THE BLUESTOCKING CLUB
The list of bluestocking ladies given by Hannah More in her poem,
_Bas Bleu_, is as follows: ‘Vesey of verse the judge and friend,’
‘Boscawen sage,’ ‘bright Montagu,’ and Elizabeth Carter. To this
we should of course add the name of Miss More herself. The men
enumerated as members are Lord Lyttelton, Pultney, Earl of Bath,
and Horace Walpole. Exactly the same list is given by Forbes in his
_Life of Beattie_, save that he adds the name of Stillingfleet.
Miss More mentions certain famous men as former habitués of the
blue drawing-room, Garrick, Mason, Dr. Johnson, Burke (‘apostate
now from social wit’), and Sir William Pepys. These five, with the
exception of Pepys, are thought of rather as frequent visitors than
as recognized members.
We must not assume from the use of the word _club_ the existence
of a formally established society, like the great Literary Club,
with rules and election of members. The blues were drawn together
simply by the desire for mutual intercourse, and the group expanded
freely as fit associates appeared. No exact list of bluestockings
can therefore be made. Indeed, the list of ladies in Hannah
More’s _Sensibility_, described as participating in ‘the charm
of friendship and the feast of sense,’ is somewhat different from
the one already quoted: Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Montagu,
Mrs. Chapone, Mrs. Walsingham, Mrs. Delany, and Mrs. Barbauld.
Fanny Burney, like Miss More herself, is thought of as a younger
member,[203] almost as a protégée of the club. Mrs. Thrale, with her
own coterie, was always more or less of an outsider, as was also
Mrs. Ord. Later, as we shall see, the name _bluestocking_ came to
be applied to women who had only the remotest connection with the
original group.
The origin of the little company which was to develop into the _Bas
Bleu_ is now difficult to discover. Miss More’s poem in praise of
it did not appear until 1786, many years after its fame was fully
established. The verses, begun in 1783, circulated for many months
in manuscript and frequently retouched, are the official handbook
of the society; but it is necessary to remember that the author did
not come into contact with the group during its earlier history,
and that her account of its origin is therefore not to be taken as
indubitable evidence. She divides the honour of having instituted the
bluestocking _conversazioni_ between Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Boscawen.
Madame D’Arblay, on the other hand, assigns it exclusively to Mrs.
Vesey.[204] In any case, it is certain that Mrs. Montagu speedily
became the leading person in the club, for Lyttelton, apparently
as early as 1765,[205] refers to her as ‘la belle présidente.’ The
earliest meetings may well have occurred at her literary breakfasts,
which have been already described.[206] It is not unreasonable to
assume that the ‘club’ was already in existence during the later
fifties, for it was well known to Admiral Boscawen, who died in 1761.
A prominent member of it, mentioned by Miss More, was the Earl of
Bath, who died in 1764. But the Bas Bleu did not attain the meridian
of its fame till many years later.
From its very beginning the object of the club was to promote
literary conversation as the chief pleasure of social life. That such
conversation was a stiff and solemn business one hardly needs to be
told. Bluestocking letters alone are a sufficient proof of it. In the
_Bas Bleu_ we hear much of the false wit of the Hôtel de Rambouillet,
Where wit and point and equivoque
Distorted every word they spoke.
The English bluestockings will have none of this. They repudiate wit
that is French and wit that is tainted, and exalt common sense in its
stead. Hannah More declares that the solid basis of conversation is
learning; it is for conversation, she cries, that
The sage consumes his midnight toil;
And keeps his vigils to produce
Materials for thy future use.
Such praise of serious conversation enables us to guess at the
preparation which earnest souls made for the _conversazioni_ in
which they hoped to shine. To Lady Louisa Stuart the group at Mrs.
Montagu’s had about it a suspicion of acting before an audience.
‘If you had good luck,’ she says, ‘you might not only be greatly
amused at Mrs. Montagu’s, but carry away much that was well worth
remembering. But then, also, the circular form is not less convenient
to prosers and people who love to hear themselves talk, so you might,
on the contrary, come in for the most tiresome dissertations, the
dullest long stories, the flattest jokes anywhere to be found.’[207]
Lyttelton himself gave similar testimony. Fanny Burney’s words
seem to show that the bluestockings were occasionally bored with
themselves: ‘I respect and esteem them,’ she writes in April 1784,
‘but they require an exertion to which I am not always inclined.’
There is, moreover, the indirect evidence afforded by Boswell. The
greatest judge of conversation then living had been repeatedly in the
presence of the bluestockings; he never wearied of expressing his
admiration for them; he had watched them swarming about his master;
he had taken the trouble to investigate the origin of their society;
but he never thought it worth while to record their talk.
Much of the fame of the bluestockings was due to the name by which
they had come to be known. It caught the public attention quickly,
and has remained a useful addition to the English vocabulary. The
word _bluestocking_ presents an interesting but perhaps insoluble
problem in etymology, or rather in slang. Various explanations of
the term exist, but, though they are not irreconcilable, they are
not wholly satisfactory. It would seem as though a source ought
to be found in seventeenth century France or sixteenth century
Italy[208]; but none has yet come to light. Mills in his _History
of Chivalry_[209] (1825) traces the word back to the Society ‘de
la Calza,’ founded in Venice in the year 1400. The society lasted
till 1590, when, he continues, ‘the rejected title’—by which
presumably he means _calza turchina_, though he nowhere mentions
it—‘crossed the Alps, and found a congenial soil in the flippancy
and literary triflings of Parisian society.... It diverged from
France to England.’ No evidence for the remarkable migrations of
this title is adduced by Mills. The words _bas bleu_ are unknown
to French lexicographers save as a translation of the English
bluestocking;[210] so that Mills’s statements respecting the
peregrinations of the term seem to be the result of his own
imagination.[211]
On the other hand, when we turn to English literature, we find that
the term was used as early as the seventeenth century. The first
occurrence of it noted by Murray, in the _New English Dictionary_,
is in Bramston’s _Autobiography_ (1683), in reference to the Little
Parliament of 1653: ‘That Blew-stocking Parliament.’ It is here
plainly used as a sneer at the unostentatious dress of the Puritans,
who eschewed silk stockings. Reference to coarse or ugly stockings
had been a well-known form of abuse for years. Prince Hal makes use
of a similar term, ‘puke-stocking’—puke being a kind of bluish-black
woollen, not worn by courtiers—in sneering at the keeper of the
Boar’s Head tavern.[212] The word _bluestocking_, even after its
application to literary ladies, retained something of a derogatory
flavour; it was considered by some a term of reproach,[213] and was
bitterly resented.
Just when the term was first applied to literary ladies, it is
difficult to say;[214] the period of its great popularity was in
the decade of the 80’s. By that time it had caught the attention and
roused the curiosity of Boswell, who gives the following explanation
of it:
About this time [1781] it was much the fashion for several ladies
to have evening assemblies, where the fair sex might participate in
conversation with literary and ingenious men, animated by a desire
to please. These societies were denominated Blue-stocking Clubs,
the origin of which title being little known, it may be worth while
to relate it. One of the most eminent members of those societies,
when they first commenced, was Mr. Stillingfleet, whose dress
was remarkably grave, and in particular it was observed, that he
wore blue stockings. Such was the excellence of his conversation,
that his absence was felt as so great a loss that it used to be
said, ‘We can do nothing without the _blue stockings_’ and thus by
degrees the title was established.[215]
Forbes, in his _Life of Beattie_, throws new light on the matter:
Mr. Stillingfleet, being somewhat of an humourist in his habits and
manners, and a little negligent in his dress, literally wore grey
stockings, from which circumstance, Admiral Boscawen used, by way
of pleasantry, to call them the ‘Blue-Stocking Society,’ as if to
indicate that when these brilliant friends met, it was not for the
purpose of forming a dressed assembly. A foreigner of distinction,
hearing the expression, translated it literally, ‘Bas Bleu,’ by
which these meetings came to be afterwards distinguished.[216]
Madame D’Arblay, writing in 1832, asserted that it was Mrs. Vesey
who first encouraged Stillingfleet to appear in his homely dress;
‘“Pho, pho,” cried she ...“don’t mind dress! Come in your blue
stockings!”’[217] and there seems to be no good reason for rejecting
this additional detail. It is at least not inconsistent with the
facts already cited.
The ‘mistake’ made by the ‘foreigner of distinction’ is plainly
referred to in a letter from Mrs. Carter to Mrs. Montagu, in
reference to the title _Bas Bleu_: ‘Do not you remember last winter
that Madame de Montier (or some such name; she was, however, the
French Ambassadress) desired somebody to introduce Monsieur—son Mari
to the Bas bleu?’[218]
These explanations, which form a fairly consistent series, and
which commended themselves to the bluestockings, ought to be good
enough for the twentieth century. Some, however, insist on a
more picturesque interpretation, probably in protest against the
implication that the first bluestocking was a man. An explanation
first offered in 1861 by Mr. Hayward, in the second edition of his
_Autobiography of Mrs. Piozzi_, was given to him by a lady who said
she received it from Lady Crewe in the course of a conversation held
in 1816. It runs as follows:
Lady Crewe told me that her mother (Mrs. Greville), the Duchess
of Portland, and Mrs. Montagu were the first who began the
conversation parties in imitation of the noted one, _temp._ Madame
de Sévigné, at Rue St. Honoré. Madame de Polignac, one of the first
guests, came in blue silk stockings, then the newest fashion in
Paris. Mrs. Greville and all the lady members of Mrs. Montagu’s
_club_, adopted the _mode_. A foreign gentleman, after spending
an evening at Mrs. Montagu’s _soirée_, wrote to tell a friend of
the charming intellectual party who had one rule; ‘they wear blue
stockings as a distinction.’
It would hardly be necessary to notice this account at all, were
it not that it has been seriously presented in the _Dictionary of
National Biography_ as the correct explanation, has been cited by
an anonymous writer in the _Quarterly Review_ (January 1903), and
recently repeated with full approval.[219] It must be noticed,
in the first place, that Mr. Hayward himself does not accept the
story, inasmuch as he banishes it to a footnote, and retains the
traditional account in the body of his work. Again, the sole source
of his authority is the hearsay evidence of an anonymous lady
given a century after the fact. We are three stages away from the
original informant, without written evidence of any kind until 1816.
Moreover, the anecdote bears upon its face all the marks of a story
_ben trovato_. Those who can think of Mrs. Montagu and her friends
as genially displaying blue stockings as a sort of badge are, to say
the least, but ill acquainted with certain nice prejudices of our
literary ladies.
It is clear, however, that there was about this phrase that vague
yet eloquent connotation which is the peculiar property of slang
and in which the explanations given above are, with the exception
of the last, conspicuously deficient. In no other way can the
sudden popularity of the word be accounted for.[220] The tendency
to play with the phrase became evident at once: ‘When will you
_blue-stocking_ yourself and come amongst us?’ wrote Walpole to
Hannah More.[221] ‘You may put on your blue stockings,’ wrote Mrs.
Chapone to Miss Burney,[222] ‘if you have got any boots to walk
about in the mornings, I shall like you as well in them.’ The word
was of course presently reduced to _blue_,[223] partly, no doubt,
because of the associations of this colour with the salons ever
since the Rambouillet days. When Fanny Burney was asked what Johnson
called Mrs. Montagu, she replied, ‘“Queen,” to be sure! “Queen of
the Blues!”’[224] and at court she was amused at a gentleman who was
ashamed to be found ‘reading to _a blue_.’[225]
Two facts emerge clearly from these quotations. In the first place,
we derive from Mrs. Carter’s letter a definite date for the origin
of the phrase _bas bleu_, the winter of 1782-3. In the second place,
it is obvious that this French phrase and the anecdote connected
with it account in large measure for the popularity of the word
_bluestocking_. That word had, as we have seen, existed before;[226]
indeed the French lady who first used the words _bas bleu_ was but
trying to translate an English phrase already familiar to her;
but it was only when that phrase assumed a kind of international
significance by appearing in French form that the English public
generally took up the earlier word _bluestocking_. From 1782 onwards
the word becomes common. Moreover, it was at the same period that
public attention began to be directed to the Bluestocking Club, and
the date 1782 may conveniently be taken as marking its florescence.