THE BLUESTOCKINGS
To Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Vesey (a warm-hearted Irish lady), and Mrs. Ord
(daughter of an eminent surgeon, named Dillingham, and subsequently a
wealthy widow) is generally ascribed the merit of having founded parties
where conversation should form the chief, if not only, occupation. But
there was a lady much connected with the above, and, indeed, with all the
Blues, to whom may be assigned the honour of first attacking what it was
the object of the Bluestockings to overthrow, namely, Miss Mulso, better
known to us as Mrs. Chapone,—a name which she acquired by marriage in
1760. When this lady was about twenty-three (1750), she, in concert with
Johnson, wrote the tenth number of the _Rambler_. Under the character of
Lady Racket, she sent compliments to that censor of manners, and “lets
him know she will have cards at her house every Sunday, ... where he will
be sure of meeting all the good company in town.... She longs to see the
torch of truth produced at an assembly, and to admire the charming lustre
it will throw on the jewels, complexions, and behaviour of every dear
creature there.”
Of course, this note was written as a text to which Johnson might append
a comment that should sharply censure that card-playing against which
intellectual ladies were beginning to set their faces and close their
doors. Accordingly, the _Rambler_ remarks: “At card-tables, however
brilliant, I have always thought my visit lost; for I could know nothing
of the company but their clothes and their faces. I saw their looks
clouded at the beginning of every game, with a uniform solicitude now and
then in its progress, varied with a short triumph, at one time wrinkled
with cunning; at another, deadened with despondency, or, by accident,
flushed with rage at the unskilful or unlucky play of a partner. From
such assemblies ... I was quickly forced to retire; they were too
trifling for me when I was grave, and too dull when I was cheerful.” When
Johnson suggests to Lady Racket to “light up her apartments with myrtle,”
he seems to have made the suggestion which ladies of sense and means
adopted, and for which they were ridiculed and nicknamed by persons as
brainless as any of the figures staring stupidly at nothing on the court
cards.
There already existed, however, conversation parties that were as little
attractive to persons of good taste as the ruinous card-tables were
to persons of prudence. In one of the few letters of Mrs. Scott which
survived her unfortunate request that all should be destroyed, she thus
wrote of card-parties and _conversations_ in the very year, 1750, that
Johnson and Miss Mulso combined in the _Rambler_ to reform both:
“I find no objection to large companies, except the want of society
in them.... I have not the natural requisite for society—the love
of cards.... I excuse myself from card-parties by saying I have a
great dislike to sitting by a card-table, which no one can pretend is
unreasonable; and I find nothing is so useful as asserting one’s liberty
in these ceremonious points: it gives little offence, and without it, one
may remain all one’s life the suffering slave of a painful civility....
I am glad, by-the-bye, there are such things as cards in the world; for
otherwise one would be teazed by eternal conversation parties, which are
terrible things. I seldom venture into a Sunday-night circle, and I quite
disclaimed them a year before I left London. The principal speakers are
always those to whom one is the least inclined to attend. Every day in
the week would be as much taken up with these parties, if cards did not
conquer even the love of talking.”
Mrs. Montagu, a year before she acquired that name, had expressed her
distaste for the flashy conversation of her time. In a letter to her
sister Sarah, she describes one of the “talkers” with great vivacity.
“Mr. B——’s wife put out her strength to be witty, and, in short, showed
such a brilliant genius, that I turned about and asked who it was that
was so willing to be ingenious; for she had endeavoured to go off two or
three times, but had unhappily flashed in the pan.” In 1750, Mrs. Montagu
and some other ladies attempted to reform manners, by having parties
where cards could not be thought of, and where the mental power was
freshest for conversation.
In that year, 1750, there was a charming French lady taking notes amongst
us. Madame du Bocage, in her “Letters on England, Holland, and Italy,”
notices Mrs. Montagu; and from the notice may be learned, that the
last-named lady was already giving entertainments of a nature to benefit
society. While at the Duke of Richmond’s, as many as eighteen card-tables
were “set for playing” in the gallery of his house near Whitehall, with
supper and wine to follow, for the consolation of the half-ruined, and
congratulation of the lucky, gamblers, Mrs. Montagu gave breakfasts.
Madame du Bocage thus speaks of them and of the hostess:
“In the morning, breakfasts, which enchant as much by the exquisite
viands as by the richness of the plate on which they are served up,
agreably bring together the people of the country and strangers. We
breakfasted in this manner to-day, April 8, 1750, at Lady Montagu’s” (as
Madame du Bocage mistakenly calls her), “in a closet lined with painted
paper of Pekin, and furnished with the choicest movables of China. A long
table, covered with the finest linen, presented to the view a thousand
glittering cups, which contained coffee, chocolate, biscuits, cream,
butter, toasts, and exquisite tea. You must understand that there is no
good tea to be had anywhere but in London. The mistress of the house, who
deserves to be served at the table of the gods, poured it out herself.
This is the custom, and, in order to conform to it, the dress of the
English ladies, which suits exactly to their stature, the white apron and
the pretty straw hat, become them with the greatest propriety, not only
in their own apartments, but at noon, in St. James’s Park, where they
walk with the stately and majestic gait of nymphs.”
Mrs. Montagu was not the only lady who gave those literary breakfasts.
Lady Schaub (a foreign lady who would marry Sir Luke) received company at
those pleasant repasts. Madame du Bocage met Frederick Prince of Wales at
one of them. The prince, who, with all his faults, was an accomplished
gentleman, came incognito, so as to enjoy and to allow greater freedom.
Madame du Bocage treated him as an ordinary gentleman, and was perfectly
delighted with his conversation, as well as with his thorough knowledge
of the literature of her own country. They gossiped beneath the
Sigismunda (one of many fine pictures possessed by Sir Luke), which
stirred Hogarth to paint the same subject, in rivalry, as he thought,
with Corregio; but the picture was since discovered to be by Farini.
When the breakfasts gave way to the evening coteries for conversation
(with orgeat, lemonades, tea, and biscuits) is not known. After these had
lasted a few years, the word “Bluestocking” occurs for the first time
in Mrs. Montagu’s letters. Writing, in March, 1757, to Dr. Monsey, she
says: “Our friend, Mr. Stillingfleet, is more attached to the lilies of
the field than to the lilies of the town, who toil and spin as little
as the others, and, like the former, are better arrayed than Solomon
in all his glory. I assure you, our philosopher is so much a man of
pleasure, he has left off his old friends and his blue stockings, and
is at operas and other gay assemblies every night; so imagine whether
a sage doctor, a dropsical patient, and a bleak mountain are likely to
attract him.” Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet used to be seen as often at Mrs.
Vesey’s gatherings as at Mrs. Montagu’s. “Bluestocking” was not a term
exclusively applied to Mrs. Montagu’s assemblies. To all assemblies
where ladies presided and scholars were welcomed, the name seems to have
been given. A “Bluestocking club” never existed. The title was given in
derision by persons who, as before said, lacked the brains, or who were
not distinguished by other merits that would have entitled them to an
invitation. The assemblies of Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Vesey, and Mrs. Ord were
spoken of indifferently as _bas-bleu_ assemblies.
Sir William Forbes, in his “Life of Beattie,” states that the society
of eminent friends who met at Mrs. Montagu’s originally consisted of
Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Vesey, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Carter, Lord Lyttelton,
the Earl of Bath (Pulteney), Horace Walpole, and Mr. Stillingfleet.
Around these some of the most distinguished persons of intellect used
to assemble. Mrs. Vesey (daughter of the Bishop of Ossory and wife of
Agmondesham Vesey), says Sir William, was another centre of pleasing
and rational society. Without attempting to shine herself, she had the
happy secret of bringing forward talents of every kind, and for diffusing
over the society the gentleness of her own character. Mrs. Boscawen
(née Granville, wife of the renowned admiral), unknown to the literary
world, but made familiar to modern readers by her pleasant letters in
the Delany correspondence, made herself welcome by “the strength of her
understanding, the poignancy of her humour, and the brilliancy of her
wit.” Sir William adds, that Stillingfleet was a learned man, negligent
in his dress, and wearing gray stockings, which attracted Admiral
Boscawen’s notice, and caused the gallant seaman to call the assembly of
these friends the Bluestocking Society, as if to indicate that when those
brilliant friends met, it was not for the purpose of forming a dressed
assembly.
To one of the so-called Bluestocking Ladies, the once renowned Literary
Club owed its name. Sir Joshua Reynolds proposed the formation of such
a club; Johnson joyfully acceded, and “the club” was formed. Hawkins,
one of the members, has left on record that “a lady, distinguished by
her beauty and taste for literature, invited us two successive years
to dinner at her house.” Hawkins does not name the hostess (opinion
is divided between Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Vesey, and Mrs. Ord); but he
ascribes her hospitality to curiosity as to a desire to intermingle
with the conversation of the members the “charms of her own.” This
idea of “conversation” in place of gambling and other fashionable
follies, was the leading idea with the ladies who share the merit of
having founded the Bluestocking assemblies. The hostess who received
the club “affected,” says Hawkins, “to consider the members as literary
men;” and he thinks it probable that the club thence derived an
appellation which it never arrogated to itself. The Bluestockings and
the Literary Clubbists seem to have had this in common: their discourse
was miscellaneous, chiefly literary; politics were alone excluded. The
last, however, were sometimes quietly discussed in one or other of the
groups into which the assemblies under the leadership of ladies divided
themselves.
Mrs. Montagu, being a thorough woman of business as well as a recognised
leader in social life, did not make her house in Hill Street a “court
for the votaries of the muses” all at once. She had a wholesome horror of
being in debt, and she indulged her tastes only when her purse authorised
the outlay. In 1767, she completed the Chinese-room which had charmed
Madame du Bocage years before. “Mr. Adams,” as Mrs. Montagu informed Lord
Kames, “has made me a cieling, and chimney-piece, and doors which are
pretty enough to make me a thousand enemies. Envy,” she said, jestingly,
“turns livid at the first glimpse of them.”
At this time, Mrs. Montagu had been living in Hill Street more than
thirty years. It was not even at the later period the well-macadamised
and broadly paved street it now is. A few of the original and noble
houses still dignify the street. Mrs. Montagu began to reside there
a short time before Lord Chesterfield removed from Grosvenor Square
to Chesterfield House; namely, in 1748. In the June of that year,
Chesterfield wrote to Mr. Dayrolles: “I am now extremely busy in moving
to my new house, where I must be before Michaelmas next.... As my new
house is situated among a parcel of thieves and murderers, I shall have
occasion for a house-dog.” Chesterfield House is within a stone’s throw
of Hill Street. The “thieves and murderers” were among the butchers of
May Fair and Sheppard’s Market—not then cleared out for such streets as
have since been erected on the site. Park Lane was then Tyburn Lane,
and what with the fair of six weeks’ duration (with blackguardism and
incidents of horror that will not bear repeating), and the monthly
hangings at Tyburn, from which half the drunken and yelling spectators
poured through May Fair, Hill Street, and adjacent outlets on their way
to home and fresh scenes of riot,—between the fair, the gallows, and the
neighbouring rascalry,—the district was not to be entered after dark
without risk of the wayfarer being stripped by robbers. Footpads were as
common between Hay Hill and Park Lane as highwaymen between Hounslow and
Bagshot. Now, Hill Street looks as if no mounted gentleman of the road
had ever quietly ridden through it on a summer’s evening westward, on
felonious thoughts intent. Chesterfield House stands, but new mansions
occupy its once brilliant gardens, whence all the gay spirits have been
driven. In that locality no longer can it be said that—
“... round and round the ghosts of beauties glide,
Haunting the places where their honour died!”
In 1770, Hill Street, still unpaved, was most crowded with the carriages
of visitors to Mrs. Montagu’s rooms. In the assemblies held there, the
hostess had words for all, but she had no special idols; and this was
not always gratifying to those who looked for idolatry. Boswell notices
one night when “a splendid company had assembled, consisting of the most
eminent literary characters. I thought he (Johnson) seemed highly pleased
with the respect and attention that was shown him, and asked him on our
return home if he were not highly gratified by his visit. ‘No, sir,’ said
he; ‘not highly gratified, yet I do not recollect to have passed many
evenings with fewer objections.’”
How “objectionable” Johnson could be to others is well known; but they
took it good-naturedly. Soame Jenyns having been roughly treated by
the doctor on one of these occasions, revenged himself by writing an
anticipatory epitaph. It was probably read aloud at one of Mrs. Montagu’s
coteries. The original is preserved, with half a hundred sprightly
letters by Garrick, among the MSS. belonging to Earl Spencer.
“Here lies poor Johnson! Reader, have a care,
Tread lightly, lest you rouse a sleeping bear!
Religious, moral, generous, and humane
He was; but, self-sufficient, rude, and vain.
Ill-bred, and overbearing in dispute,
A scholar, and a Christian, and a brute.
Would you know all his wisdom and his folly,
His actions, sayings, mirth, and melancholy,
Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit,
Will tell you how he wrote, and talked, and coughed, and spit!”
Mrs. Garrick was among the ladies who met in Mrs. Montagu’s drawing-room,
and she remained the fast friend of the latter till death parted them.
About a quarter of a century had elapsed since, as Eva Violetti, Mrs.
Garrick had made her first appearance on the stage as a dancer. In what
guise she made her début was, doubtless, laughingly alluded to by the
Bluestockings. The Earl of Strafford, who died childless, in 1791, has
left a record of the fact in an unpublished letter (March, 1746) in the
Cathcart collection. “She surprised her audience at her first appearance
on the stage; for at her beginning to caper, she showed a neat pair of
black velvet breeches, with roll’d stockings; but finding they were
unusual in England, she changed them the next time for a pair of white
drawers.” This was a joke for the more intimate circle in Hill Street.
It is probable that it was at the more exclusive gatherings at Mrs.
Montagu’s that the satirists, who had no title to enter, flung their
shafts. “Beattie used to dwell with enthusiasm and delight,” says Sir
William Forbes, “on those more private parties into which he had had
the happiness of being admitted at Mrs. Montagu’s, consisting of Lord
Lyttelton, Mrs. Carter, and one or two other most intimate friends, who
spent their evenings in an unreserved interchange of thoughts; sometimes
on critical and literary subjects; sometimes on those of the most serious
and interesting nature.”
Mrs. Montagu’s assemblies were held within-doors. Other ladies varied
the character of their entertainments. Lady Clermont (for example) was
not more remarkable for her conversational parties than for her al
fresco gatherings. In May, 1773, when living in St. James’s Place, she
issued invitations to three hundred dear friends, “to take tea and walk
in the Park.” It is said that the Duchess of Bedford, who then resided
on the site now occupied by the north side of Bloomsbury Square, sent
out cards to “take tea and walk in the fields.” It was expected that
syllabubs would soon be milked in Berkeley Square, around the statue
of his Majesty. Walpole speaks of being invited to Lady Clermont’s
conversation pieces. These conversation pieces led to such easy manners,
that etiquette was sometimes disregarded when it was most expected. Lady
Clermont, for instance, being at a card-party at Gunnersbury, with many
royal personages, and many witty ones, including Walpole, she remarked
aloud that she was sure the Duke of Portland was dying for a pinch of
snuff! and she pushed her own box toward him, across the Princess Amelia.
Her fluttered Royal Highness, remembering that my lady had been much
favoured by the Queen of France, said: “Pray, madam, where did you learn
that breeding? Did the Queen of France teach it to you?”
The district around Berkeley Square, Hay Hill, Hill Street, etc.,
continued to be a dangerous district. Lord Cathcart, in an unpublished
letter to his son William, dated December, 1774, affords an instance of
the peril which people ran on their way to the houses of Mrs. Montagu,
Lady Clermont, Lady Brown, and other residents of that neighbourhood.
Lord Cathcart tells his son, that as his sisters and Mr. Graham
(afterward Lord Lyndoch) were going to Lady Brown’s, in a coach, they
were attacked by footpads on Hay Hill. One opened the door and demanded
the company’s money. The future Lord Lyndoch showed the stuff of which
that gallant soldier was made. He upset the robber who addressed them,
then jumped out and secured him. The confederate took to his heels.
One night in the autumn of 1776, the house in Hill Street was crowded.
The French ambassador and Mme. de Noailles were there, but the hero of
the night was Garrick, who electrified his audience by reciting scenes
from Macbeth and Lear. “Though they had heard so much of you,” Mrs.
Montagu wrote to Roscius, “they had not the least idea such things were
within the compass of art and nature. Lady Spencer’s eyes were more
expressive than any human language.... She amazed them with telling them
how you could look like a simpleton in Abel Drugger, had many comic arts
equally surprising, when murderous daggers and undutiful daughters were
out of the question.” Mme. de Noailles was so profuse, as she descended
the stairs, in thanks for the great intellectual enjoyment, that Mrs.
Montagu was afraid she would forget herself, and, by a false step, break
her neck. She fervently hoped, too, that Garrick had not caught cold
by going out into the air, “when warmed with that fire of genius which
animated every look and gesture.”
In March, 1779, Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale: “On Monday, I came late
to Mrs. Vesey. Mrs. Montagu was there. I called for the print” (of Mrs.
Montagu, in the costume of Anne Boleyn) “and had good words. The evening
was not brilliant but I had thanks for my company.” In October of the
same year, Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale: “I have been invited twice to
Mrs. Vesey’s _conversation_, but have not gone.”
Johnson has described a scene at one of the Bluestocking assemblies
(Mrs. Ord’s) where, as he wrote to Mrs. Thrale: “I met one Mrs. Buller,
a travelled lady of great spirit and some consciousness of her own
abilities. We had a contest of gallantry an hour long, so much to the
diversion of the company, that at Ramsay’s, last night, in a crowded
room, they would have pitted us again. There were Smelt, and the
Bishop of St. Asaph, who comes to every place, and Lord Monboddo, and
Sir Joshua, and ladies out of tale.” On another night he was at Miss
Monkton’s, the then young lady who many may remember as the old and
eccentric Lady Cork. Mr. Langton, in a letter to Boswell, thus paints
the groups of Bluestockings at the house of the lady who shared with
Mrs. Montagu the glory of being their founder: “The company consisted
chiefly of ladies, among whom were the Dowager Duchess of Portland, the
Duchess of Beaufort, whom, I suppose from her rank, I must name before
her mother, Mrs. Boscawen, and her eldest sister, Mrs. Lewson, who was
likewise there, Lady Lucan, Lady Clermont, and others of note, both for
their station and understandings. Amongst other gentlemen were Lord
Althorp, Lord Macartney, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lord Lucan, Mr. Wraxall
(whose book you have probably seen, the ‘Tour to the Northern Parts of
Europe,’ a very agreeable, ingenious man), Dr. Warren, Mr. Pepys the
master in chancery, and Dr. Barnard the Provost of Eton. As soon as Dr.
Johnson had come in and had taken the chair, the company began to collect
round him till they became not less than four, if not five, deep, those
behind standing and listening over the heads of those that were sitting
near him. The conversation for some time was between Dr. Johnson and
the Provost of Eton, while the others contributed occasionally their
remarks.” How well Mrs. Montagu could converse, Johnson has portrayed
in a few comprehensive words to Mrs. Thrale: “Mrs. Montagu is _par
pluribus_. Conversing with her, you may find variety in one.” These
assemblies were miscalled and sneered at only by the blockheads. Walpole
was scarcely sincere when he affected to laugh at them. He not only
attended them, but stirred others to do so. Four years after this, he
writes to Hannah More: “When will you blue stocking yourself and come
among us?”
In 1781, Hannah More took the Bluestockings for a theme for her sprightly
little poem, which she entitled “Bas Bleu,” and dedicated to Mrs.
Vesey. In a few introductory words, the author explained the origin and
character of the assemblies to which the well-known epithet was given.
“Those little societies have been sometimes misrepresented. They were
composed of persons distinguished in general for their rank, talents,
or respectable character, who were frequently at Mrs. Vesey’s and a few
other houses, for the sole purpose of conversation, and were different
in no respect from other parties, but that the company did not play at
cards.”
Hannah More describes the hours she passed at these parties as “pleasant
and instructive.” She states that she found there learning without
pedantry, good taste without affectation, and conversation without
calumny, levity, or any censurable error.
From the following lines, the names of the founders of the new assemblies
may be learnt. Their object was to rescue—
“... Society o’errun
By Whist, that desolating Hun;”
and from despotic Quadrille, the “Vandal of colloquial wit.” Three
ladies, according to Hannah More, effected the reformation.
“The vanquish’d triple crown to you, (Mrs. Vesey)
Boscawen sage, bright Montagu,
Divided fell. Your cares in haste,
Rescued the ravaged realms of taste.”
Among the genial and the lofty spirits found in the rooms of those
ladies, and of Mrs. Ord and others, Hannah More names accomplished
Lyttelton, witty Pulteney, polished, sometimes sarcastic, Walpole, with
humourists who charmed and never wounded, critics who recorded merits
before they looked for defects, Christian poets, skilled physicians,
honest lawyers, men of all shades of politics, with princes of the
church, ladies of ton, and “reasonable beauties.” Roscius (Garrick), Mars
(Mason), Cato (Johnson), and Hortensius (Burke), are recorded amongst
those who, at those intellectual gatherings, at various times, led the
conversation, and made it as glorious as Hannah More, who shared therein,
proceeds to describe it.
The chief incident in Mrs. Montagu’s life in the year 1781, one which
threw a shade over several succeeding years, was her quarrel with Doctor
Johnson, founded on certain depreciatory passages in Johnson’s “Life
of Lyttelton.” When Johnson sent to Mrs. Montagu his MS. of the Life
before it went to press, the homage implied that he submitted it to her
judgment for approval or correction. Mrs. Montagu disapproved the tone,
and Johnson sent his copy to press without altering a word or modifying a
sentiment.
Nevertheless, Johnson’s account of Lyttelton seems fair enough to
readers of the present day, though it greatly offended the lady who
paid Lyttelton a homage of reverential affection. Johnson duly records
Lyttelton’s precocity at Eton, and his creditable attempt in his
“Blenheim,” to become a poet, at Oxford. His political career, as the
opponent of Walpole, by whose fall Lyttelton came into office, is told
without passion, and Lyttelton’s honest progress from honest doubt
to honest conviction of the truth of Christianity is delicately and
sympathetically narrated. His merits as a landlord, his good fortune as
a politician, his fidelity as a friend, and his anxiety to be at least
accurate as an historian, are chronicled without reserve. The details
of Lyttelton’s dignified death might have made his best friend forget
and forgive the criticisms on some of his writings. Mrs. Montagu might
forget a part, but she could not forgive an expression of compassionate
contempt, which was worse than adverse criticism. She might forget
that Johnson spoke of “The Progress of Love,” as verses that “cant of
shepherds and flocks, and crooks dressed with flowers.” She may have been
only momentarily stung by the censurer’s remark that, in the “Persian
Letters,” the ardour for liberty which found expression there, was only
such “as a man of genius always catches when he enters the world, and
always suffers to cool as he passes forward.” She might herself have
sneered at Johnson’s praise of the “Advice to Belinda,” on the score of
its purity, truth, vigour, elegance, and prudence, whereas, with some
merits, it is a poem which no one now would dare to read aloud, where it
was meant to be read, to Belindas of the time being. The paragraph in
the Life which gave Mrs. Montagu such exquisite pain was the following,
in reference to the “Dialogues of the Dead:” “When they were first
published, they were kindly commended by the critical reviewers; and
poor Lyttelton, with humble gratitude, returned his acknowledgments in a
note which I have read; acknowledgments either for flattery or justice.”
This paragraph gave the great offence. The words “poor Lyttelton”
rendered it almost unpardonable. Notwithstanding the offence, Mrs.
Montagu subsequently invited Johnson to dinner; but she could not treat
him with her old cordiality, nor would she fall into conversation with
him. General Paoli sat next to the doctor. Johnson turned to him and
remarked, “You see, sir, I am no longer the man for Mrs. Montagu!” He
was not indifferent to this condition of things. “Mrs. Montagu, sir,” he
afterward said to a friend, “has dropt me. Now, sir, there are people
whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropt
by.”
Good-natured friends embittered the quarrel. Mrs. Vesey “sounded the
trumpet,” as was remarked by Walpole, who added: “It has not, I believe,
produced any altercation; but at a Bluestocking meeting, held by Lady
Lucan, Mrs. Montagu and Johnson kept at different ends of the chamber,
and set up altar against altar there. She told me, as a mark of her high
displeasure, that she would not ask him to dinner again. I took her
aside and fomented the quarrel, and wished I could have made Dagon and
Ashtaroth scold in Coptic.” Walpole (who in this quarrel was quite as
malicious as Mrs. Vesey, whom he affected to laugh at, was indiscreet)
called Johnson in another letter referring to this quarrel, “Demagorgon,”
and says that the doctor and the lady kept aloof “like the west from
the east.” He states that Lady Lucan, whose house was the scene of the
comedy, “had assembled a Bluestocking meeting in imitation of Mrs.
Vesey’s Babels. It was so blue, it was quite mazarin blue. There were
Soame Jenyns, Persian Jones, Mr. Sherlock, the new court, Mr. Courtenay,
besides the outpensioners of Parnassus.” And besides those named, every
man of whom was a man of intellect, there was Mr. Horace Walpole himself,
who certainly was present, because he knew he would not be among fools,
though he pretended to go as if he found amusement in their folly. He
seems, in the above extract, to recognise the good-natured Irish lady,
Mrs. Vesey (whose house in Bolton Row, or subsequently in Clarges Street,
was hospitably open to people of merit—proved or promised), as the
founder of assemblies to which the slang name of _bas-bleu_ assemblies
was given. Referring to Mrs. Montagu, with whom he was very glad to dine,
he says (in this year, 1781), “She is one of my principal entertainments
at Mrs. Vesey’s, who collects all the graduates and candidates for fame,
where they vie with one another till they are as unintelligible as the
good folks at Babel.” We should honour any lady of the present century
who, like Mrs. Vesey, Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Ord, Lady Lucan, and others in
the last century, welcomed to their houses, not only all the graduates,
but also the candidates for fame. Johnson himself was annoyed when not
invited to those intellectual meetings. In 1780, he writes, “I told
Lady Lucan how long it was since she sent to me; but she said, I must
consider how the world rolls about her.” From the lips of the guests
whom Walpole met at the houses indicated he could not carry away the
stories that he loved so well as to insert them, in his most exquisite
hand, into folios carefully arranged. These still exist; they illustrate
phases of life among high-born women and men of the last century who were
graduates, not in fame, but in infamy. Nothing could well be worse,
except the infamy of him who must have passed many a night in penning
that unutterably horrible and scandalous chronicle. The chronicler, on
the other hand, is not to be blamed for noting the little affectations of
those whom he encountered, as in the following example, the date of which
is 1781: “I met,” he says to Lady Ossory, “Mrs. Montagu the other night
at a visit. She told me she had been alone the whole preceding day, quite
hermetically sealed. I was very glad she was uncorked, or I might have
missed that piece of learned nonsense.” However, “Mrs. Montagu,” writes
Mrs. Boscawen to Mrs. Delany, “is in perfect health and spirits in her
Château Portman.” But, in Montagu House, Portman Square, the so-called
Bluestockings were much less at home than in Hill Street. Nevertheless,
there, and at similar houses supposed to be of a Bluestocking class,
Walpole was much more amused than when he was at the Princess Amelia’s,
at Gunnersbury, with the “cream of the cream” of Europe, and playing
commerce with the grandest of them. He never had to say of himself at
Mrs. Montagu’s, as he did of his doings at the Princess’s, “Played three
pools of commerce till ten. I am afraid I was tired, and gaped!”
There died in this year, 1781, a Provincial Bluestocking,—who has been
delicately praised by Miss Seward, and furiously attacked and ridiculed
by Horace Walpole,—Mrs. Miller, the neighbour of Mrs. Scott and Lady Bab
Montagu at Batheaston. There is an old story that Walpole, declining
to recognise a man in London whom he had known at Bath, explained
himself by saying, that he would be happy to know the same individual
again—at Bath! So, with regard to literary or _bas-bleu_ assemblies, he
acknowledged those only of London. Provincial meetings he treated as
shams, and covered them with ridicule. Mrs. Miller’s house,—to which she
invited a rather mixed assembly of persons distinguished for intellectual
merit, or persons who were distinguished only by the accident of
birth,—Walpole mis-named the “puppet-show Parnassus at Batheaston” (or
Pindus)—“a new Parnassus, composed of three laurels, a myrtle-tree, a
weeping willow, and a view of the Avon, which has been new-christened
Helicon.” Miss Rich, Lady Lyttelton’s sister, took Walpole to dine
there.... He ridiculed his hosts, described Captain Miller as officious,
though good-natured, who, with his wife, had caught “taste,” and outlived
their income. Having (like wise and honest people) recovered themselves
by living economically abroad, they resumed their old home with improved
habits. “Alas!” says Walpole, “Mrs. Miller is returned a beauty, a
genius, a Sappho, a tenth Muse, as romantic as Mademoiselle de Scuderi,
and as sophisticated as Mrs. Vesey. They have introduced _bouts-rimés_
as a new discovery. They hold a Parnassus fair every Thursday, give out
rhymes and themes, and all the flux and quality of Bath contend for the
prizes. A Roman vase, decked with pink ribbons and myrtle, receives the
poetry, which is drawn out every festival. Six judges of these Olympic
games retire and select the brightest compositions, which the respective
successful acknowledge, kneel to Mrs. Calliope Miller, kiss her fair
hand, and are crowned by it with myrtle.... The collection is printed,
published,—yes, on my faith, there are _bouts-rimés_ on a buttered
muffin, by her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland, receipts to make
them, by Corydon the Venerable, alias George Pitt; others, very pretty,
by Lord Palmerston; some by Lord Carlisle; many by Mrs. Miller herself,
that have no fault but wanting metre.... There never was anything so
entertaining or so dull.” It may be added here, that Lord Palmerston’s
lines “On Beauty” are more than “very pretty,” and that the duchess could
not avoid the subject laughed at, since two of the rhymes given to her
were “puffing” and “muffin,” and she came out of the difficulty with
skill and dexterity. There are, perhaps, few people in a mixed company at
the present time, who could more pleasantly dance such an intellectual
hornpipe in similar fetters.
Miss Seward modifies Walpole’s satirical account without disturbing
the main facts. She adds, with reference to the volumes of these prize
poems then published: “The profits have been applied to the benefit of a
charity at Bath, so that Lady Miller’s institute” (her husband had been
knighted) “was not only calculated to awaken and cultivate ingenuity, but
to serve the purposes of benevolence and charity.” Walpole suppressed
the fact that any one profited by the assemblies at Lady Miller’s, of
whom and of whose husband who presumed to have Walpole’s predilection for
_virtu_, Horace says: “They make themselves completely ridiculous, which
is a pity, as they are good-natured, well-meaning people.”
Some fine spirits contributed to the Batheaston vase, and their
contributions, for which the writers generally had a fortnight’s
notice,—the one theme being given to all competitors,—are often marked
by power, grace, fancy, and, in the comic pieces, rough humour. On one
occasion, some scandalous verses were dropped into the vase, the reading
of which in the very first lines called up blushes on the cheeks of the
modest, and caused suspicion to rest on the rather audacious Christopher
Anstey. “An enemy hath done this,” was the sum of the general comment.
Lady Miller’s death soon followed. Miss Seward has generously spoken of
her really intellectual friend, though she begins with a curious figure
of speech. “Lady Miller,” she says, “was surrounded by a hornet’s nest,”
which was, as she goes on to state in more common sense style, “composed
of those who were disappointed in their expectations of being summoned
to her intellectual feast, and of others whose rhyming offerings could
neither obtain the wreath, nor be admitted to a place in her miscellany.
‘Who knows not the active malice of wounded vanity to blot the fairest
worth and blast the brightest fame?’ From its venom, excellence cannot
even find repose in the grave, and it never fails to descend upon those
who dare defend the claims of the deceased.”
Reference has been made, in a previous page (see p. 46) to Boswell’s
error in stating that the Bluestocking Clubs were originally established
about this time, 1781, when Hannah More was writing of them as
institutions, the chief members of which had already passed away. The
amiable philosopher and thoroughly honest, modest, and accomplished man,
Benjamin Stillingfleet (the grandson of the bishop), from whom they are
supposed to derive their name, had been dead ten years. In his early
days, he made the ascent of Mont Blanc; his last were spent in Kensington
Barracks, where his salary as barrack-master satisfied his wants and
left him wherewith to help those who were in need. He contributed toward
the social reform commenced by Johnson, Miss Mulso (Chapone), and Mrs.
Montagu in 1750, a poem on “Conversation.” It rings with echoes of Pope,
and lays down some very excellent rules that, implicitly followed, would
make conversation impossible. Boswell refers to Hannah More’s poem on the
Bluestockings without noticing her record that so many of the persons
named in it were then dead. The institution, in fact, was in “the sere,
the yellow leaf,” and one, at least, of its old leaders was weary. In
1782, when Mrs. Montagu was established in her palace (as Wraxall says
the Italians would call, and as many English people did call, it), in
Portman Square, her assemblies were more crowded than ever. She herself,
queening it beneath the ceiling painted by Angelica Kaufmann, felt, or
affected to feel, a little weary of her splendour.
“I think,” she wrote to Lord Kames, in 1782, “the calm autumn of life, as
well as of the year, has many advantages. Both have a peculiar serenity—a
genial tranquility. We are less busy and agitated, because the hope of
the spring and the vivid delights of the summer are over; but these
tranquil seasons have their appropriate enjoyments, and a well-regulated
mind sees everything beautiful that is in the order of nature.”
In 1785, Cumberland took the new assemblies, at Montagu House, for
the subject of an essay in _The Observer_. He places Mrs. Montagu,
under the name of Vanessa, in the foreground, and mingles praise with
mockery. He does not refer to the slang word by which the assemblies
conducted by ladies were known; he calls Vanessa’s assembly the Feast of
Reason. Throughout life, according to this essayist, Vanessa had been
a beauty or a wit, whose vanity had this good quality, namely, that
it stimulated her to exercise charity, good nature, affability, and a
splendid hospitality,—qualities which carried her into all the circles
of fine people, and crowded all the fine people into hers.... In her
saloons there was a welcome for every follower of science, every sort of
genius,—a welcome which extended, so the satirical essayist affirms, from
the manufacturer of toothpicks to the writer of an epic poem. Authors
looked to her for fees in return for dedications; and players, for
patronage and presents on their benefit nights.
According to Cumberland, the lady of Montagu House was seated, like the
statue of Athenian Minerva, incensed by the breath of philosophers,
poets, orators, and their intellectual brethren. Hannah More states, on
the contrary, that at the original Bluestocking parties, previous to
1781, the company, instead of being a formal unity, were broken up into
numberless groups. Something, too, of this fashion seems to be referred
to by Cumberland, who describes Vanessa as going from one to another,
making mathematicians quote Pindar, persuading masters in chancery to
write novels, and Birmingham men to stamp rhymes as fast as buttons.
We are further told that the books on Vanessa’s table (and Mrs. Montagu
often complained of the number of presentation copies which were sent to
her) indicated who were among her guests. This little civility is sneered
at, and she from whom it emanated was also occasionally sneered at by
some of her guests; which would have been more natural than courteous if
the lady of the house ever dressed herself, as Cumberland describes her
with boundless exaggeration, in a dress on which were embroidered the
ruins of Palmyra! The same exaggeration is applied to the description of
the company, among whom figure cracked philosophers and crazy dreamers,
with Johnson alone grand, powerful, majestic, eloquent, and ill-mannered.
Next, and perhaps equal with Johnson, is the unmistakable presence of
Mrs. Siddons, who, since the October night of 1782, when she took the
town by the passion and pathos of Isabella, had been the idol of the
time. There she sits at Mrs. Montagu’s on a sofa, leaning on one elbow,
in a passive attitude, counting, or seeming to count, the sticks of her
fan, as homage and compliments are profusely laid at her feet. To silly
questions she has sensible replies—replies which indicate the queries:
“I strove to do it the best I could; I shall do as the manager bids me;
I always endeavour to make the part I am about my best part;” and, “I
never study anything but my author.” There is, probably, no exaggeration
in this; and the more fantastic side of Mrs. Montagu’s character is not
overcharged in the incident that follows. The hostess introduces a “young
novitiate of the Muses,” in a white frock. A fillet of flowers crowns
her long hair, and the novice, advancing to Melpomene, addresses her with—
“O thou, whom Nature’s goddess calls her own,
Pride of the stage, and fav’rite of the town;”
which puts poor Mrs. Siddons to the blush, and half of those who are
within hearing to flight.
In 1790, the so-called Bluestocking Club puzzled dwellers in country
places. Nestor, of Bark Place, Salop, was sadly perplexed as to what
the club was, and also as to the meaning of another slang term then
prevailing. He writes to Sylvanus Urban accordingly, with a sort of
apology for being old and living in remote Shropshire. Among others, he
frequently meets with the term “white bear,” applied to many characters
of eminence; and often reads of “the Bluestocking Club,” which he knows
consists chiefly of the literati. But being ignorant of the derivation
and propriety of application of those terms, he will be much obliged to
any correspondent who will condescend to inform him. It does not appear
that any correspondent, not even the editor himself, could enlighten
Nestor, either as to the bear or the club.
Among the latest writers who have, as Hannah More said, misrepresented
these intellectual parties is Miss Mitford. She speaks of Batheaston
in her “Recollections of a Literary Life” (A. D. 1857) as “memorable
for the Bluestocking vagaries of a certain Lady Miller, a Somersetshire
Clemence Isaure, who, some seventy years ago, offered prizes for the best
verses thrown into an antique urn; the prize consisting, not of a golden
violet, but a wreath of laurel, and the whole affair producing, as was
to be expected, a great deal more ridicule than poetry.” In Lady Miller’s
case, the original object, “conversation,” was lost sight of; and some
vanity was mixed up with the doings of the Batheaston Muse. But to stir
up even dull minds to make an attempt to write some sort of poetry was an
intellectual exercise at least as beneficial as the process which counts
honours, and eternally asks, “What’s trumps?”