Shirting

    "Making a husband's shirt was widely seen as a fundamental matrimonial duty. Women's plain sewing had a resonant emotional symbolism that carried over even when a mistress did not ply the needle with her own fingers. In gentry families, wives did not expect to make shirts and shifts in bulk themselves. Yet administering the production of personal linens, from buying the Holland, sourcing the thread, to employing the neat seamstresses and overseeing the making up and washing, perhaps personally finishing them off and labelling them, was one of the crucial ways that women serviced the needs of their men. If you did not provide the shirts you were hardly a wife."

    That passage is from the excellent Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England by Amanda Vickery, and is typical of the fascinating insights into the lives of our ancestors which that book contains. It does lead me to wonder, though, whether I am failing in my wifely duties by leaving Mr. C. at the mercies of Messrs. Tyrwhitt and Lewin! (I do iron all his shirts, however, so perhaps honour is saved).