FOOTNOTES:

"If their desires are strong, and nature free,Keep from her man and opportunity,Else 'twill be vain to curb her by restraint;But keep the question off, you keep the saint."

"If their desires are strong, and nature free,

Keep from her man and opportunity,

Else 'twill be vain to curb her by restraint;

But keep the question off, you keep the saint."

Everything should be done to render intriguing dangerous, if not impossible. The building should be of three plain fronts, "that theeye might at a glance see from one coin to the other, the gardens walled in the same triangular figure, with a large moat and but one entrance." But the restraint would be only relative, for only those were to be admitted into the seclusion of the college who were willing to live there, and even they were not to be confined a moment longer than the same voluntary choice inclined them.

Defoe realised that upon an absolute separation from the opposite sex depended the success of his undertaking. We seem to be listening to Lilia in Tennyson'sPrincesssaying: "But I would make it death for any male thing but to peep at us", when Defoe pleads the advisability of an act of parliament making it "felony for any man to enter by force or fraud into the house, or to solicit any woman though it were to marry, while she was in the house." Any woman willing to receive the advances of a suitor, might leave the establishment, whilst those anxious to "discharge themselves of impertinent addresses" would be sure at any time to find a refuge in it.

The plan of instruction is made relative to the natural inclinations of the sex. An important place is to be given to music and dancing, "because they are their darlings", and to foreign languages, particularly French and Italian, "and I would venture the injury of giving a woman more tongues than one." Books are recommended, especially on historical subjects, to make them understand the world, nor are "the graces of speech", and "the necessary air of conversation" forgotten, in which the usual education was so defective.

In the solution he proposes to the problem of female erudition, Defoe was equally effective. He recognises that it will not do to fit all women into a universal harness. Allowance must be made for individuality. "To such whose genius would lead them to it" he would deny no sort of learning. He is even roused to an ecstatic pitch of enthusiasm by the contemplation of the ideal female which his imagination conjures up before his mind's eye. "Without partiality; a woman of sense and manners is the finest and most delicate part of God's creation, the glory of her Maker, and the great instance of his singular regard to man, his darling creature, to whom he gave the best gift either God could bestow or man receive", to which he adds that education may make of any woman "a creature without comparison, whose society is the emblem of sublime enjoyments." God has given to all mankind souls equally capable, and the entire difference between the sexes proceeds "either from accidental differences in the make of their bodies, or from the foolish differenceof education." And Defoe winds up with the bold assertion that all the world are mistaken in their practice about women, "for I cannot think that God Almighty ever made them such delicate and glorious creatures, and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind, with souls capable of the same accomplishments with men, and only to be stewards of our houses, cooks and slaves."

In direct opposition to the opinion of the Dean of St. Patrick's, holding women to be the main cause of their own depravity and endowing them with a very limited share of intelligence rendering them forever inferior to men, stand out the views of at least one individual member of the sex. While fully sharing Swift's disapproval of the actual condition of women, she felt more inclined to follow Defoe in blaming the other half of mankind for refusing them every opportunity to show their possibilities. The tyranny of the male sex aroused the burning indignation of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose feelings found vent both in her voluminous correspondence and in her, mostly occasional, poetry. She was most vehement in her denunciation of the treatment of married women by their husbands, which she made an argument against matrimony, and in favour of the virginal state, which at least ensured to women a certain amount of freedom and leisure. "Wife and servant are the same, but only differ in the name", and accordingly women are exhorted to "shun that wretched state, and all the fawning flatt'rers hate."[24]She did not, like Swift, believe in the moral superiority of man, and called marriage "a lottery, where there is (at the lowest computation) ten thousand blanks to a prize." Being all her life a furious reader, she had in her earliest years imbibed the romantic notions of d'Urfé'sAstréeand of de Scudéry's long-winded romances ofCyrusandClélie, causing her to deeply regret the utter loss of that platonic ideal of gallantry with its tendency to elevate the mind and to instil honourable sentiments which had so charmed her hours of meditation. In spite of the fact that her passion for literature met with little or no encouragement, and that her own education had been, according to her own statement[25]"one of the worst in the world"—being an exact parallel to that of which the unfortunate Clarissa Harlowe became the much-lamented victim—her erudition was such, that Pope—previous to their quarrel, when he said some very nasty things about her—playfully wondered what punishment might be in store for one who, notcontent, like Eve, with a single apple, "had robbed the whole tree".

Her own marriage to Mr. Edward Wortley Montagu was hardly a success. His diplomatic career, however, gave his wife the much wished-for opportunity to cultivate her understanding by means of foreign travel. As a result of her experiences at Constantinople she was enabled on the one hand to furnish the medical science with the means of successfully combating that most destructive disease: the smallpox, and on the other to enrich literature with a correspondence which bespeaks a profound knowledge of the world, combined with great sagacity and a wonderful discriminating power, and cannot fail to charm even the modern reader with the freshness and variety of its descriptions. Both style and descriptive manner show a pronounced resemblance to Mary Wollstonecraft's "Letters from Sweden", written nearly eighty years later. A preface to Lady Mary's Letters, which were not published until her death, was written in 1724 by Mrs. Astell, who certainly did not deserve the description given of her by the first editor of the Letters as "the fair and elegant prefacer", being "a pious, exemplary woman, and a profound scholar, but as far from fair and elegant as any old schoolmaster of her time."[26]Her friendship for Lady Mary found its origin in the circumstance that she saw in the latter's talents the conclusive evidence of that mental equality of the sexes which she made it her business to demonstrate. "I confess I am malicious enough to desire that the world should see to how much better purpose the Ladies travel than their Lords; and that, whilst it is surfeited with male travels all in the same tone, and stuffed with the same trifles, a lady has the skill to strike out a new path and to embellish a worn-out subject with variety of fresh and elegant entertainment." That this praise is—at least partly—due to considerations of feminism, appears from the following verses:

"Let the male authors with an envious eyePraise coldly, that they may the more decry;Women (at least I speak the sense of some)This little spirit of rivalship o'ercome.I read with transport, and with joy I greetA genius so sublime, and so complete,And gladly lay my laurels at her feet."

"Let the male authors with an envious eye

Praise coldly, that they may the more decry;

Women (at least I speak the sense of some)

This little spirit of rivalship o'ercome.

I read with transport, and with joy I greet

A genius so sublime, and so complete,

And gladly lay my laurels at her feet."

Lady Mary on her part wrote an "Ode to Friendship", addressed toMrs. Mary Astell. She also sympathised with the latter's scheme for the establishment of a convent. She thought that a safe retreat might be preferable to a show of public life. Her friend Lady Stafford once said of her that her true vocation was a monastery, and we have Lady Mary's own evidence where, approving of a project of an English monastery in "Sir Charles Grandison", she confesses that it was one of the favourite schemes of her early youth to get herself elected lady-abbess. This intellectual propensity—for what appealed to her most in the scheme was the indefinite leisure to be devoted to studies—pervades all her writings, and throws further light upon her disinclination to the matrimonial state and her recluse habits.

Lady Mary's social career came to a sudden close when in 1739 her declining health made it advisable for her to leave England for the sunny skies of northern Italy, where she remained till the year before her death. To this period belong her chief contributions to the Woman Question, contained in her correspondence with her daughter the Countess of Bute, and giving her views of the position of women, elicited by certain remarks on the education of her little granddaughter. The circumstances under which this correspondence was carried on bear a close resemblance to Mme de Sévigné's when writing to her daughter Mme de Grignan her excellent advice regarding the education of little Pauline de Simiane. From what has already been said it may be readily concluded that the principal of Lady Mary's grievances against the existing system was not that women were not allowed their share of political and social power,—for she felt no difficulty in entrusting the male sex with those duties which would have kept her from her favourite pursuit—but rather that they should be purposely and systematically debarred from studies and kept in ignorance. But she was wise in avoiding all generalisation and recommending the consideration of each individual case by itself and for its own sake, since what might suit one woman might prove a source of misery to another.

When her own daughter had been young, the fact that she was likely to attract the highest offers had made it necessary that she should learn to live in the world, for which very few intellectual qualifications were then needed. But her granddaughter's chances of a brilliant match were considerably less, and so she ought to be taught how to be perfectly easy out of the world, in that retirement which Lady Mary herself preferred to the social state. Thus, a new element is added to the arguments in favour of liberal instruction, which isto be a pleasure rather than a task, with no more important background than the providing of a substitute for social intercourse to those whose circumstances prevent them from occupying a place in social circles. And it is clearly the mother's task to talk over with her daughter what the latter may have read, that she may not "mistake pert folly for wit and humour, or rhyme for poetry, which are the common errors of young people, and have a train of ill consequences."

The moral education which she recommends for her granddaughter is rather slight, and based chiefly on the negative principle—which we have also found in Fénelon and other French moralists—of keeping the mind occupied as a means of preventing idleness, which is the mother of mischief. Learning,—which modesty would have them carefully conceal, for ignorance is bold, and true knowledge reserved—will tend to make women less deceitful instead of more so, and as the same lessons will form the same characters, there is no reason to "place women in an inferior rank to men."

Lady Mary thus declared her belief in the equality of the sexes, but she has not enough of the social leaven in her to make any definite claim for her sex. She is rather an isolated specimen of womanhood, serving as a proof of the capacities of some exceptional women, than a fighter for female rights. Her intellectual and literary powers were of a critical and satirical rather than a creative nature. That she was among the very first women to possess the critical faculty in an eminent degree, appears from the clever criticism of contemporary fiction with which her correspondence abounds, and which makes her the forerunner of her husband's relative of Bluestocking fame. She was sufficiently independent in her judgment to disagree with the general opinion of Richardson's novels, without being able to remain uninfluenced by his pathos. "I heartily despise him, and eagerly read him, nay, sob over his works in a most scandalous manner." This merely because of the parallel some of the heroine's circumstances afforded to those of her own youth, for neither Miss Howe nor even Clarissa herself found favour in her eyes. She was one of the very few readers of Richardson who saw the faultiness of the moral of bothPamelaandClarissa Harlowe, considering them "to be two books that will do more general mischief than the works of Lord Rochester." Her sound common sense made her heartily despise any excess of that sensibility which Richardson's works fostered. Her verdict ofSir Charles Grandisonwas even more crushing. "His conduct (towards Clementina) puts me in mind of some ladiesI have known who could never find out a man to be in love with them, let him do or say what he would, till he made a direct attempt, and then they were so surprised, I warrant you! nor do I approve Sir Charles's offered compromise (as he calls it). There must be a great indifference to religion on both sides, to make so strict a union as marriage tolerable between people of such distinct persuasions. He seems to think women have no souls, by agreeing so easily that his daughters should be educated in bigotry and idolatry."

In her love of learning, and more still in her keen literary judgment Lady Mary foreshadowed the coming of the Bluestockings, whom her total lack of sociability would have forever prevented her from joining.

FOOTNOTES:[15]"The World's Olio" (1655) contains an essay on "The Inferiority of Woman, morally and physically".[16]See Forsyth,Novels and Novelists of the Eighteenth Century, pp. 18-24.[17]Letter 126.[18]Letter 298.[19]Letter 76.[20]Letter 481.[21]Letter 78.[22]Letter 124.[23]The above statement may at first sight seem rather too sweeping. But it is supported by the authority of Mary Astell (cf. page 90), who in her "Serious Proposal to the Ladies" remarks that it was generally considered quite unnecessary to waste money on the education of daughters. Most parents, she says, "took as much pains to beat girls away from knowledge as to beat boys towards it". She was quite aware that her scheme for the establishment of a nunnery in which the daughters of the aristocracy were to be saved from neglect must be shocking to the parents of her generation, who feared that such an education might in all probability corrupt their morals(!) and would certainlyprevent them from marrying. In this lies the gist of all deliberate discouragement of female learning. The only object in a girl's life being to make a suitable match,—meaning a wealthy one,—it followed that everything was subordinated to this consideration. And it unfortunately happened that the men of the century preferred their partners in wedlock silly and ignorant, and consequently easy-going and submissive.At one time Mary Astell's scheme came very near to realisation. The devout, intellectual and wealthy Lady Elizabeth Hastings became interested in it and declared herself willing to supply the necessary funds. But it so happened that Bishop Burnet heard of the plan and of the promised donation. A scheme for a rational education for girls struck this conservative churchman as so absurd that in his Anglican hatred of Catholicism he rather irrelevantly referred to it as "a popish project", using all his influence to divert Lady Elizabeth's charity, in which effort he was completely successful.[24]A Caveat to the Fair Sex.[25]Letterto the Countess of Bute, March 6, 1753.[26]"Introductory Anecdotes" to Lord Wharncliffe's Edition of the Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Paris, 1837).

[15]"The World's Olio" (1655) contains an essay on "The Inferiority of Woman, morally and physically".

[16]See Forsyth,Novels and Novelists of the Eighteenth Century, pp. 18-24.

[17]Letter 126.

[18]Letter 298.

[19]Letter 76.

[20]Letter 481.

[21]Letter 78.

[22]Letter 124.

[23]The above statement may at first sight seem rather too sweeping. But it is supported by the authority of Mary Astell (cf. page 90), who in her "Serious Proposal to the Ladies" remarks that it was generally considered quite unnecessary to waste money on the education of daughters. Most parents, she says, "took as much pains to beat girls away from knowledge as to beat boys towards it". She was quite aware that her scheme for the establishment of a nunnery in which the daughters of the aristocracy were to be saved from neglect must be shocking to the parents of her generation, who feared that such an education might in all probability corrupt their morals(!) and would certainlyprevent them from marrying. In this lies the gist of all deliberate discouragement of female learning. The only object in a girl's life being to make a suitable match,—meaning a wealthy one,—it followed that everything was subordinated to this consideration. And it unfortunately happened that the men of the century preferred their partners in wedlock silly and ignorant, and consequently easy-going and submissive.At one time Mary Astell's scheme came very near to realisation. The devout, intellectual and wealthy Lady Elizabeth Hastings became interested in it and declared herself willing to supply the necessary funds. But it so happened that Bishop Burnet heard of the plan and of the promised donation. A scheme for a rational education for girls struck this conservative churchman as so absurd that in his Anglican hatred of Catholicism he rather irrelevantly referred to it as "a popish project", using all his influence to divert Lady Elizabeth's charity, in which effort he was completely successful.

At one time Mary Astell's scheme came very near to realisation. The devout, intellectual and wealthy Lady Elizabeth Hastings became interested in it and declared herself willing to supply the necessary funds. But it so happened that Bishop Burnet heard of the plan and of the promised donation. A scheme for a rational education for girls struck this conservative churchman as so absurd that in his Anglican hatred of Catholicism he rather irrelevantly referred to it as "a popish project", using all his influence to divert Lady Elizabeth's charity, in which effort he was completely successful.

[24]A Caveat to the Fair Sex.

[25]Letterto the Countess of Bute, March 6, 1753.

[26]"Introductory Anecdotes" to Lord Wharncliffe's Edition of the Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Paris, 1837).

"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 retiredinto 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 influenceof 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 thancosmopolitans. 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 termpersiflage, 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 onto 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 assembliesin 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 wouldhave 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 convincedon rational groundsof 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 theirexclusion at the Bluestocking assemblies left the field to literary conversation. Philanthropy, or active benevolence, was practised instead, and the light moralising tendencies of theSpectatorenlistened 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'sLettersinsist 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 ofopinion, 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'sEmile, 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 theRamblerin 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 solepurpose of conversation, and were different in no respect from other parties, but that the company didnotplay 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 ofEvelina, 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 theDead"—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'sDiaryrelates 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 sameDiarymakes mention (in 1782) of the verses published by the author's father—Dr. Burney—in theHerald, making women the object of praise instead ofblame 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'sDiary, 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 shinepar excellencewas 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 andfine 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'sFemmes Savantesand 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 aBluestocking 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 byCumberland in theObserverof 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 "ina 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 stateddays, 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 "DeadDialogues". 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 explainsin 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 modernfiction, 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. InClarissa Harlowe"one finds the dignity of heroism tempered by the meekness and humility of religion, a perfect purity of mind and sanctity of manners", andSir Charles Grandisonis "a noble pattern of every private virtue, with sentiments so exalted as to render him equal to every public duty." Next toRichardson, 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.

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