_Qualified Feminism: The Bluestockings._
"Feminism", says M. Ascoli, in an article in the "_Revue de Synthèse
historique_", "is the mental attitude of those who refuse to admit a
natural and necessary inequality between the faculties of the sexes,
and, in consequence of this, between their respective rights; who
believe that--within certain limits clearly defined by Nature--women
are capable of the same occupations as men, in which they will succeed
equally well when, prepared for their task by an adequate education,
they will be no longer opposed by the ill-will and the hostile jealousy
of the opposite sex; of those who, eager for the birth of a more
extensive liberty and a more liberal justice, hope for the realisation
of an ideal which will bring the greatest boon not only to women, but
to all humanity."
If the above is a correct and exhaustive definition of feminism, the
Bluestockings certainly cannot be called feminists, for they none
of them believed that the future of the human race was in any way
dependent on a recognised equality between the sexes. This, however,
should not be understood as implying that they did nothing to promote
the march of feminism, or rather to prepare the national mind for the
first symptoms of a more directly feminine movement which were to
manifest themselves before the more or less artificial conversations
of the Bluestocking côteries had retired into insignificance before
the looming spectre of Revolution, filling the mind with speculations
of more direct importance, and arousing the hereditary conservatism
which slumbers at the bottom of every true British heart in a common
effort to uphold the laws of the country against the revolutionary
element, sown broadcast at home, and prevailing with most disastrous
consequences abroad. But the contribution of the English salons to
feminism in its narrower sense, however important in its consequences,
must be described as largely unintentional, and extremely qualified.
The very mention of Mary Wollstonecraft's name was enough to arouse
indignation and disgust in the bosom of every true "Blue" except Miss
Seward, on the joint score of her being considered an extreme feminist,
a revolutionary and most of all: an atheist.
The charge of atheism is of the many accusations brought against the
author of "_A Vindication of the Rights of Women_" beyond any doubt the
most absurd, and where there was so little mutual understanding, it
is not astonishing that there should be an utter lack of appreciation
between such women as Hannah More and Mary Wollstonecraft, both of whom
were actuated by the noblest motives and whom a closer acquaintance
could not have failed to bring nearer together. Of the main contentions
in the former's "_Strictures_" a very considerable majority, stripped
of their dogmatic spirit of orthodox Christianity, and worded in
such a manner as to make them sound as a vindication of inalienable
rights and corresponding duties rather than an exhortation to a life
of moral virtue, are an exact repetition of the notions put forward
in the "_Rights of Women_"; with the contents of which Hannah More
was unacquainted. Horace Walpole, the tone of whose letters to "Saint
Hannah" is so completely different from his usual scoffing as to
suggest a conflict in the writer's mind between irony and genuine
admiration, in referring to the Paris massacres, expresses his disgust
of "the philosophing serpent", and is pleased to find that his friend
has not read her works; to which Hannah replies that she has been "much
pestered" to read the "_Rights of Women_", which she evidently never
did.
Mary's feminism was of the most comprehensive description. Although
very far from atheism, her religious notions, shaken by bitter
experience, were not sufficiently strong to support her in what was to
her the very cruel struggle for life, the facts of which were, from her
earliest infancy, so hideous as to leave her no leisure for the gradual
development of social ideas under the regulating influence of a riper
mind, but put her through the hard school of suffering. The problem
with which she found herself confronted was an urgent one, calling for
immediate solution.
Considerations of a future existence certainly did come at different
times to comfort her, but they were to her a remnant of convention
and called forth in times of pressure rather than an inherent part
of her being. In proportion as the more tangible ideals of the
Revolution came to absorb her interest, the hope of salvation became
a secondary consideration, which was not to be allowed to interfere
with the necessity for correcting present evils and relieving present
wants. To her, the problem of the female cause was stern reality which
was well worth the devotion of a lifetime. Her energetic mind took
in the subject in its entirety and thought it out to the minutest
details, suggesting radical changes without stopping to consider their
feasibility, and impressing us with the almost masculine width of its
range.
How insipid and uninteresting compared to her radicalism are the
attempts at a partial reform of a Hannah More, the very limitations
of which bring out more clearly the utter want of breadth, the narrow
conventionality which hampered the growth of the ideal! To her and
to her associates the Woman Question had a much narrower range, and
remained limited to the problem of moral improvement. Hannah More,
indeed, had no cause to complain of scornful treatment at the hands
of men, and in her circle, next to one or two of the greatest men of
the day, women were the ruling influence. Of the lower classes and
their struggles her early youth had taught her little or nothing, and
her sympathy with the poor and humble was awakened in the course of
the long and bitter struggle of conventionalism against radicalism,
in which, viewing the matter broadly, she ranged herself among the
defenders of a doubtful cause. It gave her a better insight into the
social conditions of England, and no doubt she grew to realise that the
great problem of humanity had reached an acute stage, and that even
in her own cherished country there were many wrongs to be righted.
From that time she became more and more of a social reformer, but the
pressing need of the case was forever mitigated by considerations
of Eternity. To her, who pinned her faith on the promise of life
everlasting, the most glaring pictures of human misery faded before
the beacon-light of faith and trust. She never found it difficult to
be reconciled to the preponderance of evil, for she looked upon it "as
making part of the dispensations of God", who in his supreme wisdom
meant this world for a scene of discipline, not of remuneration. Hence
the utter incompatibility of the orthodox view with the doctrine of
perfectibility, and the hostile attitude of the Bluestocking ladies
towards those of the new faith, by which this world was looked upon
as all-in-all, and in which want and misery were considered as evils
arising solely from the defects of human governments. "Whatever is,
is right", was Hannah More's guiding principle, and to remove that
inequality which in her eyes was a portion of God's great scheme
seemed to her rebelling against God's own decree. She relieved human
misery where she could, from a sense of Christian duty and propriety,
and by establishing schools tried to rouse the poor to a sense of
moral duty, teaching them to be satisfied in the position in which it
had pleased God to place them and to live in the hope of Eternity.
The practice of that humility which is among the first duties of a
Christian forbade any attempt at rising in the social scale. Likewise,
in the case of woman, there was to her only one great and leading
circumstance that raised her importance, and might to a certain extent
establish her equality: "Christianity had exalted them to true and
undisputed dignity; in Christ Jezus, as there is neither rich nor poor,
bond nor free, so there is neither male nor female. In the view of
that immortality which is brought to light by the Gospel, she has no
superior. Women, to borrow the idea of an excellent prelate, make up
one half of the human race, equally with men redeemed by the blood of
Christ." All other forms of equality do not seen to her worth fighting
for.
This view of Hannah More's was fully shared by those among the
Bluestockings who took a more direct interest in social questions: Mrs.
Montagu, Mrs. Chapone and Mrs. Carter. In their opinions about social
inequality they were guided by the conservatism of dogmatic faith, as
their views of the position of women derived colour from notions of
propriety. They rejoiced with the rest of the nation at the news of
the fall of the Bastille, which to every true John Bull had become
the symbol of French slavery and which served as an opportunity to
assert his own superiority and praise that perfect liberty which he
imagined to be the privilege of every individual Briton--and no doubt
thought themselves extremely enlightened in doing so. But at the first
reports of bloodshed and lawlessness propriety suggested that they
had suffered themselves by their all-embracing love of humanity to be
betrayed into feelings which might be thought distinctly improper,
or be translated into a want of patriotic feeling. They chose to be
Englishwomen rather than cosmopolitans. This choice was made the
easier for them as they had come to regard France as the chief bulwark
of irreligion. Hannah More complains (1799) that "that cold compound
of irony, irreligion, selfishness and sneer, which make up what the
French (_from whom we borrow the thing as well as the word_) so well
express by the term _persiflage_, has of late years made an incredible
progress in blasting the opening buds of piety in young persons of
fashion."[27] When the immediate danger of revolution in England was
over, some Bluestockings--in particular Mrs. Montagu, Hannah More and
Mrs. Carter--responded to the appeal of suffering humanity, in a narrow
compass, to the best of their ability, and in the case of the second
with highly creditable zeal and devotion, but they did not, like Mary
Wollstonecraft, rise to the occasion, forego public praise and suffer
martyrdom for the cause of humanity.
The Bluestockings, therefore, cannot be ranked as militant feminists.
They were content with the position of dependence which the authority
of the Bible assigns to women. It is true that even from among
their circle an occasional protest was heard against the deliberate
subjection of the female sex. The learned Mrs. Carter once complained
to her friend Archbishop Seeker of the partiality of the male
translator of the Bible, who in rendering the First Epistle of St.
Paul to the Corinthians had translated the same verb in different ways
so as to bring out what he thought ought to be the relations between
husband and wife, writing that he was not to "put away" his wife, and
that she was not to "leave" him; and the archbishop, who began by
contradicting her, on referring to the Bible was forced to acknowledge
that she was right. On the whole, however, the literary remains of
the Bluestockings demonstrate pretty clearly that their confidence
in female equivalence was not great. Mrs. Chapone, in her letters,
mostly adheres to the creed of male superiority. She tries, however, to
effect a compromise. Man, the appointed ruler and head, is undoubtedly
woman's superior, but a woman "should choose for her husband one whom
she can heartily and willingly acknowledge her superior, and whose
understanding and judgment she can prefer to her own". This sounds most
revolutionary at a time when women, as a rule, were not allowed to
choose their own husbands. It is interesting to note that Miss Hester
Mulso did, and made a love-match with Mr. Chapone, whom she soon after
lost through death. She goes on to say that the husband should have
"such an opinion of his wife's understanding, principles and integrity
of heart, as will induce him to exalt her to the rank of his first and
dearest friend", and concludes: "I believe it necessary that all such
inequality and subjection as must check and refrain that unbounded
confidence and frankness which are the essence of friendship, be laid
aside or suffered to sleep". A qualified superiority, therefore, upon
which the lord and master is supposed not to presume.
Among the correspondence of Mrs. Montagu, the "Queen of the Blues",
published "by her great-great niece" Miss E. J. Climenson, is a letter
to her devoted friend and admirer the Earl of Bath on the subject of
her archenemy Voltaire's tragedy of "_Tancred_", in which she finds
fault with the character of Aménaide for not following virtue as by law
established, but despising forms and following sentiment, "a dangerous
guide". This is what we should expect from a Bluestocking leader. She
continues: "_Designed by nature to act but a second part_, it is a
woman's duty to obey rules; she is not to make or redress them". Hannah
More also admits the male superiority in a chapter on conversation
in her "_Strictures_", where she follows Swift and Mrs. Barbauld in
suggesting that men shall concur in the education of the female sex
by allowing them the humble part of interested listeners to their
superior conversation. "It is to be regretted", she says, "that many
men, even of distinguished sense and learning, are too apt to consider
the society of ladies as a scene in which they are rather to rest their
understandings than to exercise them; while ladies, in return, are too
much addicted to make their court by lending themselves to this spirit
of trifling: they often avoid making use of what abilities they have,
and affect to talk below their natural and acquired powers of mind,
considering it as a tacit and welcome flattery to the understanding of
men to renounce the exercise of their own"[28]. The last part of this
statement strikes a higher note in its denunciation of the pernicious
system of "relativity". Mrs. Carter also refers somewhere in her
correspondence to the indignity of ladies and gentlemen at various
assemblies being kept separated, as if the former were disqualified
by the shortcomings of their sex from listening to the improving
conversation of the latter.
In conclusion it may be stated that the Bluestocking assemblies
in all probability arose from an ardent wish on the part of some
intellectual ladies to intermingle with the conversation of the members
of Dr. Johnson's club the charms of their own. One of the Literary
Clubbists informs us that a certain lady, whom he does not name, but
describes as distinguished by her beauty and taste for literature,
used to invite them to dinner and share in the conversation. He may
have meant Miss Reynolds, Sir Joshua's sister, who wrote a much
praised "_Essay on Taste_", and whose salon was among the first where
Wits and Bluestockings learnt to appreciate each other's society.
Boswell, in his "_Life of Johnson_" says: "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_". Although the duty of receiving the guests and
so placing them as to ensure animated discussions fell to the share
of the women, yet few of them were bold enough to let themselves be
heard in the presence of the literary dictator, whose oracular speeches
were delivered with pompous assurance and listened to and taken in
with becoming deference and humility. Dr. Johnson made and marred the
literary and conversational reputations of his bevy of female admirers;
Fanny Burney owed her success as a Bluestocking principally to his
praise of "_Evelina_", as Hannah did hers--next to the kind protection
of Garrick--to his unstinted eulogy of her "_Bas Bleu_" poem. Johnson
had said that "there was no name in poetry that might not be glad to
own it." But after Johnson's death there came a radical change, and
in the absence of a male dictator to occupy the vacant throne, the
female element predominated more and more. Especially Mrs. Montagu
"queened it" over her satellites, both male and female, and of all
the Bluestocking hostesses who vied for supremacy she came nearest to
justifying the charge of pedantry.
The question whether the Bluestocking societies were either directly
or indirectly an imitation of the older French salons must be answered
with some degree of circumspection. That the influence of the latter
was considerable may be taken for granted, and the direct points of
contact were numerous. Horace Walpole in particular was an intimate of
both, David Hume frequented several Paris salons and Mme du Bocage,
Mme de Genlis and Mme de Staël--the last two in the year of their
exile from France--were repeatedly seen in blue society. It is to
the pen of the first that we owe one of the most vivid descriptions
of Mrs. Montagu's convivial meetings. If we moreover consider that
French interest in England which is a prominent feature of 18th
century society and the close relations between the two countries,
we do not wonder that a parallel movement to that of the French
salon should have sprung up. And yet the Bluestocking assemblies
had a distinct individuality of their own; inferior to their French
rivals in some respects, they were superior to them in others. Most
critics of the time agree in asserting their inferiority, which is a
natural circumstance in view of the fact that they considered them as
a literary and conversational movement, in which the chief aim was
literary taste and polished, witty conversation. Their estimate never
went beyond these limits to consider the influence exercised by these
côteries upon society in general. And it is when throwing into the
scale the moral improvement, especially among women, which was the
result of the efforts of the Bluestocking ladies, that we realise that
although different, they were not necessarily inferior to their French
rivals.
Wraxall in his "_Historical Memoirs_" opines that "neither in the
period of its duration, nor in the number, merit or intellectual
eminence of the principal members, could the English society be
held upon any parity with that of France." He might have added with
equal truth that the average Frenchwoman of the cultivated class is
distinguished from her English sister by greater keenness of wit
and by a greater brilliance of conversation. The chief talents of
the French are of the mind, "de l'esprit", and are shown off to the
best advantage, those of the English are rather of the heart and are
not flaunted in public. English society, in the matter of outside
splendour and brilliance, has always been completely overshadowed by
the greater expansiveness of the French. The Bluestocking hostesses
were upon the whole less brilliant specimens of female magnificence,
but they were undoubtedly far better women. For the light-hearted
gallantry practised in the French salons they substituted warm and
generous friendship, which considerations of envy only very rarely
disturbed. The Bluestocking atmosphere was purer, allowing one to
breathe more comfortably than in some French salon where intrigue
ruled the hour. The women were like the men, lacking in that "finesse"
in which the French excelled, but kind and considerate, and upon the
whole quicker to praise than to find fault. Hannah More realised this
when singing the praises of the Blues in her "_Bas Bleu_" poem. She
describes the members of the French assemblies as brilliant and witty,
but lacking common sense and simplicity. Her verdict would have
been more correct if for the Hôtel de Rambouillet, against which her
disapprobation is directed, she had substituted the later salons of
the decline, where indeed a mistaken "préciosité" prevailed and "where
point, and turn, and équivoque distorted every word they spoke". For
indeed the parallelism with the salon of the 17th century is far more
marked than with that of the 18th. The evolution of both French and
English polite literary society furnishes a strong argument in favour
of Rousseau's theory that "everything degenerates in the hands of
man"--by which he meant "humanity"--for after a short spell of glory
both degenerated sadly. In both pedantry supplanted wit, and Molière's
"_Femmes Savantes_" might have found its counterpart--though probably
not its equivalent--in Fanny Burney's play of "_The Witlings_", which
the unfavourable criticism of her friends induced her to destroy. The
history of Bluestocking pedantry is a repetition of what took place
in French society with the exception that to the Bluestocking society
of England no second blossoming was granted by the chilling blasts
of Revolution. Pedantry, that archenemy of Wit, robbed it of all its
charm, leaving naked Learning, than which nothing can be less sociable.
Fanny Burney signalled its approach, warned against it, and ended by
joining in the general homage.
There can be no doubt that the French salons occupy the more important
place in the history of 18th century thought. No daring philosophical
schemes were hatched under the auspices of the Bluestockings, and
if their conversation showed the influence of the rationalist
spirit, their rationalism was not made subservient to projects of
a revolutionary nature, but made to support with its evidence the
long-established truth of orthodox religion. Mrs. Chapone in her
"_Letters on the Improvement of the Mind_" warns her niece that Reason,
which may help us to discover some of the great laws of morality,
is yet liable to error. The sending of God's son therefore is to be
looked upon as a demonstration or revelation of the evidences of the
Christian religion, by which we become convinced _on rational grounds_
of its divine authority. Here, as in the matter of sexual preeminence,
Mrs. Chapone loved a compromise between the head and the heart. The
company at Mrs. Vesey's is described as a good "rational society" by
Hannah More, who herself rather affected a "comfortable, rational day".
Where politics are discussed, the door is opened wide to intrigue,
and party-feelings will prevail. Politics had been the ruin of many a
periodical attempt and their exclusion at the Bluestocking assemblies
left the field to literary conversation. Philanthropy, or active
benevolence, was practised instead, and the light moralising tendencies
of the _Spectator_ enlistened the same sympathy among the Bluestockings
which the sterner moral code of Port Royal awakened in the heart of the
more serious Hannah.
Upon the whole the Bluestockings were not, like their French rivals,
recruited from the aristocracy. They belonged to the middle-class, to
whom the 18th century was a time of great financial prosperity. Mrs.
Montagu's wealth was considerable, and she made a liberal use of it not
only in philanthropy, but also in encouraging needy authors, which made
Hannah More refer to her as "the female Maecenas of Hill Street"[29].
They were mostly the daughters of clergymen and schoolmasters, who in
early youth acquired that taste for learning which their fathers or
near relations were able to gratify, and that serious cast of mind
which never forsook some of them and fitted them to be religious
moralists.
The tone of their conversation and writings was a distinct improvement
upon that of the ladies of the preceding generation, of whom it was
said that those who--like Mrs. Aphra Behn and Mrs. de la Rivière
Manley--excelled in wit, failed signally in chastity. The love of
scandal which had been their chief characteristic, and which Sheridan
justly satirised, was an object of scorn to the Bluestockings, who
were as careful to preserve the reputation of others as they were of
their own. That some of them occasionally went too far in constituting
themselves the mentors of others who were fully able to take care of
themselves, is an "amiable weakness" which may be readily forgiven.
Thus, for instance, Mrs. Thrale's second marriage with the Italian
vocalist Signor Piozzi aroused a good deal of unfavourable comment,
brought about an indirect rupture with Fanny Burney and partly caused
her withdrawal from the Bluestocking circles. The same exaggerated
notions, arising partly from hatred of the Encyclopedian spirit of
revolutionism embodied in the much-reviled Rousseau, occur in Mrs.
Delany's "_Essay on Propriety_" and in her extremely voluminous
correspondence. Mrs. Chapone's _Letters_ insist on a proper regard to
reputation as one of the most desirable qualities in a friend. She
emphatically distinguished between love of reputation, which is nothing
but discretion, and undue regard of opinion, which is only vanity.
Here her views coincided with Mary Wollstonecraft's, who had pointed
out the error of wanting to make opinion "the high throne of Virtue"
to women in Rousseau's _Emile_, but who did not make Mrs. Chapone's
distinction. In the behaviour of young women towards gentlemen, the
latter says, great delicacy is required, "yet women oftener err from
too great a consciousness of the supposed views of men, than from
inattention to those views, or want of caution against them." She
therefore agreed that the "desire to please" should be kept under a
certain amount of restriction.
All the Bluestockings' actions arose from a strong sense of duty,
which the majority of French hostesses--with the emphatic exception
of Mme de Lambert--sadly lacked. One of their deliberate aims was the
substitution of conversation "à la française" for cards. The first
determined attack upon the greatest social curse of the age was made
by Mrs. Chapone,--then Miss Mulso--in collaboration with Johnson in
No. 10 of the _Rambler_ in the year 1750. She wrote to Johnson in his
capacity of censor of manners, informing him that she, "Lady Racket",
intended to have "cards at her house every Sunday". She, of course,
intended that Johnson should seize the opportunity to attack gambling
and thus range himself openly on the side of the intellectual ladies
who were in open revolt against the practice. Johnson replied that
even at the most brilliant of card-tables he had always thought his
visit lost, "for I could know nothing of the company but their clothes
and their faces." Their complete absorption in the vicissitudes of
the game, their exulting triumph when successful, and their flush of
rage at defeat or at "the unskilful or unlucky play of a partner" so
disgusted him that he soon retired. "They were too trifling for me
when I was grave, and too dull when I was cheerful". Mrs. Carter, who
did not object to taking an occasional hand at whist or quadrille, was
vehement in her condemnation of faro, which she hoped Horace Walpole
on getting into the House would succeed in putting down. Hannah More's
"_Bas Bleu_" further endorses the statement that the substitution of
conversation for cards was one of the objects of Bluestockingism.
The introduction states its origin and character. The ladies at Mrs.
Vesey's, Mrs. Montagu's and Mrs. Boscawen's, to mention the three
hostesses to whom according to their chronicler Hannah More "the triple
crown divided fell", although in the opinion of others Mrs. Thrale and
Mrs. Ord were candidates for Mrs. Boscawen's place--assembled "for the
sole purpose of conversation, and were different in no respect from
other parties, but that the company did _not_ play at cards." It was
there that Hannah More found the Rambouillet-ideal realised of learning
without pedantry, good taste without affectation, and conversation
without calumny, levity or any censurable error.
The attacks directed against whist, "that desolating Hun", and
quadrille, "that Vandal of colloquial wit", were made not so much on
the score of their devastating influence on the moral character as of
their exclusion of conversation. It should be remembered, however, that
Hannah More wrote her "_Bas Bleu_" in the years before the desire to
effect moral reforms got the better of the natural vanity of displaying
her considerable intellectual talents.
Conversation thus became in itself a pursuit, almost a cult, the
purpose of which was to "mend the taste and form the mind". The
record of what was said by the most prominent male and female wits
at the Bluestocking gatherings was kept with a minuteness which is
characteristic of the time in the endless memoirs and the voluminous
correspondence in which every literary lady indulged, and upon which
she lavished her talents as an author. Immeasurably the best is Fanny
Burney's diary, with its clever and vivid sidelights upon gatherings
in which she herself as the successful author of _Evelina_, and
the protégée of Johnson, was lionised, although she never became a
Bluestocking in the full sense of the word, her temperament being far
too sprightly and volatile, and the language of her pen too gushing to
suit the notions of propriety of some ladies, whom she further offended
by her marriage to a French refugee and by the freedom with which she
published details that were not meant for the general ear.
The constellation in the Bluestocking circles differed somewhat from
French society, where the hostess received in her drawing-room a
number of prominent men-of-letters, scientists, diplomatists, artists
and philosophers, the female element being represented by herself,
and only a very few privileged friends. At the English assemblies
the majority were ladies, and although some members of the Literary
Club, Johnson's satellites, were regular frequenters, the female
element predominated. Boswell, Johnson's biographer, the painter Sir
Joshua Reynolds, the politicians Fox and Burke--before the stirring
political events that drew them apart,--the historian Gibbon, the poet
Goldsmith, the actor Garrick and the author Lyttleton--Mrs. Montagu's
friend and collaborator in the "_Dialogues of the_ _Dead_"--alike
delighted in Bluestocking society and by their conversation helped
in that diffusion of high principles which to Mrs. Chapone in her
"_Essay on Conversation_" seemed more important than the French object
of sharpening the wit. In her "_Letters on the Improvement of the
Mind_" she says that conversation must be cultivated "by the mutual
communication of whatever may conduce to the improvement or innocent
entertainment of each other."
The literature which was the direct outcome of Bluestockingism is
far slighter in bulk than the poetical effusions called forth by the
spirit of gallantry which dominated the early French salons. There
was between the ladies and gentlemen of the English circles rather
less love-making and rather more mutual esteem. There was hardly any
of that complimentary occasional poetry of the lighter kind in which
the love-sick French swains of the Montausier type had found relief.
One of the rare instances of verse-making at an assembly occurred in
Mrs.--afterwards Lady--Miller's provincial drawing-room at Batheaston,
where, in imitation of a French custom, each of the assembled guests
deposited his or her poetry in an antique vase, to be read aloud
and judged. That this "puppet-show Parnassus[30]" called forth the
ridicule of Walpole and Johnson proves sufficiently that emulation of
this kind was not regarded with sympathy among Bluestockings and their
wellwishers.
It is difficult to say whether the Bluestockings' contribution to
the increase of female importance and influence rivalled that of the
French societies, but we undeniably find, that in the latter half of
the 18th century the popular verdict regarding women is undergoing a
distinct change. Instead of the scornful blame to which Pope, Swift and
Chesterfield have made us accustomed we actually find women recognised
as an influence in literature by no less a critic than the great Doctor
himself. Madame d'Arblay's _Diary_ relates how--in 1799--Johnson once
talked to Mrs. Thrale and Sir Philip Jennings about "the amazing
progress made of late years in literature by the women." He said he
himself was astonished at it, and told them he well remembered when a
woman who could spell a common letter was regarded as all-accomplished;
but now they vied with the men in everything. The same _Diary_ makes
mention (in 1782) of the verses published by the author's father--Dr.
Burney--in the _Herald_, making women the object of praise instead
of blame and ridicule. The composition was entitled "_Advice to the
Herald_", published anonymously, and ascribed to Sir W. W. Pepys, until
in 1822 a M. S. copy was found among Dr. Burney's papers. They exhort
the paper not only to proclaim the shame of woman, but to also "record
in story such as shine their sex's glory". Hannah More's "pathetic
pen", Mrs. Carter's "piety and learning", Fanny Burney's "quick
discerning" are praised; and special places are retained for Mrs.
Chapone, "high-bred, elegant Mrs. Boscawen"; Lady Lucan, Mrs. Leveson
Gower, Mrs. Greville, Lady Crewe and "fertile-minded" Mrs. Montagu.
David Garrick, Hannah More's faithful friend and supporter, in
referring to the success of her ballad entitled "_Sir Eldred of the
Bower_", followed by another poem called "_The Bleeding Rock_",
playfully represents the male sex as mortified by female success and
makes Apollo the author. And in Hoole's "_Aurelia, or the Contest_",
likewise referred to in Fanny Burney's _Diary_, the example of "the
wiser females" is glanced at to counterbalance female folly. All
which examples tend to show that public opinion regarding women was
undergoing a slow process of change. Now that women themselves had
taken their moral improvement in hand, the male authors felt that they
could again indulge in some measure of praise.
On the other hand, women had become sufficiently conscious of the moral
shortcomings of the opposite sex, to take an occasional share in their
reclamation and point out the error of their ways. When, after long
circulating in manuscript, the "_Bas Bleu_" poem was at last published,
it was accompanied by another entitled "_Florio_", describing the
fopperies and the utter worthlessness of a typical "maccaroni" or young
man of fashion, a criticism which none of us would think of calling
undeserved.
The department of literature in which women were qualified to shine
_par excellence_ was the novel. Richardson's novels had succeeded
marvellously in awakening interest in the workings of the female heart,
and analysis of the female character to its minutest details was what
the reading public had grown to expect. This was a field in which
women have since abundantly proved themselves in many ways the equals
of men, and the story of the universal praise with which "_Evelina_"
was welcomed, and the author's mingled pride in her achievement
and bashfulness, arising out of the fear that she might be thought
lacking in modesty, is among the most amusing parts of her diary.
Unfortunately, for all her keenness of perception and fine sense of
humour, there was about her character a certain want of depth, which
became more apparent as she grew older. But she certainly paved the way
for the later female novelists, and particularly for Jane Austen.
Not the least among the Bluestockings' merits was the fact that by the
example some of them gave they accustomed the British public to seeing
females engaged in different occupations which before had been the
exclusive work of men. Where ladies of such a strong sense of propriety
did not shrink from appearing before the public as authors, and even
pseudonyms were often thought unnecessary, the domain of literature
ceased to be the exclusive property of men. Strangely enough, the
notion that female knowledge should be carefully concealed, originating
in Molière's _Femmes Savantes_ and prevailing all through the 17th and
18th centuries in both literatures until Mary Wollstonecraft openly
disregarded it, was implicitly obeyed by the Bluestockings.
Not all the Bluestocking ladies were authors; Mrs. Vesey for instance,
probably the most loveable among the hostesses, who understood better
than any of her rivals the art of making her guests comfortable,
has left us no literary legacy. Of the others, Mrs. Delany and Mrs.
Boscawen concentrated their literary energies chiefly upon their
correspondence, while Mrs. Carter's clever translation of Epictetus
which elicited the unstinted praise of Mr. Long, a later translator,
who repeatedly, when in doubt, consulted her text, is of no importance
to her sex. The principal literary contributions to the subject of
feminism were made by three Bluestockings: Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Chapone
and Mrs. Hannah More, the nature of whose contributions corresponds
closely with their respective characters.
The natural bias of Elizabeth Robinson's character was strengthened by
the circumstances of her education. In her early youth she was often
at Cambridge, where her grandmother's second husband, Dr. Conyers
Middleton, took great delight in her keenness of understanding, and
often kept her in the room while he was conversing with his visitors,
among whom were the greatest philosophers and scholars of the day.
Her father was also amused at the child's precocity and they used to
have frequent "brain cudgellings", until he became painfully aware
that he was no longer a match for his clever daughter. She was a
furious letter-writer, which occupation, if it sharpened her wit, also
developed in her that insatiable intellectual vanity which afterwards
became her ruling passion, distinguished her as a Bluestocking from
her more modest rivals and prevented her from being as universally
liked as a Mrs. Vesey. Her biographer Mr. Huchon says that "she
was all mind, if not all soul", and was more respected than loved.
Sentimentality was not among her weaknesses, her sound practical sense
dictated both to herself and to others. She strongly opposed the
love-match which her ward Miss Dorothea Gregory--one of the daughters
to whom the well-known physician of that name addressed his legacy of
advice--asked her permission to make, and the ubiquitous Fanny Burney
writes that Mrs. Montagu once asked her, "if she should write a play,
to let her know of it", which vexed Fanny's "second Daddy", Mr. Crisp,
as it "implied interference". Her own marriage (1742) was purely a
"marriage de raison", the husband being considerably older, and a man
of great wealth. Mrs. Chapone afterwards called her with reason "an
ignoramus in love", which did not in this case prevent the marriage
from being fairly happy.
Neither was Mrs. Montagu free from affectation. Much-praised simplicity
and humility were not among her virtues, and no flattery seems to
have been too gross for her to accept. Lady Louisa Stuart--Lady Mary
Wortley Montagu's granddaughter, to whom we are indebted for some
humorous pictures of Bluestocking society--describes her as thoroughly
satisfied with herself. Her speech is described as affected, although
ready wit can scarcely be denied her. Her reply on being informed that
Voltaire, Shakespeare's translator, had boasted of having been the
first Frenchman to find "quelques perles dans son fumier": "c'est donc
un fumier qui a fertilisé une terre bien ingrate" is a good specimen
both of her proficiency in the French language and of her quickness of
repartee. However, she often descended from the heights of rhetoric,
and her affectation of speech seems to have been a weakness into
which she was occasionally betrayed by a momentary lapse of her fine
judgment. Speaking of Mr. Gray she once said: "I think he is the first
poet of my age; but if he comes to my fireside, I will teach him not
only to speak prose, but to talk nonsense, if occasion be."
She loved to make a display of her learning, and Johnson said of her
that "she diffused more knowledge in her conversation than any women he
knew." At the same time she criticised others freely, which procured
her many enemies. Mr. Crisp thought her "a vain, empty, conceited
pretender, and little else"; Wraxall judged that "there was nothing
feminine about her"; and an essay by Cumberland in the _Observer_
of 1785 describes the "Feast of Reason" at Mrs. Montagu's house in
Portman Square, where the lady herself is satirised under the name
of "Vanessa". It describes her as stimulated to charity, affability
and hospitality exclusively by the dictates of inordinate vanity,
and even accuses her of bribing her critics: "Authors were fee'd for
dedications, and players patronised on benefit nights".
Her charity was, indeed, of a condescending kind. Thus her annual feast
to the chimney-sweeps on May day rather smacks of the doctrine of Good
Works pointing the way to Salvation, and to the working people in her
coal-mines she was a dutiful but immeasurably superior patroness. In
a few isolated cases, however, there were flashes of real kindness.
She gave unstinted financial support to Mrs. Williams, the blind
poetess whose lot had aroused Johnson's compassion, and her letter
of condolence to Mrs. Delany on the occasion of the death of their
mutual friend the Duchess of Portland has the genuine ring of grief
and sympathy. It tries to find solace in considerations of eternity.
Mrs. Montagu's religious views were strict, and religious worship was
a serious matter with her. However, her strong individuality would not
suffer her to bow her intellect before that of any man. Beyond the
admitted fact that "God is the loving father of all", she has only
Hope, but no definite knowledge of the certainty of a future state.
Such was the character of the lady whom Johnson called "Queen of the
Blues", and Fanny Burney "our sex's glory". The incident which had a
determining influence on her further life was the death of her only
child. Grief of that kind may be to some extent drowned in religion or
in social intercourse, and Mrs. Montagu tried both. She emphatically
believed in the social state as productive of good through the friction
of minds. Thus it came about that in the middle of the century--the
exact date is nowhere given, which makes it difficult to decide whether
Mrs. Montagu, or Mrs. Vesey, or Miss Frances Reynolds had the right to
consider herself the first Bluestocking hostess,--Mrs. Montagu opened
her salon in Hill Street, where she entertained a great number of
guests of the most widely different description, her rooms being often
filled from eleven in the morning till eleven at night.
The best descriptions of Mrs. Montagu's parties are to be found in
Hannah More's correspondence and in Mme du Bocage's "_Letters on
England, Holland and Italy_." The latter visited England at a time
when Mrs. Montagu's breakfasts were all the fashion, served "in
a closet lined with painted paper of Pekin and furnished with the
choicest movables of China", the so-called Chinese Room, recalling the
splendours of the "Chambre bleue" of the marquise de Rambouillet. It
was probably at Mrs. Montagu's and at Mrs. Thrale's that Dr. Johnson
chiefly indulged in his tea-orgies, and Mme Du Bocage describes his
hostess as pouring out her delicious tea, attired in a white apron and
a large straw hat. On the whole the English ladies paid more attention
to gastric delights than their French sisters, and in Mrs. Montagu's
case her well-provided table often relieved her from the wearisome duty
of keeping up the flow of conversation. In this lay the characteristic
difference between Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Vesey. The latter wanted her
guests to forget her and to consult their own inclinations in the
forming of groups of conversation, contenting herself with listening
to her literary lions; Mrs. Montagu on the other hand, to quote Fanny
Burney, "cared not a fig, as long as she spoke herself". That her
intellectual queenship involved the duty of maintaining conversation at
a high pitch seems to have considerably worried her upon occasions.
The Bluestocking hostesses kept a great variety of hours. In the
last decades of the century late teas were in vogue, but the usual
entertainments were breakfasts and dinners, in which there was a great
variety. We read of Mrs. Garrick's dinner parties to a select company
of eight chosen friends, among whom Hannah More was proud to find
herself, and according to Horace Walpole Mrs. Montagu's breakfasts at
her house in Portman Square sometimes included seven hundred guests,
from royalty downwards. To this magnificent abode she removed in 1781,
six years after the death of her husband. She spared no cost in fitting
it up in the most gorgeous fashion, and although Walpole thought her
decorations in good taste, one cannot help feeling doubts as to the
room with the feather hangings of which Cowper wrote in 1788 that "the
birds put off their every hue, to dress a room for Montagu." The famous
"Room of the Cupidons" made her a little ridiculous in the eyes of the
more sober-minded ladies, one of whom (Mrs. Delany) in a letter refers
somewhat spitefully to "her age".
There are no references to any of Mrs. Montagu's parties taking place
out of doors, but some of the minor hostesses would sometimes send
out invitations to tea, followed by a walk in the Park or fields.
This custom was perhaps an imitation of the habits prevailing among
Rambouillet-circles. Neither do we find anywhere mention of stated
days, such as were kept by the French hostesses, although Sundays were
objected to by some of the more orthodox.
The greater artificiality of arrangement at the Bluestocking assemblies
appears from the pains taken by the hostess to so place her guests
as to ensure a free flow of wit. In connection with Mrs. Montagu,
reports are contradictory. Hannah More's correspondence informs us
that the company used to split up into little groups of five or six;
Fanny Burney on the contrary relates how the guests were seated in
a semi-circle round the fire. Here again, Mrs. Vesey followed her
individual inclinations, for the Bas-Bleu poem tells us how her
"potent ward the circle broke", insisting on an easy informality in
the grouping of her guests. Mrs. Ord seems to have preferred the later
method of drawing chairs round a table in the centre.
Mrs. Montagu's early correspondence is full of wit and humour, and
displays so much discrimination that we feel surprised the writer did
not make her mark later in life as a novelist. The critical faculty
she possessed in so eminent a degree fitted her for satire, the object
being naturally contemporary society. In a letter, written when she
was twenty, she gives a vivid description of fashionable life at Bath,
ridiculing the emptiness of daily conversation and signalising the
general depravity of morals. "How d'ye do?" prevails in the morning,
and "What's trumps?" at night; the ladies' only topic is diseases, and
the men are all bad. "There is not one good, no not one." She likewise
freely vented her ridicule of overdone fashions, and descriptions like
the following are by no means rare. "Lady P. and her two daughters make
a very remarkable figure, and will ruin the poor mad woman of Tunbridge
by out-doing her in dress. Such hats, capuchins, and short sacks as
were never seen! One of the ladies looked like a state-bed running upon
castors. She had robbed the valance and tester of a bed for a trimming."
Although her satire is chiefly directed against her own sex, she
strongly protested against the opinion that women were morally inferior
to men, whose insincere flattery was largely responsible for female
frivolity.
One of her most constant friends and Platonic admirers was Mr.
(afterwards Lord) Lyttleton, her vindication of whose memory against
Dr. Johnson in later years led to the most famous of Bluestocking
quarrels. In 1760, Lyttleton published his "_Dialogues of the
Dead_"--referred to rather unkindly by Walpole as the "Dead
Dialogues". The preface says that after the dialogues of Lucan, Fénelon
and Fontenelle, English literature can boast only the learned dialogues
of one Mr. Hurde, who takes living persons for his characters. The
author proposes to take his cue from the history of all times and
nations, opposing them to or comparing them with each other, "which
is, perhaps, one of the most agreeable methods that can be employed of
conveying to the mind any critical, moral or political observations".
Needless to say, the dead are supposed to know all that has taken place
since their decease.
Mr. Lyttelton goes on to say that the last three dialogues are by a
different hand. "If the friend who favoured me with them should write
any more, I shall think the public owes me a great obligation, for
having excited a genius so capable of uniting delight with instruction,
and giving to knowledge and virtue those graces which the wit of the
age has too often employed all its skill to bestow upon folly and vice."
The above sufficiently denotes the character of the dialogues in which
Mrs. Montagu--for the "different hand" was hers--had every opportunity
to display her satirical vein. The numbers 27 and 28, of which the
former satirises fashionable conduct and the latter the literature of
gallantry, are illustrative of her opinions of contemporary female
character. The characters of No. 27 are Mercury and a Modern Fine
Lady, whose name is Mrs. Modish. The god comes to fetch her to the
nether world, but she begs to be excused: "I am engaged, absolutely
engaged". Mercury thinks she is referring to her duties to her
husband and children, but he is quickly disillusioned. "Look on my
chimneypiece, and you will see I was engaged to the play on Mondays,
balls on Tuesdays, the Opera on Saturdays, and to card-assemblies the
rest of the week, for two months to come; and it would be the rudest
thing in the world not to keep my appointments. If you will stay with
me till the summer season, I will wait on you with all my heart.
Perhaps the Elysian Fields may be less detestable than the country in
our world. Pray have you a fine Vauxhall and Ranelagh? I think I should
not dislike drinking the Lethe waters when you have a full season."
When Mercury objects that she has made pleasure the only object in
her life, she replies that she has indeed made diversion her chief
business, but has got no real pleasure out of it. For late hours and
fatigue have given her the vapours and spoiled the natural cheerfulness
of her temper. Her ambition to be thought "du bon ton" (which Mrs.
Montagu explains in a note is French cant for the fashionable air of
conversation and manners) has ruled her conduct. When asked by Mercury
to define the term, Mrs. Modish is somewhat perplexed. "It is--I can
never tell you what it is; but I will try to tell you what it is not.
In conversation it is not wit, in manners it is not politeness, in
behaviour it is not address; but it is a little like them all. It can
only belong to people of a certain rank; who live in a certain manner,
with certain persons, who have not certain virtues, and who have
certain vices, and who inhabit a certain part of the town. Like a place
by courtesy, it gets a higher rank than the person can claim, but which
those who have a legal title to precedency dare not dispute for fear of
being thought not to understand the rules of politeness."
Mercury finds fault with her for sacrificing all her real interests
and duties to so arbitrary a thing as "bon ton". She asks him what he
would have had her do? To which Mercury replies that her real business
consisted in promoting her husband's happiness and devoting herself
to the education of her children. It appears that their religion,
sentiments and manners were to be learnt from a dancing-master, a
music-master and a French governess. The result will be "wives without
conjugal affection and mothers without maternal care." Mercury's final
advice to the lady is to "remain on this side the Styx", and to wander
about without end or aim, to look into the Elysian Fields, but never
attempt to enter them, lest Minos should push her into Tartarus, "for
duties neglected may bring on a sentence not much less severe than
crimes committed."
The characters of the next dialogue are Plutarch, Charon and a modern
bookseller. It contains a pointed satire on literary taste. It appears
that the works of Plutarch do not command any sale whatever except
to "a few pedants," but "_The Lives of Highwaymen_" have brought our
bookseller a competent fortune, and the enormous sale of "The Lives of
Men that never Lived" (by which the novel is meant) have set him up
for life. This latest modern improvement in writing enables a man to
"read all his life and have no knowledge at all." Modern books not only
dispose to gallantry and coquetry, but give rules for them. Caesar's
commentaries and the account of Xenophon's expedition are not more
studied by military commanders than our novels are by the fair; to a
different purpose indeed, for their military maxims teach to conquer,
ours to yield; those inflame the vain and idle love of glory, these
inculcate a noble contempt of reputation. If the women had not the
friendly assistance of modern fiction, the bookseller fears they might
long remain "in an insipid purity of mind; with a discouraging reserve
of behaviour."
Plutarch is shocked at so much degeneracy of taste and wishes that for
the sake of the good example he had expatiated more on the character of
Lucretia and some other heroines. It grieves him to hear that chastity
is no longer valued, and that crime and immorality, far from meeting
with the punishment they deserve, are universally applauded. And yet
it is not more than a century since a Frenchman wrote a much admired
Life of Cyrus under the name of Artamenes[31], in which he ascribed
to him far greater actions than those recorded of him by Xenophon and
Herodotus. He goes on to praise the gallant days of chivalry, when
authors made it their business to incite men to virtue by holding up
as an example the deeds of fabulous heroes, whereas it seems to be the
custom of a later age to incite them to vice by the history of fabulous
scoundrels. "Men of fine imagination have soared into the regions of
fancy to bring back Astrea: you go thither in search of Pandora, oh
disgrace to letters! Oh shame to the Muses!"
The bookseller's feeble remonstrance that authors have to comply with
the manners and disposition of those who are to read them, is met
with the indignant remark that they should first of all correct the
vices and follies of their age. To give examples of domestic virtue
would surely be more useful to women than to inflame their minds with
the deeds of great heroines. "True female praise arises not from the
pursuit of public fame, but from an equal progress in the path marked
out for them by their great Creator."
Thus we find that even Plutarch is pressed into service to inculcate a
religious moral. The Bluestocking ladies were sufficiently enlightened
to recognise the deep wisdom of the Ancients, which is of all ages and
independent of religious doctrines. Mrs. Carter, the translator of
Epictetus, was a woman of profound piety.
The bookseller now remarks that some authors have indeed tried to
instil virtuous notions. In _Clarissa Harlowe_ "one finds the dignity
of heroism tempered by the meekness and humility of religion, a perfect
purity of mind and sanctity of manners", and _Sir Charles Grandison_ is
"a noble pattern of every private virtue, with sentiments so exalted
as to render him equal to every public duty." Next to Richardson,
Fielding and Marivaux are remarkable for their fine moral touches, and
some comfort is to be derived from the reflection that when there is
wit and elegance enough in a book to make it sell, it is not the worse
for good morals.
Here Charon appears to conduct our bookseller to his future abode,
but deeming him after all "too frivolous an animal to present to wise
Minos", proposes to constitute him _friseur_ to Tisiphone, and make him
"curl up her locks with satires and libels".
The above pieces derive their chief interest from the fact that they
are among the very first instances of female satire of a kind which in
being more pointed and more direct than that of the Spectator, and less
bitter and exaggerated than that of Swift, written by a member of the
sex who was herself a recognised leader of society, was more calculated
than anything else to impress the female mind with the necessity of
thorough reform.
Strange to say, Mrs. Montagu's claims for female instruction other than
moral are very modest. It is a subject she seldom refers to, although
there is a letter dated 1773 to her sister-in-law Mrs. Robinson,
containing a reference to the education of her little niece, in which
she certainly does not aim very high. A boarding-school is recommended
in spite of the fact that what girls learn there is most trifling, "but
they unlearn what would be of great disservice--a provincial dialect
which is extremely ungenteel, and other tricks that they learn in the
nursery." French lessons she deems unnecessary, "unless for persons
in very high life", and she expects a great deal of benefit from a
good air and a good dancing-master. Mrs. Montagu here presents that
curious mixture of good sense and narrow conventionality which proves
the extreme difficulty of getting away from influences and forming an
independent judgment.
In the "_Essay on Shakespeare_" (1769) Mrs. Montagu appears as a
literary critic. She felt offended at Voltaire's disparagement of the
great English author and also at the Frenchman's haughty arrogance. The
Essay was favourably criticised in the _Critical Review_, and Cowper
praised it in a letter to Lady Hesketh in the following words: "I no
longer wonder that Mrs. Montagu stands at the head of all that is
called learned, and that every critic veils his bonnet to her superior
judgment.... The learning, the good sense, the sound judgment, and
the wit displayed in it fully justify not only my compliment, but all
compliments that either have been already paid to her talents or shall
be paid hereafter." But Johnson spoke scornfully of it. He said he had
"taken up the end of the web, and finding it packthread, had thought
it useless to go further in search of embroidery," but had to grant
afterwards that it was conclusive against Voltaire. It procured Mrs.
Montagu a great many friends in France, where such wit as hers was sure
to find full appreciation. When, seven years later, she visited Paris,
Voltaire wrote another furious article against Shakespeare, which was
read at the Académie in her presence. "I think Madam," said one of the
members when the reading was over, "you must be rather sorry at what
you have just heard." Mrs. Montagu shrugged her shoulders. "I, Sir! Not
at all! I am not one of M. Voltaire's friends!"
Of quite a different cast of character was Mrs. Chapone, whose
"_Letters on the Improvement of the Mind_" were dedicated to Mrs.
Montagu. She was plain and uninteresting, and when the romance of her
life had taken an untimely ending, it is to be feared her conversation
became too much like sermonizing to suit vivacious young ladies like
Fanny Burney, who thought her assemblies "very dull". But whatever she
wrote bears the stamp of sincerity. She was evidently deeply concerned
about the moral welfare of the niece she addressed in her Letters--the
example set by Mme de Sévigné and imitated by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
had found followers--and she honestly tried to reconcile what was noble
and proper in her eyes with the demands of convention. Above all she
tried to inculcate that sense of responsibility for our actions which
she held to be the basis of true Christianity. All our strivings should
have the same purpose; that of bringing us nearer to God. Her niece is
told to render herself more useful and pleasing to her fellow-creatures
(a concession to prevailing opinions), "_and consequently more
acceptable to God_". This last addition completely subverts the meaning
of what precedes. Without it, the sense would be: "Please others and
you will please your own vanity," which now becomes: "Please others and
try to make them happy, and you will please God."
Mrs. Chapone thought pride and vanity the worst vices. Men were
particularly addicted to the former, since to be proud is to admire
oneself; and women to the latter, for vain is she who desires to be
admired by others. It is the vice of little minds, chiefly conversant
with trifling subjects, and brings affectation in its train.
The vain woman turns exaggerated weakness to account to ensure her
empire over the stronger sex. Thus arises that false sensibility which
will weep for a fly and leads to a thousand excesses. A well-directed
reason will keep the feelings under control and spur us to actions of
Christian charity. Those who relieve the sufferer are of more benefit
to him than those who lament over his misfortunes.
Sensibility is, indeed, one of the catchwords of the century.
Originally a laudable compassion and sympathy with the sufferings of
others and a reaction against "the faithless coldness of the times",
Richardson's novels show how soon it began to degenerate into sickly
sentimentality which, when indulging in the luxury of woe, forgot to
relieve the suffering which called forth the tears of sentiment. One
of the most serious charges brought against J. J. Rousseau was that
in his "_Nouvelle Héloise_" and in his "_Confessions_" he makes his
lovers wallow to a sickening extent in the ecstasy of grief, inducing
others by the magic of his personality to imitate him. This false
sensibility was as much the abomination of the Bluestocking ladies
as a well-regulated fellow-feeling was thought commendable, and here
at least Mary Wollstonecraft heartily agreed with them. The usual
reproach that the revolutionary leaders, those "friends of humanity",
in fighting for the interest of the human race neglected the immediate
wants of the individual--of which argument especially the Anti-Jacobin
made ample use--was, therefore, in her case at least, utterly
undeserved.
Hannah More made "_Sensibility_" the subject of a poem dedicated to
Mrs. Boscawen, and in her "_Strictures_" devoted an entire chapter
to it. In both the conclusion runs that sensibility has received its
true direction when it is supremely turned to the love of God: "But if
religious bias rule the soul, then sensibility exalts the whole."
There is, of course, in Mrs. Chapone's letters the usual warning
against the danger of fiction, especially of the sentimental kind, the
chief nurse of false sensibility, and also an element arising from the
wish to reconcile Christian charity with the "necessary inequality"
among individuals: the question of the treatment of inferiors. Since
the chief duties of woman are of a domestic nature, it follows that
the management of servants will be her task, and the Christian in Mrs.
Chapone would see them treated with kind civility, while the lady of
quality in her warns against the danger of too close intimacy with
people of low birth and education. The idea of raising them by slow
degrees to a higher social level probably never suggested itself to her.
Her ideal of female instruction must be likewise described as in the
main conventional, with a few useful hints to mark a partial advance.
Dancing and French are "so universal that they cannot be dispensed
with", but music and drawing she wanted to be taught only to those
who were qualified by possessing talent. The study of history is
recommended as giving a liberal and comprehensive view of human nature,
and supplying materials for conversation, and the reading of poetry
will improve the female imagination, which only wants regulating to
be superior to that of men. Shakespeare, Milton, and Mrs. Montagu's
_Essay_ ought to be the object of diligent study, and even heathen
mythology and Greek philosophy may be recommended as containing a
strong moral element. The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake clearly
did not appeal to Mrs. Chapone at all.
The most pronounced character among the Bluestockings, as well as the
most privileged among them in literary gifts was beyond any doubt Mrs.
Hannah More.[32] It will be interesting, in continuation of the more
general appreciation of respective tendencies in the introduction to
this chapter, to contrast her with Mary Wollstonecraft with a view to
establishing the chief causes from which the difference in their ideas
arose, and arriving at a vindication of the laudable intentions of both.
If Mary Wollstonecraft was turned into a social reformer chiefly
through the influence of the outward circumstances which dominated her
youth, Hannah More's career was largely the consequence of certain
innate qualities, which predestined her to become a moralist. She may
have inherited her preaching propensities from her father, who had
himself been designed for the church before circumstances interfered to
turn him into a schoolmaster. Her mother, a farmer's daughter, devoted
herself entirely to the children's education. In her earliest youth,
little Hannah's favourite pastime--as her biographer and admirer Mr. W.
Roberts tells us in his memoirs--was the writing of long exhortative
letters "to depraved characters", and when in later years she lived
at Mrs. Garrick's we find her referred to as the latter's "domestic
chaplain". And yet she could be witty enough when she chose and was
not without a sense of humour. At the time of the writing of her "_Bas
Bleu_" she sent her friend Mrs. Pepys a pair of stockings for one of
her children, accompanied by a letter, "_The Bas Blanc_", in which
she treats the subject as if it were an epic, "so far of a moral cast
that its chief end is utility,"--hoping the child will be able "to run
through it with pleasure". She goes on to say that "the exordium is
the natural introduction by which you are led into the whole work.
The middle, I trust, is free from any unnatural humour or inflation,
and the end from any disproportionate littleness. I have avoided
bringing about the catastrophe too suddenly, as I know that would
hurt him at whose feet I lay it", and so on in the same strain. Mary
Wollstonecraft would have been utterly incapable of such playfulness. A
further determining factor in the difference in the lives of both was
the treatment received at the hands of the influential. Mary was first
treated with indifference and coldness, and afterwards reviled for her
opinions, whereas Hannah More was courted and flattered in a way which
might have turned the head of any more volatile girl. To the struggle
for life of which Mary bore the marks till her dying-day, Hannah was
a total stranger, having had a comfortable annuity settled on her by
a Mr. Turner, who once made her an offer of marriage. Thus secured
against penury, that constant dread of rising authors, Hannah could go
to London and give herself up to social amusements and to literature.
Her meeting with Garrick ensured her a hearty welcome in Bluestocking
circles, and his support smoothed her brief dramatic career and
contributed to the warm reception of her first poetic attempts. They
represent her contribution to romanticism, and gained the approval of
no less a critic than Dr. Johnson himself.
Hannah More thus became a universal favourite, and her "vers de
société" became very popular. However, her career as a dramatist came
to an end with Garrick's death, and after the success of "_Bas Bleu_"
and "_Sensibility_" she more and more directed her energies towards
social and moral reform. The Bluestocking assemblies, much as they
appealed to her love of witty conversation, afforded no outlet for that
pent-up energy which made her long for some worthy object on which to
concentrate herself for the benefit of society. It may be said that
from the decade which saw the outbreak of the French Revolution dates
the participation of English women in the discussion of the great
social problems by which the times were stirred. It was as natural
that Hannah More should openly declare herself in favour of a strict
maintenance of the existing social order as that Mary Wollstonecraft
should become the champion of radical social and political reform.
Thus, each of the contending parties numbered among the warmest
advocates of their cause a member of the female sex. And yet, previous
to the great social upheaval in France, Hannah More at one time seemed
likely to range herself among the partisans of moderate social reform.
Her first social object was found in the struggle for the abolition
of the slave-trade which in 1787 held the attention of Parliament. Mr.
Wilberforce became her "Red Cross Knight", and Hannah wrote a poem
entitled "_The Black Slave Trade_", in which her attitude towards the
Revolution is foreshadowed. The lines:
Shall Britain, _where the soul of freedom reigns_,
Forge chains for others she herself disdains?
Forbid it, Heaven! O let the nation know,
The liberty she tastes she will bestow;
are sufficient to show that she consented to be the champion of liberty
in other countries only while they regarded England as the natural home
of Freedom. Burke had no more faithful follower among his conservative
friends than the reformer Hannah More.
After the outbreak of the Revolution she soon altered her opinion
that, although the capture of the Bastille had been undertaken by
"lawless rabble" yet "some good" might be expected from it. Price's
sermon filled her with horror, and Burke's _Reflections_ had her
undivided sympathy. While engaged upon religious tracts and plans for
instructing the children of the poor came the news of Dupont's speech
in the National Assembly, attacking all religion and calling Nature
and Reason the gods of men. Indignation made Hannah take up her pen in
reply, and refute the atheistic arguments in a pamphlet. The success of
this effort caused her to be solicited from all sides to undertake the
refutation of Thomas Paine's _Rights of Man_. Her humorous treatment of
the subject in this second tract, entitled "_Village Politics, by Will
Chip_", appealed to the class for whom it was chiefly intended and was
a distinct success, as were her doggerel ballads on the subject, some
of which were to popular tunes, preaching submission to the existing
social order, for, as "Will Chip" puts it in his "true Rights of Man":
That some must be poorer, this truth will I sing,
_Is the law of my Maker_, and not of my king;
And the true Rights of Man, and the life of his cause,
Is not equal possessions; but equal, just laws.
Hannah's sympathy went out to patient Joe, the Newcastle collier, who
held that "all things which happened were best", and to the ploughman
who felt safe in his cottage with the British laws for his guard: "If
the Squire should oppress, I get instant redress"; a view which the
author of _Caleb Williams_ emphatically did not share, and which makes
the modern reader feel as if Hannah More were "laying it on a little
too thick."
Hannah More and Mary Wollstonecraft--who, as will be seen in the
next chapter, ranged herself among the opponents of Burke--thus took
opposite sides in the great struggle, defending diametrically opposed
principles, yet collaborating in gradually weaning the reading public
from the conventional notion that the domain of literature was taboo
to women and in accustoming them to the unwonted spectacle of women
participating in a social struggle.
Mary Wollstonecraft's claims for a complete emancipation impressed
Hannah More as directed straight against the divine authority. The
state of inequality, we have seen, was looked upon by her as God's
will, and to rebel against it was to oppose the decrees of the
Almighty. The right way to benefit her sex seemed to her to insist on
a better moral education. On this subject at least the two political
adversaries were agreed. "In those countries in which fondness for
the mere persons of women is carried to the highest excess, they
are slaves; their moral and intellectual degradation increases in
direct proportion to the adoration which is paid to their charms" is
one of the many statements in Hannah More's "_Strictures on Female
Education_"[33] which Mary Wollstonecraft might have written, and
both saw in a liberal moral education the only remedy. At this point,
however, the two paths become separated. To Mary Wollstonecraft
female education was merely one of the milestones in the march
towards perfection; to Hannah More it seemed that women might be made
instrumental "to raise the depressed tone of public morals and to
awaken the drowsy spirit of religious principle", and also that they
might be called upon "to come forward and contribute their full and
fair proportion towards the saving of their country." With Hannah More,
high morality and patriotism necessarily went hand in hand. Her ideal
was to see all English women join in a thorough reform of manners and
morals, that her country might become not only the bulwark of tradition
against the mania for innovation, but also that of the religion she
held sacred against the onslaughts of atheism coming from across the
Channel.
If she had a less fervent temperament than Mary, she compensated for
this lack through her practical insight, which told her that sudden
radical changes are apt to destroy the edifice of ages, without
offering anything solid as a substitute. She felt the guardian of
her sex against the attacks of infidelity which in her eyes were
principally directed against the female heart. "Conscious of the
influence of women in civil society, _conscious of the effect which
female infidelity produced in France_, they attribute the ill success
of their attempts in this country to their having been hitherto chiefly
addressed to the male sex. They are now sedulously labouring to
destroy the religious principles of women, and in too many instances
have fatally succeeded. For this purpose not only novels and romances
have been made the vehicles of vice and infidelity, but the same
allurement has been held out to the women of our country which was
employed in the Garden of Eden by the first philosophist to the first
sinner,--knowledge"[34].
The above lines determine Hannah More's attitude towards female
learning, which she regarded as the devil's own bait. As an example
of the corrupting tendencies of foreign literature she makes a few
remarks on the much-admired German plays of "_The Robbers_" and "_The
Stranger_", the second of which presents the character of an adulteress
in the most pleasing and fascinating colours. "To make matters worse,
the German example has found a follower in a woman, a professed admirer
and imitator of the German suicide Werter. The female Werter, as she
is styled by her biographer, asserts in a work entitled, "_The Wrongs
of Women_" that adultery is justifiable, and that the restrictions
placed on it by the laws of England, constitute one of the wrongs of
women".[35]
To come to a correct understanding of this passage, it is necessary
to remember that the "_Strictures_" were written in 1799, when the
remembrance of Mary Wollstonecraft's attempt at suicide was still
fresh, and when her unexpected death had drawn attention to Godwin's
edition of her works, the only one containing "_Maria, or the Wrongs of
Woman_".
In their ideas of marriage, as indeed in all their applications
of religious precepts, the gulf between Hannah More and Mary
Wollstonecraft becomes immeasurably wide. But wherever the sense of
moral duty, unhampered by convention or by a rigid philosophical
harness, was free to assert itself, it is curious to note the close
affinity between the ideas of two women who occupied such widely
different positions in the social life of their time, yet were
both so extremely conscious of the moral responsibility of their
sex. It remains for us to consider the interesting--if somewhat
eccentric--personality of the woman who had brought down upon herself
so many charges of gross immorality.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] _Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, p. 10._
[28] _Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, p. 245._
[29] See W. Roberts, _Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs.
Hannah More_, p. 62.
[30] Walpole.
[31] There seems to have been a good deal of uncertainty as to the
authorship of the works of the famous brother and sister. Contemporary
opinion unanimously assigns that of "_Le Grand Cyrus_" to Madeleine de
Scudéry, and not to her brother George.
[32] Like Mary Wollstonecraft, Hannah More took brevet-rank as a matron
by virtue of her literary publications.
[33] p. 2.
[34] _Strictures_, p. 29.
[35] _Strictures_, p. 32.