Miss Seward modifies Walpole’s satirical account without disturbing the main facts. She adds, with reference to the volumes of these prize poems then published: “The profits have been applied to the benefit of a charity at Bath, so that Lady Miller’s institute” (her husband had been knighted) “was not only calculated to awaken and cultivate ingenuity, but to serve the purposes of benevolence and charity.” Walpole suppressed the fact that any one profited by the assemblies at Lady Miller’s, of whom and of whose husband who presumed to have Walpole’s predilection for virtu, Horace says: “They make themselves completely ridiculous, which is a pity, as they are good-natured, well-meaning people.”
Some fine spirits contributed to the Batheaston vase, and their contributions, for which the writers generally had a fortnight’s notice,—the one theme being given to all competitors,—are often marked by power, grace, fancy, and, in the comic pieces, rough humour. On one occasion, some scandalous verses were dropped into the vase, the reading of which in the very first lines called up blushes on the cheeks of the modest, and caused suspicion to rest on the rather audacious Christopher Anstey. “An enemy hath done this,” was the sum of the general comment. Lady Miller’s death soon followed. Miss Seward has generously spoken of her really intellectual friend, though she begins with a curious figure of speech. “Lady Miller,” she says, “was surrounded by a hornet’s nest,” which was, as she goes on to state in more common sense style, “composed of those who were disappointed in their expectations of being summoned to her intellectual feast, and of others whose rhyming offerings could neither obtain the wreath, nor be admitted to a place in her miscellany. ‘Who knows not the active malice of wounded vanity to blot the fairest worth and blast the brightest fame?’ From its venom, excellence cannot even find repose in the grave, and it never fails to descend upon those who dare defend the claims of the deceased.”
Reference has been made, in a previous page (see p. 46) to Boswell’s error in stating that the Bluestocking Clubs were originally established about this time, 1781, when Hannah More was writing of them as institutions, the chief members of which had already passed away. The amiable philosopher and thoroughly honest, modest, and accomplished man, Benjamin Stillingfleet (the grandson of the bishop), from whom they are supposed to derive their name, had been dead ten years. In his early days, he made the ascent of Mont Blanc; his last were spent in Kensington Barracks, where his salary as barrack-master satisfied his wants and left him wherewith to help those who were in need. He contributed toward the social reform commenced by Johnson, Miss Mulso (Chapone), and Mrs. Montagu in 1750, a poem on “Conversation.” It rings with echoes of Pope, and lays down some very excellent rules that, implicitly followed, would make conversation impossible. Boswell refers to Hannah More’s poem on the Bluestockings without noticing her record that so many of the persons named in it were then dead. The institution, in fact, was in “the sere, the yellow leaf,” and one, at least, of its old leaders was weary. In 1782, when Mrs. Montagu was established in her palace (as Wraxall says the Italians would call, and as many English people did call, it), in Portman Square, her assemblies were more crowded than ever. She herself, queening it beneath the ceiling painted by Angelica Kaufmann, felt, or affected to feel, a little weary of her splendour.
“I think,” she wrote to Lord Kames, in 1782, “the calm autumn of life, as well as of the year, has many advantages. Both have a peculiar serenity—a genial tranquility. We are less busy and agitated, because the hope of the spring and the vivid delights of the summer are over; but these tranquil seasons have their appropriate enjoyments, and a well-regulated mind sees everything beautiful that is in the order of nature.”
In 1785, Cumberland took the new assemblies, at Montagu House, for the subject of an essay in The Observer. He places Mrs. Montagu, under the name of Vanessa, in the foreground, and mingles praise with mockery. He does not refer to the slang word by which the assemblies conducted by ladies were known; he calls Vanessa’s assembly the Feast of Reason. Throughout life, according to this essayist, Vanessa had been a beauty or a wit, whose vanity had this good quality, namely, that it stimulated her to exercise charity, good nature, affability, and a splendid hospitality,—qualities which carried her into all the circles of fine people, and crowded all the fine people into hers.... In her saloons there was a welcome for every follower of science, every sort of genius,—a welcome which extended, so the satirical essayist affirms, from the manufacturer of toothpicks to the writer of an epic poem. Authors looked to her for fees in return for dedications; and players, for patronage and presents on their benefit nights.
According to Cumberland, the lady of Montagu House was seated, like the statue of Athenian Minerva, incensed by the breath of philosophers, poets, orators, and their intellectual brethren. Hannah More states, on the contrary, that at the original Bluestocking parties, previous to 1781, the company, instead of being a formal unity, were broken up into numberless groups. Something, too, of this fashion seems to be referred to by Cumberland, who describes Vanessa as going from one to another, making mathematicians quote Pindar, persuading masters in chancery to write novels, and Birmingham men to stamp rhymes as fast as buttons.
We are further told that the books on Vanessa’s table (and Mrs. Montagu often complained of the number of presentation copies which were sent to her) indicated who were among her guests. This little civility is sneered at, and she from whom it emanated was also occasionally sneered at by some of her guests; which would have been more natural than courteous if the lady of the house ever dressed herself, as Cumberland describes her with boundless exaggeration, in a dress on which were embroidered the ruins of Palmyra! The same exaggeration is applied to the description of the company, among whom figure cracked philosophers and crazy dreamers, with Johnson alone grand, powerful, majestic, eloquent, and ill-mannered.
Next, and perhaps equal with Johnson, is the unmistakable presence of Mrs. Siddons, who, since the October night of 1782, when she took the town by the passion and pathos of Isabella, had been the idol of the time. There she sits at Mrs. Montagu’s on a sofa, leaning on one elbow, in a passive attitude, counting, or seeming to count, the sticks of her fan, as homage and compliments are profusely laid at her feet. To silly questions she has sensible replies—replies which indicate the queries: “I strove to do it the best I could; I shall do as the manager bids me; I always endeavour to make the part I am about my best part;” and, “I never study anything but my author.” There is, probably, no exaggeration in this; and the more fantastic side of Mrs. Montagu’s character is not overcharged in the incident that follows. The hostess introduces a “young novitiate of the Muses,” in a white frock. A fillet of flowers crowns her long hair, and the novice, advancing to Melpomene, addresses her with—
“O thou, whom Nature’s goddess calls her own,