CHAPTER IX
Bluestockings as Authors

Much mischief to the cause of criticism is wrought by the specialists. Investigators in the underworld of forgotten books, to which scholarly competition too frequently drives them, often become so accustomed to the darkness about them that they mistake a glimmer for the glorious light of the upper world, and hasten to inform an inattentive public that the dim by-ways and dark corners of the realm of dead authors are by no means lacking in brilliancy. But such assertions serve rather to darken counsel than to illuminate the world. Enthusiasm for a subject sometimes coexists with a state of delusion about it. It ought to be possible to discover that a forgotten book is readable without trying to convince the public that an acquaintance with it is indispensable to all who pretend to culture.

The works of the bluestockings have all long since sunk into this oblivion. The benevolent reader of them has the feeling which Dante experienced so strongly when he met in hell the souls who had once been famous in a brighter world. These books seem to appeal to the reader to reëstablish something of their former fame, even though this, in its turn, prove to be but transitory. Who now reads Montagu? To many the question itself will be unintelligible; or will be taken to refer to another; yet in 1770 all the world was reading her. It is hardly too much to say that as a critic she was esteemed almost as highly as Johnson himself. She was known as the woman who had dared to challenge comparison with Lucian, as the defender and even as the ‘patroness’ of Shakespeare; she was an Eve in the world of critics, an armed Athena who had set her foot on the head of the serpent Voltaire.

Mrs. Montagu’s career as a writer began with the composition of three dialogues which were added to Lord Lyttelton’s Dialogues of the Dead when they appeared in 1760. The works were anonymous; but the news that they were by Mrs. Montagu was soon spread abroad. Many had no doubt inferred her authorship already from the enthusiastic words in which the noble lord spoke of her: ‘I shall think,’ he says, ‘the Public owes me a great Obligation for having excited a Genius so capable of uniting Delight with Instruction, and giving to Knowledge and Virtue those Graces which the Wit of the Age has too often employed all its skill to bestow upon Folly and Vice.’ The public did not disappoint the peer. Five editions were called for before 1768.

Mrs. Montagu’s dialogues might easily be dismissed by saying that they do not reach the level of Lyttelton’s. But if it be required to detect grades of value in work so uniformly flat, we may say that the dialogue between Mercury and a Modern Fine Lady is the best, as that between Hercules and Cadmus is the worst. They are all well called Dialogues of the Dead, for despite all their inflation, they never once betray any semblance of vitality. Of characterization they are wholly innocent, but not of profundity. Cadmus, for example, gives utterance to this: ‘The genuine glory, the proper distinction of the rational Species, arises from the perfection of the mental powers. Courage is apt to be fierce, and Strength is often exerted in acts of Oppression. But Wisdom is the Associate of Justice; It assists her to form equal Laws, to pursue right measures, to correct power, protect weakness, and to unite individuals in a common Interest and general Welfare.’ It is amazing the amount of such platitudinizing which the eighteenth century consumed with relish. It is one of the marvels of that marvellous era. The style derived its popularity in part from Johnson, who himself achieved a bare victory over its deadliness by the vivacity of his intellect.

In the dialogue between Mercury and Mrs. Modish, the author was at once less pretentious and in closer touch with her subject. Yet even here her desire to give instruction triumphs over any temptation to depict human nature. Mrs. Modish, the frivolous butterfly, explains the phrase bon ton quite as seriously as Mrs. Carter the bluestocking would have done: ‘It is—I can never tell you what it is; but I will try to tell you what it is not. In conversation it is not Wit; in manners it is not Politeness; in behaviour it is not Address; but it is a little like them all. It can only belong to people of a certain rank, who live in a certain manner, with certain persons who have not certain virtues and who have certain Vices, and who inhabit a certain Part of the Town.’ This is perhaps the best thing in the dialogues. One great advantage of these works remains to be mentioned. They triumph over the form in which they are written, for they never once remind us of Lucian.

But Mrs. Montagu had yet to achieve her unique distinction. It was nine years later that she delighted the world by appearing as the champion of Shakespeare, redressing his wrongs,[312] and vindicating him from the charges of Voltaire. She published a work somewhat largely entitled, An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespeare, Compared with the Greek and French Dramatic Poets, with some Remarks upon the Misrepresentations of Mons. de Voltaire. The attacks upon Shakespeare which Mrs. Montagu felt it incumbent upon herself to answer need no discussion here;[313] it may suffice to say that her defence was more widely read in England than the ‘misrepresentations’ which called it into being. It was regarded as a standard piece of criticism, and its fame penetrated to France and even to Italy.[314] It is impossible to give adequate illustrations of the esteem in which the book was held.[315] It conferred upon Mrs. Montagu the reputation of a critic, and gave her an enviable position among English writers for the space of thirty years. In the chorus of praise with which this feeble book was greeted there was but one discordant voice. When Reynolds remarked that Mrs. Montagu’s essay did her honour, Dr. Johnson retorted: ‘Yes, Sir, it does her honour, but it would do nobody else honour. I have indeed, not read it all. But when I take up the end of a web, and find it packthread, I do not expect by looking further to find it embroidery. Sir, I will venture to say, there is not one sentence of true criticism in her book.’[316]

It is to this view that posterity—when it has had any views at all on the subject—has inclined. Professor Huchon naturally deplores it,[317] and builds up a judicious defence of the defence. But the modern reader will probably agree with Mr. Lounsbury that ‘it is in many ways one of the most exasperating of books.’ Mrs. Montagu’s ignorance of the Elizabethan era was both profound and extensive. Her conception of Shakespeare’s environment may be deduced from the following quotation:

A woman who conceived of Shakespeare as living ‘in the dark shades of Gothic barbarism,’[319] and who lamented his lack of ‘the admonitions of delicate connoisseurs’[320] had in effect yielded all that the most virulent critic could demand. Mrs. Montagu’s enthusiasms seem very pallid after her alarming concessions. She considers Falstaff humorous and Macbeth tragic, and is, in general and as usual, platitudinous. But her continuous apologies and concessions really form the staple of her work. ‘She found,’ says Lounsbury, ‘the speech of Brutus to the people in Julius Cæsar, quaint and affected. She exhibited her utter incapacity to comprehend the rhetorical skill of Antony by declaring that the repetition of the epithet “honorable” in his speech was perhaps too frequent. The character of Pistol in the second part of Henry IV was too much for her to understand. Following previous critics she found many bombast speeches in the tragedy of Macbeth. Like her predecessors she unfortunately forgot to particularize them; lapse of time has now made it difficult to discover them.’

One of the features of Mrs. Montagu’s Essay was a series of comparisons between the Shakespearian drama and the ancient Greek. Here she was indeed on dangerous ground, for she could not read the language of Æschylus. This, however, did not discourage her from expressing herself very decidedly on the characteristics of his art. She pronounces the supernatural element in The Persians unfitted to the piece, and finds ‘something of a comic and satirical turn’ in the ghost of Darius.[321] She asserts that the Eumenides of the Oresteian trilogy ‘seem both acting out of their sphere and below their character’;[322] but admits that the whole story ‘might be allegorical.’ Such indeed she considered very nearly all of Æschylus to be; for she had a peculiar notion that his materials were derived at second-hand ‘from the hieroglyphic land of Egypt,’ and, though in the grosser times of Greece literally understood by the vulgar, were in more philosophic ages ‘again transmuted into allegory.’[323] But it is idle longer to stir this forgotten dust.

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A woman truly learned in the classics, whose abiding common sense protected her from the ridicule freely poured out upon bluestockings, was Miss (or, by courtesy, Mrs.) Elizabeth Carter, the spinster of Deal. To Mrs. Montagu (patron of letters) she was an indulgent preceptress, a very Pierian source of learning, and much that passed as erudition in the ‘female Mæcenas’ was in reality derived at second-hand from Mrs. Carter. Mrs. Montagu was never unwilling to sit at the feet of the woman whose reading ranged from Aristotle to Petrarch and from Diodorus Siculus to the Sorrows of Werther,[324] who would correspond with her respecting the Newtonian mechanics or the Stoic philosophers.

Mrs. Carter’s reputation was made by a translation of the extant works of Epictetus, an elegant quarto put forth in 1758, provided with an introduction and ample notes. The style of the translation is, in a very high degree, chaste and pleasing, and nowhere suggests the line-by-line method of the laborious translator. The introductory essay is an admirable exposition of the Stoic philosophy. The following specimen may show that Mrs. Carter was capable not only of a spirited style, but of genuine critical treatment of her subject:

With regard to the value of the book as a translation of Epictetus, it is perhaps sufficient to point out that it was, in its own time, a standard commentary, that it passed into a second edition in 1759, and that it is the basis upon which a subsequent translator has been content to build.[325] It has, moreover, renewed its youth in the recent reprints of popular libraries of the classics.[326]

Mrs. Carter has, therefore, transferred to modern times something of her scholarly fame. Yet she was not a pedant, and never gave herself the airs of a femme savante. Johnson (who wrote a Greek epigram in her honour that she might be celebrated in ‘as many different languages as Lewis le Grand’[327]) used to say that she could ‘make a pudding as well as translate Epictetus from the Greek, and work a handkerchief as well as compose a poem.’[328] He paid her the compliment of receiving two of her essays for the pages of The Rambler,[329] and these, though dull, are not more unreadable than the rest of that periodical.

Of her collected poems there were four editions during her own life. But it must be frankly admitted that her reputation as an independent author, though respectable in her own day,[330] has since suffered total extinction. Yet the student may discover in her poems here and there a point of antiquarian interest. For our purpose the volume is significant as containing lyrics to Mrs. Vesey and Mrs. Montagu. Both poems, though addressed to living ladies, contrive to belong to the Churchyard School and to prolong faint echoes of Gray. Two of the stanzas addressed to Mrs. Vesey are plainly intended to counteract that lady’s rationalism, and may be quoted here as a specimen of Mrs. Carter’s poetic powers:

Over the whole volume is cast the shadow of the now-fashionable melancholy, and much is made of the midnight moon, the evening dew, the ‘Gothic pile,’ and the ivy bower of the bird of night. These are worth mention as showing that Mrs. Carter’s interests were not bounded by the school of Pope. Her tastes, like Mrs. Vesey’s, grew increasingly romantic, and though she detested Werther[332] and never doubted that Rousseau was mad,[333] she was always an affectionate believer in Ossian.[334] She felt the new passion for landscape. In thought she accompanies Mrs. Vesey to the cliffs of Snowden,[335] and regrets that Mrs. Montagu cannot ascend the heights of windy Morven.[336] At Eastry she dreams herself back to the worship of Woden.[337] Her interest in Gothic architecture is intense, and she writes about the demolition of old buildings like a disciple of Ruskin: ‘It seems to me that when a fair inheritance is transmitted to a family they ought to feel a certain degree of tenderness to the abode of the ancestors from whom it is derived, which ought at least to sink quietly by the silent depredations of time, and not be torn down by the rude hand of human violence.’[338]

This interest in romance enabled her to understand the Celtic imaginings of Mrs. Vesey as her learning and her knowledge of philosophy gave her a control over Mrs. Montagu. Her friendship with the two ladies was unruffled throughout, and she received an annuity of £100 from the latter without any sacrifice of dignity. She never lost her head about anything—least of all about herself. She was a scholar and had a scholar’s love of the classics, yet she was broad enough to know when the age was widening its horizon. In an age of prudes, she dared to like Tom Jones. In an age of wits, she appreciated wit, yet had the sense to see that it is a ‘squint of the understanding which is mighty apt to set things in a wrong place.’[339] She understood and approved what was best in the salons, but could be happy without any pretensions to a career in them.

Thus her life was passed serenely without social rivalries, without the attempt or desire to follow her ostentatious friends afar, and while escaping the criticism so freely visited upon them, she had the honour of contributing by her quiet, serious, and almost unseen influence to whatever of solid worth they were to achieve.

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Intimately associated with Miss Carter was ‘the admirable Mrs. Chapone,’ who, when Miss Mulso, had been one of Richardson’s ‘Daughters.’ Her two chief works, Letters on the Improvement of the Mind and Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, were the result of bluestocking patronage, and were dedicated to Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. Carter respectively. The former, having seen Mrs. Chapone’s letters to a favourite niece, recommended their publication, and assisted in preparing them for the press by correcting them with her ‘elegant pen.’[340] The preparation of the second volume was undertaken at the instigation of Mrs. Carter and with the approval of Mrs. Montagu; though Mrs. Delany claims the honour of having first put the plan into the author’s head.[341]

Mrs. Chapone’s Letters were supposed to have had an enormous influence on the conduct of young women. According to Hannah More, in Sensibility, Chapone ‘forms the rising age.’ In Samuel Hoole’s Aurelia, the heroine has a vision of an ideal woman:

But one is inclined to suspect that this volume belongs to that large class of admonitory works less popular with the young than with their parents and preceptors. The book was put into the hands of every young girl from the Princess Royal downwards. Mrs. Delany considered it next to the Bible as an entertaining and edifying work for youthful females. She advises that not more than six lines of it be read at one sitting, in order that it may be the more deeply impressed on the attention, and thinks that the historical and geographical parts of it should be got by heart. She hopes her grand-niece will read it once a year, until she has a daughter to read it to her.[342] Mrs. Chapone herself smiled at the popularity of the book, and considered its success to be due principally to the patronage of Mrs. Montagu, and in part to the ‘world’s being so fond of being educated.’[343] It is probable that it was generally used as an antidote to the Letters of Chesterfield which appeared about the same time, and had a very different reception.

Mrs. Chapone’s Letters consist almost entirely of advice; if she ever wanders from this it is to give instruction. She treats in turn of religion, the Bible, the affections, the temper, economy, politeness, geography, and history. It is all admirable, incontrovertible, wholesome, and heavy. It is like oatmeal—an old-fashioned food which should be consumed in quantities by the young, but for which they perversely seem to have no appetite. It will be remembered that when Lydia Languish received an untimely visit from Mrs. Malaprop, she wished to be found reading Mrs. Chapone; though her interests were more seriously engaged by works less uplifting. Of literary quality in these Letters one can hardly speak, for it is difficult to diffuse literary quality through two hundred pages of solid advice.

The contents of Mrs. Chapone’s second volume are hardly different. There are essays (‘Affectation and Simplicity’; ‘Conversation’), but they are in the same hortatory strain as the Letters. There are poems—fortunately few—several of which are addressed to Elizabeth Carter. They are, in general, like that lady’s poems, save that they reveal the influence of Collins rather than of Gray.

The most interesting things Mrs. Chapone wrote were her familiar letters.[344] They contain many interesting remarks on Richardson, and Johnson, both of whom were personally known to the author. They have an independence, an ease, and a vivacity that are quite lacking in the more solemn productions. The reader of them may find it in his heart to regret that Mrs. Chapone was so filled with a sense of the earnestness of life and of the importance of piety. A long indulgence in frivolity might have saved her.

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Miss Hannah More had larger ambitions and more varied talents than the other bluestocking authors. She wrote poems lyrical, occasional, and narrative; she wrote dramas tragic, classical, and sacred; and she wrote essays and critiques of conduct. In all her earlier work she was assisted and inspired by the bluestockings. She was their chosen poet. She represented them in print as Mrs. Montagu represented them in the salon. She celebrated them all in verse, and dedicated in turn to Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Montagu, and Mrs. Vesey. It is with this earlier period of her career that we are exclusively concerned; the voluminous works which the lady produced after her separation from the bluestockings form no proper part of our inquiry.

Miss More’s relations with the bluestockings began in 1774, soon after her arrival in London. The exact date of her first visit to the metropolis is uncertain. Her biographer, Roberts, who seldom gives himself any concern with dates, says that this took place in ‘1773 or 4’; but inasmuch as Miss More dedicated her Inflexible Captive to Mrs. Boscawen as early as March 1, 1774, the former date would appear the more probable. Her introduction to the literati was due to Garrick, whose interest in Miss More had been roused by her description of his acting in Lear.[345] By 1775 Hannah More was a recognized member of the circle that surrounded Mrs. Montagu. Her poems, Bas Bleu and Sensibility, which have been noticed elsewhere in this book, were composed directly in their honour; but works of a more public appeal created no less enthusiasm among these ladies. Thus her ballad, Sir Eldred of the Bower, which appeared in 1775, was greeted by Mrs. Montagu in her most extravagant manner. She admired ‘the spirit and fire of the gothic character’ in the tale; the simplicity of the plot, the depiction of ancient manners (save the mark!), the primitive sentiments, and the characterization—all these challenged the critical approval of Mrs. Montagu. The tale of The Bleeding Rock, in the same volume, she esteemed no less highly. ‘Your Rock,’ she wrote, ‘will stand unimpaired by ages as eminent as any in the Grecian Parnassus.’[346] Such was the measure of bluestocking praise. But the poems had a sanction more important than this. They were read by a larger circle, Reynolds, Garrick, and Johnson; they became the ‘theme of conversation in all polite circles.’ Johnson could repeat all the best stanzas by heart.[347] He read both poems with the author, made some alterations in Sir Eldred, and even—as was his custom with poems submitted to his judgment—added certain lines to it.[348]

The poems belong to the Gothic school, and may well have been suggested by Percy’s Reliques; Johnson’s interest in them would be hard to understand were they not the production of a woman whom he playfully termed ‘the most powerful versificatrix’ in the language. But the bluestockings loved romance[349] and the primitive world to which they thought it introduced them. The fact that this world, as conceived by Hannah More, has no remote similarity to our own made it only the more conformable to bluestocking standards of the antique. In reading this lady’s poems and plays one is constantly reminded of those still-popular engravings of the eighteenth century, in which distressed virgins, in carefully studied poses, cast their melting eyes up to heaven. They live in bowers; refer to themselves in the third person, as the ‘sad Elwina’ and ‘the distressed Julia’; and when disappointed in love, or (to speak in their own idiom) when their flame is not reciprocated, immediately go mad, and after a painful scene before the footlights complete their career by sudden death. Their lovers are of sterner stuff. They seek wars in distant climes, disappear for long periods of time, and are reckoned dead, only to reappear just as some domestic tragedy is reaching its climax; they are for ever drawing their swords—frequently to plunge them into their own bosoms. Miss More made full use of the poetic license which governs this pasteboard world. Her characters are burdened with no human motives, and it is idle to seek for related cause and effect in their conduct. But morality flourishes. Thus in Sir Eldred we learn the dangers of jealousy:

But as the hero never once in the course of the poem acted like a human being, the force of the moral is somewhat impaired.

In 1777 Miss More essayed a higher flight. She had written dramas in her school-teaching days,[350] and now, with the assistance of Garrick, produced a romantic tragedy, entitled Percy. Its title, if not its contents, indicates the influence of Home’s Douglas. The situation in this play, venerable in romance, deals with two rival houses, those of Percy and Douglas, a heroine forced into an unwilling marriage with the rival of her lover, who has been killed in the Crusades. The distressed heroine and the returned lover (who had not really been killed) meet in a garden-bower:[351]

It is unnecessary to follow the course of the tragedy; for the reader’s own imagination will suggest it.

The play was a success in every way. It ran for twenty-one nights. No tragedy for years had been so successful. Mrs. Barry was at her finest in the mad-scene at the end. The author made nearly six hundred pounds.[352] The play was translated into German, and acted with success in Vienna. The bluestockings were triumphant. Mrs. Montagu appeared repeatedly in her box at Covent Garden. Mrs. Boscawen, who could carry Duchesses to the theatre with her, sent the author a wreath of bay.[353] Mrs. Delany invited her to dinner. Garrick, who had written the prologue, introduced her to Home, thus presenting ‘Percy to the Douglas.’[354]

In Percy Miss More reached the summit of her early achievement, and the book is still sought by collectors. Readers, if in an indulgent mood, will perhaps agree with Walpole, who found the play better than he expected, and, though devoid of nature, not lacking in good situations.[355] Severer folk will side with Mrs. Thrale, who considered it foolish, and thought Fanny Burney ought to be whipped if she did not write a better.[356] The truth probably lies between the two opinions. To the eighteenth century the piece certainly seemed to have merit. At any rate, it was popular enough to be revived in order that Mrs. Siddons might appear as Elwina. Had it survived to the mid-nineteenth century it might have proved useful as a libretto for Bellini or Donizetti. In the coloratura woes of the modern diva, the distressed Elwina would have found her perfect interpretation.

Garrick was so pleased with the success of Percy that he urged Miss More to write another tragedy. The result was The Fatal Falsehood, a romantic tragedy of the same sort. It was acted late in the spring of 1779, some months after the death of Garrick, and, though it did not duplicate the success of the earlier play, was enthusiastically received. With its production Miss More’s connection with the London stage came to an end.[357]

The Fatal Falsehood sinks far below the level of Percy. It probably suffered from the lack of Garrick’s revising hand; though it is doubtful if even his genius could have introduced any semblance of reality into a series of situations so preposterous. Miss More is usually content to depend upon accident as the source of her dramatic effects; but in The Fatal Falsehood she attempted to depict in Bertrand a villain as subtle as Iago. Although he analyzes himself and his motives in a series of soliloquies, he remains a tangle of absurdities, and all the action of the piece, which flows from him, must be similarly described.

Miss More’s dramas, as well as her poems and essays, were intended to serve the cause of virtue, about which all bluestockings were seriously concerned. Even the plays are filled with a sort of portable morality in the shape of maxims:

Miss More never escaped from the office of preceptress; the forming spirit of all her work is that of the Young Ladies’ Academy.

In the same year which saw the production of Percy, she put forth a volume entitled Essays on Several Subjects, principally intended for Young Ladies. The book is of the same sort as Mrs. Chapone’s Letters: it warns young women to be modest, to avoid envy, and guard against the ‘obliquities of fraud’ in lovers. Allowing for its hopelessly narrow view of life, it may be granted that the advice is sound enough. But the bluestockings never realize that good advice is the cheapest commodity in the world.

Florio, a tale somewhat inappropriately dedicated to Walpole, is a sort of parable in verse, designed to enforce such lessons as are conveyed in the Essays. The hero, once a slave to frivolous society, is converted by reading Johnson’s Idler and inspecting the beauties of Nature under the direction of his mistress.

With Florio we reach a period in Miss More’s literary career and the end of what may be called the bluestocking influence on her work. Her pietism, which had amused Garrick, was now becoming chronic. She declined to go and see Mrs. Siddons as Elwina, because it is wrong to attend the theatre. She deplored the singing, dancing, and feasting in which London indulged after King George’s recovery of his sanity.[358] She even objected to the phrase merry Christmas, as being bacchanalian rather than Christian.[359] Walpole, who was naturally distressed by all this, made a charming attack on Miss More’s Low Church faith in the Ten Commandments, and pointed out to her that she was guilty of the Puritanical heresy.[360] The truth is that Miss More’s sense of responsibility to society at large was weighing on her mind. In 1788 she published a serious call to a more solemn view of life in her Thoughts on the Importance of the Manners of the Great to General Society, and definitely embarked upon her career as preceptress in public morality. Meanwhile she was drawing steadily away from her fashionable friends. At last she came to think any association with them almost wicked. On March 12, 1794, she wrote in her diary:

Whatever may have been the influence of the bluestockings upon others, there can be no doubt that for Hannah More it had been an excellent corrective. It had at least prevented her from comparing herself to Elijah.