Bluestockings: cultured, literary women!

A Bluestocking was a mid C18th intellectual woman with strong scholarly or literary interests. A group was founded to dis­cuss the arts,  started by two high society ladies in Britain: heiress Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800) and intellectual Elizabeth Vesey (c1715–91). Mrs Vesey organised the first functions in Bath. It wasn’t until she moved to London that any competitive­ness developed between them.

Portraits of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo (above)

by Richard Samuel, 1778 132 x 155 cm, Nat Portrait Gall 

Their London salon was for intelligent discussion over tea; a change from the endless card games and harmless flirtation that was the norm for mixed-gender high society gatherings. Worse was when women had been limited to gossip and embroidery, while the men sat in the study and discussed poetry and politics.

There were challenging female brains in those early gatherings, more than equal to male intelligence, including linguist-classicist Elizabeth Carter, novelist Fanny Burney, courtier-diarist Mary Hamilton, Hester Chap­one, Mary Monck­ton and playwright and anti-slavery campaigner Hannah More. Montagu patronised a number of authors, including Anna Barbauld, Sarah Fielding, James Beattie and Anna Williams. Samuel Johnson's hostess, Hester Thrale, was also an occasional visitor to Hill Street. Elizabeth Montagu was not the dominant blue stocking personality, but she was the woman of the greatest means. It was her house and power that made the society possible.

Here is a story I DID know. When Vesey invited the learned Benjamin Stilling­fleet (1702–71) to one of her parties, he declined because he lacked appropriate dress. So she told him to come in the ordinary blue worsted stockings he was wear­ing. He agreed, and Bluestocking society became the group’s nickname. The bluestocking women, also in their ordinary blue woollen legwear, “enjoyed society in undress”; it created informality and equalitarianism at their salons.

But the Venetians used blue stockings first.  In the 1400s they had an elite salon called della calza for their fancy leg wear. And the Parisian Bas Bleu-bluestocking label emerged in the 1500s for groups of French literary women. So the Georgians were clearly quoting a European heritage of learned gath­er­ings in their name.

And another thing. The Society’s members were not all wealthy or aristocratic. Novel­ist Fanny Burney worked as Keeper of the Robes for Queen Charlotte. Poet-essayist Anna Laetitia Barbauld had worked as a housekeeper at Palgrave Academy Suffolk. Hester Chapone was the writer daughter of a farmer who later married a solic­it­or. By 1770, her home on Hill St London had become the premiere salon. 

Nonetheless these women held salons to which they invited men of letters, and members of the aristocracy with literary interests: David Garrick, Earl of Bath, Lord Lyttleton, man of letters Horace Walpole, artist Sir Joshua Reynolds, philosopher Edmund Burke, author Dr Samuel Johnson and biogr­apher James Boswell.

The original bluestocking salons launched similar social gather­ings across London and then across Britain. Poet-playwright Hannah More published her poem Bas Bleu Con­versation in 1786, in homage to the soirees. Her use of “bas bleu” in the title was a nod to the scholar­ship of the circle. The group was a support network for women scholars and artists i.e an informal university.

Luckily the patrician bluestockings pack­aged their “female social rebellion” as an el­eg­ant balance between fashion and learning. The first bluestockings were seen as Georgian ideals of feminine sophistic­ation and virtue. The artist Richard Samuel (see above) painted the or­iginal Portraits in the Characters of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo in 1778, hoping to capture the public imagination. So successful was his ploy that it became a popular print, depicting the women sacrificing to the goddess Britannia in lieu of Apollo. NB the print featured in a famous pocket diary in 1778, to inspire women to write down their own musings.

At first it was a great publicity campaign, sweeping in the idea of stylish female learning at a time when wom­en had no rights to money or property, and were effect­ively a servant class to men.

Then, as the American War of Independence (1775–83) and the French Revolution (1789-99) made the idea of egalitarian learning more dang­er­ous than sexy in the late C18th, the bluestockings faced attacks. Few people wanted these women forgetting their rightful place. Montagu was satirised by Lord Byron as the ridiculous Lady Bluebottle in his 1821 Literary Eclogue. Byron laughed at best-selling poetess Felicia Dorothea Hemans, suggesting she should ‘knit bluestockings instead of wearing them.’

Criticism
Admiral Edward Boscawen scorned his wife’s literary pretens­ions. Mrs Frances Evelyn Boscawen neé Glanville had been a popular Blue Stockings Society hostess and elegant letter writer. Thomas Rowlandson’s 1815 cartoon “Breaking Up of the Blue Stocking Club” depicted screaming harridans attacking each other, grabbing hair and ripping clothes, with tea cups flying. And French sat­irical cartoonist Honoré Daumier attacked across the Channel with his etchings of grotesque women scholars, Les Bas Bleus, and targeted liberated femmes eg novelist George Sand.

But it wasn’t only savage men. Blue­stocking Fanny Burney wrote her first play The Witlings about pretentious women patr­ons of the arts. The satire was to be staged by Sher­idan at Drury Lane, but she withdrew it before it got her into trouble with Montagu. Depictions of unfeminine blue­stockings became more sinister eg the character of mannish feminist Harriet Freke was based on radical writer Mary Wollstonecraft, in Maria Edgeworth’s 1811 novel Belinda.

Not surprisingly it was sex that damaged the bluestockings in the end. Catharine Macaul­ay’s radical 8-volume History of England, arguing for democ­ratic republic to replace monarchy, made the Establishment bring her down. But she was ridiculed for her scandalous private life filled with inappropriate partners!

Bluestockings Displayed: Portraiture, Performance and Patronage 1730–1830 

by Elizabeth Eger (ed)

Macauley’s scandalous sexual antics weren’t innocent; they were as political a state­ment as her writing. She considered it an outrage that virtue in a woman meant only one thing: chastity. Mary Wollstone­craft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, agreed with her, and lived out her own life with even less approval. Imagine her radicalism, passionate female friendships, love affairs, illegitimate child and suicide attempts. Far from embracing her as a role model, C19th suff­ragettes felt obliged to ignore her.

Mostly the participants discussed books and ideas, but sometimes they debated political controv­ers­ies! Perhaps it was too much when women went from national treas­ures to dangerous rebels. Within a decade, bluestocking gatherings launched radical political thinkers who spoke out ahead of their time for the equality, liberty and soc­ial justice. Women who consequently got themselves ostracised and denigrated fuelled the backlash that transformed the label bluestocking from an affectionate nickname into an insult. 

Enjoy Bluestockings Displayed: Portraiture, Performance and Patronage 1730–1830 by Elizabeth Eger ed, Cambridge UP, 2013. And thank you to  The Bluestockings Circle at the National Portrait Gallery.