No More Learning

Mrs Barbauld was merely the echo of popular sentiment
when she protested that women did not want colleges. "The best
way for a woman to acquire knowledge,' she wrote, “is from con-
versation with a father, or brother, or friend. It was not till the
beginning of the next century-after the pioneer work of the
bluestockings, be it observed—that Sydney Smith, aided, doubt-
less, by his extraordinary sense of humour, discovered the absurdity
of the fact that a woman of forty should be more ignorant than
a boy of twelve.
In society, at routs or assemblies, cards or dancing were the
main diversions. Women were approached with flattering respect,
with exaggerated compliment, but they were never accorded the
greater compliment of being credited with sufficient intelligence
to appreciate the subjects that interested men. What dean
Swift wrote in 1734 to Mrs Delany from Ireland applied equally
well to general opinion in England : “A pernicious error prevails
here among the men that it is the duty of your sex to be fools in
every article except what is merely domestic. '
There were then, as there always had been, exceptions. There
were women who, by some unusual fortune of circumstance, or
by their own persistent efforts, had secured a share of the educa-
tion that was given to their brothers as a matter of course. One
such woman, Elizabeth Carter, a learned linguist and prominent
bluestocking, wrote to Mrs Montagu concerning a social evening :
As if the two sexes had been in a state of war the gentlemen ranged them-
selves on one side of the room where they talked their own talk and left us
a


## p. 344 (#366) ############################################

344
The Bluestockings
[CH.
a
a
poor ladies to twirl our shuttles and amuse each other by conversing as we
could. By what little I could overhear our opposites were discoursing on the
old English Poets, and this did not seem so much beyond a female capacity
but that we might have been indulged with a share in it.
The faint resentment underlying this gentle complaint indicates
how a few women with a natural and cultivated taste for literature
began to regard the limitations imposed by traditional prejudice
on their mental activities. As an unconscious protest against this
intellectual stifling, as well as against the tyranny of cards,' it
began to be
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 1,
The first conversation,' however, had been given in the early
fifties, many years before Boswell wrote this. It was held at the
house of Mrs Vesey, wife of Agmondesham Vesey, a member of
the Irish parliament, and daughter of Sir Thomas Vesey, bishop
of Ossory. She was a witty Irishwoman with a taste for literature,
who determined to unite the literary and the fashionable society
of her acquaintance—worlds that had hitherto been kept apart.
Much perverse ingenuity was wasted by the writers of the first
quarter of the nineteenth century in trying to account for the
term 'bluestocking. ' Abraham Hayward, de Quincey, Mrs Opie, all
sought for an obscure origin in France, in Italy, anywhere, in fact,
save where it lay embedded in the writings of the bluestocking
circle. The point is still disputed, but critical authorities lean to
the Stillingfleet origin, supported by Boswell, and corroborated
by Madame d'Arblay. During the annual migration of the great
world to Bath, Mrs Vesey, meeting Benjamin Stillingfleet, invited
him to one of her 'conversations. ' Stillingfleet, the disinherited
grandson of the bishop of Worcester, was a botanist and a poet,
a philosopher and a failure. He had given up society and was
obliged to decline the invitation on the score of not having
clothes suitable for an evening assembly. The Irishwoman, a
singularly inconsequent person, giving a swift glance at his every-
day attire, which included small-clothes and worsted stockings,
exclaimed gaily: 'Don't mind dress. Come in your blue stockings. '
Stillingfleet obeyed her to the letter; and, when he entered the
brilliant assembly where ladies in ‘night gowns' of brocade and
lutestring were scarcely more splendid in plumage than men in
garments of satin and paduasoy, the shabby recluse claimed
1 Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, G. B. (1887), vol. iv, p. 108.


## p. 345 (#367) ############################################

Xv]
Elizabeth Vesey
345
permission to join them by whimsically murmuring: 'Don't mind
dress. Come in your blue stockings. '
Stillingfleet was so popular at these conversation parties, that
'blew stockings,' as he was called, was in great request.
'Such was the excellence of his conversation,' wrote Boswell, that it came
to be said, we can do nothing without the blue stockings, and thus, by degrees,
the title was established. '
By one of the ironic subtleties of nomenclature, a term origin-
ally applied to a man was gradually transferred in deepened tint
to the women of these assemblies. It was a name, 'fixed in playful
stigma,' as one of the circle happily phrased it. For, though blue-
stockings were estimable women, individually held in high honour,
the epithet 'blue,' if not a designation of scorn like les femmes
savantes, held at least a grain of goodhumoured malice; possibly,
because few of them were free from what their 'queen,' with frank
selfcriticism, called, the female frailty of displaying more learning
than is necessary or graceful. '
But it is only just to say that Mrs Vesey! , “the first queen' of
the bluestockings, was free from this particular female frailty.
Though she delighted in literary conversation, she had neither
literary ambition, nor desire to pose as a learned woman. She was
ethereal and imaginative, and, said her friends, even in old age,
combined the simplicity of a child with the eager vivacity of
eighteen. Her intimates called her the sylph, and, of the blue-
stocking hostesses, without question, she was the best-beloved.
By nature unconventional, Mrs Vesey was noted for her amusing
horror of the paralysing effect of the conventional circle. Her large
reception rooms in Bolton row-and, later, in Clarges street-
appropriately upholstered in blue, were crowded with guests, who,
by her deft arrangement of chairs and sofas 'naturally broke up
into little groups' that were 'perpetually varying and changing.
There was ‘no ceremony, no cards, and no supper,' and Mrs Vesey,
we are told, had the almost magic art of putting all her company
at their ease without the least appearance of design. And, what
was possibly even more conducive to the success of her assemblies,
‘it was not absolutely necessary to talk sense. '
Vesey, though not a model husband, was an excellent host,
with sufficient interest in literature to help Lord Lyttelton with
his Life of Henry II, and to be delighted when he was elected
a member of Johnson's Literary club. Husbands were not much
in evidence in the bluestocking circle—by a curious coincidence,
1 See, also, ante, vol. x, chap. XI, p. 261.


## p. 346 (#368) ############################################

346
[ch.
The Bluestockings
they were rarely seen in Parisian salons—but Vesey, undoubtedly,
contributed to the success of his wife's literary parties. To the
Veseys belongs the credit of being among the first to welcome
authors and people with an interest in literature to social inter-
course with the great. Even of Johnson, Croker remarks in a
footnote that, 'except by a few visits in his latter years at the
basbleux assemblies of Mrs Montagu, Mrs Vesey, and Mrs Ord,
we do not trace him in anything like fashionable society. In the
bluestocking coteries, however, he was regarded as a literary lion
of the first rank, 'whose roar was deeper in its tone when he meant
to be civil. ' We get a bluestocking picture of the literary autocrat
from Bennet Langton, one of the best talkers among the 'blues,'
who, knowing Boswell's amiable hero-worship, sent him an ac-
count of an evening at Vesey's. Here, surrounded by duchesses,
lords, knights, and ladies, ‘four if not five deep,' Johnson held
converse with Barnard, provost of Eton, while the company
listened with respectful attention. The evenings were probably
pleasanter, however, when there was less monopoly, and the
various groups conversed among themselves. Hannah More,
whose critical judgment was equal to that of any of the blue-
stockings, not only gave precedence to ' Vesey, of verse the judge
and friend in her poem Bas Bleu, but she also wrote 'I know
of no house where there is such good rational society, and a con-
versation so general, so easy and so pleasant. '
For more than thirty years, Mrs Vesey's house was a notable
centre of the most cultivated society in London. After her
husband's death, however, her mind became clouded, and, for a
few years before she died in 1791, she was unable to recognise
her friends, who, nevertheless, visited her with a loyal devotion,
lest at any time she should regain her faculties, and miss their
society. In 1787, Hannah More wrote:
Mr Walpole seldomer presents himself to my mind as the man of wit, than
as the tender-hearted and humane friend of my dear infirm, broken-spirited
Mrs Vesey.
>
Though Mrs Vesey was indirectly responsible for the title of
the bluestocking coteries, it was Mrs Montagu', who, by her
dominant character, by her husband's wealth and by the almost
unique position she made for herself in London society, was
speedily recognised as what Johnson in a moment of wrath
satirically called her, the Queen of the Blues. ' Elizabeth
6
1 See, also, ante, vol. x, chap. XI, pp. 261 ff.


## p. 347 (#369) ############################################

Xv] 'The Queen of the Blues'
“
347
Robinson was born at York in 1720, one of a family of twelve
children. Much of her childhood was spent in Cambridgeshire,
with her maternal grandmother, the wife of Conyers Middleton,
librarian of Cambridge university. At Cambridge, the pretty pre-
cocious child was looked on as something of an infant prodigy.
Middleton not only allowed her to come to his academic parties,
but he would afterwards, with educational intent, require from
her an account of the learned conversations at which she had
been present.
At the time of her marriage, he somewhat
pompously reminded her: "This University had the honour of
Mr Montagu's education, and claims some share in yours. ' Her
father, an accomplished amateur artist, delighted in cultivating
the gift of swift repartee that she had evidently inherited from
himself. Her mother, from whom, perhaps, she inherited her taste
for literature, was related to Sterne. At home, she disputed and
argued goodnaturedly with her brothers, till their emulation pro-
duced in their sister 'a diligence of application unusual at the
time'-a diligence that resulted in a knowledge of French, Italian
and some Latin, though, influenced by fashion, she was sometimes
ashamed to own to the latter accomplishment.
While staying with her grandmother in Cambridge, she was
taken to call at Wimpole, the seat of the second earl of Oxford.
Here, she made acquaintance with the earl's only daughter, Prior's
Noble lovely little Peggy,' who, in 1734, married the second duke
of Portland. Though Elizabeth Robinson was only thirteen at the
time of this marriage, the young duchess of eighteen found a good
deal of pleasure in the child's witty letters, and, as she grew older,
frequently invited her to Bulstrode. This friendship introduced
her to a cultivated circle, among whom were Lord Lyttelton,
Mrs Delany—then Mrs Pendarves—and many more, who, besides
helping to form her literary tastes, became her lifelong friends
and good bluestockings. She was early “brought out' by her
father, who, proud of his vivacious daughter, took her into society
at Bath and Tunbridge when she was only thirteen. At the age
when girls of today are enjoying their first balls, Elizabeth, satiated
with years of recurring gaieties, wrote concerning Bath : ""How
d'ye do,” is all one hears in the morning, and "What's trumps ? ”
in the afternoon. Scarcely a year later, she writes to her mother,
'there is nothing so much wanted in this country as the art of making
the same people chase new topics without change of persons. And,
through its slightly involved expression, one may detect, even at
that early age, a foreshadowing of her bluestocking parties.
6
-
6


## p. 348 (#370) ############################################

348
[CH.
The Bluestockings
6
This ‘art' she made a point of cultivating after her marriage
in 1742, with the wealthy Edward Montagu, grandson of the first
earl of Sandwich. She was twenty-two, and her husband twenty-
nine years older; but, as her cold practical nature had already
decided that 'gold is the chief ingredient in worldly happiness,'
the discrepancy in their ages was not considered a drawback to
the solid advantages of wealth and position. When, in 1744, their
.
only child died in infancy, she sought happiness in social and
intellectual pleasures with even greater avidity than before.
Mrs Montagu had not long been married before she discovered
that her husband's town house in Dover street was too small for
her magnificent projects of entertaining. Mr Montagu, therefore,
built a fine house in Hill street, into which they were able to move
in 1748. Here, in her famous Chinese room, she began to give a
series of receptions, and, in 1753, she writes to Mrs Boscawen that
her 'Chinese Room was filled by a succession of people from
eleven in the morning till eleven at night. There is not any
precise information as to when she began to give her bluestocking
parties, but it was probably after she became acquainted with
Mrs Vesey. Though Hannah More gives Mrs Vesey preeminence
in her poem Bas Bleu, it is generally conceded that Mrs Montagu
was the undoubted 'queen’of these assemblies. Lady Louisa Stuart,
granddaughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and daughter of
the third earl of Bute, gives a detailed and not too flattering
account of Mrs Montagu's 'attempt at an English salon':
“The only blue stocking meetings which I myself ever attended,' she wrote,
were those at Mrs Walsingham's and Mrs Montagu's. To frequent the
latter, however, was to drink at the fountain-head . . . Mrs Montagu eclipsed
them alli'
She then gives a somewhat sarcastic portrait of the hostess, and,
while allowing that she had quick parts, great vivacity, no small
share of wit, and competent learning, she credits her, also, with a
superabundance of vanity, and concludes with the insinuation that
her 'excellent cook is probably the only one of the powers that
could carry on the war single-handed. '
6
6
6
Thus endowed,' she writes, Mrs Montagu was acquainted with almost
all persons of note or distinction. She paid successful court to all authors,
critics, artists, orators, lawyers, and clergy of high reputation. . . she attracted
all tourists and travellers; she made entertainment for all ambassadors, sought
out all remarkable foreigners, especially if men of letters 2?
1 Gleanings from an old Portfolio (Correspondence of Lady Louisa Stuart), ed.
Clark, Mrs Godfrey (privately printed, 1898), vol. I, p. 61.
2 Ibid. p. 62.


## p. 349 (#371) ############################################

Xv]
6
PII
W!
it's
6
Mrs Montagu's Receptions 349
Lady Louisa was not a bluestocking—she had, indeed, 'a horror
of appearing in print lest she should lose caste'—and her evidence,
though seasoned with a dash of malicious humour, is probably
less biassed than that of the bluestockings whose pens were too
often tipped with the honey of mutual admiration. She flings the
fine scorn of a grande dame on the bluestocking habit of opening
the gates of society to those who had not been born within the
sacred ringfence; she ridicules, with the prejudice of her class
and period, the college geniuses with nothing but a book in their
pockets. ' She stigmatises Mrs Montagu's company as a 'hetero-
geneous medley,' which, with all her sparkling wit and manifold
attractions, she was never able to fuse into a harmonious mass.
*As they went in, so they went out, single, isolated'; a result,
partly owing, no doubt, to Mrs Montagu's habit of arranging her
guests in one large, disconcerting half-circle. Madame d'Arblay
also mentions this peculiar formation, at the head of which sat
the lady of the house, and, on her right, the guest of highest
rank, or the person of the moment whom she most delighted to
honour. Lady Louisa, not restrained by bluestocking loyalty,
frankly holds the custom up to ridicule. “Everything at that
house, as if under a spell, was sure to form itself into a circle or
semi-circle. ' And she tells, further, of 'a vast half-moon' of twenty-
five ladies of whom she was one, seated round the fire, and of the
vain efforts of the men, when they solemnly filed in from dinner, to
break through it.
Lady Louisa’s facts are probably as correct as they are amusing;
but, as facts invariably take the colour of the medium through
which they are presented, be it sympathy or antipathy, it is only
just to dilute her sarcasms with some of the admiration and high
regard expressed by the bluestocking coteries. If not an ideal
hostess, Mrs Montagu had many of the qualities that go to the
ruling of a salon. Lord Lyttelton, one of her intimate court of
Platonic admirers, was amazed, he once told her, that those
dangerous things . . . beauty, wit, wisdom, learning and virtue (to
say nothing about wealth)' had not, long before, driven her from
society. Her wit, from childhood to age, was indisputable. Ву
the alchemy of her dexterous mind she could transmute her wide
reading, her swift impressions, her varied experience into what
she aptly called 'the sal volatile of lively discourse. ' Living, as
she did, in the limelight of a critical society, it was inevitable
that her character should be freely discussed. But, though
her complacent vanity might, occasionally, be censured, her
a
IG


## p. 350 (#372) ############################################

350
[CH.
The Bluestockings
6
affectations deplored, her flattery derided, yet we are told that
even those who were most diverted with her foibles would express
a high opinion of her abilities. 'In her conversation she had more
wit than any other person, male or female, whom I have known,'
wrote Beattie. Dr Johnson, whom, said Mrs Thrale, 'she flattered
till he was ready to faint,' paid her back in the same seductive
coin. When she showed him some plates that had belonged to
queen Elizabeth, he assured her that 'their present possessor was
in no tittle inferior to the first. At another time, he said of her,
Sir, that lady exerts more mind in conversation than any person I ever
met with. Sir, she displays such powers of ratiocination, such radiations of
intellectual excellence as are amazing.
And Lord Bath once told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he did not
believe that there ever was a more perfect human being created, or
ever would be created, than Mrs Montagu. ' Even Lord Macartney,
much given to 'elegant pleasantries,' who 'piqued himself upon
carrying compliments beyond the moon,' having flattered Mrs
Montagu to the furthest limit of credulity, would confess to his
intimates : ‘After all, she is the cleverest woman I know. Meet her
where you will, she says the best thing in the company. ' Horace
Walpole might occasionally wing his sly shafts of malicious wit in
her direction, but there are few greater tributes to the interest of
her assemblies and of the bluestocking coteries generally than his,
and Soame Jenyns's and Owen Cambridge's—the old wits as a
younger generation irreverently called them frequent attendance.
Even her enemies allowed that she had a sincere love of
literature. She ‘makes each rising wit her care,' said a con-
temporary poem, and her kindly discriminating help to struggling
authors, and authors who were past struggling, earned for her the
high-sounding title, the 'female Maecenas of Hill Street,' bestowed
on her by Hannah More. When Anna Williams, the blind
poetess, was left with a precarious income, Mrs Montagu gave her
an annual allowance of £10, a kindness greatly appreciated by
Johnson, who, in his' wild benevolence,' had given Mrs Williams,
in company with other derelicts of humanity, a home under the
shelter of his roof. After Edward Montagu's death, when she be-
came sole mistress of his wealth, she gave an annuity of £100
to Mrs Carter; and, when there was a question of a government
pension for Beattie, she assured him with the utmost delicacy
that, should the project fail, she herself would supply the necessary
funds. These are only a few instances out of many; her corre-
spondence is full of allusions to the needy and distressed. Nor
1
1
3
6


## p. 351 (#373) ############################################

xv]
A Patroness of Literature
351
were her gifts all in the sordid coin of commerce. Not only did
she give generously to her literary friends the encouragement and
sympathy that, in dark moments, are of more value than gold, but
she would promote their interests in every way possible, after the
manner of the ladies of the Parisian salons. It was Mrs Montagu's
wide-reaching influence that materially helped to spread the fame
of Beattie's Essay on Truth, as a counterblast to Hume's 'infidel
writings. ' Later, it was she who suggested its reissue by sub-
scription; and, though she was indefatigable in her efforts to
enlist subscribers, she was much disappointed because it only
produced about four hundred guineas profit for the author. She
gave him introductions to Lord Kinnoul and his brother, the arch-
bishop of York, who both made plans for his advancement. In
1772, she writes: 'I was in hopes to have something done among
the Great that might forward my hope for you’; and, when The
Minstrel appeared, not only did she send copies to Lord Lyttelton,
Lord Chatham and others of her personal friends, but she told
Beattie, ‘I wrote immediately to a person who serves many gentle-
men and ladies with new books, to recommend it to all people
of taste. . . . I have recommended it to many of our bishops and
others. '
Having so active an interest in authors and their works, it
was not surprising that she should one day appear as author
herself. In 1760, when Lord Lyttelton published his Dialogues of
the Dead, the last three were advertised as 'composed by a different
hand,' the hand of Mrs Montagu: though, in deference to the
prejudice of her day, she preferred to shield herself behind a veil
of anonymity, which she was not sorry that most of her friends
were able to penetrate. The Dialogues met with much criticism,
favourable and otherwise. Johnson called them a 'nugatory per-
formance,' and Walpole, by nature unable to resist an opportunity
for epigram, wrote of them as the dead dialogues, a prophecy
that time has almost fulfilled. Those by Mrs Montagu were be-
tween Cadmus and Hercules; Mercury and a modern fine lady;
Plutarch, Charon and a modern bookseller. The first is full of
solid good sense—too solid, indeed, for satire—but every phrase is
trite and obvious, without a glimmer of the wit that Mrs Montagu
scattered freely in her talk and letters. Mrs Carter gave it fatal,
.
discerning praise when she assured its author that it has all the
elegance of polite literature. ' The dialogue between Plutarch
and the bookseller is severe on the popular taste of the day, and
suggests that popular taste, like human nature, never changes.
>


## p. 352 (#374) ############################################

352
[CH.
The Bluestockings
6
6
'I unadvisedly bought an edition of your Lives,' the bookseller
says to Plutarch; "a pack of old Greeks and Romans . . . and the
work which repaired the loss I sustained. . . was the Lives of
the Highwaymen. ' The second dialogue, between Mercury and
Mrs Modish, is in Mrs Montagu's happiest vein of light sarcasm.
It is by far the wittiest of the whole collection, and met with un-
qualified success. It is a lively satire on the fashionable woman of
the period, who, when Mercury summons her to pass the Styx,' is
‘engaged, absolutely engaged . . . to the Play on Mondays, balls on
Tuesdays, the Opera on Saturdays, and to card assemblies the rest
of the week. ' She suggests, however, that he should wait till the
end of the season, when she might like to go to the Elysian fields
for a change. 'Have you a Vauxhall and Ranelagh ? ' she asks.
'I think I should not dislike drinking the Lethe waters when you
have a full season. ' Compliments flowed in from the bluestocking
circle who were inclined to preen themselves on their 'queen’s'
literary success; and Mrs Montagu, exhilarated with the heady wine
of public applause, wrote to Mrs Carter, 'I do not know but at last
I may become an author in form. . . . The Dialogues, I mean the
three worst, have had a more favourable reception than I expected. '
It was not, however, till nine years later, that the great literary
effort of her life appeared, an Essay on the Writings and Genius
of Shakespeare, carrying the sub-title 'with some remarks upon
the misrepresentations of Mons. de Voltaire. ' In her letters, one
may trace its germ at an early stage, with here and there evidences
of its gradual growth. In a letter to Lord Bath, in 1761, she
writes a long criticism of Voltaire's Tancred, in which she com-
pares the natural sallies of passion in our Shakspear' with 'the
pompous declamation' of Voltaire in Tancred.
later, Mrs Carter mentions Mrs Montagu's criticism on Macbeth'
and, when Johnson's preface to the 1765 edition of Shakespeare
with all the other prefaces appeared, she writes of Johnson's as
the ablest of them all. Mrs Montagu's Essay was, in great measure,
a protest against the strictures that Voltaire had for years hurled at
Shakespeare, from whom he had freely borrowed. As many English
readers knew, he had taken whole scenes from Macbeth for his
Mahomet; the plot of his Zaïre was only Othello slightly disguised;
but indignation in England deepened to disgust at Voltaire's
introduction to Sémiramis. Miss Talbot, a bluestocking, wrote to
Mrs Carter in 1745, ‘Voltaire has just published with his Semiramis,
the foolishest, idlest, coarsest critique that ever was? '
1 For criticism of Shakespeare in the eighteenth century see vol. v, chaps. XI, XII.
Three years
9


## p. 353 (#375) ############################################

Xv]
Mrs Montagu and Voltaire
353
6
In her introduction, Mrs Montagu says, “I was incited to this
undertaking by great admiration of his genius, and still greater
indignation at the treatment he has received from a French wit. '
The whole gist of the Essay, however, so far as Shakespeare is
concerned, is summed up in the trite conclusion of the introduction,
'Nature and sentiment will pronounce our Shakespear a mighty
genius; judgment and taste will confess that, as a writer, he is far
from faultless. ' Her vindication of Shakespeare, it may at once
be admitted, was what a contemporary called it, “a work of
supererogation’; but the attack on the literary dictator of Europe,
even though, in its daring, it may suggest the proverb concerning
fools and angels, was at least, well-merited. In Paris, particularly,
when, five years later, the Essay was translated into French,
Voltaire's credit as an authority on Shakespeare was felt to be
seriously damaged. He had boasted that his translation of
Julius Caesar was 'the most faithful translation that can be, and
the only faithful one in the French language of any author, ancient
or modern. Such confidence invited attack, and Mrs Montagu fell
on his errors with a pitiless enjoyment that gives life and vigour to
this part of her destructive criticism. She points out that, in this
only faithful translation, Voltaire has utterly misread the meaning
of several words and phrases, and, with a relish sharpened by
indignation, her unsparing pen points out ‘the miserable mistakes
and galimathias of this dictionary work. ' After an attack on
Corneille, with whom Voltaire had compared Shakespeare, to
the disadvantage of the latter, she finally hopes that the many
gross blunders in this work will deter other beaux esprits from
attempting to hurt works of genius by the masked battery of
an unfair translation. '
The essay, though published anonymously, met with a flattering
reception. The Critical Review wrote of the author as 'almost
the only critic who has yet appeared worthy of Shakespeare,' and
most of the other reviews-save The Monthly Review, which
condemned the language of the Essay as affected—were, on the
whole, favourable. From the bluestocking circle, she received reams
of eulogy, and perhaps Johnson was the only dissentient in the
chorus of praise when he remarked to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'Sir,
it does her honour, but it would do nobody else honour. Modern
criticism agrees with Johnson, and the Essay is condemned as
'well-intentioned,. . . but feeble,' and quite without value in the
enormous bulk of Shakespeare criticism.
* History of Criticism, by Saintsbury, G. , vol. 11, p. 173.
23
a
E. L. XI.
CH. XV.


## p. 354 (#376) ############################################

354
[CH.
The Bluestockings
6
It brought her, however, a considerable measure of contem-
porary fame in England, and her bluestocking adherents were
proud of their 'queen’s' achievement in the world of letters.
‘She is the first woman for literary knowledge in England,' said
Mrs Thrale, while Fanny Burney wrote that the general plaudits
given to the book ‘mounted her. . . to the Parnassian heights of
female British literature. When, in 1776, she visited Paris she
had the satisfaction of finding her Essay well known, and herself
a celebrity. She was a welcome guest at many of the Parisian
salons, she adopted Parisian rouge, criticised French plays and
French acting with severity and, by a singular chance, her visit
coincided with the opening of the French academy on the
occasion when Voltaire's famous abusive Letter to the Academy
was read by d'Alembert. Shakespeare was again denounced in
language so unrestrained that even some of the forty, wrote Mrs
Montagu, shrugged their shoulders' and showed other strong
signs of disapprobation. At its conclusion, Suard said to her, Je
crois, Madame, que vous êtes un peu fâchée de ce que vous venez
d'entendre. Moi, Monsieur ! she replied, with her ever ready
wit, point du tout ! Je ne suis pas amie de Monsieur Voltaire.
Her bluestocking friends rather feared that her Parisian success
would unduly inflate her selfesteem. Mrs Delany wrote to
Mrs Boscawen a witty little sketch of her as Madame de Montagu,
to which Mrs Boscawen replied, “Much I fear that she will never
be Mrs Montagu, an English woman again ! ' However, their fears
were not realised. She came back to England and was soon her
former English self, something of a poseuse perhaps, a good deal
of an egotist, but always possessing such brilliant qualities of mind
and intellect, such a gift for steady friendship, that she remained
as firmly fixed as hitherto on her bluestocking throne, on which
she had still more than twenty years to reign.
6
But, of the members of the bluestocking circle none was more
‘darkly, deeply, beautifully blue' thán Mrs Elizabeth Carter, who,
though unmarried, took brevet rank as matron after the custom
of her day. She was the daughter of Nicholas Carter, perpetual
curate of a chapel at Deal, and one of the six preachers at Canter-
bury. As a first step in her education, she was sent to Canterbury
for a year to learn French in the house of a Huguenot refugee.
On her return home, she took lessons with her brothers in Latin,
Greek and Hebrew, but she acquired knowledge with such difficulty
1 Letters of Horace Walpole (1904), vol. ix, p. 444.


## p. 355 (#377) ############################################

Xv]
Elizabeth
Carter
355
6
that her father advised her to give up attempting the classical
languages. She continued, however, with dogged persistence.
She rose early, and, to keep her attention from flagging at night,
she took snuff, bound wet towels round her head and chewed
green tea and coffee. As a result of this undaunted plodding,
she gained so solid a knowledge of Greek that Johnson spoke
of her later as one of the best Greek scholars he had ever known.
By degrees, she added Italian, German, Portuguese and Arabic to
her languages. She was, at the same time, educating her young
step-brothers, one of whom was sent to Cambridge.
As a linguist, who spoke fluent French, who could write pure,
literary Italian, who, at need, could talk in Latin, who 'delighted'
in German, who knew something of Hebrew, Portuguese and
Arabic and who was among the best Greek scholars of her time,
her views on the study of languages are worth considering, parti-
cularly as they accord with some of the most modern and intelli-
gent methods of teaching in vogue today. She knew practically
nothing of Greek and Latin grammar, and used to speak of them,
says her biographer, 'with some degree of unmerited contempt. '
He hastens to explain that, as a science, she understood grammar,
but, he adds significantly, not as taught in schools. Her fine
intellect quickly discovered that the commonsense method of
acquiring a foreign language is identical with that of learning
one's own. A preliminary store of words and phrases must be
assimilated before grammar can be of use, and she regarded it
rather as a consequence of understanding the language, than as a
handmaid. . . . '
Though grammar was not, for her, an obstructive fetish in the
acquirement of a new language, she yet had a cultivated eye for
grammatical errors, and a fault that she had detected in a line of
Homer ‘kept her awake at night. At another time, she disputed
with archbishop Secker over the translation of two verses in
Corinthians, and, after consulting the original, the archbishop was
compelled to admit that “Madam Carter' was in the right.
She was introduced to Cave, of The Gentleman's Magazine, by
her father, and contributed verse to his magazine so early as her
seventeenth year. In 1738, he published for her a thin quarto of
twenty-four pages; poems that had been written before she was
twenty. Johnson, who was then doing hackwork for Cave, wrote
Greek and Latin epigrams on the author, to whom he had been
introduced by the publisher. At another time, he said that ‘Eliza'
ought to be celebrated in as many languages as Louis le Grand,
a
a
23-2


## p. 356 (#378) ############################################

356
[ch.
The Bluestockings
and, in proof of his high opinion of her abilities, he asked her to
contribute to his Rambler. Numbers 44 and 100 are hers; four
‘billets' in no. 10 are by Hester Mulso, afterwards Mrs Chapone,
and no. 30 is by Catherine Talbot, all accomplished ladies of the
bluestocking circle. Richardson the novelist, seeing Elizabeth
Carter's Ode to Wisdom in manuscript, printed it without
permission in Clarissa. Her remonstrance was the prelude to
an acquaintance with him, and she sometimes joined his 'flower-
garden of ladies' at North End, his petticoaterie, according to the
scoffing Walpole. It is said that he gravely consulted her on the
qualities that should distinguish the perfect man before he created
Sir Charles Grandison.
Her first serious effort in literature was Examination of
Mr Pope's Essay on Man, which she translated from the French
of Jean Pierre de Crousaz. It was thought that this might lead
to an acquaintance with Pope, and Sir George Oxenden warned
her father
that there is hardly an instance of a woman of letters entering into an
intimacy of acquaintance with men of wit and parts, particularly poets, who
were not thoroughly abused and maltreated by them in print. . . Mr Pope has
done it more than once l.
Shortly afterwards, she translated Algarotti's Newtonianismo per
le Dame into English, under the title, Sir Isaac Newton's Philo-
sophy explained for the use of the Ladies, in Six Dialogues on
Light and Colours. She was then twenty-two, and Thomas Birch
wrote of her as, “a very extraordinary phenomenon in the republic
of letters. ' Elizabeth Carter was not, by temperament, a literary
woman; her pleasure was in acquiring knowledge rather than in
giving it out. In all her studies—save that of German, perhaps,
which she began with the view of preparing herself for a place at
court-she had not, apparently, any ambition beyond her passion
for study. Even the great literary achievement of her life, the
translation of Epictetus, was made to oblige her friend Miss Talbot,
and was not, at first, intended for publication.
Catherine Talbot, with her mother, lived in the household of
bishop Secker and his wife. She was an accomplished woman, but she
did not read Greek, and, in 1743, she wrote to Mrs Carter that she
was 'vastly curious' to read those precepts of Epictetus that had
not been translated. It was not till 1749, however, that Elizabeth
Carter, to please her friend, began a rough translation of the work
that was to be the foundation of her modest fortune, as well as to
1 Memoirs of the Life of Mrs Elizabeth Carter, by Pennington, M. , vol. 1, p. 44.
1
1


## p. 357 (#379) ############################################

1
Xv]
Mrs Carter's Epictetus
357
6
a few
hu
add enormously to the fame she already enjoyed as the learned
Mrs Carter. These few pages were submitted to the bishop of
Oxford, who found the translation good. Its only fault, he said,
was its elegance of diction, that block of stumbling to many
eighteenth century writers. Epictetus, the bishop reminded her,
was a plain man, who spoke plainly, and the translation ought
to be less smooth to preserve the spirit of the original. When
Mrs Carter wrote back that she had some defence of her passion
for ornament,' the bishop replied grimly, “Why would you change
a plain, home-awakening preacher into a fine, smooth, polite writer
of what nobody will mind ? ' But Mrs Carter was not easily
persuaded to renounce the elegance of polite literature into
which she was transforming the Greek slave's trenchant exhorta-
tions. It was only after Miss Talbot added the weight of her
opinion, and wrote ‘I am much of my Lord's mind. . . for energy,
shortness and plainness,' that she was induced to put her transla-
tion into a more direct form. The bishop wrote a few pages as a
model of the rough almost literal translation which he advocated,
but perhaps he was a little chagrined at her obstinacy, for,
months later, she laments that 'Epictetus and I are miserable that
. . . my Lord had so inhumanly given us up to our own devices. '
Bishop Secker, however, gave her valuable help in correcting it,
devoting a whole month, when he was laid up with gout, to its
revision. It was he, probably, who, in 1753, suggested its publica-
tion, for, from that time, it was prepared for the press. When it
was at length finished, Miss Talbot urged her friend to collect
materials for the life of Epictetus, to be published with it, to
which Elizabeth replied: “Whoever that somebody or other is, who
is to write the life of Epictetus, seeing I have a dozen shirts to
make, I do opine, dear Miss Talbot, that it cannot be I. She,
however, added the Enchiridion and notes, at the bishop's sug-
gestion, and the whole was finished in 1756, just seven years after
it was begun.
In the work of correcting sheets for the press, bishop Secker
again gave ungrudging assistance; and, in one letter, we find her
thus whimsically adjured:
Do, dear Madam Carter, get yourself whipt, get yourself whipt. . . I know
you mean to be careful; but you cannot without this help. . . The first thing
I have cast my eyes upon is Epictetus for Epicurus. . .
Epictetus appeared before the public in 1758, and its success and
sale make it one of the minor romances of publishing. It was in
one volume, large quarto, and 1018 copies were struck off at first;
2


## p. 358 (#380) ############################################

358
[ch.
The Bluestockings
but, as these were insufficient, 250 more were printed a few months
later. It was issued by subscription, and the price was a guinea
in sheets. In her own copy were the names of no fewer than 1031
subscribers, and, since many copies were not claimed ‘by way of
compliment,' Mrs Carter gained nearly a thousand pounds profit.
Richardson's bill for printing the first impression amounted to
£67. 78. Two further editions were printed in her life-time, and,
for many years, it remained a good selling book at a high price.
Epictetus gained for its author a European reputation. So far
afield as Russia, where, said Elizabeth Carter, ‘they were only just
beginning to walk on their hind legs,' there appeared a notice of
the learned English woman, and she was told that the Tsarina had
read it through with high approbation. After its publication, she
was regarded by the bluestocking circle with something akin to
awe, and it is almost a relief to find her intimates, Mrs Montagu
and Miss Talbot, jestingly referring to her uncle Epictetus,' or
writing of her as 'cousin-german to Xenophon,' while Walpole,
with his facile talent for bestowing unchristian names, frequently
calls her Mrs Epictetus Carter.
After Epictetus, Mrs Carter did not write anything more for
publication, though, in 1762, Lord Bath persuaded her to publish
a small volume of poems that had been written at various times.
She gave such reluctant consent to this that Miss Talbot accused
her of thinking it ‘no small degradation from a quarto of Greek
Philosophy to dwindle into an eighteenpenny pamphlet of English
verse. The dedication was to the earl of Bath, and, writes her
biographer, 'is wholly unsullied by that flattery which is too often
a disgrace both to the author and the patron. But this praise is
somewhat discounted, when, on the next page, he quotes a letter
from Mrs Carter, indicating that Lord Bath wrote the dedication
himself!
For the remainder of her long life, Elizabeth Carter settled
down to the comfortable enjoyment of her fame on the modest
competence of which the profits from Epictetus were the foundation
Her influential friends invested this money profitably; and, some
years later, when Mrs Montagu inherited her husband's fortune,
she allowed her friend £100 a year. Lord Bath did not leave her
an annuity, according to the expectation of many of the blue-
stockings; but his heirs generously made good this deficiency by a
grant of £100 a year. During the summer months, she lived with
her father at Deal, or went on visits to her friends among the
great at their country houses. The winter she invariably spent in
1


## p. 359 (#381) ############################################

Xv]
Hannah More
359
London in handsome and comfortable apartments in Clarges street,
within easy distance of several of the bluestocking hostesses.
“She kept no table,' and never dined at home, except when ill, or
unable to go out. In the wide bluestocking circle, she was always
a welcome guest, and, not only did they invite her to their houses,
but they invariably sent for her their sedan chairs or carriages,
which again carried her back to Clarges street by ten o'clock
at the latest. She was, apparently, a sympathetic listener rather
than a talker, but she was always, to the end of her long life,
a notability in the inner circle of the bluestockings.
Di
Flot
The bluestocking, however, whose fame reached to the furthest
ends of the earth—though as a philanthropist rather than as
a blue—is Hannah More! When she first appeared in the blue-
stocking coteries, she had not yet become a passionate reformer, a
stern moralist, “the eminent divine,' as she was called in later years.
Her connection with the blues represents the 'gay and worldly'
side of her serious life. During her first winter among them she
was still in the twenties, and her hasty impressionist descriptions
of the literary society of London scintillate with the fresh enthusiasm
of a girl whose eyes and mind are slightly dazzled by unaccustomed
experiences. She was not unworthy to be admitted to the society
of those learned ladies and ingenious gentlemen. She spoke
fluent French, polished by conversation with some French officers
on parole, who often visited her home. Her father taught her
Latin, and some mathematics, though, frightened by her pre-
cocity, he did not take her far in the latter science. Her elder
sisters, not having any fortune in prospect, opened a boarding-
school at Bristol to which she was sent, at the age of twelve.
Later, like her four sisters, she taught in the school, assiduously
carrying on her own education at the same time. She studied
Latin, Italian and Spanish, improving her style by translations
and imitations of the Odes of Horace, and some of the dramatic
compositions of Metastasio.
Hannah More was a precocious child—a child who, indisputably,
was the mother of the woman. In youthful days, she would
treasure any stray scrap of paper on which she scribbled verses or
essays that were always adorned with a well directed moral. '
When her ardent wish took form in the shape of 'a whole quire
of paper to herself,' it was soon filled by the budding moralist with
supposititious letters to depraved characters, intended to reclaim
ZIE
1 See, also, ante, vol. x, chap. XI, pp. 267—8, and vol. xi, chap. XII.
711


## p. 360 (#382) ############################################

360
[CH.
The Bluestockings
them from their errors. The one romance of her life began when
she was twenty-two, and came to naught, though, indirectly, it
paved the way for her literary career. She was engaged to a
wealthy man of good position, the cousin of two of her pupils.
This gentleman named Turner is said to have had every good
quality to make marriage a success, save 'a cheerful and composed
temper,' and—still more important lack—the initial courage to
marry. Twice was the wedding-day fixed and postponed, when
Hannah, on the advice of her friends, determined not to be trifled
with any longer. Turner was repentant, but Hannah was inexor-
able. Finally, however, he insisted on settling on her an annuity
of £200, to compensate her for her great expense in preparing
to be the wife of a man of large fortune. This income per-
mitted her to devote her time to literary pursuits, though, when
she first visited London in 1774, she had not published anything
except a small play for schools, The Search after Happiness.
She was introduced to London society by one of those fortunate
events that suggest the guiding hand of destiny. She, with two
of her sisters, had not been in London a week when she wrote to a
friend describing her emotions at seeing Garrick as king Lear.
Her friend, who knew Garrick, showed him the letter, and, as the
actor was curious to see the young enthusiast, an introduction was
arranged. The day after this she was invited to the Garricks'
house to meet Mrs Montagu, and, as her biographer succinctly puts
it, ‘her introduction to the great, and the greatly endowed, was
sudden and general. ' Her portrait, painted some years later by
Opie, suggests a strong and pleasant personality, and one finds that,
wherever she was taken by the Garricks, she gravitated towards
people of high rank in intellect by a species of mental elective
affinity. She had long desired to see Johnson, but Sir Joshua
Reynolds, at whose house she met him, prepared her, as he 'handed
her
up the stairs,' for a mood of possible sadness and silence in the
great man. She was, however, fortunate enough to find him
advancing to meet her with good humour in his countenance, and
a macaw of Sir Joshua's in his hand,' while he gallantly greeted her
with a verse from a morning hymn of her own composition. Other
introductions speedily followed: to Edmund Burke, to bishop
Percy, the collector of the Reliques, who was 'quite a sprightly
modern, instead of a rusty antique,' and to other distinguished
members of the bluestocking coteries.
In the following year, 1775, Hannah again visited London in
February. This time, she dined at Mrs Montagu's, where she met
2


## p. 361 (#383) ############################################

xv]
Hannah
More and Cadell
361
6
6
Elizabeth Carter and Mrs Boscawen, the widow of the admiral.
The bluestocking parties were now at their zenith, and the clearcut
thumbnail sketches Hannah gives of the chief dramatis personae
are always vivid and lifelike. Of Mrs Montagu, she says,
She is not only the finest genius, but the finest lady I ever saw . . . she lives in
the highest style of magnificence . . . her form is delicate even to fragility . .