The district around Berkeley Square, Hay Hill, Hill Street, etc., continued to be a dangerous district. Lord Cathcart, in an unpublished letter to his son William, dated December, 1774, affords an instance of the peril which people ran on their way to the houses of Mrs. Montagu, Lady Clermont, Lady Brown, and other residents of that neighbourhood. Lord Cathcart tells his son, that as his sisters and Mr. Graham (afterward Lord Lyndoch) were going to Lady Brown’s, in a coach, they were attacked by footpads on Hay Hill. One opened the door and demanded the company’s money. The future Lord Lyndoch showed the stuff of which that gallant soldier was made. He upset the robber who addressed them, then jumped out and secured him. The confederate took to his heels.
One night in the autumn of 1776, the house in Hill Street was crowded. The French ambassador and Mme. de Noailles were there, but the hero of the night was Garrick, who electrified his audience by reciting scenes from Macbeth and Lear. “Though they had heard so much of you,” Mrs. Montagu wrote to Roscius, “they had not the least idea such things were within the compass of art and nature. Lady Spencer’s eyes were more expressive than any human language.... She amazed them with telling them how you could look like a simpleton in Abel Drugger, had many comic arts equally surprising, when murderous daggers and undutiful daughters were out of the question.” Mme. de Noailles was so profuse, as she descended the stairs, in thanks for the great intellectual enjoyment, that Mrs. Montagu was afraid she would forget herself, and, by a false step, break her neck. She fervently hoped, too, that Garrick had not caught cold by going out into the air, “when warmed with that fire of genius which animated every look and gesture.”
In March, 1779, Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale: “On Monday, I came late to Mrs. Vesey. Mrs. Montagu was there. I called for the print” (of Mrs. Montagu, in the costume of Anne Boleyn) “and had good words. The evening was not brilliant but I had thanks for my company.” In October of the same year, Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale: “I have been invited twice to Mrs. Vesey’s conversation, but have not gone.”
Johnson has described a scene at one of the Bluestocking assemblies (Mrs. Ord’s) where, as he wrote to Mrs. Thrale: “I met one Mrs. Buller, a travelled lady of great spirit and some consciousness of her own abilities. We had a contest of gallantry an hour long, so much to the diversion of the company, that at Ramsay’s, last night, in a crowded room, they would have pitted us again. There were Smelt, and the Bishop of St. Asaph, who comes to every place, and Lord Monboddo, and Sir Joshua, and ladies out of tale.” On another night he was at Miss Monkton’s, the then young lady who many may remember as the old and eccentric Lady Cork. Mr. Langton, in a letter to Boswell, thus paints the groups of Bluestockings at the house of the lady who shared with Mrs. Montagu the glory of being their founder: “The company consisted chiefly of ladies, among whom were the Dowager Duchess of Portland, the Duchess of Beaufort, whom, I suppose from her rank, I must name before her mother, Mrs. Boscawen, and her eldest sister, Mrs. Lewson, who was likewise there, Lady Lucan, Lady Clermont, and others of note, both for their station and understandings. Amongst other gentlemen were Lord Althorp, Lord Macartney, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lord Lucan, Mr. Wraxall (whose book you have probably seen, the ‘Tour to the Northern Parts of Europe,’ a very agreeable, ingenious man), Dr. Warren, Mr. Pepys the master in chancery, and Dr. Barnard the Provost of Eton. As soon as Dr. Johnson had come in and had taken the chair, the company began to collect round him till they became not less than four, if not five, deep, those behind standing and listening over the heads of those that were sitting near him. The conversation for some time was between Dr. Johnson and the Provost of Eton, while the others contributed occasionally their remarks.” How well Mrs. Montagu could converse, Johnson has portrayed in a few comprehensive words to Mrs. Thrale: “Mrs. Montagu is par pluribus. Conversing with her, you may find variety in one.” These assemblies were miscalled and sneered at only by the blockheads. Walpole was scarcely sincere when he affected to laugh at them. He not only attended them, but stirred others to do so. Four years after this, he writes to Hannah More: “When will you blue stocking yourself and come among us?”
In 1781, Hannah More took the Bluestockings for a theme for her sprightly little poem, which she entitled “Bas Bleu,” and dedicated to Mrs. Vesey. In a few introductory words, the author explained the origin and character of the assemblies to which the well-known epithet was given. “Those little societies have been sometimes misrepresented. They were composed of persons distinguished in general for their rank, talents, or respectable character, who were frequently at Mrs. Vesey’s and a few other houses, for the sole purpose of conversation, and were different in no respect from other parties, but that the company did not play at cards.”
Hannah More describes the hours she passed at these parties as “pleasant and instructive.” She states that she found there learning without pedantry, good taste without affectation, and conversation without calumny, levity, or any censurable error.
From the following lines, the names of the founders of the new assemblies may be learnt. Their object was to rescue—
“... Society o’errun
By Whist, that desolating Hun;”
and from despotic Quadrille, the “Vandal of colloquial wit.” Three ladies, according to Hannah More, effected the reformation.