiselle Friberg. However, the restaurateurs one after another soon discontinued because it proved impossible to run the restaurant profitably under the terms dictated by the Sällskapet. It made no difference whether the restaurateur was a man or a woman.11 Around the time when Wollstonecraft, Clarke and Acerbi travelled in Scandinavia, the occupations of innkeeper, tavern-keeper and coffee-house keeper were in Sweden about to become female-dominated trades. This development was due to a growing need among women to earn a living, on the one hand, and to the low entrance barrier to such trades, on the other.

Women in the restaurant business The debate on women’s need and right to earn a living was in Sweden launched in the 1750s in a journal article and it would continue until the introduction of freedom of trades in 1846. A major issue was that it was unthinkable that respectable women, let alone women of standing, would enter into the kind of employment which would place them on the same level as women of menial orders who were subject to the obligation to go into service and have a master (employer). For women of standing, earning a living as governess and lady companion was possible, but in many cases not feasible. To earn a living by some form of entrepreneurship or as a self-employed person was met with legal and institutional hindrances. As in most of Europe, widows had more options than unmarried women, yet widows seldom succeeded in maintaining husbands’ businesses. As regards unmarried women, an additional problem was their limited judicial competence, even though on application they could gain full competence. In practice women had – possibly more successfully than underprivileged men – worked their way into many crafts and trades that were in legal terms not open to them.12 Given the increasing numbers of women of standing who never married, this must in many cases have appeared to be the only solution.13 The issue of women’s rights to enter various crafts, trades and occupations was accentuated in Stockholm, which had for some decades suffered from economic and demographic stagnation. Around 1800 acute economic distress was felt even among the middle classes, including governmental and municipal civil servants at lower levels of the hierarchy.14 This gave new political weight to the long-debated issue of women’s rights and opportunities to earn a living. One solution then favoured by decision makers at the Riksdag, the Swedish Estates Assembly, and in Kommerskollegium, the commercial department of the Board of Trade, was to open to women the right on application to make a living as innkeepers (krögerska), coffee-house keepers and the like. Such trades were in legal terms permitted to urban citizens only;

Urban opportunities  181 outside towns and cities only stagecoach stations (gästgiveri) had the right to serve beer and spirits. As early as 1770 carrying on trade as an innkeeper had been opened to impoverished bourgeois men, to widows of civil servants at the lowest level of the hierarchy and other comparable persons in straitened circumstances so that they would be able to earn their living. This turned the trade of innkeeper (traktör) from that of respectable burghers into that of respectable women in need of an occupation for living. The policy adopted by decision makers during the first four decades of the nineteenth century likewise favoured urban middle-class15 women in need, and widows in particular.16 Respectable women making their living as innkeepers or coffee-house keepers should according to then-prevailing policy be in need of income because of their poverty. Therefore, women’s applications for the right to become engaged as innkeeper were subject to means test control by municipal officers at the borough administration. In reality those who obtained the right to keep an inn, a tavern or the like may not always have been widows or single women in need of this particular form of poor relief, but could also have been married women with husbands with incomes.17 Notwithstanding this, the image of women who made their living as innkeepers was somewhat tarnished by the abundant consumption of spirits by men and women frequenting inns. Moreover, women (and men) who made their living by illegal and clandestine distilling and brewing may have also contributed to this unfavourable image.18 In the first decades of the nineteenth century, virtually all innkeepers and tavern-keepers in Stockholm were women and most of them made a meagre living. According to Christine Bladh’s calculations, taxation rolls show that in 1812 about two-thirds of innkeepers (c. 450 women) paid less than 3 riksdaler in tax, one-third (c. 230) paid from 3 to 15 riksdaler, while eight women paid from 20 to 40 riksdaler. Six years later seven of these eight successful women were still in the restaurant business. In four cases of the seven, the occupations of the husband and wife were so intertwined that when the one died, the other was not able to continue alone for long.19 However, three of the successful innkeepers were exceptionally enterprising women. These three women, as analyzed by Christine Bladh, not only improved their own share in the world but also promoted their husband’s position and the prospects of their children. The first one, Anna Maria Arkström (born c. 1762) was the daughter of a tobacco merchant. She inherited after her father the premises in which her mother kept an inn. After her mother’s death in 1789 she assumed management of the inn. She was married to a lieutenant, a chief warden. In 1812 she paid in taxes 40 riksdaler, three years later 61 riksdaler and five years later still 56 riksdaler. She died in 1825 as a propertied and financially solid woman. In 1796 the second successful enterprising women, Maria Björk (born 1766), wife of a servant, was granted a licence to keep an inn. In 1812 when she paid in taxes 40 riksdaler, her husband was granted the title of

182  Marjatta Rahikainen court distiller. Three years later, Maria Björk paid in taxes as much as 70 riksdaler, more than any male innkeeper in Stockholm. In 1817, when she paid 65 riksdaler in taxes, she and her husband purchased a house. She gave up her innkeeper occupation in 1822 and three years later the house was sold. She died in 1834 and her husband a year later. His probate inventory revealed that he had had severe financial problems and had run into debt. The third and most successful female innkeeper, Christina Charlotta Berg (born 1773 or 1776), began as innkeeper in 1798. Her husband was then a valet de chambre, while later in 1812 his title was court distiller. His wife paid that year 30 riksdaler in taxes, three years later 70 riksdaler, in 1819 as much as 97 riksdaler, and ten years later 105 riksdaler. In 1816 they had purchased the premises in which they lived. She died as a wealthy woman in 1834.20 These three were, of course, not the only women who left their mark on the restaurant business. Other such women include Christina Hellström, married to a head waiter, who began with a modest tavern in 1831, but a few years later she was taxed as much as 80 riksdaler for what had become the Hotel du Nord. After her death her daughter assumed management of the restaurant, one of the best in the city.21 Johan Holmberg, the host of Den Gyldene Freden, a legendary restaurant in Stockholm’s Old Town, had by his purchase of the restaurant in 1750 acquired his knowledge in wines in a long apprenticeship under the widow of a rich wine merchant. After Holmberg, his widow took over the wine cellar and ran the business until 1780. Nearly half a century later, in 1825, by the death of the restaurant’s head of wine cellar, his widow Jeanette Chievitz took over the management of the entire restaurant and successfully continued the business until 1848. She also understood the value of good advertising and approached local and foreign customers with an elegant advertisement in Swedish, English and German. Likewise, in Gothenburg a legendary restaurant, Göta Källare, was around that time successfully managed by a woman.22 Although there were institutional restrictions, formal and informal, obstructing women’s undertakings, many enterprising women were capable of overcoming them.

Mademoiselle Falck Swedish female innkeepers and restaurant keepers had their counterparts in Finnish towns and cities. Edward Daniel Clarke’s and Giuseppe Acerbi’s travels in Sweden around the year 1800 extended over the Gulf of Bothnia to the Finnish side of the kingdom. Clarke’s destination was St Petersburg in the east, while Acerbi headed north towards Lapland. Acerbi and his fellow traveller arrived in April 1800 in Uleåborg/Oulu, a seaport on the northeastern shore of the Gulf of Bothnia. They found ‘a tolerable inn’ which may have been the only one in the town. They had to stay in the town longer than planned, but the delay proved most pleasant: ‘Our residence at Uleåborg will ever be pleasing to our recollection’. Their hostess, the innkeeper, had a

Urban opportunities  183 major role in this: ‘Our hostess was labouring from morning to night to supply us with a plentiful table, and to make our situation comfortable in every other respect. She killed calves, pigs and oxen, expressly on our account. The most precious spoils of the sea and rivers were procured for us, and purchased without regard to economy’. Their hostess even endeavoured to vary the meals with different soups. And the pay ‘for this rich and luxurious diet’ and for everything else the two men and their servant consumed during the weeks they stayed at the inn was very reasonable.23 Edward Daniel Clarke left Stockholm for St Petersburg at the end of the year 1799 and after a difficult crossing of the frozen sea arrived in the first days of the year 1800 in the city of Åbo/Turku, on the south-eastern shore of the Gulf of Bothnia. Clarke and his fellow traveller spent the first night at Seipells värdshus, then the largest and best inn in the city.24 The same year the inn was faced with a noteworthy competitor as Mademoiselle Eva Falck established herself as innkeeper at Brinkalahuset, that is, a new upmarket premises by the main square in the vicinity of the university and the cathedral. Eva Falck (1764–1810) had by that time lived for six years in Åbo/Turku.25 She had arrived as a single woman, aged thirty years, from Stockholm where she possibly had carried on trade as an innkeeper or restaurant keeper. Her first year as innkeeper at Brinkalahuset may not have been a success, because in 1801 Anna Sofia Ahlstrand, wife of a wine merchant, ran the inn at Brinkalahuset. However, Eva Falck was soon back. In February 1802 and again in March she had an advertisement in the local newspaper about the services available at her inn Brinkalahuset.26 It offered travellers neat, heated and well-stocked rooms for a day, week or month. In addition to hotel business Eva Falck provided a whole menu of services for society life, such as meals, teas, balls, assemblées and sleigh outings. Her competences also included dinner and banquet catering services for larger groups in the spacious restaurant of Brinkalahuset, which even had a separate lounge for non-smokers.27 The assembly hall of Seipell’s inn had in 1796 served as the venue of a ball in the honour of King Gustav IV Adolf and Queen Fredrika, who visited Åbo/Turku. In July 1802, when the king and the queen again made an official visit to the city, the ball in the honour of the king and queen took place at Brinkalahuset. In terms of practicalities, the ball was arranged by Mademoiselle Eva Falck, the innkeeper of the Brinkala house. The distinguished entourage at Brinkalahuset that evening included Prince William Frederick of Britain, two countesses who were the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, a baron, a count commander-in-chief, a vice-admiral, a major-general, the bishop of Åbo/Turku, the president of the Court of Appeal and two city architects.28 The ball and supper in honour of the king was Eva Falck’s crowning achievement as innkeeper. Whether due to insufficient demand for such first-rate services she offered or to a short-term leasing contract, in November 1803 Eva Falck gave up

184  Marjatta Rahikainen her hotel and restaurant business at Brinkalahuset. Perhaps there were in Åbo/Turku similar problems in making a first-rate restaurant business profitable as there were at the same time in the restaurant of the Sällskapet in Stockholm. In any case Eva Falck changed address frequently while she continued her business as innkeeper. In November 1806 she had a small announcement in the local newspaper that she served meals for customers at Colonel Pinello’s house, which was located at quite a respectable location; yet her business must have been of small scale, since she employed just one servant girl. In autumn 1807 she announced that she had relocated her services to a merchant’s house where she daily served breakfast, lunch and dinner. The business now went better, since she employed two servant girls and a kinswoman.29 In 1808, as a subordinate stage in the Napoleonic Wars, Russian troops occupied the Finnish provinces of the Kingdom of Sweden. Billeting officers and troops indicated increasing numbers of customers in taverns, inns and restaurants. Indeed in 1808 and 1809 Eva Falck’s businesses went so well that she leased an entire house and employed four female servants. She was also able to loan money to three persons at a 6 per cent interest rate. When she died in 1810, aged forty-six years, she had a stable economic position, as witnessed by her probate inventory. Likewise, her funeral arrangements indicated that she had died as a respectable citizen.30 How did Eva Falck succeed in building up a profitable restaurant business at a time when making a living as innkeeper was thought to be a form of relief for respectable women in straitened circumstances? Unfortunately, we know very little of her; thus, much remains hypothetical. The only title for her in contemporary documents was mamsell, Mademoiselle. The title connotes that she was of bourgeois origin, but the fact that she made her living as innkeeper must be deduced from other sources: from the newspaper feature about the ball in 1802 and half a dozen smaller newspaper announcements or advertisements as well as from her probate inventory. It included a goodly number of dram glasses, tables, chairs, candlesticks and candle brackets, pictures in gold-plated frames, plus a looking-glass and a pipe rack. A respectable single woman would have no use for such items unless she was an innkeeper.31 We may take as a proof of her business skills that in 1794 Eva Falck had left Stockholm for Åbo/Turku. As mentioned above, Stockholm was at that time a stagnating city and as a result of economic distress, many more women now tried to make their living by serving or selling food and drink. Moreover, the murder of King Gustav III at the opera in 1792 must have dampened society life, while Gustav IV Adolf was far from capable of upholding such animated public life that had characterized his father’s policy. In 1799 Edward Daniel Clarke felt the stiff atmosphere. With tougher competition among innkeepers and an apathetic public life, the prospects in Stockholm must have appeared unfavourable. At the same time in Åbo/Turku on the other side of the Gulf of Bothnia, the population was

Urban opportunities  185 auspiciously increasing and many women were active and respected actors in economic life. Moreover, there was a Latin school and the university, in other words some 500 youngsters and young men likely to visit inns and taverns.32 Whether Eva Falck was met with hardships by her settling in Åbo/ Turku is not known. In any case she overcame them and proved to be a venturesome but proficient enterpriser.

Innkeeper Cajsa Wahllund The war in 1808–1809 between Sweden and Russia was a minor incident compared with what was going on elsewhere in Europe, but from the Scandinavian perspective its outcomes were noteworthy. In 1809 Sweden had to cede its Finnish provinces to the Russian Empire and in the same year Emperor Alexander I made the newly conquered area into the Grand Duchy of Finland33 with Åbo/Turku as its capital. The city’s fresh status as capital opened new prospects for ambitious men in domestic and imperial administration and new opportunities for men and women in the field of business. In Stockholm Cajsa (Catharina) Wahllund34 (1771–1843) grasped the opportunity. In 1810 she left Stockholm for Åbo/Turku where she seems first to have made her living as a housekeeper. In her application to the body of borough administrators of Åbo/Turku in March 1812 for opening an eating house for visitors, Cajsa Wahllund used as an occupational title, ‘housekeeper’ (hushållerska).35 The permission was granted and less than a month later she announced in the local newspaper the opening of her eating house. The beginning was modest, but soon enough, in October 1813, she was the directress of Societetshuset, the city’s fine new assembly hall and restaurant. Three years later, in 1816, she took over the best inn in the town, Seipells värdshus, while at the same time running a restaurant in the fashionable spa of Nådendal/Naantali, a small seashore town nearby.36 In January 1817 her name again appeared in the minutes of the body of borough administrators, this time together with two male innkeepers. All three had to be present at the meeting of the administrators. The town clerk that kept the minutes of the meeting had given Cajsa Wahllund the title ‘mamsell’, but had later crossed it out and replaced it with ‘innkeeper’ (värdshushållerska). In the meeting ten days later the clerk tried to use the Swedish equivalent of demoiselle, ‘jungfru’, but this was also crossed out and replaced with ‘innkeeper’.37 An occupational title for a woman other than servant was at that time extremely rare; thus, it must have been Cajsa Wahllund herself who had insisted that the town clerk use her professional title. The city of Åbo/Turku remained the capital just for three years. In 1812 Helsingfors/Helsinki was made the new capital by Emperor Alexander I. It was at that time a minor seaport, ruled by wealthy merchants and as in Åbo/Turku, many women were active and respected actors in its economic

186  Marjatta Rahikainen life;38 accordingly the best inn of the town, Rådhuskällaren, in the basement of the town hall, was managed by a Madame Lönnquist.39 The entire body of governmental civil servants and officeholders, including the members of the ruling noblesse de robe, was ordered to move from Åbo/Turku to the new capital by the latest in autumn 1819. Businesswoman as she was, Cajsa Wahllund followed her chief body of customers to Helsingfors/Helsinki. She was at that time aged nearly fifty years (Figure 9.1). For her first eight years in Helsingfors/Helsinki, Cajsa Wahllund ran an elegant little hotel-restaurant located in the very centre of the city, by the central square still under construction. Since her customers both in the hotel and in the restaurant included members of the very top of the ruling noblesse de robe, they had probably been her customers already in Åbo/Turku. In 1820 Cajsa Wahllund applied for the right to include a billiard room in her hotel, a novelty that would attract upper-class men. When granting the permission, the body of borough administrators of Helsingfors/Helsinki used with her name the title ‘innkeeper’; thus, right from the beginning she had made it clear that she was other than one of the widows permitted to run small coffee shops as a form of respectable poor relief. By 1822 she had installed in her hotel a club room where the male members of the ‘Dance and Club Society’ and those of the ‘Reading Society’ held their meetings. Her reputation continued to be irreproachable, since her services were used even by Countess Steinheil, wife of the governor general, the emperor’s representative in Finland. In 1827 the first theatre building was founded in Helsingfors/Helsinki and Cajsa Wahllund extended her business by running the buffet service in the theatre. In addition, the visiting companies of actors and actresses stayed in her hotel.40 The entertainment world of Helsingfors/Helsinki gained new vigour in 1828 with the relocation of the university from Åbo/Turku. The social composition of the university students had by then grown more elitist than it had been at the turn of the century and this development would continue in Helsingfors/Helsinki for decades to come.41 This indicated wellborn young men with money to spend in inns and restaurants. Thus, the same year Cajsa Wahllund established her second restaurant, Emilienburg, just outside the city centre and university students who had been her customers already in Åbo/Turku soon found their way to her new restaurant in Helsingfors/Helsinki.42 University students of good breed had their tea, lunches and dinners at Emilienburg and went there with friends to bowl and celebrate festival days.43 In April 1832 Cajsa Wahllund’s Emilienburg was the venue of a grand gala dinner that the commanding military officers and civil officers arranged to honour the officers of the Guards battalion returning from war. Her first restaurant in the city centre continued to be visited by aristocratic customers and moneyed interests held meetings there. In 1831 she took over her male competitor’s hotel-restaurant in the centre and thus enlarged her business.44 In the spring of 1829 Cajsa Wahllund was responsible for the catering of the Russian emperor and his entourage, but the imperial visit was called off, after which she sold cheaply the luxurious ingredients and champagne

Urban opportunities  187 bottles to the city’s inhabitants. A slight compensation was that when the new Russian Governor General, Prince A.S. Menshikov took his office in Helsingfors/Helsinki (Gel’singfors) in January 1832, Cajsa Wahllund treated the fine retinue with a grand banquet. A contemporary wrote in a letter that the courses were many and well cooked, and ‘Mamsell Wahlund’ received all the credit for the banquet.45

Figure 9.1 Portrait of hotel and restaurant keeper Cajsa (Catharina) Wahllund (1771–1843). The National Museum of Finland, Helsinki. Unknown artist. Photo: Jan Lindroth. She and her restaurant Kaisaniemi/Kajsaniemi (‘Cajsa headland’) in Helsinki/Helsingfors became legendary in her lifetime. Her name was immortalized on the city map of Helsinki/ Helsingfors, as the surrounding park would be named after her restaurant.

188  Marjatta Rahikainen Cajsa Wahllund did not stop there. In 1837 she built a new restaurant Kajsaniemi (‘Cajsa headland’) in a park that had just been transformed from a private park into a public promenade park, called Society Garden, a modest imitation of the Vauxhall Gardens. Cajsa Wahllund took on lease the park and added to it a pool with swans and a bowling alley. The menus of the restaurant were regularly announced in the local newspaper and they included both plain food and such luxuries as fresh oysters and turtle soup.46 In the restaurant she had waitresses, which was a novelty in Helsingfors/Helsinki. As witnessed by cafés in post-Napoleonic Paris, pretty women serving guests attracted male guests.47 In Helsingfors/Helsinki waitresses should attract male spa guests to Kajsaniemi. The new spa of Helsingfors/Helsinki, known as Brunnshuset, was established in 1838, and was planned to attract wealthy Russians from St Petersburg and Baltic Germans from Reval/Tallinn. Cajsa Wahllund was asked to manage the spa restaurant, which she did for its first year. She had taken care of the future of her business by leaving in her last will her restaurant to her long-time business partner Emilie Myhrman.48 After Cajsa Wahllund’s death, university students had a commemoration dinner of sixteen courses in her honour at Kajsaniemi.49 Cajsa Wahllund was characterized as unpretentious, but evidently she was, nonetheless, an impressive personality. Professor Yakov Grot, who often visited the Society Garden and the spa, wrote in 1840 to the Russian public about the generous hospitality ‘Mamsell Wahllund’ showed to the guests; she took care of them ‘as parents of their children’.50 The French writer Xavier Marmier, who visited Helsingfors/Helsinki in 1842, praised her café-restaurant Kajsaniemi in Revue des Deux Mondes. It was ‘une jolie villa’, built by ‘une brave femme’ who kind-heartedly let her guests in need have their meals free of charge. Although Marmier let her remain unnamed, the readers of local newspapers that cited Marmier could easily identify her.51 Ten years after Cajsa Wahllund’s death, a local newspaper wrote that during her time even respectable women could visit the café in the Society Garden without male company; small boys might go and buy a bottle of mead and young men could frequent the café-restaurant without being considered intemperate. A general opinion was that around her café-restaurant floated an air of innocence.52 Her principal male competitors in the local restaurant business were equally successful and famous, but none of them became equally legendary and none of them had their name immortalized on the city map as she did: her restaurant Kajsaniemi would provide the name for the surrounding park. Cajsa Wahllund was a professional enterpriser who managed to run her hotel and restaurants business for three decades without discrediting herself or the profession.

Madame Astenius In 1820, about the time when Cajsa Wahllund started as innkeeper in Helsingfors/Helsinki, Mrs Hedvig Astenius, the saddle-maker’s wife in

Urban opportunities  189 Borgå/Porvoo, gave birth to a son whose godparents included at least five noblemen, two with wives; the local postmaster; a judge-advocate and a notary. As her biographer wrote, the best explanation offered for such distinguished godparents for a son of a master saddler is that the godfathers were regular guests at Mrs Astenius’s inn.53 Hedvig Astenius, née Sjöström (1783–1860), was born as an illegitimate daughter to a woman at the bottom of the social hierarchy. At the age of fifteen she became employed as a domestic servant. Her marriage to a journeyman saddler in 1804 was not yet a step up the social ladder, but five years later, in 1809, her husband was a master saddler and house-owner.54 It is not known when exactly Hedvig Astenius, now the wife of a solid master craftsman, began her life as an innkeeper. Perhaps she had the idea in 1809 when Emperor Alexander I was fêted in Borgå/Porvoo as the new sovereign and the town was crammed with distinguished visitors.55 In any case her inn was in the 1830s and 1840s considered the best inn in Borgå/Porvoo. Located about one day’s travel from Helsingfors/Helsinki, the inn hosted as regular customers virtually all those who travelled on business or leisure to and from St Petersburg, among them Professor Yakov Grot.56 Mrs Astenius’s inn also served as the venue for the local male establishment, which was a kind of small-town adaptation of the club Sällskapet in Stockholm. In June 1840 Mrs Astenius was responsible for catering at her inn for a grand gentlemen’s brunch in memory of King Gustav III’s victory over the Russian fleet at the Battle of Björkö at Svensksund in 1790.57 It is no wonder then that her son did not follow his father in the saddler’s workshop but rather chose to join his mother in the restaurant business. When the father died of consumption in the spring of 1839, the son had already left for St Petersburg to be trained as confectioner; that was the destination of all ambitious young men who wished to polish their skills. The son returned from St Petersburg in 1846, the zenith year in the history of his mother’s inn. In May 1846 Mrs Astenius happily presented to Professor Grot the construction works of the new premises for the inn that she now called hotel, while Grot now began to call her Madame Astenius.58 The opening of the new Hôtel de la Russie took place in October 1846 with a grand charity ball. An advertisement for the new hotel in the local newspaper, signed ‘Hedvig Astenius & Son’, also bore witness to new style by introducing the word ‘restauration’, soon to be spelled ‘restaurant’.59 The change from an inn to a hotel-restaurant was evidence of new business ideas and personnel that included a waiter, menus and live music in the restaurant, as well as considered efforts to attract ladies into the new hotel-restaurant. It now arranged balls, masquerades and subscribed assemblées, announced in the newspaper. The efforts bore fruit when a baroness and some other ladies attended the dinner at Martinmas fête on the 10 November 1846. However, the new style that was introduced by the son who had in St Petersburg adopted grand manners proved too grand for this small town. In 1849 the hotel-restaurant still appeared successful, with its five maidservants, two male hands and a waiter, but the newly established

190  Marjatta Rahikainen Societetshus, a clubhouse and assembly hall, proved a superior competitor.60 Therefore, towards the end of her life Hedvig Astenius faced economic problems.61 Her marriage to a craftsman who gained a burgher’s status no doubt contributed to her remarkable social ascent to respectable businesswoman and later the new business ideas that her son brought with him from St Petersburg crowned for a moment her achievement. Nevertheless, Hedvig Astenius was a self-made woman whose humble birth was revealed only by her poor writing skills.

Obliging hostesses The story of proficient female innkeepers could be extended. In 1800 in Tallinn (Reval), more than a third of the 150 tavern-keepers and innkeepers were women.62 Twenty years later, when upmarket travelling was recovering from the Napoleonic Wars, Reval/Tallinn had six coffee-house confectionaries, two of them managed by women, Madame Cavietzel and Madame Gilly. Two decades later, in 1843, the Adress-Buch für das Gouvernement Ehstlands knew of three women who offered services for visitors in Reval/ Tallinn: widow Freiberg ran a Badanstalt, public baths, widow Seywang a Conditorei (a café-confectionary) and widow Meyer a Gasthaus, an inn.63 In 1848, at the time when travelling in continental Europe was again unsafe because of political unrest, the Russian Prince Emmanuel Galitzin preferred the Grand Duchy of Finland, an orderly peripheral country. His experiences of inns and innkeepers were similar to those of Acerbi in 1800: in small towns and stagecoach stations the voyager found nice little inns whose hostesses did their best to make the guests feel comfortable. Prince Galitzin’s example inspired a Frenchman to take the same route a few years later.64 The evidence is scanty but suggests that in towns and cities and at stagecoach stations in the northern Baltic sphere, visitors may have found enterprising women who provided coffee, tea, meals, accommodation, bath, hospitality and, language permitting, friendly words. They were, as a rule, respectable women; therefore, contemporary documents seldom give more information about them than their names and marital status. They may not have enjoyed more education than having been taught the basics of Lutheran religion and to read, write and do basic arithmetic. Their professional skills they probably learned by doing, perhaps under the guidance of someone more skilled and knowledgeable, while the rest they may have learned by themselves. Today we would characterize them as skilled selfemployed women, while the few female hotel and restaurant keepers we know more about were professional businesswomen.

Women’s entrepreneurship In Europe in the field of economy, the end of old order was a long-term process; there was no spectacular revolution as in the field of politics. One

Urban opportunities  191 line in the long-term transition consisted of the stepwise dwindling of established privileges and monopolies. This process was generally supported by legislatures, but women’s endeavours to earn their living manifestly contributed to it.65 If women more successfully than underprivileged men worked their way into many crafts and trades that in legal terms were not open to them, this suggests that enterprising women’s role in the transition may have been more significant than it appears in standard historical writing. In the nineteenth century, respectable women were engaged in various service trades that we today would characterize as consumer services: they ran shops, eating houses, inns, cafés, restaurants, laundries and bathing facilities, while the more educated of them may have headed private schools. The moneyed establishment, Wirtschaftsbürgertum, tended to disregard the economic potential of such consumer services. The educated establishment, Bildungsbürgertum, tended to hold petty bourgeoisie in contempt in general and those selling services in particular. To contemporaries service businesses were associated with subservience. To the nineteenth-century establishment, the concept ‘bourgeois women’, Bürgerinnen, did not include businesswomen. It seems to me that as regards middle-class women running businesses in person, nineteenth-century attitudes lingered in historical writing. In the nineteenth century, in the shadow of the Industrial Revolution and the windfall profits gained in manufacturing, service trades and consumer services in particular appeared secondary. As long as Europe was the manufacturer of the world, such service trades were made light of in historical writing too. Only in the late twentieth century, when in Europe services were prevailing over manufacturing, did the nineteenth-century consumer services and the women who provided them begin to attract historical writing.

Notes 1 Peter Clark, European Cities and Towns, 400–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 155–157, 191–199, 310–315; Hannah Greig, The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 69–98; Tammy M. Proctor, ‘Home and Away: Popular Culture and Leisure’, in The Routledge History of Women in Europe Since 1700, ed. Deborah Simonton (London & New York: Routledge, 2007), 299–340; Friedrich Rauers, Kulturgeschichte der Gaststätte, Teil 2 (Berlin: Alfred Metzner, 1941), 933–954; Jean-Luc Pinol, Le monde des villes au XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1991), 11–50. 2 Bürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert:Deutschland im europäischen Vergleich: eine Auswahl. Bd 2, Wirtschaftsbürger und Bildungsbürger, ed. Jürgen Kocka (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995). For further German references, see page 260, note 12, in this volume. 3 Heater Shore, ‘ “The Reckoning”: Disorderly Women, Informing Constables and the Westminster Justices, 1727–33’, Social History 34:4 (2009), 409–427; Thomas Mania, ‘Weißte was – ‘nen Schnaps?’: Die Gaststätte als Kommunikationszentrum (Münster: Waxmann, 1997), 30–34, 50–53; Walter Weber, ‘Von Wirtshäusern, Reisenden und Literaten – Eine kleine Chronique scandaleuse des Wirtshauslebens’, in Reisekultur: Von der Pilgerfahrt zum modernen Tourismus,

192  Marjatta Rahikainen eds. Hermann Bausinger, Klaus Beyrer & Gottfrid Korff (München: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1991), 82–90; Beat Kümin & B. Ann Tlusty ‘The World of the Tavern: An Introduction’, in The World of the Tavern: Public Houses in Early Modern Europe, eds. Beat Kümin & B. Ann Tlusty (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 3–11; Beat Kümin, ‘Public Houses and Their Patrons in Early Modern Europe’, in The World of the Tavern, 44–62. 4 Hans Heiss, ‘Selbständigkeit bis auf Widerruf? Zur Rolle von Gastwirtinnen bis 1914’, in Unternehmerinnen: Geschichte & Gegenwart selbständiger Er­ werbstätichkeit von Frauen, eds. Irene Bandhauer-Schöffmann & Regine Bendl (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000), 49–87. 5 W. Scott Haine, The World of the Paris Café: Sociability Among the French Working Class, 1789–1914 (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1996), 7–17, 180–186; Ulla Heise, Kaffee und Kaffeehaus: Eine Kulturgeschichte (Hildesheim: Olms Presse, 1987), 93–97, 127–128; Klaus Thiele-Dohrmann, Europäische Kaffeehauskultur (München & Zürich: Piper, 1999), 25, 103, 211– 215, 225, 231. 6 For women’s entrepreneurship, see e.g. Christina de Bellaigue, Educating Women: Schooling and Identity in England and France, 1800–1867 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 75–100; Béatrice Craig, ‘Where Have All the Businesswomen Gone? Images and Reality in the Life of Nineteenth-century Middle-class Women in Northern France’, in Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres, eds. Robert Beachy, Béatrice Craig & Alastair Owens (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 52–66; Angel KwolekFolland, Incorporating Women: A History of Women and Business in the United States (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 4–15, 21; Nicola Phillips, Women in Business, 1700–1850 (Woodbridge & Rochester: The Boydell Press, 2006); Deborah Simonton, ‘Claiming Their Place in the Corporate Community: Women’s Identity in Eighteenth-Century Towns’, in The Invisible Woman: Aspects of Women’s Work in Eighteenth-Century Britain, eds. Isabelle Baudino, Jacques Carré & Cécile Révauger (Aldershot & Burlington: Ashgate, 2005), 101–116. 7 Per Hartmann, Svenskt gästgiveri genom tiderna (Stockholm: Hans O. Boquist, 1947), 67–68, 85–98; Per Hartmann, Hotellens kulturhistoria i Västerlandet (Stockholm: Mimer, 1983), 103–104, 156. 8 Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark (Fontwell: Centaur, 1970 [1796]), 16–17. 9 Joseph [Giuseppe] Acerbi, Travels Through Sweden, Finland, and Lapland to the North Cape in the Years 1798 and 1799, Vol. 1 (London: Joseph Mawman, 1802), 32. 10 Acerbi, Travels Through Sweden, Finland, and Lapland, 38–39, 47, 80–81; Edward Daniel Clarke, Travels in Various Countries of Scandinavia: Including Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Lapland and Finland: Part Third, Scandinavia, Section the Second (London: T. Cadell, 1823), 228–229; Claës Lundin, Sällskapet 1800–1900: Historisk skildring (Stockholm, 1900), 4–8. 11 Lundin, Sällskapet 1800–1900, 10–17, 27–36, 43, 51–53, 87–96, 167; Claës Lundin, Stockholm och stockholmare: Minnen från en resa i Sverige, del I (Stockholm: Oscar L. Lamm, 1869), 39–42. 12 Gunnar Qvist, Kvinnofrågan i Sverige 1809–1846: Studier rörande kvinnans näringsfrihet inom de borgerliga yrkena (Göteborg: Akademiförlaget-Gumperts, 1960), 44–69, 279–280; Tom Söderberg, Två sekel svensk medelklass: Från gustaviansk tid till nutid (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1972), 148–156; Christine Bladh, ‘Kvinna med eget företag – från 1700-talets mitt till 1800-talets slut’, in Mot halva makten: Elva historiska essäer om kvinnors strategier och mäns motstånd. SOU 1997:113, ed. Ingrid Hagman (Stockholm: Arbetsmarknadsdepartementet, 1997), 127–142. 13 Sten Carlsson, Fröknar, mamseller, jungfrur och pigor: Ogifta kvinnor inom det svenska ståndssamhället (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1977), 26–62;

Urban opportunities  193 Iréne Artæus, Kvinnorna som blev över: Ensamstående stadskvinnor under 1800-talets första hälft – fallet Västerås: Studia Historica Upsaliensia 170 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1992), 51–55, 139–146, 160–162. 14 Johan Söderberg, Ulf Jonsson & Christer Persson, A Stagnating Metropolis: The Economy and Demography of Stockholm, 1750–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 15 The Swedish equivalent to the term ‘middle class’, medelklass, appeared in print for the first time in 1792, was used as a political catchword in 1800 and gained more general currency by the 1830s. Sten Carlsson, Ståndssamhälle och stånds­ personer 1700–1865 (Lund: Gleerup, 1949), 259–260, 273; Artæus, Kvinnorna som blev över, 75–77. 16 Qvist, Kvinnofrågan i Sverige, 46, 216–217, 250–255, 273–279¸ Anita Göransson, ‘Gender and Property Rights: Capital, Kin, and Owner Influence in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Sweden’, Business History 35:2 (1993), 11–32. 17 Artæus, Kvinnorna som blev över, 155–158; Iréne Artæus, Krognäringen som försörjningsalternativ för kvinnor (Västerås: Mälardalens högskola, 1999); Christine Lindquist, ‘Kvinnor i tvåsörjarfamiljen: Gifta krögerskor och mång­ lerskor i Stockholm under första delen av 1800-talet’, in Manliga strukturer och kvinnliga strategier: En bok till Gunhild Kyle December 1987, eds. Birgit Sawyer & Anita Göransson (Göteborg: Göteborgs universitet, Historiska institutionen, 1987), 136–142. 18 Christine Bladh, ‘Kvinnors dubbla beroende av sprit: Beskänkta kvinnor och kvinnor med utskänkning i Stockholm 1812–1816’, in Kvinnor och män som aktörer och klienter, eds. Christine Bladh, Elisabet Cedersund & Jan-Erik Hagberg (Stockholm: Nerenius & Santérus, 1997), 11–40; Anne-Marie Lenander Fällström, ‘Kvinnor i lokalhistoriskt perspektiv: Levnadsvillkor i Örebro vid 1600-talets mitt’, in Manliga strukturer och kvinnliga strategier, 108–119. 19 Among the poorest only a third and among the second poorest two-fifths were still innkeepers six year later. Bladh, ‘Kvinnors dubbla beroende av sprit’. 20 Ibid. 21 Christine Bladh, ‘The Guild System and Female Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship as a Survival Strategy for Women in Pre-industrial Stockholm’, in Aspects of Women’s Entrepreneurship (Stockholm: NUTEK, 1996), 54. 22 Henrik Alm, Källaren Den Gyldene Freden, grundad 1722 (Stockholm: 1947), 21–25; C.R.A. Fredberg, Hôtel Göta Källare 1812–1912 (Göteborg: 1912), 21. 23 Acerbi, Travels through Sweden, Finland, and Lapland, 254, 275, 278. 24 Clarke, Travels in Various Countries of Scandinavia, 385–390. Clarke misread the name as ‘Scippell’. 25 For a short biography, see Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, ‘Falck, Eva (1764–1810): Traktör, värdshusidkare’, in Biografiskt lexikon för Finland 1: Svenska tiden (Helsingfors & Stockholm: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland & Atlantis, 2008), 208–210. 26 Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, ‘Mamselli Falckin tarina eli kaupunkihistorian tutkimaton sukupuoli’, in Ihmiset ovat kaupunki: Turun Historiallinen Arkisto 53 (Turku: Turun Historiallinen Yhdistys, 1999), 65–78. 27 Vainio-Korhonen, ‘Mamselli Falckin tarina’. 28 Åbo Tidning, 31 July 1802. 29 Åbo Tidning, 5 November 1806, 14 October 1807. 30 Vainio-Korhonen, ‘Mamselli Falckin tarina’. 31 Ibid. 32 Oscar Nikula, Åbo stads historia 1721–1809 [two volumes] (Åbo: Åbo stad, 1972), 262–265, 287–288, 641–654, 685; Kaarlo Wirilander, Herrskapsfolk: Ståndspersoner i Finland 1721–1870 (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1982), Bi­laga 31. 33 Velikoe Knyazhestvo Finlyandskoe.

194  Marjatta Rahikainen 4 Christina Catharina Wahllund (the spelling of her name varied). 3 35 Åbo stadsarkiv (Åbo/Turku City Archives), AIa: 30, Magistraten i Åbo protokoll, 11.3.1812, § 8. 36 Yrjö Soini, Vieraanvaraisuus ammattina, I (Helsinki: Otava, 1963), 317–318; Oscar Nikula, Åbo stads historia 1809–1856 (Åbo: Åbo stad, 1973), 501–503. 37 Åbo stadsarkiv, AIa:35, Magistraten in Åbo protokoll, 15.1., 18.1., 25.1., 25.10., 27.10.1817. 38 Jessica Parland-von Essen, Affärer, allianser, anseende: Konsten att tillhöra eliten i Helsingfors ca 1740–1820 (Helsingfors: Schildts, 2010), 41, 48, 55–56, 67–68. 39 Ester-Margaret von Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1812– 1827 med en historisk översikt (Helsingfors: Söderström, 1943), 113, 160. 40 Ibid., 243–244, 284–285, 298, 308, 334, 347, 440. 41 Wirilander, Herrskapsfolk, 314–318, Bilaga 31. 42 Emilienburg became known as ‘Sparbanken’ (‘Savings bank’), because so much of university students’ money ended there. 43 Magnus von Wright, Dagbok 1824–1834 (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1996 [1831–1834]), 248, 250, 256, 330 and passim. 44 Ester-Margaret von Frenckell, Offentliga nöjen och privata i Helsingfors 1827– 1832 (Helsingfors: Söderström, 1947), 92, 98, 161, 174, 192–193, 206, 210– 211, 267–268. 45 Ibid., 250–251. 46 E.g. Helsingfors Tidningar, 25 April 1840, 24 November 1841, 25 January 1842. 47 Haine, The World of the Paris Café, 183–185. See also Antoni Mączak, Travel in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003 [1995]), 144. 48 Soini, Vieraanvaraisuus ammattina, 395–403. 49 Helsingfors Tidningar, 2 December 1843. 50 Ya. K. Grot, ‘Gel’singfors” ’, Sovremennik” 2 (1840), 5–82, quotation 19. Grot spelled in Russian ‘Mamsel Vàlund’; L. Byckling, ‘Yakov Grot and Culture in Helsinki: Theatre and Entertainments in the 1840s – 50s’, The Philosophical Age: Almanac/Filosofskii vek: Al’manax 38 (St. Petersburg & Helsinki: St. Petersburg Centre for the History of Ideas, 2012), 195–213. 51 X. Marmier, ‘La Russie en 1842’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 4ème série, tome 32 (1842), 701–755, quotation 717; Borgå Tidning, 5 April 1842; Helsingfors Tidningar, 12 April 1842. 52 Morgonbladet, 28 September 1854; Helsingfors Tidningar, 30 September 1854. 53 Gunnar Mårtenson, Fru Astenii värdshus: Bilder från Runebergstidens Borgå (Helsingfors: Holger Schildts, 1942), 21–22. 54 Ibid. 55 In 1842 she advertised for sale a portrait of Emperor Alexander I, oil painting in gold-plated frame. Borgå Tidning, 16 November 1842. 56 Perepiska Ya. K. Grota s” P. A. Pletnevym”; Tom” II, ed. K. Ya. Grota (S.Peterburg, 1896), 168, 311–312. Swedish edition (abbreviated): Utdrag ur J. Grots brevväxling med P. Pletnjov, II (Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet, 1915), 43–44, 83–84. 57 Mårtenson, Fru Astenii värdshus, 32–35; Borgå Tidning, 6 June 1840. 58 Perepiska Ya. K. Grota, 763; Utdrag ur J. Grots brevväxling, 160; Mårtenson, Fru Astenii värdshus, 22–42. 59 Borgå Tidning, 11–22 July 1846, 7–31 October 1846, 16 December 1846, 4 September 1847. 60 Mårtenson, Fru Astenii värdshus, 32–37, 45–55; Perepiska Ya. K. Grota s” P. A. Pletnevym”; Tom” III, ed. K. Ya. Grota (S.-Peterburg: 18[9]6), 68; Utdrag ur J. Grots brevväxling, 224. 61 Borgå Tidning, 28 February 1857, 19 September 1857.

Urban opportunities  195 62 In all 62 women: 54 widows, seven Demoiselles/Mademoiselles and one Madame. Tallinna Linna-arhiiv (Tallinn City Archives), Tallinna magistrat, Fond 230, BK 33, Inhaber der Krüge und Wirtshäuser 1800. 63 Valdeko Vende, Tallinna kohvikud (Tallinn: 1996), 8–11; Heinrich Laaktman, Allgemeines Adress-Buch für das Gouvernement Ehstlands (Reval: Lindfors, 1843), 96–98. 64 Emmanuel Galitzin, La Finlande: notes recueillies en 1848 pendant une excursion de Saint-Pétersbourg à Torneo (Paris: Bertrand, 1852); Tome 1, 267–268, 355–357; Tome 2, 18–21, 52–53, 104, 133–134; L. Morel-Fatio, Paysages du nord (Paris: A. Courcier, 1856 [faximile 2001]), 55–79. 65 For empirical cases, see e.g. Solveig Fagerlund, Handel och Vandel: Vardagslivets sociala struktur ur ett kvinnoperspektiv, Helsingborg ca 1680–1709 (Lund: Historiska institutionen vid Lunds universitet, 2002), 72–123; Elizabeth Musgrave, ‘Women and the Craft Guilds in Eighteenth-century Nantes’, in The Artisan and the European Town, 1500–1900’, ed. Geoffrey Crossick (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 151–171; Daniel A. Rabuzzi, ‘Women Merchants in Eighteenth-Century Northern Germany: The Case of Stralsund, 1750–1830’, Central European History 28:4 (1995), 435–456; Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, ‘Handicrafts as Professions and Sources of Income in Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Turku (Åbo)’, Scandinavian Economic History Review 48:1 (2000), 40–63.

10 Desirable qualifications and undesirable behaviour Teachers in Swedish schools for poor children, c. 1780–1820 Åsa Karlsson Sjögren In May 1791, the county governor in Uppsala announced that the Royal Patriotic Society had awarded Mrs Almgren, the schoolmistress of the schools for poor children (Läse- och arbetsskolan), a ‘sign of distinction, consisting of a double silver necklace with an attached medallion’. The sign of distinction was given ‘for her hard work with teaching the children for several years’.1 The schoolmistress Almgren worked in one of the many schools for poor children that were operating in Swedish towns at the time. When she was employed in 1784, she was referred to as one of two ‘good-tempered elderly women’ in the school board’s minutes. Obviously Mrs Almgren had a wider competence than just being ‘good-tempered’. It is her and other teachers’ qualities and competences that are analyzed in this essay. The aim is to investigate some different urban schools for poor children around the year 1800 with special focus on the male and female teachers that were working in them. The teaching profession is a clear example of a job that is, and has been, open to both women and men. The profession is extensive, and there have been constant renegotiations and redefinitions of what qualities and knowledge are assumed to be required for good teachers and how these are valued, not least on the basis of the teacher’s gender. This was particularly true during the feminization of the profession in late nineteenth-century Sweden, when a tremendous number of women received professional training and became teachers in the expanding elementary school system, not least as junior schoolteachers.2 The teachers of this study worked in a very different school system than exists today. In early modern Sweden, with a Lutheran state church and the emergence of an absolutist state, the role of formal education was foremost to produce clergy and civil servants for the expanding state bureaucracy. Beside this formal school system, other kinds of schools and education existed, both among the elites and lower social groups of society. The formally educated teachers were all male, but both men and women could earn their living teaching children in many other areas, including as private teachers and in schools for poor children. In this chapter, I analyze how the teachers in schools for poor children were described, what qualities and experiences were of the greatest

198  Åsa Karlsson Sjögren importance and possible gender differences, how the teachers succeeded, the scope of their activities and how the school boards dealt with unsuccessful teachers. The teachers who worked in these schools could hardly be categorized as professionals in a sociological sense.3 They lacked formal education, and their social position seems most often to have been low. However, to be a successful teacher, certain qualities and skills were requested, skills that could be obtained in other ways than through formal education. The concept of ‘pedagogical content knowledge’, as introduced by Lee S Shulman, captures the specific kind of knowledge that a good teacher needs – that she or he not only needs to have a good grasp of the subject but also of the instruction of the subject.4 In modern schools, the teachers of course have learned these skills through institutionalized higher education for teachers, but they have also developed their professional skills through experience and practice, some of them more successfully than others. In the schools of this study, some of the teachers had a good grasp of the subjects as well as knowledge on how to instruct the pupils, while others did not. One skill that became more evident by the turn of the century 1800 was the ability to write and the ability to teach pupils how to do it as well. The knowledge of writing had both gender and social implications during this time, but there have not been any detailed studies of whether eighteenthcentury women in Swedish towns could write or not. Previous research has presumed that they could not. However, as Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen shows in her study of midwives, there were actually women who had such skills. During the eighteenth century, the profession of midwifery became more closely connected to literacy, and writing abilities became more evident. From 1777 onwards, there was a demand for being able to both read and write for those women who applied to be accepted as students of the state-controlled education of midwives. There was a wide variety in what was considered being able to write, and younger applicants seem to have been more likely to know how to write fluently than older applicants. Vainio-Korhonen shows that most of the midwife students came from urban areas and were wives or widows of burghers or civil servants. Some of the midwife students came from lower social strata as they were married to crofters, sailors or soldiers. Of these women, some nevertheless had a higher social background; for example, two women married sailors when they became pregnant, and one of these was the daughter of a merchant and the other was the daughter of a public prosecutor. Vainio-Korhonen’s results indicate that it was quite common that wives, widows and daughters of burghers and civil servants could write passably by the end of the eighteenth century, and even some women of the lower strata in towns had appropriated the knowledge of writing by different means.5 This essay adds new knowledge of urban women’s literacy, as well as the spread of writing skills among children of the lowest social groups in towns. Previous research has discussed the role of schools for poor children in society, not least as a way for the local authorities to prevent begging.6 The schools were quite often founded on an economic basis emanating from

Desirable qualifications  199 individual donors and through initiatives from various charitable societies. The schools were a way of taking poor children off the streets and teaching them important skills as well as basic knowledge in reading and Christianity. The parents or foster-parents saw such schools as a way to support their children, and the schools for these poor children could be characterized as a kind of substitute for a functioning home, where children would normally learn necessary skills from their parents. Recurrent parish catechetical meetings in Sweden led to a relatively high degree of reading skills among the Swedish population compared to other countries in the eighteenth century. These skills were supposed to be transferred by the parents to the children of the household as an important part of their duties when raising their children to be good Christians and subjects.7 In order to attain the goals in reading and biblical knowledge for the catechetical meetings, parents could employ both male and female teachers. In her study of the Swedish countryside, Carin Bergström shows that both women and men earned their livings as teachers in the parishes.8 It is also known from Norwegian and Danish studies that there were female teachers in schools for poor children.9 There are however no detailed studies of male and female teachers in these kinds of schools. Women devoted themselves to teaching in other social strata, too. As governesses, unmarried well-to-do women could, for example, teach girls in their homes.10 In towns, women taught private pupils in their own homes as well, sometimes with ‘half-pension’ meals included, and in a few cases at ‘full pension’, with the girls boarding in their teachers’ homes.11 It was unusual to have schools for girls of the middle and upper classes, and the only school for them in eighteenth-century Sweden was established in 1786 in Gothenburg. By the end of the 1830s, there were still only a few schools that had been established for girls of these classes – three in Gothenburg, one in Stockholm, and one in the small town of Askersund – and home schooling dominated the education of these girls.12 A girls’ school did exist in eighteenth-century Stockholm (Murbeckska flickskolan), but it has not been mentioned in previous research, probably because of a lack of source material.13 The other kinds of schools that existed in the Swedish cities and towns were almost totally designated for boys, except for some schools for small children that were referred to as pedagogier.14 There is an obvious change in the schools for poor children regarding gender in early nineteenth-century Sweden. These schools were open to both sexes, it is true, but very few girls actually went to school in eighteenth-century Swedish towns. A development from 1810 and onwards, however, changed this, and dedicated girls’ schools were established where the poor girls were taught separately and learned more advanced handicrafts than in the eighteenth-century schools. Mixed schools and boys’ schools still existed alongside these girls’ schools, which in total meant a visible change in girls’ schooling and many more girls attended schools. Female teachers seem not to have worked in boys’ schools.15

200  Åsa Karlsson Sjögren The three schools and their teachers that are the focus of this study represent both mixed schools and girls’ schools. The schools included in the study are Läse- och arbetsskolan (the Reading and Industrial School) in Uppsala for both girls and boys, which initially only had female teachers but then began to employ male teachers (founded in 1784), Slöjdskolan (the Manual Training School) in Gävle for girls with only female teachers (founded in 1811) and Fattigfriskolan (the Free School for Poor Children) in Gävle with only male teachers (founded in 1813). The schools are chosen because there are meeting minutes and other preserved sources that make it is possible to follow the individual teachers and to analyze how their qualities and experiences were met by the school boards. The minutes of the school in Uppsala are preserved in coherent books, whereas the minutes of the schools in Gävle could only be found among other items related to the Poor Relief Board. In addition to the minutes, examination lists, a local newspaper, personal accounts, census registers, records of parish catechetical meetings and death records have been analyzed.16

Desirable qualifications and skilled teachers The Reading and Industrial School was founded in Uppsala in 1784.17 The school was intended to have twenty children, ten ‘of each sex’ (av vardera könet), and they were to be divided into two rooms ‘under the supervision of an old woman in either class’. It was ‘poor but good-tempered old women’ (fattiga men beskedliga gummor) that were appointed, and they were also called ‘teaching mothers’ (läromödrar). The woman appointed for the girls was the boatswain Johan Oldsborg’s wife Brita, and the one for the boys was the city drummer Eric Almgren’s wife. The teaching mothers were to live in two rooms in the poorhouse, and the schooling would also take place there. Besides teaching the children simple handiwork, the ‘old women’ were told that they should teach the children to read and to foster them in ‘virtue and skilfulness’. The wages and payment to children and teachers were decided, and the teaching mothers declared themselves satisfied with this. It was hardly a matter of a negotiation because the female teachers were socially far removed from the members of the board. But as a matter of fact, the board tried in these minutes to make excuses for the relatively low payment to the children, and the members hoped that in the future both larger contributions from donors and increased profits from selling the handicraft items that the children made would provide preconditions for increasing the payment. The children’s payment was sometimes in the form of flour, and over the years there are a number of examples in the minutes of their being given shoes and clothes as well as educational material, such as books and pencils. The payment could be reduced if the children failed to turn up at school without valid reasons.

Desirable qualifications  201

Figure 10.1 The Reading and Industrial School (Läse-och arbetsskolan) in Uppsala 1784–1809. From the volume Upsala stads kämnärs-rätts protocoll rörande den i Krokens gård d. 18 juli 1809 upkomn. Eldswåda . . . (Uppsala, 1809). Photo: Kungliga Bibliotektet, Stockholm.

The board made frequent inspections of the school and stated that ‘both the old women and the children on either side fulfilled their duties’. In addition they were careful to impress on the parents that they had to improve their own conduct and live as an example for their children and to bring them up so as not to be ‘disobedient and evil-minded’.18 This satisfaction with the two teachers ended, however, with regard to Oldsborg’s wife. According to the minutes, she was given notice on 11 February 1786 because she herself had said that she wanted to be dismissed and because there had been complaints against her. Six months later, her substitute, a maidservant, proved not to be skilled enough, and she too had to quit.19 The board then decided to raise the wage of Mrs Almgren, who from then on was to teach both the girls and the boys. A closer look at church archives and census registers gives more information about Greta Almgren. She was born in 1738 and was forty-six years old when appointed as a teaching mother at the school. Her husband, Erik Almgren, who like her was born in the countryside and had moved into town, was older, fifty-nine years old. Greta was his second wife, and his eldest daughters had been born in 1748 and 1753. His third daughter Catharina might have been his and Greta’s child, as she was born in 1765. Catharina had given birth to a child out of wedlock, but according to the

202  Åsa Karlsson Sjögren records the child died. When Greta Almgren moved into the poorhouse, her husband followed her. According to the preserved census of 1788, she had two female members of her household; an adult woman exempt from paying taxes and a child under fifteen years of age. A notification at the margin tells us that Greta Almgren was ‘crippled’ (ofärdig), but we do not know in what way. She might have been lame, as she was still able to run the school and teach the children handicrafts. Her husband passed away in May 1790 at the age of 65, and a notification in the death records tells that he was a dismissed drummer and a destitute poor who had been of poor health for many years.20 Besides examining the children, board members made regular inspections of the conditions in the school, and the board had no complaints. The teacher’s work effort was also evaluated. During the next few years, both the children and the schoolmistress Almgren did well in the examinations. Almgren also saw to it to summon parents who mistreated their children and urge them to ‘keep the children tidy’ and to prevent them from begging and from wearing out their clothes.21 However, this task of exhorting parents and foster-parents to behave properly caused tensions, like when a wife according to the minutes had misbehaved against the schoolmistress at the school. She had protected her daughter’s ‘vicious’ disposition by letting her stay at home. She was told by the board to let her daughter go to school and to leave the schoolmistress in peace and not make any more complaints, otherwise she would be evicted from the town.22 The demands on the first teachers that were employed were simply that they should be ‘good-tempered’. The designation of the female teachers was quickly changed from ‘old women’ and ‘teaching mothers’ to ‘schoolmistresses’. The schoolmistress Almgren proved to be so successful in this job that she was presented with a medal in 1791. However, soon afterwards she would resign because of unsuitable behaviour. When Almgren had resigned and a substitute for her was to be appointed, the first candidate that was proposed was a boatswain’s wife, who was ‘known to be a good-tempered human being’. After some time it turned out, however, that she was not skilled enough. Some members of the board by mere chance met Mrs Carlsten.23 They asked her about the appointment and tested her knowledge, which was found to be good. It was also stressed that she was the daughter of a toll-gatherer and had a ‘good education’, and she was therefore employed.24 The schoolmistress Mrs Carlsten seemed to have some problems with her authority towards some of the parents. As was the case also with Mrs Almgren, the board took the responsibility of punishing pupils who had a particularly bad behaviour, and they also exhorted parents to behave properly. On one occasion the board had to ask the schoolmistress Carlsten if the reason for not mentioning any specific pupil who had misbehaved was that she was afraid of the parents’ hostility. The county governor then ordered that she should not hide anything from the board, whereupon she told the board about a schoolboy

Desirable qualifications  203 who had been punished by her for his pilfering. The board thereafter admonished him and warned him about his behaviour in the future. According to schoolmistress Carlsten, the boy’s mother had told her that she should take her son out of school and send him out to his father in the countryside.25 The schoolmistress Carlsten kept her post for ten years, but she too was given notice, although for more unclear reasons than Mrs Almgren. There are notes about the children not having learned to read properly in the examinations of 1799 and 1800.26 When in May 1802 she was replaced with a male teacher, it was stated that ‘neither the teaching itself nor the present schoolmistress’s conduct was acceptable’.27 Fairly soon after the school was established, the school had begun to demand that at least the boys should learn not only to read but also to write. They should become ‘useful members of the community’ and learn to write either in the Big School (Stora skolan, Katedralskolan) or by an additional male teacher.28 This demand resulted in the board eventually deciding to employ a male teacher instead of a female teacher. They wanted to find ‘some man, who was willing, on the most acceptable terms, to take on the teaching of writing and some arithmetic in this school’.29 It was now implicit that the girls too should be taught to write. The decision was made in consultation with the burghers and the elders of the city. Even if the boys were first considered, knowledge of writing soon became a concern for both sexes. The decision to replace female teachers with male teachers probably reflects that the schoolmistresses were unable to write themselves, or at least were so weak in writing skills that they were not able to teach the children how to write. When the board decided to employ the schoolmaster Henrik Widman in May 1802, they were uncertain about his qualifications and whether he was able to write or not. It was noticed that he had been working at an ironworks, which seems to have been a positive clue. The clerk then showed them Widman’s application letter and his writing, and the decision was made.30 The schoolmistress Mrs Carlsten had to move out of the poorhouse, and when it became known to the board that Widman had a wife and four children and that the education of writing skills needed more space, the lodger Mr Strandman in the third room on the same floor in the poorhouse had to move out.31 When the semi-annual examination of the children was conducted in October of the same year, ‘it was found that the children were less proficient in reading from the book than might have been assumed’, and Widman was therefore told that the board was dissatisfied with his work and he was ‘forewarned that he should hereafter do better and use more energy on them’.32 The board employed student clergymen to give extra tuition to some schoolboys so that they would gain ‘a better understanding of religion than just through reading’. In May 1803, it was noticed that the children had made progress, not only in reading, but also in spinning and knitting and writing. The children’s copybooks were shown, ‘which to

204  Åsa Karlsson Sjögren the satisfaction of the board were found to have advanced far in this short period, for which reason the schoolmaster was praised’.33 It would soon, however, be obvious to the board that Widman mismanaged his work in several ways, such as maltreatment of the children and heavy drinking. He was eventually given notice and was then replaced with the customs officer Thönnes Mellberg as the new schoolmaster. Mellberg was told to take care of the school with ‘loyalty, diligence and care’. There was no doubt that a customs officer should be able to teach the children how to write.34 A couple of years later, Mellberg fell ill and his wife Johanna took over as head teacher on probation.35 The tailor’s apprentice Lars Ekbom was soon appointed, and he managed the teaching of writing and singing. It seems like Mellberg’s wife Johanna, like the previous female teachers who had worked in the school, lacked sufficient knowledge of writing to be able to teach the children how to write. After Mellberg’s death, his widow married Ekbom. She was called ‘The Present Schoolmistress’ in the minutes, but when she married Ekbom, he took over the title of schoolmaster. Henceforth it was he who would ‘draw the wage and enjoy the benefits that his soon-to-be wife had hitherto enjoyed’.36 On the whole, the couple seems to have been fairly successful in the further operation of the school. In May 1811, the archbishop praised the ‘schoolmaster and his wife’ for their ‘diligence and care’ in teaching.37 They also had educationally insightful school regulations to adhere to. The new instruction of 1807 made it clear, for example, that the teaching must be varied. The teacher would have to show understanding of the children being different and having different learning capacities and should never demand too much of them. It was more important ‘to praise the willingness to acquire knowledge than the knowledge itself’.38 In this school, there developed a male dominance of the teaching profession, but it was not a complete dominance because Mellberg’s widow had taken over after her husband died and continued managing the school. When she married Ekbom, she had to relinquish the title of schoolmistress, and her new husband became schoolmaster, but this did not prevent her from working further with the school. The couple of Johanna Mellberg and Lars Ekbom grew to be the kinds of teachers that the board had aimed at recruiting. They managed year after year to admit new pupils and give them sufficient knowledge to pass the examinations in a satisfactory manner, although there were some exceptions.39 In Gävle, where a manual training school for girls with only female teachers had been founded in 1811, the Free School for Poor Children (for both boys and girls), which was founded somewhat later, came to recruit only male applicants. When the Poor Relief Board in Gävle decided to employ a female teacher in the new manual training school for girls in 1811, they were considerably more specific than in Uppsala. They had many wishes concerning the applicants’ qualifications, and they decided to put an advertisement

Desirable qualifications  205 in the local newspaper Weckoblad för Gefleborgs län, with the following wording: . . . that the future Teacher should be a middle-aged Person, Widow or unmarried, but of firm and irreproachable morals, able easily to read in a Book and passably write and make notes, what is needed, possess skills in the art of spinning, in particular Flax, but also wool and cotton, and moreover sew a good needle stitch and knit stockings, etc., and she should also possess the qualities of understanding with seriousness, tenderness and Patience to acquire in the teaching not less respect and obedience than love and attachment from the Children she will supervise.40 Among the seven applicants for the post, there were a number of widows, an unmarried woman and a couple of wives. Although the board wanted explicitly to employ widows or unmarried women, they decided to employ the locksmiths’ guild-master Falk’s wife Anna Brita because she was the most ‘suitable’ and ‘skilled’ person for the post. The locksmith’s status was quite high among the artisans.41 The fact that she was married was solved by her husband submitting a testimonial provided with a seal stating that he had made an agreement with his wife to accept the contracts that his wife would enter into with the Poor Relief Board. The pay was certainly small, but in addition Madam Falk would get accommodation, wood and candles along with encouragement ‘from the diligence she shows in the teaching’. The board exhorted her ‘. . . to train the Children in the catechism with meekness, seriousness and diligence and teach them useful women’s handiwork’. She should also account for the materials and tools that she received. Madam Falk expressed gratitude for the trust and promised ‘to try to deserve it’.42 Soon after the manual training school for girls had started, it appeared that the pupils and their parents wanted the pupils to learn not only to read but also to write. The board said that they had actually not promised such teaching, but they consented and decided that ‘Madam Falk, who writes a fairly good Latin style, should at least for the older girls’ teaching thereof, use the Wednesday or Saturday afternoons’.43 Compared to the other female teachers of this study, Madam Falk was so good at writing that she could also teach the pupils to write. Madam Falk worked for a number of years as the teacher in the school, and she seems to have had all of the expected qualities. Every quarter of a year, the board decided to give her extra pay, and every six months an examination was held of the girls, who for the most part had made great progress both in reading and in their handiwork. Examination lists show moreover that all girls were taught to write, with good progression in writing skills.44 Soon after the school had started with twenty pupils, the number had increased to thirty because the school did so well. A couple of

206  Åsa Karlsson Sjögren years later, Madam Falk was also given the responsibility for training poor women in the workhouse and seeing to it that the poor women were set to work with spinning yarn. When the board described Madam Falk’s achievements, it is obvious that it was her great capacity for work – her ‘skills’, ‘diligence’ and ‘zeal’ – that were emphasized.45 She was both ‘sensible’ and displayed ‘care about the teaching’, which of course yielded good results.46 Her efforts were also described very positively in the newspaper. At the exam in December 1812, ‘honest inhabitants of the town of both sexes’ were invited to see how the girls had progressed in their work under the schoolmistress’s ‘skilful care’. The girls not only learned how to read and write and all ‘Useful female handiwork’ for future maintenance, they were also paid for their products and given extra rewards for ‘their modesty and diligence’.47 The girls were praised and rewarded by the board for their ‘progress’, for their ‘gentleness, readiness to learn and diligence’, their ‘skills and carefulness’ and for their ‘modesty and behaviour’, which was ‘virtuous and irreproachable’.48 The problems that existed chiefly had to do with truancy, and the board soon took over the responsibility for inquiring about the reasons for such truancy and where appropriate taking the parents to task. Later on we will see that Madam Falk did not manage her large undertaking well, and she was later dismissed. Another skilled teacher in the same town was the schoolmaster Anders Berg, who was employed in the Free School for Poor Children, which was founded a couple of years later.49 The schools, which were planned to be three in number, were to be open for both boys and girls, and according to the advertisement in the local newspaper, the ‘child teachers’ that were searched for should be able to ‘spell safely and with proficiency read from a Book, write a legible Style and do arithmetic as much as was needed for the teaching’. In addition, the person in question should display a ‘good and firm behaviour and aptitude for the said profession; they may moreover be of any class or condition’.50 The teaching would only take place in the mornings, and the pay was small. The advertisement attracted only one applicant, the dismissed fire-watchman Anders Berg. He had already worked as a teacher in several places, and his submitted testimonials ‘gave evidence of good behaviour and skilful teaching’. After an examination by the chief magistrate, it was found that he had the necessary knowledge that was required and he was therefore employed. As long as he ‘zealously’ fulfilled his duties, he would be paid in accordance with an agreement with the board.51 There was soon great pressure on the newly established Free School for Poor Children, and more than a hundred children were admitted when the school started. There was a need for employing one more teacher, but the board had difficulty in recruiting a suitable person. The first who applied had no references, and after further investigations it was found that his qualifications were insufficient. When the next teacher was eventually

Desirable qualifications  207 employed, Jacob Muhr, the board described Anders Berg as a ‘model’ to him and exhorted him to ‘acquire the board’s esteem and benevolence in the same way’.52 When the board assessed Berg’s achievements, it was above all his capacity for work and competence to teach so many children at the same time that were emphasized. As in Madam Falk’s case, it was Berg’s ‘diligence’ that was stressed, as well as his ‘orderliness’.53 Besides the responsibility for the Free School for Poor Children, Berg admitted private pupils, which the board encouraged. Later on he also took over the porter’s duties in the workhouse, which he came to carry out together with his wife.54 Fairly quickly, Berg began to use one of his own pupils as a kind of assistant teacher, i.e. a foster son, who made a great impression on the board with his knowledge. The boy read from both the catechism and the hymnbook with the ‘most pleasant pronunciation’, and he could ‘accurately distinguish all sentences according to their punctuation and on every word place a correct and suitable stress’. In this way Berg paved the way for the pedagogical form of schooling that somewhat later was generally accepted in the town, the so-called monitorial education system, but in Berg’s case without any pedagogical education. Berg and Falk resembled each other in many respects. They were skilled teachers who gained the board’s respect for their diligence and capacity for work. At the same time, they were lowly paid and constantly took on new tasks. Schoolmaster Berg was married, and his wife appears occasionally in the material. She might have played a more important role for the school than the minutes state. At least as regards the couple Johanna Mellberg and Lars Ekbom, it is obvious that they ran the Reading and Industrial School in Uppsala together in a successful way. In summary the same qualities were required of both female and male teachers: industriousness and the ability to teach the children various skills. When demands for learning to write and do arithmetic were raised, it seems that the women in the social groups where the teachers were recruited did not in general master this knowledge, with some exceptions such as Madam Falk, who was married to a locksmith guild-master. When Madam Falk was to be replaced, the field of applicants was very weak. Among the applicants, there was, for example, a shoemaker’s wife ‘who could not write herself, but had a daughter, now sixteen years old, properly skilled in this respect’. Another applicant, a captain’s wife, could neither do arithmetic nor write, but she had a twelve-year-old son ‘with these skills’. Others claimed that they had ‘the required skills’, but could not verify them, so the board had to go on searching until they found a suitable teacher. These women were wives or widows of mates, scribes or overseers, and one of them was the sister of a bookbinder.55 It was thus difficult to find qualified teachers. The small payments that were given cannot have been very attractive, especially not to the men. In addition, a number of recruited teachers turned out not to be able to cope with the work in the long run. An important aspect of the teaching

208  Åsa Karlsson Sjögren profession and gender during this period is that even though women taught children, the norm of the teachers, as well as the pupils, was that they were mostly male. Especially formally educated men such as clergy were advantaged compared to women as well as men of lower classes. It seems to have also been the tendency to draw up lines between male and female teachers concerning private teachers. A study of advertisements in the local newspaper of Gävle shows that both male and female teachers advertised their skills. In February 1786, a ‘married woman’ put out invitations for ‘children’ to come to her home to learn different kind of sewing, spinning and weaving, and also to read and write. She did not give her name, but an address in the southern part of the town.56 Her announcement was, however, called into question. An anonymous written text ‘Reflections’, published 1 March, started with verifying that a ‘married woman’ should teach children all kinds of sewing, spinning and weaving, because such handiwork ‘belongs to a Woman’, and stated that you could presume that she was skilled in these fields. However, her offer to teach the children how to read and write was questioned. She should have added some reliable proof that she ‘knows more than she actually needs’. The text continues by giving a reflection about her address, and that she lived in the southern part of the town, ‘the actual location [seemed to] put one in the fair necessity to proof whether and how much one could read and write’. Therefore ‘Mrs Schoolmistress’ was given the advice to withdraw her offer to teach reading and writing, otherwise her ignorance would be exposed. Besides, her offer was ‘redundant’, as there were many ‘poor students’ who needed extra income by teaching. Nevertheless, the author of this anonymous text wanted to ‘praise’ ‘My Wife (or whoever you are)’ for her ‘industry’ and ‘diligence’ to support herself and to be useful to society. In addition, her teaching of household and handiwork knowledge, which was said to belong to the ‘sex’, would give her pupils the necessary skills to make their men and husbands ‘happy and content’ in the future.57 It is obvious here that it was difficult to imagine a poor woman who could teach children how to read and write in the 1780s. There was also a conflict in the town over the income of teaching, and this text was written during the years when there was a conflict about closing the orphanage in favour of a children’s school in the town.58

Unsuitable teachers and undesirable behaviour As has already been described above, several teachers were dismissed from the schools examined in this survey. The minutes are often scanty about the reasons. The former glazier Muhr, who had been employed in the Free School for Poor Children in Gävle, was exhorted to learn from the schoolmaster Berg’s teaching methods, but he did not hold the post for very long. The board stated that the recruitment of Muhr was ‘unsuccessful’. When visiting the school ‘they had made the unpleasant experience that Muhr is

Desirable qualifications  209 unskilled concerning maintenance of the discipline that is necessary among the Children and by singing long hymns he takes too much of the short time for teaching reading and does not distinguish his disciples and their real needs’.59 After this statement, Muhr was given notice and Berg had to resume the responsibility for all of the children in the Free School for Poor Children. But skilled teachers also failed. The most flagrant example among the teachers in the schools in this study is probably the schoolmistress Almgren in Uppsala. Her medal, which can indeed be regarded as a mark of honour, had no positive effect – rather the contrary. As early as November of the same year (1791) the rumour was investigated of ‘the schoolmistress Mrs Greta Almgren now having begun to take strong drinks in excess’, and after an inspection by the court clerk and the businessman Dahlberg, they stated that she had not only been drunk but also spoken thickly and railed at the children with cursing. Nor had she been able to give sensible answers to the question that the inspectors asked. The dean then said that he had summoned her and pointed this out to her, but that she had answered ‘rather impudently’; she did not want to admit any blame, or promise any improvement. Then she had gone straight to the court clerk and demanded dismissal ‘since she had been so much slandered’.60 ‘Sensible’ teachers should take over. At the meeting on the same day, it was proposed that the boatswain’s wife Söderström should take over as a substitute on probation, but, as has been mentioned before in this chapter, it turned out that she was not skilled enough. Then some board members tried to make Almgren apologize, ‘but thereto she answered quite curtly: No, I won’t do that’.61 Mrs Carlsten was then employed and kept the post for ten years, but with varying results. Mrs Almgren seems to have been an unusually skilled teacher, and we do not know what caused her drunkenness, something that she neither wanted to admit nor apologize for. The board tried to make her do this in order to get her back, but this was in vain. A not entirely unreasonable conclusion is that Almgren realized that her authority in relation to the children, their parents and the board had declined because of the incident.62 As was stated above, the board had difficulties in recruiting a male teacher to the Reading and Industrial School in Uppsala. When the only applicant, schoolmaster Widman, had started working, it was necessary to employ an assistant teacher, and soon the pupils’ achievements improved. This improvement was, however, only temporary. In September 1803, it was clear that Widman had broken the rules of the school in several ways. He was said to have used parts of the children’s payment for his own use, given the children days off, used the children’s labour in his own household and set up a box in which children who were late had to put money. In addition, he was ‘prone to excessive use of strong drinks’, as a result of which he had been ‘aggressive to both his wife and his children, which is against both God’s law and secular law’. On a number of occasions he had also appeared ‘drunk in the streets’. He admitted that he on some occasions had been

210  Åsa Karlsson Sjögren drunk, as he had been offered drinks by friends. The board further stated that ‘such unsuitable behaviour of a teacher’ would cause ‘contempt of his teaching performance among the children’. Some parents had complained that ‘his corporal punishment of the children was too harsh and sometimes unreasonable’; he was also said to have beaten the children when he was drunk. Widman tried to defend himself, but because the board knew that a boy had been so severely beaten that he had been ill for several weeks and had had to stay away from school, ‘Widman was then seriously admonished not to exercise such violence any more’. The board stated that if Widman did not immediately improve his conduct, he would be given notice. Unlike Mrs Almgren, he tried to defend himself and make excuses with regard to his behaviour. When threatened with dismissal, he also asked whether he would not be given due time for dismissal and removal, but was told that ‘this day is the day of notice’ and that if he committed any folly and was summoned, the dismissal would be carried into effect.63 The board bore with Widman for one more year, but then he was replaced with the customhouse officer Thönnes Mellberg. In the case of both the schoolmaster Widman and the schoolmistress Almgren, the board thus adopted a placatory attitude. They believed in improvement and tried to persuade Almgren to stay at her post. In Widman’s case no persuasion was necessary, as it was Widman himself who asked to be allowed to stay. In view of the way he had behaved, it is rather amazing that the board wanted to keep him. He had not only drunk and beaten his family and his pupils, but he had also been careless about the teaching and used his pupils for financial gain. At the autumn examination in 1803, one month after his bad behaviour had been dealt with by the board, it is clear that the children and their parents disliked him. Most of the parents did not show up at the exam; they had either been reported sick or just stayed away. The children were said to often be late or to skip school.64 The third and last example of a teacher who misbehaved was Madam Anna Brita Falk at the manual training school for girls in Gävle. As has been shown earlier in the essay, she fulfilled all expectations: she was skilled in women’s handiwork; she could read, write and do arithmetic; and the pupils performed impeccably in the examinations. Over the years, she took on teaching more pupils and also assumed responsibility for the handiwork in the workhouse. But in February 1818, the chief magistrate raised the question of the expenses ‘at the so-called Workhouse’, which he thought were far too high. In addition, the quality of the products from the workhouse was poor.65 Although Madam Falk had regularly rendered accounts, it now turned out that she had withheld quite a lot of goods for herself or for others. When this was clear to the board, she was immediately dismissed from the school. After her dismissal, the extensive work began of reconstructing the accounts and trying to find out how much had disappeared. Madam Falk promised to restore the yarn that she had given to her daughters and others.

Desirable qualifications  211 She also thought regarding the wool in particular that it lost weight in the processing and drying and that this could explain some of the loss. On one occasion during the extensive investigation, she claimed that she could not contribute more information because she had ‘felt so sick that she had not been able to collect her thoughts’.66 When Madam Falk had been informed about her dismissal, she sought an audience with the board ‘when she made a humble inquiry whether they would be able to allow her to keep her former post’, which she was denied.67 Taken together, the debt amounted to more than 1,690 riksdalers, a considerable sum of money. In this case, it is obvious that the entire Falk family was involved in the affair. The minutes show that the husband – the locksmith guild-master – had previously been heavily indebted, but now the family’s house property had been assigned away to the children as a future inheritance and the daughters had participated in the embezzlement. There is nothing, however, in the minutes that would indicate that the board took the affair to court. On the contrary, in May 1818 the chief magistrate Sundqvist wrote a memorial where he asked the court to withdraw the charge. With reference to Madam Falk’s written undertaking, he stated that after the promised economic restitution she would not own anything other than her clothing. In a written ‘Relation’ (Förbindelse), Madam Falk promised the town access to her assets, which consisted of the agricultural yield of two allotments, and she promised to get a written contract with her children about their property, which would give her and her husband the right to yield the property. Her husband was, however, ill and confined to his bed, so resources were needed for his care. She also promised to pay half her wage if she would be allowed to stay at her position, which she was not. All in all, she said that after these transactions she would only keep some furniture and her clothes, which were of little value. Enclosed with the letter was a copy of her husband’s testimonial stating that he had made an agreement with his wife to accept the contracts of his wife and the board.68 On 22 July 1819, the minutes of the board stated that ‘since Madam Falk’s husband has now died, she should be able to pay instalments on her debt to the workhouse’.69 We do not know what induced Madam Falk to start embezzling. She had been given great responsibility and the board trusted her. She might have started by taking away very small quantities, which rapidly became bigger when nobody seemed to discover it, and such activities allowed her to fill the holes in her private economy.

Conclusion In summary, we can state that the female and male teachers of this study who worked in schools targeted at poor children lacked formal education but possessed valuable knowledge and qualities. The most important thing was, of course, to impart different kinds of knowledge and skills to the pupils, and it was the pupils’ achievements that were decisive for the

212  Åsa Karlsson Sjögren teachers’ success. For the teachers of this study as for today’s teachers, pedagogical content knowledge was crucial to being a good teacher. They needed knowledge of the subject, of course, but also knowledge of how to instruct their pupils. The teachers who were particularly diligent and had high capacity for work were rewarded. The boards expressed their approval in similar ways for both male and female teachers. The boards that employed these teachers consisted of the towns’ most distinguished strata and they often had high ambitions for the schools. The teachers were lowly paid and in a position of dependence on their employers, but their employers were at the same time eager to have as skilful teachers as possible, so it might be claimed that the dependence was mutual. There does not seem to have been any limit to the amount of work that especially skilful teachers took on. With the meagre conditions in which they worked, they could always take on more teaching or greater responsibility for the care of the poor. For the female teachers, where ‘good-tempered’ behaviour was the chief required quality, this quality was hardly sufficient in the long run. When the demands for teaching of writing were raised, the boards searched for men. The eighteenth-century female teachers were not skilled enough in writing to be able to teach the children how to write, and this lack of knowledge might have been a matter of low social background. Madam Falk in Gävle, who was married to an artisan of quite high social status, and therefore more likely to know how to write, taught her pupils writing skills in the 1810s. The differences between female teachers might also be explained by generation. The fact that even the poorest girls received writing instructions at the turn of the century 1800 led to the social spread of writing, and more urban women than ever before began to learn to write. The boards found it difficult to recruit competent men with the working conditions that were offered. The men of this study who took on the job as teachers had diverse social backgrounds of different urban occupations, such as fire-watchman, tailor’s apprentice, glazier and customs officer. The teaching seems to have been most successful among married couples, when the responsibility for running the school could be shared. The widow Johanna Mellberg could take over and go on managing her husband’s activities for some time, in the same way as burghers’ widows did in the towns. Although the schoolmistresses of this study lacked formal education and worked with the lowest social groups of pupils, and although the social distance between them and the schools’ boards was large, the responsibility and the competence that the task itself required were so demanding that it might be claimed that these women practised an independent profession. The teaching profession also became one of the most important professions for women later on in the nineteenth century.

Notes 1 Uppsala stadsarkiv (Uppsala City Archives), Läse- och arbetsskolan, Direktionsprotokoll, 1784–1819 AI:1, 21 May 1791.

Desirable qualifications  213 2 Christina Florin, Kampen om katedern: Feminiserings- och professionaliseringsprocessen inom den svenska folkskolans lärarkår 1860–1906 (Umeå & Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1987). 3 The teaching profession in general has been under constant renegotiation about whether it should be seen as a proper profession or not. One example is the ongoing struggle, ever since the introduction of the state curriculum in 1842, about the freedom or control of the teacher via the state curriculum. (Jan Morawski, Mellan frihet och kontroll: Om läroplanskonstruktioner i svensk skola (Örebro: Örebro universitet, 2010.) A specific authorization of teachers was introduced in Sweden in 2011, and this meant that teachers were authorized in the same way as lawyers, medical doctors, etc. At the same time, other political decisions could be argued to diminish the professional aspects of the job, not least the state curriculum of 2011 and other controlling institutions. 4 Lee S Shulman, ‘Knowledge and Teaching: Foundation of the New Reform’, Harvard Educational Review 57:1 (1987), 1–22. 5 Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, ‘Skrivande barnmorskor: Barnmorskeyrkets litterarisering under 1700-talet’, Historisk tidskrift för Finland 100:4 (2015), 526–534. See also Chapter 2, Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, ‘Midwives’, in this volume. 6 Bengt Sandin, Hemmet, gatan, fabriken eller skolan: Folkundervisning och barnuppfostran i svenska städer 1600–1850 (Lund: Arkiv avhandlingsserie, 1986). 7 Egil Johansson, ‘The History of Literacy in Sweden’, in Literacy and Social Development in the West: A Reader, ed. Harvey J Graff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 151–182; Daniel Lindmark, Reading, Writing and Schooling: Swedish Practices of Education and Literacy 1650–1880 (Umeå: Kulturens frontlinjer, 2004). 8 Carin Bergström, Skolmostrar och läsmästare: Lärare på landet före folkskolereformen 1842 (Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag, 2000). Bergström’s study of how teachers of the same social strata in the countryside were described in stories of the parishes (Sockenberättelser) shows that some of them were considered to be truly qualified teachers, contradicting previous research that has emphasized their low social status. Bergström has, however, not been able to undertake any detailed qualitative studies of male and female teachers’ skills (22–23). Gunhild Klose’s study of a survey of all school districts in 1812 shows that the local clergy often examined and authorized the teachers. Gunhild Klose, Folkundervisningens finansiering före 1842 (Uppsala: Utbildningshistoriska meddelande, 2011), 94. 9 Ida Bull, Kunnskap – hver etter sin stand: Utdanning i norske byer på 1700-tallet (Trondheim: Akademisk forlag, 2013); Christian Larsen, Erik Nørr & Pernille Sonne, Dansk skolehistorie: Da skolen tog form, 1780–1850 (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2014). 10 To have a governess for the instruction of their daughters gave higher status to the parents than to have their daughters educated in pension schools. See Jessica Parland von Essen, Behagets betydelser: Döttrarnas education i det sena 1700-talets adelskultur (Möklinta: Gidlund, 2005), 42–43. See also Chapter 11, Olga Solodyankina, ‘Cross-cultural Closeness’ and Chapter 12, Marjatta Rahikainen, ‘Shaping Middle-class and Upper-class Girls’, in this volume. 11 Annelie Rundqvist, ‘Til en wördad Allmänhets underrättelse: Utbildnings marknaden i 1798 års Stockholm med omnejd med fokus på privatlärare’ (Master thesis, Umeå university 2016, electronically published at: http://umu. diva-portal.org.). 12 Wilhelm Sjöstrand, Pedagogikens historia III:1 (Malmö: Gleerups, 1961), 205–210; Gunhild Kyle, Svensk flickskola under 1800-talet (Göteborg: Kvinnohistoriskt arkiv, 1972), 41. This is a late development compared to, for example, England. See Susan Skedd, ‘Women Teachers and the Expansion of Girls’

214  Åsa Karlsson Sjögren Schooling in England, c. 1760–1820’, in Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, eds. Hanna Barker & Elaine Chalus (London & New York: Longman, 1997), 101–125. However, just as in Sweden, the importance of home education in England lasted for a long time. See, for example, Michèle Cohen, ‘Familiar Explanations: Social Conversations, Familiar Conversations and Domestic Education in Late Eighteenth-century England’, in Educating the Child in Enlightenment Britain: Beliefs, Cultures, Practices, eds. M. Hilton & J. Shefrin (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009), 15–35. 13 Murbeckska flickskolan was, according to a report to the state committee on education of 1812, established as a girls’ school in 1769. The Royal decisions in 1769 said that an already existing school, financed by private donors, should be allowed to establish a fund free of taxes and other fees. The school was foremost for poor girls, but also to help other poor persons. Nothing specific is said about the curriculum, only a general statement that it should have a good Christian purpose. (Kongl. Maj:s Nådiga resolution uppå någre Stockholms Stads Invånares ansökning, rörande en Inrättning till fattige Barns upfostran och underhåll sam andre torftiges hjelp. Gifven Stockholm i Råd-Cammaren den 28 April 1769). 14 In Gävle, a Pedagogi was established after the closing of the town’s orphanage in 1787. No records are preserved from the Pedagogi, but according to a report to the state committee on education of 1812, it was said that the school was meant for ‘both sexes’ when it was established. Riksarkivet (The National Archives, Stockholm), 1812 års Uppfostringskommitté enkät, 171–179. The closing of the orphanage is discussed in Gävle stadsarkiv (Gävle City Archives), Barnhusdirektionen S 12, Protokoll och inneliggande handlignar 1785–1947, A:I:1, Protokollsbok 1785–1797, 20 October 1786. 15 The development towards more poor girls in schools has not been examined in previous research, but such research will be published within the project Segregation and integration: Gender, class and citizenship in the Swedish education system, 1800–1850, financed by the Swedish Research Council 2014–2016 (Project leader: Åsa Karlsson Sjögren). 16 The research project presented in the footnote above consists of three strands. In the strand about schools for poor children, schools from Stockholm, Uppsala and Gävle are included. The preserved source material of these schools is, however, scattered, and it seldom gives detailed information about the teachers and their skills. The three schools in Gävle and Uppsala where minutes are preserved are therefore included in this study. 17 Uppsala stadsarkiv, Läse- och arbetsskolan, Direktionsprotokoll, 1784–1819 AI:1, 22 June 1784. 18 Ibid., 4 December 1784. 19 Ibid., 29 July 1786. Her name was Caisa Nyström. 20 Riksarkivet, Mantalslängder 1642–1820, Uppsala län, Uppsala stad, Mantalslängd Ånäbben, 1788, 1789, 1790 and 1791 (1785–1787 are missing. In 1784, Almgren is not included in the census registers of Ånäbben, the block where the poor house lay.) The register differs in the description of Greta Almgren. In 1788 ‘Schoolmist. Almgren’ has her own record, and her husband is named in the line below her with ‘Almgren’. In 1789, the couple is discernible in the same record, after ‘Almgren’. In 1791, Greta Almgren is called ‘Almgren’s widow’, and a notification at the margin says that she is both ‘crippled’ (ofärdig) and ‘poor’. (Riksarkivet, Uppsala domkyrkoförsamling, Kyrkoarkiv, Husförhörslängder, Huvudserie A1aB.) According to the records of the parish Catechetical Meetings of 1780–1790, the couple lived in another part of the town (Svartbäcksroten, Block Pehr 4). The reason for this is that the record covers ten years. In

Desirable qualifications  215 that record, it is therefore not possible to see that Greta Almgren worked as a schoolmistress; however, there is information about Erik Almgren’s first wife and daughters, and the daughters’ and Greta’s birth years as well. According to the death records, Erik Almgren died 10 May 1790. (Riksarkivet, Uppsala domkyrkoförsamling, Kyrkoarkiv, Död- och begravningsböcker, 1790.) 21 Uppsala stadsarkiv, Läse- och arbetsskolan, Direktionsprotokoll, 1784–1819 AI:1, 8 May 1790. 22 Ibid., 23 October 1790. 23 Magnus Carlsten’s wife Brita Maria Wägerberg. 24 Ibid., 2 May 1792. 25 Ibid., 4 May 1793. 26 Ibid., 24 October 1800. 27 Ibid., 20 May 1802. 28 Ibid., 11 February 1786, 13 October 1787. 29 Ibid., 22 January 1802. 30 Ibid., 20 May 1802. 31 Ibid., 2 June 1802. 32 Ibid., 16 October 1802. 33 Ibid., 16 May 1803. 34 Uppsala stadsarkiv, Handlingar tillhörande Läse- och Arbetsscholeinrättningen uti Uppsala stad,15 October 1804. 35 Uppsala stadsarkiv, Läse- och arbetsskolan, Direktionsprotokoll, 1784–1819 AI:1, 26 January 1805. 36 Ibid., 28 May 1810. 37 Ibid., 5 May 1811. 38 Ibid., 4 may 1807. The former instruction of the school did not include pedagogical issues. 39 Uppsala stadsarkiv, Läse- och arbetsskolan Direktionsprotokoll 1820–1831, AI:2, 21 October 1829. 40 Gävle stadsarkiv, Fattigvårdsstyrelsen, Protokoll 1800–1817, AI:1, 29 October 1811. 41 Ibid., 26 November 1811. Her name was Anna Brita Norberg. 42 Ibid., 17 December 1811. 43 Ibid., 28 January 1812. 44 Examination lists 1815–1818 Gävle stadsarkiv, Fattigvårdsstyrelsen, Inneliggande handlingar till protokoll AIA:2 and AIA:3 and Fattigvårdsstyrelsen, Kassabok med verifikationer 1818. 45 Gävle stadsarkiv, Fattigvårdsstyrelsen, Protokoll 1800–1817, AI:1, E.g. 16 June, 20 June 1812, 22 June 1813. 46 Ibid., e.g. 26 May 1812, 16 June 1812. 47 Weckoblad för Gefleborgs Län, 19 December 1812. 48 Gävle stadsarkiv, Fattigvårdsstyrelsen, Protokoll 1800–1817, AI:1, E.g. 16 June 20 June 1812, 23 June 1814. 49 Another children’s school existed in the town before the establishment of the Free School for Poor Children. See note 14 above. 50 Gävle stadsarkiv, Fattigvårdsstyrelsen, Protokoll 1800–1817, AI:1, 14 December 1813. 51 Ibid., 25 January 1814. 52 Ibid., 8 April 1814. 53 Ibid., 22 March and 18 April 1814. 54 Ibid., 24 May 1814. 55 Ibid., 5 May 1818. 56 Weckoblad för Gefleborgs Län, 18 and 25 February 1786.

216  Åsa Karlsson Sjögren 7 Ibid, 1 March 1786. 5 58 See note 14 above. 59 Gävle stadsarkiv, Fattigvårdsstyrelsen, Protokoll 1800–1817, AI:1, 24 May 1814. 60 Uppsala stadsarkiv, Läse- och arbetsskolan, Direktionsprotokoll, 1784–1819 AI:1, 30 November 1791. 61 Ibid., 2 May 1792. 62 There are no references in the minutes that Almgren’s husband had passed away and that she was widowed. 63 Ibid., 21 September 1803. 64 Ibid., 11 October 1803. 65 Gävle stadsarkiv, Fattigvårdsstyrelsen, Protokoll 1817–1828, AI:2, 7 February 1818. 66 Ibid., 7 April 1818. 67 Ibid., 5 May 1818. 68 Gävle stadsarkiv, Fattigvårsstyrelsen, AIA:3. 69 Gävle stadsarkiv, Fattigvårdsstyrelsen, Protokoll 1817–1828, AI:2, 22 July 1819.

11 Cross-cultural closeness Foreign governesses in the Russian Empire, c. 1700–1850 Olga Solodyankina

Working as a governess in a private household was one of the first opportunities for women to work and to earn money in a respectable way in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe. This chapter focuses on foreign governesses in the Russian Empire. According to Russian legislation, citizens of other countries were considered foreigners, but could be granted Russian citizenship by an established order.1 However, contemporaries were not guided by these legal regulations, but rather considered foreigners to represent various countries and nationalities regardless of whether they gained the Russian citizenship or not. I will adopt a similar approach. The role of foreign tutors and governesses in the home education of nobility and gentry in Russia is rather complicated. Researchers usually focus on the analysis of activity of tutors and governesses belonging to one nationality only.2 In this chapter, I attempt to provide some more general information about foreign governesses in Russia, whilst considering their activity as a channel of cross-cultural communication. The Westernization of Russia began during the reign of Peter the Great (1689–1725), and some changes in the sphere of children’s education were felt necessary. The key persons who would help in acquainting the children of Russian noble families with Western European customs were foreign tutors and governesses. The very first ones appeared in Russia in the imperial family, as well as in families of aristocracy and in non-Russian families. The daughters of Peter the Great, Anna (1708–1728) and Elizabeth3 (1709–1761), had a French governess, Mademoiselle Delannoy4 (according to other sources, Madame Letour Lannoy5). She taught the girls the basics of foreign languages and etiquette. As a result, Anna spoke four foreign languages: French, German, Italian and Swedish. As for Elizabeth, she spoke Italian, French and German fluently; she was an excellent dancer too. Anna acquired the title of Duchess of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp after getting married, and in 1727, together with her husband she moved to Holstein, with Madame Delannoy accompanying her. After the death of the duchess in 1728, Madame Delannoy returned to France. The Prussian governess Madame Arcass (or Aderkass) brought up Anna Leopol’dovna (1718–1746), the niece of the Empress Anna Ioannovna,

218  Olga Solodyankina teaching her foreign languages and the art of conversation or ‘small talk’.6 This governess, the widow of a French general, was not particularly young, but she was quite a pretty woman; she considerably expanded her inborn native intelligence by reading books. Anna Leopol’dovna spoke German and French fluently thanks to her governess, and she liked to read passionately. The daughter of General Field Marshal Boris Sheremetev, Nataliia (1714–1771) was brought up by Madam Studen.7 Until the mid-eighteenth century, Russian aristocrat families adhered to the model of home education by foreign governesses, preferably German,8 but owing to the limited availability of them, only the upper crust of the Russian society could afford such governesses. One of the first options for foreign governesses was an invitation to a compatriot family. In St Petersburg, the three daughters of a rich English merchant Hill Evans were in 1734–1737 brought up by Elisabeth Justice, an Englishwoman. In Great Britain, her husband had left her and three children without money, but she was an industrious and sociable woman who left home for another country without even speaking the Russian language. At that time, Western Europeans knew little about Russia and considered it to be a barbarous country, so people had to have enough courage (or be in despair, like Mrs Justice) to make up their mind and take such a leap as to work in Russia. Upon returning to England, in order to earn some money, Elisabeth Justice published a book devoted to her stay in Russia.9 However, unlike other foreign governesses who worked in Russian families, Elisabeth Justice stayed in a family of her compatriots, so she did not have to overcome the cultural barriers or to experience the cultural shock of daily interaction with the representatives of another culture.

Legislative regulation of governesses’ activity The legal status of the governesses was very unstable; the issues of earnings, pensions10 and social protection were decided at the employer’s discretion. The decree of 1757,11 the order of the Minister of National Education of 1812,12 the Charter of educational institutions of 182813 and the additional resolution to the (1828) Charter of June 183114 all declared their purpose of controlling foreign teachers’ activity by the state, but this did not bring the expected results. Only Sergei Uvarov, Minister of National Education in 1833–1849, who had been educated by a French tutor, managed to take control of home education in Russia. The High Order ‘On prohibition to accept foreigners of both sexes to serve as teachers and governesses in houses of noblemen, officials and merchants without appropriate certificates’ was signed in 1834.15 Moreover, ‘The statute on home preceptors and teachers’ of 1834 introduced some new definitions: those of a home teacher and a supervisor.16 Women could work as home teachers and supervisors, while the title ‘governess’ disappeared from the documents and only remained in private life. According to the new definitions, home teachers were persons who had

Cross-cultural closeness  219 passed a special test at a university, a lyceum or a gymnasium. During such tests, it was necessary for the applicants to show general knowledge on the subjects that they planned to teach. The documents of the examination board of St Petersburg University provide a summary of applicants to receive a certificate entitling teaching in private homes, as well as candidates who received it in the period 1829 to 1834. During this period, seventy-two women with foreign names passed tests in St Petersburg University, but only forty-two among them were definitely foreigners: thirteen were from Switzerland (31 per cent), four from France (10 per cent), while the origin of the others was not specified (see Table 11.1, in which the foreigners are marked with an asterisk*). The vast majority of the women wrote their application in French with a request to examine them. In fifty-six cases they asked for their knowledge to be checked in French, in twenty-five cases in German, in nine cases in English, in five cases in Russian and in two cases in Italian. Nineteen women planned to teach more than one language (usually both French and German). Only three women wrote about their willingness to teach geography and two women were happy to teach history. In twenty-two cases we can see some changes as a result of such a test. It might be a smaller number of languages permitted for teaching (compared with the one spoken by the candidate), or the level of proficiency in a particular language was estimated as sufficient for teaching only ‘the basics of the language’ or ‘reading and speaking in that language’. If we look at the years, in which the tests were taken, there were as few as five cases in 1829–1830, but as many as thirty-two in 1834. This was probably connected with the efforts of the government to supervise foreign governesses’ activity, whilst foreigners who worked as governesses in Russian families under real conditions felt a necessity to receive the appropriate documents. We can broaden this picture with the data received from the Central Historical Archive of Moscow, which provides information on people who obtained the certificate, giving them the right to teach in private homes in the Moscow educational district17 in 1834–1850.18 Among 426 persons who received certificates entitling them to teach in private homes in 1834–1850, there were only sixty-six (16 per cent) who had foreign names, sixty-five women and one man. Only forty-two of them were foreigners as defined by the law: nineteen women were French citizens (45 per cent), five were Swiss (12 per cent), two were British and fourteen were German (33 per cent). As for religion, 45 per cent of those receiving the certificate were Lutherans, 32 per cent were Catholics and 9 per cent represented the Reformed Church. Two-thirds of the foreigners (64 per cent) planned to teach French (in some cases French combined with other subjects), while less than half of all foreigners (45 per cent) were willing to teach German (in some cases German combined with other subjects, even French). So, French governesses seemed to be prevailing, even though there were also many German and Swiss governesses among them.

220  Olga Solodyankina

Social status of foreign governesses in Russia It is important to point out that the occupation of a governess may have been quite a frustrating one, as the person literally ‘dropped out’ of their habitual life, moving to the most ‘strange’ environment. It could be a transition both downwards (in case of the family’s bankruptcy) and upwards, when the knowledge and distinguished manners allowed some women to improve their social position. The first case was the most unenviable – having grown up in an environment where they enjoyed a high social status, the women in question could hardly reconcile with a new humiliating situation in which they were dependent on their masters. Daughters of ruined aristocrats, ex-politicians or impoverished ex-noble families were no longer able to live as nobility and could only become governesses. The French Revolution forced a large number of young men and women of noble origin, who under other circumstances would not have had to earn their living, to leave France and look for opportunities to provide for themselves. Many Russian parents preferred exactly this kind of governess. ‘From a good family’, ‘with good manners’, such a recommendation always raised the governess’s salary (zhalovan’e). Among such governesses were Mademoiselle Sybourg, the governess of Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna since 1808; Mademoiselle Benoit, the governess of P.A. Osipova’s daughters in the Pskov province since 1808;19 Madame d’Horrer, the governess of the Venevitinov family in Moscow in the 1810s,20 Madame Pascalis, the governess of the Sheremetevs in Moscow in the 1820s;21 and Miss du Tour, the governess of the Bludovs in St Petersburg in the 1820s.22 The Englishwoman Claire Clairmont (1798–1879) was the stepdaughter of the famous philosopher William Godwin, stepsister of the famous writer Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, a close friend to the famous poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, yet she became a governess due to unfavourable circumstances. She arrived in Russia in 1823 with the family of the Countess Zotova, in which she worked as a governess. In 1824–1825, Claire Clairmont worked as a governess with the Posnikovs (the family of a Moscow judicial official) and then she stayed in the Princess Golitsyn’s house in Moscow; in 1827–1831 she was a governess in the family of General Kaisarov. Claire Clairmont concealed the circumstances of her previous life (first of all that she had had with Lord Byron a deceased illegitimate daughter). She did not mention the names of Shelley, Godwin and Byron, being aware that communication with such people, having the reputation of free-thinkers, would have damaged her career as a governess. She had to work as a governess to ensure a comfortable old age. All the time, Claire Clairmont was calculating for how long she would need to serve as a governess in order to earn enough money for her future life.23 Under these circumstances she constantly felt a burden of her position as that of ‘slavery’ as she called it: ‘No one knows better than myself what it is like to climb the staircase in a strangers’ house, feeling it with every step that a solitary room and the faces

Cross-cultural closeness  221 in it are filled with strange indifference whilst awaiting us. The world is kept in silence for me. It is for years that I have lived among strangers’.24 A reason such as poverty of the family was the main factor inducing a woman to become a governess and go to Russia in search of good money. Marital issues which led to spouses occupying separate accommodation (divorces were rare at that time), as well as early widowhood, were the main reasons for a married woman to choose the career of a governess.25 Elizabeth Stephens’s (née Planta, died 1816) history is remarkable in this respect. Her ancestors were Swiss who had moved to England. Her brother, Joseph Planta (1744–1827), was Chief Librarian at the British Museum. As for Elizabeth, she spoke French and Italian, was skilled in all kinds of needlework and played the harpsichord. When her husband, an Anglican priest, died, she found herself and their three children in a quite helpless position. In 1789, her brother sent a letter to Andrey Samborskii (1753–1815), a former chaplain in the Russian church in London, asking him to find a job for his widowed sister in Russia. Samborskii found a position of governess for Mrs Stephens, who had to teach Alexanrda (1775–1847), the youngest daughter of Countess Ekaterina Shuvalova.26 Also prospects of retirement in Russia were at best rather favourable: ageing governesses would still live in the families of their pupils, and that was considered to be a normal arrangement.27 Another option in becoming a governess was moving up the social ladder. This indicated that governesses were expected to be experts in behaviour more typical for higher social groups, in spite of their not belonging to these kinds of circles. To this purpose, they needed to learn all the symbols grading someone as definitely belonging to ‘society’. Being an expert in the fine manners of society, but not being part of it herself, a governess could easily be confronted with difficulties of wrong representation and false expectations. Emilie Schaffe (1827–1906) was an example of such upward mobility. She was born in St Petersburg into a German family, went to St Petri-Schule, but she did not finish her education due to financial reasons. At the age of sixteen, she began to work as a home-school teacher while simultaneously continuing her self-education. In 1858, she opened a private school in St Petersburg, which under her management developed into one of the best gymnasiums for girls.28 During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the governess’s position underwent a great change. In the eighteenth century, the number of foreign tutors and governesses was much smaller than the number of noblemen wishing to invite them to instruct their children. At the same time, Russian tutors and governesses did not exist at all, so uneducated parents entrusted the education and upbringing of their children to the care of foreign tutors and treated them as family members. Between the 1820s and the 1840s, the situation changed with regards to the families of educated parents; governesses were under supervision, but parents respected their knowledge and their labour. Olga Smirnova wrote that her governess, Mademoiselle

222  Olga Solodyankina Overbeck, loved her parents, and they treated her as their own sister.29 In the 1850s and 1860s, the situation changed again. With the number of governesses increasing in Russia, the status of this professional group declined. From that moment on, the masters had to be reminded of the fact that the governesses were people of an equal or even a superior mind.30 At that time the occupation of a governess was not considered to be a prestigious one, and women engaged in this occupation felt themselves to be people of a lower class. Amalia Schröder, a wonderful Swiss governess in the RossetArnoldi family since 1800 until the 1810s, was underestimated by her masters. Her pupil, Alexandra Smirnova, wrote that Amalia Schröder had many high virtues; she was so innocent that neither she nor the others suspected that these were the very best manners. She thought that she was not worth of special attention and gratitude.31 After issuing ‘The statute on home preceptors and teachers’ in 1834, the Ministry of National Education began to collect data about granted certificates entitling people to teach in private homes, and the authorities started to record data on the social origin of foreign applicants. At the very beginning of the process, it was sufficient for foreigners to specify their status as ‘from abroad’, but later on this formulation needed to be specified in details. In the 1830s and 1840s, foreign governesses in Russia originated from the families of merchants, manufacturers, teachers, medical doctors,32 bakers, chemists, glove masters, tailors, bronze masters, upholsterers, coach makers, musicians and the like.33 The French Countess Sofía de Nechez appeared to be quite an exception as compared to them. In 1841, she wished to receive a certificate entitling her to teach French, but during the standard procedure of checking her knowledge, it was found out that she was able ‘to teach only basic French’.34

Educational and professional background Parents and teachers had essentially different approaches regarding the definition of who was able to work as a governess and who was not. Parents looked for ‘such a person who, whilst remaining with our children during the whole of the day, could replace ourselves to our children’, and ‘tutors and governesses who would be like second parents’, as Adrien Lesguilliez wrote in his manual for tutors and governesses.35 The process of education was especially fruitful if the governesses were professionals, however only some of them were. In relation to the eighteenth century, it is difficult to give examples of governesses who received special education; it was enough to be a native speaker. But in the nineteenth century, governesses were increasingly engaged in home education or were trained at schools for girls, after which some of them could prepare for their future pedagogical activity. Thus, the governess of the Uvarov family (Minister of National Education), Mademoiselle Sylvestre, was famous for her knowledge and undertook astronomy-related research, which was absolutely untypical for

Cross-cultural closeness  223 that time. Claire Clairmont, the British governess in Moscow in the 1820s, was home-schooled until the age of ten, and then attended schools in Ramsgate and Walham Green.36 She had a great aptitude for foreign languages, played music and also developed a taste for literary activities. Mademoiselle Michel, the Tuchkovs’ governess, was a widely read person; she was fluent in English, French and German and was familiar with the national literature of these countries. Fanny Durbach (1822–1901), born in Montbéliard/Mömpelgard, worked in 1844–1848 as a governess for a little boy, Petr Chaikovskii, the future famous composer Peter Tchaikovsky. She had a specific educational background aimed at professional pedagogical activity. Mademoiselle Mulanie, the governess in the Iakovlev family in Kaluga, had graduated from the French school of le Sacré Cœur in Rome.37 The level of requirements with regards to scholastic attainments of a governess gradually increased. Since the 1830s, in order to receive a teaching certificate giving the right to educate children in private homes, it was necessary to pass specific tests at a university, lyceum or gymnasium and to show (in writing and orally, by answering questions) knowledge in the subjects that the governess was going to teach; she was also to confirm a basic level of knowledge in arithmetic, geography and history. We can imagine the procedure of such a test as illustrated by the example of Emilia Gross, a sixteen-year-old daughter of a dyer, a Lutheran Saxon citizen. In 1850, she took tests in the Novgorod Gymnasium, wishing to obtain a certificate entitling her to teach German, French and Russian. On 8 November 1850, she had her speaking exams in German, French and Russian; on 10 November she was taking exams in history, geography and arithmetic; and on 14 November, Emilia gave a lecture in German ‘On usage of auxiliary verbs in syntactic relations’, a lecture in French ‘On the participle’ and provided written responses to the defined topics in German and in French. The teachers at Novgorod Gymnasium remarked on the high level of her knowledge; however afterwards the package of the documents (including her answers and the texts of her compositions) was checked in St Petersburg University, and the test commission of the university licensed Emilia Gross to teach only German, having counted 172 mistakes in her French texts. Thus, the system of checking the level of knowledge of governesses worked quite successfully towards the middle of the nineteenth century. The texts of the compositions were preserved in the personal records of the potential governesses who were undergoing assessment at St Petersburg University. It is obvious that the examiners had their favourite subjects of such compositions: ‘About education’; ‘On importance of education’; ‘Education as the source of happiness’; ‘Education of young ladies’; ‘Sciences’; ‘The duty of a governess’; ‘An idea of a good governess’; ‘Character of children’; ‘Modesty’; ‘Patience’; ‘Gratitude’. But there could also be a few creatively different subjects of compositions: for example, on music and equality of people. In doing so, the compositions were only checked from the point of view of the language: with regards to grammatical and

224  Olga Solodyankina punctuation mistakes. We cannot find any marks of the examiners concerning the contents of the compositions themselves. Let me provide several extracts from the texts of the compositions devoted to pedagogical topics, although it would be hard to say whether it reflects the real visualization of the contenders themselves seeking to fill governesses’ positions. It is quite possible that they used the words that would be expected in such situations; or perhaps they expressed their innermost thoughts. In any case, these are the ‘live voices’ of the governesses dating back to the 1830s. Sarah Odell wrote her composition ‘About education’ showing the importance of education and emphasizing those benefits and pleasures which any knowledge would give. Frances Potts explored the topic ‘On importance of education’, paying attention to the fact that education brought happiness and pleasure into our lives. Mary Jones, who was assigned the topic ‘An idea of a good governess’ for her composition, wrote how important it was to develop religious feelings in pupils. Ann Miller was elaborating on the topic ‘The duty of a governess’. According to her opinion, the governess’s duty was more of shaping the mindset and redressing the manners of children in her care, rather than just giving lessons. She was pointing out quite distinctively that one could not just apply the same methods of influence to every child, as the pupils differed from one another. Deborah Packwood was given the topic ‘Education as the source of happiness’. She subdivided education into three different types: intellectual, moral and physical, underlining the importance of appealing to the texts of those authors whose morality and authority did not raise any doubts. Deborah Packwood summed up her reasoning as follows: ‘We should as far as possible adhere to a steady system of education. . . daily increasing the stock of knowledge already gained, and keeping the mind in constant activity’.38 Even now we cannot but agree with these conclusions of the English governess belonging to the nineteenth century.

Tasks of a governess It was difficult even for the most reasonable and respectable parents and trustees to describe the whole range of requirements to a governess, to formulate them accurately and to work according to an action plan developed for a particular child’s education. First of all, the parents’ ideas on their children’s future differed greatly and consequently, there were quite a few changes regarding what knowledge they considered to be compulsory or optional. In this respect, a lot depended on the abilities of a child, their physical condition and immediate environment (relatives, friends), as well as financial circumstances of the family, fashion trends and preferences. Then parents had to decide which part of upbringing and educational responsibilities they were willing to undertake themselves, and which duties they intended to entrust to the governesses. If the mother or father was in

Cross-cultural closeness  225 charge of their children’s education and passed their knowledge themselves, they would invite a governess only to take care of their children, without demanding deep knowledge on her part. If the parents did not exercise constant control, they would invite skilled governesses capable of teaching the majority of the subjects and to control visiting teachers only. During the process of employing a governess, the parents had to decide what salary they would be able to pay. The choice of a governess depended upon it, as the potential supply was drastically dwindled due to the limited financial resources of the family. Another issue was of where the governess would be accommodated; in Russia it was possible that a foreign governess would arrive with her children and/or with her spouse. Other issues included what servants she would have, how many days off she would get, whether she would be provided with a carriage, where the governess and her pupils would eat – table d’hôte or separately, what rooms would be used as a classroom and what educational tools and materials it was necessary to get. A separate room was rather seldom arranged for a governess; usually she was accommodated behind a screen in the same room with her pupils. It was thought that continuous supervision by a governess was useful for the children, so even in the imperial family the governess was accommodated together with her pupil. Teaching foreign languages was the main duty of a foreign governess; very often she taught other subjects too. Many parents demanded her presence at all the lessons given by other teachers,39 as the governess had to know the topics taught to the children and to resolve any conflicts. Other duties of the governesses came in different shapes and forms. They had to teach etiquette rules to their pupils, how to behave at the table, how to receive guests, to be engaged in small talk, etc. They taught drawing, music, were responsible for pupils’ health, arranged their leisure time, accompanied children to theatres, balls and concerts, supervised their reading and paid attention to their mental health. As a rule, parents trusted their governesses and tutors and would hesitate to find any faults in their educational activity. Nataliia Grot was brought up by a Swiss governess, Mademoiselle Haldy, in the 1830s, and after only two years it turned out that the governess was a changeable sort of person, quite thoughtless and taking care only of her own life.40 Governesses spent their free time differently: from an active social life to self-education to pursuing their own fields of interests. Madame Noiseville, the governess of Princesses Golitsyns in 1800–1810s, was famous for her lively mind and witty conversations.41 She contributed to making the Golitsyns’ house the most attractive place for all the French people living in St Petersburg. Living in a foreign environment, governesses looked for compatriots in search of social support, which resulted in creating special communication and relationships. Frequency of such contacts depended on the size of a local foreign community. The opportunities were particularly good in St Petersburg and Moscow. In 1825, Claire Clairmont, who lived in the

226  Olga Solodyankina Islavskoe estate near Moscow, received British newspapers and magazines from an English teacher Mr Baxter quite regularly, as well as some letters from her compatriots Miss Weston from Penza, Mrs Seymour from Odessa and from others. They discussed political news, international as well as Russian. In November 1825, in Moscow, Claire Clermont visited the house of an Englishwoman Miss Trewin, where she met Miss Gottman to go to the church together. They discussed the rumours of the death of Alexander I in Taganrog: ‘Everybody of course was lost in grief and astonishment’.42 Communication with compatriots gave some sort of evasion from the hard work of the governesses and soon brought its dividends: they could bring a letter or a parcel to their relatives in the homeland; and after returning to Russia they could share news and receive parcels from the sources in Europe. Compatriots helped each other both by giving advice and financially. It might have happened that when busy with other affairs, the mother of the governess’s pupils would entrust the governess to stay in regular correspondence with the family’s relatives, reporting all the details of the family life and the process of their children’s education. Princess Aleksandra Volkonskaia, one of the most influential court ladies and wife of Orenburg Governor General Prince Grigorii Volkonskii (1742–1824), stayed in St Petersburg; Sof’ia, the only daughter of Volkonskii’s, lived there too. Prince Volkonskii stayed in Orenburg for some years and communicated with the family in writing. The first Swiss governess of Sof’ia Volkonskaia, Mademoiselle Calame, wrote to him about the progress of his grandsons and granddaughters, until the governess, a niece of the previous one, Cecile Wildermeth, took over. Prince Volkonskii sent greetings in French in his letters to his wife and daughter, which were delivered to the governesses; and while the family was staying abroad, he began to write separate letters to the governess as well. At least ten of such messages were recorded since 1813 until 1815, all of them being kind and containing various instructions. Prince Volkonskii did not forget to thank the governess for taking care of himself and his grandsons. He expressed his gratitude with words and gifts: he sent a shawl, some tea and even caviar, common in Orenburg but rare in St Petersburg.43

Governesses and the process of cross-cultural communication In the mid-eighteenth century, governesses were usually Germans; by the beginning of the nineteenth century they were predominantly French. In some cases, they were German and Swiss and extremely rarely they were English. Then, the share of Swiss and English governesses increased. The fashion of having a governess from another country had changed, as the prevailing languages changed in their significance. At around the mid-­ eighteenth century, a daughter or a son was the first in the family to be brought up according to Western European traditions. Thus, a profound conflict between the generations, fathers and children, was not only linguistic,

Cross-cultural closeness  227 but cross-cultural as well. At the turn of the nineteenth century, the new generation brought up by foreign governesses entered the active phase of their life; this softened disagreements between the generations a little bit. Count Mikhail Buturlin (born 1807) knew perfectly well that his mother was brought up by a Swiss governess, and that his elder sister was brought up by an English governess.44 Representatives of the succeeding generations could already mention the names of the tutors for their grandmothers, grandfathers and parents, as well as their own tutors, when they contributed to the family chronicle. Lidiia Rostopchina (born 1838) noted that her grandmother Ekaterina Rostopchina, née Protasova (born 1776), was brought up by Madame de-Pon, and that her uncle, Count Sergei Rostopchin (born 1796) was brought up by a French immigrant D’Allonville; her father, Count Andrei Rostopchin, who was born in 1813, was raised by French tutors Ysarn and Rougemont, whereas Lidiia herself was brought up by a Polish governess, Louise Stavska, and later on by Madame Cointe.45 Practically all aspects of life for sons and daughters of Russian noble families were shaped under the influence of foreign governesses, starting from physiology (daily routine, diet, physical activities) and ending with mental issues, such as self-identification and interpersonal communication. The consequences of such influence were quite controversial in accepting Western European norms of behaviour, whilst retaining the desire ‘to come back to square one’. Governesses were close to their pupils all the time, and children unconsciously imitated them or simply noted the nonverbal methods of communication, peculiar to a foreign culture. The governess shaped the appearance and the character of a Russian child according to her ideas and other people’s judgements. As a result, the difference could be perceived in terms of nonverbal means of communication, a physiognomic mask (traits and look), clothes, features of constitution, gestures, poses, distance between the interlocutors, expression of eyes and the direction of look, acoustic and tactile means of nonverbal communication, smell, skin reactions and so on. There are numerous descriptions of appearance of different governesses, but we can visualize these descriptions thanks to illustrations to Vera Zhelikhovskaia’s memoirs (see Figures 11.1 and 11.2). Vera Zhelikhovskaia, née von Hahn (1835–1896), a Russian writer, mostly of children’s stories, was the daughter of a well-known Russian writer, Helena von Hahn, née Fadeeva (1814–1842), and Peter von Hahn (1798–1873), an artillery officer. Elena Blavatskaia (1831– 1891), a famous Russian occultist, a spiritualist medium and the co-founder of the Theosophical Society, was an elder sister of Vera Zhelikhovskaia. Their cousin was Count Sergei Witte (1849–1915), an outstanding Russian government leader, finance minister and later on, head of the government. At the very beginning, the governesses appeared complete strangers, a sharp contrast with native Russians; however, gradually the situation changed, and the governesses became more like Russians in several aspects. Governesses modelled their appearance, expression of their eyes, observed clothes, direction of looks, gestures, poses, intonation, loudness and the

Figure 11.1 Miss Jeffers, an English governess of the von Hahn daughters in Odessa and other places in Russia where Peter von Hahn served in the late 1830s through early 1840s. Drawing by Ekaterina Zarudnaya-Kavos (1861–1917). Source: V.P. Zhelikhovskaia, Kak ia byla malen’koi. Iz vospominanii rannego detstva V.P. Zhelikhovskoi (Sankt-Peterburg: A.F. Devrien, 1908), 137.

Cross-cultural closeness  229

Figure 11.2 Madame Pecqoeur, the French governess of Helena and Vera von Hahn. Drawing by Sergey Solomko (1867–1928). Source: V.P. Zhelikhovskaia, Moe otrochestvo (Sankt-Peterburg: A.F. Devrien, 1909), 191. CarolineHenriette Pecqoeur (died during the cholera epidemic in 1847) brought up Helena and Vera von Hahn in Saratov in the 1840s. After the death of their mother, Helena and Vera von Hahn were brought up in the family of their grandmother, née princess Dolgorukova, and their grandfather, Andrei Fadeev, the governor of Saratov.

pitch of voice, especially as they taught their native language. It was more difficult though as far as the body build and skin reactions (reddening, for example) were concerned; they mostly depended on physiology and biological factors, but not on the cultural features. Keen observers spoke about people of slender constitution like that: ‘he is rather a Frenchman than Russian, because his hands and feet are so thin and graceful’. Foreign governesses were bearers of carriers of other cultures; communication of Russian noblemen with them was considered to be the act of cross-cultural communication accompanied with all the nuances that such processes would involve.

230  Olga Solodyankina

Hierarchy of foreign governesses The hierarchy of home teachers was also changing between the 1750s and the 1850s. At first, the Germans were most widespread, but afterwards the French prevailed and then, with the ubiquity of French teachers, the English governesses began to be valued the highest. The difference in assessment of teachers belonging to different genders or representatives of a particular nationality is rather interesting. Englishwomen were appreciated above all the others, but it was impossible to make such a clear-cut statement about British men, for example. Swiss tutors were very highly thought of, but Swiss governesses were considered to be at somewhat much lower level than the French, though a little bit above the Germans. In Lesguilliez’s manual for tutors and governesses, all foreigners were ranked according to their skills. The English governesses were the most expensive ones; ‘The Englishwoman. . . is well educated, knows her business and to be fair deserves to be the top’.46 Thus, the English governesses could not hide their sneering attitude to the country in which they had to work. In 1826, Claire Clairmont told a female English friend of hers: ‘the Russians are as yet totally ignorant of anything like real education’.47 A French governess, ‘who has just arrived from Paris’, was a second choice. Lesguilliez wrote: ‘the others try to imitate her and acquire all her manners’. A typical Swiss governess would possess features similar to a French one, ‘but usually she is better educated and uses the very best teaching methods’.48 A considerable number of governesses arrived in Russia from Switzerland. When travelling around Switzerland, Alexander Turgenev wrote: ‘I have not found La Harpe . . . but I have seen Mademoiselle Calame and other teachers of the Russian fair sex; Switzerland is full of them’.49 Indeed, the Swiss family Calame-Wildermeth provided several governesses to Russia. The representative of the first generation, Mademoiselle Calame, brought up Countesses Varvara and Ekaterina Razumovskii, daughters of Count Alexei Razumovskii, in the 1790s. Then she went to service Princess Sof’ia Volkonskaia, sister of her former pupil, Varvara Razumovskaia’s husband, Prince Nikolai Repnin-Volkonskii. That is where she brought up Alina, the eldest daughter of Volkonskii.50 All the three nieces of Mademoiselle Calame, the Swiss girls Wildermeth, became governesses too. Princesses Aleksandra and Varvara Repnin, daughters of the née Countess Varvara Razumovskaia, had a governess called Victoria Wildermeth, accompanying the family on all the journeys in Russia and abroad. Victoria’s sister Cecile Wildermeth was the successor of their aunt: she worked as a governess in the family of Prince N.G. Repnin-Volkonskii’s sister, Princess Sof’ia Volkonskaia, who got married to her relative, Prince Peter Volkonskii. The latter became minister of the court later on. In the 1810s, Cecile Wildermeth brought up Alina, Dmitrii and Grigorii Volkonskii in the family of Prince Volkonskii. The third sister, Margarita Wildermeth, was the governess of Prussian Princess Charlotte, the future empress Aleksandra Fedorovna, wife of Nicholas I.51

Cross-cultural closeness  231 As for the German governesses, Lesguilliez wrote: ‘The German governess would distinguish herself by her education and depth of thinking, she would regard her occupation in terms of stricter manners, as compared to the others’. Furthermore, she considerably differed from all the others in her ability to teach sciences and her ‘excellent knowledge of all the needlework’. Lesguilliez advised parents to have a German or Baltic German governess for their children, ‘as a more skilled and educated person’ who was also much cheaper than French and Swiss governesses.52 The typical successful career of a respectable foreign governess in the first half of the nineteenth century looked like that of Mademoiselle Michel. In the early 1830s, at about the age of twenty, she arrived in Russia where the people she was recommended to placed her as a governess for the children of rich German negotiator Forsch, who lived in Moscow. She spent about three to four years at his house. Then Mademoiselle Michel brought up E.A. Stolypina’s daughters Mariia and Elizabeth in St Petersburg and Moscow. It lasted for about five years, until the time when the elder daughter married. Since 1841, Mademoiselle Michel worked at the Tuchkovs and lived in their Penza manor for eight years. The journey abroad in 1848 became a very joyful moment: ‘her cherished dream was fulfilled’. At the same time, the governess became aware of Nataliia Tuchkova’s rapprochement with a married man, Nicholas Ogarev. Staying abroad in the Herzen family was also probably a little bit ambiguous: ‘it was not easy for the poor Mademoiselle Michel to embrace this era of our existence, so unpleasant for her, but even having such obstacles she did not cease to love us’. In the same year of 1848, Mademoiselle Michel accepted the offer of Princess Trubetskaia, and ‘it was her last place of work. She never became friends with the princess, finding her to be a cold person relying on fashion. She had two pupils; she loved the youngest one, and she remained friends and maintained correspondence with all her Russian pupils throughout her life’. She lived for a long time in Italy with the Trubetskoi family. Then Mademoiselle Michel, who had become a Russian citizen during her governess career, returned home to Lorraine/Lothringen and lived in the convent as a boarder, without leaving Metz.53 The logic of such migrations is obvious. At first, she moved to a foreign country and worked for a non-Russian family, because she had a smaller risk of frustration due to the acknowledgement of daily routines in her new home. Then she worked for families of respectable, untitled noblemen. And lastly she began to work for a princely family. It indicated a transition to the level representing the high society, with a bonus of regular journeys abroad. At the end of her career, the governess returned home, where a more or less respectable life was guaranteed for her old age due to her service in Russia. It goes without saying that not every career was as successful as that. Bearing in mind all the differences, circumstances and destinies, one could state that the final stage of a governess’s career would be in many respects defined by her previous work.

Knight, Uranie* French

Duboes (Dubois), French Louise Lafontaine, French Clar* Rolin, Elisabethe French

Foreigner

Foreigner

French

French German

French and German

French Basic French and Basic German French and German, including Grammar, Arithmetic French and German French

French, including Grammar French

Subjects taught (according to the certificate)

French

French and German French

French and German

French French and German

Schmidt, A.* French Heynisch, Louise French

Bergström, Mathilde*

French

Eck, Antoinette* French

Sweden

French

Landolh, Marie* French

Swiss from the canton of Bern Swiss from the canton of Vaud Foreigner

Language Subjects of the taught application (at their discretion)

Full name

Status

18.12.1830

11.10.1830

3.6.1830

3.6.1830

27.6.1829

12.5.1829 14.6.1829

10.4.1829

10.4.1829

Issue date of the document (day, month, year)

Religion

Marital status

Daughter of Kammermusieker Vasilii Heynisch

Other information

Table 11.1 Women taking tests at St Petersburg University to obtain a certificate entitling them to teach in private homes, 1829–1834

Foreigner

Swiss from the canton of Neuchâtel

Foreigner

Swiss from the canton of Geneva

Duperron, Marie*

French

French

French

French French

French

12.10.1831

9.6.1831

23.5.1831

27.4.1831 14.5.1831

3.4.1831

6.3.1831

1831

1831

Basic French November 1831

French

German

French and German French

French

Jannerét (Jeannereth), Rose Grohmann, Ernestine Borel, Adèle*

French

Wilhelm, Wilhelmina Fettback, Catherine* Koll, L. Kehler (Kaehler), Amalia (Amelie)

Russian

German, Only reading French and in German Russian French and French and German German Basic German Basic German French French French, French, German, German, Geography, elements of History Geography and History French French

German

French

Henning, Marie

French

French

Peyrot, Elisabeth*

Evangelical Reformed Church of France

Evangelic Reformed Church

Madame

Mademoiselle

Mademoiselle

(Continued)

Daughter of a deceased pastor

Foreigner

Foreigner

Foreigner

Foreigner

Sigel, Elizabeth Jones, Mary (Mariam)*

French English

French

French

French

French

French

Blanchet, Lucille* Goffare (Gaffare, Goffar, Jaffare), Marie* Thounard (Thonard), Louise* d’Aussonne (d’Aussonn), Emilie Abadie* Kraetz, Charlotte*

Foreigner

French

Alioth, Cécile*

Swiss from the canton of Bern French French

French

Subjects taught (according to the certificate)

French English

French, Russian and German

French

French

13.2.1832

4.1.1832

1832

Issue date of the document (day, month, year)

8.3.1832

Basic French, 8.3.1832 Basic Russian, and Basic German French 14.5.1832 English 21.5.1832

French

Basic French 22.2.1832

French, French History, Geography

French

French

Language Subjects of the taught application (at their discretion)

Full name

Status

Table 11.1 (Continued) Marital status

Roman Catholicism

Roman Madame Catholicism

Roman Madame Catholicism

Roman Mademoiselle Catholicism Roman Mademoiselle Catholicism

Reformed Church

Religion

Other information

de Bellingshausen, Jeannette

French

Bedauex, Marie (Marianne de Bedauex, Maria Bedauer)* Odell, Sarah*

French and Italian German French and German French French French

German

French

French

French

French

German

English

French

French

French

French

English

French

Wyss, Aděle*

Guichard (Juichard), Eugénie* Foreigner Müller, Wilgelmina Karolina* Foreigner Guthmann (Gouthmann), Louise* Foreigner from Stokleit, Claire Paris Marie* Foreigner St Thomes (St Thoma), Albertine* Foreigner Basset, Josephine*

Swiss

Russian

Foreigner

Swiss from the canton of Bern Swiss from the canton of Neuchâtel

French

French

French

French and German

German

French

German

English

French

French

19.9.1833

4.3.1833

23.12.1832

22.12.1832

19.11.1832

10.9.1832

10.9.1832

7.9.1832

3.8.1832

28.6.1832

Mademoiselle Roman Widow Catholicism Roman Catholicism

Reformed Church

(Continued)

Née Langevise

From Hamburg

Née Joly

Mademoiselle Daughter of Baron de Bellingshausen

Mademoiselle

Roman Widow Catholicism

Church of England Evangelical Lutheran Church

Reformed Church of France

Of a good family, from Switzerland, canton Bern Of a bourgeois family, from the canton of Neuchâtel

Swiss from the canton of Vaud Swiss from the canton of Vaud English and French French French

English

French

French

French

Packwood, Deborah Neveux, Marie Catherine Théremin (Therémin), Elizabeth Alexandrine

French

French

Subjects taught (according to the certificate)

French

French

English

French

French

French, German German and Basic and Italian French

French

French

French

French

French

Language Subjects of the taught application (at their discretion)

Huguenin, Isaline*

André, Rose Aline (Rosaline)* de Voisenon (Voisennon), Josephine Fusée (Fuscé, Fussée)* Gandillon, Pauline*

Foreigner

French

Full name

Status

Table 11.1 (Continued)

27.1.1834

18.1.1834

Marital status

Roman Madame Catholicism

Religion

Reformed Church of France

December 1833 Reformed Church of France 1834 Evangelic French Church 1834

17.11.1833

29.10.1833

Issue date of the document (day, month, year)

Parents lived in Russia

Née Luxembourg

Other information

English

de Stappere (Stappers), Thérésa* Miller, Ann* Hippius, Caroline

Foreigner

English French

French

Berger, Caroline* French

Foreigner

English French

French April 1834 13.4.1834

13.2.1834

10.2.1834

7.2.1834

English German

French English German

French

12.5.1834 12.5.1834

3.5.1834

French French 17.4.1834 Russian, Basic Russian 18.4.1834 German, and Arithmetic German, elements of Arithmetic French French 3.5.1834

English French

English French

French

French

German, Basic Russian, German English, and Geography French French

French

Fleury, Louise Wolters, Caroline*

de Schönendall d’Arimont, Gabrielle Park, Ann Rossat, MarieFrançoise*

Noth, Catherine French

Salzmann, Rose* French

Foreigner

Swiss from the canton of Vaud

Countess

Foreigner

Mademoiselle

Evangelical Lutheran Church

(Continued)

Mademoiselle Of a good family, from Netherlands Mademoiselle Mademoiselle Daughter of a pastor

Mademoiselle

Roman Mademoiselle Catholicism

Church of England

Countess

Countess

Foreigner

Foreigner

Foreigner

Russian

French

German

French

French

French

English French

French and German German

German

French and German English French

French

German

Molinary, French Marie* Grandpré; Anne French de Moll, Emilie de German

Sokoll (Socole), Elise Schor, Clémence Fréderique* Cairns, Mariane Tuefferd, Cathérine Sophie* Mussard, Elizabeth (Elise)

Boustedt, French Dorotheé Herm, Augustine French

Russian

Language Subjects of the taught application (at their discretion)

Full name

Status

Table 11.1 (Continued)

2.6.1834

30.5.1834

30.5.1834

24.5.1834 30.5.1834

21.5.1834

21.5.1834

19.5.1834

12.5.1834

Issue date of the document (day, month, year)

Reading and 15.6.1834 speaking in German

French

French

French

English French

French and German Basic German French

German

Subjects taught (according to the certificate)

Evangelical Reformed Church of France

Religion

Other information

Mademoiselle

Mademoiselle

Madame

Mademoiselle Lived in Reval/ Tallinn, Estland Mademoiselle

Marital status

German

French

Beckmann, Helene

Kroupp, Elise

Potts, Francis (Frances)

English

Dagatte, French Jeanne Marie Prospérina* Duplan, Louise* French

Billeter (Billiter), French Sophie

French

Gros-Jean, Julie Jeanneret*

6.6.1834

Reading and 15.6.1834 speaking in German French and 18.6.1834 Basic Russian

French

English

French English

3.8.1834

Basic French 26.7.1834

French, German and Russian French, French, 26.6.1834 German German and English and English French Basic French 1834. 06. 27.

German

French

Mademoiselle

Mademoiselle

Mademoiselle

Mademoiselle Of a good family

Roman Mademoiselle From Guéblange, Catholicism département de la Meurthe Reformed Mademoiselle Lived in Church of Lausanne France Church of Madame England

Evangelical Reformed Church of France

Foreign women are marked with an asterisk*.

Source: Central Historical Archives in St Petersburg, fund 14, opis’ 24, d. 295, 296, 316, 331, 379, 402, 403, 413, 419, 426, 430, 474, 475, 477, 495, 502, 503, 508, 512, 515, 532, 533, 535, 536, 537, 550, 552, 624, 629, 635, 645, 738, 739, 740, 741, 742, 743, 744, 746, 747, 748, 749, 750, 751, 752, 753, 754, 755, 756,757, 758, 759, 761, 762, 763, 764, 765, 767, 768, 769, 770, 771, 782, 916, 976, 987, 994, 1143, 1144, 1152, 1159, 1163.

Swiss from the canton of Vaud

French

Swiss from the canton of Neuchâtel

240  Olga Solodyankina

Why Western European women left for Russia to work as governesses Working in Russia had many advantages. First of all, as the English governess Claire Clairmont formulated it: ‘there is no country so favourable to foreigners’.54 Secondly, in Western Europe, special requirements were imposed on the qualifications of governesses, whereas in order to work in Russia they only had to speak their native language. Parents even welcomed tutors and governesses who were not fluent in any other languages and could not speak any Russian: they would teach the language better and faster. Therefore, the governesses who could not find employment in their homeland left for Russia. In general, they may not have been top-quality teachers. Working in Russia was attractive because foreign governess had less duties; different subjects were taught by tutors, and the governess still had more free time for herself. Russian teachers (both men and women) as well as governesses had more responsibilities. Foreigners, due to their higher status, could demand better terms including a higher salary. In England and France, where the supply of governesses exceeded the demand, the fees for their services continuously decreased. In Russia, before the beginning of nineteenth century, the situation was quite the opposite: the demand exceeded the supply. In Western Europe, relations with pupils most often came to an end together with the end of the contract in the entrusted family. Prospects of retirement in Russia were rather favourable: in many cases, former tutors and governesses received a lifelong pension and settled with comfort in a most convenient place. Those who could not provide for their retirement had very sad prospects: they would reside in shelters or alms-houses. The foreign governesses firmly ‘fitted into’ the daily routines and life of the Russian nobility. Rigid stereotypes concerning appearance, character and other features followed foreigner governesses: to begin with, they were known for their severity; possessing the Western European glamour and having a witty mind and kindness. Parents preferred either older single women or harmless widows. Age, appearance, personal traits, good and bad habits, marital status, the number of children and the level of knowledge, as well as pedagogical techniques and experience – all of these influenced the role of assessment whilst accepting a new governess. Thus both material reasons and intellectual attitudes led to the spread of a socio-cultural phenomenon related to the concept of foreign governesses and their activity in Russia.

Notes 1 ‘Zakony o sostoianiiakh. O sostoianiiakh inostrantsev. St. 1512’, in Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, poveleniem Gosudaria Imperatora Nikolaia I sostavlennyi, tom IX (Sankt-Peterburg: Tipografiia Vtorogo Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi E.I.V. Kantseliarii, 1857), 291. 2 H. Pitcher, When Miss Emmie Was in Russia. English Governess Before, During and After the October Revolution (London & Toronto: Century Publishing & Lester and Orpen Dennys Deneau, 1984); A.G. Cross, ‘An Anglo-Russian Medley: Semen

Cross-cultural closeness  241 Vorontsov’s Other Son, Charles Cameron’s Daughter, Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich’s English Playmate, and Not Forgetting His English Nurse’, The Slavonic and East European Review 70:4 (1992), 708–721; A. Cross, ‘Early Miss Emmies: British Nannies, Governesses and Companions in Pre-Emancipation Russia’, Anglo-Russica: Aspects of Cultural Relations Between Great Britain and Russia in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. Selected Essays by Anthony Cross (Oxford: Berg, 1993), 222–244; A.G. Cross, ‘By the Banks of the Neva’: Chapters from the Lives and Careers of the British in EighteenthCentury Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); A.V. Tikhonova, ‘Shveitsarskie uchitelia v Rossii pervoi poloviny XIX v.’, Voprosy istorii 9 (2011), 142–147; Le Précepteur Francophone en Europe (XVIIe – XVIIIe siècles, eds. V. Rjéoutski & A. Tchoudinov (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2013). 3 Elizabeth was the Russian Empress in 1741–1761. 4 E. Shchepkina, Iz istorii zhenskoi lichnosti v Rossii: Lektsii i stat’i (Sankt-Peterburg: Tip. B.M.Vol’fa, 1914), 94. 5 I.N. Bozherianov, Detstvo, vospitanie i leta iunosti russkikh imperatorov (Petrograd: Obshchestvo popecheniia o bespriiutnykh detiakh, 1915), 29. 6 Letters from a Lady [Mrs. Rondeau], who resided some years in Russia, to her friend in England: With historical notes (London: Dodsley, 1777), 74–76. 7 N.B. Dolgorukaia, Svoeruchnye zapiski kniagini Natal’i Borisovny Dolgorukoi, docheri fel’dmarshala grafa Borisa Petrovicha Sheremeteva (Sankt-Peterburg: Khudozh. literatura, 1992), 52. 8 Later on, the governesses in the aristocratic families were predominantly French or Swiss, and rarely British. 9 Mrs. Elizabeth Justice (Surby), A Voyage to Russia: Describing the Laws, Manners, and Customs, of That Great Empire, as Governed at This Present by That Excellent Princess the Czarina. Second edition (London: Printed for the author, by G. Smith, in Johnson’s Court, Fleet-Street, 1746). 10 Foreigners could count on a pension from their employers, but this was characteristic of the emperor’s family, as well as of the families of the richest aristocrats only. 11 ‘O predvaritel’nom ispytanii v naukakh inostrantsev, zhelaiushchikh opredeliat’sia v chastnye domy dlia obucheniia detei, i o vzyskanii shtrafa s tekh, kotorye primut k sebe v dom i stanut derzhat’ uchitelia, ne imeiushchego dolzhnogo attestata. Imennoi, ob’’iavlennyi iz Senata Ukaz ot 5 maia 1757 g.’ in Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii, s 1649 goda, tom XIV (Sankt-Peterburg: Tipografiia Vtorogo Otdeleniia Sobstvennoi E.I.V. Kantseliarii, 1830), 765. 12 ‘Mnenie Ministra narodnogo prosveshcheniia, 19 ianvaria1812 g. Ob ispytanii domashnikh inostrannykh uchitelei’, in Sbornik postanovlenii po Ministerstvu narodnogo prosveshcheniia, tom1 (Sankt-Peterburg: tip. V.S. Balashova, 1875), col. 770–777. 13 ‘8 dekabria 1828 g. Ob ustave Gimnazii i uchilishch uezdnykh i prikhodskikh, sostoiashchikh v vedomstve Universitetov: S.-Peterburgskogo, Moskovskogo, Kazanskogo i Khar’kovskogo’, in Sbornik postanovlenii po Ministerstvu narodnogo prosveshcheniia, tom 2 (Sankt-Peterburg: tip. V.S. Balashova, 1875), col. 200–257. 14 ‘Vypiska iz Ukazu Ministru narodnogo prosveshcheniia. 12 iiunia 1831 g. Dopolnitel’nye postanovleniia k ustavu 1828 goda o zanimaiushchikhsia soderzhaniem chastnykh uchebnykh zavedenii i obucheniem iunoshestva’, in Sbornik postanovlenii po Ministerstvu narodnogo prosveshcheniia, tom 2 (Sankt-Peterburg: tip. V.S. Balashova, 1875), col. 438–440. 15 ‘Vysochaishee povelenie ot 25 marta 1834 g. O vospreshchenii prinimat’ inostrantsev oboego pola bez nadlezhashchikh svidetel’stv v domy dvorian, chinovnikov i kuptsov, v uchitel’skie, nastavnicheskie i guvernerskie zvaniia. Ukaz

242  Olga Solodyankina Pravitel’stvuiushchemu Senatu’, in Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, chast’ vtoraia, IV (1834), LXXI – LXXIII. 16 ‘Vysochaishee povelenie ot 1 iiulia 1834 g. Polozhenie o domashnikh nastavnikakh i uchiteliakh. Ukaz Pravitel’stvuiushchemu Senatu’, in Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, chast’ tret’ia, VIII (1834), XVII – XXXVI. 17 Moscow educational district included Kaluga, Ryazan’, Smolensk, Tver’, Tula, and Yaroslavl’ provinces. 18 Central State Archive of Moscow, f.459, op.2, d. 1478. 19 A.P. Kern (Markova-Vinogradskaia), Vospominaniia. Dnevniki. Pis’ma (Moskva: Pravda, 1989), 120. 20 N.E. Komarovskii, Zapiski grafa Nikolaia Egorovicha Komarovskogo (Moskva: Ob-vo revnitelei russkogo istoricheskogo prosveshcheniia, 1912), 15. 21 V.P. Sheremeteva, Dnevnik Varvary Petrovny Sheremetevoi, urozhdennoi Almazovoi: 1825–1826 gg. : Iz arkh. B.S. Sheremeteva (Moskva: Sinod. tip., 1916), 5. 22 A.D. Bludova, ‘Vospominaniia grafini Antoniny Dmitrievny Bludovoi’, Russkii arkhiv 1 (1874), 718. 23 Olga Yu. Solodyankina, ‘Personal Transfer of the Message and Undesirable Acquaintance to the Addressee: Reputation of the Governess’, in Incidents and Failures in European Epistolary Culture, ed. A.V. Stogova (Moscow: IVI RAN, 2016), 125–154. Percy Shelley bequeathed Claire Clairmont a sum sufficient for a comfortable life, but Percy’s father refused to carry out his will, and Claire had to earn money to ensure good living conditions. 24 The Journals of Claire Clairmont. 1814–1827, ed. M.K. Stocking (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 411. 25 O.Y. Solodyankina, ‘European Widows as Governesses in 18th and 19th-century Russia’, Women’s History Magazine 63 (2010), 19–26. 26 M. Raeff, Michael Speransky: Statesman of Imperial Russia, 1772–1839 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1957), 20. 27 ‘Pis’mo F. V. Rostopchina gr. S. R. Vorontsovu ot 10 noiab. 1801 g.’, Russkii arkhiv 2 (1887), 168; ‘Zapiski grafa Mikhaila Dmitrievicha Buturlina’, Russkii arkhiv 2 (1897), 235 and 4 (1897), 630; Rasskazy babushki: Iz vospominanii piati pokolenii, zapisannye i sobrannye ee vnukom D. Blagovo (Leningrad: Nauka, 1989), 248; A.O. Smirnova, Zapiski, dnevnik, vospominaniia, pis’ma (Moskva: Federatsiia, 1929), 171; A.O. Smirnova, Dnevnik. Vospominaniia (Moskva: Nauka, 1989), 736, 778; A.A. Olenina, Dnevnik; Vospominaniia (Sankt-Peterburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 1999), 213; ‘Vospominaniia i zapiski grafini A. D. Bludovoi’, Zaria 3 (1871), 5; N. Reshetov, ‘Dela davno minuvshikh dnei’, Russkii arkhiv 7 (1885), 431; ‘Vospominaniia grafa M.V. Tolstogo’, Russkii arkhiv 2 (1881), 305; ‘Iz vospominanii N. A. MalevskogoMalevicha: Aleksandr Ivanovich Rozov (Moskovskii starozhil)’, Russkii arkhiv 5 (1908), 94; A.I. Del’vig, Moi vospominaniia, tom 1 (Moskva: Moskovskii publichnyi i Rumiantsevskii muzei, 1912), 247; S.D. Sheremetev, Vospominaniia detstva (Sankt-Peterburg: Tip. M.M. Stasiulevicha, 1896), 54–55, 58; L. Rostopchina, Semeinaia khronika (1812 god) (Moskva: “Zvezda” N. Orfenov, 1912), 160. 28 ‘Nekrolog E.P. Schaffe’, Istoricheskii vestnik, tom 104, 5, (1906), 693. 29 ‘A.O. Smirnova i N. V. Gogol’. Pis’ma k Gogoliu Smirnovoi 1844–1851 gg.’ Russkaia starina, tom58, iiun’(1888) 607. 30 Zhizn’ v svete, doma i pri dvore (Sankt-Peterburg: prilozhenie k zhurnalu “Vestnik mody”, 1890), 93. 31 A.O. Smirnova, Zapiski,  dnevnik, vospominaniia, pis’ma  (Moskva: Federatsiia, 1929),171. 32 Central State Archive of Moscow, f.459, op.2, d.259, p. 13 ob., 14 ob., 19 ob.; d.343, p. 3 ob., 9 ob.; d.1478, p. 4 ob., 18 ob., 24, 36 ob.

Cross-cultural closeness  243 33 Central Historical Archive of St Petersburg, f.174, op.1, d.492, p. 14; d.573, p. 32, 174, 180, 286; d.1086, p. 43, 70, 90, 127,131. 34 Ibid., f.174, op.1, d.1086, 64. 35 A. Lesguilliez, Handbuch des Hauslehrers und der Gouvernante oder VadeMecum der Familien. Second edition (Sankt-Peterburg: tip. Nekliudova, 1870), 1. 36 Stocking Marion Kingston, ‘Clairmont, Clara Mary Jane (1798–1879)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Accessed September 2012, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5428. 37 ‘Zapiski grafa Mikhaila Dmitrievicha Buturlina’, Russkii arkhiv 8 (1898), 529. 38 Central Historical Archive of St Petersburg, f.14, op. 24, d.495, p. 2; d.762, p. 2, d.552, p. 2; d.768, p. 1, d.763, p. 2. 39 ‘Zapiski grafini Antoniny Dmitrievny Bludovoi’, Russkii arkhiv 7–8 (1872), col. 1221. 40 N.P. Grot, Iz semeinoi khroniki: Vospominaniia dlia detei i vnukov (SanktPeterburg: izd.sem’i, 1900), 40. 41 ‘Zapiski grafa Mikhaila Dmitrievicha Buturlina’, Russkii arkhiv 4 (1897), 630. 42 The Journals of Claire Clairmont, 1814–1827, 319, 327, 357, 363, 369, 373, 385. 43 Arkhiv dekabrista S. G. Volkonskogo: Do Sibiri, Chast’ 1 (Petrograd: Ogni, 1918), 269, 333, 347, 385, 416. 44 ‘Zapiski grafa Mikhaila Dmitrievicha Buturlina’, Russkii arkhiv 2 (1897), 229, 235. 45 L. Rostopchina, Semeinaia khronika (1812 god) (Moskva: “Zvezda” N. Orfenov, 1912), 25, 96, 129, 160, 179. 46 Lesguilliez, Handbuch des Hauslehrers, 90–91. 47 The Clairmont Correspondence: Letters of Claire Clairmont, Charles Clairmont, and Fanny Imlay Godwin, vol. 1, 1808–1834, ed. M.K. Stocking (Baltimore & London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1995), 242. 48 Lesguilliez, Handbuch des Hauslehrers, 91–92. 49 ‘A. I. Turgenev – kniaziu P. A. Viazemskomu. 9 iiulia 1833 g’, in Perepiska Aleksandra Ivanovicha Turgeneva s kniazem Petrom Andreevichem Viazemskim. 1814–1833 gody, tom1, ed. N.K. Kul’man (Petrograd: Izdatel’stvo RAN, 1921), 231. 50 Arkhiv dekabrista S.G. Volkonskogo: Do Sibiri, Chast 1 (Petrograd: Ogni, 1918), 69. 51 ‘Iz avtobiograficheskikh zapisok kniazhny V. N. Repninoi’, Russkii arkhiv 7 (1897), 480–489. 52 Lesguilliez, Handbuch des Hauslehrers, 93–94. 53 N.A. Tuchkova-Ogareva, Vospominaniia (Leningrad: Academia, 1929), 60, 384–387. 54 The Clairmont Correspondence, 231.

12 Shaping middle-class and upper-class girls Women as teachers of daughters of good families in the Baltic Sea world, c. 1780–1850 Marjatta Rahikainen During the nineteenth century, in most of Europe, the education of daughters of good families expanded and diversified in content and structure. Education at home was increasingly complemented and polished by more formal and systematized instruction in educational institutes. Since the 1960s, this process has been widely studied from the perspective of female education and the girls concerned, and thanks to many fine pieces of research,1 we now know a great deal of what it indicated to the girls themselves. We know far less of what these changes indicated to the women who made their living by educating daughters of good families.2 How did they respond to them and how did they contribute to them? This chapter focuses on women who made their living as governesses, teachers and directresses of small private schools and large boarding schools and as headmistresses of early grammar schools (lower secondary schools) for girls. By the change of perspective, I wish to enrich the image of economically active middle-class women and at the same time review the received image of the governess and the school mistress. The image of the governess has largely been shaped by the many governesses featuring in fiction, from Jane Austen’s Emma to Lev Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, while the image of real governesses is dominated by scholarship on governesses in Victorian Britain.3 Although there were many similarities in the personal experiences of governesses throughout Europe, in terms of institutions Britain was different. Grammar schools for daughters of good families were established in societies around the Baltic Sea earlier than in Britain; hence, early nineteenthcentury governesses had a real option of becoming teachers and directresses of such girls’ schools. The empirical cases discussed below are derived from the part of Northern Europe that reaches from the Danish Sound to St Petersburg and Stockholm, here called for short the Baltic Sea world. In this area in the past, people, ideas and practices readily passed back and forth. In the nineteenth century the societies around the Baltic Sea were in close interaction, and in the eastern Baltic4 sphere this was further facilitated by the long peace, a

246  Marjatta Rahikainen sort of ‘Pax Russica’ enjoyed after the Napoleonic Wars.5 As regards girls’ education, French, Austrian and German institutions served as models. On the other hand, the education of daughters of noble families only hesitantly adopted bourgeois elements.6 In the Baltic Sea world, German was the lingua franca among several important groups, including the emerging educated urban middle classes. However, French remained the lingua franca of the elites up to about the 1860s; therefore, French continued to occupy a large role in the education of daughters of good families. In the largely Protestant Baltic Sea world educational institutions for girls early took other forms than in Catholic Europe and Orthodox Russia or, for that matter, Britain. In the early nineteenth century, the schooling market for daughters of good families included by and large three types of schools in terms of ownership and economy. First, there were girls’ schools founded by benefactors, such as major landowners and aristocratic ladies. More important were the numerous privately owned pension schools. They provided their directresses and directors with a living; thus they had to be run profitably enough so that the fees covered all the expenses plus the living costs of the owner household including servants. Pension schools were often too expensive for middle-class girls who may therefore have attended modest private Mamsell schools. Finally, there were urban grammar schools for girls, that is, day schools subsidized by municipal authorities or other interested parties so that the fees could be kept reasonable enough for middleclass families.7 The discussion below offers no comprehensive picture of women as teachers of daughters of good families, since the information available is more or less anecdotal. As literate women they are, nonetheless, more visible in sources than the great majority of women of the time. By presenting this unsystematic sample of women engaged in teaching I wish to make visible the much larger number of unknown women whose personal decisions to make a living by educating girls contributed to opening the world of learning to other women. In the following I begin with governesses, whom I see as professionals. Next I present women who headed various kinds of girls’ schools, from modest to prestigious. Based on these two groups, I discuss the emerging professionalization of female teachers. In conclusion, I reflect on the contrast between words and actions: the story appears different depending on whether the focus is on the discourse about girls’ education or on women teachers’ own endeavours.

Professional governesses Once French became the lingua franca of European elites after the midseventeenth century, mastering the French language became imperative for upper-class young women, if they were to have any chance in the elite marriage market. Therefore, the primary duty of governesses in the non-French

Shaping middle-class and upper-class girls  247 parts of Northern Europe was to make the girls in their charge achieve fluency in French. In 1690 John Locke gave no occupational title to French women employed to teach French to the daughters of British elite families, but he had observed them and was puzzled by the efficiency of their unsystematic method: ‘And when we so often see a Frenchwoman teach an English girl to speak and read French perfectly, in a year or two, without any rule of grammar, or anything else, but prattling to her . . .’.8 A century later, in the late eighteenth century, governesses were found not only in aristocratic households, but also in houses of rural gentry and urban bourgeoisie. One explanation for the increasing presence and availability of tutors and governesses was the decline of real wages, which indicated declining real costs for keeping servants: ‘The lower the real wage rates sank before 1820, the cheaper became the high-income lifestyle’.9 Governesses and tutors were not servants, but their remuneration in cash and kind made up part of total rich-household expenditures for living-in personnel. Governesses were in any case better paid than women making a living in other occupations available to well-bred women, such as housekeeper or doing finer needlework. In addition, governesses enjoyed other advantages: living in another household indicated a lifestyle consistent with or even above their station and at best offered useful contacts and intellectual stimulation. Due to their occupation, governesses also travelled quite long distances, which may have been both a hardship and an advantage. Moreover, as the German historian Irene Hardach-Pinke points out, the occupation of governess was not only the most qualified occupation available for educated women, but the only one in which women competed with a male occupation: the tutor.10 When the demand for governesses expanded, there emerged a shortage of appropriately educated women. In the decades around 1800, accomplished German governesses were largely autodidacts who accumulated knowledge from all possible sources and learned their pedagogical skills from experience. Many of them deepened their knowledge in some special subject: some in natural sciences, some in literature, many in French and English; foreign languages were always an asset in the labour market for governesses. According to Irene Hardach-Pinke, in this way they worked their way up into the educated bourgeoisie, Bildungsbürgertum. Eventually they adopted a professional identity, characterizing themselves in their autobiographies as educators, Erzieherinnen.11 However, neither governesses nor Erzieherinnen are included in modern works on Bildungsbürgertum and Bürgerinnen.12 It may be, though, that here the male self-image of nineteenth-century Bil­ dunsbürgertum has directed historians’ gaze. Unless they had been fortunate enough to have spent their childhood in a Francophone milieu, prospective governesses had to work hard to gain real proficiency in French. This can be illustrated by the case of Switzerland. The ‘French governess’, or ‘Französin’ was in actuality often a Swiss woman – Protestant German families preferred Swiss Huguenots13 – who had grown

248  Marjatta Rahikainen up in the French-speaking Switzerland. Thus, her polished French was a kind of perquisite of growing up in a Francophone bourgeois home. In contrast, in German-speaking Switzerland, learning French required years of studying for young girls. In Bern in 1836, a grammar school was established for Mittelstande girls to whom the need to earn a living loomed large. In this school middle-class girls studied French from the age of eight years up to the age of sixteen. By the age of ten girls were expected to have learned the basics, after which correct pronunciation and accent became essential in French lessons, which consumed five to six hours a week. Those who aimed at qualification as a primary or secondary school teacher continued three more years at the finishing school (Fortbildungsschule), with three to five hours of French a week. In addition, they could study English, Italian and painting as optional subjects.14 When the English language became fashionable in continental Europe, French governesses in their turn had to learn polished English. During the reign of Nicholas I (1825–1855), English became voguish at the imperial court in St Petersburg and therefore also among elites in the western fringes of the empire. In the Grand Duchy of Finland15 elite girls, who had until then learned French and German, by around 1840 began also to learn English. In Helsingfors/Helsinki in 1842 Count Vladimir Musin-Pushkin employed a French tutor, Monsieur Louis Léouzon Le Duc from Dijon, for his children, who had a German governess to teach them German. When the sons left for a boarding school in St Petersburg, a French governess, Mademoiselle Eugénie Zaïe, whose competences included English, was employed for the daughters. Eventually she moved with the family far into interior Russia. Mademoiselle Zaïe was paid 10,000 roubles for her ten years in the family’s service, if the last will of Count Musin-Pushkin was executed as written, whereas according to contemporary inside information, Monsieur Léouzon Le Duc had been paid 8,000 roubles for the two years he stayed with the family.16 Russia constituted a very special kind of market for tutors and governesses.17 In 1843, the German gentleman J.G. Kohl, Esq., offered in his travel book a good résumé of the supply of and demand for governesses in Russia: As for the governesses, most of them come from French Switzerland. . . Of the German governesses few come from Germany, because they are not competent to teach French, but more from the Baltic provinces and Petersburg, chiefly of the lower classes, mere Germanized Esthonians and Lettes, for whose imperfect German and French a high price is nevertheless paid in the interior of Russia; but frequently too, for distinguished houses, young ladies of the best families, and a number of needy Livonian and Esthonian misses, who migrate to Russia to earn a maintenance for themselves or their impoverished relations.18 Kohl reported that in Russia the ‘great schools for young females in Moscow and St Petersburg, as well as foundling hospitals, furnish a very great

Shaping middle-class and upper-class girls  249 number of governesses. These institutions alone send out every year from 800 to 1000 governesses’. However, he continued, ‘these young women have received too refined an education, and too often find themselves unhappy in their new situations, where they mostly meet with not the most polished society’.19 Among the Baltic German nobility tutors and governesses were inevitable household members.20 In her memoirs Elisa von der Recke (born 1754) from Kurland wrote of her French governess Demoiselle Audui as follows: ‘My Französin was an extremely fat, very unpleasant person’, so ‘fortunately for me Audui died’, yet the next ‘Französin’ was not better.21 A present-day reader wonders how it was to live and die as a disliked lone French governess in a Baltic manor house. Louise Pantenius (born 1850) from Riga studied together with the daughters of another noble family in an informal ‘school circle’ (Schulkreis), with the eldest of the daughters as its leader, although she also had governesses. She wrote in her memoirs affectionately about her first governess, ‘meine “Französin” ’, Anna Turin from Lausanne. In contrast, the next governess Madame Wenger, a Swiss widow, was ‘stupid’ and ‘unsympathetic’, so she was dismissed, after which she left for Russia, ‘which suited her much better’. The third governess, an Anglophone, remained so faceless that the writer of memoirs could not recall her name. The last one, Fräulein Hennings, a clergyman’s daughter from Ratzeburg, spoke excellent English and French. ‘She virtually lived in our classroom’, wrote Louise Pantenius, without reflecting on the narrowness of her governess’s life. In 1868, having turned eighteen years, Louise could no longer tolerate Fräulein Hennings, who was then dismissed at her request.22 Responsible wealthy families may have provided for their faithful ageing governesses, but in societies around the Baltic Sea most governesses had to find another livelihood sooner or later, unless they got married. Many governesses gave up the occupation because it left no true free time, because governesses were expected to always be at hand, or because they grew tired of their working and living conditions. Others may have found that the governess’s life lacked independence, or left because close relatives needed them. Becoming a writer offered an alternative way to make a living; some governesses became widely known thanks to their literary works.23 Fanny Tarnow (born 1779) was slightly disabled due to an accident in childhood. Therefore, she did not receive more education than reading, writing and arithmetic. She learned needlework, but not music or drawing, but she mastered French because it was spoken by her parents. At the age of twenty she was employed as governess in a gentry house in Rügen and would then work in other families in Mecklenburg. Her duties kept her occupied from eight in the morning up to midnight. In 1812 she wanted to leave her life as educator, Erzieherin. By then she had gained some acclaim with her first novel and this showed a way out: she became a professional writer.24 Her years as an educator had made her quite cultivated. The travel book she published about her long visit to St Petersburg in 1816 and 1817 included

250  Marjatta Rahikainen many passages about writers she had discussed with in St Petersburg, and learned comments about famous works of art in the Hermitage museum, plays in the theatre, music at the opera and concerts in private houses.25 In the western Baltic sphere, in 1825, the highly professional Danish governess Caroline Erfeldt (born 1789) moved across the Danish Sound to Sweden. It is not known how she had acquired her competences. In any case, she wrote elegant and naturally fluent French, as may be expected of a governess who had mostly been employed in aristocratic families. She was well aware that she was a skilled educator: if she did not like the family that had employed her, she did not hesitate to resign because she had always been offered new employment. However, by the age of fifty years she had grown tired of repeatedly moving from one place and household to another, so she just wanted to settle in a place of her own for her remaining days. She had trusted her substantial savings into the hands of a man in high position26 – and lost all her savings in his bankruptcy.27 A little luckier was Franziska von Zuccalmaglio (born 1828), daughter of a governmental office holder in Kurland, who had completed her secondary education in Höhere Töchterschule in Mitau/Jelgava and had gained a certificate for private teacher’s competence, ‘Attestat auf den Grad einer Hauslehrerin’, (more of this below) in 1846. Thus, she had formal competence when she began her first employment as governess in a large manor house in northern Kurland. She had with her the textbooks, dictionaries, grammar books and classics that she would need in her work. She was given at her disposal two rooms; one was a bedroom which she shared with her three pupils – a usual practice28 – and the other was a classroom with a piano. The morning lessons ran from eight to eleven, the afternoon lessons from three to five, yet this routine was often broken by visits, festivities, short trips and the like, so her first years as governess went well. In January 1849 she began to work as a governess in another manor house and was bored to death. Each day was exactly like the other and the daughter of the house was so thick-headed that she comprehended nothing, as Franziska wrote in a letter. In autumn 1850 she left her governess life, moved back to Mitau/Jelgava, began the next year as a teacher in a girls’ school and soon was married.29 On the Swedish side of the Baltic Sea, Louise Forsell (born 1823) began to work as a governess in 1840, first in Vänersborg and then in Nääs. Having studied at the Societetsskolan in Gothenburg, she was relatively well educated. She took her work seriously, but did not like it and felt unhappy with the teaching routine. After having worked sixteen years as a governess, she established a modest school of her own in the small town of Alingsås. Eight years later she established a new school for girls and this school developed into an esteemed grammar school for girls.30 If the lives of these female governesses may seem circumscribed, the experiences of male tutors were not that different. A former German tutor as a young man in 1796 had emigrated from Leipzig to Livonia, but after eight years as a tutor changed occupation and began as a teacher in the

Shaping middle-class and upper-class girls  251 gymnasium of Dorpat/Tartu.31 In a similar manner, to become employed in a girls’ school was an alternative that readily presented itself to governesses. Another was to establish a school of some kind.32 These two schemes supported each other.

Directresses and headmistresses of schools for daughters of good families In the daily parlance around the Baltic Sea, any school for daughters of good families may have been known as a ‘pension’ or ‘pensionat’ school, which suggests boarding schools (cf. French pensionnat). However, it seems that pension schools located in cities recruited their customers, daughters of good families, principally from local families. Thus, in practice many pension schools were partly if not exclusively day schools. Providing boarding facilities required extra staff and larger premises. The solvency of a private boarding school may have been fragile, if it had no aristocratic customers but competed for daughters of civil servants and the bourgeoisie. However, if it also attracted aristocratic customers, fees were not the only source of income for its owner. In southern Sweden in Wäxjö, Mrs Gustava Köllner’s pension school, studied by the Swedish historian Eva Helen Ulvros, had aristocratic girls as boarders. In the 1790s it was customary that the boarders’ families gave expensive presents to the directress of the school, such as a silver coffee service set and candlesticks, gold earrings and other costly jewellery.33 The economy of a boarding school may also have been based partly on philanthropic funding.34 In 1780 Louise L’Ecuyer, Protestant Swiss governess from Neufchâtel, opened such a boarding school, known as Karolineschule, in Frankenthal in Pfalz. In this school, under the directress, a governess lived and worked too. She was the deputy of the directress but her special responsibility was to act as a mother for the young boarders, see them to bed in the evening, wake them up in the morning, assist them with their dressing, monitor their breakfast, lead them to classrooms, monitor them during lessons and share their free time.35 Women who successfully headed private schools for girls must have been fairly cultivated, judging from the esteem enjoyed by the best schools and the range of subjects offered by such schools. In Copenhagen in 1782, Sophie Dorothea Zinn from Sweden, the eight-year-old daughter of the prosperous director of a large merchant house, began her school years as a boarder at Henrietta Erichsen’s private school, a highly esteemed establishment. The directress of the school, Henrietta Erichsen, was the daughter of a wellknown physicist in Bergen and had a thorough literary and musical education. She was considered a capable teacher, but how she had acquired her professional competences is not known.36 In Lübeck in 1787, Magdalena Tischbein’s Erziehungs-Institut had in its programme for boarders and dayschool pupils religion, history, geography, German, French, fine needlework,

252  Marjatta Rahikainen embroidery and knitting, drawing and painting, and for extra pay girls could learn dance, music, natural history, English and Italian, taught by visiting male teachers. Such a broad range of subjects required enough of bourgeois fathers prepared to pay eight Reichstaler every three months.37 About three decades later, in 1814, Dorothea Ahlberg, née Blöcker, headed an esteemed private pension school in a small Finnish administrative town Tavastehus/Hämeenlinna. She was born in Hannover, but seems to have worked in Russia as a teacher in a boarding school for noble girls. In her own school she taught French, German, philosophy and ancient mythologies. Her husband, a clergyman, taught religion, geography and history. The school also offered instruction in drawing and playing piano.38 The range of subjects suggests German models, but it is not known whether the directress had received a German education. Two German directresses of boarding schools made their names famous by their literary works. Caroline Rudolphi (born 1754) was an acknowledged poet and the author of a pedagogical work, Gemälde weiblicher Erziehung (1807). She grew up in straitened circumstances, which suggests self-instruction. She had first made her living as a seamstress and then as a governess, until she established an educational institute for girls in 1785 near Hamburg. The school was relocated to Heidelberg in 1803. There her school had to compete with a large Catholic girls’ school. She must have been quite a capable directress, judging from the fact that her school, Institut Karoline Rudolphi, could in 1805 offer a three-year curriculum with a broad range of subjects, of which she instructed needlework and possibly also French.39 On the other hand, Betty Gleim (born 1781) wished to depart from Rudolphi’s generation in her own pedagogical work. She wrote two books about female education, the first in 1810, Erziehung und Unterrich des weiblichen Geschlechts. She cited many authorities in the field of female education, ancient and contemporary, so clearly she was a pedagogue with a broad literary background. In 1806 she established in Bremen the school, Lehrer­ anstalt für Mädchen, which became a model for other schools. In 1812 it had eighty pupils who followed an ambitious curriculum that covered the entire schooling of girls from the age of four years up to sixteen. Betty Gleim taught a large number of the so-called theoretical subjects.40 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the number of small private schools rapidly increased. In Stockholm in 1812 there were more than one hundred pension schools for boys and girls. In the Stockholm newspaper announcements of pension schools grew from three in 1796 to fifteen in 1815. According to Eva Lis Bjurman, the word ‘pension’ indicated a better kind of school with at least one modern foreign language in its range of subjects.41 One of these early private schools was founded in Askersund in 1813 for ordinary middle-class girls; thus, its curriculum was modest: religion, the Swedish mother tongue, geography and history of Sweden, writing and basic arithmetic. All subjects were taught by male boys’ school teachers.

Shaping middle-class and upper-class girls  253 The only woman to be employed, with the title governess, was expected to be able to read French aloud and instruct girls in needlework and elegant decoration.42 A parallel boom of small private schools took place in Stettin/Szczecin in Pomerania. The first private girls’ school teaching French was established in 1814 by the wife of a poor broker, to support a family of three daughters. She was licensed to open the school only after having proved that she was able to write French and German, mastered needlework and knew her religion. At her school she taught needlework and French, which she had learned when working in her youth as a governess in France. By 1830, fifteen more women in Stettin/Szczecin had established such schools. Only a third of these schools survived until 1839, and only two grew into a large school.43 In Åbo/Turku, the largest city in Finland, young Sara Wacklin (born 1790) first made her living as a private children’s teacher, simultaneously pursuing studies in French and music by herself. Having grown up in straitened conditions, her school education was limited to mamsell school. In 1815 she was employed as a governess for the children of the county governor in Tavastehus/Hämeenlinna. During her stay in this fine household, she learned the manners needed in elite circles. From 1819 on she managed a number of private pension schools for girls, evidently quite successfully. In the summer of 1835, she left for Paris and stayed there for one year, according to a newspaper note, ‘in a larger pension school’. Back in Finland in 1836 she opened a pension school for girls in the capital Helsingfors/Helsinki. In Paris she had recruited for her school a Frenchwoman ‘with the right accent’. In a newspaper announcement in 1841, she declared that in her school ‘competent men and women teachers’ taught religion, French, German, history, geography, arithmetic, drawing and painting and ‘all kinds of modern skills for women’. However, in the summer of 1843, having reached fifty-three years (Figure 12.1), she closed her school and moved to Stockholm.44 There she wrote the book that would make her name known in literary circles.45 Small urban schools for girls established by bourgeois women may have outlived their founders if there were daughters capable of taking over. In 1786 Mrs Linde founded a small school for girls in the city centre of Copenhagen. By the 1820s, when it was headed by her two daughters Wilhelmine and Christine, it had established itself as one of the largest and finest schools in the city, leaving behind the Døtreskole, a grammar school for girls that had held the prime position since the 1790s.46 In 1826 Demoiselle Linde’s school had about one hundred pupils and its teaching staff included eleven men and six women. Wilhelmine Linde was one of the two teachers in French, while three of the teachers taught English, a new and more prestigious subject than French, which was a standard subject in all better schools for girls. As was customary in such schools, during the many needlework lessons only French was spoken.47

254  Marjatta Rahikainen

Figure 12.1 Portrait of Finnish school directress Sara Wacklin (1790–1846). Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki. Artist: Johan Erik Lindh, 1840. Photo: Hannu Pakarinen. She began her career as a private children’s teacher, continued as a governess and ended up as a respected directress of her own school. In 1835, she travelled to Paris for one year in order to polish her French. Back in Finland, she opened a girls’ school in Helsinki/ Helsingfors. In 1843 she closed her school and moved to Stockholm where she wrote the book Hundrade minnen från Österbotten (1844– 1845), which is still read today.

Similarly, in Stettin/Szczecin the girls’ school founded in 1814 by Mrs Blume was taken over by her eldest daughter Luise Blume at the founder’s death in 1820. She had already taught at the school for twelve years and in practice headed it for five years. Luise Blume taught French, geography,

Shaping middle-class and upper-class girls  255 German grammar, history, needlework and drawing, while her sister acted as the teacher for the beginner class and Fräulein Malbranc for the subsequent one. For the teaching of older girls the school was served by six male teachers and Fräulein Homann. By 1839 Luise Blume’s school had 120 pupils and was the largest of its kind. At that time there were eleven private schools in Stettin/Szczecin, all headed by women. When the directress Luise Blume died, the school risked closing. The municipal decision makers acted quickly to prevent the city from losing this esteemed girls’ school and its boarding facilities. Luise Blume’s school was reorganized into a municipal grammar school for girls, and a Herr Professor was appointed as its director. With the entry of a man at the head of the school, the professional status of the female head fell: Bernhardine Krohn (born 1808), the new headmistress, had no other competence save having worked as an educator in private households, and her task was to shape the girls’ manners and characters.48 St Petersburg was a great market for private schools teaching French. Russian authorities strove to keep some control over the diversity of private schools with an inspection in pension schools in 1784. Only one of them was established by a Frenchwoman, Madame Labache. She had arrived in Russia as Mademoiselle Merray in 1773 as governess for Count Panine in Moscow; after marrying a Frenchman who taught at the Cadet Corps, in 1779 she and her husband opened a pension school for girls. The first educational institute for girls in Russia was the large convent-like boarding school, Smolny institut, for daughters of noble families, established in St Petersburg in 1764. Among its Western European models was l’école de Saint-Cyr in France (established in 1686). At the beginning all teachers at Smolny institut were men, since there were no women qualified enough to be recruited as teachers; women did only as ‘class dames’ and ‘governesses’ who did not teach. Sophie Ivanovna de Lafont, born in France into a Huguenot family, was recruited at Smolny institut to the office of governess in 1764 to be a substitute mother for the young boarders. After nine years as governess, Sophie Ivanova rose to the position of the directress of the entire Smolny institut and remained in this influential post until her death in 1797.49 In 1819 two boarding schools were established in St Petersburg for daughters of officers of the Imperial Army killed in battle, the Patriotichesky institut and the Elizavetinsky institut. One of their aims was to educate governesses. For their first three decades, from 1819 to 1847, the two new institutes were headed by Luise von Wistinghausen, who was born in Warsaw into a German Evangelical (Protestant) family and brought to Vilna/Vilnius through marriage. As the directress of the two institutes, she proved to be an efficient organizer and administrator who in practice built up the two institutes under her charge. When a large number of officers’ daughters lost their fathers in the war with Persia and Turkey, the directress managed in a short time to get Emperor Nicholas I to grant the funding to enlarge the premises.50 These two institutes appear to have been modelled after the Maison

256  Marjatta Rahikainen d’Éducation de la Légion d’Honneur at Saint-Dennis, France, a boarding school for daughters of recipients of the medal who had been killed in active service, which was founded by Napoleon in 1804. In the Baltic Sea world, a surge in the numbers of private schools for girls took place around the 1830s and 1840s. In St Petersburg, German Protestant women established several private girls’ schools.51 Likewise in the Baltic provinces, in Reval/Tallinn and Dorpat/Tartu, German-speaking women established girls’ schools.52 In 1834 there were at least eight private girls’ schools in Dorpat/Tartu. The two that offered a full three-year curriculum had among their pupils nearly thirty daughters of noble families, twenty of bourgeois families and almost thirty of civil servant families.53 In Berlin in 1838 there were eleven private higher girls’ schools headed by women and four pension schools run by women.54 In Sweden the cities of Falun and Norrköping, the former a prosperous centre of mining and the latter of textile manufacturing, had new pension schools that taught French and were headed by women. In Stockholm in 1831, private schools for girls headed by women were faced with a serious competitor, Wallinska Skolan, headed by university-educated men; to begin with, only two women were employed: a directress teaching female handicrafts and a Frenchwoman teaching pronunciation.55 By establishing pension schools for girls, well-bred women addressed the growing demand for female education; these women had plenty of cultural capital, but were short of investment capital. However, at the same time quite different kinds of girls’ schools were established. Compared with them, pension schools and large boarding schools appeared a legacy of the ancien régime. The new girls’ schools were not modelled after the ideals of Fénelon and Rousseau, but increasingly after the new kinds of grammar schools (secondary schools) for boys that likewise had distanced themselves from ancien régime Latin schools. Formal qualifications for female teachers of girls’ schools were introduced parallel with male models.

Towards the professionalization of women teachers The emergence of women teachers is associated with the struggle for children’s souls between Catholics and Protestants – in practice, whose catechism children learned. In the first centuries after the Reformation, in Protestant towns and cities any respectable literate man and woman in need of income may have established a small private school teaching reading and perhaps writing to children. In German-speaking towns and cities such tiny schools were known as Winkelschulen. They did not suffice for master craftsmen who wanted for their sons schools that provided instruction in practical skills and the German language. Such schools were known as deutsche Schulen, ‘German schools’.56 From the perspective of professionalization of women teachers, Winkelschulen appear as forerunners of Mamsell schools, while ‘German schools’

Shaping middle-class and upper-class girls  257 appear as forerunners of pension schools for bourgeois girls in which practical skills, needlework and calligraphy were essential subjects. Any respectable literate woman was qualified enough to open a modest Mamsell school.57 The survival of such schools depended on market demand, which meant the willingness of parents to pay the fees. Since all Protestant children were expected to be able to read, the demand remained sufficient. Private pension schools for bourgeois girls were likewise dependent on demand and the willingness of fathers to pay the fees. Pension school fees were expensive investments in daughters’ future chances on the marriage market. Hence the qualifications of the directress, director and teachers were important in fathers’, that is, the payers’ choices of a school for their daughters. In many parts of the Baltic Sea world, private pension schools faced early serious competition from day schools that had more systematized instruction and fixed curriculums. Protestant German communities were often the first to establish such schools for boys and girls whenever the community was large enough, even in far-away Archangel. Starting in the first years of the nineteenth century, in the Baltic provinces municipal girls’ schools, Töchterschule and Mädchenschule (with German as the language of instruction), were in turn established in all major towns and cities: Riga, Mitau/ Jelgava, Dorpat/Tartu, Reval/Tallinn, Libau/Liepāja, Windau/Ventspils, Wenden/Cēsis and Wolmar/Valmiera. As a rule, public girls’ schools had at least one woman on their teaching staff and this indicated career prospects for women teachers in private pension schools.58 In Russia German schools generally had a higher professional standard than other schools; thus, in St Petersburg Orthodox Russian parents may have enrolled their sons and daughters in Protestant schools, such as St PetriSchule and Anne-Schule.59 Likewise educated Jews in Kurland who wished their daughters to have a better education than that offered by the Jewish school for girls (Cheder) sent daughters to German Protestant schools where girls would gain competences such as French and playing piano that were an asset in the upper-class marriage market.60 Institutional professionalization of woman teachers began early in Germanspeaking parts of the Baltic Sea world. In 1803 Johanna Ernestine von Kro­ sigk, née Krüger, established a teacher training unit in Berlin as an annex of the grammar school for girls. It was financially supported by the Prussian Minister of Education, but when this funding ended, Johanna von Krosigk had to give up the teacher training courses. Later, a teacher training seminar for women, known as Luisenstiftung, began in Berlin in 1811. Its own teaching staff consisted of a headmistress and four women educators, while visiting male teachers instructed in theoretical subjects. It was a boarding school, so the fees were high. The first year it had fifteen students, aged from eighteen to twenty-two years, and the full curriculum took three years. Their competence allowed them to teach in secondary schools for girls. Another teacher training seminar for women, with no fees, was founded in 1832. Around that time a seminar for education of governesses and primary school

258  Marjatta Rahikainen mistresses was established in Posen/Poznań in the part of former Poland that had been annexed to Prussia. The seminar, Köningliche Luisenschule, had in the beginning of its programme French, English and Polish. The seminar proved a success in the sense that the governesses educated in it were very sought-after. By the mid-century teacher training seminars for women had become an established practice in Prussia.61 In Stettin/Szczecin in Pomerania, the first seminar for women started in 1841 in connection with the Elisabethschule, founded by the local French Protestant community.62 In Russia’s Baltic Provinces formal professionalization was instituted with an imperial statute in 1834 declaring that women who had finished education in Höhere Töchterschule, higher girls’ school, could gain a certificate for private teacher’s competence. Private girls’ schools and from 1853 also the municipal girls’ school of Dorpat/Tartu had examinations for private teacher’s and primary school teacher’s competence. Moreover, the University of Dorpat/Tartu also offered courses for formal teacher competence, first for men and later for women. Between 1839 and 1864, 428 women in all passed the private teacher examination in private schools and fifty-three women took the university course.63 One of oldest girls’ schools in the Russian Empire was the Töchterschule zu Wiburg,64 established in 1788 in Vyborg/Wyborg/Viborg, a coastal city northwest of St Petersburg. Its educational standard was the responsibility of the University of Dorpat/Tartu. It was a modern grammar school in the sense that the curriculum was fixed, although the subjects were typical of girls’ schools. The school was headed by a headmistress who taught French, German and needlework, while other subjects were taught by male boys’ school teachers. During the long leadership of headmistress Ernestine Leh­ mann the Töchterschule became widely known for its high standards65 and gained in practice a similar role as the teacher training courses in northern German states and the Baltic provinces. The formal status of ‘Demoiselle Lehmann’ as ‘Aufseherin’ was not higher than that of her predecessors, so it was her personal competence that gave the school its reputation. She had arrived to Vyborg from St Petersburg as the governess of L.H. von Nicolay’s family. In 1798 she established a small private school of her own, and in 1800 she was appointed the headmistress of the girls’ school. The Töchterschule of Vyborg served as the model for the first public grammar school for girls in Finland,66 established in Helsingfors/Helsinki in 1844. Its first headmistress Amalie Ertmann had been educated in the Töchterschule of Vyborg. In nineteenth-century Finland, several former students of the Töchterschule later made their marks as women teachers.67 By the mid-nineteenth century, numerous urban grammar schools for girls, known as or inspired by German Mädchenschulen and Töchterschulen and eventually modelled after grammar schools for boys, had been established in Protestant towns and cities around the Baltic Sea. Combined with the emerging teacher training facilities for women, they bear witness to professional attitudes among women educators.

Shaping middle-class and upper-class girls  259

Winding up: Two stories Changing circumstances pushed women who made their living by educating daughters of good families to acquire better professional competences in order to improve their relative position in the increasingly competitive educational market. At the time when good schools for girls were rare and private education expensive, many accomplished governesses and female teachers were largely autodidacts. Likewise, many directresses of esteemed boarding schools for girls acquired by their own initiative much of the knowledge of the subjects they taught and built their pedagogical skills on learning by doing. These women adopted a professional identity and were taken as professionals by contemporaries. The education of girls or, rather, of daughters of good families was the subject of numerous treaties and pamphlets composed by generations of learned men from seventeenth-century philosophers to nineteenth-century pedants. Their message was basically the same: the proper role of women was that of wife and mother, and this was the purpose of their education. Governesses and women educators who became famous thanks to their pedagogic writings conveyed basically the same message, though in more nuanced form.68 In fact, they had no choice; they simply had to convey the traditional message in order not to alienate their potential paying customers: the parents of daughters of good families. However, if we focus on how female educators acted, not on what they wrote, the moral of the story appears to be a different one. Instead of the motherly role of governess, they chose to become directresses of educational institutes or professional publishers and writers. The directresses of the Smolny institut and the Patriotichesky institut liked to present themselves as mothers for the hundreds of girls who studied in these institutes, but in reality they were influential managers of large organizations through which thousands of girls and hundreds of staff members passed. Since the debate was very loud, we cannot say that actions spoke louder than words, but with the benefit of hindsight we may say that actions heralded the future better than words.

Notes 1 See above page 22, notes 63–71. 2 For teaching as a profession for women in England and France, see Christina de Bellaigue, Educating Women: Schooling and Identity in England and France, 1800–1867 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 103–137. 3 Kathryn Hughes, The Victorian Governess (London: Bloomsbury, 2006); Alice Renton, Tyrant or Victim? A History of the British Governess (London: Weinfield & Nicholson, 1991); M. Jeanne Peterson, ‘The Victorian Governess: Status Incongruence in Family and Society’, in Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age, ed. Martha Vicinus (London: Mathuen & Co, 1980 [1972]), 3–19. 4 The attribute ‘Baltic’ (baltische) as used here is somewhat anachronistic as regards its German usage at that time.

260  Marjatta Rahikainen 5 David Kirby, The Baltic World 1772–1993: Europe’s Northern Periphery in an Age of Change (London & New York: Longman; 1995); Jānis Krēsliņš, ‘Early Modern Cultural Interchange: A Glossary’, in Migration und Kulturtransfer im Ostseeraum während der Frühen Neuzeit, eds. Otfried Czaika & Heinrich Holze (Stockholm: Kungliga biblioteket, 2012), 20–41; Edward C. Thaden, with Marianna Forster Thaden, Russia’s Western Borderlands, 1710–1870 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). See also Peter Clark, European Cities and Towns, 400–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 6 Monika Kubrova, Vom guten Leben: Adelige Frauen im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2011), 108–128. 7 James C. Albisetti, Schooling German Girls and Women: Secondary and Higher Education in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988); Elisabeth Blochmann, ‘Das Frauenzimmer’ und die ‘Gelehrsamkeit’: Eine Studie über die Anfänge des Mädchenschulwesens in Deutschland (Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1966), 91–116; Sandra Donner, Von Höheren Töhtern und Gelehrten Frauen: Mädchen- und Frauenbildnung im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005), 48–57; Jürgen Zinnecker, Sozialgeschichte der Mädchenbildung: zur Kritik der Schulerziehung von Mädchen in bürgerlichen Patriarchalismus (Weinheim: Beltz, 1973), 29–48; Sylvina Zander, Zum Nähen wenig Lust, sonst ein gutes Kind . . . Mädchenerziehung und Frauenbildung in Lübeck: Veröffentlichingen der Hansestadt Lübeck, Reihe B Band 26 (Lübeck: Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck, 1996), 90–118; Allan Liim, ‘Unterricht, Erziehung, Bildung: Über deutsche Schulen in Dorpat im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Dorpat, eds. Helmut Piirmäe & Claus Sommerhage (Tartu: Universität Tartu, 2000), 165–197; Gunhild Kyle, Svensk flickskola under 1800-talet (Göteborg: Göteborgs universitet, 1972), 40–49. See also Chapter 10, Åsa Karlsson Sjögren, ‘Desirable qualifications and undesirable behaviour’, in this volume. 8 John Locke, ‘Some Thoughts Concerning Education’, in The Works of John Locke, a New Edition, Corrected: In Ten Volumes, Vol. IX (London: Thomas Tegg. Reprint Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1963 [1690/1823]), 153–154. 9 P.T. Hoffman, S. Jacks, P.A. Levin & P.H. Lindert, ‘Real Inequality in Europe Since 1500’, The Journal of Economic History 62:2 (2002), 322–355, quotation 335. 10 Irene Hardach-Pinke, Die Gouvernante: Geschichte eines Frauenberufs (Frankfurt am Main & New York: Campus Verlag, 1993),75–79, 206–212. 11 Blochmann, Das ‘Frauenzimmer’, 87–89; Hardach-Pinke, Die Gouvernante, 81–105. 12 Cf. Bildungsbürgertum im 19. Jahrhundert, Teil I, eds. H. Werner Conze & Jürgen Kocka, Teil II, ed. Reinhart Koselleck, Teil III, ed. M. Rainer Lepsius, Teil IV, ed. Jürgen Kocka (Stuttgart: Klett Cotta, 1985–1990); Bürger und Bürgerinnen: Geschlechterverhältnisse im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Ute Frevert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988); Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe, eds. Jürgen Kocka & Allen Mitchell. (Oxford: Providence, 1993). 13 Blochmann, Das ‘Frauenzimmer’, 87–91. 14 [G. Frölich], Die Einwohner-Mädchenschule in Bern: Denkschrift auf die Feier ihre fünfundzwanzigjährigen Jubiläums (Bern, 1861), 1–13, 27–32, 49–50, 79–114. 15 Velikoe Knyazhestvo Finlyandskoe. 16 Perepiska Ya. K. Grota s “P.A. Pletnevym, Tom” I, ed. K. Ya. Grota (S.-Peterburg: 1896), 303, 311, 314, 621. Swedish edition (abbreviated): Utdrag ur J. Grots brevväxling med P. Pletnjov, I, transl. Walter Groundstroem (Helsingfors: SLS, 1912), 164, 168, 169, 317; Katri Lehto, Kytäjän kreivitär: Marie Linderin elämä (Helsinki: Otava, 1985), 51, 66–68, 83.

Shaping middle-class and upper-class girls  261 17 See Chapter 11, Olga Solodyankina, ‘Cross-cultural closeness’, in this volume. See also N. Tourgueneff [Turgenev], La Russie et les Russes, Tome II (Paris: Ledoyen, 1847), 153. 18 J.G. Kohl, Russia and the Russians, in 1842, vol. II (London: Henry Colburn, 1843), 76. 19 Ibid., 75–77. 20 Heide W. Whelan, Adopting to Modernity: Family, Caste and Capitalism Among the Baltic German Nobility (Köln: Böhlau, 1999), 167–180. 21 ‘Meine Französin was eine übermäßig dicke, sehr unangenehme Person . . . Zu meinem Glücke starb die Audui; an ihre Stelle wurde eine andere Französinn genommen, die nicht besser war.’ Elisa von der Recke, Aufzeichnungen und Briefe aus ihren Jugendtagen, ed. Paul Rache (Leipzig: Dieterich’sche, 1900), 36–37. 22 Louise Pantenius, Jugenderinnerungen aus dem alten Riga (Hannover-Döhren: Harro von Hirschheydt, 1959), 52–60. See also: Klaus Schenk, ‘Riga in der deutschbaltischen Erinnerungsliteratur zwischen Fakten und Fiktion’, in Erinnerungs­ metropole Riga: Deutschsprachige Literatur- und Kulturvielfalt im Vergleich, eds. Michael Jaumann & Klaus Schenk (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2011), 189–207. 23 Hardach-Pinke, Die Gouvernante, 54–66, 90–104, 129–138; Eva Helena Ulvros, Fruar och mamseller: Kvinnor inom sydsvensk borgerlighet 1790–1870 (Lund: Historiska Media, 1996), 238–244; Eva Lis Bjurman, Catrinas intressanta blekhet: Unga kvinnors möten med de nya kärlekskraven 1750–1830 (Stockholm and Stehag: Symposium, 1998), 142–146. 24 Hardach-Pinke, Die Gouvernante, 91–98; Amely Bölre, Fanny Tarnow: Ein Lebensbild (Berlin: Wegener, 1865), 1–10, 25–54, 80–120, 131–146. Fanny Tarnow’s father was Kommissionsrat, a lawyer, and her mother was of gentry origin. 25 Fanny Tarnow, Briefe auf einer Reise nach Petersburg an Freude geschrieben (Berlin: Enslin, 1819), 94–215. See also Monika Straňáková, ‘ “Est ist hier vieles ganz anders, als man bei uns glaubt . . .” Fanny Tarnows Reise nach St. Petersburg’, in Wege in die Moderne: Reiseliteratur von Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftstellern des Vormärz, ed. Christina Ujma (Bielefeild: Aisthesis-Verl., 2009), 229–242. 26 The first savings banks were established in Sweden in the 1820s, but they were not generally available until some decades later. Tom Petersson, ‘The Silent Partners: Women, Capital and the Development of the Financial System in NineteenthCentury Sweden’, in Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres, eds. Robert Beachy, Béatrice Craig & Alastair Owens (Oxford & New York: Berg, 2006), 36–51. 27 Ulvros, Fruar och mamseller, 244–251. 28 The author of the manual for tutors and governesses in Russia wrote: ‘La chambre à coucher de votre élève, qui bien souvent aussi est la vôtre, . . .’ Adrien Lesguilliez, Manual du gouveurneur et de la gouvernante ou le vade-mecum des familles (Saint-Petersbourg: 1854), 65. 29 Karl-Otto Schlau, Als Gouvernante auf kurländischen Gütern (1846–1850) (Wedemark & Elze: Verlag Harro v. Hirschheydt, 1996), 4–32. 30 Mamsell Forsells dagbok, ed. Ingeborg Nordin Hennel (Malmö: Corona, 1988), 5–9, 162–165 and passim. Societetsskolan was founded in 1786 by Herrnhut (Pietist) congregation in Gothenburg. 31 E.g. ‘Erinnerunngen des Oberlehrers K.Th. Hermann (1796–1837)’, in Altlivländische Erinnerungen, ed. Fr. Bienemann (Reval: Frenz Kluge, 1911), 39–75. 32 Bjurman, Catrinas intressanta blekhet, 204–213; Hardach-Pinke, Die Gouvernante, 91, 96–98; Zander, Zum Nähen wenig Lust, 113–117.

262  Marjatta Rahikainen 33 Eva Helen Ulvros, Kärlekens villkor: tre kvinnoöden 1780–1880 (Lund: Historiska media, 1998), 17–24. 34 Albisetti, Schooling German Girls and Women, 26–27. 35 Anna Maus, Von Philantropin zur Mädchenschule 1782–1957, cited in Blochmann, Das ‘Frauenzimmer’, 92–95. 36 Eva Lis Bjurman, ‘Sophie, Education and Love: A Young Bourgeois Girl in Denmark in the 1790s’, Ethnologia Scandinavica 26 (1996), 5–24. 37 Zander, Zum Nähen wenig Lust, 94. 38 Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, Sofie Munsterhjelmin aika: Aatelisnaisia ja upseereita 1800-luvun Suomessa (Helsinki: SKS, 2012), 44–45. 39 Blochmann, Das ‘Frauenzimmer’, 68–71, 96–97; Zander, Zum Nähen wenig Lust, 95–96; Gudrun,Perrey, Das Leben der Caroline Rudolphi (1753–1811): Erzieherin – Schriftstellerin – Zeitgenossin (Heidelberg: Winter, 2010), 15–24, 61–117, 131–137. 40 Blochmann, Das ‘Frauenzimmer’, 71–76, 111–112; Josefine Zimmermann, Betty Gleim [1781–1827] und ihre Bedeutung für die Geschichte der Mädchenbildung (Köln: Studentenburse, 1926), 72, 82–89, 100. 41 Bjurman, Catrines intressanta blekhet, 211–212. 42 Ebba Heckscher, Några drag ur den svenska flickskolans historia (Stockholm: P.A. Nordstedt, 1914), 11–15, 130. 43 Dorothea Strecker, Die Kaiserin Auguste-Viktoria-Schule im Stettiner Mädchenbildungswesen 1534–1945: Wissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte und Landeskunde Ost-Mitteleuropas Nr. 62 (Marburg: Johann Gottfried HerderInstitut, 1963), 20–24. 44 Finlands Allmänna Tidning, 9 August 1836, 5 September 1836; Helsingfors Tidningar, 8 July 1837, 11 July 1838, 13 May 1840, 20 October 1841, 25 January 1842. Wacklin’s economy was good in 1842, because she announced for a lady’s maid and a domestic. 45 Kungliga biblioteket (The Royal Library, Stockholm), Sara Wacklin, Manuskriptsamling Ep. V 1, V.f. 218; Helena Westermarck, ‘[Introduction to] Sara Wacklin’, in Hundrade minnen från Österbotten (Helsingfors: Holger Schildts, 1919 [1844]), 7–66. 46 For Døtreskole, see Carol Gold, Educating Middle Class Daughters: Private Girls Schools in Copenhagen 1790–1820 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1996), 115–146. 47 Bjurman, Catrinas intressanta blekhet, 179–180, 252–253. 48 Strecker, Die Kaiserin Auguste-Viktoria-Schule, 24–45. See also Albisetti, Schooling German Girls and Women, 33–34, 43. 49 Wladimir Berelowitch & Galina Smagina, ‘Enseignants et modèles éducatifs français à Saint-Pétersbourg au XVIIIe siècle’, in La France et les français à Saint-Pétersbourg XVIII–XX siècles (Sankt-Peterburg: Evropeiskii dom, 2005), 189–227; Jan Kusberg, Eliten- und Volksbildnung im Zarenreich während des 18: und in der ersten Hälften des 19: Jahrhunderts: Studien zu Diskurs, Gesetzgebung und Umsetzung (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 2004), 129–132, 232– 235, 247. 50 Igoŕ Nikolaevič Charlamov, ‘Das Patriotishe Institut in St. Petersburg unter Luise von Wistingshausen 1819–1847’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 43:4 (1995), 536–545. 51 Erik Amburger, Deutsche in Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Rußlands: Die Famille Amburger in St. Petersburg 1770–1920 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1986), 63–67. 52 E. Ernits, ‘Feodalismilt kapitalismile ülemineku ajajärk (19. sajandi algus – 1850. aastad)’, in Eesti kooli ajalugu 1. köide, 13. sajandist 1860. aastateni, ed. E. Laul (Tallinn: Valgus, 1989), 335–342, 403–447.

Shaping middle-class and upper-class girls  263 3 Liim, ‘Unterricht, Erziehung, Bildung’, 186–195. 5 54 Albisetti, Schooling German Girls and Women, 30. 55 Heckscher, Några drag, 15, 101–104, 131–133, 138–141, 153; Sten Carlsson, Fröknar. mamseller, jungfrur och pigor: Ogifta kvinnor i det svenska ståndssamhället (Uppsala & Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1977), 40–41. 56 Strecker, Die Kaiserin Auguste-Viktoria-Schule, 3–21; Christa SchillingerPrassl & Ilse Brehmer, Mädchenerziehung in Innerösterreich vom Ende des 15. Jahrhunderts bis zur Schulreform unter Maria Theresia und Joseph II. Veröffent­ lichung des Steiermärkischen Landesarchiv 24 (Graz: Steiermärkischen Landesarchiv, 2000), 81–82, 111. 57 Helene Lange (1848–1930) started in such a school. Helene Lange, Lebenserinnerungen (Berlin: F.A. Herbig, 1928), 39–42. 58 Kusberg, Eliten- und Volksbildnung im Zarenreich, 264–266, 292, 377–409: Liim, ‘Unterricht, Erziehung, Bildung’, 174–176, 184–189; D.W. Fürgeson, Das Elementarlehrer-Seminarium zu Dorpat nach seiner gegenwärtigen Einrichtung und Verfassung (Dorpat: Schuenmann, 1833), 60–90; Wilhelm Räder, Die Lehrerkräfte an den deutschen Schulen Kurlands 1805–1860, ed. Erik Amburger (Lüneburg: Nordostdeutsche Kulturverk, 1991), 24, 27, 37, 46, 48, 54, 55, 57, 62, 63, 66, 69. 59 Erik Amburger, ‘Die deutschen Schulen in Russland mit besonderer Berück­ sichtigung St. Petersburgs’, in Deutscher Einfluss auf Bildung und Wissenschaft im östlichen Europa, eds. Friedhelm Berthold Kaiser & Bernhard Stasiewski (Köln & Wien: Böhlau, 1984), 1–26; Margarete Busch, Deutsche in St. Petersburg 1865–1914: Identität und Integration (Essen: Klartext, 1995), 139–153. 60 Svetlana Bogojavlenska, Die Jüdische Gesellschaft in Kurland und Riga 1795– 1915 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012), 91–97. For Jewish schools for girls, see Pauline Wengeroff, Rememberings: The World of a Russian-Jewish Woman in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Bernan D. Cooperman, transl. Henry Wenkart (Potomac: University Press of Maryland, 2000 [German original 1913]), 16–25. 61 Blochmann, Das ‘Frauenzimmer’, 113–117; Hardach-Pinke, Die Gouvernante, 76–78, 146–157; Albisetti, Schooling German Girls and Women, 58–64. 62 Strecker, Die Kaiserin Auguste-Viktoria-Schule, 30–31. 63 Ernits, ‘Feodalismilt kapitalismile ülemineku ajajärk’, 419–421, 446–447; Liim, ‘Unterricht, Erziehung, Bildung’, 174–176, 184–188, 192–194. 64 First called Demoisellen-Classe der Hauptschule zu Wiburg and up to 1805 Demoiselle-Schule. 65 Blochmann, Das ‘Frauenzimmer’, 102. 66 In 1812 Vyborg was annexed to the Grand Duchy of Finland. 67 Ernestine Lehmann (born 1760 in Berlin) was the daughter of scientist Johann Lehmann. Amalie Ertmann (Erdmann, born 1800 in Vyborg) was the daughter of a German-born innkeeper (traktör). Gustav Dahl, ‘Fruntimmersskolan i Viborg 1788–1905’, in Svenska fruntimmersskolan i Wiborg 1904–1905 (Viborg: Zilliacus, 1905); Marjatta Rahikainen, ‘The Fading of the Ancien Régime Mentality: Young Upper-class Women in Imperial St Petersburg and Helsinki (Helsingfors)’, Scandinavian Journal of History 40:1 (2015), 25–47. 68 For example, Caroline Rudolphi and Betty Gleim, see above page 252.

Select bibliography

Ågren, Maria, Domestic Secrets: Women and Property in Sweden, 1600–1857. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Albisetti, James C., Schooling German Girls and Women: Secondary and Higher Education in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. The Art of Midwifery: Early-Modern Midwives in Europe. Edited by Hilary Marland. London: Routledge, 1994. Asch, Ronald G. ‘Introduction: Court and Household from the 15th to the 17th Century’. In Politics, Patronage and the Nobility, edited by Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke, 1–39. Oxford: University Press, 1991. Bachelor, Jennie, Women’s Work: Labour, Gender, Authorship, 1750–1830. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. Barker, Hannah, The Business of Women: Female Enterprise and Urban Development in Northern England 1760–1830. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Bellaigue, Christina de, Educating Women: Schooling and Identity in England and France, 1800–1867. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Berg, Maxine, ‘Women’s Property and the Industrial Revolution’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 24:2 (1993): 233–250. Bergström, Carin, Skolmostrar och läsmästare: Lärare på landet före folkskolereformen 1842. Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag, 2000. Bladh, Christine, ‘The Guild System and Female Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship as a Survival Strategy for Women in Pre-industrial Stockholm’. In Aspects of Women’s Entrepreneurship, 37–61. Stockholm: NUTEK, 1996. Blochmann, Elisabeth, Das ‘Frauenzimmer’ und die ‘Gelehrsamkeit’: Eine Studie über die Anfänge des Mädchenschulwesens in Deutschland. Heidelberg: Quelle and Meyer, 1966. Blom, Ida, ‘Den haarde Dyst’: Fødsler og fødselshjelp gjennom 150 år. Bergen: J.W. Cappelens Förlag, 1988. Brewer, John, ‘ “The Most Polite Age and the Most Vicious”: Culture as Commodity, 1660–1800’. In Consumption of Culture 1600–1800, edited by Ann Bermingham and John Brewer, 341–361. London: Routledge, 1995. Brooks, Lynn Matluck, Women’s Work: Making Dance in Europe Before 1800. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007. Bull, Ida, Kunnskap – hver etter sin stand: Utdanning i norske byer på 1700-tallet. Trondheim: Akademisk forlag, 2013. Chalus, Elaine, Elite Women in English Political Life, c. 1754–1790. Oxford: Clarendon, 2005.

266  Select bibliography Chrisman-Campbell, Kimberly, ‘The Face of Fashion: Milliners in Eighteenth-Century Visual Culture’, British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Journal 25 (2002): 157–171. Clark, Linda L., The Rise of Professional Women in France: Gender and Public Administration Since 1830. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Cohen, Michèle, ‘Familiar Explanations: Social Conversations, Familiar Conversations and Domestic Education in Late Eighteenth-Century England’. In Educating the Child in Enlightenment Britain: Beliefs, Cultures, Practices, edited by Mary Hilton and Jill Shefrin, 15–35. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Collins, James B., ‘The Economic Role of Women in Seventeenth-Century France’, French Historical Studies 16 (1989): 436–470. Craig, Béatrice, Women and Business Since 1500: Invisible Presences in Europe and North America? London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Cross, Anthony Glenn, ‘By the Banks of the Neva’: Chapters from the Lives and Careers of the British in Eighteenth-Century Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Cross, Louisa, ‘The Display and Trading of Fashionable Dress and Its Impact on Women in Scotland’s Growing Urban Centres, c. 1780–1825’. In Women in EighteenthCentury Scotland: Intimate, Intellectual and Public Lives, edited by Katie Barclay and Deborah Simonton, 233–252. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Crowston, Clare, Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675–1791. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. Crowston, Clare, ‘Women, Gender and Guilds in Early Modern Europe’, IRSH 53 (2008), Supplement: 19–44. Davidoff, Leonore and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850. 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Davidova, Evguenia, Balkan Transitions to Modernity and Nation-States: Through the Eyes of Three Generations of Merchants (1780s – 1890s). Leiden: Brill, 2013. Davies, Tracy C., Actresses as Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture. London: Routledge, 1991. Deutscher Einfluss auf Bildung und Wissenschaft im östlichen Europa. Edited by Friedhelm Berthold Kaiser and Bernhard Stasiewski. Köln and Wien: Böhlau, 1984. Dumont, Dora, ‘Women and Guilds in Bologna: The Ambiguities of “Marginality” ’, Radical History Review 70 (1998): 4–5. Enzelberger, Sabina, Sozialgeschichte des Lehrerberufs: Gesellschaftliche Stellung und Professionalisierung von Lehrerinnen und Lehrerer von den Anfängen biss zur Gegenwart. Weinheim-München: Juventa, 2001. Erickson, Amy Louise, ‘Eleanor Mosley and Other Milliners in the City of London Companies, 1700–1750’, History Workshop Journal 71 (2011): 147–172. Farr, James R., ‘Consumers, Commerce and the Craftsmen of Dijon: The Changing Social and Economic Structure of a Provincial Capital (1450–1750)’. In Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France, edited by Philip Benedict, 134–173. London: Unwin and Hyman, 1989. Farrow, Lee A., Between Clan and Crown: The Struggle to Define Noble Property Rights in Imperial Russia. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004. Female Economic Strategies in the Modern World. Edited by Beatrice Moring. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012. Finn, Margot C., The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740– 1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Select bibliography  267 Florin, Christina, Kampen om katedern: Feminiserings- och professionaliseringsprocessen inom den svenska folkskolans lärarkår 1860–1906. Umeå: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 1987. Fregulia, Jeanette M., ‘Stories Worth Telling: Women as Business Owners and Investors in Early Modern Milan’, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10:1 (2015): 122–130. Gilder, Rosamond, Enter the Actress: The First Woman in the Theatre. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931. Graves, Robert, Born to Procreate: Women and Childbirth in France from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century. New York: Peter Lang, 2001. Greig, Hannah, The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian London. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Hafter, Daryl M., Women at Work in Preindustrial France. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. Hardach-Pinke, Irene, Die Gouvernante: Geschichte eines Frauenberufs. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 1993. Harris, Barbara J., English Aristocratic Women, 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Hart, Avril, ‘The Mantua: Its Evolution and Fashionable Significance in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’. In Defining Dress as Object, Meaning and Identity, edited by Amy de la Haye and Elizabeth Wilson, 93–103. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. Heiss, Hans, ‘Selbständigkeit bis auf Widerruf? Zur Rolle von Gastwirtinnen bis 1914’. In Unternehmerinnen: Geschichte & Gegenwart selbständiger Erwerbstätichkeit von Frauen, edited by Irene Bandhauer-Schöffmann and Regine Bendl, 49–87. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000. Hengerer, Mark, ‘Court and Communication: Integrating the Nobility at the Imperial Court (1620–65)’, The Court Historian 5 (2000): 223–229. Hengerer, Mark, Kaiserhof und Adel in der Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts: Eine Kommunikationsgeschichte der Macht in der Vormoderne. Konstanz: UVK-Verl.Ges., 2004. Höjeberg, Pia, Jordemor: Barnmorskor och barnafödeskor i Sverige. Stockholm: Carlssons, 1991. Höjeberg, Pia, Helena Malhiems barnmorske lära år 1756. Stockholm: Hälsopedagogik HB, 1995. Hughes, Kathryn, The Victorian Governess. London: Bloomsbury, 2006. Ilmakunnas, Johanna, Ett ståndsmässigt liv: Familjen von Fersens livsstil på 1700talet. Helsingfors and Stockholm: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland and Atlantis, 2012. Ilmakunnas, Johanna, ‘Career at Court: Noblewomen in Service of Swedish and Russian Royals, c. 1750–1850’, Women’s History Magazine 72 (2013): 4–11. Ilmakunnas, Johanna, ‘The Luxury Shopping Experience of the Swedish Aristocracy in Eighteenth-Century Paris’. In Luxury and Gender in European Towns, 1700–1914, edited by Deborah Simonton, Marjo Kaartinen and Anne Montenach, 115–131. London: Routledge, 2015. An Improper Profession: Women, Gender, and Journalism in Late Imperial Russia. Edited by Barbara T. Norton and Jehanne M. Geith. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. The Invisible Woman: Aspects of Women’s Work in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Edited by Isabelle Baudino, Jacques Carré and Cécile Révauger. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005.

268  Select bibliography Johansson, Egil, ‘The History of Literacy in Sweden’. In Literacy and Society in the West: A Reader, edited by Harvey J Graff, 151–182. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Jones, Jennifer, Sexing La Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France. Oxford: Berg, 2004. Kägler, Britta, ‘Vernetzte Eliten: Amt, Familie und sozialer Status am Münchner Hof (1650–1750)’, Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 145/146 (2009/10) [published 2011]: 397–428. Kägler, Britta, Frauen am Münchener Hof (1651–1756). Kallmünz: Verlag Michael Lassleben, 2011. Kägler, Britta, ‘Dynastische Ehen in der Frühen Neuzeit: Partnerwahl zwischen Sozialprestige und Außenpolitik’, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 64 (2014): 5–20. Kay, Alison, The Foundations of Female Entrepreneurship: Enterprise, Home and Household in London, c. 1800–1870. London: Routledge, 2009. Keller, Katrin, Hofdamen: Amtsträngerinnen im Wiener Hofstatt de 17. Jahrhunderts. Vienna: Böhlau, 2005. Keller, Katrin, ‘Ladies-in-Waiting at the Imperial Court of Vienna from 1550 to 1700: Structures, Responsibilities and Career Patterns’. In The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-Waiting Across Early Modern Europe, edited by Nadine Akkerman and Birgit Houben, 73–97. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Keller, Katrin, ‘Frauen in der höfischen Gesellschaft des 17. Jahrhunderts: Amtsinhabe und Netzwerke am Wiener Hof’, Zeitenblicke 4 (2005), 13 December 2005. URL: www.zeitenblicke.de/2005/3/Keller/index_html (accessed 4 August 2016). Klingensmith, Samuel J., The Utility of Splendor: Ceremony, Social Life, and Architecture at the Court of Bavaria, 1600–1800. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Kramer, Ferdinand, ‘Bavaria: Reform and Staatsintegration’, German History 20 (2002): 354–372. Kramer, Ferdinand, ‘Piety at Court: The Wittelsbach Electors in Eighteenth-Century Bavaria’. In Monarchy and Religion: The Transformation of Royal Culture in Eighteenth-Century Europe, edited by Michael Schaich, 283–316. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Kubrova, Monika, Vom guten Leben: Adelige Frauen im 19. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2011. Kusberg, Jan, Eliten- und Volksbildnung im Zarenreich während des 18. und in der ersten Hälften des 19. Jahrhunderts: Studien zu Diskurs, Gesetzgebung und Umsetzung. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 2004. Kwolek-Folland, Angel, Incorporating Women: A History of Women and Business in the United States. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998. Kyle, Gunhild, Svensk flickskola under 1800-talet. Göteborg: Kvinnohistoriskt arkiv, 1972. Larsen, Christian, Erik Nørr and Pernille Sonne, Dansk skolehistorie: Da skolen tog form, 1780–1850. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2014. Lewis, Judith Schneid, In the Family Way: Childbearing in the British Aristocracy, 1760–1860. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986. Lindmark, Daniel, Reading, Writing and Schooling: Swedish Practices of Education and Literacy 1650–1880. Umeå: Kulturens frontlinjer, 2004. Ling, Sofia, Konsten att försörja sig: Kvinnors arbete i Stockholm 1650–1750. Stockholm: Stockholmia, 2016. Locklin, Nancy, Women’s Work and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Brittany. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.

Select bibliography  269 MacHardy, Karin J., War, Religion and Court Patronage in Habsburg Austria: The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Political Interaction, 1521–1622. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003. Making a Living, Making a Difference: Gender and Work in Early Modern European Society. Edited by Maria Ågren. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Manliga strukturer och kvinnliga strategier: En bok till Gunhild Kyle December 1987. Edited by Birgit Sawyer and Anita Göransson. Göteborg: Göteborgs universitet, Historiska institutionen, 1987. The Marital Economy in Scandinavia and Britain 1400–1900. Edited by Maria Ågren and Amy Louise Erickson. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. Marrese, Michelle L., A Woman’s Kingdom: Noblewomen and the Control of Property in Russia, 1700–1861. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002. Milton, Lena, Folkhemmets barnmorskor: Den svenska barnmorskekårens professionalisering under mellan- och efterkrigstid. Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2001. Montenach, Anne, ‘Gender and Luxury in Eighteenth-century Grenoble’. In Luxury and Gender in Eighteenth-century European Towns, 1700–1914, edited by Deborah Simonton and Anne Montenach, 39–56. London: Routledge, 2014. Monter, E. William, ‘Women in Calvinist Geneva, 1550–1800’, Signs VI (1980): 189–209. Muldrew, Craig, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early-Modern England. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998. Musgrave, Elizabeth, ‘Women and the Craft Guilds in Eighteenth-Century Nantes’. In The Artisan and the European Town, 1500–1900, edited by Geoffrey Crossick, 151–171. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. Norrhem, Svante, Kvinnor vid maktens sida: 1632–1772. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2007. Nussbaum, Felicity, Rival Queens: Actresses, Performance, and the Eighteenth-Century British Theater. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Nussbaum, Martha C., Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Ogilvie, Sheilagh, A Bitter Living: Women, Markets, and Social Capital in Early Modern Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Ogilvie, Sheilagh, ‘How Does Social Capital Affect Women? Guilds and Communities in Early Modern Germany’, American Historical Review 109 (2004): 325–359. Owens, Alastair, ‘Property, Gender and the Life Course: Inheritance and Family Welfare Provision in Early Nineteenth-Century England’, Social History 26 (2001): 297–315. Parland-von Essen, Jessica, Behagets betydelser: Döttrarnas education i det sena 1700-talets adelskultur. Möklinta: Gidlund, 2005. Phillips, Nicola, Women in Business, 1700–1850. London: The Boydell Press, 2006. Pickering Antonova, Katherine, An Ordinary Marriage: The World of a Gentry Family in Provincial Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. The Politics of Female Households: Ladies-in-Waiting Across Early Modern Europe. Edited by Nadine Akkerman and Birgit Houben. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Prior, Mary, ‘Women and the Urban Economy: Oxford, 1500–1800’. In Women in En­glish Society, 1500–1800, edited by Mary Prior, 93–117. London: Methuen, 1985. Proctor, Tammy M., ‘Home and Away: Popular Culture and Leisure’. In The Routledge History of Women in Europe Since 1700, edited by Deborah Simonton, 299–340. London: Routledge, 2007. Professions and Professionalization. Edited by J.A. Jackson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.

270  Select bibliography Professions in Theory and History: Rethinking the Study of the Professions. Edited by Michael Burrage and Rolf Torstendahl. London: Sage Publications, 1990. Pullen, Kirsten, Actresses and Whores: On Stage and in Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Qvist, Gunnar, Kvinnofrågan i Sverige 1809–1846: Studier rörande kvinnans näringsfrihet inom de borgerliga yrkena. Göteborg: Akademiförlaget-Gumperts, 1960. Rahikainen, Marjatta, ‘The Fading of the Ancien Régime Mentality: Young Upperclass Women in Imperial St Petersburg and Helsinki (Helsingfors)’, Scandinavian Journal of History 40:1 (2015): 25–47. Rautelin, Mona, En förutbestämd sanning: Barnamord och delaktighet i 1700-talets Finland belysta genom kön, kropp och social kontroll. Helsingfors: Helsingfors universitet, 2009. Reynolds, K.D., Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Richardson, Joanna, Courtesans: The Demi-Monde in Nineteenth-Century France. Edison: Castle Books, 2004. Roche, Daniel, The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Régime. Translated by Jean Birrell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Rundquist, Angela, Blått blod och liljevita händer: En etnologisk studie av aristokratiska kvinnor 1850–1900. Stockholm: Carlssons, 1989. Sandin, Bengt, Hemmet, gatan, fabriken eller skolan: Folkundervisning och barnuppfostran i Svenska städer 1600–1850. Lund: Arkiv avhandlingsserie, 1986. Schellenberg, Betty A., The Professionalization of Women Writers in EighteenthCentury Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Schmidt, Ariadne, ‘Generous Provisions or Legitimate Shares? Widows and the Transfer of Property in 17th-century Holland’, The History of the Family: An International Quarterly 15 (2010): 13–24. Scott Haine, W., The World of the Paris Café: Sociability Among the French Working Class, 1789–1914. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996. Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History. Edited by Anne Walthall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Shulman, Lee S., ‘Knowledge and Teaching: Foundation of the New Reform’, Harvard Educational Review 57 (1987): 1–21. Simonton, Deborah, History of European Women’s Work. London: Routledge, 1998. Simonton, Deborah, ‘Gender, Identity and Independence: Eighteenth-Century Women in the Commercial World’, Women’s History Magazine 42 (2002): 4–13. Simonton, Deborah, Women in European Culture and Society: Gender, Skill and Identity from 1700. New York: Routledge, 2011. Simonton, Deborah, ‘Threading the Needle, Pulling the Press: Gender, Skill and the Tools of the Trade in Eighteenth-Century European Towns’, Cultural History 1 (2012): 180–204. Simonton, Deborah, ‘Toleration, Liberty and Privileges: Gender and Commerce in Eighteenth-Century European Towns’. In Routledge History Handbook of Gender and the Urban Experience, general editor Deborah Simonton, 33–46. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017. Skedd, Susan, ‘Women Teachers and the Expansion of Girls’ Schooling in England, c. 1760–1820’. In Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: Roles, Representations and Responsibilities, edited by Hanna Barker and Elaine Chalus, 101–125. London: Longman, 1997.

Select bibliography  271 Smith, S.D., ‘Women’s Admission to Guilds in Early-Modern England: The Case of the York Merchant Tailors’ Company, 1693–1776’, Gender & History 17 (2005): 99–126. Solodyankina, Olga Yu., ‘European Widows as Governesses in 18th and 19th-century Russia’, Women’s History Magazine 63 (2010): 19–26. Solodyankina, Olga Yu., ‘Personal Transfer of the Message and Undesirable Acquaintance to the Addresse: Reputation of the Governess’. In Incidents and Failures in European Epistolary Culture, edited by A.V. Stogova, 125–154. Moscow: IVI RAN, 2016. Stage Mothers: Women, Work, and the Theatre, 1660–1830. Edited by Laura Engel and Elaine M. McGirr. Bucknell: Bucknell University Press, 2014. Steinbach, Susie, ‘Can We Still Use “Separate Spheres”? British History 25 Years After Family Fortunes’, History Compass 10:11 (2012): 826. Thiele-Dohrmann, Klaus, Europäische Kaffeehauskultur. München-Zürich: Piper, 1999. Ulianova, Galina, Female Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth-Century Russia. London: Pickering and Chatto Publishers, 2009. Unternehmerinnen: Geschichte und Gegenwart selbständiger Erwerbstätichkeit von Frauen. Edited by Irene Bandhauer-Schöffmann and Regine Bendl. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2000. Vainio-Korhonen, Kirsi, ‘Skrivande barnmorskor: Barnmorskeyrkets litterarisering under 1700-talet’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland 100 (2015): 526–534. Vainio-Korhonen, Kirsi, De frimodiga: Barnmorskor, födande och kroppslighet på 1700-talet. Helsinki: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2016. Van den Heuvel, Danielle, Women and Entrepreneurship: Female Traders in the Northern Netherlands c. 1580–1815. Amsterdam: Aksant, 2007. Wagner, William G., Marriage, Property, and Law in Late Imperial Russia. 2nd edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001. Wiskin, Christine, ‘Urban Business Women in Eighteenth-Century England’. In Women and Urban Life in Eighteenth-Century England: ‘On the Town’, edited by Rosemary Sweet and Penelope Lane, 87–110. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Women and Their Money, 1700–1950: Essays on Women and Finance. Edited by Anne Laurence, Josephine Maltby and Jeanette Rutterford. London: Routledge, 2008. Women with Attitude: Lessons for Career Management. Edited by Susan Vinnicombe and John Bank. London: Routledge, 2003. Women, Business, and Finance in Nineteenth-century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres. Edited by Robert Beachy, Béatrice Craig and Alastair Owens. Oxford: Berg, 2005. Women, Gender and Enlightenment. Edited by Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Women in Russian Culture and Society, 1700–1825. Edited by Wendy Rosslyn and Alessandra Tosi. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. ‘Women in Scandinavian Theatre’, Nordic Theatre Studies: Yearbook for Theatre Research in Scandinavia 1 (1988), special issue. Women’s History: Britain, 1700–1850: An Introduction. Edited by Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus. London: Routledge, 2005. Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe. Edited by Barbara A. Hanawalt. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.

Index

Aberdeen 136, 144 – 5, 147 – 8, 150 academies of art 9 – 10, 91, 99, 101, 105 – 8, 111 account books 1, 45, 50 – 2, 53 – 4, 56, 144, 161, 163, 166, 169, 200, 205, 210 Acerbi, Giuseppe (writer) 179 – 80, 182, 190 actors 69, 78, 80 – 1, 117 – 20, 122 – 4, 129 – 30, 186 actresses 2, 9 – 11, 16, 115 – 17, 119 – 20, 125 – 6, 129 – 31; bodies of 127 – 8; career as 121 – 4 advertisements 1, 139, 144 – 5, 152, 182, 184, 188 – 9, 253 age 10 – 11, 29 – 32, 47, 52, 59, 77, 79, 85, 92, 99, 106, 116, 119 – 20, 122, 126, 137, 171, 186, 189, 202, 220 – 1, 223, 231, 248 – 50, 252, 257 agency 2, 5, 7, 9, 70, 85 – 6, 115, 153 alba amicorum 101 amateur 8, 101, 151 ambitions 56, 73, 78, 83, 92, 109, 212; political 79; professional 1 – 2, 5, 7, 9 – 11, 14 – 15, 58, 178 apothecaries 25, 28 apprenticeship 16, 135, 137, 139 – 40, 143– 4, 145, 149, 154, 182 aristocracy 7 – 8, 44 – 6, 49 – 50, 56, 60 – 1, 69 – 77, 80, 82 – 3, 85, 101, 160, 177, 179, 186, 217 – 18, 246 – 7, 250 – 1; see also gentility; nobility Arkhangelsk (Archangel) 166 – 7, 257 Arkhangelsk province 161 – 6 art 6, 7, 9 – 11, 17, 92, 94 – 5, 97, 99, 101 – 2, 104 – 5; art world 91 – 2, 107; collections 91, 97, 111; exhibitions 86; performing arts 6, 9 – 11, 120; schools 106

artists 7, 9 – 11, 15 – 16, 71, 75, 91 – 5, 97, 99, 101 – 2, 104 – 7, 109, 111; see also actors; actresses; authors; composers; musicians; painters; singers; writers Astenius, Hedvig (innkeeper, restaurant owner) 178, 188 – 90 Austria 2, 11, 13, 58, 246 authors 2, 9 – 10, 33, 110, 141, 224, 252; authorship 10 bankruptcy 124 – 8, 220, 250; see also finances baptisms 26 – 7, 29, 49 – 50 barbers 25, 35, 126 Bärens, Magdalene Margrethe 10, 91, 109 – 11; in England 107 – 8; and professional strategies 105 – 7 Bath 138, 140, 147 – 9 Bavaria 44 – 5, 50, 53, 56 – 9; court of 44, 46 – 7, 53, 60; elector of 44, 49, 57; electress of 46, 49, 55, 57 Berlin 73, 76, 256 – 7 Bertin, Rose (milliner) 141 – 2 Blom, Greta (town midwife) 33, 37 – 8 blood letters 25 Bourgeois, Louise (court midwife) 27 Brussels 53 Bürger, Bürgerinnen, Bürgertum 4, 59, 177, 191, 247 burghers 30, 32, 189, 190, 203; families 31; occupations 28; rights 28; widows of 28, 181 – 2, 198, 212; women 30, 32 business 5, 11 – 13, 16, 45, 58 – 9, 83, 159 – 62, 168 – 9, 171 – 3, 177 – 8, 184, 190 – 1; art 97; businessman 209; businesswomen 57 – 8, 130, 135, 149, 171, 186, 190 – 1; fashion 135, 138,

274 Index 140 – 1, 142– 4 , 146– 7, 149, 152 – 4; hotel 183; merchant 160, 172; paper 167; restaurant 178, 180 – 2, 184, 186, 188 – 9; service 178, 191; small scale 28; theatre as 124, 130; timber 166; tobacco 56 – 7, 61 Caesarean sections 27, 38 cafés and coffee houses 12, 102, 177 – 8, 180 – 1, 188, 190 – 1; see also restaurants Campbell, Robert (writer) 136, 140, 146, 151 – 3 capital 160, 256; cultural 7, 85, 256; social 7, 85; symbolic 48 certificates 4, 15, 17, 29, 34, 218 – 19, 222 – 3, 258 chamber dwarf 52 chamberlain 49, 53, 60, 75, 77, 80, 83; lord chamberlain 81 chambermaids 55 childbirth 6, 26 – 30, 34 – 8, 122 children 7, 13, 15, 31 – 2, 35 – 7, 50, 52, 61, 78, 82 – 3, 85, 99, 106, 111, 115 – 16, 120 – 1, 123, 125, 129, 217 – 18, 221 – 5, 226, 231, 240, 248, 253, 256 – 7; born out of wedlock 28, 129 – 30, 150, 166, 169 – 72, 177, 181; poor 13, 197 – 212; princely 45, 48; royal 97 church 13, 47, 99, 135, 226; archives and records of 116, 201; buildings 163, 167 – 8; Catholic 13, 219; Lutheran 28, 31, 118, 197, 219; Orthodox 221; Reformed 219; see also religion civil servants 3, 43, 120 – 1, 180, 186, 197 – 8, 251, 256 Clarke, Edward Daniel (writer) 179 – 80, 182 – 4 clergy 6, 25, 29, 31, 119, 197, 208; clergymen 101, 203, 249, 252; see also priests coffee houses see cafés and coffee houses Colchester 138 – 9, 143 – 4, 147 – 8 composers 9 – 10, 122, 223 conflicts 13, 38, 54, 72, 130, 149, 208, 225, 226–7 consumption 125 – 7; of alcohol 181; household 171 – 2; as illness 120, 189; of tobacco 56 Copenhagen 8, 26, 91, 94, 97, 99, 101, 102, 104 – 6, 110, 251, 253 copying 95, 98

courtiers 8, 43 – 4, 59 – 60, 62, 69 – 74, 77 – 8, 80 – 4; female 8, 45, 47, 59 – 61, 69 – 71, 77 – 8, 80, 82 – 5; male 61, 69, 77, 81, 84 court mistresses 45 – 7, 51 – 5, 59, 60, 73, 76 – 9, 82, 84; chief court mistresses 45 – 6, 49, 51 – 5, 57, 60, 73, 76, 78 – 9, 81 – 2, 84 – 5 courts 6 – 8, 16; electoral 43 – 62; midwife 27; royal 69 – 86; treasury 57 courts (of law) 1, 28 – 9, 31 – 2, 34 – 7 craft guilds see guilds craftsmen 17, 25, 30, 100, 126, 189 – 90, 256 credit see finances crime 7, 118, 152 Davidoff, Leonore 159, 162 debts see finances De la Gardie, Hedvig Catharina (countess, courtier) 74 – 80, 82 delivery chairs 26; rooms 35 – 6 demimondaines 119, 126, 129 Denmark 2, 26, 91, 99, 104, 106, 137, 163 dissections 7, 29 distilleries 164–5, 170 – 2 divorce 30, 106, 120, 122 – 3, 125, 128 – 9, 221 education 6 – 7, 61, 70, 74 – 5, 202, 223 – 4, 245 – 6; artistic 9 – 10, 92, 99, 117, 121; formal 1 – 2, 4 – 5, 15, 74, 102, 117, 197 – 8, 207, 211 – 12, 253; at home 13, 199, 217 – 18, 222, 259; see also apprenticeship; governesses; midwifery; schools; teachers educators see governesses; teachers Enbom, Christina Wilhelmina (actress) 115, 117 – 18, 120, 122 – 3, 128 – 30 England 2 – 3, 6 – 8, 13, 16, 25 – 6, 33, 107, 109, 137, 143, 163, 179, 218, 221, 240 entrepreneurs 6, 11 – 13, 124, 143, 160 – 1, 179 entrepreneurship 159 – 60, 162, 168, 172, 178, 180, 190 Erikson, Maria Charlotta (actress) 115, 117, 120, 122 – 30 Falck, Eva (innkeeper, restaurant owner) 178, 182 – 5 family 11, 15, 123, 126, 159, 210 – 11, 220 – 4, 240, 255; aristocratic (noble) 45, 47 – 50, 56, 59 – 61, 73 – 9, 82 – 5,

Index  275 166, 169 – 70, 217, 220, 227, 230 – 1, 248 – 50, 258; artisan 16, 136, 140– 1, 147; artist 91 – 3, 95, 97, 99, 101 – 2, 104 – 5; business 138, 160 – 1, 171; connections of 8, 10; imperial 217, 225; law 162; mercantile 218; middle-class 32; princely 43, 46, 54, 58, 60; royal 71, 73, 76, 80 favours 43, 45, 48 – 50, 55 – 6, 76, 80 Fersen, Augusta von (countess, courtier) 75, 77 – 80, 82 Fersen, Sophie von (countess, courtier) 75 – 6, 82 Fersen, Ulla von (countess, courtier) 77 – 80, 82 finances (credit and debt) 97, 124 – 7, 187 Finland 2, 12, 25, 27, 29 – 32, 39, 146, 169, 178, 185 – 6, 190, 248, 253, 258 Fosie, Johanna Marie (painter) 10, 91, 97 – 8, 101 – 4, 106 – 7, 110 – 11; education of 99 – 101; as ‘remarkable woman’ 104 – 5 France 3, 6, 10, 13, 16, 25, 50, 69, 73 – 5, 119, 122, 129, 136 – 7, 142– 3, 149 – 50, 169, 217, 219 – 20, 240, 253, 255 – 6 Frauenzimmer see household, female Fugger, Anna Maria (countess, courtier) 8, 47, 56 – 7, 61 gender 14, 38, 91 – 2, 110 – 11, 116 – 17, 145, 153, 159 – 60, 162, 197 – 9, 208, 230 gentility 7, 140, 153; see also aristocracy; nobility German states 12 – 13, 258 Germany 2, 4, 10, 25, 76, 91, 106, 129, 248 gifts 49, 84, 97, 123, 145, 227 governesses 13, 180, 245 – 50, 252 – 3, 255 – 7, 259; appearance of 227–8; choice of 225; duties and tasks of 224 – 9; education of 219, 222 – 4, 249 – 50; foreign governesses in Russia 217 – 40; hierarchy of 230 – 9; legal status of 218 – 19; preferred nationalities of 219, 226–7; salary of 218, 220, 225; social status of 220 – 2; see also education; schools; teachers; tutors Grot, Yakov (professor) 188 – 9 guilds 12, 17, 25 – 6, 28, 135 – 7, 139, 141 – 3, 149 – 51, 205, 207, 211 gynaeceum 104 – 5

headmistresses 14, 16, 245, 251, 255, 258 Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotta (duchess, later Queen Charlotte of Sweden) 75, 77 – 8, 82 Helsinki (Helsingfors, Gel’singfors) 178, 185 – 9, 248, 253 – 4, 258 Henriette Adelaide (Electress of Bavaria) 44, 46, 49, 52, 60 Holland 6, 16, 25, 91, 97, 106, 163 hostesses (social and political) 7, 70, 75, 102 household 15 – 16, 47, 60 – 1, 91 – 2, 111, 117, 120, 162, 170 – 2, 199, 202, 208 – 9, 217, 246 – 7, 249 – 50, 253, 255; female (Frauenzimmer) 46, 53 – 6, 60; royal and princely 43, 46, 49 – 52, 54, 62, 69 – 73, 77, 79 – 80, 83 – 5 identity 5; corporate 143, 149; gender 160; group 107; professional 6, 25, 94, 143, 247, 259 income 1, 30, 39, 44, 51, 53, 84 – 5, 118, 121, 123, 151, 160, 166, 172, 181, 208, 247, 251, 256; see also remuneration; salary; wage infant (child) mortality 26, 28, 31, 37 – 8 infanticides 7, 26, 37 innkeepers 12, 178 – 86, 188 – 90; see also restaurants Italy 26, 44, 231 Jaraush, Konrad H. 4 Juliane Marie (Queen of Denmark) 106 Kiernander, Jonas (medical counsellor) 34 Kingston upon Thames 136 – 7 knowledge 5, 15, 25, 28, 31, 38 – 9, 45, 70, 73 – 4, 105, 127, 140, 144, 182, 197, 204, 206, 208, 211 – 12, 219 – 25, 231, 247, 259; pedagogical 14, 198 – 9, 202, 240, 259; in reading 199, 207; tacit 16; theoretical 7, 26; of writing 198, 203 – 4 Kocka, Jürgen 5 Kurland 249 – 50, 257 labour 1 – 2, 12, 56, 117, 140, 160, 162, 172, 221; child 209; market 8, 70, 247 ladies-in-waiting 8, 16, 45 – 9, 51 – 2, 55, 59 – 61, 70 – 1, 73 – 5, 77 – 85; see also court mistresses; maids of honour

276 Index languages see skills La Rochelle 136, 143 law 1, 3, 5, 26, 28, 31, 39, 70, 72, 107, 118, 122 – 3, 135, 143, 161, 162, 167, 177, 179, 209, 219 Léouzon Le Duc, Louis (tutor, writer) 248 Lewenhaupt, Carolina Juliana Anna Ulrika (countess, courtier) 74 – 5, 77, 80, 83 literacy 15, 29, 31 – 2, 39, 140, 198 literate 13, 15, 26 – 7, 31 – 2, 144, 168 – 9, 246, 256 – 7 Locke, John 247 London 107 – 8, 141, 143– 4, 145 – 7, 177, 179, 221 Lovisa Ulrika (Princess of Prussia, Queen of Sweden) 72 – 3, 76 – 7, 79 – 80, 83 maidservants 52, 54, 179, 189, 201 maids of honour 8, 45 – 7, 51, 55, 59 – 61, 70 – 1, 73 – 4, 76 – 82, 84 – 5; see also court mistresses; ladies-inwaiting Malheim, Catharina (town midwife) 33 mantuamakers 12, 135 – 40, 143, 149– 50, 153 – 4 manufactories 159, 161, 169 – 71; manufactory owners 12, 16, 166; manufacturers 57, 179, 222; manufacturing 8, 58, 160 – 1, 163 – 4, 168, 172, 191, 256 marchandes de mode 136, 141, 144, 151 Maria Leopoldine (Electress of Bavaria) 57 – 9 Marie Antoinette (Queen of France) 135, 141 Marmier, Xavier (writer) 188 marriage 7 – 8, 30, 51, 76 – 8, 82, 85, 95, 111, 120, 122, 129 – 30, 159, 162, 169, 171, 189 – 90, 255; market 59 – 61, 257 maternity clinics, hospitals 26 – 7, 35 – 7 medical doctors 25 – 8, 33 – 4, 36 – 7 mercery 138 merchants 11, 17, 33, 36, 56, 71, 124, 136, 147, 149, 160 – 1, 163, 167 – 70, 172, 179, 181 – 5, 198, 218, 222; merchant houses 159, 251; merchant women 160 – 1, 168, 172 Merian, Maria Sibylla (painter) 10, 91 – 8, 101, 105 – 7, 109, 111

meshchanstvo, meshchane (lowest stratum of the urban population in Russia) 160 – 1, 163, 166 – 7, 169, 172 microhistory 116 middle classes 14, 59, 99, 159, 162, 180, 246 midwifery: certificate of study 29; examination 28 – 30; guidebooks, textbooks 27, 29, 33 – 4, 39; license 25, 27, 29 – 30, 35; oath 25, 29, 34, 37, 39; profession 25, 28; regulations 28 – 9; students 34 – 5, 198; training 28 – 30, 34, 38 midwives 3, 6 – 7, 15, 25 – 39, 198 milliners 12, 135 – 41, 142 – 3, 146 – 50, 152 – 4 mills 163; flour mills 164 – 5; paper mills 164, 167, 172; sawmills 164 – 6 miscarriages 27, 34, 37 mistresses see court mistresses; headmistresses modistes 135 – 6, 149, 150 Morison, Isabella (milliner) 145 – 8 Morman, Ebba Jeanette (actress) 115, 117, 120 – 2, 127 Munich 6, 8, 25 – 6, 43 – 57, 59, 61 musicians 9 – 10, 44, 120 needle trades 135, 137 – 8, 145 needlework 14, 138, 231, 247, 249, 251 – 3, 255, 257 – 8 networks 8, 10, 16, 45, 57, 61, 92, 97, 102, 106, 111, 123, 129 – 30, 138, 145, 161, 172 nobility 7, 13, 43 – 5, 47 – 9, 56, 58, 61, 67, 69 – 70, 72 – 4, 77, 85, 119, 121, 163, 170, 172, 178, 186, 217, 220, 227, 240, 246, 249, 252, 255 – 6; see also aristocracy; gentility noblewomen 12, 32, 44 – 9, 51, 59, 69 – 77, 82 – 6, 160 – 1, 166, 168, 170, 172 nurses 3, 30, 52, 179; see also midwives Nussbaum, Martha 14 obstetrics 26, 33 occupation 1 – 3, 5, 7 – 8, 11, 15, 17, 28, 30, 38, 70 – 1, 80, 85, 99 – 100, 141, 150, 153, 160, 169, 180 – 2, 185, 220, 222, 231, 247, 249 – 50

Index  277 offices 8, 31 – 2, 70, 80; at court 43 – 8, 50 – 1, 55 – 6, 59 – 61, 69, 71 – 3, 76 – 8, 82 – 3, 85, 171; office holders 3, 33, 35, 39, 43, 46 – 8, 51, 53 – 6, 60 – 1, 72 – 3, 186, 250 painters 10, 16, 30, 81, 91 – 2, 95, 101, 105 – 11, 141; see also artists painting (as art form and skill) 103, 106, 115, 248, 252 – 3 paintings 9, 69, 81, 95, 97, 99, 101, 105, 107, 111; flower 91 – 2, 110 – 11; portrait 92 – 4, 99, 101 – 3, 106 – 8, 111, 147, 187, 254; reception piece 109; still life 91 – 2, 95, 97, 107, 109 – 11 Paris 6, 26 – 7, 33, 72, 74 – 5, 120, 136 – 7, 141, 150, 177 – 8, 188, 230, 253 – 4 Parsons, Talcott 2 patronage 8, 49, 61 peasantry/peasants 31, 59, 97, 162, 164, 166 – 7, 169, 179 Porvoo (Borgå) 178, 189 poverty 119, 121, 123, 128 – 30, 153, 181, 221 power 4, 8, 43, 47 – 8, 50, 56, 69 – 71, 77 – 82, 85, 97, 106, 109, 142, 167; political 8, 61, 72 – 3; societal 39; symbolic 84 pregnancy 6, 26, 34 – 5, 198 priests 27, 33, 221, 252; see also clergy private sphere 85, 130; see also public sphere; separate spheres professional 69 – 70, 116, 129, 146, 149, 177, 190, 222, 257 – 8; activities 2, 5, 223; ambitions 1 – 2, 5, 7, 9 – 11, 14 – 15, 58, 178; artists 9, 16, 94, 99, 104; autonomy 143; competence 14 – 16, 251, 259; degree 28; enterpriser 188; knowledge 25; life 8; literature 7, 27, 31; oath 25, 28 – 9; qualifications 16, 38 – 9; skills 5, 15, 33, 35, 37, 61, 198; social 4 – 5, 56, 76, 117, 161, 212, 220; status 6, 39, 99, 135, 150, 255; strategies 105, 111; training 197; women 3, 15, 59, 61, 99, 117, 128, 130, 142– 3; see also identity professionalism 2, 4, 39, 136 professionalization 2 – 6, 17, 246, 256 – 8 professions 2 – 6, 11 – 12, 14, 17, 25, 27 – 31, 38, 70 – 1, 83, 85, 115 – 17,

119, 121, 129 – 30, 135 – 6, 139 – 41, 143, 151 – 2, 154, 161, 178, 188, 197 – 8, 206, 208, 212; liberal professions 3, 70, 135 property rights see rights public sphere 11, 85 – 6, 130; see also private sphere; separate spheres publishing 10, 94, 99, 111 Ramsay and McKenzie (milliners) 145, 147 rank 8, 43, 45 – 9, 53 – 4, 56, 59, 70, 73 – 5, 81, 83, 119, 166, 171 rape 7, 26, 37 Reeve(s), Lucia (milliner and mantuamaker) 138 – 9, 143, 145 – 7 religion 203, 219, 251 – 3; Anglican 13, 221; Catholic 8, 13, 45, 53, 219, 246, 252, 256; Huguenot 247, 255; Jewish 257; Lutheran 27, 31, 190, 197, 219, 223; Protestant 13 – 14, 27, 246 – 7, 251, 255 – 8; see also church remuneration 1, 8, 71, 84, 140, 247; see also income; salary; wage Renaut, Catharina (city midwife) 32 – 3, 37 reputation 13, 29, 97, 106, 109, 119, 124, 145, 146, 153 – 4, 186, 220, 258 restaurants 17, 177 – 9, 182 – 6, 188 – 9, 191; as business 12, 178, 180 – 2, 184, 188 – 9; restaurant keepers 16, 178 – 9, 182, 190; see also cafés and coffee houses; innkeepers retirement 51, 117, 129 – 30, 221, 240 rights 2, 11, 55, 139, 143, 151, 173, 180; burghess 28; civic 136; legal 143; property 12, 160 – 2, 173 Rosenborg Castle 94 – 5, 97, 105, 111; Florilegium 94 – 5, 97 Russia 2, 4, 6, 12, 14, 16, 30, 106, 160 – 3, 166 – 70, 172 – 3, 185, 217 – 18, 220 – 2, 225, 227, 230 – 1, 240, 246, 248 – 9, 252, 255, 257 – 8 St Petersburg 8, 12, 166 – 70, 178, 182 – 3, 188 – 90, 245, 248 – 50, 255 – 8 St Petersburg province 161, 163 – 5, 168 – 70 salary 8, 39, 43, 45, 47 – 8, 50 – 4, 61, 70 – 1, 84, 117, 220, 225, 240; see also income; remuneration; wage salon 74 – 5, 101 – 2, 104; salonière 7, 177

278 Index schools 13 – 17, 32, 185, 191, 197 – 212, 221 – 3, 245 – 59; boarding (pension) 12 – 15, 74, 120, 245 – 6, 251 – 7, 259; charity 13; grammar 245 – 6, 248, 250, 255 – 6, 258; pauper 13 – 14, 197 – 212; secondary 4, 14 – 15, 248; see also art, schools; headmistresses; teachers; theatre, schools; training scientists 7, 71, 92 – 4, 97, 111 seamen 32 – 3 seamstresses 137, 143, 149– 50, 153, 252 separate spheres 70, 159 – 60; see also private sphere; public sphere serfs 160, 162, 164 – 5, 170 – 2 servants 43, 46, 51 – 5, 61, 84, 120, 168, 179, 181, 183 – 5, 189, 201, 225, 246 – 7 service 3, 5, 16 – 17, 137, 145, 178 – 80, 183 – 4, 186, 190 – 1, 231, 240, 248; of sovereign 43, 45 – 53, 56, 60 – 1, 70 – 3, 77, 82 – 5, 230; of state 166 – 7, 172, 256 shopkeepers 12, 127, 141 Siegemund, Justine (court midwife) 27, 33 singers 9 – 11, 44, 78, 80, 120, 122, 141, 144 single women 12, 59, 143, 151, 181, 183 – 4, 240; see also unmarried women skills 143; in foreign languages 75, 99, 217 – 19, 223, 225, 227, 240, 246 – 8, 252, 256 – 7; practical 16, 26, 198, 256 – 7; in writing 7, 31 – 3, 47, 120, 190, 198, 203 – 5, 208, 212, 223, 227, 249, 252, 256; see also apprenticeship Smolny institute (St Petersburg) 255, 259 sociology 2 – 5, 17, 198 Sparre, Charlotta Fredrika (baroness, courtier) 74 – 84 state 2 – 4, 48, 59, 170, 198, 218; absolutist 1, 72, 197; administration of 4, 44, 60 – 1, 197; nation 15 status 3, 7 – 8, 10, 26, 43, 45 – 6, 54, 59, 61, 75 – 6, 80, 84 – 5, 93, 104, 107, 128, 136, 138, 139, 142, 149, 153, 190, 205, 218, 222, 240, 258; marital 15, 28, 45 – 6, 51, 164; see also professional, status Stenberg, Lisette (actress) 115, 117, 121 – 5, 128 – 9

still life see paintings Stockholm 7 – 8, 28 – 30, 32 – 5, 38, 73, 75, 82, 115, 117 – 22, 127, 129 – 30, 146, 179 – 81, 183 – 5, 245, 252 – 4 surgeons 25 – 8, 34, 36 – 7, 39 Sweden 2, 10 – 13, 16, 25, 27 – 31, 33, 35, 37, 39, 71 – 8, 80 – 4, 115, 117 – 19, 122, 130, 178, 180, 182, 184 – 5, 197, 199, 251 – 2, 256 Switzerland 219, 230, 247 – 8 tailors 25, 30, 33, 126, 136, 139, 143, 149 – 51, 204, 212, 222 Tallinn (Reval) 188, 190, 256 – 7 tanneries 164, 166 – 7 Tarnow, Fanny (governess, writer) 249 Tartu (Dorpat) 251, 256 – 9 teachers 3, 12 – 14, 99, 104, 121, 197 – 212, 218, 221 – 2, 225, 227, 230, 245 – 59; art 106; behaviour of 208 – 11; qualifications and competence of 14, 197 – 8, 200 – 8, 212, 219, 240, 247 – 8, 250, 258 – 9; see also education; governesses; schools; training; tutors theatre 9, 11, 17, 69, 75, 78 – 81, 115, 117 – 24, 126 – 30, 179, 186, 225, 250; schools 117, 120 – 1, 123 training 1 – 2, 4 – 7, 10, 16, 28, 35, 48, 50, 135, 206; of artisans 137 – 8, 139, 145, 149, 154; of artists 92, 99, 111; of midwives 6 – 7, 15, 25 – 6, 28 – 31, 33 – 6, 38 – 9; of teachers 13 – 14, 197, 248, 257 – 8; see also schools; teachers Turku (Åbo) 33, 37, 146, 178, 183 – 6, 253 tutors 75, 217 – 18, 221 – 2, 225, 227–9, 240, 247 – 50 universities 2, 4, 25, 27, 33, 53, 56, 70, 135, 183, 185 – 6, 188, 219, 223, 256, 258 unmarried women 11 – 12, 36, 45, 47 – 8, 59, 76, 80, 162, 180, 199, 205; see also single women Versailles 8, 44, 73 – 5 Vienna 8, 44, 73 Vologda 167 – 8 Vologda province 161 – 4, 167, 170 Vyborg 167, 169, 258

Index  279 Wacklin, Sara (governess, school directress, writer) 253 – 4 wage 52, 117, 123 – 4, 128, 130, 152– 3, 200 – 1, 204, 211, 247 Wahllund, Cajsa (Catharina) (innkeeper, restaurant owner) 178, 185 – 8 Wäström, Sophia Magdalena (actress) 115, 117, 121, 123, 126, 128 – 30 widowhood 60, 221 widows 8, 11 – 12, 28 – 31, 33, 36, 45 – 8, 50 – 1, 54, 56, 58, 115, 141, 143,

147, 150– 1, 161, 164, 166, 168 – 9, 180 – 2, 186, 190, 198, 204 – 5, 207, 212, 218, 221, 235, 248 – 9 Wollstonecraft, Mary (writer) 179 – 80 Wood, Mary and Sarah (milliners and mantuamakers) 138 – 9, 143 – 4, 145 – 7 workshops 10, 17, 111, 136, 143, 189 writers 9 – 10, 101, 104, 115, 118, 162, 171, 188, 220, 227, 249 – 50, 259