CHAPTER VI
Conversation Parties and Literary Assemblies

Not the least pleasant of the social gatherings for conversation was the levee, or reception held on rising from bed. The custom was of course adopted by people of fashion in imitation of the popular court function, and it always retained something of the courtly atmosphere, its popularity in fine society being due to the sense of importance which it lent to the host or hostess. Madame de Tencin, for example, thus held court from eight o’clock in the morning, queening it over everybody, ‘from the lowest tools to the highest.’[167] Mascarille, it will be remembered, boasts that he never rises from bed without the company of half a dozen beaux esprits. Yet despite its imitation of the court, there must have been about this kind of reception a certain intimacy and ease that were lacking in the more formal assemblies held later in the day.[168]

In England the levee had been known for perhaps a hundred years;[169] but it first becomes of importance to the student of literature about the middle of the century. A good general impression of it may be obtained from the fourth plate of Hogarth’s Marriage à la Mode, published in 1745. The hostess, half dressed, is seated at her toilet-table, under the ministrations of her hair-dresser, and is engaged in conversation with her lover, who is reclining on a sofa near by. In the background is seen the bed, one curtain of which is still drawn. A negro butler is passing chocolate to the guests who are ranged in front of the bed, while an Italian tenor is regaling them with solos to the accompaniment of a flute. This latter point is significant in the satire, for it is evident that the hostess is incapable of conducting a true conversazione, and has therefore had recourse to providing her guests with other entertainment, while she pursues her amorous intrigue.

A later and even more familiar representation of the levee is found at the opening of the School for Scandal, where Lady Sneerwell is ‘discovered’ at her toilet. When this scene is correctly represented on the stage the lady’s guests are shown as drinking chocolate at her levee, and there characteristically displaying their conversational gifts.

That the levee was at its best essentially a literary function is shown by the encouragement it received from Samuel Johnson. The account of his morning receptions is preserved for us by Dr. Maxwell, whose description must be quoted in full:

When Johnson visited Boswell in Edinburgh after the tour of the Hebrides ‘he had, from ten o’clock to one or two, a constant levee of various persons, of different characters and descriptions;’ so that poor Mrs. Boswell was obliged to ‘devote the greater part of the morning to the endless task of pouring out tea.’[172]

This custom, thus sanctioned by fashion and by literary authority, was adopted by all who pretended to wit. In 1760, Goldsmith sneers at the philosophical beau who ‘receives company in his study, in all the pensive formality of slippers, night-gown, and easy-chair.’[173] Flavia, in the same author’s Double Transformation, after marrying an Oxford Fellow, aspires to the reputation of a femme savante:

By 1779 the function had become so popular that its name was frequently extended to any formal entertainment where conversation was the principal attraction, even when it was held in the evening.[174]

The levee merged easily into the formal breakfast. This function might occur at any hour from eight o’clock in the morning to three in the afternoon.[175] It was in 1750 that Madame du Bocage recorded her impressions of Mrs. Montagu’s breakfasts, generalizing upon the custom of the nation in these words:

The diaries and letters of Beattie, Mrs. Delany, Miss Burney, and Miss More are strewn with references to this fashionable meal. In the spring of 1774, Walpole professes himself frightened at the inundation of them coming on.[177] A favourite diversion at these matutinal parties, as at entertainments later in the day, was the declamation of Thomas Sheridan (who would repeat Gray’s Elegy, Dryden’s Ode, and ‘everything that everybody could say by heart’[178]), the French readings of Tessier, the tragic recitations of Tighe (who expected his auditors to swoon from emotion), and, occasionally, bits of recitation or acting by Garrick. Sheridan gave so many of these literary breakfasts that Mrs. Boscawen suspected that he received money for them.[179] At times such functions were more or less public, and were held in the Haymarket, at Vauxhall, or at Bath, in the Assembly Rooms.

The receptions of the later afternoon and evening are of a less definite character. Beattie describes a gathering at Mrs. Montagu’s as ‘an assembly or conversation or rout.’[180] The entertainment was of wide scope, as in Italian and French drawing-rooms, and might include dancing, card-playing, and literary readings, as well as conversation.[181] In this work we are concerned only with the literary aspect of these parties; the origin and the more serious results of the London salon are discussed elsewhere, so that the rest of this chapter may be devoted to a consideration of the means adopted for shining in conversation at these parties, and the attempt to connect such assemblies directly with the production of poetry.

It is surely a misfortune that contemporary descriptions of the conversazione should be generally satirical in tone; but it is natural enough, for conversation, unsupported by other entertainment, tends, in large groups, to pedantry on the one hand, and to frivolousness on the other. English literature produced no Molière to satirize the salons; but the conversazione did give both character and title to one great comedy, the School for Scandal. Although this play is not, like the Critique de l’École des Femmes, an adequate criticism of the literary drawing-room, it does nevertheless preserve prominent aspects of it, and we shall have occasion to refer to it repeatedly in illustrating the nature of the conversazione.[182] Another criticism of this entertainment is found in a book now totally forgotten, entitled, Modern Manners, or the Country Cousins, in a series of Poetical Epistles. This is the work of the Rev. Samuel Hoole, son of the translator of Tasso and Ariosto, and appeared in the year 1782. The poems describe the visit of a north-English family to London, somewhat after the manner of Smollett in Humphry Clinker, and of Anstey in the New Bath Guide. The tenth epistle is an account of Lady Chattony’s conversazione.[183] At that assembly old Mr. Ralph Rusty is served with lukewarm coffee and tea and a minute bit of cake, which made him long for more. The company splits up into groups, each with their backs turned on the rest. The first party which he joins is (naturally) talking scandal:

His second visit is to a group engaged in musical gossip:

He escapes from their gushing ecstasies only to fall on a political discussion:

Mr. Rusty’s unhappy evening was concluded by listening to the tales of a young lord just returned from his travels, a buck who wishes to fight a duel with him because he laughs at incredible stories.

There is nothing very witty in this poem, as the quotations may show; and the satires no doubt sank of their own weight; but in spite of its dulness, the account would appear to be, in the main, a fair picture of the conversazione. We may notice, in the first place, that Lady Chattony has followed the best traditions of the salon in reducing her refreshments to a minimum, depending for the success of her reception entirely upon the conversation of her guests.[184] The talk, again, is not confined to a large circle; but is broken up, after Mrs. Vesey’s manner, into a series of small groups. We have the usual references to gossip, scandal, and chatter about clothes, politics, and the opera, with occasional approaches to Sheridan’s method of satire, but with none of his cleverness.

It is inevitable that any satire on the conversazione should dwell on the tendency to scandal and gossip. So inevitable is their presence in the salons that it seems hardly necessary to point it out; but it is essential to be at the true explanation of their prevalence, which no satire is likely to point out. Scandal, and its sister, Gossip, are the short cuts to cleverness, and cleverness is the one indispensable thing to the frequenters of salons. This is abundantly evident in the School for Scandal. It is wit for which Lady Sneerwell’s guests are striving, and they will mar a character that they may make a mot. ‘There is no possibility,’ says Lady Sneerwell, ‘of being witty without a little ill-nature; the malice of a good thing is the barb that makes it stick,’[185] and Lady Teazle is in practical agreement with her; ‘I vow I bear no malice against the people I abuse; when I say an ill-natured thing ’tis out of pure good humour.’

Sheridan was not the only dramatist to satirize the salons and their scandalous talk. His comedy was imitated by Thomas Holcroft in Seduction,[186] a play whose popularity on the stage was equalled by its popularity in print. The conversation descriptive of an assembly at Lady Morden’s is in obvious imitation of the Scandal School.

Other aspirants to conversational fame adopted the less questionable habit of talking sentiments. Here again the School for Scandal reveals the trick of the salons, for Joseph Surface has won himself a place in the group by virtue of his philosophical and ethical maxims. Sheridan’s brilliant satire of a reigning fad in literature and society was anticipated by Goldsmith in She Stoops to Conquer, in which, when Kate Hardcastle wishes to speak like a fine lady, she at once begins to talk sentiments.[187] This habit of lending a semblance of depth to one’s conversation by the introduction of philosophical aphorisms is no doubt as old as the salon itself. At its best, there is nothing contemptible in the sentiment, as the long and brilliant history of the maxim in French literature may prove. The reputation of Mme. de Sablé’s salon was largely made by the maxim or pensée, and all the later salons afford examples of its vitality. Madame Geoffrin was famous for it. ‘Madame Geoffrin,’ wrote Mme. Necker, ‘a mis toute sa raison en maximes,’[188] and the same writer praises the work of English authors for their successful production of this type, finding these authors otherwise deficient in moral principles.[189] The maxim, ethical sentiment, or philosophical truth sententiously expressed, did indeed attain substantial existence in the essays of Samuel Johnson, who fancied that mankind might come in time to ‘write all aphoristically;’ but in English conversation it never found a thoroughly congenial soil. ‘Sentiments’ were popular, but, like much that was popular, they were hollow too. The Dowager Countess Gower writes to Mrs. Delany that the bluestockings are at Sunning Wells, where they ‘sport sentiments from morn tell noon, from noon to dewy eve.’[190] The pages of the Wit’s Magazine teemed with collections of them: ‘Flattery, like a cameleon, assumes the colours of the object it is nearest to.’ The record of bluestocking maxims and sentiments preserved in letters and diaries is amazing, but not because of its brilliance. Mrs. Montagu wrote the following to Miss Burney, in reference to the character of Mr. Vesey, ‘A frippery character, like a gaudy flower, may please while it is in bloom; but it is the virtuous only that, like the aromatics, preserve their sweet and reviving odour when withered.’[191] This is exactly in the style of Julia, the once-fashionable heroine of The Rivals, who, in respect of her conversation, might be own sister to Joseph Surface: ‘When hearts deserving of happiness would unite their fortunes, Virtue would crown them with an unfading garland of modest hurtless flowers; but ill-judging Passion will force the gaudier Rose into the wreath, whose thorn offends them when its leaves are dropped.’

Closely akin to the neatly-turned sentiment is the epigram and this, in all its forms, the salon, following Continental models, sought to stimulate. One thinks immediately of the poetical epigrams of Sir Benjamin Backbite, his impromptu verses on Lady Frizzle’s feather catching fire, his rebuses, the charade which he made at Mrs. Drowsie’s conversazione, and, above all, of that sprightly extempore conceit on Lady Betty Curricle’s ponies:

There was no more certain way of achieving a reputation for wit than by the impromptu composition of these little verses. No lover of Goldsmith will fail to remember Garrick’s epigram on the poet who ‘wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll.’ Less hackneyed is the couplet which Dr. Young produced at the ‘World,’ a club of gentlemen who were amusing themselves after dinner by scratching verses, with their diamonds, upon the wine-glasses. Having no jewel of his own, Young, when his turn came round, was obliged to borrow Chesterfield’s, and then wrote:

It is difficult to find a volume of eighteenth century verse that does not bear witness to the popularity of the epigram. Every miscellany teems with them. No collected edition of poems was complete without a handful of them. They are recorded in every diary and commonplace-book, and were exchanged by friends in the course of familiar correspondence. High and low, the peer of wit and the pretender to it, vied with one another in the production of them. All alike seem to have reached a dead level of mediocrity. The charade which Johnson made in honour of his friend Dr. Barnard[194] is no better and no worse than scores of impromptu verses quoted in Walpole’s Letters or the Asylum for Fugitive Pieces.

Much of this, no doubt, seems trivial. But wherever the spirit of the salon appears, evidence of its presence is seen in the production and general esteem of such trifles: rebuses, anagrams, madrigals, enigmas, charades, and bouts rimés. The explanation of it all goes back, perhaps, to the Italian Renaissance, when, as Burckhardt has shown, an epigram could lay the foundation of a scholar’s celebrity:

The popularity of epigrams in fine English society is amusingly illustrated by the entertainments provided by a certain Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Miller at her villa near Bath. The character and the results of her attempt to stimulate the production of literature are typical, and, as they have left a considerable record in print, it may be profitable to consider them somewhat at length. She introduced what she was pleased to term the ‘little Gallic institution’ of bouts rimés. Lists of riming words were distributed among her guests, who composed verses suggested by them, employing them in their given order. The resulting effusions were then placed in a vase decorated with laurel branches and pink ribbons, erected upon a ‘modern altar.’ ‘It is at present,’ writes this ingenious lady, ‘the receptacle of all the contending poetical morsels which every other Thursday (formerly Friday) are drawn out of it indiscriminately, and read aloud by the gentlemen present, each in his turn. Their particular merits are afterwards discussed by them, and prizes assigned to three out of the whole that appear to be the most deserving. Their authors are then, and not before, called for, who seldom fail to be announced either by themselves, or, if absent, by their friends. Then the prize poems are read aloud a second time to the company, each by its author, if present, if not, by other Gentlemen, and wreaths of Myrtle presented publicly by the Institutress[195] to each successful writer.’

When these verses were published they roused, if not the general esteem which the Institutress plainly expected for them, the interest of Miss Burney, the curiosity of Boswell, and the mirth of Walpole. The latter wrote, in his most delightful mood, to the Countess of Ailesbury:

Mrs. Miller’s Institution appears, however, to have been an unqualified social success. The first edition of the verses was exhausted in ten days,[197] and a second was published in the following year. Three similar volumes appeared at intervals,[198] and the series was terminated only by the death of the Institutress.[199] The publications received the compliment of an anonymous attack entitled Sappho,[200] in which Mrs. Miller was satirically hailed as ‘Mistress of the tuneful nine’; but a more deadly assault took the form of a solemn congratulatory Epistle to Mrs. Miller,[201] in which that lady is said to

An examination of the volume published in 1775 hardly seems to bear out these statements. The following production of the hostess herself it is difficult to describe with accuracy, for the word verse hardly seems appropriate to it:

It is only fair to say that the verses in the volume do frequently rise from this level to that of mediocrity. The following specimen of bouts rimés may serve to indicate the type and contents of the volume:

There are other things to be said in amelioration of the harsh judgments one is inclined to pass upon Mrs. Miller. The later volumes are certainly less bad than the first. The praise of Mrs. Miller, which had formed the staple of the first volume, is somewhat mitigated in the others, and the names of the contributors occasionally emerge into the borderland of fame. Potter, William Hayley, Anna Seward, and Christopher Anstey are worthy of respect, and a poem by Garrick, though worthless, lends a certain distinction to the second volume. Anstey’s poem, An Election Ball,[202] which enjoyed something of the popularity of his New Bath Guide, was written upon a subject given out by Mrs. Miller, ‘The ancient and modern Dress and Manners of the English Nation compared’; and the Poetical Address which prefaced it is addressed to Mr. Miller. In the former ‘Clio’ and the Tusculan ‘vause’ are celebrated, and in the latter the ‘myrtle sprigs’ and ‘vocal swans of Bath.’ These poems are still readable.

To Mrs. Miller must certainly be allowed the merit of having gathered about herself a group of persons who would have made the reputation of any London drawing-room. Her own inability to produce anything that should have more than the external appearance of verse does not seem to have repelled those of higher ability and finer taste. For such a woman it was in the nature of an achievement that her Institution lasted six years; and the four volumes of so-called poetical contributions to it retain a certain melancholy interest as showing the result of a deliberate attempt by the world of fashion to stimulate the production of poetry.