[163] Works of Saint Évremond, English translation, 2d edition, London 1728; 2. 247.
[164] Ib. 2. 299.
[165] Her beauty was celebrated by Waller in The Triple Combat. Lely painted her portrait.
[166] See Dr. Upham’s ‘English Femmes Savantes at the End of the Seventeenth Century,’ in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, April 1913. This is a fairly exhaustive treatment of the subject, and reveals a development of ‘feminism’ in England parallel in some respects with that in France. As the movement, however, reveals no attempt to centre literary activity in salons, the article must be regarded as treating a different aspect of the general subject from the one here dealt with.
[167] So Madame du Deffand told Walpole. Walpole’s Letters 10. 28.
[168] Guests were not necessarily received in the sleeping-room. The adjoining dressing-room was often utilized for the purpose. See Colman’s Man of Business (1774), opening of Act 2. The levee should be compared with Mme. de Rambouillet’s more intimate receptions, where a seat near the bedside, in the ruelle or lane between bed and wall, was the place of honour, as being nearest to the hostess while she reclined in state.
Morning informality became so popular in Paris that ladies and gentlemen of quality appeared at lectures, ‘même en robe de chambre’ (Roberts’ Memoirs of Hannah More 2. 17). Cf. Goldsmith (Citizen of the World, Letter 77), ‘the modern manner of some of our nobility receiving company in their morning gowns.’
[169] As early as the days of the Spectator, Addison deplored the custom, introduced by travelled ladies, of ‘receiving gentlemen in their bed-rooms.’
[170] Probably, as Hill notes, Mme. de Boufflers; cf. above, p. 53.
[171] Boswell’s Life 2. 118; cf. 3. 207.