And then, though a whole group would hold it fitting to flock around her, and recount what had been said; if a smile caught her roving eye from any opposite direction, the fear of losing something more entertaining, would make her beg not to trouble them, and again rush on to the gayer talkers. But as a laugh is excited more commonly by sportive nonsense than by wit, she usually gleaned nothing from her change of place, and hastened therefore back to ask for the rest of what she had interrupted. But generally finding that set dispersing, or dispersed, she would look around her with a forlorn surprise, and cry: “I can’t conceive why it is that nobody talks tonight? I can’t catch a word!”
Or, if some one of peculiar note were engaging attention; if Sir William Hamilton, for example, were describing Herculaneum or Pompeii; or Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Hannah More were discussing some new author, or favourite work; or if the then still beautiful, though old, Duchess of Leinster, was encountering the beautiful and young Duchess of Devonshire; or, if Mr. Burke, having stept in, and, marking no one with whom he wished to exchange ideas, had seized upon the first book or pamphlet he could catch, to soothe his harassed mind by reading—which he not seldom did, and most incomparably, a passage or two aloud; circumstances of such a sort would arouse in her so great an earnestness for participation, that she would hasten from one spot to another, in constant hope of better fare; frequently clapping, in her hurry, the broad part of the brazen ear to her temple: but after waiting, with anxious impatience, for the development she expected, but waiting in vain, she would drop her trumpet, and almost dolorously exclaim: “I hope nobody has had any bad news to night? but as soon as I come near any body, nobody speaks!”
Yet, with all these peculiarities, Mrs. Vesey was eminently amiable, candid, gentle, and even sensible; but she had an ardour to know whatever was going forward, and to see whoever was named, that kept her curiosity constantly in a panic; and almost dangerously increased the singular wanderings of her imagination.
Here, amongst the few remaining men of letters of the preceding literary era, Dr. Burney met Horace Walpole, Owen Cambridge, and Soame Jenyns, who were commonly, then, denominated the old wits; but who rarely, indeed, were surrounded by any new ones who stood much chance of vying with them in readiness of repartee, pith of matter, terseness of expression, or pleasantry in expanding gay ideas.
MRS. MONTAGU.
“Yet, while to Mrs. Vesey, the Bas Bleu society owed its origin and its epithet, the meetings that took place at Mrs. Montagu’s were soon more popularly known by that denomination; for though they could not be more fashionable, they were far more splendid.
Mrs. Montagu had built a superb new house, which was magnificently fitted up, and appeared to be rather appropriate for princes, nobles, and courtiers, than for poets, philosophers, and blue stocking votaries. And here, in fact, rank and talents were so frequently brought together, that what the satirist uttered scoffingly, the author pronounced proudly, in setting aside the original claimant, to dub Mrs. Montagu Queen of the Blues.
This majestic title was hers, in fact, from more flattering rights than hang upon mere pre-eminence of riches or station. Her Essay on the Learning and Genius of Shakespeare; and the literary zeal which made her the voluntary champion of our immortal bard, had so national a claim to support and to praise, that her book, on its first coming out, had gained the almost general plaudits that mounted her, thenceforward, to the Parnassian heights of female British literature.
But, while the same bas bleu appellation was given to these two houses of rendezvous, neither that, nor even the same associates, could render them similar. Their grandeur, or their simplicity, their magnitude, or their diminutiveness, were by no means the principal cause of this difference: it was far more attributable to the Lady Presidents than to their abodes: for though they instilled not their characters into their visitors, their characters bore so large a share in their visitors’ reception and accommodation, as to influence materially the turn of the discourse, and the humour of the parties, at their houses.