Ladies in the Wheatstone Ledgers: the Gendered Concertina in Victorian England, 1835–1870 (B) Reschron 39 Prelims 25/8/06 10:05 Page Ii
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(B) ResChron 39 Prelims 25/8/06 10:05 Page i RMA ISSN 1472-3808 ROYAL MUSICAL ASSOCIATION Royal Musical Association RESEARCH CHRONICLE 39: 2006 Edited by Jonathan P. Wainwright Allan W. Atlas Ladies in the Wheatstone Ledgers: the Gendered Concertina in Victorian England, 1835–1870 (B) ResChron 39 Prelims 25/8/06 10:05 Page ii © The Royal Musical Association and the Author, London, 2006 (B) ResChron 39 Prelims 25/8/06 10:05 Page iii (B) ResChron 39 Prelims 25/8/06 10:05 Page iv Editorial address: Jonathan Wainwright Department of Music The University of York Heslington York YO10 5DD UK E-Mail: [email protected] Tel. +44 (0)1904 434748 (+ answering machine) Fax. +44 (0)1904 432450 (attention Dr Wainwright) Sales address (agent for non-members): Sales address for Royal Musical Association members: Rosemary Dooley Dr Jeffrey Dean Crag House The RMA Secretary & Publications Witherslack Administrator Grange-over-Sands 4 Chandos Road Cumbria LA11 6RW Chorlton-cum-Hardy UK Manchester M21 0ST UK E-Mail: [email protected] E-Mail: [email protected] Tel. +44 (0)1539 552286 Tel. +44 (0)161 861 7542 Fax +44 (0)1539 552013 Fax +44 (0)161 861 7543 Subscriptions are welcome. RMA and AMS Members are entitled to a 50% discount on the current purchase price and should send orders to the Publications Administrator, as above. All others should send orders to the Agent; there are special terms for the book trade. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire. (C) ResChron 39 1835-1870 25/8/06 09:56 Page 1 LADIES IN THE WHEATSTONE LEDGERS: THE GENDERED CONCERTINA IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND, 1835–18701 ALLAN W. ATLAS The heart of this study is the inventory of women whose names appear in the nineteenth-century sales ledgers of Wheatstone & Co., the period’s most prestigious manufacturer of the English concertina.2 More specifically, the inventory is based on the nine extant sales ledgers, now housed at the Horniman Museum, London, that list Wheatstone’s day-to-day sales from 4 April 1835 to 23 May 1870.3 In all, the ledgers record a total of 15,056 transactions,4 of which no fewer than 1,769 (just under 12%) refer to and account for 978 women who either purchased, rented, exchanged, or bor- rowed concertinas for their own use or, as with those who taught the instrument (see Tables 8 and 11), had such transactions carried out in their name with the intention of passing the instrument on to someone else. Clearly, these figures come with an important caveat with respect to things that we can- not know: (1) how many transactions entered under a woman’s name involved instruments ultimately destined for men; (2) how many transactions signaled movement in the opposite direction; and (3) how many concertinas sold to dealers ended up in the hands of women? In the end, we can only tally up the transactions, take them at face value, and take note of those that specifically involve women. 1 It is with great pleasure that I dedicate this article to and acknowledge the help and support received from my fellow mem- bers of the informal (internet-connected) Concertina Research Forum: Chris Algar, Stephen Chambers, Robert Gaskins, Randall Merris, and Wes Williams, all of whom share my interest in the history of the concertina in Victorian England and were always ready to supply information, challenge interpretations, and keep up a constant stream of stimulating discussion. Thanks also to Judith Barger, Christina Bashford, Margaret Birley, Julie Cunningham, Paul De Silva, Therese Ellsworth, William Glenn, Halina Goldberg, Rachel Goodman, Robert Harvey, Foster Henry, Blake Howe, Ian Graham-Orlebar, Sylvia Kahan, Charity Lofthouse, Adrienne Munich, Julia Grella O’Connell, Peg Rivers, Douglas Rogers, Deborah Rohr, Pat Shipman, Lawrence Shuster, E. Bradley Strauchen, Wim Wakker, Jennifer C.H.J. Wilson, Robert J. Wood, and the Research Chronicle’s anonymous reader, each of whom helped and contributed in diverse and important ways. 2 The company was variously known as: (1) C. Wheatstone & Co., after the family’s most famous member, the physicist Sir Charles Wheatstone (see below); (2) W. Wheatstone & Co., first after Sir Charles’s father, William (1775–1854), and then after his brother, William Dolman (1804–62), with the two Williams seemingly having run the day-to-day affairs of the business during their lifetimes; (3) Messrs. Wheatstone & Co; and (4) simply Wheatstone & Co. To what extent Sir Charles took an active role in the business from the time of his brother’s death in 1862 until the firm was sold to the Chidley family (related to the Wheatstones through marriage) around 1870 is uncertain. In addition to manufacturing concertinas, Wheatstone’s also produced flutes (at least early on in its history) and seraphines/harmoniums, and published a volumi- nous amount of music, mainly for the English concertina. On the history of the firm, see Peter Kidson, William C. Smith/rev. Peter Ward Jones, ‘Wheatstone’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London, 2001), xxvii, 334–5 (hereafter New Grove 2); William Waterhouse, The New Langwill Index: A Dictionary of Musical Wind-Instrument Makers and Inventors (London, 1993), 426; Neil Wayne, ‘The Wheatstone English Concertina’, Galpin Society Journal, 44 (1991), 117–49 (also online at <http://www.free-reed.co.uk/galpin>); idem, ‘Concertina Book—Final Edit’ (1986), 29–51 (an unpublished manuscript of which there is a copy in the Horniman Museum, London); Stephen Chambers, ‘Some Notes on Lachenal Concertina Production and Serial Numbers’, Papers of the International Concertina Association, 1 (2004), 19–20, n. 18 (also online at both <http://www.concertina.org/pica.php> and <http://www.concertina.com/chambers/lachenal-production>). Unless otherwise noted, all references to the concertina are to the type known as the English concertina, though I sometimes use that name in full; for other types, see note 12. 3 The ledgers are described in some detail below (see the section entitled ‘The Ledgers’, following the Introduction). Ledger C104a, 18, contains a late, pencil entry dated 3 May 1834 in connection with the sale of Wheatstone no. 352 (all Wheatstone concertinas have a serial number); however, this date is surely incorrect, as no other instrument numbered in the 300s antedates 1839. There is a gap in the records from 5 April 1849 through 31 December 1850, as the ledger for that period is now missing. In addition, records from 4 April 1835 to 4 April 1839 and from 6 April 1848 to 5 April 1849 are patchy and probably incomplete. The ledgers are in the Horniman Museum’s Wayne Archive, and are available online at <http://www.horniman.info>. 4 This does not include the 875 instances of duplicate entries shared by C1046 and C104a; on the often-puzzling relationship between these two ledgers, see the description of the latter in ‘The Ledgers’, below. Note that, throughout this study, the word ‘transactions’ can refer to sales, rentals, returns, loans, or exchanges. (C) ResChron 39 1835-1870 25/8/06 09:56 Page 2 2 ALLAN W. ATLAS The Introduction, which analyses and provides the context for the data in the Inventory, is divided into six sections: I. ‘Matters of Propriety’, II. ‘The English Concertina’, III. ‘The Clientele: An Overview’, IV. ‘Ladies in the Ledgers’, V. ‘Marketing Strategies’, and VI. ‘Concluding Comment’. It is followed by two brief sections: ‘The Ledgers’, which describes the nine sales ledgers and offers a short note on one ‘production’ book (without the names of customers) and two salary books, and the ‘Preface to the Inventory’, which explains how the Inventory is organised and lists the sources (and their sigla) cited therein. INTRODUCTION I. Matters of Propriety As is well known, Victorian England held firm convictions about which instruments were appropriate for women, whether professionals or well-bred amateurs of the middle and upper classes (titled aris- tocracy included). Indeed, conventional wisdom holds that, until the early 1870s, when the informal ban on women playing the violin began to loosen,5 only three instruments were deemed suitable for women: piano, harp, and—as Dora reminds us throughout Dickens’s David Copperfield—guitar.6 Yet this seemingly neat assessment needs to be fine tuned a bit, for the popularity of the guitar seems to have peaked by the middle of the century,7 while the harp was already relegated to the status of ‘a splendid Mythus’ by 1849.8 Thus the piano reigned supreme (if not, as we shall see, entirely alone). Perhaps no one spelled out the situation with greater charm—and perhaps with a whiff of nos- talgia for the ‘good old days’—than that prolific writer of ‘how-to-do-it’ books for women, Mrs C. S. Peel: ‘Singing and playing the piano, and during the thirties and forties, upon the harp and guitar, were approved feminine accomplishments. Gentlemen also sang and duets were in high favour, 5 The story of the violin’s adoption by women is told superbly by Paula Gillett, Musical Women in England, 1870–1914: “Encroaching on All Man’s Privileges” (New York, 2000), 77–140. Though founded in 1822, and always non-discriminatory with respect to gender, the Royal Academy of Music did not admit its first female violin students until January 1872. Prior to that time, female students could, in addition to taking up voice, study only piano and harp; see W.W. Cazalet, The History of the Royal Academy of Music (London, 1854), 146; Frederick Corder, A History of the Royal Academy of Music from 1822 to 1922 (London, 1922), 10.