The Bluestocking Society, a Guest Post from Pamela Aidan

Today, we bring you the ever-fabulous Pamela Aidan, who is lending a helping hand to Barbara Cornthwaite.

What do you know of The Bluestocking Society?

Although there is no direct linkage known between Jane Austen and the women of the Bluestocking Society who preceded her by fifty or more years, there can be little doubt that there is some debt owed to this remarkable group of women.

The Bluestocking Society, so named for a male guest who could not afford the black silk stockings considered appropriate fashion but instead wore his every-day blue ones, began as literary breakfasts hosted by Elizabeth Montague, wife of a wealthy descendant of the Earl of Sandwich. By 1760, these had become evening assemblies held at Montague’s Hill Street residence and, by 1770, the premiere salon in London for witty conversation on literary and philosophical topics. The gatherings brought together a wide swath of society, including writers and artists, as well as many who were strong supporters of female education.

The eighteenth-century bluestocking circle included the poet and essayist Anna Letitia Barbauld; the poet and philosopher James Beattie; the diarist and biographer James Boswell; the politician and author Edmund Burke; the writers Frances Burney and Hannah More; the poet, translator, and writer Elizabeth Carter; the essayist Hester Chapone, author of Letters on the Improvement of the Mind (1773); the actor and playwright David Garrick; the playwright Elizabeth Griffith; the author and lexicographer Samuel Johnson; the artists Angelica Kauffman and Joshua Reynolds; the novelist Charlotte Lennox; the historian Catharine Macaulay; the writer Elizabeth Montagu, author of Essay on Shakespeare; the singer and author Elizabeth Ann Sheridan (nee Linley); and the diarist Hester Thrale. The circle was celebrated in Richard Samuel’s well-known painting, Portraits in the Characters of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo (1778), which featured a group image of nine women portrayed as the classical muses.

The women who composed the core of the Bluestocking Society also wrote in their own rights, whether as novelists, playwrights, literary critics, essayists, or diarists and were models for later women writers and scholars. All of the women, whether from well-to-do backgrounds or not, “struggled for the right to be both clever and feminine.” (Joan Smith, “Blues Sisters,” New Statesman, 13 March 2008).  These “circles of intellectual women used friendship, patronage and a talent for PR to overcome ridicule and subvert the restrictions placed on them.” (Amanda Vickery. “Not Just A Pretty Face”, The Guardian, 8 March 2008.

History, though, has not been kind, and the names of most of these extremely talented woman have faded into obscurity. Even modern feminism is not sympathetic, for the strides they made are not seen as long enough nor some of the views and beliefs they had as modern enough to celebrate. I hope I have piqued your interest in these literary antecedents of Jane Austen and will offer more on one in particular next month.

To give you a hint of the talent in store, here are some lines from Hannah More’s poem Bas-Blue. They certainly seem echoed in Austen’s works and may remind readers of certain Austen characters:

    Where the dire Circle keeps its station,
        Each common phrase is an oration;
        And cracking fans, and whisp’ring Misses,
        Compose their Conversation blisses.
        The matron marks the goodly show,
105  While the tall daughter eyes the Beau–
        The frigid Beau! Ah! luckless fair,
        ‘Tis not for you that studied air;
        Ah! not for you that sidelong glance,
        And all that charming nonchalance;
110  Ah! not for you the three long hours
        He worshipp’d the Cosmetic powers;
        That finish’d head which breathes perfume,
        And kills the nerves of half the room;
        And all the murders meant to lie
115  in that large, languishing, grey eye;
        Desist:–less wild th’ attempt would be,
        To warm the snows of Rhodope:
        Too cold to feel, too proud to feign,
        For him you’re wise and fair in vain;
120  In vain to charm him you intend,
        Self is his object, aim, and end.
        Chill shade of that affected Peer,
        Who dreaded Mirth, come safely here!
        For here no vulgar joy effaces
125  Thy rage for polish, ton, and graces. 

Pamela Aidan grew up in small towns in southeast Pennsylvania but found her heart’s home in the Pacific Northwest, where she lives with her husband and a feisty miniature Australian Shepherd named Sassy.