Transcript
Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print
General Editors: Professor Anne K. Mellor and Professor Clifford Siskin
Editorial Board: Isobel Armstrong, Birkbeck & IES; John Bender, Stanford; Alan Bewell, Toronto;
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Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print will feature work that does not
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Uniquely, it will combine efforts to engage the power and materiality of print with explorations
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Titles include:
Melanie Bigold
WOMEN OF LETTERS, MANUSCRIPT CIRCULATION, AND PRINT AFTERLIVES
IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Elizabeth Rowe, Catharine Cockburn, and Elizabeth Carter
Dometa Brothers
THE ROMANTIC IMAGINATION AND ASTRONOMY
On All Sides Infinity
Katey Castellano
THE ECOLOGY OF BRITISH ROMANTIC CONSERVATISM, 1790–1837
Noah Comet
ROMANTIC HELLENISM AND WOMEN WRITERS
Ildiko Csengei
SYMPATHY, SENSIBILITY AND THE LITERATURE OF FEELING IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Alexander Dick
ROMANTICISM AND THE GOLD STANDARD
Money, Literature, and Economic Debate in Britain, 1790–1830
Angela Esterhammer, Diane Piccitto, and Patrick Vincent (editors)
ROMANTICISM, ROUSSEAU, SWITZERLAND
New Prospects
Ina Ferris
BOOK-MEN, BOOK CLUBS, AND THE ROMANTIC LITERARY SPHERE
John Gardner
POETRY AND POPULAR PROTEST
Peterloo, Cato Street and the Queen Caroline Controversy
George C. Grinnell
THE AGE OF HYPOCHONDRIA
Interpreting Romantic Health and Illness
David Higgins
ROMANTIC ENGLISHNESS
Anthony S. Jarrells
BRITAIN’S BLOODLESS REVOLUTIONS
1688 and the Romantic Reform of Literature
Emrys Jones
FRIENDSHIP AND ALLEGIANCE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE
The Politics of Private Virtue in the Age of Walpole
Jacqueline M. Labbe
WRITING ROMANTICISM
Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, 1784–1807
April London
LITERARY HISTORY WRITING, 1770–1820
Robert Morrison and Daniel Sanjiv Roberts (editors)
ROMANTICISM AND BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE
‘An Unprecedented Phenomenon’
Catherine Packham
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY VITALISM
Bodies, Culture, Politics
Emma Peacocke
ROMANTICISM AND THE MUSEUM
Murray G.H. Pittock
MATERIAL CULTURE AND SEDITION, 1688–1760
Treacherous Objects, Secret Places
Amy Prendergast
LITERARY SALONS ACROSS BRITAIN AND IRELAND IN THE LONG EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Jessica Richard
THE ROMANCE OF GAMBLING IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH NOVEL
Andrew Rudd
SYMPATHY AND INDIA IN BRITISH LITERATURE, 1770–1830
Seth Rudy
LITERATURE AND ENCYCLOPEDISM IN ENLIGHTENMENT BRITAIN
Sharon Ruston
CREATING ROMANTICISM
Case Studies in the Literature, Science and Medicine of the 1790s
Yasmin Solomonescu
JOHN THELWALL AND THE MATERIALIST IMAGINATION
Richard Squibbs
URBAN ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PERIODICAL ESSAY
Transatlantic Retrospects
David Stewart
ROMANTIC MAGAZINES AND METROPOLITAN LITERARY CULTURE
Rebecca Tierney-Hynes
NOVEL MINDS
Philosophers and Romance Readers, 1680–1740
P. Westover
NECROMANTICISM
Travelling to Meet the Dead, 1750–1860
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Literary Salons Across
Britain and Ireland in the
Long Eighteenth Century
Amy Prendergast
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
© Amy Prendergast 2015
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Contents
List of Figures
vii
Acknowledgements
viii
Introduction
The salon’s physical setting
Cultural transfers
Changing nature of elite sociability
1
5
7
10
1 The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
The eighteenth-century salon in Paris
Provincial salons
Post-revolutionary salons
14
16
27
33
2 A French Phenomenon Embraced: The Literary Salon in
Eighteenth-Century Britain
French connections
The London town house as salon location: Boscawen,
Montagu, and Monckton
Hester Lynch Thrale at Streatham
Edinburgh’s salons
44
47
50
66
71
3 “Never Was a Flock So Scattered for Want of a
Shepherdess”: Elizabeth Vesey Between England and
Ireland
Irish Bluestockings
Cultural transfers across the Irish Sea
78
89
101
4 Moira House Salon: A Site for Irish Scholarship
Moira House
Antiquarianism and translation
Regional writing
Political literati
106
107
111
120
128
5 Collaborative Hospitality and Cultural Transfers:
Provincial Salons Across England and Ireland
The Irish provincial salon and networks of exchange
Provincial English salons and literary production
132
135
143
v
vi Contents
6 “Dublin Is Attribilaire” – The Changing Nature of Elite
Sociability
Shane’s Castle and private theatricals
Reading parties and book clubs
Post-act of Union salons
Transfers and transformations
153
155
160
168
173
Notes
177
Bibliography
216
Index
232
Figures
2.1 The Hon. Miss Monckton, 1777–1778, Sir Joshua Reynolds
(1723–1792). Bequeathed by Sir Edward Stern 1993
4.1 Moira House Dublin, drawn and etched by William Brocas,
published 1811
6.1 Shane’s Castle in Lough Neagh, the Honble. Mr O’Neil’s in the
county of Antrim, 1780
vii
64
108
156
Acknowledgements
My initial interest in the salon was formed during my master’s
study at Queen’s University Belfast, under the supervision of Moyra
Haslett who originally fostered my interest in female communities and
the Bluestockings, and kindly invited me to participate in my first
ECLRNI (Eighteenth-Century Literary Research Network in Ireland) symposium at Lucan House. At Trinity I was fortunate enough to come
under the guidance of the wonderful Ian Campbell Ross for the continuation of my research at PhD level. Ian has read and discussed so many
drafts of this current work, always with much rigour, humour, and kindness. Completing the triumvirate is Aileen Douglas who, in her position
as postdoctoral mentor, played a key role in helping me to transform
the thesis into the monograph it is today. I am extremely grateful for
the continued advice and supervision of all three of these mentors.
They each have continued to guide and support me long beyond the
termination of any official role, and their endless patience, combined
with constant encouragement, has been and continue to be absolutely
invaluable to me.
I am also grateful to a variety of colleagues and friends for their insight
and advice over the past several years. Niall Gillespie, Anne Markey,
David O’Shaughnessy, Jim Shanahan, and Patrick Walsh have provided
so much practical advice and help since I moved to Dublin, and I continue to turn to them all for guidance today. Special thanks are due
to Niall for taking the time to read through the final draft and offer
comments on it. I have also received particularly helpful remarks on
my research at various conferences and via email from Claire Connolly,
Lesa Ní Mhunghaile, Finola O’Kane, and Martyn Powell. In a work that
focuses on networks and literary sociability, I must mention the great
work of both the ECIS and ECLRNI, as well as the assistance I have
received from members of the Elizabeth Montagu network, particularly
from Nicole Pohl and Betty Schellenberg, as well as the many helpful comments from my PhD extern Elizabeth Eger. Part of the work in
Chapter 4 originally appeared in the Eighteenth-Century Ireland journal –
and I would like to thank the ECIS for its permission to reproduce that
material here.
My archival research was made much easier by staff at various institutions, including Charles Benson, Simon Lang, and all the staff in Early
viii
Acknowledgements
ix
Printed Books at TCD; Lady Georgina Forbes who kindly allowed me
to access the muniment room at Castle Forbes; as well as the staff at
the Public Record Office in Northern Ireland; the National Library of
Ireland; the Irish Architectural Archive; and the Royal Irish Academy.
I have also had extremely pleasant and helpful dealings with staff at
the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, as well as at Sheffield
Archives, and Lichfield Record Office.
My research was facilitated by the generous award of a ‘Texts, Contexts, Cultures’ scholarship, coordinated by the Trinity Long Room Hub,
with funding from the PRTLI. I would like to acknowledge Crawford
Gribbin’s assistance throughout the programme, and the contribution
of my fellow TCC PhD students. My recent receipt of an Irish Research
Council Government of Ireland postdoctoral fellowship allowed me the
opportunity to shape the present monograph. Many thanks are also
due to my exceptionally efficient editor at Palgrave, Ben Doyle, and his
equally helpful assistant Tom René, who have managed to make the
process of publication enjoyable.
Academic research is not as solitary a pursuit as is often thought
and I am grateful to the following people for their helpful remarks and
advice since the start of this project: Sarah Crider Arndt, Toby Barnard,
Roísín Blunnie, Chris Borsing, Michael Brown, Daniel Carey, Andrew
Carpenter, Norma Clarke, Jane Conroy, Dara Downey, Suzanne Forbes,
Rebecka Gronstedt, Raphaela Holinski, Margaret Kelleher, Gary Kelly,
James Kelly, Jim Kelly, Harriet Kramer Linkin, Eoin Magennis, Jennifer
Martyn, Susan McDermott, Tina Morin, Clíona Ó Gallchoir, Jennifer
Orr, Shaun Regan, Daniel Roberts, Maria Anita Stefanelli, James Wood,
and Julie Anne Young, as well as the extensive QUB PhD cohort.
I would especially like to thank my family – my parents, James and
Deirdre, and my brother Evan – for their personal support, invigorating
candour, and constant encouragement. My interest in reading was nurtured at a very young age by my mum and her vast collection of books
and French magazines, collected since her own undergraduate studies
at Maynooth. I also owe so many thanks to my fiancé Alan Smyth
for his reassurances and support, his enduring patience and endless
proofreading, and his unswerving belief in me.
Introduction
A kind of academy of beaux esprits, gallantry, virtue and science
in Paris, for all these things complement each other marvellously,
as well as being the meeting place of all those who were the most
distinguished both in status and merit, a tribunal where you had to
make an impression and whose opinion had a great weight in the
world.1
Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon
(1675–1755), on the salon
The salon represented an important example of associational life in
the long eighteenth century as a mixed-gender voluntary gathering of
social elites. Within the salons, it was women who generally presided
over the polite, intellectual conversation that took place within fashionable settings. Originating in seventeenth-century France, the literary
salon was subsequently warmly embraced by hostesses in Ireland and
Britain. Salons indeed flourished across Britain and Ireland in the long
eighteenth century, particularly in the metropolitan cities of London,
Dublin, and Edinburgh, but also in provincial areas. These salons offered
extensive networks of intellectual affiliation and the participants certainly held cosmopolitan ambitions, with cultural links between the
salons maintained through travel and epistolary communication. This
book offers the first detailed examination of the literary salon in
Ireland, considered in the wider contexts of contemporary salon culture in Britain and France. Accordingly, it provides a fresh comparative
approach to the salon’s evolution across three countries and reveals the
cultural transfers that took place between them.
Salons have been defined broadly as “private social gatherings primarily for discussing literature, art and philosophy [that] took place in many
1
2
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
European urban centres, notably in France.”2 These gatherings held
great importance for the development of sociability; the creation, critique, and circulation of literature; the promotion of cultural transfers;
the advance of antiquarian research; and the possibility of self-education
for women. The literary salons offered interested participants a forum
for the development of new research and the development of written
texts, while the salon enabled all its participants to come together to
engage in conversation and debate on a range of topics.
Sociability itself relates to people who are “inclined or disposed to
seek and enjoy the company of others [and] disposed to conversation
and social activities.”3 The central role played by conversation in this
sociability formed the focus of much debate during the eighteenth century, with numerous contemporary essays considering the topic. In The
Present State of Conversation from Essays Moral and Literary (1782), the
clergyman and educationalist Vicesimus Knox declares, “There is, perhaps, no method of improving the mind more efficacious, and certainly
none more agreeable, than a mutual interchange of sentiments in an
elegant and animated conversation with the serious, the judicious, the
learned, and the communicative.”4 This description of “elegant and
animated conversation” perfectly captures the objective of the salons
with the coming together of like-minded people to engage in intelligent
debate rather than to play cards or gossip.
Such intelligent salon debate was generally focused on belles
lettres, with participants discussing various published and unpublished
poems, plays, essays, and novels. As well as providing a focus for conversation, the salons played a key role in the formation, critique, and
editing of literary works. The literary salon was an institution that permitted the enhancement and, indeed, even the establishment of literary
reputations. An introduction into the salon secured a professional network and ultimately an influential audience for aspiring authors and
their work, regardless of gender. The salon hostesses regularly acted as
patrons, while salon members frequently subscribed to the work of their
fellow participants, as well as offering support and engaging in collaborative projects.5 This aspect of salon life was particularly important
in the Bluestocking salons in London and Dublin, as well as in the
provincial salons in Bath.
These literary salons formed part of a much larger body of
associational life. They existed alongside coffee houses and taverns,
clubs and societies.6 What set them apart from most of these was their
elite nature and their absolute insistence on mixed-gender sociability.
The world of eighteenth-century associational life was one that was
Introduction
3
predominantly male in composition, with women participating only
rarely. The salon, as an example of mixed-gender association, offered
women a valuable opportunity to avail of a form of sociability that
was generally denied them. Research has revealed that women were
occasionally present at coffee houses and taverns as coffee-women or
servants, for example, but they were there primarily as marginalized
observers rather than active participants.7 In British Clubs and Societies
1580–1800, Peter Clark further emphasises that societies in Britain were
almost always exclusively male, but claims that, “female complaints
about their exclusion were rare.”8 Clark alludes briefly to the presence
of women in some clubs such as music, debating, and philanthropic
groups, but states that these “comprised only a small minority in a maledominated associational world,” and women form a negligible part of
the study.9 As Toby Barnard notes:
Much of this conviviality occurred either in the tavern or coffeehouse, both of which (except for their servants) were exclusively
male preserves. Women, sometimes notably public-spirited and philanthropic, might subscribe to charities, buy tickets for concerts and
swell the audiences, but they were not included among the governors
of the hospitals or members of the learned societies.10
Salons therefore allowed women, particularly female writers, a rare
opportunity to participate in literary debate on an equal footing with
men, and allowed them access to a very different form of sociability
than was generally available to them.
Not all women had the possibility of being salon participants, of
course, with the salons generally welcoming guests who brought with
them wealth, fame, or literary prowess. Clubs, coffee houses, and
taverns are now recognised as forming part of the authentic public
sphere as described by Jürgen Habermas: that is, as “a forum in which
private people come together to form a public.”11 The adjective “bourgeois,” which is perpetually attached to the public sphere of coffee
houses, taverns, clubs, and societies, does not apply in equal measure to the salon, where participation was confined to members of
a flexible social elite, those “most distinguished both in status and
merit.”12 John Brewer describes taverns and coffee houses, for example, as “places of pleasure and business, catering to customers from all
walks of life, centres of rumour, news and information,” and stresses
that they were “open to all ranks.”13 In contrast, salons were essentially, and certainly initially, aristocratic forms of association, which
4
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
allowed for the participation of particularly gifted bourgeoisie through
meritocracy.
At the centre of these salons, across France, Britain, and Ireland, was
the salon hostess.14 It was she who organised the gatherings as well as
committing herself to structuring the dialogue, inviting the guests, and
providing the actual physical site for discussion within their homes.
These women presided over the salons, shaped them, and ensured their
existence. Suzanne Necker wrote to Baron von Grimm regarding her fellow hostess Julie de Lespinasse: “Everyone in these assemblies is [now]
convinced that women fill the intervals of conversation and of life –
like the padding that one inserts in cases of china; they are valued
at nothing, and [yet] everything breaks without them.”15 This revealing comment gestures to both women’s importance within the salon,
and also the discomfort and resentment this often caused, reminding us
of the fragility of the hostess’s own position within eighteenth-century
society. The salons were hosted by an array of women across Britain and
Ireland, including Frances Boscawen, Alison Cockburn, Elizabeth Vesey,
and Frances Sheridan, to offer but a selection of names. All these women
added something of their personalities to the salons and moulded them
in different ways, imposing an individual stamp on the gathering while
maintaining the requisite order.
Samuel Johnson is recorded by James Boswell as admitting “that is the
happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a
calm, quiet interchange of sentiments.”16 For this “quiet interchange,”
rather than monopolisation of conversation, to occur, a skilled hostess
was necessary to govern and harmonise the various voices. Conversation
was intended to have a salutatory effect on all salon members, both male
and female, with each sex benefiting from the presence of the other,
just as David Hume describes in his essay, “Of Refinement in the Arts”
(1752):
Both sexes meet in an easy and sociable manner; and the tempers of
men, as well as their behaviour, refine apace. . . . it is impossible but
they must feel an encrease [sic] of humanity, from the very habit of
conversing together, and contributing to each other’s pleasure and
entertainment.17
Here, the condition of “ease” is emphasised, as is the sociability of the
meeting as well as the refinement of behaviour, presumably through
politeness, cooperation, and exchange. Women were clearly at the
centre of the salon in their capacity of hostesses, but they encouraged
Introduction
5
a principle of equality among participants and did not simply privilege
the opinion of their female guests. The basic premise for good conversation, both during the eighteenth century as a whole and in the salons in
particular, was the cooperation of the two sexes based on the principle
of complementarity, whereby all members of the salon would mutually
enliven and stimulate each other’s conversation.
This interaction also contributed to another important role upheld by
the salon, that as a place of self-education for women. Speaking in 1787,
regarding the establishment of a girls’ school, the poet Anna Laetitia
Barbauld announced to the salon hostess Elizabeth Montagu that “the
best way for women to acquire knowledge is from conversation.”18 Conversation has been described by Elizabeth Eger as a tool for education, “a
means of exercising the understanding,” and in a society where women
often received no formal education, the salon offered a forum for learning, debate, and formulation of opinions.19 The feminisation of culture,
the changing perceptions regarding learned ladies, and the development of the idea that the position of women within a society indicated
that society’s level of progress can all be traced through the salon’s
development.20 At the same time, the contribution of men to the conversation was judged of great importance, as men were thought to bring
a different type of knowledge and rational intelligence to the salon,
just as women were seen as contributing to its harmonious functioning
through their inherent sense of politesse.
Politesse, a term that implies both courtesy and manners, was a defining element of the literary salons.21 As Stephen Conway has argued,
“politeness was about easing social interaction between the traditional
elite and the aspiring middle sort.”22 All the salon’s members had to
acquire the rules of politesse, so enabling them to be assimilated into an
elite community through polished behaviour. The possible transgression
of politesse was a contentious one within salon gatherings as diversity
of attitude and thought, provided it was adequately and intelligently
argued, was not only allowed but indeed desired, allowing a more varied
but potentially discordant exchange. The hostess was therefore present
in order to make the ideal of politesse a reality through her governance
and upholding of the new rules of sociability within her home.
The salon’s physical setting
Salons generally took place amidst opulent surroundings. The importance of the physical setting for the salons has been noted by Amanda
Vickery in relation to Elizabeth Montagu, one of the most successful
6
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
English hostesses, “[Montagu] appreciated furnishings for their potential to define a space and set the tone for social gatherings.”23 The same
can certainly be said of the other hostesses, all of whom sought to distinguish their salon through particular use of decoration and space.
No understanding of the salon can be complete without consideration
of the various material aspects to which participants, and especially
hostesses, attached considerable importance. The architectural environment, deployment of the decorative arts, the consumption of food and
drink, all contributed to the definition of the salon as phenomenon.
The salon’s essential emphasis on space has, perhaps, led to its
prolonged omission from studies of Irish culture. Irish literary salons
generally took place within impressive Anglo-Irish town and country
houses. Unlike in much of Britain, the Irish public’s relationship with
its built heritage has been fraught with complex emotions and postcolonial realities.24 However, Terence Dooley in his introduction to
The Irish Country House, Its Past, Present and Future (2011) notes that
“The last twenty years or so have witnessed a regeneration of the historic house,” and that “animosity, vandalism and neglect have given
way to appreciation, preservation and restoration.”25 Many of the
Irish homes referred to in this book have suffered severe neglect or
complete destruction during the twentieth century. More recently, however, there has been a surge in public interest in Ireland’s built heritage,
as well as excellent academic engagement with these historic sites.26
Of course, these houses had a multiplicity of purposes, but one particular and important function was the historic house’s role in literary
associational life.
The Irish Architectural Archives, the Georgian Society, the Office of
Public Works, and the National Trust have done a great deal of work
in safeguarding historic buildings and their contents, as well as making them accessible to the public. Mark Purcell’s The Big House Library in
Ireland: Books in Ulster Country Houses (2011), published by the National
Trust, illustrates the importance of such organisations in preserving
cultural and literary material. In addition to these public ventures,
many archives remain in private possession in privately owned country houses, such as those carefully preserved in the muniment room in
Castle Forbes, Co. Longford. Archival material at Castle Forbes includes
catalogues and inventories of “books, plate, pictures, furniture, wine,
game, stock and horses” belonging to the Irish salon hostess Elizabeth
Rawdon, Lady Moira, and gives us a particularly detailed picture of elite
life in late eighteenth-century Dublin as well as patterns of consumption
there.27
Introduction
7
Salons took place in both town and country houses, although primarily in the former. This distinction is crucial to our understanding
of the occupants’ choice of decoration and consumption of goods, as
Rachel Stewart’s The Town House in Georgian London (2009) makes clear.
Some of the century’s greatest architects, including James “Athenian”
Stuart and Robert Adam, were commissioned by the salon hostesses to
create the settings for the salons in eighteenth-century London and
Dublin. Indeed the changing taste of French, British, and Irish elites
can be traced through their architectural choices as well as their various
espousal of chinoiserie, particular wallpaper, and also their personal selection of clothes.28 Salon hostesses’ choice of seating arrangement within
these spaces reveals much about their sense of identity and their perception of social hierarchy, while it also gives us a greater opportunity
to visualise the salon in the absence of contemporary pictorial representations. This absence, and the largely oral nature of the salon, certainly
presents methodological problems, but a clear sense of salon life can
nevertheless be achieved through careful consultation of published letters and diaries, as well as close attention to unedited archival material,
which often retains rich allusions to literary gatherings, whether in
epistolary form or embedded in household accounts. Finally, it is imperative to recognise that the term “salon” itself is in fact an anachronistic
one in relation to the seventeenth and early-eighteenth century. In these
periods “salon” was used solely to refer to a room in a house or apartment; only at the end of the eighteenth century did it begin to be used
to refer to a social gathering.29 The term conversazione was frequently
employed by English salon participants when referring to their gatherings, rather than the term bureau d’esprit,
t which was often favoured by
French participants.30 This study will, however, use the term salon to
apply to all those gatherings that are now recognised as such, whether
previously identified by terms such as conversazioni, ruelles, bureaux
d’esprits or coteries.
Cultural transfers
The salons contributed much to the transnational circulation of ideas,
goods, and practices. Much research has been conducted relating to the
Grand Tour, the practice of finishing off one’s education by travelling
to Continental Europe, and while specific numbers for Irish and British
men and women travelling to France as part of the Grand Tour remain
difficult to establish, the importance of those visits is more easily determined. Máire Kennedy, for instance, relates, “This contact with Europe,
8
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
particularly France, led to an awareness of French literature and culture
and stimulated the desire to participate in the cosmopolitan civilization of the Enlightenment.”31 Such emulation of the salon indicates
the pervasive influence of French culture abroad. Knowledge of the
French language was also widely encouraged and promoted throughout eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland, while the letters of the
Bluestockings in particular, are brimfull with French expressions, such
as “bon soir, ma chère amie,” as well as lengthy quotations from French
works, and original “very pretty” French verses.32 The Irish and British,
however, also contributed greatly to French cultural life, emphasising
the “complexity, processuality, and reciprocity of intercultural exchange
relations” recognised in transfer studies.33 Intercultural exchanges were
a central element of the literary salons, with the participation of foreign
visitors a key factor of salon life. Additionally, British and Irish hostesses
held salons in France, whilst Irish hostesses, and indeed Irish salon participants, also played a central role in England’s social life, particularly
in London, through their contribution to salon culture abroad.
Salon hostesses, such as Elizabeth Vesey, acted as cultural intermediaries, performing their role as importers and purveyors of foreign
ideas. In addition to introducing the institution of the salon into
new regions, these women transferred cultural items, such as newspapers, pamphlets, poetry, and manuscript papers, between salons in
the different countries. Salon hostesses who had particularly strong
links with hostesses in other countries could further disseminate the
writings of their own salon members, thereby increasing readership, networks, audience, and, subsequently, the chance of publication. This was
particularly important for participants of the British and Irish salons as,
unlike that in eighteenth-century France, the work promoted in Britain
and Ireland was frequently composed by female and regional writers,
who benefited immensely from such increased circulation.
Collaborative work on cultural transfers has repeatedly emphasised
the “active role of the receiving culture,” stressing “the extent to which
transfer implies change, as the source culture is mixed with the receptor
culture to produce something new that is a combination of both and has
an impact on both.”34 While always retaining their emphasis on politesse
and intellectual discussion, the salons adapted to meet the assorted
demands of the participants in the various countries. This allowed its
members in Ireland and Britain the possibility of embracing the salon
for a variety of reasons and in order to fulfil different purposes. The salon
could be used, for example, to obtain a certain amount of social mobility
in seventeenth-century France or as a forum for Enlightenment debate
Introduction
9
in the eighteenth century. In London it could be chosen by Bluestocking
participants to enable self-education. The salon could also be embraced
in order to allow access to literary networks and to the world of publishing by hostesses, such as Anna Seward or Anna Miller in England,
and Elizabeth Hamilton in Scotland, while Lady Moira’s Dublin salon
became a primary location for Irish scholarship.
While adhering to “an elite horizontal sense of solidarity,” that was
sustained through transnational association and exchange, the salon
could also be embraced as providing a forum for the construction of
national identity.35 Salon hostesses and participants could define themselves in opposition to other gatherings and other participants. The
salon itself also played a role in facilitating the advancement of such
studies as antiquarianism and regional writing, which enabled the development of a clearer sense of self. This was particularly true in Ireland and
Scotland where salon hostesses, such as Edinburgh’s Alison Rutherford
Cockburn, defined their salons in clear opposition to those in England
and frequently used the salon as a forum for negotiating personal and
national identity. Moira House salon, meanwhile, became one of the
most important meeting places for those engaged in recovering and
constructing a sense of Ireland’s cultural heritage in the late-eighteenth
century. This was also true to a lesser extent in the English salons, where
distinctions dependent on national affiliation formed and were determined through recognition of group identity based on shared religious
and cultural beliefs.36
Joep Leerssen’s Mere Irish and fíor-ghael (1996), which reconsiders the
“cultural confrontation” between England and Ireland, defines a nation
as “a group sharing a common demographical self-definition that distinguishes it from its non-members, and sharing a common allegiance
to the criteria by which that self-definition is performed.”37 In Ireland,
identity was complicated by the hyphenated Anglo-Irish status of the
vast majority of that country’s salon members. As Andrew Carpenter
has noted, poets such as Patrick Delany and Thomas Sheridan, both
of whom were participants in salon life, “were Protestant and English
speaking, but they were loyal to the Church of Ireland rather than to
the Church of England, to Trinity College Dublin rather than to Oxford
or Cambridge, and, particularly when the English administration was
enacting anti-Irish legislation, to Ireland rather than to England.”38
Amidst all the cultural exchanges between France, Britain, and
Ireland, it is also worthwhile to note that women themselves were
often physically transplanted from one country to the next. The number of English-born women married to members of the Irish gentry
10
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
and aristocracy is quite striking. Anne Dawson, Lady Moira, and Emily
Fitzgerald, the Duchess of Leinster, are just a few examples of female
salon participants who left their country of birth for another and had
to adapt to the circumstances arising from this. Such movement of people had multiple implications, and the correspondence written by these
women betrays these issues in a variety of ways, such as with questions
of “home” and where this might be; with discussions of legal repercussions of their nationality on inheritance and taxation; comments
on their adjustment to a new country; and of course their negotiation
of identity and what it means to be Irish. The famous Lennox sisters,
Emily, Louisa, and Sarah, embraced Ireland to varying degrees after moving there following the death of their parents and Emily’s marriage to
James Fitzgerald. Louisa declares in a letter to Emily in 1786, “They are
now gone back to England. Sarah tells me that he is a most thorough
Irishman, and that ’twas a pity I did not see him, as she reckons me so
complete an Irish woman.”39 These married women’s journals, diaries,
and personal papers also offer many instances of comparative judgements on salon sociability as they return to England and sample literary
life there.
Changing nature of elite sociability
The salons reflect the distinctiveness of elite sociability in France,
Britain, and Ireland as well as the changing nature of the sociability
in these countries, as the salons adapted to the historical changes taking place over a period stretching from the early-seventeenth century
until the July Monarchy (1830–1848). The salons took place in the contexts of Enlightenment advances and of the Protestant Ascendancy in
Ireland. The relative stability in mid-eighteenth-century Britain allowed
salon life to flourish there after the turbulence of the civil war in the
previous century and the Stuart crisis, which culminated in the revolution of 1688. Salons also operated, however, during periods of change,
unrest and upheaval, including events such as the French Revolution,
the Revolutionary Wars, the 1798 Rebellion, the Act of Union between
Great Britain and Ireland, and the First Empire. The salon’s functioning
during these periods reveals much about the impact of these events on
elite cultural life in each country as the salon had to further adapt and
transform to maintain its importance.
As the salons adapted, other forms of mixed-gender literary gatherings
began to emerge. It is possible to locate these various literary gatherings along a spectrum, with salons viewed as the most prestigious,
Introduction
11
while book clubs and reading parties were more democratic. In between,
one can identify intermediate forms of literary association, such as the
single-author salons, where the hostess was the main literary beneficiary. Differences are primarily bound up with the fact that, rather than
focusing on literary discussion and critique, the reading parties were
instead centred on the reading aloud of chosen material. The work being
read had generally been already published, thus rendering it immune
from editorial assistance as occurred in the salons. In the reading parties, the author of the works being read was generally absent, which
again distinguished them from the salon, where the author was regularly a participant. Book clubs were even more easily distinguished as
they served primarily to enable the acquisition of books, although the
books’ contents would have been generally discussed prior to purchase.
The reading parties and books clubs are stripped of the prestige of the
salons, but nevertheless retain a strong literary and cultural function
common to all the literary gatherings: the dissemination of national
and foreign literatures.
While predominantly concentrated in metropolitan areas, salons also
took place in provincial centres. Provincial life has received its most
thorough study in Peter Borsay’s landmark The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1770 (1989). This
study includes mention of the development of provincial newspapers
and libraries, key elements of literary life outside the capital. Private
subscription libraries started to appear from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, while private, clerical libraries existed long before this
and added much to the cultural standing of the clergy.40 The clergy also
controlled more “public” libraries, and as a result access to such collections by lay members of the neighbourhood was strictly monitored, as
was the material selected.41 A wealthy neighbour’s private library in a
regional area was thus of great importance for the reading members of
the local elite in the mid- to late-eighteenth century. Comments relating to the accessibility of such private libraries feature intermittently
in the correspondence of provincial salon members who remark on the
varying degrees of difficulty in gaining access to the collections of others. The provincial salon played an important role in the circulation of
books, pamphlets, and manuscript materials, both through their dissemination of material outside of the salon and their shared experience of
reading and discussing the chosen material within the gathering itself.
Salons also occasionally took place within rooms designated as
libraries. Toby Barnard describes libraries as “spaces dedicated as much
to society and conversation as to silent study. The books catered
12
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
to conviviality.”42 Several eighteenth-century libraries survive to the
present day. Two surviving libraries described by Mark Purcell, the
Libraries Curator of the National Trust, as “remarkable,” are those at
Tullynally Castle, Co. Westmeath, which was visited by the author Maria
Edgeworth, and Clonalis, Co. Roscommon, home to the antiquarian
Charles O’Connor. The National Trust, meanwhile, owns 140 historic
libraries across the United Kingdom, including seven houses in Northern Ireland with books.43 The core of the libraries in the two largest
collections – Springhill, Co. Derry, and Castle Ward, Co. Down –
were assembled before the Williamite-Jacobite War of 1689–1691.44 The
library at Castle Forbes, one of the best country house libraries in
eighteenth-century Ireland, co-founded by Lady Moira and her daughter Selina, Lady Granard, was auctioned in 1993, with a catalogue listing
the dispersed titles.45 Inventories for the libraries of two urban salon
hostesses, Elizabeth Vesey and Lady Moira, still exist, and they provide
information on the reading habits of these hostesses along with the
components of their respective collections.46 Of course there were also
transfers of books between libraries across Britain and Ireland, and the
correspondence of Elizabeth Vesey in particular details many instances
of such exchange.
This study begins by surveying the French literary salon, an important
but overlooked aspect of which was the considerable participation of foreign visitors. The salons of Irish hostesses in France, such as Anastacia
Fitzmaurice, the Countess of Kerry, and Bridget Plunket, Madame de
Chastellux, offer exciting new perspectives on the salons and reveal
the transformation of French sociability that took place during the
French Revolution and Revolutionary Wars. Chapter 2 moves to Britain
and examines a range of salons, focusing on figures such as the Irishborn Mary Monckton, one of the most neglected of the Bluestocking
hostesses, as well as Edinburgh’s Alison Rutherford Cockburn. It will also
feature an assessment of the influence of French salon culture on gatherings in England and Scotland, as well as Irish involvement in salons
in London town houses and elsewhere.
Chapters 3 and 4 offer detailed case studies of particular salons, specifically those of Elizabeth Vesey and Lady Moira, using unpublished
archival material. Correspondence, biographies, journals, household
reports, stray verse, travel descriptions, and assorted other items, all
form part of the available material still extant for these salon hostesses,
and these two chapters include discussion of their salons’ contexts,
aims, influences, and main participants. Chapter 5 investigates the presence of salons outside of urban areas, arguing for the importance of
Introduction
13
the provincial salon in the dissemination of literary material outside
the capital, and also their role in cultural transfers between regions and
countries. Finally, Chapter 6 will analyse the diffuse nature of salons, as
a changing political landscape and increased democratisation resulted
in the emergence of less elite gatherings, such as reading parties and
book clubs, thus exploring the relationship between the salon and these
more popular literary gatherings.
1
The French Salon: Its Foreign
Participants and Hosts
These receptions are attended by all the best people and by all the
distinguished foreigners and travellers.1
Reflecting in a letter to his father on his experiences of salon culture
during his 1763 visit to France, the historian Edward Gibbon stressed
the salons’ heterogeneity as well as their shared spirit. Emphasising their
common values, he noted that the salons were not identical: “all these
people have their different merit; in some I meet with good dinners; in
others, societies for the evening . . . .”2 Precisely as Gibbon recognised, it
is essential to respect and indeed highlight the differences and multiplicity of purposes inherent in the French salons rather than forcing the
salon to adapt to a strict, inflexible definition. The salon as an institution changed and evolved over the centuries, retaining the same overall
form, but fulfilling different functions and needs as contexts and circumstances varied. The French Revolution, for example, changed the
salon’s conversation by politicising it and making public affairs a top
priority, but its form and ethos of sociability remained virtually unaltered until 1848, when liberals began to view salons and mondanité as a
“frivolous distraction.”3
In all its manifestations, the French salon was a staged event, involving distinctive forms of material culture. These forms, no less than
the discussions taking place, define the salon at any one moment.
To consider a sketch or outline of an evening at a salon, with its
food, decoration, and guests, offers us a fuller, more appropriately complex sense of an individual gathering. What the salon hostesses wore
and how they choose to set the scene for their salons reveal much
regarding taste, fashion, and creativity, while enabling us to further
visualise the event. These gatherings often involved large numbers of
14
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
15
guests. Who these people were, what backgrounds they came from, and
how they behaved amongst each other lead to questions of meritocracy and complementarity, politesse and gallantry. These salons offered
an important forum for discussion and they had an extensive sphere
of influence, encompassing the French Academy, publishing, and the
world of literature in general.
One important, often overlooked, feature of the French salons was the
considerable participation of foreign visitors. The Englishman Edward
Gibbon was just one of many foreign participants in the French salons.
The abbé André Morellet, for example, recorded a list of participants at
Mme Geoffrin’s Paris salon, which included Jean-François Marmontel,
Baron d’Holbach, and Abbé Raynal as well as “beaucoup d’étrangers de
tous les pays qui n’eussent pas cru avoir vu Paris, s’ils n’avaient pas
été admis chez Madame Geoffrin.”4 The diaries, journals, and correspondence of British men and women of letters such as William Cole,
David Garrick, David Hume, Horace Walpole, Laurence Sterne, Edward
Gibbon, and Elizabeth Montagu all provide accounts of their visits to
French salons, particularly during the 1760s and 1770s – after, or even
during, the period of the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) – and offer
interesting accounts of the salons from a British perspective. This flood
of tourists visiting France continued until the outbreak of the French
Revolutionary Wars when the British began to rediscover their own
country, travelling to places such as the Lake District, the Wye Valley,
and Edinburgh.5
Visitors were also attracted to the salons from elsewhere in Europe
and the world at large; the Italian economist Abbé Galiani and the
American philosopher Benjamin Franklin, for example, both frequented
the Parisian salons, as did the Russian Enlightenment figure, Princess
Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova. This practice of receiving foreign visitors to the French salons did not begin in earnest until the eighteenth
century.6 The presence of foreign visitors in these eighteenth-century
salons allowed both Enlightenment thought and descriptions of salon
culture to spread throughout the Western world, “permitting mutual
appreciation and a mutual exchange of ideas.”7 Amongst the most
neglected of these foreign visitors are the French salons’ Irish contributors. In addition to the priests, merchants, and soldiers who made up
the three dominant Irish groups in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
France, there were also many literary figures, members of the aristocracy, and travellers on the Grand Tour, who chose to visit or reside in
France.8 Thomas O’Connor notes: “This exchange of people, ideas and
resources marked Ireland’s historical experience and had an important
16
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
impact on Europe in the early-modern period.”9 Our understanding of
the French salon is incomplete without investigating the nature of this
impact. The personal papers of such figures as James Caulfield, first Earl
of Charlemont, and Emily Fitzgerald, Duchess of Leinster, for instance,
offer a fresh insight into the French Enlightenment and its salons. The
Irish involvement in the eighteenth-century French salon was extensive.
In addition to their presence in various French salons as participants,
several Irish men and women also played a significant role in hosting
salons. Important salons in France were held by James Butler, the 2nd
Duke of Ormonde; Anastacia Fitzmaurice, the Countess of Kerry; and
Bridget Plunket, Madame de Chastellux. Correspondence and personal
papers held in the National Library of Ireland, in addition to published
correspondence, memoirs, and travel journals belonging to such Irish
men and women, provide much information about these gatherings.
These Irish salons in France add further to our perception of the salons,
not only demonstrating their diverse nature, but also revealing points of
similarity throughout. In addition, these sources allow new, often overlooked, perspectives on an institution which has received much study,
but where the same evidence is frequently circulated by authors on the
subject.
The eighteenth-century salon in Paris
Writing at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Marquise de
Lambert (1647–1733) reflects on the salons of the early-seventeenth
century in the following manner: “Il y avait autrefois des maisons où
il était permis de parler et de penser; où les muses étaient en société
avec les grâces.”10 With this revealing statement, de Lambert highlights the importance of intellectual freedom, the ability to “both speak
and think,” in seventeenth-century salons, implying her belief that
free enquiry and individual reasoning were considered fundamental.
Nicole Pohl has identified philosophical symposia, Medieval norms of
courtly love, and Italian Renaissance court culture as having provided
the “blueprint for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century salon culture,”
in particular the latter through its emphasis on humanism, Platonism,
and gallantry.11 Men of letters played an important role within the
seventeenth-century salons, but remained on an equal level with the
female members and the female literati’s own literary endeavours and
interests. A sample list of participants at Mme de la Sablière’s salon, for
example, includes both successful men and women: Mme de Sévigné,
the Comtesse de Lafayette, Mme de Coulanges, Mme Scarron, Mme
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
17
de La Suze, Ninon de Lenclos, Madeleine de Scudéry, Paul Pelisson,
Valentin Conrart, Isaac de Benserade, Jean de la Chapelle, Charles
Perrault, and Fontenelle, as well as various diplomats and scientists.12
In the seventeenth-century salon, the salonnière was both hostess and
avid participant, contributing to the debate with her own interjections
as well as offering her own written material for conversation and formal improvement. In the eighteenth century, the composition of the
gatherings altered significantly with mixed-gender sociability generally
confined to a female hostess and male-only participants.
Women in the eighteenth-century salon were thus present primarily
as facilitators and hosts rather than as participants, but they still served
an essential function. The salonnière’s most important task was now
to guide conversation and to maintain absolute harmony amongst her
guests. These salonnières became vital to the harmonious working of the
eighteenth-century salon, invisibly determining the mood of the gathering itself. Those hostesses most associated with the salon’s “golden
age,” and indeed with the term “salon” in general, are Suzanne Curchod
Necker (1739–1794), Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin (1699–1777), Julie
de Lespinasse (1732–1777), and Marie de Vichy-Champrond du Deffand
(1696–1780).13 The participants in these Parisian salons were primarily, if not exclusively, male. Julie de Lespinasse is often referred to as
the only woman present at the salon of Madame Geoffrin: “[Lespinasse]
était la seule femme que Mme Geoffrin eut admise à son dîner des gens
de lettres,” while descriptions of Madame Necker’s salon usually only
record the presence of one other female – the Neckers’ young daughter
Germaine, better known today as the famous author Madame de Staël.14
The primary role of these salon hostesses was unmistakably to govern
and uphold the rules of polite conversation by facilitating the intellectual exchanges of their guests. It is attention rather than interpolation
that is now essential. Madame Necker declares in one of her diaries,
which were published by her husband after her death, that “the great
secret of conversation is continual attention.”15 The hostess had to
ensure the smooth flow of dialogue. In Marmontel’s Portrait de Madame
Geoffrin (1777), the author declares: “Lorsqu’il [l’abbé de Saint-Pierre]
s’en allait, Mme Geoffrin lui dit: Monsieur l’abbé, vous avez été d’une
excellente conversation. Madame, lui-dit-il, je ne suis qu’un instrument dont vous avez bien joué.”16 Faith Beasley, in her work on the
seventeenth-century salon, frequently belittles those of the eighteenth
century while Dena Goodman claims that “it was the seriousness and
regularity of these [eighteenth-century] salons that distinguished them
from seventeenth-century salons.”17 Rather than denigrating salons
18
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
from different periods, it is better to see the salons as evolving to fulfil
different functions. As an institutional base for the Enlightenment, the
salon is no more or less serious than it would be as a centre for Fronde
opinion or literary production, and one can observe that the salon’s
position as a location for debate on literary and philosophical issues
remained constant.18
The eighteenth-century French salons were re-established as a serious focus of study in the wake of Goodman’s critically acclaimed work,
The Republic of Letters (1994), but they have been the centre of popular study for more than two centuries. The salons have been subject
to idolisation at the hands of nineteenth-century amateur historians;
feminist re-appropriation in the latter half of the twentieth century;
abstract reasoning regarding sociability, conversation, and debates on
the bourgeois public sphere during the 1980s; and more recently the
denial of their very significance, with the entire history of the salon
thus far denounced by Antoine Lilti as a mere product of the historical imagination.19 While it could be argued that Goodman occasionally
overplays the importance of the salons, Lilti’s dismissal of their worth
is untenable. Within his work, Lilti disparages many memoirs by contemporary salon members, such as Marmontel and Morellet, as mere
nostalgic accounts. Correspondence and memoirs allow salon participants to disseminate a particular image of their gatherings and shape
how others will perceive them. Such works, particularly these memoirs, should indeed be approached with caution, but to dismiss them
entirely is a mistake. These personal writings contain much invaluable
information and allow us to determine how the participants themselves
interpreted the salons. The room in which the salon took place was
carefully decorated with specific objects and commissioned artworks,
including portraits of the salon hostesses, represented in such a way as
to communicate a specific message. It is not surprising that such preparation for staging the salon also extended to consideration of how the
gatherings would be perceived by others through written and visual
descriptions. Within this material, there are certainly varying levels
of authenticity and attempts at realistic representations. One can, for
instance, easily identify such manifest fallacies as the 1812 oil painting
by Lemonnier of Madame Geoffrin’s salon, which includes figures who
could not have attended the salons together. Such idealisations, whether
overt or ambiguous, can still help us to understand how impressions
of the salons were commissioned, constructed, and circulated by both
participants and hostesses.
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
19
That these salons were carefully orchestrated events is readily observable in the preparations undertaken by the hostesses prior to the actual
gatherings. The salonnière often prepared meticulously in advance of
the salon, setting the stage and anticipating the dialogue. Lespinasse’s
guest, the chevalier de Chastellux, discovered one of Madame Necker’s
diaries, or “little book,” for example, in the Neckers’ drawing room,
which reveals the extent to which her salon was a planned event:
It was the preparation for the very dinner to which he was invited:
Madame Necker had written it the evening before, and it contained
all she was to say to the most remarkable persons at table; his name
was there, and after it these words, “I must talk to the Chevalier de
Chastellux about Public Happiness and Agathe.”
In addition to those notes regarding de Chastellux, a man of letters who
had contributed to the Encyclopédie, there were also notes for Marmontel
and Guibert, and indeed Mme Necker is recorded as subsequently having said, “word for word what she had written in her pocket-book.”20
Geoffrin, meanwhile, is reported to have kept a catalogue of her guests
according to nationality, including some essential information adjacent
to several of the names. This information was written there to help her
memory when she went to receive them into her salon, such as how
to pronounce their names or to make a joke: “General Barington: m’a
donné à dîner, avec Milord Grosvenor; il est fort laid et marqué de la
petite vérole. Grosvenor, en anglais, se prononce Gros Veneur.”21 These
salonnières embraced their role with seriousness and saw their salons as
performing an important function.
Scholars such as Joan Landes have championed these women as being
proto-feminists.22 Alan Kors, by contrast, pours scorn on them, claiming that the only place philosophes could say what was actually on their
mind was in the so-called “coterie” of the Baron d’Holbach: “there the
fetters were removed.”23 The salonnières’ unequivocal position of power
seems to have often been met with both eulogies and expressions of
discomfort from male salon members. Many male participants viewed
these women’s governing of the social space with a paradoxical mixture of respect and anxiety. While Geoffrin is famously and repeatedly
recorded as intervening with her “allons, voilà qui est bien” in order to
draw a halt to inappropriate conversations, it is wrong to presume that
liberty of speech and expression was not allowed by these women.24 The
all-encompassing nature of topics permitted for discussion is illustrated
20
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
in the following quotation from Baron von Grimm commenting on
Lespinasse:
Politics, religion, philosophy, anecdotes, news, nothing was excluded
from the conversation, and, thanks to her care, the most trivial little
narrative gained, as naturally as possible, the place and narrative it
deserved. News of all kinds was gathered there in its first freshness.25
Roger Picard in speaking of these salons suggests that the philosophes
were there attempting to “assure the dominance of thought in society,” utilising the salons to diffuse Enlightenment ideas as a great aim of
the project was to expand the audience for Enlightenment and create a
model for the general public to emulate.26
Dena Goodman also repeatedly emphasises the vital importance
of the salons as Enlightenment institution, describing them as “the
civil working spaces of the project of the Enlightenment.”27 Goodman
presents the salons as the nexus of exchange at the core of the French
Enlightenment, and while it is perhaps exaggerating a little to insist
on their being quite as central, they were clearly linked to Enlightenment endeavours and offered a location for discussion and debate to
take place. Present there were the most prominent writers, philosophers,
and politicians, all those whose names have now become synonymous
with Enlightenment thought, including Rousseau, Diderot, d’Alembert,
and Voltaire. Several salonnières are described as supporting the creation
of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie (28 vols., 1751–1775), a project
that reflected the aspirations of the entire Enlightenment with its aim
to aid the advancement of mankind through education and reason, by
helping humankind to overcome ignorance. Julie de Lespinasse’s eulogy,
for example, describes her as “très connue dans le monde par l’asile
qu’elle donnait à M d’Alembert, par sa passion pour l’Encyclopédie et
les encyclopédistes . . . .”28 The eighteenth-century salons offered a newly
defined social space where enlightened philosophes could go to enable
the advancement of their collective activity and benefit from the salon
as a site for intellectual exchanges and collaboration.
As well as acting as a forum for such collaborative work, the salons
also played a role in literary production and reception. The salon
had a critical function to play in the circulation of manuscript material, for example, which was still a viable practice in the eighteenth
century.29 Gentil-Bernard’s Art d’Aimer and Guibert’s Eloge du Chancelier
de l’Hospital are two examples of texts that were circulated extensively
in manuscript rather than published form.30 The salon also played an
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
21
equally important role in the transition from manuscript to published
material, having almost “the monopoly of first publication” with all
new material having first to gain salon members’ assent and approbation prior to publication.31 Aspiring writers sought entry into the salons
as they offered a place for manuscripts to be read aloud to an important audience who might provide financial support should they prove
sufficiently impressed with the material and should the author wish to
publish.
The social make-up of the salons, although elite, was quite mixed,
with salons being composed of both literary figures and members of the
gentry and nobility. The seventeenth-century salon had offered participants a degree of social mobility and performed somewhat as “schools
for assimilation into aristocratic manners.”32 Madame Geoffrin insists
that the presence of the nobility in her eighteenth-century salon was
solely to further the literary careers of her preferred guests:
Vous croyez . . . que c’est pour moi que je vois des grands et des ministres? Détrompez-vous; je les vois pour vous et pour vos semblables,
qui pouvez en avoir besoin: si tous ceux que j’aime étaient heureux
et sages, ma porte serait tous les jours fermée à neuf heures, excepté
pour eux.
[You really believe that I invite these great men and ministers here
for myself? You are quite mistaken, I invite them here for you and
those like you, who might have need of them: if all those I love were
happy and wise, my door would be closed every day at nine o’clock,
except to them.]33
The nobility are thus declared by her to be present primarily as potential support for the literati in attendance rather than for their own worth
and contribution. However, as with all correspondence, it is important
to note the audience for each individual letter and interrogate the truth
of the self-image being projected. While Geoffrin’s letters to the literati
announce her lack of interest in the nobility, the correspondence of
these men and women sheds new light on such matters. It is important
to note also that the presence of foreign guests in the literary salons carried a mark of distinction, as Marianne D’Ezio has noted in relation to
the presence of British guests in Italian salons.34
In addition to attracting local elite figures, the French salons were
particularly alluring for foreign nobles, and it is easy to conceive how
the salonnières might have enjoyed the aristocratic as well as literary
celebrities who were drawn to their salons. Geoffrin, in particular, seems
22
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
to have been favoured by titled visitors from Britain and Ireland. She is
described, for example, in the correspondence of Lady Holland to her
sister Emily, then the Marchioness of Kildare, as “much the Duchess
of Bedford’s favourite of all the French”; “the intimate friend of Lady
Hervey”; and by Lady Holland herself as “exceedingly agreeable.”35
Equally, she is mentioned as being “very fond of the English,” and this
fondness is put to good use. Lady Holland explains, “She is delightfully useful to strangers, because she really can tell one what to do,
and what not to do,” thus avoiding any social embarrassments.36 The
presence of the nobility thus adds celebrity and glamour to the chosen
salon gathering, while allowing the foreign participants to better navigate French society, offering a further example of the symbiotic nature
of the salon.
As well as Baronesses and Duchesses, Madame Geoffrin, of course, also
maintained a close friendship with King Stanislaw August of Poland,
who met Geoffrin during his Grand Tour in the 1750s, and who Geoffrin
purportedly referred to as her son. There are also several mentions of
Geoffrin and her salon in the memoirs of Princess Dashkova of Russia.
Dashkova’s memoirs are notoriously complicated, given the numerous
editions in existence, the original translation by the Irish sisters Martha
and Katherine Wilmot and the rigorous editing by Martha, in addition
to the usual desire of a memoir’s subject to disseminate a particular public image.37 Nonetheless, it is interesting to note Dashkova’s recollection
of Mesdames Necker and Geoffrin. They are described in the memoir as
both urgently seeking out the Princess in person while she stayed with
Diderot, before writing to request a visit:
The following day I received a very flattering note from Madame
Necker saying that Madame Geoffrin hated the idea of living in the
same town without seeing me, and such was her high opinion of me
that she would never get over the fact of having missed me.38
Whether or not the salonnières desired to meet Dashkova quite so
intensely, it seems likely that they did attempt to attract her company.
Dashkova later notes that she attended Necker’s salon during her second visit to Paris: “At Madame Necker’s I made the acquaintance of the
Bishop of Autun as well as of Monsieur Guibert, author of a book on
tactics which had earned so much fame; and there, too, I met Monsieur
de Rulhiere whom I had known in Russia,” indicating once again the
variety of guests present at the Paris salons, each with their own reason
for being there.39
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
23
In the eighteenth-century salon, participants were generally received
into buildings designed according to that style that characterised the
reign of Louis XV, the feminine and elaborately ornamental rococo. This
style of residence was essentially private but nevertheless allocated a
section of the house, the salon, to public activity with the result that
“the discursive space of the salon was located within the public architectural space of these new private homes.”40 While Steven D. Kale has
claimed that Habermas’s study can hardly be said to be “a precision
instrument for describing the history of the salon, its social and political dimensions,” it is, however, useful in its application to the structural
layout of the salon, allowing us to conceive of the idea of a public sphere
in a private realm.41 The interior decoration of these salons offers much
insight into the values and tastes of the salonnières and, indeed, their
guests, as well as allowing us to better picture the conduct of a salon
evening. Rococo with its asymmetrical patterns and scrollwork was the
style generally favoured during the mid-eighteenth century, but this
did not prevent each salon from having its own particular and highly
individual character.
Madame du Deffand’s salon, for example, is described as a large room
hung with silk fabric of a buttercup yellow colour and dotted with
fire-red bows.42 Her salon was located in the former Convent of SaintJoseph, not far from the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The convent
had been founded in the 1640s, but had fallen into financial difficulty by the first decade of the eighteenth century, in common with
other such institutions at the time, and rooms were thus rented out
to private individuals such as du Deffand in an effort to earn some
money.43 Madame du Deffand provided her guests with “petits soupers”
where there were just five or six guests, offering them a choice of two
entrées, a roast and two desserts.44 Both tea and coffee were drunk in
the salons and, although there is no evidence that it was consumed
in du Deffand’s, alcohol was served in other salons. Julie de Lespinasse
was initially the full-time companion of Mme du Deffand, the sister of
Lespinasse’s brother-in-law, from 1754, but was later dismissed after du
Deffand discovered Lespinasse secretly holding her own salon before
the elder woman’s salon had begun. Lespinasse then left du Deffand,
established her own salon, and from 1765 onwards presided over one
of the most important philosophical salons of the eighteenth century.45
Lespinasse’s own salon, on the corner of rue Saint-Dominique and Rue
de Belle Chasse, consisted of a large room lit by four windows framed
with crimson taffeta curtains. Voltaire’s bust, along with d’Alembert’s,
dominated the room, which is also described as being furnished with
24
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
elegant pieces given by the Maréchale de Luxembourg, the Comtesse de
Boufflers, the Duchesse de Châtillon, and Mme Geoffrin.46
In addition to her disagreement with Lespinasse, du Deffand was also
at odds with Geoffrin. Lady Sarah Lennox’s letters from 1776 detail the
animosity that existed between the two salonnières: “By the by I hope
you did not ask Madame du Deffant [sic] about her, for they have been
rival courts for many years.”47 The extent of this rivalry between the two
women becomes clear when Emily, now the Duchess of Leinster, visits
du Deffand despite her sister’s warnings and recommendations:
Why, what a mean poor spirited, toad-eating, abject wretch you are,
to go and curry favour with old Deffand at the expense of a poor
woman you did not know! I am so mad with you I could almost beat
you, for now mark the consequence; old Deffand will take care to
have this repeated to the other to triumph over her, and then old
Geoffrin will be piqued and will say you have no feeling, no gratitude not have a little consideration for the friend of your sister, who
protected all the family and was so civil to them.48
Sarah’s letters refer to previous examples of disputes between the two
women, and how she attempted to navigate their gatherings without
provoking either salonnière. Such considerations differ greatly from the
sense of camaraderie described amongst the Bluestockings in England
and the comments of respect among salon hostesses in Ireland. It also
reminds us of the way in which salons are often presented as idealised
gatherings, but involved much rivalry and disagreement.
Geoffrin’s salon, which began in 1749, was held on Mondays and
Wednesdays, with different days devoted to different participants, as
Lady Holland intimates: “She lives always at home and sees everybody
at Paris, I think, in their turns; one day in a week she gives a dinner
to the esprits and savants, another day to the artisans.”49 The Monday salon was thus primarily dedicated to artists such as Vanloo, Verdet,
Lemoine, Latour, and the comte de Caylus, while the latter was reserved
for men of letters.50 Only a small number of people gained entrance
to both, amongst them Marmontel who describes the evenings at her
house, immediately subsequent to the salon gatherings when “les petits
soupers” were consumed. Marmontel declares that “la bonne chère en
était succincte” and goes on to describe it as consisting of chicken,
spinach, and omelette.51 While he describes it as being rather meagre,
and du Deffand mocks it saying “voilà bien du bruit pour une omelette
aux épinards,” Lespinasse is recorded as not offering any meal at all at
hers.52
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
25
In his literary portrait of Geoffrin, composed upon her death in
1777, Marmontel recalls the interior of her salon: “Son appartement
était orné de leurs [des artistes] ouvrages. Des tableaux de Vanloo,
de Greuze, de Vernet, de Vien, de Lagrenée, de Robert; des têtes de
Lemoine, etc; des meubles, des bronzes du meilleur goût y montraient
par-tout l’amour des arts et des artistes.”53 Some of these paintings
were specifically commissioned by Geoffrin herself, including two Van
Loo paintings, La Lecture espagnole and La Conversation espagnole (1754),
which allowed emphasis to be placed on two central aspects of her
salon: reading aloud and conversation. These two images appeared later
also on Lespinasse’s walls in the form of engravings.54 Mme Geoffrin’s
salon, with its exquisite furniture and ornamentation, clearly reflects the
salonnière’s love of art and decoration. Marmontel expounds further to
declare that her house distinguishes itself by its order, cleanliness, good
taste, and utility, adding that her salon reflected something of her own
character, possessing a form of uniqueness combined with simplicity.55
The discourse of clothing adds further to our visual image of the salon.
On Sunday 27 October 1765, the British clergyman and antiquarian the
Rev. William Cole encountered Geoffrin for the first time and the following represents his lively portrait of the salonnière, who at this time
was 66 years old:
After this Company was retired, came in an elderly French Lady, of
about 60 years of age, to drink tea with Mr Walpole . . . and being without stays, in the loose, easy and negligent dress of the French Women,
she had more the appearance of a person just got out of bed, with a
night gown flung hastily over her, than a person dressed to make a
visit in an evening.56
Casual negligée dress styles were indeed introduced in the mideighteenth century, but the hoop petticoat remained popular until the
1780s.57 Lady Holland’s assessment of French dress from two years earlier than Cole’s also notes the difference in dress between the French
and English, but emphasises the excesses of the former and the effort
required to be appropriately dressed in Paris:
I am sure you would all at Richmond House be diverted to see me go
by in my berlin all over glass and gliding, with my hoop and my million of curls and my rouge, and my lace liveries, and in this manner
one is dressed every day, tho’ one is perhaps only to make one visit
or two airing.
(28 May 1763)58
26
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
Elements of this style are purchased and then sent on to England
and Ireland. After recommending hoops and sending worked ruffles
on previous occasions, Caroline urges her sister Emily to inform her of
“anything you may want from Paris by way of commission”:
The winter silks are beautiful beyond imagination, to my taste at
least, especially those velvet ones without gold or silver, under £30
English; one may have a gown as rich as it’s possible to be without gold or silver, there are satins with chenille flowers in two
colours . . . I tell you all this in case you should have any commands.
(Paris, October 1763)59
Caroline’s circulation of goods from France to England and Ireland
embraces not only silks and satins, but also much china, with Caroline
being particularly fond of her gift to Emily of un petit dejeuner with cup,
saucer, milk-pot, and sugar dish. Emily also received literary works from
her sister, including books by Riccoboni.60
As well as such literary portraits of French dress and material, there are
also many representations of the salonnières, their attire, and their salons
to be found in paintings from the period. Among the most famous are
those in oil and pastel by Jean-Baptiste Perroneau and Maurice-Quentin
de Latour. Unlike the “negligence” and disregard described by a shocked
and surprised Cole, these commissioned portraits are axiomatically
much more stylised, considered and self-conscious. They are carefully
composed with an audience in mind.61 Jean-Marc Nattier (1685–1766)
is perhaps one of the best-known portraitists of the salonnières. Nattier
is credited as having revived the genre of the allegorical portrait where
a contemporary person is depicted in Greco-Roman attire. His portraits
include an oil painting of Madame Geoffrin, dating from 1738, in which
the salonnière is presented to the viewer leaning upon a book. Mme
Necker is depicted in a 1781 portrait by Jean-Siffred Duplessis as seated
upon an armchair in a white satin dress with her powdered hair piled
high upon her head.
Morellet’s Mémoires outlines the founding in 1766 of Necker’s salon
by himself, Raynal and Marmontel, describing how they settled upon
Friday as the day that should be allocated to Necker so as not to be
in competition with the other salon gatherings.62 Necker is said by
Marmontel to have modelled her salon on that of Geoffrin. Originally
the Neckers lived in the Parisian quartier of le Marais where de Scudéry
had lived before them, but their home there soon became too small
to accommodate all the salon habitués with the result that the family
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
27
moved to the Hôtel Leblanc on the rue de Cléry. D’Haussonville, in
his full-length study of Necker’s salon, describes the façade as majestic,
detailing large well-crafted stairs with an iron banister leading up to the
first-floor apartments where the ceilings were beautifully decorated with
mythological paintings while the walls were decorated with arabesques
and medallions.63 As well as this residence, M Necker, concerned for
his wife’s health, also rented the chateau de Madrid, near the bois de
Boulogne as well as the chateau de Saint-Ouen. The latter is described as
being close enough to Paris (under 10 km) that one could still reach it
to attend the Friday salons there by using a carriage, which Mme Necker
often personally provided to enable her guests to reach her easily.
Provincial salons
That D’Haussonville stresses Saint-Ouen’s distance from the very centre
of Paris highlights how Paris became imprinted in all minds as the
pre-eminent location for all salons. The Parisian salons were visited by
travellers from elsewhere in Europe as well as by French literati from the
provinces. Morellet, for instance, moved to Paris from his hometown of
Lyon, while Marmontel was originally from a small village situated on
the Dordogne. In his mapping of the salons, Lilti concentrates on the
geographical formation of the “beaux quartiers” in the west of Paris, outlining the importance of the salons in the establishment of these areas as
socially important: “dès le XVIIIe siècle se met en place une géographie
sociale de Paris qui va marquer le XIXe et le XXe siècle avec la constitution de ce que l’on appelera les ‘beaux quartiers.’ ”64 He identifies the
quartier of the faubourg Saint-Germain where Mme du Deffand and Julie
de Lespinasse reigned as being one of the most important, in competition with the area around le Palais Royal where Mme Geoffrin’s salon
was located in nearby faubourg Saint-Honoré, and finally the third most
important quartier as Montmartre where Necker’s salon was located.
Lilti’s geographical study concentrates on the year 1775, a period of relative calm before the Revolution that would erupt a decade later, altering
the salons yet again.
The salon was not exclusively a Parisian phenomenon, however, and
there were indeed salons located outside of Paris, such as those recorded
as having existed in Bordeaux, Lyons, Toulouse, Dijon, and Autun.65
Madame de Saint-Julien, for example, is said to have a hosted a salon
at her chateau at Fontaine-Française in Dijon with Voltaire representing her most important guest.66 It is much more difficult to trace the
development of these provincial salons than the more famous Parisian
28
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
gatherings. Sufficient documentary material does, however, survive in
relation to two such salons, of an importance comparable with those
held in the metropolis. The salons are those hosted by the Duke of
Ormonde in Avignon in south-eastern France and Madame Duplessy
in Bordeaux in the south-west. James Butler (1655–1745), 2nd Duke of
Ormonde, “soldier, lord lieutenant of Ireland, and Jacobite,” had a long
relationship with Avignon: “He had lived there for almost a year in 1716
and then again for several months in 1727” before he settled there permanently in 1732.67 Ormonde had originally supported William III after
his success in the Revolution of 1688 and campaigned with him in
the Netherlands. After the accession of George I in 1714, Ormonde left
Britain to act as Secretary of State to the Old Pretender, which led to his
impeachment and subsequent exile. Avignon, “the City of Popes,” was
chosen as an appropriate location for residence by Jacobite exiles, such
as Ormonde, as it was not part of the Kingdom of France, but rather
controlled by the Pope, at that time Clement XI, who supported James
as rightful King of Great Britain and Ireland.68 Writing to her husband
from Avignon on 19 July 1742, the author Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
relates the importance of the Duke of Ormonde’s salon:
All the English without Distinction see the Duke of Ormond. Lord
Chesterfield (who you know is related to him) lay at his House during
his stay in this Town, and to say truth, nothing can be more insignificant. He keeps an assembly where all the best Company go twice
in the week. I have been there sometimes, nor is it possible to avoid
it while I stay here. . . . The Duke lives here in great Magnificence, is
quite inoffensive, and seems to have forgot every part of his past Life
and to be of no Party.69
As Wortley Montagu’s description makes clear, there were no political
implications in visiting or being the guest of Ormonde. His salon was an
important affair with “all the best company”: receiving members of the
local (English, Irish, and Scottish) Jacobite community, family members,
English authors such as Wortley Montagu herself, and of course French
literati and nobility. Indeed, such was its importance that it was impossible for Wortley Montagu to avoid during her stay there. The salon
is also described as having adhered to a strict routine with bi-weekly
gatherings, recalling those of Mme Geoffrin.
The Enlightenment writer Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d’Argens,
gives further substantiation to Wortley Montagu’s observations in the
following comment in his Memoirs of Count du Beauval:
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
29
Hence we went on to Avignon, where we had the Honour of meeting the Duke of Ormond, who appear’d not in the least afflicted at
his distress’d Situation. His House was the Rendezvous of the most
amiable People of both Sexes; Strangers were entertain’d at it with
the greatest Elegance, and we were among the Number who often
visited his Grace during our remaining at this Town.70
D’Argens’s comments highlight the mixed-gender sociability to be
found at Ormonde’s salon. Apart from its provincial nature, Ormonde’s
salon is, of course, noticeable due to the gender of its host. The Duke’s
espousal of the customarily female role of hostess further demonstrates
the changeable nature of the salon, its adaptability and malleability.
Notwithstanding this, the salon’s required politesse and civility remain,
with Ormonde receiving his guests with “the greatest Elegance.” The
splendour of the Parisian salons is also clearly upheld. Wortley Montagu
echoes d’Argens’s choice of adjective in her recollection of the “great
magnificence” of the gatherings. This magnificence was a costly affair,
as in 1739 Charles de Brosses estimated that Ormonde spent an income
of 800,000 livres or £40,000 in Avignon.71
The Bordeaux salon of Madame Duplessy (1702–1782) was also an
impressive affair with “her sumptuous home” having been described as
“the rendezvous of Bordeaux’s elite.”72 Mme Duplessy was born JeanMarie Francoise de Chazot and married Claude Duplessy who died
young in 1736.73 It was upon her widowhood that her salons began to
gain fame. The most detailed accounts of her gathering are contained
in André Grellet-Dumazeau’s La Société bordelaise sous Louis XV et le
salon de Mme Duplessy (1897). This volume adheres to the conventions
of many such writings of the period in its platitudes and eulogiums,
but nevertheless offers some insight into Duplessy’s remarkable salon.74
Grellet-Dumazeau goes into great detail in describing Duplessy’s two
large rooms and the full description allows us to obtain an idea of the
salon hostess’s interests in antiquarianism, science, and history:
Deux vastes pièces, ordonnés avec méthodes, sont affectées aux
collections. La première, garnie d’armoires, de tablettes, de vitrines, contient toutes les richesses de la conchyliologie. La seconde
rappelle les boutiques d’antiquaires, telles que certains romans se
plaisent à les dépeindre, avec un appareil de réchauds, de cornues, d’instruments mystérieux, et toute une série d’animaux suspendus aux solives: chiens de mer, poissons volants, crocodiles,
chauves-souris aux ailes déployées . . . Spectacle troublant pour les
30
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
âmes délicates! Heureusement le regard ne tarde pas à se porter
vers les parois de la muraille ou apparaissent, rangés avec symétrie,
les plumages multicolores des oiseaux des îles . . . Du temple de
l’ornithologie on accède à la bibliothèque, dont les mathématiques,
la physique, l’astronomie se disputent les hauts rayons. L’histoire y
occupe également une place importante . . .
[Two enormous rooms, methodically arranged, are set aside for the
collections. The first, furnished with wardrobes, shelves, and windows, contains all the wonders of conchology. The second brings to
mind antiquarian stores, exactly as certain novels delight in depicting
them, with a stove, vials, mysterious instruments, and a whole set of
animals suspended from the joists: seahorses, flying fish, crocodiles,
bats with their wings spread out . . . A disturbing spectacle for those
of a delicate nature! Happily, it is not long before one’s eyes turn
towards another part of the wall where multicoloured feathers of
birds from the islands are arranged symmetrically . . . From this temple
of ornithology one reaches the library, where mathematics, physics
and astronomy argue over the high shelves. History also inhabits an
important place there.]75
While all the salons had significant decoration and attention to artistic
detail, Mme Duplessy’s goes further still with the salon hostess fully epitomising the enlightened woman, surrounded by scientific equipment,
taxonomic specimens, and a well-stocked library.
As in Ormonde’s salons, Duplessy’s gatherings included both men and
women, as well as artists and famous authors: “Aux plus distingués de
ses membres se joignent les autres célébrités locales, savantes, artistes,
femmes d’esprit: toute une phalange de personnes instruites.”76 Other
less famous participants included members of the Lamothe family.
Christine Adams’s A Taste for Comfort and Status: A Bourgeois Family in Eighteenth Century France (2000) represents a detailed study of
this Bordeaux family, a typical “provincial professional family.” The
Lamothes, Adams informs us, were “dedicated to creating a local milieu
both in opposition to and in imitation of the dominant culture of
Paris.”77 Their participation in Mme Duplessy’s salon represents such
an endeavour and demonstrates that it was possible to engage in salon
debate outside of France’s capital. The salon played an important role
in provincial life, circulating ideas and offering a forum for discussion.
Brothers Alexis and Delphin’s participation in this particular Bordeaux
salon allowed them “to indulge their taste for art, literature and the
sciences and to discuss current intellectual and political topics in a
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
31
freer and more critical tone than allowed by the authorized academies,”
echoing the role of the salon in Paris.78
The most famous member of Duplessy’s salon was Charles de
Secondat, baron de Montesquieu: “ . . . bientôt, il ne s’établit plus
de renommé littéraire qui ne portât l’estampille de son salon, et
Montesquieu lui-même accepta l’honneur de figurer au nombre de ses
amis.”79 Montesquieu, most famously the author of Lettres persanes
(1721) and De l’esprit des lois (1748), was a founding member of the
Académie de Bordeaux and in 1728 was elected to the Académie française.
One of the most fascinating accounts of Montesquieu during the latter
period of his life is provided by the Irish peer James Caulfield, Earl of
Charlemont, on his return from his Grand Tour in 1754:
I have frequently met him in company with ladies, and have been
as often astonished at the politeness, the gallantry, and sprightliness
of his behaviour. In a word, the most accomplished, the most refined
petit-maitre of Paris, could not have been more amusing, from the
liveliness of his chat, nor could have been more inexhaustible in that
sort of discourse which is best suited to women, than this venerable
philosopher of seventy years old.80
Charlemont portrays a sprightly philosopher, somewhat at odds with
the general portrayal of Montesquieu at this time.81 It is interesting that he seems to contrast the different sort of discourse that is
expected from a venerable philosopher and that suitable for women.
Montesquieu’s politeness and gallantry immediately identify him with
salon behaviour, as does Charlemont’s recollection of “the liveliness
of his chat.” Montesquieu is typically recorded as frequenting the
salons of Paris, but he clearly also participated in those of Bordeaux,
adding immensely to their prestige.82 The County Clare-born physician
Michael Clancy (1704–1776) also claims to have spent much time with
Montesquieu while a student in France: “Monsieur de Montesquieu did
me the Honour to keep me with him near six months in the country”
and states that, whilst in Bordeaux, “Men of the first fashion came to
visit him every Day.”83 While this evidence, obtained exclusively from
Clancy’s memoirs, is not entirely trustworthy, it nevertheless serves to
reinforce the link between Montesquieu and Irish travellers, whether
real or wished for. Duplessy’s salon continued until 1769 when the
salon hostess was forced to sell her properties in order to finance her
daughters’ marriages.
Another participant in the salons at Bordeaux was the poet and playwright, Joseph Quesnel (1746–1809). Quesnel “came from a merchant
32
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
family at Saint-Malo France and in the 1770s he frequented literary
salons in Bordeaux.”84 While it is not stated that he attended Duplessy’s
salon in particular, what is significant is that Quesnel later in life
attempted to set up similar salons in Canada, illustrating the importance of the provincial salon in providing a model for gatherings at
home and abroad: “He [Quesnel] would later try to establish such salons
in Lower Canada. Captured by the British while on a merchant ship
bound for the American colonies in 1779, he was taken to Halifax and
then to Montreal, where he married and conducted business.”85 Thus,
the salon did not remain simply within France but spread across Europe
and beyond.
The literary salon was emulated by eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury salon hostesses in countries such as Germany and America
as well as Canada. Literary and cultural connections became established between the various European gatherings in particular.86 These
European cultural contacts were “reinforced and sustained by correspondence, dedications and recommendations.”87 Nicole Pohl identifies Christina Mariana Ziegler (1695–1760) as having hosted the first
German literary salon, in Leipzig, and describes her salon as “characterized by a playful display of wit and satire – sottises galantes – often
at the guests’ expense.”88 Louise Gottsched (1713–1762) is described
as Ziegler’s competitor and both these salon hostesses were extremely
intellectual: Ziegler was the first woman admitted into the Deutsche
Gesellschaft (similar to the Académie française) whilst Gottsched worked
with her husband as editor and translator.89
In comparison with developments in Paris, and indeed London,
salon culture only became established in Berlin in the latter part of
the eighteenth century: “Salons held by Jewish women first appeared
in 1780s Berlin, with the dissemination of French Enlightenment
ideas into Germany.”90 The main hostesses at this period in Berlin
were Jewish women such as Henriette Herz, Dorothea Mendelssohn
Veit, and Rahel Levin-Varnhagen. The salons hosted by Varnhagen
(1771–1833) were “rooted in a liberal Jewish tradition of sociability,”
while also being “indebted to the great French tradition of salons,”
with Varnhagen influenced by her reading of the works of Sévigné,
Stael, Genlis, and du Deffand.91 These salons played an important
role in allowing Jewish women access to German intellectual culture,
“the gatherings provided a means for acquiring knowledge of general German and Western culture and for moving beyond the confines
of the Jewish community,” although one must recognise the persistent anti-Semitism endured by these hostesses, in addition to the
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
33
pejorative comments often levelled at eighteenth-century hostesses in
all countries.92
American salons are discussed in David Shields’s Civil Tongues, Polite
Letters in British America (1997). Again, Shields immediately identifies the
model for these early Republic salons as being French in origin: “Anne
Willing Bingham’s drawing room in Philadelphia, created a haven of
conversation where politics, art, and economics, were discussed by men
and women of influence after the fashion of Paris.”93 Shields also takes
care to note “the continuing vitality of all the old arenas of sociability”
following the American Revolution of 1775–1783: “The Revolution, for
all the talk of republicans about simplicity, equality, and virtue, did not
alter the play of private society.”94
Post-revolutionary salons
In France, the Revolution and the subsequent Reign of Terror severely
hindered the possibility of elite associational life. A letter from the Irish
antiquarian Joseph Cooper Walker written from Avignon in 1791 has
survived and offers an example of the extent of the chaos unleashed by
the Revolution:
Since I did myself the honor to write to your Ladyship [Lady Moira],
I have been witness to many of the melancholy effects of the late
Revolution. During the election of the Mayor of Montpellier for
the [Ensuing] year, a dispute arose between the Democratic and
Aristocratic parties. A riot being apprehended, a detachment of the
Troupes de Ligne was ordered to parade the Streets. I met them proclaiming Martial Law. In a few minutes after, a pistol was fired at
them by a fellow, who immediately took refuge in the house of
M. Calan, a Procureur. The Guard pursued him; but being denied
admission, they instantly brought there 4 pounders from L’Hotel de
Ville & firing at the house, forced it, & killed M. Callan & a Surgeon, &
wounded a servant of the former. Immediately all the shops were
shut, the whole town appeared in arms & several shots were fired by
both parties. It was a scene of tumult & horror. Not even a Stranger
could venture with Safety in the Streets. Voila! un aristocrate! says a
fellow, pointing at a poor man who was passing, & fifty muskets were
instantly discharged at him. – The Guards continued parading the
streets until 10 oc at night, & every [house] was illuminated. When
I departed the next morning at 10 oc all the shops were shut, &
armed mobs were assembling in different parts of the town. I have
34
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
since learned that seven people were killed & a much greater number
dangerously wounded.95
Clearly such breakdown of society would not have allowed for the
continuation of normal life for the aristocracy. Descriptions, such as
Walker’s, circulated across Europe, communicating the perceived realties
of life in France at the end of the eighteenth century. His reflection at the
end of the letter encapsulates the fear experienced by many: “No man
can foresee the moment when a furious mob, urged by the Spirit of
party, may demolish his house, & plunge a dagger into his breast.”96
The salon of Irishwoman Anastacia Fitzmaurice (1723–1799) further
demonstrates the turbulence unleashed by the events of 1789 and the
resultant confiscation of elite property. Her salon illustrates both how
the French Revolution impacted on one particular salon and also upon
foreigners in general in Paris. Anastacia Fitzmaurice, née Daly, was the
daughter of Peter Daly and Elizabeth Blake from Co. Galway.97 She
had originally married a lawyer, Charles Daly, of Loughrea, Co. Galway
in 1747 but divorced him on 7 March 1768 and 12 days later married Francis Thomas Fitzmaurice, 3rd Earl of Kerry, thereby becoming
Countess of Kerry.98 The third Earl was mostly an absentee landlord and
sold much of his estate in Co. Kerry during the 1780s.99 Perhaps one
of the reasons for the Fitzmaurices’ removal to Paris in 1774 was the
social scandal created by the marriage of the “imprudent” Fitzmaurice
to a divorced Catholic woman 17 years his senior and past the age
of childbearing.100 Lady Mary Coke’s journal entry from 21 May 1769,
for example, describes Anastacia as “my Lady Kerry, who was divorced
last year from her first Husband for adultery.”101 Their alliance is generally cited as the reason for the sale of the Kerry lands. According to
Fitzmaurice’s cousin, the Earl of Shelburne, due to the scandal of their
marriage and Anastacia’s age, the couple had to “fight up to get into
good company, and having no posterity, they sold every acre of land
that had been in our family since Henry the Second’s time, converting
the remainder into life-rents.”102
In Richard Hayes’s 1943 study of Irishmen in France, we learn that:
In pre-Revolutionary days Lord Kerry had a town house and considerable property in Paris. His wife’s salon in the Champs Elysées
was one of the most brilliant in the French capital . . . but after the
fall of the monarchy in August 1792, he hurriedly left France. A few
days after his departure the authorities placed seals on his papers and
effects . . . .103
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
35
These papers and effects were preserved and now form part of a series
in the national archives in Paris comprising “documents séquestrés
pendant la Révolution dans le département de la Seine, provenant
de particuliers émigrés ou condamnés et de quelques communautés
laïques.”104 This archive includes the papers of Lord Kerry. These papers
allow us an insight into the expenses of the Fitzmaurices, their reading
material, and their way of life.
The Fitzmaurices’ London house in Mayfair has been described as
lavishly furnished, and their extraordinary wealth is also very apparent during their time in France.105 Sale catalogues for material from
the Kerry family describes Fitzmaurice as having achieved “a degree of
extravagance unparalleled among the contemporary Irish, if not the
English and French aristocracy.”106 The Fitzmaurices were originally
based in the Hôtel de Charost on rue du Faubourg St-Honoré, and
later leased a hôtel particulier in the rue d’Artois.107 The material in the
archives consists of many receipts and bills from their time in Paris
and includes many luxurious purchases, such as two large opera glasses
with silver rings; several references to horses and the renting of stables;
jewellery “par Granhez, Bijoutier de la Reine” including a commissioned music box; in addition to the purchase of much clothes and fine
materials.108 There are also many references to literary works, such as the
receipt of a subscription for la petite bibliothèque des théâtres. Additionally, there are receipts for subscriptions to the Journal de Paris, des Affiches
de Paris, ou journal général de France, and la Gazette de France, all dating
from 1789. There is also a receipt from the bureau général des gazettes
étrangères, indicating the Fitzmaurices’ interest in events occurring outside of France. Their rent of the apartment in which their salons were
held was 960 Livres per month, with several of these receipts present
in the collection. There are also many invoices and lists from booksellers, particularly from Théophile Barroire the younger. One example
from 6 May 1789 includes one Nouveau voyage en Espagne, three vols
in octavo; Monthly Review 1788, 12 numbers in octavo; Bell’s Classical
Arrangement of Fugitive Poetry; the Bible; A History of Modern Europe in two
volumes; one Royal Kalander; and a catalogue of English books printed
in England.
As well as books and periodicals, the family also have receipts and
advertisements from such establishments as Magasin de Bougies, Rue
des Prouvaires, and Bachelier, marchand épicier,
r droguiste, and distillateur.
Their receipts show many purchases of alcohol, including six bottles of
Bordeaux red wine in August 1790, 25 on another occasion, as well as
fruit, ice-cream, and, of course, clothes and bed linen. Food expenses
36
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
listed in 1792 included oranges and lemons, oil, vinegar, Parmesan,
pistachios, anchovies, and Gruyère.109 One can only assume that participants at their salon would have enjoyed many of these goods. Their
invitation cards to their home were certainly spectacular, as can be seen
from a receipt from 1 May 1789 for “deux milles billets d’invitation
pour souper imprimés sur papier vélin superfin d’Annonay dorer sur
tranche.”110 This lavish lifestyle was abruptly ended by the Revolution;
the Fitzmaurices’ effects were sealed, an inventory of their furniture was
made and “in accordance with the official decree sequestering the property of subjects of countries at war with France, it was sold and realised
150,000 livres.”111 It is claimed that two servants were in fact guillotined
trying to retrieve some of this material in 1793.112
It was not simply the Countess of Kerry’s salon that was badly affected
by the Revolution, almost all salons experienced massive disruption
either immediately in 1789 or at least during the Reign of Terror.
Goodman suggested that “Despite their grand schemes and infinite
projects, the Republic of Letters that the philosophes had been constructing for forty years was limited and fragile, too much so to support a
revolution of the magnitude of 1789.”113 Steven D. Kale’s French Salons:
High Society and Political Sociability from the Old Regime (2004), however, represents an extremely compelling and persuasive challenge to
the above claim by Goodman who insists that the salon collapsed after
the events of 1789. Kale’s work represents a full study of those salons
that emerged after the French Revolution, offering an examination of
their transformation into political institutions. Again, what must be
emphasised is the salons’ ability to adapt to altering circumstances,
highlighting their flexibility. Kale admits that the salons had, indeed,
essentially dissolved in France during the actual Revolution but that
they revived in Paris soon after the end of the Reign of Terror (1793–
1794). Napoleon is said to have initially encouraged this rebirth and
reconstitution of the salon in an attempt to gain the support of the traditional aristocracy. Legislation under France’s First Empire was highly
prohibitive of associational life, however. Article 291 of the 1810 code
allowed for the dissolution of all unauthorised associations numbering
more than 20 people, and threatened the leaders of such associations
with three months to two years imprisonment.114 As the century progressed to witness the Bourbon Restoration (1815–1830) and the July
Monarchy (1830–1848) the salons continued to be acknowledged as
the chief meeting places for “elite political networking and discussion,
structured by the conventions of mondaine sociability and managed
by salonnières” until their decline during the reign of Louis Philippe,
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
37
Prince of Orléans, and their eventual retrenchment with the February
Revolution of 1848 which altered the social landscape irreversibly.115
These post-revolutionary salons became more and more politicised with
many taking on clear partisan identities, facilitating communications
between different members and enabling political factions to distinguish themselves and their policies one from the other, thus gaining
coherence as free debate and association became newly permitted in
society.
One of the most famous accounts of salon society both before and
after the Revolution is that written by the Comtesse de Genlis: Memoirs of the Countess de Genlis: Illustrative of the History of the Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Centuries (1825). The Comtesse de Genlis (1746–1830)
composed her memoirs with the desire to leave to posterity “a faithful picture of a state of society now broken up or extinct, and of a
century not only passed away, but absolutely effaced from the minds
of the existing generations.”116 Arriving in France with her daughter
after a period of exile that began in 1792, she reflects nostalgically on
a bygone period when women were modest and treated properly and
when the French language was spoken decorously. One of her greatest subjects of regret is the demise of the salons. The author’s own
footnote declares: “At present, the bureaux d’esprit are entirely gone,
and our Government ought specially to regret them. Universal peace
would be quite established, if they were to replace the bureaux of
politics.”117 Several critics have interpreted these lamentations as indicative of the complete dissolution of the salons, but Genlis herself, in
fact, goes on to establish her own literary salon in the Bibliothécaire
de l’Arsenal. Genlis had what she described as her own bureaux d’esprit
where she received “men of fashion” at her house on Saturdays: “After
this nomenclature, it would have been appropriate to have given to
these assemblies, (which lasted during nine years) the title of Bureaux
d’Esprit.”118
Genlis was not alone in her establishment of a literary salon at this
time. One example of a salon that experienced a rebirth after the
revolution was that of the Marquise de Condorcet (1764–1822) who
originally held a salon at the Hôtel des Monnaies, which was frequented
by the philosophes, suspending it during the Terror and re-establishing
it in 1795 to host the ideologues.119 Elsewhere, Mme Ancelot (1792–
1875) held an influential literary salon on the rue de Seine from 1824,
while Mme Récamier (1777–1849) held a salon at the Abbaye-au-Bois,
which was attended by Chateaubriand.120 The author Maria Edgeworth
attended Madame Récamier’s salon several times during her 1802 visit
38
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
to France, and there are detailed descriptions of the gatherings in her
letters, such as the following from 21 November:
Friday we saw beauty, riches, fashion, luxury, and numbers at Mme
Récamier’s; she is a charming woman, surrounded by a group of adorers and flatterers in a room where are united wealth and taste, all of
modern execution and ancient design that can contribute to its ornament – a strange mélange of merchants and poets, philosophers and
parvenus – English, French, Portuguese, and Brazilian, which formed
the company; we were treated with distinguished politeness by our
hostess, who concluded the evening by taking us to her box at the
Opera.121
Récamier’s salons preserved the eighteenth-century tradition of attracting foreign visitors – including mention of the former Queen of
Sweden in a later letter – as well as hosting a wide variety of guests
from widely different backgrounds, and mixing “wealth and taste.”122
Edgeworth describes the salon as “elegant,” with the salonnière in “the
first fashion.”123 Despite the political turmoil at the time, literature
was still greatly discussed according to Edgeworth, whose novel Belinda
(1801) was much praised in Paris at the time: “The conversation frequently turns on the new petites pièces and little novels which come out
every day, and are talked of for a few days with as much eagerness as a
new fashion in other places.”124
Genlis’s memoirs also contain frequent references to a fellow postrevolutionary salonnière, “an Irish lady,” Mary Bridget Plunket (1759–
1815). Plunket was born in Louvain [Leuven], the daughter of the army
officer Baron Thomas Plunket from Castle Plunket, Co. Roscommon,
and his Tipperary-born wife Mary D’Alton.125 In 1787 she married the
Marquis de Chastellux, who had served as a major general in the French
expeditionary force during the American War of Independence. He was
also an accomplished writer and member of the French Academy. The
Marquis died within a year of their marriage and four months before
the birth of their child Alfred. Mary Bridget [or Marie Brigitte, as she
was referred to in French] was then offered protection by the Duchess
of Orléans for whom she acted as lady-in-waiting.126 Genlis had been
instrumental in the marriage of Plunket to Chastellux: “I undertook the
charge of every thing relative to their marriage, purchases for their outfit, and presentations every where. I introduced her into society, where
every one was prejudiced against her.”127 There was, however, much animosity between the two women as Genlis was convinced that Mme de
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
39
Chastellux, as she was now styled, was endeavouring to usurp Genlis’s
place as chief friend to the Duchess of Orléans. However, “in spite of all
the vexations which Madame de Chastellux has occasioned me,” Genlis
admits that her rival possessed many favourable merits: “she was lively
and clever, that she even possessed some excellent qualities; that she was
a good mother, and rendered the Chevalier de Chastellux happy . . . .”128
Hayes mentions Plunket in his biographical study of Irishmen, stating
that she “presided over a fashionable salon at Paris” but that, “after
the outbreak of the Revolution, the Marquise was imprisoned at Paris
as an aristocrat during the Reign of Terror. Her gaol from November
1793 to November 1794 was the Austin convent where she had been
educated.”129
Many details of de Chastellux’s salon are provided by the diary and
letters of New York senator Gouverneur Morris. The American first went
to Paris in 1789 and returned in 1793 as Minister Plenipotentiary for
France.130 Morris refers specifically to visiting Madame de Chastellux’s
salon: “I make a short visit in the salon of Madame de Chastellux
later.”131 His diary is full of descriptions of these gatherings and recordings of those present, for example: “Go to Madame de Chastellux’s:
the Duchess is there, as usual; also the Vicomte de Ségur. Some politics with him. Madame de Ségur comes in late; has been detained by her
visitors.”132 The Duchess referred to is the Duchess of Orléans, and she
was constantly present at de Chastellux’s salons. Phillipe-Henri, marquis
de Ségur, minister of War from 1781 to 1787, and his wife are also generally listed as present. Another entry from 1790, which also includes the
Ségurs’ son, describes a gathering in more detail:
I take the Vicomte de Ségur to Madame de Chastellux’s, where he
reads a little comedy called “Le Nouveau Cercle,” which is not without merit, but he reads too well to judge of it. For the rest, he has
made himself the principal character of the piece. Lady Carey is here,
an Irishwoman who has, I believe, the merit of keeping a good house
in Paris. Leave this at a little after nine and go to the Louvre.133
Here we are informed not only of the participants, who include an
Irishwoman as well as a French minister and American ambassador, but
also of the salon’s literary emphasis. We also learn of the time of the
salon, which was clearly in the evenings as Morris departed after nine.
In an earlier entry, from 14 December 1789, the salon is replaced by a
“large breakfast party” which upholds the literary emphasis in that “the
Abbé Delille reads or rather repeats to us some of his verses, which are
40
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
fine and well delivered.”134 On another occasion, Morris recalls how his
opinion was sought on literary matters at the salon: “Go from hence to
Madame de Chastellux. The Vicomte de Ségur gives me a book he has
written, and desires that I will give him my candid opinion of it. It is a
supposed correspondence between Ninon de l’Enclos and her lover, the
Marquis de Villarceaux.”135
In addition to these literary discussions, Madame de Chastellux’s
salon also adheres to the general pattern for post-revolutionary salons
highlighted by Kale, in that a clear political emphasis was conspicuous.
In those salons that survived after 1789, until the Reign of Terror, and
indeed in those that were re-established after the Terror’s conclusion,
politics became a sure topic of discussion. Accounts of the salons at this
time make clear how much they were dominated by political matters
of various kinds. In addition to Morris’s mentioning of “some politics”
with de Ségur, a “letter from M. Lally-Tollendal to his constituents” was
read aloud at another gathering, while in January 1790 Morris notes:
“Go from hence to Madame de Chastellux’s. Madame de Ségur and the
Maréchal and the Count come in. Conversation is about the decree of
the day, and so it is at Madame de Stael’s.”136
As the editor of Morris’s journal noted, “By November [1789] society began to feel the exodus from its ranks. The most brilliant salons
of a few months back were closed and silent, and their gay inmates
languishing in foreign lands.”137 However, the effects of the French Revolution did not initially impact greatly on Mme de Chastellux. She
remained under the protection of the Duchess of Orléans, who she
describes obsequiously as “a woman who is the honour of her sex.”138
However, everything altered in 1793 when the Duchess’s husband was
guillotined and the Orléans fortune confiscated. The Duchess’s children
were then sent to America for their safety, and de Chastellux herself
spent a year imprisoned within the Augustinian convent in Paris, le couvent des dames augustines anglaises, from November 1793 to November
1794.139 She is said to have been placed there for playing a role in aiding the King’s aunts to escape, and as the widow of an aristocrat. The
convent remained a gaol until March 1795 and de Chastellux was kept
there alongside “a motley throng” of prisoners that included the abbé
Edgeworth’s sister Betty.140 The Marquise’s position by 1795 is outlined
in a fascinating exchange of letters with Thomas Jefferson, to whom she
writes in order to obtain a pension for herself and her child. Her personal situation is subsequently communicated by Jefferson to George
Washington on 12 September 1795:
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
41
He [Chastellux] was himself without fortune, being a younger son
and therefore depended on his military pay and some pension.
On his death, a small pension was continued to his widow by the
crown, but her chief dependence was the Dutchess [sic] of Orleans
who had taken affection to her, gave her apartments, a place at her
table, and some pension. The Orleans fortune being confiscated, all
these dependencies are gone, and Madame de Chastellux with her
infant son is, I dare say, entirely destitute of provision.141
The correspondence is itself an absorbing study in deference and politeness and how these structures within letter writing correspond with
reality. Jefferson’s letters to the Marquise resound with compliments and
assurances of aid; his letters to Washington, however, reveal his unease
about setting precedents in agreeing to her requests and mentions various legal restraints. His platitudes have disappeared, and he mentions to
Washington that it is said that Mary Bridget intrigued her husband into
marrying her. Alfred, the Comte de Chastellux, received no assistance in
spite of his mother’s efforts, and by 1797 Mme de Chastellux described
herself as “lead[ing] the life of a recluse,” far removed from her previous
incarnation as successful salon hostess.142
Madame de Chastellux’s salon was connected in Morris’s mind with
one of the most famous salonnières from this period: the daughter of
Suzanne Necker, Baronne Germaine de Staël-Holstein. As well as presiding over what became one of the most important post-revolutionary
salons, Staël was also a great literary figure with her novel Corinne (1807)
firmly establishing her literary fame. Staël set up her intensely political salon on the Rue du Bac and such was its influence that Napoleon
said of it in October 1816: “Her house had become quite an arsenal
against me; people went there to be armed knights. She endeavoured
to raise enemies against me and fought against me herself. She was at
once Armida and Clorinda.”143 Staël’s salon attracted people of all political allegiances, as the salon did not adhere to one particular outlook.
This political inclusivity attracted constitutional monarchists such as
Talleyrand, Louis de Narbonne, and Mathieu de Montmorency as well
as Sieyès, Lafayette, and Barnave.144 Staël’s salon, originally established
before the Revolution to help and gather support for her father, Jacques
Necker, eventually became a place for members of the constitutional
left to gather together to discuss strategy. Another woman of the same
family associated with such politically focused salons was the salonnière Albertine de Staël-Holstein, Staël’s daughter. She presided over a
42
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
salon during the July Monarchy where topics discussed included matters concerning the political economy and legislation. In both of these
salons, occurring at different periods, the salonnières conducted their
salons in the same fashion as Necker had before them, ensuring harmony and conviviality amongst their guests by upholding the rules of
polite conversation.
Despite Staël’s success, it was during the July Monarchy that the
salon’s decline became most evident. Prior to 1830, changes to salon
society had already begun, as Peter McPhee has noted: “Many noblewomen, too, shunned the pre-revolutionary public world of the salon
and adopted the domestic ideal as the price to be paid for consolidating
shattered families and restoring social authority by moral example.”145
Adjustments such as these were consolidated during the July Monarchy by other factors, which all contributed to the salon’s retrenchment.
The withdrawal of the nobility from active participation in politics, and
their retreat to the countryside, altered the landscape of associational
life in Paris dramatically, depriving the salons of many prestigious members. Salons also began to be replaced by a non-elite form of sociability
called cercles. By the end of the July Monarchy and the Revolution of
1848, there were 1,928 cercles with over 121,585 members, all male.146
Both Carol E. Harrison and Maurice Aghulon stress that the cercles “were
a bourgeois, egalitarian form of the aristocratic salon.”147 These cercles
differed dramatically from the literary salons – they were deliberately
and exclusively male, insistently bourgeois, and took place in a rented
location whose cost was divided among cercle members, rather than in
private, luxurious homes.148 These masculine gatherings were primarily
associated with provincial rather than metropolitan sociability and facilitated gaming and smoking as well as conversation.149 The cercles also
shunned the role of the salonnière, leading to conversation that was less
governed, orderly, and polite. This conclusively signalled their departure from the institution of the salon, which had flourished for over 200
years.
From the early eighteenth century, the French salon benefited from
the contribution of various foreign visitors, both aristocratic and literary, from Princess Dashkova of Russia to the Duchess of Leinster from
Ireland. It was also shaped by those Irish men and women who established their own salons across France, for differing purposes. Whether
involved in literary creation, evaluation and publication, philosophical
debate or political discussion, the salon as institution played a central
part in the history of France and emerged as a specific institution that
other countries could and did emulate. Despite its multi-functionality
The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
43
and adaptability it is nevertheless possible to identify certain key elements that are common to all salons, whatever their subject matter or
emphasis. The salon can be described as a luxurious space where the
company is select and meets regularly, a woman generally governs and
polite conversation is imperative. The final key point to note is that all
salons were shaped by cultural transfers and exchange. The salon did
not exist in isolation, and the French salons were particularly remarkable for attracting many foreign visitors who acted as both observers
and the observed. The presence of different nationalities, as well as the
mixture of urban and rural guests, allowed for the exchange of differing viewpoints. It also enabled the dissemination of abstract ideas, in
addition to physical manuscripts and published works. The subsequent
chapters will investigate the development of the salon outside of France
during the eighteenth century as the concept of the salon is exported
to learned men and women in Britain and Ireland who continue this
tradition of cultural transfer.
2
A French Phenomenon Embraced:
The Literary Salon in
Eighteenth-Century Britain
She maintained the rank in the society of Edinburgh which French
women of talents usually do in that of Paris, and in her little parlour
used to assemble a very distinguished and accomplished circle . . . .1
Salons in eighteenth-century Britain provided women with the
possibility of associational life, normally denied to them by the various clubs and societies throughout England and Scotland, which were
almost invariably male in composition.2 The salons were a key site of
sociability and self-education, offering their members the chance to
engage in intellectual exchange and debate. While the salons were composed of both men and women, they were particularly significant in the
lives of their female members as they allowed many women a means to
enter into the world of print for the first time. Not only did the salon
offer emerging writers an extensive network of friendship and support,
it also offered its members the possibility of submitting their work for
correction and improvement, with manuscripts often the focus of discussion among salon members. Such demonstrations of collaboration
and cooperation were a key element of these salons, with all participants
forming part of a community intent on promoting the various members’ work, in addition to partaking of polite conversation and fine food.
The figure of the hostess often served simultaneously as patron in these
salons, aiding the fledgling writer in their efforts to obtain a publisher
for their work, and indeed initially recommending the work for publication. Finally, published material found a ready audience in the salons,
both among the members themselves and through their dissemination
of the work outside the immediate circle.
These literary exchanges and intellectual discussions generally took
place within fashionable surroundings in England and Scotland.
44
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
45
Contemplation of the London town house salon, for example, affords
us the opportunity to investigate how the salons operated within
these homes where display was paramount. The salon participants
and hostesses discussed new building projects; which areas of London
were most fashionable to live in; the craze for chinoiserie; the correctness of women affixing their names to mortgages; and the cost of
decorating the various premises. The salon participants in Edinburgh
were also concerned with ornament and display, though perhaps to
a lesser degree. Fashionable areas and proximity to the centre remain
key considerations, while almost all the hostesses engaged with the
promotion of a particular image and identity through self-portraiture.
Several salons took place in England prior to the outbreak of the
English civil war in 1641, but whilst the monarchy was re-established
in 1660, salon culture did not reassert itself in England for almost 100
years.3 This was due in part to the inordinate success of the coffeehouse
as site of sociability: “The coffeehouse, not the salon, was the centre
of literary sociability in Restoration and early Augustan England.”4 The
key figures involved in the re-establishment of a stable salon culture in
England were Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800), Frances Boscawen (1719–
1805), Mary Monckton (1746–1840), Hester Lynch Thrale (1741–1821),
and Anna Miller (1741–1781). Unlike the Stuart salons, described as “a
fixture of courtly and aristocratic culture,” the salons of the mid- and
late-eighteenth century in England were increasingly genteel in focus.5
The women who hosted these salons were highly influential figures
and their lives and letters offer us fascinating insights into eighteenthcentury British society. All these hostesses were married, with rather
varying degrees of happiness and success, and all had to contend with
the risks and difficulties of childbirth and the threat of infant mortality.6
These women set the standard for taste and fashion within their homes
and often through their dress, while maintaining a virtuous domestic
appearance and presiding over successful literary salons.
Montagu, Boscawen, and Monckton belonged to the group of
learned men and women that came to be known collectively as the
Bluestockings. The word was first introduced in 1756 to describe those
present at the salons in London after one of their guests, Benjamin
Stillingfleet, absent-mindedly wore blue woollen stockings rather than
the formal white silk to the salon hostess Elizabeth Montagu’s Hill
Street residence. By the late 1770s it had come to be associated solely
with those women in attendance, and eventually to refer to intellectual women in general.7 The term later began to assume distinctly
negative connotations, being used primarily to mock learned ladies,
46
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
a legacy which continued in the nineteenth and into the twentieth
century.8 While individual Bluestockings, such as Elizabeth Montagu,
Frances Burney, and Catharine Macaulay, have been well studied, much
less attention has been paid to the Bluestocking salons themselves.9 A
notable exception to this is Elizabeth Eger’s Bluestockings: Women of Reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism (2010), which includes a chapter
entitled “The Bluestocking Salon: Patronage, Correspondence and Conversation,” which concentrates primarily on Elizabeth Montagu’s salon.
Montagu was known as the “Queen of the Blues” and is now, as she was
then, universally regarded as the most important and best known of all
the salon hostesses. This has led somewhat to a London-centric view of
both the Bluestockings and British salons, obscuring the importance of
other salons in provincial England and indeed those in Scotland, while
neglecting those of contemporary Ireland almost entirely.
Just as French salons owed much to the contribution of many
Irish men and women, both the Bluestocking salons and other salons
throughout Britain consisted of Irish as well as British participants. Literary figures such as Elizabeth Sheridan, Robert Jephson, and Edmund
Burke all attended Bluestocking salons in London, while Elizabeth Vesey
(c.1715–1791) hosted extremely successful Bluestocking salons in both
England and Ireland.10 Meanwhile, there was a distinctive Irish contribution to the non-Bluestocking salons, with figures such as Arthur
Murphy, George Ogle, and Dr Thomas Campbell participating in Hester
Lynch Thrale’s salons at Streatham, for example, as well as Maria and
Richard Lovell Edgeworth attending the Edinburgh salons hosted by
Alison Rutherford Cockburn (1713–1794) and the Belfast-born Elizabeth
Hamilton (1758–1816). Descriptions of these Edinburgh salons counter
the argument, advanced by authors such as Paul Wood, that Scotland
and the Scottish Enlightenment were untouched by salon culture.11
These salons in London, Streatham, and Edinburgh stood in direct
juxtaposition to two prevalent gatherings in eighteenth-century Britain,
the card party and the all-male club. Elizabeth Carter described the average London party of those days as: “A drum, a rout, a racket, a hurricane,
an uproar – where every charm of conversation was drove away by that
foe to human society, whist . . . .”12 The literary salon considered itself
as operating in direct contrast to such a description, as the comments
of several salon attendees demonstrate. They repeatedly express their
good fortune at the fact that cards were banished from their salons in
favour of intellectual debate: “We had the other night a conversazione
at Mrs Boscawen’s. What a comfort for me that none of my friends play
at cards.”13 The salons can be similarly contrasted with the exclusively
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
47
male clubs and societies that flourished in Britain at the time, representing an instance of successful mixed-gender voluntary association,
offering an alternative to the club and the card table. It is evident from
the correspondence that, rather than choosing to emulate other British
or German gatherings – the male clubs and card parties discussed above,
or German tischgesellschaften and sprachgesellschaften – the Bluestockings
and indeed Thrale, Cockburn, and Hamilton chose the French salon as
their model for “a site for sociable communication.”14
French connections
While the English and Scottish salons should be appreciated as literary and intellectual gatherings with distinctive features of their own,
they cannot be fully understood without considering the French salons
that influenced them. Apart from works such as Susanne Schmid’s British
Salons of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (2013), which
focuses on the salons of Mary Berry, Lady Holland, and the Countess
of Blessington, little research has been dedicated to the study of salons
in England and Scotland, with even less attention devoted to comparative studies. Schmid mentions both the Bluestockings and the French
salons in her introductory chapter where she looks at the salon’s traditions. However, she is sceptical about the influence of the French salon,
using it as a point of comparison, “even if no major influence,” and
therefore devotes little space to its consideration.15 Two notable works
that do stress the links between the salons of France and Britain are
Chauncey Brewster Tinker’s The Salon and English Letters (1915), and
Evelyn Gordon Bodek’s essay “Salonnières and Bluestockings: Educated
Obsolescence and Germinating Feminism.”16 While Tinker’s work was
a welcome development to literary studies during the early-twentieth
century, it must be recognised that its treatment of the salons appears
today as excessively popular in its approach. Tinker’s anecdotal, even
whimsical, style may be gauged by a comment on Madame du Deffand:
“And then, in the late evening of her [Madame du Deffand’s] days, a
miracle occurred. The dry branch budded and bloomed.”17 Moreover,
Tinker is ultimately dismissive of the Bluestockings “and their somewhat tiresome assemblies.”18 He also argues that the Bluestocking salon
was less successful than its French equivalent because of the absence of
intimate relations between its members, which he attributed to the supposed fact that “passion is unknown to them [the English].”19 Tinker’s
main arguments are repeatedly undermined, as here, by such sweeping
generalisations. Bodek’s shorter and more recent study of the two salon
48
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
communities unfortunately distorts the argument by comparing French
salonnières with all of those – hostesses and guests alike – who attended
Bluestocking salons.20
British hostesses would have been very much aware of the practices
of those French salons dating from the previous century, thanks to the
writings of Marie de Raboutin-Chantal, Madame de Sévigné. Sévigné’s
correspondence, which featured extensive portrayals of seventeenthcentury French salons, was widely read and commented on by various
members of the British salons. Horace Walpole, for example, had great
respect for Sévigné as indicated in the following letter to Richard
Bentley: “PS I have just seen in the advertisements that there are arrived
two new volumes of Mme de Sévigné’s Letters. Adieu, my American studies . . . ” (3 November 1754), while Elizabeth Sheridan espouses a chatty,
intimate tone when referring to Sévigné in her correspondence: “as our
friend Mme de Sévigné says.”21 The main channel by which the concept
of the eighteenth-century French salon was disseminated and circulated
abroad, however, was by foreign visitors’ written and oral observations
regarding the gatherings.
Among the travellers who visited Parisian salons during their stay
in France were Edward Gibbon, David Garrick, Laurence Sterne, David
Hume, and Elizabeth Montagu. All of these figures demonstrate their
interest in the salon as a phenomenon by including lively descriptions
of their French experiences in their correspondence. These letters were,
in turn, circulated back in Britain, thereby extending awareness of the
French salon, and permitting British salon participants to emulate their
French counterparts, while also shaping their own salons in distinctive
ways. The majority of the British visitors to the French salons greatly
admired the gatherings. The sections of their letters that pertain to
salon activities are almost exclusively laudatory in tone, with all the
correspondents selecting certain elements to hold up for praise. Edward
Gibbon declares: “In these symposia the pleasures of the table were
improved by lively and liberal conversation; the company was select,
though various and voluntary,” while Horace Walpole heaps praise upon
Mme du Deffand in his letters to Lady Gray: “[du Deffand] is now very
old and stone blind, but retains all her vivacity, wit, memory and judgement, passions and agreeableness . . . . her judgement on every subject is
as just as possible . . . .” (26 January 1766).22
The Bluestocking hostess Elizabeth Montagu also wrote about her
experiences in the French salons. Montagu departed for Paris on 22 June
1776 and returned on 5 October of the same year. Her correspondence
from this period provides numerous instances of her admiration for the
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
49
salonnières Necker and du Deffand: “Mr and Mrs Necker have been very
good, they are with justice highly esteemed here. Mr Walpole’s passion
Mme de Dufans [du Deffand] has a great deal of wit and is very agreeable” (15 July 1776).23 She also reflects on French sociability: “Their
tables are very well served but what is of much more importance in
the entertainment, their manners are easy and polite; knowledge with
parts render their conversation very delightful.”24 Such letter writing
as this represents a process of dissemination permitting the distribution of ideas and observations regarding salon practices. Montagu’s
correspondence allowed descriptions of the salons she frequented in
Paris to reach her acquaintances who remained in England, many of
whom were themselves members or indeed hostesses of the Bluestocking
literary gatherings, such as her fellow hostess Elizabeth Vesey, and
Elizabeth Carter. Carter was also a committed Bluestocking, famous for
her renowned translation from the Greek of All the works of Epictetus
(1758) as well as for her poetry and contributions to Samuel Johnson’s
Rambler.25 These women were thus in a position not only to receive
impressions of French salon activity but also to introduce and incorporate these practices or customs into Bluestocking gatherings. Similarly,
Garrick, Gibbon, and Walpole, all of whom produced extensive written
documentation of their visits to French salons, were also frequenters of
the English salons, thus allowing us to believe that French salon activity was widely experienced by, and known to, various members of the
British salons. The positive nature of their anecdotes and the frequent
declarations of approval and admiration encountered in these writings
would seem to strongly suggest a desire to incorporate particular elements pertaining to French methods of sociability, such as gallantry and
politesse, into English and Scottish salon gatherings.
These exchanges were reciprocal, and French visitors also attended
British salons. Montagu entertained several guests directly connected to
the French salons, for example, further strengthening the link between
the two country’s gatherings. The author and salonnière Anne-Marie
Fiquet du Bocage, for instance, received a warm reception from Montagu
while in London.26 Similarly, Montagu welcomed the Neckers into her
household during their stay in England in the spring of 1776, thereby
establishing a friendship with the salonnière Suzanne Necker, which
would be continued through correspondence between the two women.
Two of Madame Necker’s letters to Montagu provide several examples
of expressions of reciprocal admiration and respect between the two
women such as Suzanne Necker’s reference to the “plaisir que nous
avons eu en recevant en France la muse d’Angleterre.”27 This mutual
50
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
respect was continued among the English hostesses themselves. While
one is repeatedly struck by the antithetical relationship that existed
among the French salonnières, the English hostesses instead embrace a
distinctly collaborative network and engage in displays of support to
enhance their salons, placing a strong emphasis on female writing and
the related importance of friendship and encouragement.28 Despite the
various French influences, a distinct impression of unique British salons
thus begins to emerge, with the French salon system being emulated
and adapted rather than simply adopted.
The London town house as salon location: Boscawen,
Montagu, and Monckton
In France Mrs Frances Boscawen (née Glanville) was known as “la
Sévigné d’Angleterre.” In England Hannah More is also recorded as
having drawn a parallel between the letters of Boscawen and Sévigné:
“the same admirable turn of expression, the same ease, which, when
imitated, is so stiff, and when natural is so full of grace. The same philanthropy, the same warm feelings, and above all the same excess of
maternal tenderness” (July 1786).29 Frances and her husband, the Admiral Edward Boscawen, moved into the family home in West London in
1747, five years after their wedding, and Frances set herself the task of
decorating what would later become the site of one of London’s most
sought-after literary salons. It was only after the death of her husband
in 1761, however, that Boscawen began her salons there in the house at
14 South Audley Street.
Christine Casey has noted that “unlike the country house insulated
within its demesne, the urban house is the place where the private
life meets the collective or public space . . . [and] was an occasion for
the display of wealth and status, of presenting and doing justice to
one’s place in society.”30 This is certainly true of Boscawen’s residence
at South Audley Street in Mayfair, as well of course as Montagu’s properties in Berkeley Square and Portman Square. The building itself is a
terraced town house, the largest of the row and was built c. 1736 by
the carpenter Roger Balgrave.31 It was originally three stories high with
basement, and four windows wide. The house has been preserved and
is now Grade II listed by the British Landmark Trust.32 Volume 40 of
the Survey of London has noted that the house has “kept its basic earlyGeorgian character . . . There is also an ornamental ceiling on the ground
floor in the front room, with a central head of Apollo and other busts
in the margins.”33 Montagu’s own salons began at her home at 23 Hill
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
51
Street, near Berkeley Square, in the 1750s and continued there until she
moved to the grander Portman Square in the early 1780s. Montagu first
mentions her plans to Elizabeth Vesey in June 1777:
I mean in the space of three years, to make up from my income, the
difference between that House and what my habitation in Hill street
will sell for, added to a small sum I have in India bonds. I confess this
is not necessary as I could borrow; but writing Eliz Montagu to bond
or mortgage wd appear to me a masculine action . . . .34
The public often frequented Montagu’s house at Portman Square during its construction, and in 1782, after building was completed, she
remarked that “it is much ye fashion to go and see my House and I
receive many compliments upon its elegance and magnificence.”35
It has been noted that unlike the country house, which had much
room for expansion, “the slender town house demanded a tidy vertical arrangement that made efficient use of the available space.”36 Both
salons and town houses are more often associated with women than
men, and it was certainly the case regarding the Boscawens, with Frances
rather than Edward setting about decorating their home and arranging
the available space. Edward Boscawen’s position in the royal navy meant
that he was often away from home for long periods of time and his wife’s
letters to him are filled with details of the house’s transformation into
an enviable property:
. . . my furniture, which is now pretty complete, costs many a penny.
So elegant am I that my fender is a Chinese rail. Je connois des gens
qui portent tellement envie à ma maison et à mes meubles qu’ils en
sont presque malades, and worry their husbands night and day to go
out of that odious, beastly house.
(11 January 1748)37
By including a Chinese rail, Boscawen was embracing the vogue
for chinoiserie, espoused by her fellow salon hostesses in London and
Dublin. Chinoiserie, a hybrid Sino-Western style, had gained enormous
popularity in Europe by the mid-eighteenth century as European artists
turned to Asia for their inspiration, introducing Oriental elements into
what were otherwise distinctly European artworks.38 This taste for
chinoiserie was particularly pronounced in England where porcelain and
silk from China and Japan were highly sought after and tea drinking
was more widespread than in any other country. Montagu was among
52
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
the first of the English hostesses to employ a Chinese scheme for her
dressing room, which served both to entertain friends on a small, intimate scale but also was used as a public room when it was opened
upon the rest of the apartment during her salon gatherings.39 Known
for her discernment in both literature and art, Montagu fully embraced
the fashion, decorating the walls with oriental wallpaper in addition to
furnishing the room with Chinese porcelain and furniture. In a letter to
her sister Sarah Scott she declares: “the very curtains are Chinese pictures on gauze, and the chairs Indian fan-sticks with cushions of Japan
satin painted: as to the beauty of the colouring it is carried high as possible” (January 1750).40 Montagu commissioned the leading architects
James Stuart and Robert Adam for these architectural projects, the latter
initiating a second Chinese scheme in 1765, which reduced the amount
of chinoiserie and introduced “a classical ceiling, with eight chinoiserie
roundels inserted into the scheme and a carpet in a related design.”41
In keeping with the splendour of the décor of the salon, Montagu’s
guests were offered discriminating fare. The food on display on one particular occasion, for example, consisted of “coffee, chocolate, biscuits,
cream, butter, toasts and exquisite tea.”42
Frances Boscawen’s interior decoration caused her great expense, as
she admits in her letters to her husband: “My house is an hourly expense
to me, as you may imagine . . . my furniture, which is now pretty complete, costs many a penny.”43 The purchases also included “bespoke
Wilton carpeting of a very uncommon and very pretty sort.”44 Despite
the obvious expense involved in furnishing the house, Frances draws
repeated attention in her correspondence to her self-imposed budgeting
and her efforts in carefully choosing items that would suit the house:
“My second room is not yet hung, not having been able to get any
paper to my mind under an exorbitant price. At length, however, I have
agreed for one, and Bromwich comes to put it up tomorrow.”45 Her letters speak of white ceilings and chintz, of walls decorated with paintings,
of blue and white linen, and planed floors. Boscawen’s autonomy in
arranging their London town house is highlighted throughout her correspondence. She asserts her independence in the face of opposition
regarding the decoration of her bow-window room, for example, where
for the moment she “shall not give up my taste and opinion that tis
now extremely pretty,” despite comments to the contrary.46
The Boscawens moved into their house in the late 1740s, and by
the 1770s the area around South Audley Street, Mayfair, had become
fashionable, recalling the beaux quartiers of west Paris. As a result of
this the neighbourhood began to witness much building activity as the
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
53
following laments by Mrs Boscawen make clear: “we are almost blind
with dust and my neighbour, Mrs Howard, won’t join in watering the
street!” and “It used to be a great relief to walk or sit in Kew gardens . . . but now all these rural amusements are deny’d by the clouds
of dust that obstruct the pursuit of them, so that, when I am wise,
I sit still in my dressing-room” (June 1772).47 Elizabeth Montagu’s correspondence with Elizabeth Vesey also attests to “the great increase of
the town, & the hundred new streets that are building,” and states that
“In London there is such a noise & hurley burley in the streets one cou’d
hardly hear ones conscience.”48
During her husband’s lifetime the Boscawens generally spent their
winters in South Audley Street and their summers in the country in the
same fashion as many of the country’s elite. The Boscawens purchased
an estate at Hatchlands Park, south-east of London, in 1750, which is
now in possession of the National Trust.49 Elizabeth Montagu described
Hatchlands thus: “it resembles the mistress of it, having preserved its
native simplicity, though art and care has improved and softened it,
and made it elegant” (July 1755).50 The Boscawens demolished the old
house and employed Robert Adam to design the interiors there in what
has been described as one of his earliest commissions. The letters refer
to exquisite mantelpieces, ceilings, and carved wood-casings.51 After
Admiral Boscawen’s death, the widowed Boscawen purchased numerous other residences such as those at Enfield and Glanvilla, where salons
were also recorded as having taken place. In a similar fashion, Elizabeth
and Edward Montagu did not permanently reside in London but spent
significant periods of time in “country retirement.” The parliamentary
season in London – as also in the Irish capital – dictated the periods
when the gentry resided in town. Thus, winters were spent in London,
whilst Elizabeth Montagu spent the spring and autumn at Denton near
Newcastle, and the summer season in Berkshire, at the Montagus’ country estate in Sandleford.52 Writing from Tunbridge Wells in June 1772,
Montagu states.
I sat by my great fireside with great satisfaction rejoicing that I had
got out of the hurly burly of London of which I am always tired before
the Spring is well advanced. If it were in my power, I would always
leave the town before London milk maids insult the rural nymph.53
This division of time between city and country was repeatedly praised
as an example of national superiority by several of the Bluestockings
who opposed the English practice of dual residency with the French
54
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
preference for remaining in town. The following letter from Montagu to
Robert Morrison offers an example of this: “the change we make in our
amusements and mode of life by spending ye summer in ye country is
I think much in our favour” (16 September 1776).54
Upon visiting 22 Portman Square in 1782 Hannah More declared: “I
had no conception of anything so beautiful. To all the magnificence
of a very superb London house, is added the scenery of a country
retirement.”55 Montagu’s “new palace” as Horace Walpole described it,
was even more magnificent than her town house at Hill Street. Designed
by James Stuart, Montagu House’s great size allowed even more visitors than before, a factor recognised by Montagu who declared it to
be “so ample for the devoirs of society, and so calculated for assemblies that it will suit all ones humours . . . .”56 The number of guests at
London salon gatherings seems to have varied greatly according to the
preference of the salon hostess. Elizabeth Montagu’s salons were always
grand affairs assembling scores of people. Indeed Hannah More said of
Montagu that: “The only fault that charming woman has, is that she
is fond of collecting too many of them [brilliant wits] together at one
time.”57 Boscawen’s salon gatherings on the other hand tended to be
much more intimate affairs. More on one occasion recorded the following gathering of female-only Bluestockings at a salon: “I have been at
Mrs Boscawen’s. Mrs Montagu, Mrs Carter, Mrs. Chapone, and myself
only were admitted” (1775), while on a later date she noted: “ . . . I was
engaged at Mrs Boscawen’s to meet by appointment a party. It was a
conversazione, but composed of rather too many people; one is used to
small parties there, which I like much better” (1776).58
While the number of guests differed greatly between the two salons,
Boscawen preserved the role adopted by Montagu and copied from the
French salons, of the hospitable hostess, catering to the conversational
needs of all her guests:
Our hostess [Mrs Boscawen] was all herself, easy, well-bred, and in
every place at once; and also attentive to every individual, that I dare
say everybody, when they got home, thought as I did, that they alone
had been the immediate object of her attention.59
The Bluestockings’ guests included men as well as women; indeed
one of the most famous guests was the revered scholar and lexicographer Samuel Johnson. Johnson’s relationship with the Blues, and
in particular with Elizabeth Montagu, was an extremely volatile one,
although his admiration for Montagu is well documented in both textual and visual form. It is to Johnson in fact that we can attribute the
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
55
origin of Montagu’s appellation “the Queen of the Blues.” Johnson’s
praise of Montagu in his correspondence noticeably includes commendation of her as a worthy contributor to salon conversation, and as a
possessor of all-embracing knowledge: “she has a constant stream of
conversation, and it is always impregnated; it has always meaning.”60
In addition to recalling the methods of governing of the seventeenthrather than the eighteenth-century salonnière, the notes of tribute also
reveal much about the nature of the conversation that would have taken
place within Montagu’s salon. Johnson describes the hostess as exerting
the qualities of rationalisation and intellectualism, virtues that connote
deep thought and reflection as essential elements of the conversation.61
As occurred in France, this central female role within the salon
sometimes made men uncomfortable, revealing a considerable tension
within this society. Just as Marmontel protested before him, Johnson
complained to Hester Lynch Thrale in April and May 1780 about his
subjection to this “petticoat government.”62 While free to speak as he
wished within the famous literary Club he formed in 1764, Johnson
was clearly forced to submit to the Bluestocking hostesses in the salons,
curbing his conversation to meet the proper standards of politesse and
honnêteté. Oliver Goldsmith, the Irish-born man of letters who was educated in Trinity College Dublin, lamented that Johnson was “for making
a monarchy of what should be a republic,” and the hostess at whatever
particular salon he was attending would have been compelled to closely
monitor Johnson’s participation in order to encourage interchange and
prevent Johnson’s contribution from becoming a monologue.63
Despite this stricture and adherence to politeness, candour and freedom of expression were greatly encouraged and indeed valorised at
Boscawen’s salons as the following quotation from Hannah More makes
clear: “Mr Walpole and I fought over the old ground, Pope against
Dryden, and Mrs Montagu backed him, but I would not give up.”64
On another occasion More relates a discussion regarding the Irish
playwright Robert Jephson’s new play Braganza (1775):
Dr Johnson asked me how I liked the new tragedy of Braganza. I was
afraid to speak before them all, as I knew a diversity of opinion prevailed among the company: however, as I thought it a less evil to
dissent from the opinion of a fellow-creature, than to tell a falsity,
I ventured to give my sentiments.65
What appears as being of paramount importance to salon functioning
in London is the ability to voice a frank opinion rather than to simply
agree for the sake of consent. By expressing opinions she knew to be
56
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
contrary to those held by others, More eschewed mere flattery and obsequiousness to allow conversation to take place unimpeded by gallantry
or her desire to compliment the male participants present. This instance
demonstrates that the expression of one’s own opinion in the salons
was not therefore dependent on the beliefs and attitudes held by those
present but on the ability of the speaker to convey their own judgement
independently.
In France various days were associated with different salonnières, such
as Necker’s Fridays or Geoffrin’s Mondays for artists. In England, however, this was generally not at all the case. In fact many salon attendees
participated in more than one salon on a single night. In July 1777, the
Bluestocking Hester Chapone wrote to Elizabeth Carter regarding the
“unceasing torrent of wit and stories” she had heard the Abbé Reynal
recount at the salon of Mrs Boscawen: “He had held on at the same
rate from one at noon (when he arrived at Glanvilla) and we heard that
he went the same evening to Mrs Montagu’s, in Hill Street, and kept
on his speed til one in the morning.”66 It was thus possible to freely
participate in more than one salon on a given night, allowing foreign
visitors such as the Abbé Reynal to experience and contribute to several salons during their stay. This “torrent of wit and stories,” which was
spread over numerous salons also allowed the Bluestockings to participate in a kind of self-education. The limitations of education for women
in the eighteenth century caused many people to interpret the French
salon as an informal university for women, an acceptable place for them
to further their learning outside the realm of a formal education. The
2008 Bluestocking exhibition at the National Portrait gallery in London
reflected a similar understanding of the educational role of the English
salon in its announcement that the exhibition intended to celebrate
the Bluestockings “at least as much for their creation of an intellectual
community – almost an informal university – as for their individual literary and artistic achievements.”67 Thus, discussion of literature and politics served to advance the personal knowledge of those women present.
As well as providing a site and opportunity for sociability, the English
salon also copied the French literary model in its shared function as
a facilitator of intellectual exchange relating to prose, poetry, drama,
and imaginative prose writing. The place of belles lettres as the focus
of salon conversation in general is repeatedly noted in Johnson’s correspondence and biographies, for example: “The talk was for a while about
Burney’s book [[Evelina], and the old objection to the Captain’s grossness
being mentioned, Lady Edgecombe said that she had known such a captain.” However, while literature was undoubtedly the principal source
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
57
of conversation it was not the only one; politics was another important
subject within the salon. As well as being a hostess Elizabeth Montagu
was also politically involved, supporting her husband Edward Montagu,
a member of parliament for Huntingdon from the early 1730s until
1768.68 This was particularly apparent during the 1760 election when
she contributed to the electioneering process by accompanying Edward
to Newcastle where she attended local entertainment and visited the
local Corporation there in the capacity of political wife.69 Although
predominantly literary, her salon occasionally reflected this aspect of
her life. Conversations such as the following occurred, for example,
after Lord North had made unsuccessful overtures to Chatham to join
the government: “There was talk one evening at Mrs Montagu’s of the
present state of politicks: I have lived said she to see many an opposition
come over to the ministry, but this is the first time I ever saw a ministry
go over to the opposition” (March 1778).70
The Bluestocking hostesses were well-off individuals with a longstanding association with the court. These hostesses, and many of their
salon participants, were undoubtedly interested in modernisation during the 1770s and 1980s as it affected their prosperity, but rather than
advocating radical change or protest, the Blues promoted “moderation
and modification.”71 Gary Kelly argued in his preface to Bluestocking
Feminism (1999) that “On the whole, the members of the Bluestocking
circles were so well connected with the established order, and had such
a vested interest in it, that they resisted radical change to it.”72 George
III’s wife, Charlotte, who reigned during the Bluestockings’ golden age,
was linked with many of the Bluestocking members: particularly Mary
Hamilton, who acted as sub-governess to the princesses; Frances Burney
who was employed as second keeper of the robes; and Mary Granville
Delany who was given a house at Windsor after the death of the Duchess
of Portland, a close friend of the Queen’s.73 Charlotte, along with her
five daughters, is also recorded as having visited Montagu House at
Portman Square, thus further confirming the Bluestockings’ link with
the royal family. The “entwined nature” of the monarchy and the
Church of England is expanded upon at length in Emma Major’s illuminating Madam Britannia (2012). Unlike in Ireland, where the Protestant
Ascendancy was set apart automatically from the Catholic majority of
the population through both wealth and religion, the Bluestockings
endeavoured to establish their own identity based not only on intellect, but also on Anglican virtue and patriotic zeal.74 Major sees in the
Blues’ charitable endeavours, for example, attempts to shape the lower
and middling classes into “orderly Anglicans,” with the Bluestockings
58
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
defining themselves more and more “against an allegedly treasonous,
Dissenting middling class and the ubiquitous mob.”75
The salon in England did, however, aspire to maintain the French
ideal that entrance would be based on merit rather than birth. Mary
Hamilton was a courtier and diarist whose circle of friends included
many of the Bluestockings, such as Hannah More and Mrs Boscawen.
Her diary, which was begun on 30 July 1776, provides many descriptions
of the Bluestocking or bas bleu gatherings. Her diary entry on 12 April
1784, for example, illustrates the type of crowd gathered together at
Montagu’s salon, allowing us to determine the diverse nature of the
salon participants: “Went to a bas bleu party; there were Mrs Montagu,
Mr Walpole, Mr and Mrs Pepys and Sir L Pepys, Lady Rothes, Mrs
Garrick, Miss H More, Dr and Miss Burney, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Miss
Palmer, Lord Monboddo and Miss Carter.”76 More and Carter were
from relatively humble backgrounds, with More the daughter of a local
schoolmaster while Carter was the eldest daughter of the Revd Nicolas
Carter, the perpetual curate of Deal Chapel. Garrick and Reynolds were
also from modest families and gained entry into such circles by their
own achievements. Conversely, Walpole was son of a former prime minister, and James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, was a judge and philosopher
whose family was a cadet branch of the Burnets of Leys, Deeside.77 In a
similar fashion Hannah More refers to a salon gathering at Montagu’s
in 1775 that included Boscawen, Johnson, Reynolds and Carter as well
as “some other persons of high rank.”78 Clearly lords and ladies mingled with the middle class and literati of the day just as had occurred in
France.
These literary figures benefited immensely from both the encouragement and support of the salon members and the patronage and
guidance of salon hostesses. Hester Mulso Chapone’s dedication in Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to a Young Lady (London,
1773) declares that her work’s existence in print is owing entirely to
the intervention of Elizabeth Montagu: “I believe, you are persuaded
that I never entertained a thought of appearing in public . . . perhaps it
was the partiality of friendship, which so far biased your judgement,
as to make you think them capable of being more extensively useful,
and warmly to recommend the publication of them.”79 Had it not been
for Montagu’s involvement and her warm recommendation, the letters
that Chapone had been addressing to her niece since 1765 would not
have been published and so would never have gone on to become the
writer’s most celebrated work and “the most widely read work of the first
generation of bluestockings.”80 It must be borne in mind throughout,
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
59
however, that the process of dedication was clearly meant primarily
as one of deference, and generally done strategically. Montagu herself
states that “I am afraid of encouraging dedications, no one but myself
believes one word of ye fine things they say of me,” and later that “Miss
Moore has dedicated her Essays to me which are just published. They
are excellent . . . I assure you I do not praise them because I am bribed
with a Dedication.”81 Montagu’s position as literary patron extended
beyond encouragement to include correction and alterations to literary
works. Thus, in addition to praising the work and promoting its circulation, Montagu intervened in altering and enhancing the actual textual
composition of Chapone’s work: “ . . . some strokes of your [Montagu’s]
elegant pen have corrected these Letters . . . .”82
Elizabeth Montagu was again the catalyst, along with William
Pulteney, the Earl of Bath, for the publication of the poetry of another
Bluestocking, Elizabeth Carter. Carter only published two collections of
poetry herself: Poems on Particular Occasions (London, 1738) and Poems
on Several Occasions (London, 1762). The publishing dates for the above
illustrate that Carter had retreated from the world of publishing after
her initial engagement with it in the 1730s, before being prompted to
re-immerse herself in it almost a quarter of a century later upon the
urging of her two Bluestocking friends. Just as was the case regarding her involvement in the publishing of Chapone’s material, Montagu
again provided practical help and advice in the preparation of the text
for printing. Carter’s correspondence with Montagu illustrates just how
comprehensive the latter’s involvement actually was with the inclusion
of such expressions as “So tell me what you would have me do, and I will
proceed accordingly,” “be so good as to correct it [the Ode] when I send
it, by that which you have” and “ . . . as your judgment is what I am principally concerned in, it [the Ode] shall either be printed or not as you
decide.”83
Montagu’s involvement is almost one of collaboration stretching as
it does from initial encouragement of publication, to alterations and
correction of the proofs, to advice regarding publishing format and
front matter. The salon hostess is involved at every stage of publication,
even the final one of distribution of the printed word: “I have desired
Mr. Rivington to send you twelve copies bound, and I enclose you a list
of their destination, if you will be so good as to distribute them, which
I think you told me you would” (21 December 1761).84 It is important
to note, however, that many of the works read at the time were circulated in manuscript rather than printed form, and this should be seen
as a deliberate choice. While some desired the manuscript work to be
60
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
circulated extensively, many of the salon participants wished for their
writings to be read by a very select group. This is the case with an ode
penned by Vesey, for example:
how cd you think it possible I shd have blamed you for communicating to Miss Cooper what yr delicacy might not chose to have made
publick. Ye ode was very pretty, but as you might not chuse [sic] to
be call’d a Poetess your desiring it might not be mentiond was very
natural & not less so that you shd indulge Miss Cooper with it.85
Vesey clearly wished for her poetry to remain extremely private, but
manuscripts could also reach an extensive audience. Hannah More’s
account of the Bluestockings, “The Bas Bleu” for example, was widely
read as a manuscript poem from 1783 before its eventual publication in
1786.86
Several Bluestockings chose to publish by subscription, including
Clara Reeve who published her Original Poem on Several Occasions
(1769) by subscription with over 500 subscribers. Frances Burney’s novel
Camilla (1796) remains the most famous example of an instance where
the Bluestockings enabled a publication. Burney felt obliged to print by
subscription owing to the enormous expenses that had been incurred
as a result of Pitt’s Stamp Act, 1795, which introduced a heavy duty
on paper. Generally it was the bookseller who advertised and sold subscriptions to attract potential subscribers; Burney not only made use of
this traditional commercial approach, however, but also exploited her
position as a member of the Bluestocking circle in order to secure the
maximum profitability for her novel. Burney thus went about organising with her friends to solicit subscriptions among polite society and to
collect and keep account of money and transactions on her behalf: “Miss
Cambridge answers for Mrs Boscawen. Mrs Montagu, I fancy, may also
be counted. To such characters I shall be happy to owe obligation . . . ”
(18 June 1795).87 The proposals for the printing by subscription of the
work in six volumes duodecimo declare that: “the subscription will be
one Guinea, to be paid at the time of subscribing.”88 Burney undoubtedly benefited fully from her salon membership and the Bluestockings’
influence and prestige, allowing her to eventually realise a profit of
£1000 from the subscription.
In the Bluestocking salons then, friendship and mutual support
amongst the Bluestocking hostesses replaced the open animosity found
amongst the salonnières in France. These hostesses accelerated the
notion of community inherent in the French salon to introduce the
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
61
concept not just of autonomous support within each salon but also of
collaboration between salons. The element of cooperation that existed
between the different hostesses was pivotal to their functioning and can
be interpreted as representing a “fabric of connectedness which supported their autonomous interests.”89 Elizabeth Montagu wrote of her
fellow hostess Frances Boscawen: “I think there is not a grain of evil
in her composition. She is humble, charitable, pious, of gentle temper, with the firmest principles and with a great deal of discretion . . . .”90
It seems apparent that the Bluestocking salon project, in contrast to that
of the French salonnières, was one of overall cooperation and clear association with a working network of salons based on friendship rather than
opposition and rivalry.
One of the most neglected of the salon hostesses in modern accounts
of the Bluestockings has been Mary Monckton (1746–1840). Though
she became Countess of Cork and Orrery after her marriage to Edmund
Boyle, 7th Earl of Cork and Orrery, as his second wife at the age
of 40 in 1786, Monckton’s Irish connections have been constantly
overlooked.91 Like her husband, however, her father was also an Irish
peer. She was the daughter of John Monckton, first Viscount Galway,
who received his peerage in 1727 and his wife Jane, née Westenra, of
Rathleagh in Queen’s County (now Co. Laois).92 In his own chapter
on the Bluestockings, Chauncey Brewster Tinker declared: “Others of
them such as Miss Monckton (still remembered for Reynolds’s sentimental portrait of her), Lady Lucan, Lady Hemes, Mrs. Greville . . . have left,
in general, little more than a name (and an adjective) to posterity.”93
However, many details of Monckton and indeed her salon have been
recorded not only in Bluestocking correspondence but also in biographical accounts of Johnson, who regularly frequented her gatherings.
Frances Burney, in fact, described Monckton as “one of those who stand
foremost in collecting all extraordinary or curious people to her London
conversaziones, which . . . mix the rank and the literature, and exclude
all beside” (10 November 1782).94 Thus while she may have drifted into
obscurity in later years, she was a highly sought-after hostess in the
late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century. Monckton’s early salons
took place at her childhood home in Charles Street, Berkeley Square,
where she lived with her widowed mother, not far from Elizabeth
Montagu’s Hill Street address. It is there that she entertained such literary figures as James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Frances Burney, and
Edmund Burke.
It is paradoxical that a considerable amount of our knowledge of
the Bluestockings is, in fact, filtered through accounts of Johnson.
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
This is certainly the case with Monckton, with the hostess featuring
intermittently in Boswell’s treatment of Johnson, focusing on his
behaviour at her salon. Several entries illustrate that, just as in the
French salons, for polite conversation to occur one must have ease,
elegance, and politeness rather than stiffness or formality:
Johnson was prevailed with to come sometimes into these circles, and
did not think himself too grave even for the lively Miss Monckton
(now Countess of Corke) who used to have the finest bit of blue at
the house of her mother, Lady Galway. Her vivacity enchanted the
Sage, and they used to talk together with all imaginable ease.95
It is clear that what is occurring in the above instance is a mutual
exchange of opinions conducted with a sense of openness and sincerity
in adherence to Bluestocking principles. The conversation is described
as “lively” rather than overly solemn and Boswell communicates a
sense of the mutual enjoyment gained through the encounter, one that
allows for candour and vivacity to coincide rather than “disagreeable
formality” or “improper solemnity.”
As well as Johnson and Boswell, Monckton’s salon also included the
Irish writers Edmund Burke, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Richard
Lovell Edgeworth.96 Richard Lovell Edgeworth explicitly connected
English salons with those he had visited in France, albeit in a rather
unflattering manner:
For my part English assemblies have no charm for me – Society is not
only a century behind French society, but it never can be so agreeable.
There is certainly too much beef and pudding about Englishmen –
They appear obviously heavy in company and besides their physical
inaptitude for conversation there is a mental reserve and fear of committing themselves that prevents them from mixing with the other
sex in assemblies and from addressing or attending to strangers – all
this I saw exemplified at Lady Cork’s conversazione last Sunday.97
Edgeworth identifies the key elements of French salon society that the
English salon attempted to emulate: the mixed gender of the participants, the emphasis on conversation, and the politesse required amongst
people unacquainted with one another. However, in his excoriating
description, these necessary qualities are not met with, and Edgeworth’s
letter allows us to gain an alternative insight into the gatherings, which
are generally praised by others.
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
63
In a letter to Catherine Maria Bury, Lady Charleville, the writer Amelia
Opie expands on the qualities of Monckton’s parties, detailing the number of participants, their names, the time of the gathering, and the topics
of conversation:
Last Tuesday we had a conversation party at Lady Cork’s, consisting of about 30 persons; and after they had formed themselves
into various groups till ½ past 11, ye entrance of two supper tables
divided them into two sets. At ye table where I sat, were only
Lord Landsdowne, Lady Charlotte Linzie [Lindsey], Lady Crewe, Mrs
Buller, Lady Boringdon, Lady Lansdowne, Mr Sneyd Edgeworth, & a
Mr Kingston, & a Mr North, ye latter a young Irishman . . . . In this
small, & really intellectual party, I wished much for yr Ladyship. Literature, ye right & wrong habits of society, schemes for improving ye
present state of visiting, & of parties, anecdotes well told by Lord L. &
Mrs Buller, made up ye conversation of ye evening, & I have scarcely
passed a pleasanter one.
(3 June 1810)98
This descriptive letter gives us a defined sense of what was talked
about at a salon. The range of conversational topics at Lady Cork’s was
extremely extensive, stretching from literature to the state of society.
The recipient of these details, the Irish-born Lady Charleville, was herself
a strongly intellectual woman and a salon hostess. She is often mentioned along with Lady Cork as an alternative hostess: “Although it was
Lady Cork’s ‘Pink night,’ the rendez-vous of the fashionable exclusives,
we got away as soon as Sir Charles came up, being voués to dear Lady
Charleville’s. There we found an agreeable party already assembled.”99
Lady Cork is said to have divided her salons depending on guests, so
that she had “pink (parties) for the exclusives, blue for the literary,
gray for the religious, and one party of all sorts but I have no name
for that.”100 Lady Morgan described the latter as “dun-ducketty mud
colour.”101 Although the French salons could be split depending on artistic pursuit, this decision to invite guests based on exclusivity is a clear
departure from earlier salon principles of meritocracy.
Just as portraits of the salonnières enable us to form a better idea of
how they wished to be perceived and represented, the same is true in the
case of several Bluestocking hostesses. Elizabeth Eger has discussed the
1762 portrait of Elizabeth Montagu by Allan Ramsay at length, emphasising the connection between Montagu and the French salonnières: “His
painting of Montagu is reminiscent of the French tradition, including
64
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
Jean-Marc Nattier’s several portraits of the French salonnières,” and
“connects her [Montagu] with both the Scottish Enlightenment and the
French tradition of salon culture.”102 Evidently, Montagu wished her
image, which she herself had commissioned, to promote a particular
identity and to link her explicitly to the salons in France.
Monckton’s portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds was painted in 1777–1778
and begun when Monckton was almost 30 years old (see Figure 2.1). One
is immediately struck by the mischievous expression on Monckton’s face
as Reynolds has perfectly captured her character as described by Frances
Burney: “She has an easy levity in her air, manner, voice and discourse.”
The portrait depicts her as sitting down, which reflects her habit of
receiving her salon guests seated.103 The presence of the urn in the right
background is indicative of the hostess’s status. Monckton’s later mansion on New Burlington Street, half a mile northeast of Berkeley Square,
was decorated with “marble stairs, with their gilt balustrade” which led
to a “suite of apartments which opens with a brilliant boudoir, and
Figure 2.1 The Hon. Miss Monckton, 1777–1778, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–
1792). Bequeathed by Sir Edward Stern 1993. © Tate, London 2015
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
65
terminates with a sombre conservatory.”104 While she herself remained
seated, one of the traits Monckton is most remembered for is her desire
“to prevent a circle”:
Some new people now coming in, and placing themselves in a regular
way, Miss Monckton exclaimed, “my whole care is to prevent a circle,” and hastily rising, she pulled about the chairs, and planted the
people in groups, with as dexterous a disorder as you would desire
to see.105
It was Monkton’s belief that separating her guests into groups was more
conducive to conversation. An extract from Mary Berry’s journal for
1811 offers further evidence for Monckton’s preference: “Went to Lady
Cork’s; a great assembly in her upper rooms . . . The Prince there, and all
the world; and a numerous world is still in London. There were some
masks, and some people singing, and Mrs Billington at a pianoforte.”106
This particular gathering seems more like a multi-stranded entertainment than one involving straightforward intellectual conversation, and
features a number of guests appearing in masquerade costumes. The repetition of the word “some” implies various groups of people, gathered
throughout the room with another guest, Mrs Billington, playing separately on the piano, indicating also that music was a feature of the salon.
Lady Morgan’s biographical miscellany The Book of the Boudoir (1829)
offers a quite extensive sketch of her first visit to Lady Cork’s salon:
“invited to a rout at her fantastic and pretty mansion in New Burlingtonstreet,” where were gathered “all that was then most illustrious for rank
and talent in England.”107 Lady Morgan recalls her first appearance there
as being “a few days after my arrival in London and while my little book
was running rapidly through successive editions.” This “little book”
was The Wild Irish Girl (1806) for which Lady Morgan is best known.
Lady Morgan, then Sydney Owenson, was invited to the salon by Lady
Cork, specifically as author of this novel and indeed she was requested
to perform the part of the novel’s eponymous hero, the wild Irish girl
Glorvina: “Every body has been invited expressly to meet the Wild Irish
Girl: so she must bring her Irish harp. M[ary] C[ork] and O[rrery].”108
In addition to playing the harp, Owenson was expected to embrace the
character of her heroine to such an extent that she was offered “a sort of
rustic seat” rather than “the civilized privileges of sofa or chair” as these
were “not in character with the habits of a “Wild Irish Girl.”109 Later in
the evening, Lady Cork ordered Owenson to assume character and to, in
essence, perform her Irishness: “Now, my dear, do tell my Lord Erskine
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
some of those Irish stories, you told us the other evening at Lord Cville’s. Fancy yourself en petit comité, and take off the Irish brogue.”110
Clearly Owenson was there first and foremost to be “exhibited and
shewn off” in a very uncomfortable, rather derogatory fashion. She is
described by Julie Donovan in Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan and the Politics of Style (2009) as “a casualty of her own success” but both Donovan
and Owenson herself recognise the value of such disagreeable performances as they “provided Owenson with the opportunity to exploit her
musical talent which served as an excellent means to ingratiate herself
with the powerful and influential figures she encountered.”111 Nevertheless, it is clear that by the early nineteenth century, the character of
the salon was shifting, with some individuals now present specifically as
performers, while others became consumers.
Hester Lynch Thrale at Streatham
The acknowledged brilliance of the Bluestockings ought not to blind
us to the other literary salons within English society. The literary gathering at Streatham, six miles south of London, is an example of a
celebrated English salon, which, although attended by guests who also
frequented the Bluestockings’ salons, was not directly connected to the
Bluestocking network. Hester Lynch Thrale was born in Caernarvonshire
and was very proud of her Welsh heritage. Her parents, who were
cousins, were connected with the leading families in north Wales as
they were said to have both descended from Catrin of Berain, “Mam
Cymru” (Mother of Wales).112 Much scholarship from the nineteenth
and twentieth century has erroneously labelled the hostess at Streatham
as a Bluestocking but Thraliana (unpublished until 1942), Hester Lynch
Thrale’s collection of anecdotes, reflections, poems, and fragments from
her life, contains many examples of the hostility in existence between
herself and the Bluestockings and clearly indicates that she did not consider her salon as being affiliated to theirs: “the wits and the blues
(as it is the fashion to call them) will be happy enough no doubt to
have me safe at the Brewery – out of their way” and “Charming Blues!
Blue with venom I think.”113 Despite the animosity that arose between
Hester and the Blues due to class differences and Hester’s marriage in
1784 to the Italian Gabriel Mario Piozzi, a Catholic musician, the hostess’s salon practices echo many of those customs also embraced by the
Bluestockings and described thus far.114
Among her salon attendees Thrale could count the actor David
Garrick and the composer and musical historian Dr Charles Burney,
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
67
both of whom had travelled extensively in France prior to attending
Thrale’s salon. Dr Burney’s work The Present State of Music in France
and Italy (1771) had led him to conduct a tour of both countries from
1770 to 1771, while Garrick had travelled to Paris as part of his Grand
Tour from 1763 to 1765 and it is well recorded that he was “cordially
received” into three of the most influential salons during his time there:
the salons of Helvétius, d’Holbach, and Geoffrin.115 Their presence at
Streatham thereby establishes a further link between the French and
English salons. It also establishes a connection with Italy and suggests
that Thrale’s gatherings may have been influenced by Italian conversazioni as well as French salons.116 Hester’s impressions of Italy and the
various literary gatherings there can be gleaned from her Observations
and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy and
Germany (1789), including her comments on “a sort of literary coterie
assemble” in Venice where the participants “form a society so instructive
and amusing, so sure to be filled with the first company in Venice, and
so hospitably open to all travellers of character, that nothing can now
be to me a higher intellectual gratification than my admittance among
them.”117
Thrale also welcomed the Italian scholar Joseph Baretti into her home
at Streatham. Reference to and discussion of the participants’ nationality did occasionally arise within the salon as the following comment
recorded in Thraliana illustrates: “Burke was tart upon Baretti for being
too dogmatical in his talk about politicks: you have no business to be
investigating the characters of Lord Falkland or Mr Hampden – you cannot judge of their merits, they are no countrymen of yours.”118 Along
with Burke and Goldsmith, another participant in Thrale’s salons was
the Co. Roscommon-born playwright and actor Arthur Murphy, once
more emphasising the strong presence of Irish literary figures within
the English salons. Again, the rule of politeness, the rule present in all
the salons, emerges as the dominant one at Streatham despite a certain level of enmity and bitterness between guests: “There was Murphy,
Boswell and Baretti – the two last – as I learned, just before they entered,
are mortal foes . . . Politeness however smoothes the most hostile brows –
and theirs were smoothed.”119
If politics was one subject of discussion, the leading topics of conversation were undoubtedly literature and art. Thraliana offers the reader
many glimpses of salon conversation such as the following: “It was on
the 18th day of July 1773 that we were sitting in the Blue Room at
Streatham and were talking of writers.”120 This particular entry relates
how the salon discussion included analysis of Richard Steele’s essays,
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
Jonathan Swift’s style, and the poetry of William Mason and Thomas
Gray. While Madame Geoffrin segregated her salons, dedicating one
to art and another to literature, Thrale combined both topics in her
gatherings as the following indicates:
The conversation turned upon painting – I am sorry says our Doctor
to see so much mind laid out on such perishable materials – canvas
is so slight a substance, and your art deserves to be recorded on more
durable stuff, why do you not paint oftener upon copper?121
Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter addressed in this question, then goes on
to discuss his historical scenes with the salon members. Thirteen paintings by Reynolds actually lined the walls at Streatham. Mrs Thrale and
her eldest daughter Hester Maria, better known as Queeney, were displayed over the fireplace and Mr Thrale’s portrait hung at the entrance
to his study while the remaining three-quarter length portraits in the
library depicted the salon’s distinguished guests including Sir Joshua
himself.122 The three Irish writers, Burke, Goldsmith, and Murphy were
also depicted in these portraits.123
Johnson refers to the marked absence of Oliver Goldsmith at Thrale’s
salon after his death in April 1774: “poor Goldsmith will be much
missed at your literary parties.”124 The Collected Letters of Goldsmith
(1928) include a letter from Goldsmith to Thrale indicating that she has
requested volumes of his work for her perusal, and after initial confusion
as to which titles are requested the work is promised: “I will take care
tomorrow of the volumes in question.”125 On a later occasion, after her
marriage to Piozzi, Thrale recalls reading “some elegant novels” which
included “Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield as well as Voltaire’s Zadig” and
“Young and Addison’s Works.”126 It was Arthur Murphy meanwhile who
had initially introduced Johnson to Thrale in 1765. Theirs was quite a
symbiotic relationship in that while Murphy introduced her to Johnson,
Thrale circulated the work of the Irish author to other members of her
salons. She sent Murphy’s writing to Bishop Thomas Percy, for example,
in January 1792: “The annexed work of Mr Murphy’s will perhaps amuse
the Bishop for half an hour – it is not yet published.”127 The “annexed
work” is thought to be either an advance copy or the manuscript of Essay
on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson, LLD, due to be published on
12 May 1792. Thus while it is not so surprising that Thrale would want
to read the published work of her guests, this instance again demonstrates the role of the salon hostess in circulating unpublished material,
through Thrale’s dissemination of Murphy’s work in manuscript form.
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
69
One visitor to the Streatham salon not included in the portraits but
whose diary provides invaluable information regarding the gatherings
is Dr Thomas Campbell. Campbell was a church dignitary and Irish
antiquary educated at Trinity College Dublin who undertook a trip to
London in 1775 primarily to meet Dr Johnson. He became acquainted
with Johnson at the Thrales’ salon, the details of which he meticulously
recorded in his diary. This diary allows us to obtain an indication of
the material conditions of the salon such as the type of food consumed
there, including the evidently unfamiliar Guinea fowl:
First course soups at head and foot removed by fish and a saddle of
mutton – second course a fowl they called Galena – at head, and a
capon – larger than some of our Irish turkeys at foot – third course
four different sorts of ices viz Pineapple, grapes, raspberry, and a
fourth.128
James Clifford’s biography Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale) (1952)
records that tea was also consumed in great quantities at Streatham,
with Hester pouring tea “from a seemingly inexhaustible tea-pot.” It is
recorded that one of her tea pots which was sold in Streatham sale, could
in fact hold more than three quarts.129 Clifford’s biography also provides
information regarding the time of the salon as well as the conventional
time for dining in English salon society in general: “In spite of society’s pronounced preference for late evening parties, the regular dining
hour in the Thrale household had always been four o’clock in the afternoon.” This information is gleaned from several entries in Reynolds’s list
of engagements where he makes note of his invitation to the Thrales’ as
“4 Mr Thrale.” A later entry, however, records the altered time of “8 Mrs
Thrale” illustrating that Thrale later conformed to the standard dining
time.130
Just as the hour for dining had distinguished it, the high number of
men present at Thrale’s salon had originally set it apart from those of
the Bluestockings and made it closer to the contemporary French salons.
On 25 March 1777, Campbell recorded men outnumbering women by
five to one: “Dined at Mr Thrales, where there were 10 or dozen gentlemen and but one lady besides Mrs Thrale.”131 In addition to London’s
literati who were attracted to Streatham by Johnson’s semi-permanent
residence at the Thrales’, there were also several business and political acquaintances of Henry Thrale’s present, thereby further increasing
the masculine attendance. An important female addition to the gathering came with the introduction of the author Frances Burney. Thrale
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
described her as “a saucy spirited little puss to be sure” but then instantly
qualified her comment by continuing “but I love her dearly.”132 While
originally predominantly masculine, the salon later welcomed several
women to the group:
Yesterday I had a conversazione. Mrs Montagu was brilliant in diamonds, solid in judgement, critical in talk. Sophy [Sophia Weston]
smiled, Piozzi sung, Pepys painted with admiration . . . Mrs Ord looked
elegant, Lady Rothes dainty, Mrs Davenant dapper, and Sir Philips’s
curls were all blown about by the wind.133
This conversazione reflects the more feminine emphasis of Thrale’s later
salon, which she hosted after her second marriage as Mrs Hester Piozzi.
Her scandalous second marriage caused a break with many former
friends and acquaintances and the later salons welcomed new participants. Thrale renovated Streatham in 1790 to exhibit strong Italian
influences: “Filled with costly vases and pictures brought back from
Italy, with rich fabrics and rarities, the comfortable, sedate English
country house was changed into an Italian villa.”134 Mrs Piozzi then welcomed several new guests to her redecorated home, including the sisters
Harriet and Sophia Lee, Eva Garrick, Hannah More, and the actress Sarah
Siddons, before she left Streatham to return to her native home in Wales
in 1795.
Several hostesses continued the English salon tradition further into
the nineteenth century. However, the 1790s witnessed a major change
in Britain’s associational life and saw the demise of the traditional salon
and its replacement by gatherings that placed more emphasis on discussion of radical ideologies, such as the radical dinners held by the
bookseller Joseph Johnson in St Paul’s Churchyard in the centre of
London.135 The centrality of politesse and honnêteté to conversation,
so fundamental to salon life, began to be replaced in the wake of
the French Revolution by an emphasis on assertiveness and confrontation: “The emphasis in Rational Dissent on conversation as a form of
strenuous intellectual exchange privileged candour and sincerity over
polish and politeness.”136 Both politesse and the French language became
established as derogatory qualities, associated with effeminacy and antithetical to Englishness.137 Politeness was still necessary for the English
elite at the close of the eighteenth century, but English politeness came
to be constructed as different in nature to French politesse, and became
entirely divorced from women: “It is no longer politeness, a foreign
and effeminating import, but its opposite, manly sincerity, that is set
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
71
to produce the English gentleman.”138 The role of the salon hostess as
mediator and facilitator of polite conversation thus began to be rendered
obsolete.
Equally, the French Revolution had a major impact on the role of
female authors and their position in the public sphere, with Jacqueline
Labbe noting “a shift from a public style of authorship to a protoVictorian emphasis on domesticized femininity.”139 Those salons that
began after the turn of the century generally became more akin to the
French salons of the eighteenth century, with a central female hostess
surrounded by male participants. The salon of Margaret Gardiner (née
Power), countess of Blessington (1789–1849), for example, took place in
St. James’s Square, London from 1818 until 1822 and guests included
Lord Palmerston, Thomas Moore, and Earl Grey. Schmid describes
the countess as being “visited by famous men but shunned by most
women.”140 After her husband’s death in Paris in 1829, Blessington reestablished a salon in Mayfair (1831–1836) and her salon was again
male-dominated: “her circle of acquaintance widened, as the Disraelis,
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Daniel Maclise, Charles Dickens and Captain
Marryat, among others, attended her soirées.”141
Edinburgh’s salons
Thrale and the Bluestocking hostesses shaped the lives of many aspiring authors in England, as well as providing an important site for
sociability. Several important salons in Edinburgh provided similar
opportunities for those involved in Scotland’s intellectual culture in the
late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Katharine Glover’s Elite
Women and Polite Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (2011), which
concentrates on the period 1720–1770, notes “the absence in Scotland
of the formal, female-headed salons that played such an important role
in the intellectual life of France, or their equivalents among the English
Bluestockings,” and the Scottish salons do appear to have begun later
than those in England.142 There also seems to have been significantly less
support for published female authors in mid-to-late eighteenth-century
Scotland than in England during the same period.143 Richard B. Sher, for
example, includes only two women in his list of writers in eighteenthcentury Scotland and suggests that “Scottish women who wrote for
publication were violating established conventions in a much more
serious way than did women of late eighteenth-century England.”144
Pam Perkins and Jane Rendall have argued, however, that there was
a place for women in the world of sociability in the later eighteenth
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
century, with Rendall commenting on the desire amongst many women
in Edinburgh for both an active sociability and a civic role.145 Pam
Perkins has suggested that while Scottish women of letters did indeed
remain much less visible than their English contemporaries, this is
partly because they often chose to continue in manuscript rather than
in print, and comments that, “shifting focus away from print and individual authorship and on to the more sociable coterie literature gives
a much clearer sense of the cultural roles played by eighteenth-century
women.”146
Both Perkins and Rendall, as well as Karen O’Brien, have also noted
the importance of the Scottish Enlightenment for the associational lives
of women in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, with
O’Brien outlining how Scotland’s Enlightenment thinkers changed the
way women were viewed in history and social geography, and highlights the many positive comments made by these intellectual figures
regarding women’s contribution to sociability.147 The esteem enjoyed by
certain learned women in this period in Edinburgh can be seen as conducive to the establishment and subsequent success of literary salons,
with their encouragement of intelligent female participants and mixedgender sociability. While David Hume noted the harmonising effect
women brought to conversation, William Alexander linked the place
of women in society with the very progress of civilisation in his work
The History of Women:
The rank therefore, and condition, in which we find women in any
country, mark out to us with the greatest precision, the exact point
in the scale of civil society, to which the people of such country have
arrived; and were their history entirely silent on every other subject,
and only mentioned the manner in which they treated their women,
we would, from thence, be enabled to form a tolerable judgement of
the barbarity, or culture of their manners.148
Two hostesses in particular emerged during the eighteenth century in
Edinburgh, who engaged actively in literary sociability, and helped
to shape Scotland’s salon culture: Alison Rutherford Cockburn (1713–
1794) and Eliza(beth) Hamilton (1758–1816).
Upon her husband Patrick’s death in 1753, Alison Rutherford
Cockburn, who was born in Selkirkshire, some 30 miles south of
Edinburgh, began a highly influential salon which has been described
as having “moulded that city’s [Edinburgh’s] dining and drawing room
culture.”149 T. Craig Brown, the editor of Cockburn’s collected songs and
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
73
poems, states that, in his recollection, Cockburn’s conversation brought
her much nearer to a Frenchwoman than to a native of England, and
indeed Walter Scott said of the hostess:
She was one of those persons whose talents for conversation made a
stronger impression on her contemporaries than her writings could
be expected to produce . . . She maintained the rank in the society
of Edinburgh which French women of talents usually do in that of
Paris, and in her little parlour used to assemble a very distinguished
and accomplished circle, among whom David Hume, John Home,
Lord Monboddo, and many other men of name were frequently to
be found.150
Thus, like those of Mary Monckton and the Blues in general, Cockburn’s
salon included “society distinguished both for condition and talents.”
The Letters and Memoir of Mrs A Rutherford or Cockburn (1900) includes
several letters to David Hume, which include such expressions of familiarity as “Bring yourself however, as fast as you can, because just now
we have a fancy for you” and on 20 August 1764, “I despise thee with
affection.”151 As well as her intimate connection with Hume, Cockburn
is described as having “discovered” Scott, a cousin on her mother’s side,
at her salon as she “noted in the child of six the marks of his future
genius.”152
In addition to Home, Hume, and Scott, Cockburn’s circle also
included Henry Mackenzie, William Robertson, and David Dalrymple.153
It is important to recognise that, unlike the Bluestocking salons and
recalling Thrale’s early salons, it seems that Cockburn’s were predominantly male in composition. In this respect, Cockburn’s correspondence
laments what she sees as the alteration in relations between men and
women in Scotland since her youth:
And I think the commerce between the sexes is now totally at an
end in every respect but by appetite or avarice. In my younger days
our men were bred in France, and they could profess an admiration of a fine woman without being in love with her, or having any
design on her, legal or illegal. Now a man looks at a woman as he
does at a haunch of venison . . . . Such is the effect of the English
connection . . . .154
In Cockburn’s opinion, it was their exposure to French habits of
sociability that allowed the older generation of Scotsmen to appreciate
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
women in non-sexual ways; no longer “bred in France” the younger generation can only approach women in predatory ways. The comments
from Brown, Scott, and this from Cockburn, explicitly link the Scottish
salons to those of France, distancing themselves from those gatherings
which took place in nearby England and rejecting outright “the English
connection” despite the obvious similarity between the two countries’
salons.
Perhaps much of this attempt at differentiation is owing to the discrimination experienced by many Scottish men of letters by the English.
Hume himself refers to the indifference of the Englishmen towards him
in a letter to Gilbert Eliot:
I do not believe there is one Englishman in fifty, who, if he heard that
I had broke my neck tonight, would not be rejoic’d with it. Some
hate me because I am not a Tory, some because I am not a Whig,
some because I am not a Christian and all because I am a Scotsman.
Can you seriously talk of my continuing an Englishman? Am I, or are
you, an Englishman? Will they allow us to be so? Do they not treat
with derision our pretensions to that name, and with hatred our just
pretensions to surpass and govern them?155
In juxtaposition to this display of denigration, Richard Lovell Edgeworth
observed that “The society at Edinburgh is a hundred times more agreeable than any I ever saw in Dublin – Lady Longford’s family excepted
and the speakers.”156 It seems clear that each country’s salon participants
were very much aware of the endeavours of their fellow salon participants elsewhere and that the level of success of each salon impacted on
the perceived level of sociability of each country.
The house in which Cockburn’s salons took place was located along
Crichton Street in the fashionable neighbourhood of George Square. The
hostess had moved there from Castle-Hill after her husband’s death in
the early 1750s. A plaque on the corner of Chapel Street and Windmill Street exists today and announces that Mrs Cockburn is buried
nearby.157 Unfortunately, much of George Square was destroyed in the
1960s to make way for the University of Edinburgh’s development.158
The square had been laid out by the architect-speculator James Brown
in 1766, just one year before the start of the development of Edinburgh’s
Georgian New Town, now a UNESCO World Heritage Centre along
with the Old Town. It was Edinburgh’s largest square at the time, and
in common with the earlier examples of Brown and Adam Square, it
aimed to offer housing to “those of the wealthy who sought a greater
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
75
segregation from the dilapidated central areas but could not afford to
build separate villas.”159 In the considerably more extravagant surroundings of Holyrood House, Princess Dashkova, whose experiences of the
French salons were discussed in Chapter 1, took up lodgings in one of
the palace’s apartments there. Dashkova remained in Edinburgh from
c. 1776 to 1782, and she implies in her memoirs that she presided over
salon gatherings during her time there. Her home welcomed the literary
and aristocratic elite of the day: “The immortal Robertson, Blair, Smith
and Ferguson came twice a week to spend the day with me. The Duchess
of Buccleuch, Lady Francis Scott, Lady Lothian, and Lady Mary Irwin
contributed to make my life pleasant.”160
Belfast-born Eliza Hamilton, most familiar today as a novelist, but also
known in her lifetime as a satirist and educationalist, added much to
the prestige of Scotland’s salons.161 Unlike the majority of her fellow
hostesses, Hamilton was neither from an aristocratic family nor married to a wealthy husband. She was born in Ireland to Charles Hamilton
“a merchant from an old Scottish family” and Katherine Mackay from
Dublin.162 Eliza’s father died while she was just a year old and as a result
her childhood was spent in Scotland in the care of her aunt. Elizabeth
lived a rather peripatetic life, residing in various English towns and cities
such as Bath and London as well as visiting Ireland and Wales before
settling in Edinburgh with her sister in 1804.163 Scottish salons seem to
have been much more prevalent in Edinburgh than in nearby Glasgow.
Edinburgh, which had a population of c. 50,000 in 1750, is said to have
“provided cultural and educational facilities that attracted large numbers of the gentry and aristocracy,” while Glasgow, with a population of
30,000, is described as “a city of international trade and nascent industry, with tobacco and West India merchants, bankers and manufacturers
the prominent figures in local society.”164
Hamilton’s Translations of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah (1796) has been
suggested as the hostess’s first literary success and her fame was further secured by the publication of her novel The Modern Philosophers
(1800): “The popularity of The Modern Philosophers was a passport to
fame and distinction; and Miss Hamilton consequently found herself
admired by the celebrated and the fashionable, and an object of curiosity and interest to the public.”165 This celebrity enabled her to establish
an extremely successful, although comparatively short-lived, salon in
Edinburgh. In the Memoirs of the Late Mrs Elizabeth Hamilton (1818)
we learn that, “her house was the resort, not only of the intellectual,
but of the gay and even of the fashionable and her cheerfulness, good
sense, and good humour, soon reconciled everyone to the literary lady.”
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
This “reconciliation” was necessary as the literary lady or “vulgar term
of ‘blue stocking’ ” had by then, the year 1804, become “more hackneyed, even in the polished circles of our literary metropolis, than you
can easily imagine,” echoing the general changing attitudes to female
intellectualism that took place in England after the French revolution.166
The autobiography of Mrs Eliza Fletcher includes several references to
Hamilton, who is described as “a woman of liberal mind, with much
cultivation, with very considerable liveliness and quickness of apprehension, with great kindness of heart.”167 Fletcher states that, “in the
winters of 1805 and 1806 I had much agreeable intercourse with Mrs
Elizabeth Hamilton, at whose house I met with a greater variety of people than I had yet mixed with.”168 In general, Hamilton received guests
in her drawing room from two o’clock whilst she spent the evening reading a book aloud “for the benefit of the whole party.” Private levees were
held by Hamilton on Mondays during which she received Scotland’s
literati. This is clearly outlined in her memoirs where it is explained
that “On Monday she deviated from the general system, by admitting
visitors all the morning; such was the esteem for her character, and such
the relish for her society, that this private levee was attended by the
most brilliant persons in Edinburgh, and commonly protracted till a
late hour.”169 These brilliant persons who attended her salons included
Joanna Baillie, Walter Scott, and Maria Edgeworth. Elizabeth Hamilton’s
portrait, by Sir Henry Raeburn, was used by Benger in the frontispiece
for Memoirs. In it her lips are parted as though she has stopped in midsentence with Raeburn portraying Hamilton as though in conversation,
perhaps highlighting her important role as hostess in addition to her
roles as writer and educationalist.170
While Cockburn and Hamilton were very successful Scottish
hostesses, they were certainly not the only ones. Perkins has insisted
that “mixed intellectual sociability was a defining feature of actual
Scottish society,” and salons played an important part in this.171 Mrs
Fletcher also refers to the gatherings at the childhood home of Robina
Cullen, “for many years the resort of all the men of talent and literature in Edinburgh, and of many women of rank and fashion,” while
gatherings were also held by Helen D’Arcy Stewart and her husband, the
philosopher Dugald Stewart, among others.172 The Fletcher household
itself is described by the writer Anne Grant as “for many years the centre
of attraction to everything that is elegant or enlightened about town;
for there is no place where worth and talents are so highly estimated
as here, or where wealth can so little compensate the want of them.”173
Just as the French salons adapted to embrace different functions, and
The Literary Salon in Eighteenth-Century Britain
77
the English salons promoted literary production, the Edinburgh salon
placed greatest emphasis on polite conversation and vigorous intellectual debate, often on important social and political matters. The
Edinburgh salon allowed its participants, both male and female, the
opportunity to engage in such dialogue as well as offering the possibility
of reading literary works in manuscript form.
The French salon’s aims, its ethos, and even the overall atmosphere, as
previously related, are reflected in both the English and Scottish gatherings. The exquisite décor, the fundamental role of conversation, the
English and Scottish hostesses’ position at the centre of the group,
as well as their role as harmoniser and facilitator of conversation,
all echo the practices in France. That direct comparisons were made
between the salonnières and British salon hostesses is revealed by the
comment of both male and female writers. The traveller and memoirist
Nathaniel Wraxall characterised Montagu as “the Madame du Deffand
of the English capital,” while Suzanne Necker described her as “la muse
d’Angleterre,” or the English muse.174
It is evident that the English hostesses drew inspiration from the latter while employing their own personal, distinctive touches to achieve
a certain degree of individuality and distinctiveness. It seems clear from
the correspondence and diary entries of these women that both the
Scottish and English salons did remain close to those of the French. They
replicated, imitated, and emulated the French salons’ functioning in
many regards with the central position of women, their role as harmonisers, and the central elements of politesse, freedom of opinion, and
meritocracy. The British salon did not aim merely to copy its French
counterpart as shown in relation to its networks of support, composition, and the practice of overlapping salon days, but it is undeniable,
nonetheless that the French salon, in all its various incarnations, provided the British salons with a model and influence which pervaded
all elements of their functioning. As occurred in France, the foreign
contribution to these salons is readily apparent. Again, Irish men and
women in particular contributed significantly both as participants and
hostesses, helping to mould and develop the British salon. One particular woman who shaped salons in both England and Ireland, Elizabeth
Vesey, will be discussed in the next chapter, further revealing the intense
cultural interaction between the two countries.
3
“Never Was a Flock So Scattered for
Want of a Shepherdess”: Elizabeth
Vesey Between England and Ireland
I scarce ever met with an Irish woman in my life, who did not in
a very kindly manner take root and flourish in the soil of England.
We are much obliged to you for this partiality, for you have among
you imported more sense and virtue than I fear we are likely to
repay you . . . .1
In this elaborately polite letter from November 1771, Elizabeth Carter
explicitly praises the many Irish women who resided in England during the late-eighteenth century, bringing with them both “sense” and
“virtue.” These women “flourished” in England as well of course as
in Ireland where their sense and virtue had been originally fostered
and where they still occasionally resided. Many of Ireland’s aristocracy and gentry spent much of their time between the two countries,
passing up to 18 months in England and then returning to Dublin
for six months or more during the parliamentary season, thus contributing to the societies of both countries.2 One such woman who
passed her time between the two countries was the Bluestocking hostess Elizabeth Vesey (c. 1715–1791), the recipient of Carter’s letter and
praise.
Vesey is of particular interest as she held an important salon in Ireland
as well as participating widely in the Bluestocking salons in England,
hosting one of the most important London salons of the eighteenth
century. International exchange was central to the literary salon and it
was of paramount importance in Vesey’s gatherings in particular, with
many examples of interaction between literary figures in the two neighbouring countries. Vesey’s time was shared generously between England
and Ireland; Elizabeth Carter declares, “As I have a great partiality for
78
Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
79
Ireland, I am perfectly well contented it should share you with us . . . ”
(8 June 1772), emphasising Vesey’s division of time between Dublin
and London.3 The hostess was not the only person to alternate residence between the two countries, however. The Bluestocking network
is often presented as an exclusively English affair, but it is important to remember that this network of communication and exchange
was also very much a bi-national affair between England and Ireland.
Several important participants attended salons in both England and
Ireland, including literary figures such as the playwright and politician Robert Jephson; Dr Johnson’s good friend the poet and amateur
actor Dean Marlay; as well as members of the peerage such as Lady
Anne Dawson and Lady Dartrey, the first and second wives of Thomas
Dawson, among many others. Carter previously used the verb “import”
to describe the method of contribution by these Irish in England and
the import and export of cultural items between the two countries
becomes apparent through the institution of the literary salon and its
involvement in patronage, publication, and the circulation of written
material.
Irish-born Elizabeth Vesey was the granddaughter of the influential
John Vesey, archbishop of Tuam, and daughter of Sir Thomas Vesey,
Bishop of Ossory, and his wife the heiress Mary Muschamp.4 After the
death of her first husband, William Handcock, in 1741, Vesey married her first cousin Agmondesham Vesey of Lucan, thereby reverting
to her maiden name upon her second marriage.5 While Vesey is cited
almost without exception as one of the main Bluestocking hostesses,
her Irishness is often addressed only in adjectival form and her activities
in Dublin ignored completely.6 The concept of identity and the circumstances of being Irish in England become clear as Vesey’s “otherness”
is highlighted both at a personal level and through absentee legislation. Vesey’s own perception of her salons, her salons’ participants, and
the country of her birth emerges from her letters, as does a conflicting
impression of her sense of self and identity. Her interest in Irish folklore
and mythology, and her love of and connection with the Irish countryside, mingle with a sense of severance from England and English friends,
for example.
Details of the material reality of Vesey’s salons are also contained
within Bluestocking correspondence, regarding the physical setting of
the salon, the individual participants, Vesey’s mode of governance,
and the food consumed there.7 A letter from Elizabeth Vesey to Mary
Hamilton offers a glimpse of the way in which such letters were circulated at the time. Vesey’s references to the preservation and influential
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
nature of some of Carter’s correspondence co-mingle with anxiety
regarding their reception:
I have not been able to find much less to select Mrs Carters letters
[.] Those fine ones I mention’d are lock’d up in a saving Box left in
Ireland [,] particularly that wrote upon her return from Miss Talbot’s
funeral which will one day touch the Heart & improve the religious
feelings of Posterity. I trust to your friendship to her that you will not
shew [sic] them if you do not think they wou’d please one for whom
the author has the highest veneration & whose taste & discernment
are so decisive?
(25 January 1781)8
Correspondence could clearly be an indication of trust as well as performance of the self. We know that the Bluestockings often used letters
to disseminate a particular image of themselves, but certain personal
letters, such as Carter’s comments after returning from the funeral
of an intimate friend, were explicitly intended as private and many
such letters were burnt or destroyed after being read. However, many
Bluestocking letters that appear to us today to be of a personal nature
were frequently intended for wider dissemination, and it is important to
bear this in mind in reading through their correspondence for evidence
of their network. Montagu, for example, asks on one occasion that Vesey
return her letters so they can be further circulated: “I wish you wd send
me some of my letters back I mean such as you have read, I want the
letters for a friend, I wd have only such as are copied, the originals are
hardly legible.”9
In addition to dividing her time between England and Ireland,
Vesey also shared her time in Ireland between two residences, firstly
at Lucan House, situated around nine miles from Dublin, and also at
Westmoreland Street in the heart of Dublin city. The two locations are
constantly juxtaposed throughout all correspondence conducted with
Vesey. Elizabeth Carter repeatedly refers to Lucan in a positive fashion
in comments such as “ . . . your delightful retirement on the banks of the
Liffey,” “the quiet shades of Lucan,” or “the dear, tranquil, poetic scenes
of Lucan,” while Elizabeth Montagu writes, “I am glad you adhere to
the calm amusements of Lucan, I should be afraid of being forgot in the
diversions of Dublin.”10 Upon leaving Dublin, Vesey’s correspondents
assure her that they “pity” and “grieve” for her removal from Lucan,
“where you must have led a most enviable life,” although the requirement to go to Dublin is recognised: “But I suppose it is necessary for you
Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
81
to go to Dublin and one must get through this ‘work-a-day-world’ as well
as one can.”11 Much of the information we have about the Veseys’ early
residence in Lucan comes from Mary Delany.12 Delany’s correspondence
enables us to form an idea of the early period of the Veseys’ married life
and their method of receiving guests:
We came here on Tuesday to dinner. There is no house in Ireland I
like so well to be in for any time except my own. Mr and Mrs Vesey
are very friendly and perfectly easy, so we have no sort of restraint,
but say and do just what we like . . .
(26 August 1752)13
This sense of ease and lack of restraint features repeatedly in Delany’s
correspondence: “They are pretty people to be with, no ceremony,
everybody does what they please” and “it is as agreeable within
doors as without – perfect ease and freedom, and books and prints
innumerable.”14 Being a house-guest at Lucan involved quite a different form of sociability than that experienced in the London town
house salons or the very ordered conversation of the eighteenthcentury French salon. Delany here seems to indicate private reading and
independent activity interspersed with relaxed conversation.
The original house at Lucan had been home to the Irish Jacobite leader
Patrick Sarsfield, the 1st Earl of Lucan, although one sees little reference to this in the correspondence. It was described by Elizabeth Carter
as “the dear old castle, with the niches in its walls, and a thousand
other gothic beauties” (20 September 1777).15 However, Agmondesham
Vesey, who has been described as an “amateur architect,” decided
that it should be demolished, and in the late 1770s he replaced their
old home with a modern Georgian house, designed with the help of
Scottish architect William Chambers and the architect James Wyatt, of
London.16 The result was a magnificent Palladian mansion, which is
today the residence of the Italian Ambassador to Ireland. The plan of
the house is essentially rectangular with “a semi-circular bow on the
rear elevation.”17 This bow shape results in an oval room on the ground
floor, while on the first floor the room is fully circular. While the oval
room is thought to have provided a source of inspiration for the White
House’s Oval Office, the round room is of more concern for us in that
it was there that Elizabeth Vesey received her guests into her salon. Initially this room was viewed by Vesey with fear due to its similarity in her
mind to a cage: “She [Vesey] has this afternoon been looking over the
plan of the new-house at Lucan and seems greatly disturbed to find she
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
is to inhabit a round room, where she conceives she shall be like an old
parrot in a cage.”18 Elizabeth Montagu refers to the room in more positive fashion in 1777: “I hope you will convey me to Dublin, for I long to
see your charming house, & ye centre of your round room is the centre
of my wishes.”19 The embellishment of Lucan was a costly undertaking,
however:
Lucan is going on at a great expense I have the weakness not to be
able to say no to a pleasant object tho’ it may have its edge in a future
day – the embellishment of grounds is a smooth deceiver it appears
so harmless so natural the solitary winter nights that threaten at a
distance are not thought of.20
Arthur Young’s famous tour throughout Ireland, undertaken between
1776 and 1779, coincided with the transformation of Lucan House, and
Young’s impressions of the grounds are recorded thus: “the house is
rebuilding but the wood on the river, with walks through it, is exceedingly beautiful. The character of the place is that of a sequestered
shade.”21 Vesey herself describes it in similar manner in a letter to
Edmund Burke as “quite enfower’d [sic] in Shade & the Cottage in
Roses – & has a something tho quiet of agitation.”22
Thomas Milton’s A Collection of Select Views from the Different Seats of
the Nobility and Gentry in the Kingdom of Ireland . . . (1793) includes Lucan
House alongside other well-known Dublin locations such as the Casino
at Marino, Leinster House, and Malahide Castle, as well as country seats,
such as Florence Court in Co. Fermanagh and Brockley-Park in Co. Laois
(then Queen’s County).23 Milton describes the landscape at Lucan thus:
The Gardens are laid out with great Taste; the situation tho’ low,
shady, and sequestered; is extremely pleasant. The Liffey runs on
one Side of the Grounds, for near two Miles; the high road confines
them on the other; and, thence narrow, they do not want sufficient
variety.24
The writer also takes particular notice of the older elements of the landscape, mentioning that “To the Right, from the Front of the House,
amidst a Group of lofty Lime-trees, are the small but venerable Ruins of
an abbey” and that “The View of the New Bridge is in Part interrupted
by the Remains of an old one (exhibited in the Plate); the contrast produces a very pleasing Effect.” Lady Louisa Conolly’s home at Castletown
also included gothic ruins in their garden and Finola O’Kane has argued
Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
83
for a link between such ruins and the Anglo-Irish in particular, noting that “the anti-historicism of ruins may have proved popular among
the Anglo-Irish, whose power and position rested on a strong rebuttal
of the larger Catholic cultural environment.”25 While this is entirely
applicable to many examples, it is possible that the Veseys’ own emphasis on the ruined abbey and old bridge attempts to link them to the past
and to the Irish landscape, as the fifth generation to reside in Ireland, as
well as perhaps emphasising Elizabeth’s interest in Irish antiquity and
folklore.
The interior of Lucan House echoes these spectacular grounds; there
are plaster medallions credited to Angelica Kauffman, a cantilevered
staircase in Portland stone with mahogany handrail, and “a magnificent marble chimney piece” in the circular room which includes “inlaid
flutes and an urn and festoons” on the horizontal panel or transom.26
Vesey believed there was an explicit connection between decoration
and conversation: “In general I think decoration not useless [.] there
is a sort of finesse of arrangement – which tho short of magnificence
adds the j’ne scais quoi to conversation . . . .”27 Vesey here demonstrates
the importance of material surroundings for her salon gatherings, echoing the various descriptions of sumptuous settings at de Rambouillet’s
Chambre Bleue, Montagu’s Portman Square, and elsewhere.
Vesey experienced very different paces of life depending on her residence in Lucan or Dublin: “Your letter, my dear Mrs Vesey, was writ
when your mind was sobered and composed by the quiet retirement of
Lucan: my answer will find you amidst the hurry and flutter of Dublin”
(8 December 1773).28 While Vesey in her personal correspondence often
showed reluctance to leave Lucan, there are also countless instances
where she laments the isolation of Lucan House due to her neighbours’
removal to Dublin: “Mrs Handcock [Vesey’s sister-in-law] & I have heard
enough of the howling wind seldom broke by any human voice [,] for
our neighbours as well as family are all gone to Dublin where yr friend
L[ad]y Newnham is a favourite of every bodies.”29 In 1906, F[rancis]
E[lrington] Ball wrote unflatteringly that “In their Dublin town house
in Molesworth Street, where the Veseys spent the winters in which the
Irish parliaments sat, she [Elizabeth Vesey] endeavoured to replace her
London circle, and brought on herself some ridicule by her predilection
for baronets and pamphleteers when earls and authors of folios failed.”30
This early-twentieth-century perspective is a rather damning one, but a
very different perspective emerges when we look at contemporary correspondence, such as the following letter from Elizabeth Rawdon, Lady
Moira. Lady Moira was one of the only rivals for the title of Ireland’s
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
most important salon hostess during Vesey’s period of influence. Writing
to her brother Francis, the 10th earl of Huntingdon, on 26 January 1765,
Lady Moira declares:
I am much concerned to hear from England that Lord Charlemont
is so ill, but I yet hope to see him make one of the Bluestocking
Club, when Mrs Vesey reinstitutes that assembly here. I know you
are acquainted with her, pray tell her never was a flock so scattered for want of a shepherdess, no person has presumption enough
to attempt her plan, and her few followers are enlisted, or enlisting, beneath the banners of Pam, the King of Diamonds and Knave
Noddy . . . .31
This revealing letter emphatically removes any doubt as to whether or
not Vesey played a significant role in Dublin at the time. It also depicts
the salon hostess in a different light, as a shepherdess, guiding, tending to, and caring for her salon members, who without her central
hosting role become “scattered.”32 Lady Moira’s letter unites the salon
hostesses in relation to their dislike of cards, due to their interference
with the more serious endeavours with which the salon was concerned,
and while Lady Moira is perhaps being rather playful in her description,
there is still a clear sense of esteem.
Vesey herself refers to Lady Moira in a letter to Montagu in which she
plainly connects the two salon hostesses in her description of a ball held
by Lady Moira:
Some sparks of your imagination my d[ea]r Mrs Montagu has flown
across St Georges Channel [.] nothing less than y[ou]r magick cou’d
have rais’d such a fairy vision as Lady Moiras Ball it was so like a
concerti of y[ou]rs to turn a whimsical idea to publick use I cou’d not
help believing you had moved y[ou]r wand . . . the Irish stuffs have
the greatest variety of rich & beautiful colours in the world since the
days of Solomon & with the addition of jewels & tinsel it was the
gayest glittering fantastical assembly you can form an idea of.
(Dublin, 28 April 1768)33
Just like the salons held by Vesey, this ball had affinities with similar events in England, but was Irish in execution and style, with
Vesey’s description concluding, “the river Liffy crown’d with sedge her
robe embroider’d with water plants.” A New Ballad on the Masquerade Lately Given by the Countess of Moira (1768) makes clear that the
Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
85
various dresses at the ball were “all of Irish Manufacture” “much to the
Honour of our Noblemen and Ladies” – “Each gallant Youth, and brilliant fair/At Moira’s kind request/In Irish Manufactures rare/This grand
assembly grac’d.”34 The efforts of wives of lords lieutenant in eighteenthcentury Dublin to “set a good moral example by making the wearing of
Irish cloth fashionable” was also warmly embraced by Lady Moira, who
was clearly a most influential figure in Irish society.35 The salon hostess described in the ballad as “justly fam’d for elegance and taste” was
eager to set a clear trend that would be emulated by others in society.
The wearing of Irish cloth became a symbol of patriotism and the ballad makes reference to “true patriotic zeal” and is clear to expand on
the aims of the masquerade: “Thus, whilst their Pleasures they pursue,
their country’s good is held in view.” Thirty years later, Lady Moira was
still being linked with her efforts in relation to Irish manufacture in the
Morning Post of 17 February 1795, where the author recalls how she had
“take[n] a lead in the encouragement of domestic manufactures.”36 Lady
Moira’s connection with Irish cloth is not limited, however, to her setting an example in public and at masquerade balls. She was passionately
involved in experiments involving the cultivation of flax. The hostess
received a silver medal from the Royal Dublin Society for her efforts in
1774, and a gold medal from the Agriculture Society of Manchester. The
engraving on the medal reads “Ex minimis, maxima” and the Society
recalls that her “intelligence and charity induced her to make some very
successful attempts to form, amongst her poor neighbours, a valuable
manufacture, from the refuse of flax and hemp.”37 Specimens of her work
were deemed so impressive that they were preserved in the Leverian
Museum in London. A companion to the museum from 1790 describes
the material in a companion to Glass case I, Shelf II: “Specimens made
from flax by the Countess of Moira, so much resembling cotton and silk
as not to be distinguished therefrom by the nicest eye.”38
In Vesey’s letter to Elizabeth Montagu we get a glimpse of her own
pride in Irish manufacture in her quoted reference to Irish stuffs being of
a superlative nature. Indeed throughout their correspondence, Montagu
and Vesey often speak of the fine quality of Irish linens with the latter
often providing Montagu with the material: “I shall look so charming
in your Irish stuff I don’t care what it costs.”39 By the 1770s there were
increasing demands for greater freedom for the Irish textile industry.
Women played an important role in boycotting goods and buying
Irish products during the campaign for free trade in 1778, for example.40
In a much more dramatic twist, Elizabeth Montagu, in the 1780s, reports
encountering Lady Moira’s adult daughter Selina, now Lady Granard,
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
and learns to what extremes the promotion of Irish manufacture had
reached: “I had a visit this morning from Lady Granard . . . her ladyship
is lately arrived from Dublin; she tells me the mob stop ladies in their
coach to see whether they have any English manufactures upon them,
if that happens strip them” (28? October 1784).41 Montagu often uses
information such as this to urge Vesey to either come to or remain in
London. Even during the Gordon Riots of 1780 she says: “I hear Ireland
is in confusion so you had better stay amidst an unarmed than go to an
armed mob.”42
Throughout her time in Ireland, Vesey constantly received requests
such as the above from her Bluestocking acquaintances. One such
request, while again urging Vesey to return to England, simultaneously
provides us with an unparalleled impression of the Blue Room in Bolton
Street where Vesey held her salons, in a dream vision conjured by
Elizabeth Montagu:
Come to England, get into your blue room, call all your friends
around you, & let every melancholy remembrance be chased away. I
often dream with my eyes open of this blue room; I see Mr Garrick in
one corner of it, Lord Lyttelton sitting close to the fire, Mr Burk[e] in
the midst of your circle, Mrs Carter on your Sopha, the door opens,
in trips a Maccaroni, or stalks a Minister of State or perhaps glides a
fine Lady, no matter who or what, the spirit of Vesey is mighty still
[.] it gives gentleness to ye witty, good breeding to the wise, affability
to ye great, decency to the gay, all is harmony in her circle . . . .43
Montagu sets up a typical gathering of literary figures – the actor David
Garrick, George Lyttleton the politician and writer, the philosopher
Edmund Burke, and the author and translator Elizabeth Carter, before
adding a variety of other characters, thereby alluding to the diversity of
Vesey’s salons. Montagu mentions a Macaroni, a Minister of State, and
a member of the peerage, emphasising the salon’s assorted make-up.44
On a separate occasion Montagu refers to another imaginary group: “a
Philosopher, a fine lady, & a Gallant officer form a triangle in one corner, a Maccaroni, a Poet, a Divine, a Beauty & an ottaheite savage, a
wondrous pentagon in another.”45 While entering the realms of hyperbole, Montagu is clearly emphasising the fact that various characters
that belong to very different social groups could coexist together in
harmony due to the “spirit of Vesey.”
Participants in salons were very conscious that their success depended
on adroit management and the skills of hostesses. Writing of Vesey in
Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
87
1779, Frances Burney admitted the Irish woman’s attractive personal
qualities, but singled out her dexterity in the organization of her salon
for particular comment:
She [Vesey] is an exceeding well bred woman, & of agreeable manners, but all her Name in the World must, I think, have been acquired
by her dexterity & skill in selecting Parties, & by her address in rendering them easy with one another. – An art, however, that seems to
imply no mean understanding.
(20 July 1779)46
Vesey’s method of organising the diverse groups of participants within
her salon is highlighted by Montagu above as she describes Vesey’s
guests positioned in unusual groupings: “a triangle in one corner,” “a
pentagon in another.” In Hannah More’s “Bas Bleu” More details Vesey’s
rejection of prescribed seating arrangements:
See VESEY’S plastic genius make
A Circle every figure take;
Nay, shapes and forms which wou’d defy
All science of Geometry;
Isoceles, and Parallel,
Names hard to speak and hard to spell!
Th’ enchanteress wav’d her wand, and spoke!
Her potent wand the Circle broke . . . 47
Vesey was very well known for disrupting overly formal seating arrangements in opposition to Montagu’s more formal semi-circles or large
circles. Carter wishes for Vesey’s presence while at another gathering, for
example, where they are made to sit in regular fashion: “Mrs D’Oyley
and I the other night, sitting diametrically opposite in a large circle, tacitly wished for you, and agreed that you would have thrown a
most delightful irregularity into the form . . . .”48 Elizabeth Eger explains
Vesey’s preference thus: “Vesey favoured a more random arrangement
of small groups, thus hoping to erase the formal aspects of literary
assemblies in favour of a more relaxed company.”49 Vesey’s choice of
seating arrangement connects her loosely to her fellow Irish hostess
Mary Monckton who also disliked overly formal seating and embraced
a more zig-zag arrangement of furniture. The arrangement can also be
linked to a sense of naturalness, which echoes Vesey’s preference of
countryside to town.50
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The Veseys had originally resided in Bolton Row, just south of Berkeley
Square. Bolton Row was at the top of Bolton Street, which had been
“built circa 1699, and described in 1708 as ‘the most westerly Street
in London.’ ”51 A letter from Carter to Vesey from 7 November 1779
includes remarks indicating a change of address for the couple:
I rejoice to find there is a fair prospect of your getting the house in
Clarges Street, as probably Mr Vesey will be pleased with the change.
For my own part I must always find any house agreeable which you
inhabit; yet I shall sometimes cast a look of regret and tender remembrance on the dark green and blue rooms in Bolton-row, where I
have past so many happy hours of the truest social and affectionate
friendship with dear Mrs Handcock and you.52
This new house, on the east side of Clarges street was just a short distance from Bolton Row, and as with their previous home, the Veseys
opted to rent rather than buy. They did this in spite of Carter’s comments that, “Surely if it lets at ninety pound a year, and is to be sold for
eight hundred, the purchase would be much the best bargain. But perhaps I may judge wrong.”53 Agmondesham purchased a leasehold for
61 years for the house.54 Decisions regarding which London house to
acquire were of course difficult to conduct from Ireland, and acquaintances were solicited to help in the matter, as can be gleaned from the
architect William Chambers’ suggestion to Agmondesham: “I see bills
upon every window & your friend Mr Dunbar who I believe is a Walker
might in his Walks perhaps light upon something for you much more
eligible.”55
While Montagu describes Vesey’s salon in Bolton Row as “that blue
room where all people are enchanted,” the calibre of participants, based
on both fortune and merit, could also be daunting to some visitors.
Elizabeth Sheridan felt herself to be most inadequate upon visiting
Vesey’s salon in Clarges Street with her father in 1785:
I had little pleasure from the party – conscious that I was the only
person in the room who had not some consequence in life from fortune, rank or acknowledg’d abilities, I felt alone in the croud [sic] and
could not wholly banish the mortifying ideas the consciousness necessarily brought with it. Yet the people were all civil and attentive to
me, but I have no business among them.56
While one must bear in mind a degree of self-deprecation, Sheridan’s
remarks reveal much about the nature of Vesey’s salon. The use of
Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
89
the adjectives “civil” and “attentive” emphasises the politeness that
prevailed in eighteenth-century salons, while Sheridan’s portrayal highlights the illustrious character of Vesey’s gatherings. Just as with Lucan
House, the Veseys’ London residence is also of note: “Mr Vesey’s House
is by no means large but by the exquisite taste of Mrs Vesey in disposing
of things the apartments appear larger than they really are” (12 March
1785).57
Throughout her time in London with her brother Richard during the
1780s, Elizabeth Sheridan sent many spirited and descriptive letters to
her elder sister Alicia in Dublin. These letters allow us a glimpse into
the literary nature of Vesey’s London salons. Sheridan refers to the salon
itself as “a sort of conversationé – and reading party.” The company is
described by Sheridan as “rather numerous” and consisting of “Lords,
Ladies, Bishops.” There were also several literary figures present, in addition of course, to her own father, Thomas Sheridan: “in the literary way
there was Miss H. [Hannah] Moore, and the famous Soame Jennings
[Soame Jenyns].”58 A further detail from Sheridan describes her father
reading to the assembled party and the literary critique that followed:
My Father read one or two things which seemed to give the highest
delight to the company. Lady Spencer came rather late and seemed
to regret having lost the reading very much, so my Father to oblige
her read a passage of Milton with which she seem’d greatly pleased
and from her observations show’d both taste and sense.59
Sheridan also refers to more material aspects of the salon – detailing the
food that was served and the time at which the events took place: “Our
entertainment was elegant – Ices & c. & c.” and “It is not the fashion
of the house to sup so at ten we came home and I was sorry the party
broke up.”60
Irish Bluestockings
The Sheridans were far from the only Irish participants in Elizabeth
Vesey’s London gatherings. Vesey’s salons were well attended by
Ireland’s politicians and literati alike. Several important figures attended
her salons in both Dublin and London, substantiating the argument
for intense interaction between the two countries’ Bluestockings and
establishing a network of exchange, influence, and cultural transfers.
These men and women’s presence in one country inevitably led to a
noted absence in the other, resulting in numerous letters of lamentations from both sides of the Irish Sea. Equally, Vesey’s presence in
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Ireland led to severe inconvenience for the members of the English
Bluestocking salons, whilst her absence from Ireland deprived the latter
of any Bluestocking salon, thus “scattering the flock.” The Bluestockings
that follow attended Vesey’s salons in both countries and added to the
salon’s richness by enabling the spread of cultural exchange.
Anne Dawson, née Fermor (1733–1769), finds a place in neither the
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography nor the Dictionary of Irish Biography, but she was in fact a highly important figure in the Bluestockings’
correspondence and provides a vital and entirely overlooked link
between the salons of the two countries. Anne Fermor was the youngest
daughter of the Earl and Countess of Pomfret, Northamptonshire.61
In 1754 she married Thomas Dawson, the son of the banker Richard
Dawson and Elizabeth Vesey (d.1730), Archbishop John Vesey’s daughter by his second marriage, thus making our Elizabeth Vesey and Anne
(now Dawson) first cousins by marriage. Her husband, who was from
Dawson Grove, in County Monaghan, was Member of Parliament for
that county from 1749 to 1768, and was elevated to the Irish peerage,
as Baron Dartrey, and then created Viscount Cremorne in 1785. Anne
Dawson features throughout the Bluestocking correspondence in connection with Vesey and is always portrayed in an exceedingly positive
manner:
Gentle gales and halcyon seas convey you safely over, my dear Mrs
Vesey, to the friends who will so truly rejoice to see you on this side
the water! Pray dispatch your affairs as fast as possible and get yourself
ready to come with Lady Ann Dawson, for it will be a great comfort
to me to think you are embarked in the same vessel with her. She has
goodness enough to save from sinking a whole fleet of such poor frail
mortals as you and I . . .
(13 October 1768)62
The friends “on this side the water” were all enamoured with Lady Anne,
who is constantly described as having a hugely positive influence on
Vesey. Montagu describes her as “Miltons divine melancholy. She is the
Goddess Sage & holy,” Carter “rejoices” that “Lady Ann Dawson is to
spend her winter among us” and announces that conversing with her
is “like getting out of the suffocation of the world, and breathing the
air of Paradise.”63 Vesey was in constant receipt of letters which begged
information regarding her friend and connect Lady Anne not only with
Vesey, but more specifically and importantly, with Vesey’s salon: “Pray
when will Lady Anne Dawson return to us, Mr Dawson & she will
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91
adorn even the blue room.”64 In addition to attending Vesey’s salons,
Lady Anne is also recorded by Vesey as frequenting Montagu’s gatherings: “You have bewitch’d L[ad]y Ann Dawson in y[ou]r enchanted
circle I wish you wou’d never play the Syren to any from this country
bar Mr Vesey.”65 In a similar letter, this time to Carter, Vesey laments
Lady Anne’s departure for Ireland but Carter’s response expresses the
certainty that Lady Anne is equally at home and as frequent a visitor
in the salons of England as those of Ireland: “I should indeed more sincerely regret for you ‘the loss of two such friends as Lady Ann Dawson
and Mrs Dunbar out of Ireland,’ if I did not hope you would have nearly
equal opportunities of meeting them in London.”66
Anne Dawson died at the young age of 36 on 1 March 1769, and
Thomas Dawson constructed the Dartrey mausoleum, or Dawson Temple, to commemorate his wife: “It is a square building [designed by James
Wyatt], with a single window in the roof, known as the Temple.”67 The
Lady Anne Dawson Temple had long stood neglected, but a process of
restoration commenced c. 2005, accompanied by the restoration of an
important memorial sculpture to Lady Anne, which was noted at the
time in The Hibernian Journal: “A few days ago was landed in Dublin a
beautiful Marble Monument done by Joseph Wilton, Esq. of Portland
Street, London, which Lord Dartrey is to erect in a Temple at his seat
in Co. Monaghan.”68 The epitaph within this tomb was in fact composed by Elizabeth Carter, thus retaining Lady Anne’s association with
the Bluestockings even after her death. In her Poems on Several Occasions
(1776), Carter has included “Inscription on Lady Ann Dawson’s Monument.” The epitaph echoes her earlier mentions of Lady Anne in her
correspondence with Vesey:
She constantly practis’d, in their sublimest Excellence,
All those evangelical Duties,
Which improve, and adorn the Soul for Heaven . . . .
May those Virtues remain fixed in the Remembrance,
And imitated in the Lives of her Surviving Friends!69
Lady Anne’s remains were originally laid to rest in the nearby St John’s
Church but were later transferred to a church in Buckinghamshire, in
the estate of Lady Anne’s sister Julia, due to Thomas Dawson’s fears
about the possible disturbance of them during the 1798 rebellion.70
Despite his evident sorrow at Lady Anne’s death, Thomas Dawson
nevertheless remarried the following year, in May 1770, to Miss
Philadelphia Hannah Freame, “granddaughter of William Penn, the
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
founder of Pennsylvania.”71 Dawson was created Lord Dartrey in 1770
and so his second wife became Lady Dartrey and later Lady Cremorne
after her husband’s elevation to Viscount in 1785. She too was a participant in Vesey’s salons and made a significant contribution to the
gatherings:
This day we dined at Mr Vesey’s . . . I must talk to you of Lady Dartree
for she is a woman after your own heart. She is about fifty but looks
younger – Elegant in her manner, lively and pleasing in conversation,
with that an excellent heart and a fine understanding highly cultivated . . . she gives me the idea of those characters that Richardson
has some times drawn but that few people believe really to
exist.
(Monday, 28 March 1785)72
Lady Dartrey seems to have been the perfect salon guest in that she
adhered to the principles of politeness, attention, and interesting conversation. She had both an “excellent heart” and “a fine understanding,”
thus making her a most acceptable learned lady. Later that week, on Saturday, Elizabeth Sheridan refers to Lady Dartrey as “my favourite” and
indeed from the above it seems likely she would have been a favourite
to many of the salon participants and hostesses.
Unlike Anne Dawson, the Irish-born literary critic Anne Donnellan
(1700–1762) has received some degree of critical recognition for her
connections with the Bluestockings. Patrick Kelly, for example, emphasises Donnellan’s friendship and “close involvement” with Elizabeth
Montagu and Margaret Cavendish Harley, the Duchess of Portland,
to justify his definition of her as an Irish Bluestocking. Kelly concludes his article with further justification for Donnellan’s position as
proto-Bluestocking:
While Donnellan was not a learned lady, such as Elizabeth Carter
or Elizabeth Elston – to mention the most distinguished of her
contemporaries – she was firmly committed to the values of learning, virtue and friendship, which Sylvia Myers has identified as the
distinguishing feature of the Bluestocking circle. Although by the
time Elizabeth Montagu came to employ the term, Bluestocking,
Donnellan was at the end of her life, her intimacy with the leaders
of the group and her role in helping form the intellectual interests of
Elizabeth Montagu entitle her to consideration as important figure in
the pre-history of the group.73
Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
93
Donnellan can also be connected with the Bluestockings and their
association with the institution of the salon through her own personal experience with salon culture, most particularly with the salons
hosted by her mother, Mrs Martha Perceval. Vesey was not the only
Irish salon hostess who cultivated social life on both sides of the Irish
Sea. Long before even the term “Bluestockings” was established in
the 1750s, Martha Perceval was holding important salons in Ireland’s
capital, before continuing on the practice to London.74
The family moved to England in 1727, and the London salon Perceval
established there was visited by the prolific salon participant Mary
Delany, along with figures such as Capel Moore, his wife Lady Mary,
and Mr Wesley.75 Despite their prolonged residence in England, Anne
Donnellan still possessed much love for the country of her birth, its
people, conversation, and general sociability:
I hope next summer to be in Ireland . . . You will laugh perhaps, Sir,
at my saying I hope to see Ireland this year. Indeed the generality of our country folks who spend a little time here, and get into
any tolerable acquaintance, seem to forget they have any other country till a knavish receiver, or their breaking tenants put them in
mind of it; I prefer a sociable evening in Dublin, to all the diversions of London, and the conversation of an ingenious friend, though
in a black gown, to all the powdered toupee at St. James’s. What
has kept me seven years in London, is the duty I owe a very good
mother, of giving her my company since she desires it, and the conveniency [sic] I enjoy with her of a house, coach, and servants, at my
command.76
Donnellan makes abundantly clear the fact that many members of Irish
society did choose to separate themselves entirely from their country of birth upon establishing residence in England, unlike women
such as Anne Dawson. There is some ambivalence regarding Martha
Perceval’s feelings towards both countries. The Percevals’ choice of
England as principal residence has been explained by Delany as being
due to Mr Perceval’s preference for it, but many have suggested that
Martha was equally in favour of England.77 What was entirely unambiguous was both mother and daughter’s affectionate relationship with
the Bluestockings and in particular with the Queen of the Blues. On several occasions during the early 1740s, Montagu is recorded as having
sent small gifts to Martha Perceval: cowslips in the early 1740s and some
“potted moor-game” later in the decade.78
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
Anne and her mother knew the Bluestockings before they themselves
became known as such. Other Irish literati had the opportunity to actually attend and benefit from the salons held by Vesey and her fellow
Bluestockings. One such fortunate visitor to Vesey’s salons was the playwright, poet, and politician Robert Jephson (1737–1803). Born in Cork,
Jephson later joined the army and, like the salon participants discussed
so far, lived alternately in England and Ireland. Jephson is recorded as
settling in London “about 1762” before returning to Ireland in 1767
where he purchased a house in Blackrock, Co. Dublin.79 He is perhaps best known as the author of Braganza (1775), the first of his five
tragedies, amongst them The Count of Narbonne (1781) and Conspiracy
(1796). Vesey lists Jephson’s presence in Dublin as a convincing reason
to travel into the more boisterous society there in a letter to Montagu:
“you advise me change of scene I agree with you besides I should find a
pleasant society in Dublin in Mr Jephson Marlay & some more male &
female but Mr Vesey has built a spacious House.”80 George Marlay was
Dean of Ferns and later Bishop of Waterford. He was the son of the Chief
Justice of Ireland, uncle to Henry Grattan, and member of Johnson’s
famous literary Club along with Vesey’s own husband Agmondesham.
As above, Jephson and Marlay are constantly cited together by Vesey
during her time in Ireland: “I will(?) go & divert myself in his company
if I can but I must leave it now for here is Mr Jephson & Marlay &
Sir G Macartny [Sir George Macartney] come to supper.”81 Both are
repeatedly recorded as being visitors at Lucan House throughout Vesey’s
correspondence with Montagu and Lyttleton.
Another guest who is recorded as frequenting Lucan House along with
Marlay and Jephson is Emily Fitzgerald, Duchess of Leinster.82 All three
important figures are referred to collectively in a letter from Vesey to
Montagu written from Lucan House:
. . . for here has been Mr Marlay & Jephson to breakfast & you were the
whole subject of the conversation. The latter had an ague fit before he
left the House in spight [sic] of the mantling Blood of the Lenoxs who
were of the party [next six words blacked out] by what he said of you
I believe the Montagu veracity wou’d have been a better specifick –
you will soon have him again there is not sport enough in holding
up the mirror here where all characters are found to wear the same
uniform.83
There is clearly much activity and sociability on offer at Lucan House.
It may seem puzzling that in the same letter in which Vesey announces
Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
95
the presence of all these figures at her home in Lucan, she states that she
regrets leaving “this delightful solitude”: “Alas I must leave this delightful solitude tomorrow for the tourbillon of Dublin.”84 Solitude to Vesey
thus implies the absence of external crowds, noise, and bustle, and not
the want of guests or salon participants.
The above letter also indicates all participants’ connections with
Elizabeth Montagu, “the whole subject of conversation.” All three were
intimately acquainted with “the Queen of the Blues” and Montagu refers
explicitly to both Jephson and Marlay in connection with Vesey’s Bolton
Street salon: “Pray bring Dean Marlay & the Prime Serjeant [sic] with
you, they would improve even the blue room, so w[oul]d Mr Jephson,
but I suppose he has forgotten us.”85 She also refers to them together
in relation to Vesey’s Irish salon: “I envyd the party you described, pray
make my best compliments to Dean Marlay & Mr Jephson” (Hillstreet,
1772).86 The loss of Jephson to her circle was keenly felt by Montagu;
she urged Vesey to bring Jephson back to London and fondly remembered his presence there: “I wish you may bring Mr Jephson to England.
I remember with great pleasure the agreeable hours I pass’d in his company” (10 October 1768).87 Another letter, from 1780, refers to the
poor critical reception to Jephson’s tragedy, with Vesey urging Montagu,
“If you have read Mr Jephson’s Tragedy & have a favourable opinion
tell me something to comfort him for the abuse he has met with in
the papers not upon his theatrical talents but his nerves are drawn so
fine.”88 This shows us just how much Montagu’s opinion would matter
to Jephson, and also illustrates how important the letter form was as
an extension to the salon, allowing for critical comment to take place
beyond the confines of the gathering itself. The Duchess of Leinster’s
sister, Louisa Conolly, referred to by Montagu as “that charming divine
creature,” was also strongly involved in Jephson’s literary endeavours.89
Jephson is said to have “frequently performed at private parties at the
Conolly’s houses in both Ireland and London,” echoing his attendance
at Vesey’s salons in the two countries.90
Other frequent participants at Vesey’s salons in both England and
Ireland were Mr and Mrs Dunbar, originally from Dublin but later of
Wicklow. Montagu informs Vesey in 1769 that “Perhaps you may now
have the pleasure of Mrs Dunbars company at Lucan, for when I saw
her last she seemd to think it not impossible she might go to Ireland.”91
Montagu’s letter continues in the following strain of purported jealousy:
I own I envy Mr Dunbar his journey to Ireland, as to L[or]d
Blessingtons estate he was the lawful & the deserving heir, so I envy’d
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
it not, but there is neither Law nor Reason that entitles him to go to
Lucan more than your humble servant.
(6 October 1769)
Charles Dunbar was son and heir of Captain David Dunbar and
Mary née Dillon, and great-grandson of Murrough Boyle, 1st Viscount
Blessington, on his mother’s side. Upon the death of the 1st Earl of
Blessington, William Stewart, in 1769, the estate passed to Charles who
was “at once returned as MP for Blessington.”92 Charles’s wife Penelope
was an intimate friend of both Elizabeth Vesey and Elizabeth Carter,
to whom the former had introduced her.93 Like Montagu, Carter also
refers to the Dunbars’ inheritance of Blessington, in remarkably laudatory fashion: “Her mind is too great to feel any other satisfaction in their
present accession of fortune, than as it will furnish greater opportunities
of doing good.”94
Charles Dunbar died in 1778 and his wife Penelope remarried. Mrs
Penelope Dunbar’s second marriage, to Mr Joshua Iremonger in June
1782, elicited strong reactions, such as the following from Montagu:
I am rather surprised she did not rather continue in a condition in
which she was perfect mistress of herself, I never wonder at a mans
marrying at any age for a good servant is at all times & on all occasions a very comfortable convenient useful thing, but even a good
master is not desirable when one is too old to learn new labours, &
form new habits, & acquire new tastes.
(22 June 1782)95
Montagu’s remarks recall Mary Chudleigh’s “To the ladies” (1703),
which begins “Wife and servant are the same,/But only differ in the
name,” and remind us of the perceived status of wives in eighteenthcentury England and Ireland. A month later, Montagu writes to Carter,
“I really believe we shall escape the matrimonial influenza.”96 Such
quotations allow for an understanding of female correspondence as a
privileged space for making otherwise socially unacceptable comments.
Her remarks also illustrate the relative freedom of widows, portrayed as
“perfect mistress of herself.” Elizabeth Montagu’s own husband Edward
died in May 1775 bequeathing her a vast fortune in his will, thus leaving Montagu “in the most advantageous position possible for a woman
in the eighteenth century.”97
The library of Bishop Thomas Percy (1728–1811) includes Elizabeth
Montagu’s An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear whose
Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
97
dedication on the front endpaper reads, “To Dr Percy from the Editor
and the friend.”98 Montagu viewed Percy as an agreeable man and a
most suitable Bluestocking: “[I] met with the Mr Percy who publish’d
the Reliques of ancient poetry. Mr Percy is a very agreeable wellbred
man, and will make a good addition to our sect of blue stocking philosophers” (10 September 1767).99 She later calls him “a new blue stocking
with whom I am much pleased” and describes him as “a very ingenious man, has many anecdotes of ancient days, historical as well as
poetical” (February 1768).100 Thomas Percy was born in Shropshire in
England, but his appointment as Bishop of Dromore in 1782 has caused
him to be strongly associated with Ireland. In addition to Montagu’s
Essay, his library also contains many other works that explicitly link
him to several English salon hostesses and participants.101 For example, Percy’s library contains The Muse’s Pocket Companion: A Collection
of Poems (London 1782).102 This collection includes works by Elizabeth
Carter and Hannah More as well as Percy himself. Hester Lynch Piozzi’s
Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France,
Italy and Germany (London 1789) also forms part of his library. It contains three translations of a Latin distich on Pope Alexander III, which
includes the annotation “written by my dear and Hond. Father T. Percy
Bishop of Dromore with a pencil which I copied over with ink Elizabeth
Meade.”103
While in England, Percy was a member of Johnson’s literary club. Subsequent to his appointment in Dromore, he ceased travelling to England
and devoted himself entirely to his parishioners as well as to Irish literary life, involving himself with Lady Moira’s salon, for example, as well
as becoming a founding member of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin.
Percy was an important literary patron in Ulster and his own circle
in Co. Down included the poets Thomas Stott, William Cunningham,
and Thomas Romney Robinson. Frances Burney describes Percy as “perfectly easy and unassuming, very communicative, and, though not very
entertaining because too prolix, he is otherwise intelligent and of good
commerce.” Echoing Montagu, she identifies the bishop as “the collector and editor of the beautiful reliques of ancient English poetry.”104
Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) involved his transmission
of ancient ballads, discovered in manuscript form, to modern audiences
and would provide the inspiration for Charlotte Brooke’s Reliques of Irish
poetry: consisting of heroic poems, odes, elegies, and songs, translated into
English verse . . . (1789).
This interest in antiquarian studies and recovery of a nation’s past
immediately leads to questions of national identity. In an article in 1915,
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Ethel R. Wheeler described Vesey as “Celtic to her fingertips,” inspiring
both men and women “with love and sympathy for Ireland and Irish
ideals.”105 While the article is overwhelmingly nationalist in tone and
hyperbolic in its platitudes, it nevertheless hints at a certain truth in
relation to Vesey’s general portrayal by her fellow Blues where she is
by and large depicted as “other,” “sylph-like,” and “Irish.” In a letter to
Hannah More, Horace Walpole outlines Vesey’s Irishness and reflects on
the Irish as a nation:
The Irish have the best hearts in the three kingdoms, and they never
blunder more than when they attempt to express their zeal and
affections; the reason, I suppose is, that cool sense never thinks of
attempting impossibilities; but a warm heart feels itself ready to do
more than is possible for those it loves. I am sure our poor friend
in Clarges Street would subscribe to this last sentence. What English
heart ever excelled hers? I should almost have said equalled if I were
not writing to one that rivals her.106
This sensitivity and heightened emotional nature of Vesey’s character
is often signalled by Vesey’s acquaintances. Hannah More herself refers
to the overcrowding at some of Vesey’s salons and explains the reason
for it thus: “poor dear Vesey is so sweet tempered and benevolent that
though she vows she will not mention it to anybody, she cannot help
asking every agreeable creature that comes in her way.”107
Vesey’s letters often portray Ireland in a most positive light, sometimes quite literally such as in her letter to George Lyttelton in which
she invites him to “stand upon this Island where the sun sets in the
most beautiful variety of illuminated clouding – you must come & see
him throw his last parting Beams upon our ultime Irlanda before he takes
leave of Europe (?)”108 Her wanderings in Cork are equally mesmerising
to her:
I am now in the Pais de mes Peres and wandering about the haunts of
youth and happy inexperience and I find that when infant imagination held up the magick glass it told me fewer lyes than I could have
expected [.] the scenery is still enchanting it is I suppose that nature
is always in the right and here the hand of art had not travell’d till
she was to go hand in hand with her country companion.109
Vesey praises the natural beauty of the countryside where her father was
born and very much associates herself with “the land of her ancestors”
Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
99
in Cork but also, by extension, with Ireland as a whole. She goes on
to mention several important figures of Irish mythology, demonstrating
both her knowledge of them but also again associating herself and her
childhood with this, distinctly Irish, heritage: “but the fairies still play
their pranks [.] Fimacul or Fingal has his 3 hillocks call’d his gridiron and
a cavern for his kitchen and the great O’Moore Tombstone in the middle of a new deserted village as I have often playd with his lover . . . .”110
Fionn Mac Cumhaill is one of the most important characters in Irish
mythology, forming part of the Fionn or more commonly Fenian Cycle,
which details the exploits of Fionn and his companions, the Fianna.
James Macpherson’s retelling of the tale of Fionn in epic form in his Fragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and translated
from the Galic (1760) meant that the character of Fionn Mac Cumhaill
was very well known. Vesey was a great lover of these Celtic tales as
she states in a fragment of a letter to Montagu: “I have a passion for
Scotland & the country of Ossian.”111
Vesey does nevertheless also have a great love for England:
. . . Shall we see the resurrection of a Chatham again? England once
rose to a pitch of glory when all the world desponded. I have adored
England with such an enthusiasm I can think of nothing else, so
don’t charge me with romance or if you do forgive it. (1778)112
Much of Vesey’s love and longing for England can be interpreted as due
to missing her friends who lived there. Montagu’s letters to Vesey are
also filled with a “particular account of all your friends,” “for I know
when one is separated [sic] by a grand distance from people for whom
one interests oneself it is agreeable to hear what they are doing.”113
Many letters feature such comments as: “I had lately a charming letter from our Sylph who I believe casts many a longing look across St
George’s channel; but, alas, there is not the shadow of a hope that we
shall see her this winter” (Deal, 19 December 1769).114 Indeed, upon
receiving a news-filled letter from Montagu, Vesey refers to herself as
“banish’d from England” and elsewhere comments that “fortune has
made it my duty to consider another part of the world as my home.”115
Many of her letters to and from her friends contain details of imaginary
future meetings. This is particularly in evidence in Vesey’s correspondence with Carter in which the latter exclaims: “ . . . let us too please
ourselves with our little harmless fancies of meeting at Lucan, without
troubling our heads with the computation of probabilities” (Clarges St.,
18 January 1768) and “We may take many an excursion together to the
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stars, these clear autumnal evenings, and entirely forget the imperceptible tract between Deal and Lucan.”116 Montagu’s letters also contain
many similar references, with comments such as “How often has my
imagination set sail for Ireland & wafted me to Lucan,” and declarations of a desire to see Killarney.117 However, there is no evidence that
Montagu ever made it to Lucan. In 1777 she is still dreaming of a visit to
Ireland and what such a visit might entail: “I imagine you can show me
fine mountains and old castles in Ireland and my imagination indulges
the vision.”118
If Vesey was particularly associated in the minds of her English friends
with the imagination and the fantastic, her bi-location on either side of
the Irish sea was also susceptible to political interpretations. In 1773,
Edmund Burke, in his expostulations against a proposed Irish Absentee Tax, cited Vesey’s salon as vulnerable to destruction if the tax were
approved. This tax emphasised Vesey’s position as an Irishwoman in
England more than anything else thus far. The tax itself was to be “at
the rate of 2s. in the pound on landed property, levied on those who
resided more than six months in the year out of Ireland.”119 Burke saw
the tax as an outrage, “a virtual declaration that England is a foreign
country,” commenting that:
One of the most odious parts of the proposed absentee tax is its tendency to separate friends, and to make as ugly breaches in private
society as it must make in the unity of the great political body. I am
sure that much of the satisfaction of some circles in London will be
lost by it. Do you think that our friend Mrs Vesey will suffer her
husband to vote for a tax, that is to destroy the evenings at Bolton
Row? I trust we shall have other supporters of the same sex, equally
powerful, and equally deserving to be so, who will not abandon the
common cause of their own liberties and our satisfactions. We shall
be barbarized on both sides of the water if we do not see on another
now and then. We shall sink into surly, brutish Johns, and you will
degenerate into Wild Irish.
(30 October 1773)120
Burke is clearly drawing on the salon as an example of how the two
nations can communicate. Both Burke and the recipient of this letter,
Charles Bingham, were participants at Vesey’s salon, and this letter highlights the importance of these salons, these “evenings at Bolton Row,”
as well as the great role played by the Irish in England’s, and particularly London’s, social as well as political structures.121 Burke emphasises
Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
101
the importance of interaction between the two countries. He fears both
groups will deteriorate significantly without intermittent contact with
the other and asserts that both nationalities need to interact in order to
prevent degeneration of either group. This recalls the principle of gender complementarity outlined by David Hume in his “Of Refinement
in the Arts”.122 Burke’s assertion that Irish and English are both needed
to harmonise each other clearly echoes Hume’s formula for good conversation, which required the cooperation of the two sexes, whereby all
salon participants would mutually enliven and stimulate each other’s
conversation. The salon is presented as the forum where this harmonising can take place, and where both men and women, Irish and English,
can converse and learn from each other.
Cultural transfers across the Irish Sea
The process of exchange and interaction highlighted by Burke was
also sustained through the transfer of cultural items between the
two countries. The salons, and particularly the salon hostesses, acted
as “importers” or cultural intermediaries for these exchanges, further
emphasising the bi-national character of the Bluestockings. Both Vesey
and Montagu detail the receipt of numerous books, newspapers, and
pamphlets from each side of the Irish Sea, thereby introducing them
to new readers and establishing a network of exchange. Montagu’s letters to Vesey are often accompanied by both published and unpublished
material. Madame de Sevigné’s newly published letters are promised in
one letter: “I will send you ye elegy you desire, & with it a vol: of Madme
Sevignes letters just publishd” (9 February 1774), whilst verses by the
salonnière Madame du Bocage are enclosed in another: “I have enclosed
a copy of verses which Madme de Boccage sent me with a kind letter
since I came to England” (27 October 1776).123 Unpublished verses dedicated to Montagu herself are guaranteed on another occasion: “I will
send you ye verses next post they were by Lady Nuneham alas I am more
likely to inspire a young lady than a young Lord” (6 October 1777).124
As well as more exclusively literary items, Vesey also receives State Papers
from England, including those edited by the politician and writer Philip
Yorke, 2nd Earl of Hardwick: “I supposed you and Mr Vesey w[oul]d
like to have the state papers lately published by L[or]d Hardwicke so
I ordered Mrs [Denoqe] to send them to Mr Pery who promised to convey them to you” (24 April 1778).125 Carter also sends books to Ireland
via Irish travellers, in her case the aforementioned Mrs Dunbar: “I hope
Mrs Dunbar has not forgot to bring you Miss Talbot’s Essays, which
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designed you should have had long before, if I could have found an
opportunity of conveying them.”126 Booksellers evidently played a vital
part in this exchange process and their importance features constantly
in the correspondence of Montagu and Vesey: “I shou’d be very thankful if you wou’d send me Book pamphlet or poem if there are any you
like & get Dodsley or Pain put them to Mr Veseys account” and “You
enquire after books, the press has furnish’d little. I will ask Dodsley to
send you Mr Hands dialogue on the use of foreign travel, which I think
entirely sensible . . . .”127
The literary works that Vesey sends to England are of particular
interest as for the most part they were composed by members of her
salons. It is important to remember that the salon was an institution
that permitted the enhancement and indeed even the establishment
of professional publishing reputations. An introduction into the salon
secured a professional network and ultimately an influential audience
for an aspiring author and their work. By sending the finished works
to England, Vesey is thus continuing the effectiveness of her salon by
extending the readership abroad, as it is certain that Montagu would
have circulated the works she received amongst her circle. Dean Marlay’s
verses, for example, are put into Montagu’s care: “If you like Dean
Marlays verses do what you like with them I shall not ask his leave”
(Dublin, 1778). An undated letter records Montagu’s receipt of more
verses from Marlay where the hostess is “so gloriously immortalized.”128
Montagu expresses her thanks for the receipt of work by Sheridan on
another occasion: “a thousand thanks for Mr Sheridans prologue which
is most admirable . . . I must beg of you to convey ye enclosed to Mr
Sheridan. I envy you this [blacked out] acquaintance” (5 June 1780).129
The following year Vesey sent Montagu sonnets written by Jephson
for her perusal: “Here is a sonnet of Mr Jephsons to Lady Buckingham
I don’t know how it is received” (1779).130 Vesey’s salon offered a means
of exercising patronage similar to that made available by hostesses in
France and England. Rather than simply proffering money, the salon
hostesses, in their role as patrons, provided hospitality, encouragement,
and access to literary networks.131 Some hostesses went further still
and supplied practical help and advice in preparing texts for publication, such as was the case with Montagu and Chapone and Carter.
Vesey’s role was more centred on the circulation and promotion of
her participants’ material. In addition to making their work widely
known and widely read both within and outside the salon, the salon
hostesses also frequently introduced their salon participants to members
of the peerage who might be able to support them financially. Montagu
Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
103
endeavours to do just this on behalf of Vesey’s protégé Jephson: “Lady
Nuneham will come to Dublin with Lord Harcourt I will recommend
Mr Jephson to their acquaintance.”132 This introduction proved successful and Jephson’s Braganza was later dedicated to the Viscountess, with
the dedication concluding: “Whatever motive may be assigned for this
Address, my principal purpose will be fully answered, if your Ladyship
accepts it as a testimony of my gratitude for the favours I have received
from the Noble Family to which you are so happily united . . . .”133
Montagu’s application to Vesey regarding the poet James Woodhouse,
“the poetical shoemaker,” illustrates Vesey’s importance as hostess in
Ireland and the importance of Ireland itself in the literary career of
English poets, something that is often overlooked. Montagu’s request
to Vesey was as follows:
I have taken ye liberty to enclose four proposals for my friend Mr
Woodhouse as you love virtue and verse I am sure you will be glad
to dispose of them for him, & it will be of great service to him to be
introduced into Ireland under yr patronage.
(22 February 1766)134
Montagu, who acted as Woodhouse’s patron along with William
Shenstone, clearly wished to promote his career as a poet, and introducing him to the protection of Vesey is an attempt to do this.135
On another occasion Montagu asks Vesey to attend to two foreign
dignitaries visiting England and Ireland:
When I left London, Count Zinzendorffe one of les grands
Chambellians de l’Empire & Monsieur Dargueil a very lively clever
French man, talk’d of visiting Ireland. I beg if they come to Dublin
you wd take some notice of them, & say it is for my sake. You know
I love to give myself consequence with Foreigners & I am sure you
will be pleased with both these Gentlemen.136
Vesey unfortunately does not have the opportunity of meeting either
gentleman: “imagine the disappointment of reading yesterday Count
Zinzindorfs name among the list of passengers sail’d for England –
I don’t know anything has given me more vexation,” but the request
again underlines the important position Vesey held in Ireland’s society
at the time.
Elizabeth Montagu was herself a significant contributor to the world
of print, with her An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
(1769). It was, in fact, Carter who encouraged Montagu, after the death
of Lord Bath in 1764, to pursue her study of the playwright as a means of
diverting her from her grief, while Benjamin Stillingfleet, he to whom
the origin of the term Bluestocking is attributed, is said to have corrected the proofs.137 In the French salons, animosity and competition
were rife between the salon hostesses, but the collaborative effort of
Elizabeth Vesey and Elizabeth Montagu illustrates again that this was
clearly not the case amongst the Bluestockings. Patronage of salon members was not limited solely to the assistance of salon participants such
as Jephson as it extended to the provision of aid to other Bluestocking
hostesses, enabling the maximum output of new work and providing
evidence of the inclusivity of the salon as a network of support for all
salon members. Thus, just as Montagu, in her position of salon hostess, offered financial aid and support to others seeking to publish their
work, so too did she receive it from her fellow hostess. A letter from
Montagu to Carter in July 1769 reveals Montagu’s suspicion that Vesey
had in fact both organised and funded the printing of Montagu’s Essay
in Dublin: “I have had a letter from ye Sylph [Vesey] . . . She tells me ye
Essay on Shakespear is going to be printed at Dublin. I fancy she is at
ye expence of ye impression” (28 July 1769).138 The Bluestocking salons
thereby provided a united community that could support various publishing projects through a network of communication and exchange
rather than rivalry and opposition.
Several other of the Bluestockings’ works were also published in
Dublin. Correspondence from foreign visitors to Ireland during this
period indicates that the prices of books in Dublin compared favourably
with those of London. In her comprehensive study Dublin’s Trade in
Books 1550–1800 (1989), Mary Pollard noted that “the existence of the
Dublin book trade depended to a great extent on its ability to undercut the London trade in producing reprints of London originals.”139 The
British Copyright Act of 1709 did not apply to Ireland and so many
Irish printers concentrated chiefly on the reprint industry rather than
on publishing original material.140 This was due considerably to the fact
that authors generally sent their work to London to be published to
secure both copyright and reputation. Hester Chapone’s Miscellanies was
published in Dublin by the United Company of Booksellers in 1775, and
Elizabeth Carter’s Epictetus, which was translated at the prompting of her
fellow Bluestocking, Catherine Talbot, is listed as an Irish publication
produced by subscription in 1758.141
The network of communication and exchange amongst the
Bluestockings involved much interaction between England and Ireland.
Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
105
Carter’s comments on England’s political relationship with Ireland
testify to the large number of Irish in her social circles:
I am far from having any wish for the recovery of America: but
a breach with Ireland is of much more important consequence as
a national object, and very interesting to me, who am so greatly
obliged, and so happy in the friendship of so many amiable Irish.
(Deal, 15 December 1779)142
The amiable Irish included men and women such as Anne and
Philadelphia Dawson, Penelope and Charles Dunbar, Robert Jephson,
Dean Marlay, and Bishop Percy, all of whom have been shown to
have participated extensively in the Bluestocking salons in both countries, contributing to these salons’ make-up and their conversation.
In addition to this exchange of participants, the commerce between
Bluestockings in England and Ireland also incorporated the exchange
of letters, books, and pamphlets, such as those written by Dean Marlay.
Such bi-national correspondence was additionally supplemented by
patronage of salon members of English and Irish identity, namely James
Woodhouse and Robert Jephson, and publication of new material by
each country’s own press.
It must not be forgotten that behind all of these individual participants and examples of exchange was Elizabeth Vesey herself, the only
Bluestocking hostess to have held salons in both countries. Vesey greatly
contributed to Ireland’s social life, providing an important physical site
for exchange of ideas in addition to aiding literary aspirants through
promotion of their work, dissemination of their compositions, and
introductions to possible financial patrons. Vesey’s salon embraced the
Bluestocking ethos of meritocracy, bringing literary figures like Jephson
into contact with the aristocratic figures, such as the Duchess of Leinster,
the Duchess of Portland, Lady Anne Dawson, and Lady Philadelphia
Dartrey. Vesey’s Irish salon members benefited from extensive opportunities to develop networks through the salon’s establishment of webs
of connection with members of other Bluestocking salons in England.
New writers would have sought membership of Vesey’s Irish and English
salons both for the sake of their reputation and the better circulation of
their work, making hers one of the most attractive salons of the time.
4
Moira House Salon: A Site for Irish
Scholarship
The favourite spot where every person of genius or talents in Dublin,
or who visited Dublin, loved most to resort to.1
Lady Moira was born Elizabeth Hastings, daughter of the well-known
Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon in 1731, and married John
Rawdon of Moira, Co. Down, in 1752.2 Rawdon was awarded the
baronetcy of Moira in January 1762 while Elizabeth herself would later
possess the titles Countess of Moira, Baroness Hungerford and Hastings
amongst others.3 The splendour of these many titles was reflected in
the Rawdons’ Dublin residence at Ussher’s Island, the location of Lady
Moira’s influential salons. Many of Dublin’s intellectual elite frequented
this important salon, with figures such as the author Sydney Owenson
(later Lady Morgan) participating alongside the writer and musician
Thomas Moore and the biographer and MP Francis Hardy. Moira House
was also noted at the time as having received many Irish visitors from
outside of the capital; Lady Moira’s obituarist wrote that her home was
“the favourite spot where every person of genius or talents in Dublin, or
who visited Dublin, loved most to resort to.” John Philpot Curran hailed
for example from Newmarket, Co. Cork, the Rev. Edward Berwick acted
as vicar for Leixlip, Co. Kildare, and Henry Boyd came to Dublin from
Dromore, Co. Antrim. Such was its importance that the Moira House
salon also received an eclectic range of visitors from abroad; amongst
those recorded were Floubert, Commander of the French troops that
briefly seized Carrickfergus in 1760, Charles James Fox, the British Whig
politician in 1777, and the English novelist William Godwin in 1800.4
The above examples also serve to illustrate the longevity of Lady Moira’s
salon, here stretching over a 40-year period, and indeed the salon was
a central location for intellectual activities in Ireland for the greater
portion of the late-eighteenth century.
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Moira House Salon: A Site for Irish Scholarship
107
In exploring Moira House salon, it is extremely fortunate that so many
of the family’s papers still survive. Lady Moira’s yearly diaries, her library
catalogue, the account books, and the inventories for Moira House are
all preserved in the muniment room at Castle Forbes, Co. Longford,
the home of Lady Moira’s daughter Selina Forbes. The family correspondence of Moira House’s hostess also still exists in its entirety, as
do her letters to and from literary figures such as Joseph Cooper Walker,
Thomas Dermody, Maria Edgeworth, and Walter Scott among many others. The survival of these papers enables us to examine in detail and from
many perspectives the world of this extraordinary Irish salon, allowing
for investigation of such issues as nation, identity, and cultural transfers,
both within Ireland and between Ireland, Britain, and France. Analysis of the subject matters discussed, the interests, and affiliation of the
guests chosen to participate within the salon, as well as the individual
works the salon hostess elected to patronise, allows us to determine the
salon’s ideological aims and purpose, agreed upon by hostess and participants alike. The manner in which they embrace the salon’s potentialities
for particular literary, antiquarian, or patriotic purposes also reveals
much about its members’ emergent identities. Examined in this way
Moira House takes its rightful place as one of the most important of Irish
salons, particularly notable for its engagement with the late-eighteenth
century recovery, or construction, of Ireland’s cultural heritage.
Moira House
Moira House salon offered a tangible location where individuals could
assemble in order to exchange viewpoints, as well as to aid each other
in the production of various literary and scholarly endeavours. Recalling
the opulence of the English salons, the salon itself took place within the
beautiful interior of Moira House. Moira House no longer exists, sadly,
having been fully demolished in the 1960s. Documents in the Irish
Architectural Archives chart Moira House’s destruction and its replacement by an office block and a nearby petrol station.5 Fortunately, the
building greatly intrigued several late-nineteenth-century architectural
historians resulting in numerous articles detailing its architectural properties (see Figure 4.1). Writing in 1898, Frances Gerrard reflected on
how Moira House looked in the early 1800s, before it was transformed
into the Mendicity Institution in 1824: “the massive stone mansion
was surrounded with the most beautiful gardens, and was secluded
by the row of large trees which extended along Arran Quay to within
a few feet of Bloody Bridge.”6 An article in The Irish Builder from a
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
Figure 4.1 Moira House Dublin, drawn and etched by William Brocas, published
1811. Image courtesy of the National Library of Ireland
few years earlier, describes it as being “detached from the dwellings
on either side” and situated 40 feet back from the street with three
floors: “Each floor showed seven large windows en suite, three being
placed in centre, and two on either side.”7 Descriptions of the “magnificent internal decorations,” which were designed by the architect Healy,
are limited in all accounts to avowals of great splendour and beauty.
These descriptions are modelled, almost without fail, indeed generally word for word, on John Wesley’s oft-repeated observations from
April 1775:
Afterwards I waited on Lady Mayra [sic], and was surprised to observe,
though not a more grand, yet a far more elegant room, than ever I saw
in England: it was an octagon, about twenty feet square, and fifteen
or sixteen high; having one window, (the sides of it inlaid throughout with mother-of pearl) reaching from the top of the room to the
bottom; the ceiling, sides, and furniture of the room were equally
elegant.8
This description of Moira House can be supplemented by the fascinating room-by-room inventory conducted by Zach Foxall of Arran Quay
Moira House Salon: A Site for Irish Scholarship
109
Dublin, on 7 May 1808, shortly after Lady Moira died in April of that
year.9 This document allows us to visualise the settings in which the
salons took place. According to Foxall’s account, the large front drawing room contained two large sofas and cushions with blue calico cases,
seven large square chairs, also with blue calico cases, six painted cane
chairs, three fire screens, two large and two small floor stools, and
two small square mahogany tables.10 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Europeans were importing calicoes from India in great
quantities and it began to become a common presence in many genteel homes, as it was in Lady Moira’s.11 In addition to this fabric, the
Rawdons’ drawing room also contained several examples of oriental furniture, reflecting the then fashion for chinoiserie, noticeably embraced by
Elizabeth Montagu: two fine India cabinets in addition to two Chinese
gilt tables with white marble tops. There is also reference to large pier
glasses and three marble busts over the chimney.12
Writing to her daughter Selina, Lady Moira outlines the value she
places on items of furniture, not simply as fashionable pieces, but for
their role in linking members of a family to its shared past:
I have a little desk for her [Lady Moira’s granddaughter], made for
Drawing & keeping all the materials for that Occupation, but it wants
repair, & a new green Cloth, for it belonged to her Great Great Grand
Aunt, Mrs Dorothy Rawdon Sister of the Old Lady Granard . . . as a
Heir Loom she will Value it – & perhaps a Rag of my Mantle of
attachment to Old family Possessions may be caught up by her, when
I throw it off upon my translation from Earth.13
Pieces of furniture seem to have been circulated and exchanged between
Moira House and Castle Forbes on a reciprocal basis. In the same letter,
Lady Moira thanks Selina for the receipt of a chair which “will beautifully ornament” her drawing Room, when gilt, “& I shall have two
Ottomans to make up their set.” Furniture from the Rawdons’ home in
Co. Down is also received into their town house: “I next go to altering the Study by the assistance of the Materials from the Library of
Montalto.”14
Moira House also possessed a most impressive art collection, noted in
Richard Twiss’s Tour of Ireland:
The earl of Moira’s collection is numerous; among the chief pictures
are the following, A young woman kissing a young man. Murrillo.
A small marriage of St. Catherine, by Correggio, A few portraits in
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
crayons, by Rosalba, A warrior’s head, Rembrandt; and two or three
pieces by Salvator Rosa.15
These artworks, dating from the early-sixteenth to the late-seventeenth
century, record the shifting trends of European art. The small painting of a marriage is probably “The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine”
(1510–1515) by Correggio, the Italian Renaissance painter, now in
The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.16 Interestingly, his
paintings, particularly his mythological works, are seen as prefiguring the eighteenth-century rococo style embraced by many salonnières.
The “chief pictures” of the Moira collection also include works by
the Spanish and Italian baroque painters Murillo and Salvator Rosa,
respectively.17 Rosa, who was patronised by the Medici family in
Florence, introduced a novel type of landscape that depicted wild,
savage scenes.18 These bold artworks were “particularly esteemed in
England by admirers of the picturesesque” and presumably in Ireland
also by the occupants of and visitors to Moira House.19 Finally, the collection also possessed a warrior’s head by Rembrandt, the master painter
and etcher from the Dutch Golden Age. Of the 171 pictures in the collection, it is thought that 102 were hung in the small parlour.20 After
Lady Moira’s death, her husband’s collection was dispersed, primarily
between Castle Forbes and Loudon and Donington, with the Hastings
portraits going to her daughters, while the Rawdon portraits and most
of the remaining portraits were acquired by her son Francis Rawdon
Hastings and shared between his country seats at Loudoun Castle in
Scotland and Donington Park in Leicestershire in England.21
Connoisseurship played a significant role in the Grand Tour, which
“helped to transmit continental culture to Britain and Ireland, as tourists
brought home pictures, artefacts, clothing, and continental tastes.”22
Lady Moira’s husband, Sir John Rawdon, completed a Grand Tour of
France and Italy between 1738 and 1740, visiting various French towns
including Blois, Versailles, and Toulouse.23 Selina Forbes, Lady Granard,
travelled to France and Germany in 1785 and 1786, writing to her
mother from Montpellier on 7 June 1785.24 It is worth noting that Lady
Moira herself is said to have spent a period of up to 12 months in France,
although there are very few details available pertaining to this journey.25
As well as the significant numbers of elite Irish travellers visiting France, French language books were also in high circulation in
eighteenth-century Ireland.26 Máire Kennedy has argued that these
books were not being sold by Irish booksellers uniquely to members
of the Huguenot Diaspora in Ireland, but also to the educated upper
classes, many of whom had been educated in the language at a young
Moira House Salon: A Site for Irish Scholarship
111
age.27 Such a thesis is certainly supported by Lady Moira’s own collection. Included in the Granard Papers is a “List of the books which
belonged to the Countess of Moira and now in the green room of
Castle Forbes,” dated 18 September 1808.28 This catalogue strongly suggests Lady Moira’s fluency in French. Her library includes many French
history books, Charles-Jean François Henault’s Abrégé chronologique de
l’histoire de France in two volumes, as well as Annales de France, for example. The library also contains French works pertaining to genealogical
matters, such as Dictionnaire de l’art de vérifier les dates, Dictionnaire
Généalogique, Tables généalogiques des maisons souveraines de l’Europe, and
Histoire ecclésiastique des églises reformées du royaume de France (1580).
Finally there is another section of works relating to household arts;
confectionery, dyeing, cooking, and washing, including Menon’s La
Cuisinière Bourgeoise, Le Confiseur moderne ou l’art du confiseur . . . (1750;
1801), L’Art de Laver ou nouvelle manière de peindre sur le papier (1687?), La
Teinture Parfait (1788), and La Science du Maître d’hôtel cuisinier (1749).
Included in the Rawdon Estate Papers and Accounts are various other
receipts and accounts belonging to Lady Moira relative to the running
of Moira House. These further substantiate the widespread perception
of Moira House as a place of great wealth and luxury. There are two
undated summaries included in a bundle of receipts from circa 1790 that
offer an illuminating insight into life at Moira House. The consumption
of wines as appears from Mr Manneli’s statement, for example, records,
by the dozen, those bottles consumed in the house during that year:
137 claret, 38 port, 34 white wine, “In all being 209 dozen, being nearly
7 a day.”29 The amount of butchers’ meat consumed is also recorded,
by price rather than quantity, thus “from the 20th of May 1788 to
the 19th of November 1789 being a year and a half” was £566 2s 6d.
These figures, along with similar sums for bread and poultry, indicate
a most luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by the Rawdons in late-eighteenthcentury Dublin. Lady Moira’s magnificent residence, titles, and wealth
place her in an exclusive category of Irish society. Her Anglo-Irish status might lead one to believe that her salon would essentially replicate
those found in England at the time, with similar concerns, aims, and
ideologies. Yet, what emerges is a salon established to serve specifically
Irish concerns.
Antiquarianism and translation
As no historical compilation of the nature of the present work could be
completed by the single efforts of one man – and he engaged in a variety of
pursuits – I was necessitated to solicit foreign aid.30
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The last decades of the eighteenth century saw a great eagerness emerge
among the Anglo-Irish for antiquarianism: the study and appreciation
of the language, customs, and cultures of ancient Ireland.31 Lady Moira’s
espousal of the role of salon hostess enabled her to lend her support
to those who wished to promote such endeavours. She invited them
to participate in the Moira House salon, thereby establishing a forum
where members could converse and aid each other through instruction
as well as continuing this network through epistolary communication.
The longevity of Moira House salon can be contrasted with the shortlived success of other attempts at associational antiquarianism in the
latter half of the eighteenth century, prior to the establishment of the
Royal Irish Academy in 1785. These institutions include the PhysicoHistorical Society (1744–1752), the Select Committee on Antiquities of
the Dublin Society (1772–1774), and the Hibernian Antiquarian Society (1779–1783).32 The first two societies were explicitly Protestant in
composition although the Select Committee included several Catholics
as corresponding members. All three were exclusively male. In contrast,
the Moira House salon invited guests of different religious denomination and both men and women. Many of the key figures associated
with antiquarianism – Charlotte Brooke, Joseph Cooper Walker, and the
Catholic Thomas Moore – were all involved in the Moira House salon.
The Cavan-born antiquarian Charlotte Brooke’s statement of intent
in her Reliques of Irish Poetry: Consisting of Heroic Poems, Odes, Elegies, and
Songs, Translated into English verse . . . (1789) sums up the general aim of
those engaged in such study. Brooke declares that she has been “induced
to undertake this work,” “with a view to throw some light on the antiquities of this country, to vindicate, in part, its history, and prove its claim
to scientific as well as to military fame.”33 Brooke’s work consisted of
translating ancient Gaelic poetry into English, thereby making it accessible to a much wider audience. Her preface celebrates the aesthetic value
of the originals as well as their historical importance, although it also
laments the lack of curiosity prevalent amongst her contemporaries for
these “productions of genius.”34 According to Norman A. Jeffares and
Peter Van de Kamp, Brooke’s “renderings of the Red Branch and Fenian
material, reinforced by her knowledge of Celtic antiquities, were an
extremely influential part of the general antiquarian movement,” thus
successfully increasing awareness of, and interest in, Ireland’s past, as
well as vindicating its right to be respected in the wider literary canon.35
The subscription list to Brooke’s Reliques includes several eminent AngloIrish figures, such as Lady Elizabeth Tuite and John Philpot Curran, both
of whom were members of the Moira House salon.36
Moira House Salon: A Site for Irish Scholarship
113
Charlotte Brooke and Lady Moira first met “about the year 1786,”
after which “a gradual intimacy grew up between them.”37 That Lady
Moira contributed directly to Brooke’s work is indicated by the author’s
acknowledgement: “to the Right Honourable the Countess of Moira
I am indebted for some valuable communications.”38 Lady Moira is said
to have aided Brooke with both translation and compilation, offering
vital evidence of her interest in Ireland’s Gaelic culture.39 Liz Bellamy
has suggested a strong link between such Anglo-Irish interests and
attempts by this Protestant Ascendancy to legitimise its colonial rule
in Ireland.40 However, both Lady Moira’s support for Brooke through
her position as leading salon hostess and Brooke’s creation of such a
text despite her Anglo-Irish background can also, and more convincingly, be interpreted primarily as illustrating the embracing of Irish
rather than English culture and heritage. Both women were members
of a class who were in the process of constructing a new identity
for themselves in late-eighteenth-century Ireland. By clearly lending
her support to such literary and antiquary developments, Lady Moira
was explicitly associating both herself and her salon with a distinctive cultural movement. While the French salons, for example, can
be linked with both the Enlightenment and “the Fronde,” and the
English salons with the promotion of writing by female authors in
particular, Lady Moira’s salon became a primary location for Irish scholarship. There she welcomed all those interested in a specifically Irish
tradition, whether ancient or contemporary, offering a physical centre
to the movement and allowing the members to see themselves as part
of a group.
Charlotte Brooke herself recognised her participation in a broader
undertaking. In her acknowledgements she salutes the efforts of another
antiquarian, who himself was a regular participant in Lady Moira’s
salon, noting that “Joseph C. Walker, Esq.; has afforded every assistance
which zeal, judgement, and extensive knowledge, could give.”41 Walker,
like Brooke, was greatly interested in the Gaelic bardic tradition and
is generally credited as being the inspiration and catalyst for Brooke’s
own work. Brooke translated three poems for Walker’s Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards (1786), an extremely influential collection, again
introducing previously obscure and impenetrable songs and poems to
the Anglo-Irish community and vindicating the worth of native Irish
literary endeavours. Included in the Granard Papers at Castle Forbes are
letters from Walker, writing from St Valeri in Bray, Co. Wicklow, to Lady
Moira about historical and antiquarian matters, highlighting both her
knowledge and interest in such affairs.
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Lady Moira was also in communication with the politician and
landowner James Caulfield, 1st Earl of Charlemont, regarding her historical enquiries.42 J.C. Walker’s letters meanwhile are filled with acknowledgements of Lady Moira’s involvement in his literary endeavours; his
letter of 20 March 1798 reads, “I await impatiently, your ladyship’s
instructions in regard to the paper which I did myself the honor to send
you last week,” while that of 31 March of the same year explicitly illustrates the role played by Lady Moira in his research, “Availing of your
ladyship’s indulgence, I did not send the books last night as I intended,
but renewed my researches in them, turning in particular, to the passages pointed out by your ladyship.”43 The letters also indicate Walker’s
willingness to aid his patron, with Walker offering to transcribe “for your
use, some of your curious historical and biographical collections.”44
Walker’s preface to his An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient
and Modern Irish (1788) announces the success and optimism of
antiquarianism during the 1780s and its welcome reception: “He, who
undertakes to elucidate the Antiquities of Ireland, no longer engages
in an ungrateful task. The Spirit of literary enquiry is gone abroad in
this kingdom, and whoever advances to meet her, is sure to win her
smiles.”45 The preface also clearly outlines Lady Moira’s contributions
to Walker’s essay, and indeed throughout the work her expertise is
constantly called upon by Walker in his explanatory footnotes. While
of course acknowledging literary rules of deference, the extent of her
involvement is nevertheless emphasised by Walker in the following
comment, “Condescending to honour me with her correspondence during the progress of this work, there are few pages in either of the essays,
which I am now offering to the public, that cannot boast some obligation to her ladyship.”46 Walker’s long-term participation in Lady Moira’s
salon is recorded by his brother Samuel Walker, in the preface to J.C.
Walker’s posthumously published Memoirs of Alessandro Tassoni (1815):
The writer of these lines cannot, in justice to his brother, mention the
name of the noble family of Moira without adverting to . . . the many
delightful hours he [J.C. Walker] spent, during a series of years, at
their mansion-house in Dublin; which might truly be denominated
the temple of science and the belles lettres . . . whenever he visited the
metropolis, he uniformly received the most friendly invitations to
that house.47
Samuel Walker continues to say that his brother “there found an assemblage of rank and talent,” with members of the aristocracy mingling
Moira House Salon: A Site for Irish Scholarship
115
with the literati and other public figures. Walker’s attendance at the
Moira House salon coincided in particular with the participation of two
other men of letters, Mr Francis Hardy, best known as the biographer of
Lord Charlemont, and the Revd. Edward Berwick, a writer and chaplain
to the Earl of Moira, both of whom were to become lifelong friends of
Walker.48
While encouraging the antiquarian efforts of her salon members, one
must not forget that Lady Moira had herself previously ventured into
print regarding such matters. Her rather lengthily named article, which
appeared in Archaeologia in 1785, was entitled, in part, “Particulars relative to a human skeleton, and the garments that were found thereon,
when dug out of a bog at the foot of Drumkeragh, a mountain in the
county of Down, and Barony of Kinalearty, on Lord Moira’s estate, in
the autumn of 1780 . . . ” Archaeologia, or, Miscellaneous Tracts Relating
to Antiquity, was published for the Society of Antiquaries of London
between 1770 and 1991, and Lady Moira’s item was also noteworthy
due to her position as the first woman to contribute to the periodical.
Horace Walpole refers to the article in a letter to Anne Fitzpatrick, Lady
Ossory, in July 1785:
I have just been reading a work by a new noble authoress, a princess
of the blood of Clarence, and a lady deeply versed in the antiquities
of the country where the Brian Mac Gill Patrick was seated, as well
as of the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Gauls etc. It is the present Countess
of Moira . . . .49
The article offers us a glimpse of Lady Moira’s research interests as well as
her grasp of Irish history and contemporary scholarship. The discovery
of the skeleton on the Moira estate included various items of clothing,
which Lady Moira enumerates in meticulous detail, as well as two plaits
of hair “plaited in a very tight close manner.”50 Lady Moira’s article,
presented as a letter, offers precise details of the body’s position within
the bog and attempts to situate the period that the body might date
from. The hostess’s passion for flax and clothes manufacture on her
estate in the late-eighteenth century is echoed in this historical interest, and Lady Moira outlines her hopes for her discovery: “From the
cloathing I expected to have got some insight into the state of the flaxen
and woollen manufactures amidst the native Irish at that period.”51
Her research and findings are supported by references to John Toland’s
“Account of the Druids” from A Collection of Several Pieces (1726); to
translations by the antiquarian Charles Vallencey; to a previous issue of
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
Archaeologia; to Geoffrey Keating’s Foras Feasa (trans. 1723); as well as
by including many footnotes and a plate of illustrations. The letter was
read aloud to the society by John Theophilus Rawdon two years prior
to its publication, and Lady Moira offers useful translations of words
such as sliabh, the Irish for mountain, or craobh, the paw of an animal,
as well as helpful pronunciation of specific words for her audience in
England.52
Three years after Lady Moira’s article, Walker’s Historic Essay situated
his findings very much in their historical context and offered a defence
for not shying away from unwelcome matters:
It was hinted to me by a friend who perused my manuscript, that I
dwell with too much energy on the oppressions of the English, treading sometimes with an heavy step, on ashes not yet cold. But however
thankful for the hint, I cannot subscribe to his opinion. I have only
related unexaggerated historic truths.53
Lady Moira’s article also expands on her views regarding the treatment
of Irish people by those in power in England. She avoids euphemisms in
outlining her beliefs regarding the origin of the discovered bog body in
her ironic comment:
I therefore conjectured that the present object of my inquiry was one
of that race, who had fallen [e] a prey to famine, in consequence of
the prosecution of those humane methods my countrymen continued to employ in Elizabeth’s reign, to civilize the Irish, and conciliate
their affections to their conqueror.54
In her footnote, the Countess exclaims further, “it seems but candid
to seize any opportunity of relating what the Irish endured from the
English, since the cruelties of the former are generally stated as not having arisen from provocation.”55 Both these works date of course from
the 1780s, and both Moira and Walker wrote with much more freedom
than would have been permitted or indeed sensible in the succeeding
decade, after the French Revolution and with political tensions increasing in Irish society. While Walker insists in 1788 that “the wrongs of
the English only live now in the page of history,” and that they have
“stifled the remembrance of their oppressions in a warm embrace,” one
finds numerous references throughout Lady Moira’s personal correspondence to the plight of the Irish, both past and present, alongside praise
of their culture.56
Moira House Salon: A Site for Irish Scholarship
117
After the death of both Lady Moira and J.C. Walker, in 1808 and 1810
respectively, Henry Boyd, another member of the Moira House salon
and best known as the translator of Dante into English, reunited the
figures in a poem that celebrates their joint contribution to advancing
Ireland’s position as a cultural force:
York’s sainted heiress, who with you combin’d
The drooping genius of our Isle to raise,
With the communion of a kindred mind,
Shall share with you, the minstrel’s grateful praise.57
This attempt by Lady Moira to raise Ireland’s “drooping genius” can be
immediately identified as one of the primary aims of the Moira House
salon. Boyd’s choice of the words “combin’d” and “communion,” with
their connotations of mutual participation, echo the functioning of
Lady Moira’s salon, where literary figures such as Brooke, Walker, and
many others could come together to achieve their goals in producing
a distinctively Irish literary heritage. Indeed, Brooke and Walker may
have been the most prominent of Lady Moira’s guests, but other, less
celebrated participants, also shared the same cultural ideals. As in the
salons in Britain and France, Lady Moira’s role as hostess allowed her
to decide upon the guests, and those she chose to invite consistently
embraced ideas that were distinctly Irish.
The poet Thomas Moore refers to Lady Moira as “the enlightened
friend of Ireland” in a footnote to “The Song of Fionnuala” in his Irish
Melodies (1808–1834). On the Celtic myth, “The Children of Lir,” Moore
notes that “I found this fanciful fiction among some manuscript translations from the Irish, which were begun under the direction of that
enlightened friend of Ireland, the late Countess of Moira.”58 Much of
the translated material used by Anglo-Irish antiquarians at this time had
been transcribed by Muiris Ó Gormáin, teacher, poet, and “one of the
most prolific scribes of the eighteenth century,” who provided much
material for Lady Moira and J.C. Walker amongst others.59 Yet again,
Lady Moira is depicted as deeply interested in the Gaelic language, as
well as being associated with attempts to disseminate knowledge of this
Gaelic Irish tradition among a wider public, not just the members of her
salon. We know that Moore, a Catholic who attended Trinity College,
also attended her salon at Moira House as a young man. This knowledge is owing to a reproof made to him much later, in April 1837: “You
visit everybody but me! . . . I cared for you when I met you a stripling at
Moira House, but you forget and neglect Mrs. Cork in her old age.”60
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Moore was introduced to Lord Moira by Joseph Atkinson, “treasurer of
the ordnance under the administration of the Earl of Moira; the friend
of Moore, Owenson, Curran, Phillips, and the rest of the galaxy of Irish
genius; and himself a respectable poet.”61 Atkinson was a dramatist as
well as a poet, with his comedy and his two comic operas all produced
in Dublin. Among his verse, “Killarney, a poem” (1798) was dedicated to
Lady Moira’s son Francis Rawdon Hastings. Atkinson introduced Moore
to the 2nd Earl of Moira whilst Moore was in England after having completed his degree in Trinity College Dublin in 1799. This introduction
was of great importance, and “he [Moore] well knew that . . . the success
of any publishing venture was largely dependent on the obtaining of a
good name for patron.”62 Lord Moira introduced Moore to the Prince of
Wales who then permitted his Odes of Anacreon (1800) to be dedicated
to himself, increasing the work’s stature and reach.63 The 2nd Earl had
a large impact on Moore’s life in addition to this early introduction,
offering him the position of registrar in the admiral court in Bermuda in
1803, and assisting him in his visit to London in 1807 where he began
the Irish Melodies.64
Lady Moira’s interest in the Gaelic language is also reflected in her
interaction with the classical and Irish scholar Theophilus O’Flanagan,
providing him with material for translation. O’Flanagan replaced Muiris
Ó Gormáin as chief translator at the Royal Irish Academy in 1786,
where he was commissioned to undertake such gargantuan projects as
the translation of the Brehon laws into English. O’Flanagan was later a
founding member and first secretary of the Dublin Gaelic Society, which
was established in 1807. The aims of that Society recall those of the
Royal Irish Academy and were clearly expressed in its only publication,
Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin, Established for the Investigation
and Revival of Ancient Irish Literature (1808):
The Society recommends itself to every liberal, patriotic, and enlightened Mind; an opportunity is now, at length, offered to the Learned
of Ireland, to retrieve their Character among the Nations of Europe,
and shew that their History and Antiquities are not fitted to be
consigned to eternal oblivion; the Plan, if pursued with spirit and
perseverance will redound much to the Honor of Ireland.65
The society’s aims involved both the preservation and the cultivation
of the Irish language. Amongst its aspirations was to publish “every
Fragment” which remained of the Irish language in order to preserve it,
whilst Richard McElligot, of Limerick, Honorary Member of the Gaelic
Moira House Salon: A Site for Irish Scholarship
119
Society of Dublin, also communicated his intentions to write a new Irish
dictionary and grammar to ensure the language’s survival.
Theophilus O’Flanagan’s contribution to the Transactions included a
translation of a poem from The Book of O’Gara, which he offered to the
public as, Advice to a Prince, by Thaddy Mac Brody, or Mac Brodin, son of
Dary; being the inauguration ode of Donach O’Brien, Fourth Earl of thomond,
when elected prince of his nation, according to ancient Irish usage; with an
English translation in verse (1808). This compilation of court verse was
assembled by Feargal Dubh Ó Gadhra, or Rev. Mr. O’Gara, in the midseventeenth century.66 O’Gara collected and transcribed Irish poems
“in the several Coenobia of the Low countries,” particularly Lille and
Brussels, after having been forced to leave his native Co. Galway during
Cromwell’s persecutions.67 The collection then passed to the family of
O’Daly of Dunsandel. There were only two bidders present at the sale of
the library of the Right Hon. Denis Daly – Lady Moira’s Chaplain Edward
Berwick and Theophilus O’Flanagan. O’Flanagan had previously been
introduced to Lady Moira by the scholar and officer in the French service, “the chevalier Thomas O’Gorman, a great promoter and preserver
of Irish History and Literature.”68 O’Flanagan records in his introduction that Berwick declined bidding when he discovered O’Flanagan’s
identity, with the result that the scholar was able to acquire the work
himself.69
Several incorrect copies of The Book of O’Gara existed throughout
Ireland but the volume acquired by O’Flanagan was the “only correct one.”70 O’Flanagan dedicated his translation to Francis Rawdon
Hastings in memory of Lady Moira: “Your benign Mother, of dignified Memory, enabled me to give this curious Production to the World:
and I could not resist the Wish of making this Acknowledgement of
Gratitude to her great departed Spirit.”71 O’Flanagan had a second
motive in addressing his work to Hastings; he hoped to attract the
attention of someone of the Earl’s stature and importance “to the contemplation of ancient Irish Wisdom, exhibited in this interesting and
instructive Poem.”72 O’Flanagan is described as linking the world of
“pre-union ascendancy antiquarianism and nineteenth-century cultural
nationalism.”73 Lady Moira, although clearly embedded in ascendancy
culture and ascendancy antiquarianism, also provides a link, albeit
tenuous, between the two eras of antiquarian research through her
connection with the Catholic scholars such as Moore and O’Flanagan,
who are more commonly associated with nineteenth-century scholarship, as well as her intimate connection with fellow ascendancy figures
such as Walker and Brooke. Pre-union ascendancy antiquarianism was
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clearly associational in nature, just as that of the next century would
prove to be.
Regional writing
In an entry in her journal for 5 May 1759, Mary Delany described Lady
Moira, then Lady Rawdon, thus, “She is very sensible, well bred, and
agreeable . . . She reads a vast deal and has a surprising knowledge of
history.”74 Lady Moira was generally referred to in like manner, with
great importance paid to her intellectual capabilities. Her interest in
genealogical matters, for example, was frequently referred to by her contemporaries and represented a life-long passion as can be seen in the
following description dated from the year of her death: “Lady Moira is
quite deprived of the use of her limbs, she was able to sit up braced
to her chair a few days ago and she employed herself with making out
somebody’s pedigree. So you see the prevailing passion remains to the
very last.”75 This oft-praised competence in several different types of
scholarship allowed Lady Moira to interact with both learned men and
women alike. Lady Moira disputed at length regarding the validity of
genealogical arguments made by others engaged in the field, including with Bishop Percy, a long-term correspondent of hers: “In respect
to the second point, to which Lady Moira, like a dutiful and affectionate niece, thought not proper to agree, she presents his Lordship with
her reasons of dissent grounded on argument.”76 Similarly, Lady Moira
refers to Horace Walpole’s A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors
of England, With Lists of Their Works (1758) in another letter, presenting her objections to it in articulate yet polite fashion: “I return you
Sir many thanks for the present of Mr Walpole’s postscript to his Royal
and Nobele [sic] authors . . . It is upon dry matters of fact and historical
prejudices that I presume to have sentiments of my own, which often
are counter to his opinion.”77 Thus Lady Moira, like the Bluestockings
in England, engaged in full discussions with men, communicating her
ideas in her correspondence in an open fashion, as an intellectual equal,
despite referring to herself as a “dutiful niece” and limiting the extent
of her disagreements to “matters of fact.”
Unlike the salons in eighteenth-century France, but recalling those
of eighteenth-century England, Moira House salon was very much a
gathering place for both men and women. Whether by inviting them
to participate in her salon or extending her patronage to them, Lady
Moira offered her aid to aspiring literary figures independently of gender considerations.78 One well-known recipient of her patronage was
Moira House Salon: A Site for Irish Scholarship
121
the precocious poet Thomas Dermody (1775–1802), whom Lady Moira
entrusted into the care of Henry Boyd, then resident in Killeigh, King’s
County (Co. Offaly).79 Lady Moira’s correspondence with both Dermody
and Boyd is included in the Granard Papers and offers substantiation to
the various accounts of Dermody’s licentious nature, his difficulty in
accepting his various patrons’ advice, and in committing to the rigours
of academic life.80 Dermody refers to his own impertinence in a letter
to Lady Moira dated 21 August 1790. He informs her of having communicated his “many reasons for not entering the College [i.e. Trinity
College Dublin]” as intended, to her chaplain, who is to relate them
to her.81 In a letter from September of the same year he refers to himself as having previously been “on the brink of ruin,” and requests that
Lady Moira recommend him to important figures in London: “I hope
your Ladyship will be so generous as to give me some recommendations
which cannot fail to introduce me into public notice.”82 The “eccentric genius” later writes to Lady Moira recollecting his “misbehaviour”
towards both her and Mr Boyd and assures her of his commitment to
future discipline.83 Although this and later entreaties were officially disregarded by Lady Moira, she secretly ordered the bookseller Mercier to
“print at her expense” any of Dermody’s future works.84 Lady Moira also
supported lesser-known female poets such as Mary Tighe and Henrietta
Battier.85 Also intimately connected with Lady Moira and her salon
were three writers of much greater stature: Maria Edgeworth, Sydney
Owenson (later Lady Morgan), and the Scottish poet and novelist Walter
Scott.
Amongst her other accolades, Maria Edgeworth is often credited as
one of the founders of the regional novel, defined by K.D.M. Snell as,
“fiction that is set in a recognisable region, and which describes features
distinguishing the life, social customs, language, dialect, or other aspects
of the culture of that area and its people.”86 To a certain extent, the
regional novel supports the idea of an indigenous cultural revival suggested thus far. Both Irish antiquarianism and the translation of ancient
Gaelic poetry into English promote early Irish culture and its traditions,
while simultaneously introducing these customs and literary works to
a new audience, both within Ireland and abroad. In Maria Edgeworth’s
first regional novel, Castle Rackrent (1800), the author wanted to achieve
both these aims, but this time with regard to contemporaneous Irish
traditions and modes of life, as the fictional editor notes:
He lays it before the English reader as a specimen of manners and
characters, which are perhaps unknown in England. Indeed the
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domestic habits of no nation in Europe were less known to the
English than those of their sister country, till within these few years.87
Edgeworth intended Castle Rackrent, which was given the subtitle “an
Hibernian tale. Taken from facts, and from the manners of the Irish squires,
before the year 1782,” to be read and valued in part for the sociocultural information communicated therein. Edgeworth moved from
Oxfordshire to Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford with her family in 1782,
the same year in which she chose to set her novel, and she continued
to be very much aware of the ignorance of those from the country of
her birth on Irish matters. In this work, and in her other novels set
in Ireland, such as Ennui (1809) or The Absentee (1812), Edgeworth sets
about critiquing Irish life in a fictional manner for those unfamiliar
with it.
As early as 1787, Richard Lovell Edgeworth was writing to Lady Moira
declaring, “She [Maria Edgeworth] sends Madame Genlis [a] copy and
begs permission to send another to your Ladyship – to whom she
had hoped to dedicate her first labours, nobody else has a copy.”88
Not only were Edgeworth’s “first labours” dedicated to Lady Moira, but
the hostess also contributed to Edgeworth’s later novels and short stories: “[Lady Moira] read Italian poetry, from which she chose elegant
lines for Edgeworth to use as epigraphs to chapters, and to Tales of
Fashionable Life as a whole.”89 In a letter to Henry Edgeworth, Maria
substantiates this with her declaration: “Leonara will be out I suppose by the time you receive this – She comes out with an Italian
motto chosen by Lady Moira for her first vol” (25 December 1805).90
Lady Moira is also portrayed by Edgeworth in several of her regional
novels, being generally accepted as the model for Lady Oranmore in
The Absentee, Mrs Hungerford in Patronage (1814), and the Countess
of Annaly in Ormond (1817).91 The latter’s first introduction to the
reader is announced by Lady O’Shane who declares simply, and categorically, that, “Lady Annaly does not like cards,” which calls to
mind the French salonnières’ abhorrence of cards in general, and the
Bluestockings’ particular hatred of whist in England.92 Lady Annaly is
described as “one of the most respectable women in Ireland,” with
“matronly dress and dignified deportment.”93 Lady Oranmore, in similar fashion, is described as possessing a “dignified appearance and
respectable character.”94
In Ormond, the contents of the library of Lady Annaly are discussed at
length, with pointed emphasis placed on its inclusion of French as well
as English classics:
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123
. . . she had mentioned a present of books which she intended for
him [Ormond]: a set of books which belonged to her son, sir
Herbert Annaly, and of which she found they had duplicates in their
library . . . . It was an excellent collection of what may be called the
English and French classics: the French books were, at this time, quite
useless to him, for he could not read French. Lady Annaly, however,
sent these books on purpose to induce him to learn a language . . . .95
Lady Annaly’s desire for Ormond to learn French using these books
proves successful when Ormond finds himself immersed in Parisian society at a later stage in the novel. At first, Paris in general is portrayed as
extremely dissipated, with its inhabitants constantly pursuing pleasure
and attending grand entertainments in which moral standards are dismally low. However, after Ormond demonstrates evidence of his latent
intelligence, the abbé Morellet, “then respected as the most reasonable of
all the wits of France,” offers him the opportunity of temporarily quitting his life of dissipation to instead become acquainted with France’s
celebrated men of letters, which Ormond had expressed to be his great
ambition. At their first gathering, Ormond is instructed by Morellet
to guess the names of those present after being given hints regarding
their writings. The narrator’s comments explicitly illustrate the merit
of Lady Annaly’s gift of books in aiding Ormond’s guesses: “It was
happy for Ormond that he was well acquainted with some of their
writings (this he owed to lady Annaly’s well-chosen present of French
books).”96
Ormond becomes acquainted with some of the key participants of
the French salons; Marmontel, Marivaux, and d’Alembert.97 Edgeworth’s
description of Harry Ormond’s introduction to “some of the really good
company of Paris,” “at Mad. Geoffrin’s, Mad. de Tencin’s, Mad. du
Deffand’s and Mad. Trudaine’s” offers the anglophone reader a glimpse
into French salon society and reminds us of Edgeworth’s own introduction into French society and her knowledge of the pre-Revolutionary
French salons from her earlier visit to France in 1802–1803, when she,
like her protagonist, became acquainted with the abbé Morellet.98 In
Letters for Literary Ladies (1799), Edgeworth declares that, “Domestic life
should, however, be enlivened and embellished with all the wit and
vivacity, and politeness for which French women were once admired,
with out admitting any of their vices or follies.”99 Edgeworth’s belief in
the advantages of “the mixture of the talents, and knowledge of both
sexes” is apparent both in her connection with the Moira House salon,
and also in her own single-author salons in Co. Longford.100
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It is well known and indeed well documented that Maria Edgeworth’s
novels were the source of inspiration for the great Scottish poet and novelist Walter Scott, but much less known is the fact that Scott was seeking
Lady Moira’s approval of his work prior to his celebrated entrance onto
the literary scene as a poet in 1805. A letter from Walter Scott to Lady
Moira, included in the Rawdon and Hastings correspondence at Castle
Forbes, offers significant evidence of Scott’s admiration of Lady Moira,
his desire for her approbation, and her access to the text as the poem
progressed:
[Scott wished] to request her ladyship to honour with her acceptance
a copy of the “Lay of the Last Minstrel” which is at length after many
delays sent into the world . . . May I be permitted to hope that as your
ladyship approved of the beginning you may find some amusement
in the progress and conclusion of the story. I have no doubt that it
will be in your ladyship’s hands long before there are any copies with
the booksellers of Dublin . . . .101
Scott’s writing to Lady Moira illustrates her reputation outside of the
island of Ireland, both as an influential literary figure and as a supporter
of regional literature. The letter indicates that Lady Moira has already
been shown what might be termed the work in progress and that Scott
is careful to reiterate her previous approval in hoping to attain overall
approbation of the work.
Fortunately, Lady Moira’s reply is also to be found in the Granard
Papers. It informs us of the poem’s reception both by Lady Moira and
by the wider Irish public. Lady Moira tells Scott that both she and
Lord Granard have already received two copies of the Lay of the Last
Minstrel from their Dublin bookseller, the latter being fully aware of
“how much we wished to have all you published.” The poem had in
fact been published in London the previous month, January 1805, with
a print run of some 750 copies and Lady Moira’s letter insists that the
poem has been well received in Ireland: “let me assure you that ‘the
border Bard’ has not only made his way to ‘green erin’ but is held
therein with due respect.”102 Lady Moira’s own respect for the work owes
much to the genre itself. She praises Scott’s poem as one that concentrates on “the varying periods of elapsed time,” in his case the Scottish
and English borders during the sixteenth century.103 According to Lady
Moira, this genre of historical regional literature, “expands the thought,
calls forth unceasing reflection; and is a mine from whence is drawn
an ore which [produces] enlivening and diversified ideas.” Scott, like
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125
Edgeworth, wished to embody and preserve his region’s traditions before
they were forgotten and he stresses this intention in his correspondence.
In his letter, he describes the Lay of the Last Minstrel as “a wild romantic
tale . . . intended to embody and preserve traditions of my native country
which are fast sinking into oblivion.”104 There is a suggestion that Lady
Moira possessed family links with Scott’s “native country,” as is outlined
in a letter to Lady Moira from Thomas Brydson in which the correspondent refers to “Lord Moira’s present residence and various distinguished
connections with Scotland.”105 In light of this lineage Brydson wonders
whether “a short memoir of his [Lord Moira’s] descent from the kings
of this country and the royal armorial honours due to him in consequence, might not with propriety be recorded in the public register of
the kingdom.”106
Scott’s poem was delivered to Lady Moira while she was away from
Dublin and her expressions of regret and disappointment at not being
able to receive the emissary at Moira House reveals much about her own
sense of identity as well as being strongly indicative of her method of
receiving her salon guests:
Had I been at home, he would have received that Irish welcome,
grafted on the plain old English Hospitality expressive of good will
and frank sincerity, which is preferred by a good-hearted guest, to
the frigid, insipid, indolent politeness, that (in general) is the fashion of modern days. And here I cannot omit narrating an Old Irish
Curse: “may the path-way to your house be ever green” as marking
this estimation of social intercourse . . . .107
Here Lady Moira expresses her espousal of Irish custom, which she
directly compares to its English counterpart. She recognises the Irish
welcome as “grafted on” the English tradition but nevertheless as being
distinctively different, “other” and ultimately superior. Her inclusion
of the Irish saying further illustrates her awareness and knowledge of
Irish idiom as well as customs and tradition. Ultimately, she insists that
it would be an Irish rather than an English welcome that any guest to
Moira House would receive upon arrival. In doing so she firmly embraces
the Irish side of her hyphenated Anglo-Irish identity.108 She concludes
this discussion with Scott by insisting: “that if any persons of your
friends should come to Dublin hereafter, that you will be so kind, as
to introduce them by letter to me, that I may be enabled to indulge
myself in a satisfaction my absence from Moira House has deprived
me of . . . .”109
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It was, in fact, at Castle Forbes, Newtownforbes (formerly Lios Breac)
in Co. Longford, rather than at Moira House, that Maria Edgeworth
came to know Lady Moira. The salon there was held by Lady Moira’s
daughter Lady Selina-Frances Forbes (1759–1827), Countess of Granard.
Lady Moira had six children who lived to maturity, three daughters
and three sons – Lady Selina, Lady Charlotte who married Hamilton
Fitzgerald, Major Hon. George Rawdon, Lady Anne who married the Earl
of Aylesbury, Francis Lord Rawdon, and Hon. John Theophilus Rawdon,
member of the British House of Commons.110 Interestingly, it was Lady
Moira rather than Lady Granard who seemed to be the star attraction
at the Castle Forbes salon, further adding to Lady Moira’s role as chief
salon hostess in Ireland:
The late Lady Moira, mother of Lady Granard, will long be recollected by all who duly venerate moral accomplishments . . . Here [at
Castle Forbes] that amiable lady drew round her many persons conspicuous, like herself, for conversational talents, among whom not
the least interesting were the principal members of the family of
Edgeworth-town, whose residence is distant about nine miles from
Castle Forbes.111
This posthumous portrayal of Lady Moira clearly depicts her as being at
the centre of the Castle Forbes salon. In Maria Edgeworth’s memoir, written by her stepmother Mrs Frances Edgeworth and published privately
in 1867, Edgeworth is referred to as having had “frequent opportunities
of meeting” Lady Moira at Castle Forbes.112 In a letter to Mrs Margaret
Ruxton, detailing the entertainment at Castle Forbes, Edgeworth herself
exclaims, “we were extremely amused – particularly with Lady Moira’s
conversation. She has at 75 a wonderful portion of the spirit of animation and as warm sympathy in the pleasure of her grandchildren as if
she were in the bloom of fifteen – how well she understands the arts of
living!”113 Thus, even in old age Lady Moira still commanded attention,
respect and reverence for her position in society but also due to her wisdom and comprehension of “the arts of living.” Repeatedly, Lady Moira
is portrayed as playing a central role both in Irish society and in Maria
Edgeworth’s life: “Lady Moira was at this time, a personage of great
influence in Ireland; she held a sort of court at Moira House in Dublin,
the resort of all the wise and witty of the day – the notice she took
of a timid unobtrusive girl was therefore gratifying.”114 This practice of
extending her notice to all participants, including those who are “timid”
or “unobtrusive,” also mirrors her manner of governing her salon in
Moira House Salon: A Site for Irish Scholarship
127
Moira House. A writer in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal of 1848 recalls his
early youth in the 1780s when he was a frequent guest at Moira House.
Although he admits that Lady Moira “delighted to gather around her all
who had any pretensions to literary or professional celebrity,” he adds
that “the aged Countess was never too much engaged with her brilliant circle to omit attending to the enjoyment of her younger guests, in
whose recreation she took a kind and lively interest.”115
Lady Moira’s “younger guests” at Moira House salon also included
Sydney Owenson (1776–1859) who was introduced to the literary world
at Lady Moira’s at a very young age. Indeed Owenson’s very first poem,
about a cat, was recited for Lady Moira at Moira House:
My father took me to Moira House; made me recite my poem, to
which he had taught me add appropriate emphasis and action, to
which my own tendency to grimace added considerable comicality.
The Countess of Moira laughed heartily at the “infant Muse” as my
father called me, and ordered the housekeeper to send up a large plate
of bread and jam, the earliest recompense of my literary labours.116
This affection between the two women was to last until Lady Moira’s
death, as was the latter’s great interest in Owenson’s “literary labours.”
Owenson’s debt to Lady Moira is recognised in the former’s dedication
of her poems to her in 1801. In the dedication Owenson states, “in
sanctioning by your patronage the following little poetic sketches, you
have conferred an honour on their author, of which she is infinitely
more sensible, than capable of expressing the gratitude it has excited.”117
Interestingly, it had also been suggested by Owenson’s father that she
should be a dame de compagnie for the Countess, but Owenson flatly dismissed the suggestion: “The idea of my being dame de compagnie to so
great a lady is too presumptuous, and a ‘humble companion’ I will NOT
be to any one.”118
Owenson is best known for her third novel, The Wild Irish Girl (1806),
and Lady Moira and her salon were still being mentioned in relation to
Owenson’s literary career by the time of the novel’s publication. Lady
Stuart Lonsdale refers to the work in a letter to Lady Louisa Stuart
declaring, “Every one in this county is delighted with the Wild Irish
Girl, the author Miss Owenson is a protégé of Moira House.”119 The
Wild Irish Girl’s full title includes the description “A National Tale,”
and Owenson’s novels are rightly referred to in this manner by literary
critics.120 The milieu of Lady Moira’s salon is very much reflected in the
antiquarianism of Owenson’s novel. Her protagonist Horatio, the son
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of an English lord, becomes intrigued by the Gaelic language and culture, and undertakes to study both, assisted by the beautiful Glorvina,
the eponymous Wild Irish Girl. In a letter to his correspondent, the protagonist declares, “Behold me then, buried amidst the monuments of
past ages! deep in the study of the language, history and antiquities of
this ancient nation.”121 Owenson’s novel is informed by the endeavours
of two of her fellow participants at Moira House salon; she repeatedly
cites Walker in her footnotes: “Joseph Cooper Walker, to whose genius,
learning, and exertions, Ireland stands so deeply indebted,” as well as
Charlotte Brooke and her “elegant version of the works of the Irish
Bards.”122
Political literati
Amongst its salon participants, Moira House also received many members of the United Irishmen, who were drawn to the salon from a literary
as much as a political motivation. Indeed as Mary Helen Thuente notes
in her work, The Harp Re-strung, The United Irishmen and the Rise of Irish
Literary Nationalism (1994), “Most of the United Irish leaders and the
chief writers for the movement were men of broad interests in a culture
that did not segregate politics and literature into separate spheres.”123
In The Harp Re-strung,
g Thuente argues that Irish literary nationalism
began in the late-eighteenth rather than the mid-nineteenth century.124
Although she refers on six occasions to Lady Moira as subscriber, dedicatee or patron of various literati, Thuente fails to place any emphasis on
her as salon hostess or on Moira House salon itself, other than to remark
fleetingly that Charlotte Brooke may have met members of the United
Irishmen there in the early 1790s. Clearly, however, the salon at Moira
House provided a meeting-place of great importance for these figures.
Although he did not participate in the salon itself, the connection
between Moira House and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the United Irishmen’s
leading military strategist, must be alluded to, however briefly, as it has
passed into Irish nationalist mythology. Lady Moira gave protection
to Fitzgerald’s wife, Lady Pamela, during Fitzgerald’s concealment and
arranged that the two could meet at her house in May 1798 prior to his
arrest and subsequent death in a Newgate cell in June of that year.125
John Carr mentions ostensibly political and literary figures in the one
breath when outlining the characters he encountered upon a visit to
Moira House:
It was here that I had an opportunity of witnessing the colloquial
talents of that surprising man [John Philpot] Curran, whose wit,
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129
like the electric fluid, illuminates whatever it touches; the highly
poetical translator of Dante, the Rev. Henry Boyd, and several other
persons less known to fame but eminent for their talents and
respectability.126
Curran’s wit, described as “electric fluid,” brings to mind the loquacious
outbursts of Dr Samuel Johnson in the Bluestocking salons in England
and illustrates that the Moira House salon also had articulate discussions
instigated by figures possessing great “colloquial talents” and further
demonstrates that it was a place of polite conversation and informed
debate, akin to the leading salons in both France and Britain. John
Philpot Curran entered the Irish Parliament in 1783 and although it
remains ambiguous as to whether he was, in fact, a full member of
the United Irishmen, he was wholly sympathetic to their cause and is
generally recognised as having been their primary defender in court.127
In addition to his position as MP for Westmeath and Master of the
Robes, Curran also wrote poems, such as “The Deserter’s Lamentation”
and “Let us be merry before we go.”128
The most famous member of the United Irishmen, Theobald Wolfe
Tone, was also a visitor to Lady Moira’s salon. In a letter from H. Barry
to Tone in August 1792, Tone’s attendance at Moira House is made clear:
“I think it likely his Lordship will be in Dublin soon; and in that case, as
you are well known at Moira House, why not call when he is there? I will
write, either to Lady Moira or Lady Granard, to make your introduction
pleasant.”129 An entry in Tone’s diary from the same month gives us
an indication of the political leanings of Lady Moira, “Called at Moira
House; apprehend I am out of favor there for holding democratic principles. Cannot be helped. ‘Tis but in vain,’ &c.”130 Janet Todd has referred
to “Lady Moira’s Dublin Whig salon” and commented that “in the early
1790s many around Lady Moira and Lady Mount Cashell professed a
genteel classical republicanism or enlightened patriotism, which could
coexist with hierarchies of class,” thus clearly very much at odds with
Tone’s democratic principles.131 Lady Moira undoubtedly sympathised
with the rebels and their grievances, as indicated by their presence at her
salon, but she could not agree with their revolutionary methods and did
not wish to alter the hierarchical governance of society, thereby aligning her with elements of Bluestocking conservatism. Her letters reveal
at once her sympathy with the frustration of her salon members and
her secure self-conception as an Irishwoman – “I have become so much
of an Irishwoman” – and her related distress at how matters are being
“misinterpreted in England,” a country to which she is still connected,
despite her new sense of identity.132
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These frustrations and distress mounted as the violence of the 1798
rebellion escalated. Although primarily based at her Dublin residence,
Lady Moira also spent some time in Ulster, at Montalto House, her
home in Co. Down, just outside Ballynahinch. Lady Moira forsook both
Montalto House and Moira House during the 1798 Rebellion to reside
with her daughter Selina in Castle Forbes, as she explains in a letter to
Dennis Scully, “In our Moira House society we look forward to having
you sir of our party, as when I was last in town. & if nothing unforeseen occurs, you will find me again settled beneath my own roof, from
which I have been long a wanderer, 9 months.”133 Montalto, in fact,
became the location of the battle of Ballynahinch when Henry Monro,
the United Irish leader in Co. Down, established camp on Ednavady Hill.
Lady Moira’s son Francis Rawdon Hastings, the 2nd Earl of Moira, had
given his most famous speech relating to Ireland in the English House of
Lords, which was later published as On the Present Alarming and Dreadful
State of Ireland (1797), in order to raise awareness of the situation in his
home country. Lady Moira was frequently irritated at the distortion of
affairs and “invention” of events, subsequent to the Rebellion: “To the
Roman Catholics is attributed in England the late rebellion, stained with
every cruelty and atrocity that human fancy can invent and the hundreds of Protestants shut up in a church for their religion and burnt
to death is credited like the Gospel.”134 Lady Moira and the 2nd Earl
of Moira were intensely against the proposed Act of Union, which had
been prompted by the Rebellion of 1798. The Earl of Moira voted against
it in the Irish House of Lords, but then withdrew his opposition to the
Act in the English House of Lords in the mistaken belief that Catholic
relief would follow.135 Lady Moira clearly shows her opposition to the
Act in the following explicit comment: “My opinion is that the Union
will be attempted with redoubled force of obstinacy . . . [and] . . . that they
[the Roman Catholics] should be brought to sign the request after the
union would be giving themselves a death blow” (6 February 1799).136
The “death blow” was not just to the Irish Roman Catholics but also to
the Protestant Ascendancy, many of who were members of the Moira
House salon. The last meeting of the Irish Parliament took place on
2 August 1800. Parliamentary life in Ireland then ceased and was instead
transplanted to Westminster, with a subsequent relocation of members
of parliament and their families.
The Moira House salon reconvened after the Rebellion of 1798 and
continued until Lady Moira’s death in 1808, but it took place in a very
different cultural environment and with the loss of several elite participants. An announcement in the Freeman’s Journal from 30 January 1819
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131
gives an indication of what was to become of Moira House itself: “To be
Sold, Moira House and Gardens, also well secured profit and Ground
Rents arising out of Houses on Usher’s Island.”137 As occurred with many
town houses in London, Moira House was sold by Lady Moira’s children who had no desire to reside there. The house was purchased by
the Mendicity Institution, a charity that had been established in 1818
to provide food, clothing, and lodging to the poor of Dublin.138 Moira
House was altered to suit its new purpose and remained the site of the
institution for 130 years, from 1824 until 1954.139
The Moira House salon clearly espoused many features of the French
salon and there were several explicit links between that salon’s participants and France, including fluency in the language, travel to Paris, and
attendance at French salons. The salon at Moira House was, however,
distinctly Irish in nature and a veritable site for Irish scholarship. The
activities at Moira House salon and the salon’s celebration of indigenous Irish culture forms part of the “major shift in perspective” to which
Clare O’Halloran refers in Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations, in which
Irish Protestant writers celebrated the “Gaelic world” “primarily in terms
of its music and poetry,” rather than speaking of it in relation to barbarism or military prowess.140 At her magnificent home on Dublin’s
Ussher’s Island, Lady Moira welcomed to her salon all those interested in a specifically Irish tradition, whether ancient or contemporary.
Through the promotion of Gaelic language and culture in communion with figures such as Charlotte Brooke, Thomas Moore, Muiris
Ó Gormáin, Theophilus O’Flanagan, and J.C. Walker amongst others,
and the involvement of authors such as Maria Edgeworth, Thomas
Dermody, Lady Elizabeth Tuite, Henry Boyd, and Sydney Owenson,
Lady Moira succeeded in uniting diverse intellectual figures at her
salon. The presence there of foreign visitors as well as figures such as
John Philpot Curran, Francis Hardy, and Wolfe Tone further illustrates
the broad range of participants at the Moira House salon. By valuing the antiquarian tradition and by patronising writers interested in
Irish national and regional tales, Lady Moira brought together in her
salon very different intellectual figures, bound by a shared commitment
to promote Ireland and its culture. Lending her support to a variety
of literary and antiquarian projects, Lady Moira explicitly associated
both herself and her salon with a very particular cultural movement,
using the institution of the salon originally associated with France
to help foster the Gaelic cultural revival of the late-eighteenth and
early-nineteenth century.
5
Collaborative Hospitality and
Cultural Transfers: Provincial
Salons Across England and Ireland
The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who
have been in it. I will venture to say, there is more learning and
science within the circumference of ten miles from where we now sit,
than in all the rest of the world.1
Samuel Johnson’s memoirs and correspondence repeatedly stress
London’s superiority and its pre-eminence over the English provinces.
Yet evidence survives of a flourishing provincial literary life in both
England and Ireland in the second half of the eighteenth century. While
the provinces promoted literature and associational life in a manner
differing from that of the metropolitan areas discussed in the previous chapters, those who resided outside of the capitals participated,
throughout England and Ireland, in various literary gatherings, which
served to encourage and support literary life and elite sociability.
Literary life in provincial England was rich and varied. As Elizabeth
Child has noted, “Towns like Bath, Bristol, Norwich, Exeter and the
new industrial sites, while admittedly only a fraction of London’s size,
still became large enough, and wealthy enough, to support sweeping
architectural renovation, permanent theatres, printers, multiple bookshops and libraries, and even scholarly societies.”2 Associational life was
a key element of this “urban renaissance.”3 Several important learned
societies developed across provincial England, such as the Manchester
Literary and Philosophical Society, founded in 1781, as well as further
literary and philosophical societies in Derby and Leeds, both established in 1783, and another at Newcastle in 1793.4 In Memoirs of the
literary and philosophical society of Manchester (1793), the rules stipulate,
“That gentlemen residing at a distance from Manchester, shall be eligible into this society, under the title of Honorary Members, provided no
132
Provincial Salons Across England and Ireland
133
one be recommended who has not distinguished himself by his literary
or philosophical publications.”5 The Lunar Society at Birmingham was
another important example of intellectual associational life in provincial England, and included members such as Erasmus Darwin, Richard
Lovell Edgeworth, and Thomas Day.6 Literary salons formed part of
this large spectrum of sociability and allowed for the possibility of
mixed-gender gatherings. Two of the most significant provincial salons
were those held by Anna Miller (1741–1781) and Anna Seward (1747–
1809), in Batheaston, Somerset, and Lichfield, Staffordshire, respectively. These salon hostesses benefited from and engaged with provincial
publishers and booksellers, enabling advancement for both provincial
and metropolitan writers alike, and ensuring the continuation of elite
sociability outside of London.
In Ireland, one key example of a provincial salon was the singleauthor salon held by Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) in the Edgeworth
family’s impressive library at Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford. This
single-author salon differed significantly from those salons discussed so
far in that Edgeworth herself was the main beneficiary of the gatherings
rather than other aspiring writers. They frequently served as a platform
for discussion and appreciation of the hostess’s own work whether published or unpublished. This provincial gathering was also set apart from
previous salons in that it was heavily influenced by the availability
of guests or participants and was not the regularly held affair associated with its urban equivalent. Irish literary gatherings were also hosted
by the prolific Sheridan family in Quilca, Co. Cavan, headed by the
matriarch Frances Sheridan (1724–1766), though the exact nature of
this gathering is harder to know, given the scarcity of surviving evidence. As was the case in England, it is important to bear in mind
that Irish literary salons formed part of a larger spectrum of sociability.
This spectrum encompassed the more democratic reading parties and
book clubs, as well as private theatricals, and these differing elements
of mixed-gender associational life took place in both rural and urban
settings.7
Both Sheridan’s and Edgeworth’s literary gatherings were successful in
their own right, but they also had strong connections with metropolitan salons both at home and abroad. In spite of their important role
as provincial hostesses, it is clear that both Frances Sheridan and Maria
Edgeworth can also be understood as participating in something much
larger. These two women, from two different generations, were very
much aware of their counterparts in France and Britain, and they
understood that they participated in an intellectual conversation that
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
extended not only to Dublin, but also crossed national boundaries.
Edgeworth, in particular, has been described as forging links as part of
“an informal network of cosmopolitan women writers.”8 Both hostesses
travelled extensively and communicated regularly with literary figures
from abroad, as well as circulating literary works beyond their salons’
reach. This international conversation also extended across generations
within the families involved. Frances and Thomas Sheridan’s daughter,
the playwright Alicia Sheridan Lefanu (1753–1817), for example, held
a successful salon at her Dublin house, which was described as “the
resort of all the literary people, and foreigners in particular,” while Maria
Edgeworth attended salons in both London and Paris with her father,
the inventor and educationalist Richard Lovell Edgeworth.9 Meanwhile
in England, Anna Seward rejected the attractions of London completely
in favour of remaining in Lichfield, but still attracted many visitors
from metropolitan areas, including Dublin, illustrating the possibility
of cultural transfers between countries via provincial areas.10
The provincial salons’ distance from the capital and its booksellers
did lead to certain inconveniencies for literary figures outside of the
metropolis, but provincial booksellers were able to acquire material
quite quickly, as Jan Fergus notes in relation to John and Thomas
Clay, booksellers in Daventry, Northamptonshire: “They were able to
distribute copies of magazines published in London a day after they
appeared and seldom had trouble filling their customers’ orders for
print.”11 This efficiency led most of the provincial elite to acquire their
books from provincial booksellers such as Clay, rather than ordering
print from London.12 The regional gatherings were all grounded in
the practicalities of provincial life and this is very much reflected in
their functioning. Collaboration was an essential component in their
success, and the exchange of literary material amongst salon participants was key to their survival. Correspondence was also vital to these
gatherings, and the exchange of letters, as well as literary material,
allowed sociability to be maintained despite long absences. These salons
played a considerable role in the encouragement and promotion of
local writing, and all the literary gatherings had a central role to play
in the circulation of books and literary correspondence throughout
rural and provincial England and Ireland. Letters written by the various
hostesses and participants allow us to determine a geographical sense
of provincial salon life and to establish each gathering’s own particular
character. They also enable us to ascertain in what manner they differed
from those salons discussed so far, which took place in metropolitan
areas.
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The Irish provincial salon and networks of exchange
The Sheridan family from Quilca House, Mullagh in southeast Co.
Cavan made a major contribution to Irish literary life in both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While extensive research has been
undertaken regarding the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, there is
still a dearth of research pertaining to the female members of the family,
despite the pioneering work of Julia M. Wright.13 Much of the information that can be gleaned about the Sheridans, in particular the female
members of the family – such as Frances (1724–1766) and her daughters
Alicia and Elizabeth (Betsy) Sheridan Lefanu – is to be obtained from
Frances’s granddaughter, Alicia Lefanu’s Memoirs of the Life and Writings
of Mrs Frances Sheridan (1824), as well as Betsy Sheridan’s Journal, Letters
from Sheridan’s sister 1784–1786 and 1788–1790 (1960).14
The author Frances Sheridan, née Chamberlaine, married Thomas
Sheridan, actor, educationalist, and manager of Dublin’s Smock Alley
Theatre, in 1747. We learn from Alicia Lefanu’s Memoirs that “As Mr
Sheridan had purchased the paternal property of Quilca from his
elder brother, her time was divided between that country residence
and Dublin, where Mr Sheridan had a house in Dorset Street.”15 Co.
Cavan was an important literary location in the eighteenth century,
owing to the Sheridan connection; the presence of the Gaelic poets
Cathair MacCabe and Fiachra McBrady; and the fact that Henry and
his daughter Charlotte Brooke were also resident in the local parish of
Mullagh.16 Unfortunately, little record survives of Frances and Thomas’s
life during the early period of their marriage. We do know that the
Sheridans resided in Ireland from their marriage until they left for
London in 1754, and there are glimpses of Quilca House in the Memoirs: “At this time, Quilca might be reckoned the rallying place where
Mr Sheridan’s generous hospitality collected all the branches of his
scattered family.”17 In addition to family members, select friends were
also present in Mullagh: Sheridan is described as “surrounded by a
party of chosen friends . . . [who] were very desirous that Mr Sheridan
should give them a specimen of the old Irish taste of hospitality.”18
The setting for these gatherings of both friends and family was certainly
spectacular:
Decorations by [John] Lewis in the house of Thomas Sheridan . . . at
Quilca House, Co. Cavan, included ‘a painted Parlour’, the ceiling
painted as ‘sky and clouds’ and an east wall adorned with ‘panels and medallions with portraits of Milton, Shakespeare, Swift and
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Sheridan’, all carried out in the 1750s but perishing with the house
in 1788.19
Jonathan Swift had been strongly associated with Quilca through
Thomas Sheridan’s father, Thomas Sheridan Sr., who met Swift in 1717
and tutored him in Greek.20 It would seem that Lefanu includes Swift
when she states that “many were the visitants whom curiosity attracted
to the spot where admiration of departed genius was blended with
recollections of domestic worth.”21
It is very difficult to ascertain to what extent such gatherings in
Quilca resembled literary salons. Much more substantial evidence survives for the existence of a single-author salon in the Sheridan household during their residence in England. The Sheridan salon placed
an obvious emphasis on literary criticism: “One evening, that the
assembled company were engaged in serious literary disquisition . . . .”22
Those engaged in this particular literary discussion included “the ingenious Mrs Peckhard, wife to the celebrated dissenting minister of that
name . . . [she] frequently occurs in the ‘Correspondence’ of Samuel
Richardson”; the novelist Richardson himself who is described as
“another favourite guest”; as well as Dr Sumner who is recorded as
being on intimate terms with the family.23 Frances Sheridan’s gathering can be described as a single-author salon by virtue of the fact that all
the characteristics of a salon are evident, but it is Sheridan’s own work
that generally forms the basis for the literary discussion and critique.
Those who met her in London employ laudatory terms to describe the
author of the novel Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph (1761) and the comedies The Discovery (1763) and The Dupe (1764). Boswell described her
as “a most agreeable companion to an intellectual man. She was sensible, ingenious, unassuming yet communicative,” while Eliza Echlin, in
a letter to Samuel Richardson, said that she “is, I know, a sensible and
an agreeable woman: she is, I think, a fit companion for that ingenious
man, who is (you justly observe) equally learned and worthy.”24 It is in
Boswell’s London Journal that we get the single most extended glimpse
into the salons held by Mr and Mrs Sheridan:
I then went to Sheridan’s upon an invitation to drink tea and spend
the evening and hear a reading of The Discovery, a new comedy
written by Mrs Sheridan. He and she read alternately. I liked it
much and was well entertained. Mrs Cholmondeley was there, also
a Captain Jephson, a lively little fellow and the best mimic in the
world. Also Colonel Irwin, a genteel, well-bred, pretty man. He told
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137
us some little stories very well. We had some other people, and,
with an elegant supper, the evening went very well on. Indeed,
I was this night but a bad member of society. I was bashful and
silent.25
Boswell’s entry allows us to determine the character of the gathering
with the description of alternate reading, the choice of evening time for
the party as also recorded in the Memoirs above, and the polite atmosphere evoked through the choice of adjectives such as “genteel” and
“well-bred” to refer to guests. It is also quite clear that the focus was on
the family’s published female member rather than on other published
or unpublished authors, despite Colonel Irwin’s “little stories.” A later
event in the Memoirs offers further substantiation for this interpretation
when Lefanu states, “In the end of this year she had finished another
comedy, entitled ‘The Dupe’ which was read with approbation at her
own house by the assembled players.”26
Frances Sheridan’s daughter, Alicia Sheridan Lefanu (1753–1817) has
also been linked to successful literary gatherings. Wright identifies the
participants of the Sheridan circle in the early 1800s, naming Elizabeth
Sheridan, Sydney Owenson, Olivia Owenson (Lady Clarke), and Mary
Tighe, along with the Sheridan brothers Charles and Richard Brinsley,
who provided the participants with support in the literary market place.
Thomas Seccombe notes that “[Alicia Sheridan Le Fanu] took part in
Dublin literary society, especially in private theatricals, and wrote a
patriotic comedy, Sons of Erin, which received only one performance at
the Lyceum Theatre in London on 13 April 1812.”27 It remains extremely
difficult, however, to unearth material relating to the role she played
in the literary society of the time. Wright expresses this frustration
regarding source material: “Much of the biographical material available
on the family stresses these men, with scant attention to the women
authors except as family members and other sources of biographical
documents.”28
Sydney Owenson’s letters and memoirs offer tantalising glimpses of
Alicia Sheridan Lefanu at the turn of the century. In a letter to her father
dated circa 1796, Owenson describes an evening where she and her sister
Olivia first encounter Mrs Lefanu: “She sat in the centre of the room, surrounded by beaux.”29 Of more importance, however, is the information
M. Fontaine related on their journey home:
Monsieur Fontaine told us, going home in the carriage, that her
house was the resort of all the literary people, and foreigners in
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particular. He is to take us to see her some evening, for she invited
us very cordially, and said she knew you, dear papa, very well.30
Albeit secondhand, Owenson’s report here suggests that Alicia Sheridan
Lefanu’s literary gatherings had more the character of a salon than a simple reading party, attracting as it did important literati and foreign visitors in the style of Moira House or the Bluestocking salons in London.
Lefanu is connected with the Bluestockings in another fascinating
description from Owenson’s Memoirs in which she recounts how,
late in the evening Moore came in [to “a little musical party” held by
his mother] from dining at the Provost house, with Croker, and some
other pets of the Provost’s lady, for she was the queen of the Blues, in
Dublin, at that time, though Mrs. Lefanu, Sheridan’s sister, reigned
vice-queen under her.31
The Provost of Trinity College Dublin referred to here was John Kearney,
later Bishop of Ossory. Kearney became provost in 1799 and retained
the position for six and a half years. He married Anne Waller Keating in
February 1805, and it is to her that Owenson refers.32
Maria Edgeworth’s single-author salon also involved many important figures who were attracted to the family’s home. Edgeworth has
already been mentioned in connection with the Moira House salon,
but her family home in Edgeworthstown also welcomed many important Irish literary and cultural figures to its library. Maria Edgeworth
moved from Oxfordshire to Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford with her
family in 1782 and began the establishment of a literary network that
would stretch from within Co. Longford to Counties Louth, Meath,
Westmeath, Dublin, and beyond. In contrast with the Sheridans’ time
in Co. Cavan, much material pertaining to the Edgeworths’ literary life
in Leinster still exists.33 The correspondence is of great importance as it
enables us to gain an understanding of the single-author salons held in
Longford, and also to appreciate how literary networks were sustained
through family connections, literary correspondence, and an intense
circulation of books and manuscript material.
A letter from Charlotte Edgeworth to her sister Emmeline King (née
Edgeworth) allows us a glimpse of one of these literary gatherings:
The company arrived at about 5 o’clock and there were a sufficient
number to fill the library entirely sitting around the room – Mr and
Mrs Tuite, Mr and Mrs Smyth . . . Miss Smyth and her governess, Miss
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139
Wallis sister to Miss Wallis the actress. Now Mr Campbell. The conversation was not very general as there were too many Maria was the
object of every bodies compliment and conversation.
(14 July 1804)34
This salon, we soon learn, continued for six hours as Mr Tuite, who
“generally goes to bed at nine o’clock,” was recorded as having “staid
awake listening to Marias story til eleven o clock the greatest compliment, he ever paid, to any book.”35 The participants on this occasion
involved a small gathering of family and local figures such as the Tuites
from Sonnagh, Co. Westmeath, who came during the evening time
primarily to enjoy Maria’s reading and conversation. As was the case
with Frances Sheridan, in addition to playing the role of salon hostess,
Maria was also the focus of these parties. She shared the roles of governing and mediating as was performed by hostesses such as Vesey and
Montagu, but unlike these women who participated in either equal or
lesser measure to their guests, Edgeworth in a sense formed the conversation, being “the object of everybody’s compliment and conversation.”
At these single-author salons there was not the same opportunity for
discussion and exchange of opinions as in the traditional literary salon
where all participants had occasion to speak.
Clíona Ó Gallchoir has described Maria Edgeworth’s desire to domesticate the Enlightenment and “to reform the Enlightenment salon and
make it acceptable in post-revolutionary culture,” and Edgeworth’s gatherings were certainly a variation on the institution of the salon, rather
than a complete rejection of it.36 Polite conversation was still imperative,
the location for the gatherings was the Edgeworths’ impressive library
and the emphasis of the talk remained almost exclusively literary. Toby
Barnard highlights the significance of the library as a luxurious setting
with his observation that “Few, even in eighteenth-century Ireland, had
rooms designated as libraries . . . These were spaces dedicated as much to
society and conversation as to silent study.”37 This was certainly true of
the Edgeworth’s magnificent library, which became the focus point for
the family’s literary gatherings. As at Moira House, the guests were frequently literary figures in their own right, as is apparent from a letter
from Maria to Miss Honora Edgeworth in which she exclaims: “We have
had a bevy of wits here” (30 November 1809). The bevy of wits that
time included the judge Leslie Foster; Richard Chenevix who was a mineralogist and the author of Two Plays: Mantuan Revels, a Comedy in Five
Acts, and Henry the Seventh, an Historical Tragedy in Five Acts (1812); as
well as Henry Hamilton, a United Irishman, journalist and the author of
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the play The portrait of Cervantes.38 Thus, the single-author salons taking
place in Edgeworthstown also resembled the literary salons in their composition, being formed by members of different professions and social
standing, but all from the middling and upper classes nonetheless.
These particular salons generally served to celebrate Maria’s and
other published authors’ work rather than offering an opportunity for
new authors to enter into the literary marketplace, as occurred in the
Bluestocking salons, for example. That Edgeworth was the focus of these
gatherings is unequivocal, although she was eager to convince others
that this state of affairs was met with approval: “They were all polite
about the reading out of Emilie de Coulanges, and took it as a mark
of kindness from me, and not as an exhibition.”39 Another example
offers further substantiation that it was Maria upon whom attention
was focused, with the recollection: “This summer of 1808 Mr and Mrs
Ruxton and their two daughters passed some time with us. My father,
mother, and sister came also, and Maria read out Ennui in manuscript.
We used to assemble in the middle of the day in the library, and everybody enjoyed it.”40 The audience on both these occasions were members
of the Edgeworths’ extended family, who encouraged and contributed
to the reading parties at Edgeworthstown. Mrs Margaret Ruxton was
Richard Lovell Edgeworth’s sister and the close friend and recipient
of many of Maria’s letters for more than 40 years. Some of these letters are extremely revealing in relation to Maria’s literary work. The
Ruxtons’ home at Black Castle, in Co. Meath, “was within a long drive of
Edgeworthstown,” whilst the audience present at the reading of Emilie
de Coulanges was the Pakenham family, the earls of Longford, who
resided in Pakenham Hall (Tullynally Castle) near Castlepollard, Co.
Westmeath, “which was twelve miles from Edgeworthstown.”41
There are many glimpses of family reading sessions in Maria’s letters
to her aunt Mrs Ruxton, such as her statement that
I write in the midst of Fortescues and Pakenhams, with dear Miss
Caroline P[ackenham], whom I like every hour better and better, sitting on the sofa beside me, reading Mademoiselle Clairon’s Memoirs,
and talking so entertainingly, that I can scarcely tell what I have said,
or am going to say.
(2 February 1809)42
This communal reading is maintained by literary correspondence, particularly that addressed by Maria to Sophy and Margaret Ruxton. This
correspondence supports rather than offers adequate substitute for
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141
actual group reading as Maria’s letters make clear: “But I will not dilate
upon it in a letter; I could talk of it for three hours to you and my aunt”
and “This evening my father has been reading out Gay’s Trivia to our
great entertainment. I wished very much, my dear aunt, that you and
Sophy had been sitting round the fire with us.”43 Maria urges her aunt to
read Trivia and give her opinion on it, allowing both to exchange their
views whilst apart. The letters detail many recommendations of novels
and poems and are filled with expressions such as “at all events pray read
the book” and “I recommend [it] to you as a book you will admire.”44
Other works mentioned include “the charming story of Mademoiselle
de Clermont in Mme de Genlis’s Petits Romans”; “a most entertaining
Voyages dans les Pays Bas par M. Breton”; “Eugene et Guillaume, a modern
Gil Blas”; Mme de Staël’s Corinne, with which Maria, unlike her father,
is “dazzled”; Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison; Austen’s Mansfield Park
and Pride and Prejudice, as well as Walter Scott’s Waverley, which she
described as “a work of first-rate genius.”45 These and the other works
mentioned allow us to generalize about the kind of works being read by
the family, which seem to have been composed principally of French
and English novels, in addition to the examples of poetry mentioned.
The English novels are primarily contemporary in publication with the
single exception of Charles Grandison (1753–1754), which the younger
Edgeworths, Sneyd and Charlotte, were reading for the first time much
to Maria’s envy, as she exclaims that “it is one of those pleasures which
is never repeated in life.”46
The family literary network, the focus of which were Maria’s salons,
was further sustained by the exchange of books between the various
familial residences. Maria writes to Mrs Ruxton that, “He [Richard Lovell
Edgeworth] brought back certain books from Black Castle, amongst
which I was glad to see the Fairy Tales . . . ” (8 May 1794). In turn Maria
states on a later occasion, “I will look for the volume of the Tableau de
Paris which you think I have; and if it is in the land of the living, it
shall be coming forth at your call.”47 Her eagerness to send books to
Black Castle caused her to be teased on yet another occasion, where she
was “laughed at most unmercifully by some of the phlegmatic personages round the library table for my impatience to send you The Mine.”48
Besides Black Castle and Pakenham Hall, in Meath and Westmeath
respectively, another literary location within Longford further strengthened the literary gathering’s guest lists and their reading material, that of
Castle Forbes, at Newtownforbes. Maria alludes to this substantial reading network in her letter to Miss Lucy Edgeworth, in which she requests:
“Ask your mother to send a messenger forthwith to Pakenham Hall to
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borrow this book; and if the gossoon does not bring it from Pakenham
Hall, next morning at flight of night send off another or the same to
Castle Forbes . . . .” (13 August 1820).49 In a letter to Sophy Ruxton she
also mentions, “we have from Castle Forbes 5th volume of Canterbury
Tales – have not read them” (7 February 1806).50
The eagerness with which new reading materials were exchanged
between these literary households can be glimpsed in Edgeworth’s
account of the reception of Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake: “By great
good fortune, and by the good-nature of Lady Charlotte Rawdon, we
had The Lady of the Lake to read just when the O’Beirnes were with us.
A most delightful reading we had” (21 June 1810).51 The letter explains
that the Bishop, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, and a Mr Jephson read the
poem aloud alternately during this particular gathering at which Maria
seems more a silent participant.52 Maria elaborates on the poem’s many
merits before concluding that “Our pleasure in reading it was increased
by the sympathy and enthusiasm of the guests.”53 Extracts from Edward
Berwick’s letters reveal that Charlotte was in fact in communication
with Scott, as her mother had been. A letter from Scott’s Ashiestiel residence in the Scottish Borders area a few years previously acknowledges
receipt of poems by a Welsh bard that Scott thinks of imitating and
declares, “I am quite happy you like the lay, it is a wild story wildly told”
(1805).54 Another letter from Scott refers to his interest in the Round
Towers of Ashby-de-la-Zouche in Leicestershire, “built if I mistake not
by your Ladyship’s ancestor the celebrated Lord Hastings.”55
The importance attached to the circulation of books can be repeatedly
seen in Edgeworth’s correspondence. Maria was most eager to extend
the pleasure of reading Elizabeth Hamilton’s The Cottagers of Glenburnie
(1808) to Mrs Ruxton, for example: “This minute I hear a carman is
going to Navan, and I hasten to send you the Cottagers of Glenburnie,
which I hope you will like as well as we do.”56 Edgeworth’s decision to
send the novel to Co. Meath allows it to be circulated among a much
wider audience and is suggestive of the general dissemination of such
works by members of the Edgeworth salon. This circulation of the works
of Irish authors can be seen not only with regards to prose, but also in
relation to the poetry of Wicklow-born author Mary Tighe. Edgeworth
first mentions Tighe’s Psyche; or, The Legend of Love (1805) in a letter to
Sophy Ruxton: “Have you seen or heard anything of a poem called Psyche printed but not published by Mrs Henry Tighe? – I am told that it
is beautiful . . . .” (12 July 1806).57 Edgeworth obtained part of the work
from Miss Fortescue and then disseminated the material further by circulating her favourite lines: “Miss Fortescue has lent me some extracts
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143
from Psyche. I send you a specimen of the lines which I liked best.”58
That Edgeworth does this is of particular significance in the case of
this specific poem, as Tighe, in spite of the wishes of her literary circle,
had only published a limited edition of the work numbering 50 copies,
which were intended for private distribution. Clearly the widespread
circulation of the poem, as in the above case, meant that the initial 50
copies reached a much larger audience than was originally intended, as
noted by Harriet Kramer Linkin: “Those fifty copies were the only ones
printed during her lifetime, but they circulated so profusely among avid
readers (many of whom made and shared their own copies) that Tighe
was already feted as ‘the author of Psyche’ during the remaining five
years of her life.”59 Sophy Ruxton had obtained a more complete version of the poem as Maria explains in the same letter: “Sophy who has
read it all tells me, that the fable is the same as that of cupid and psyche in Montfaucon,” further emphasising the widespread circulation of
Tighe’s work within the Edgeworth network and illustrating the salon’s
importance in the dissemination of work by Irish writers.60 The circulation of literary material, as well as epistolary exchange, allowed the
provincial salon to extend its relevance and influence beyond the physical gathering itself. These salons were not held at regular, predetermined
intervals, but these cultural transfers sustained the network and permitted the salon’s intellectual debate and literary discussion to continue
beyond the confines of the Edgeworthstown library.
Provincial English salons and literary production
In England, one salon in particular played a substantial role in both the
dissemination of work by regional writers, and also in its creation and
development. Anna Miller established a salon at her villa in Batheaston,
two miles outside of Bath, after returning home from a tour on the
continent with her husband in 1770–1771. Ruth Hesselgrave’s work,
Lady Miller and the Batheaston Literary Circle (1927), remains the only
full-length account of Miller’s salon. The lack of academic interest in
Miller’s salon stems partly from the belief that it was less serious than
those of her Bluestocking counterparts; a belief fuelled by the contemporary ridicule and mockery of men such as Horace Walpole and Samuel
Johnson, and continued by such twentieth-century scholars as David
Gadd who refers to Miller’s salon, and in particular its poetry, as “The
silly coterie which produced this nonsense.”61 Yet while Miller never
achieved the same level of recognition or success as the Bluestockings’
assemblies, her salon remains a testament to the impression made by
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French customs on their English visitors, emphasising the diffusion of
French salon ideas to England, and more specifically, beyond London
to the English provinces. Miller’s salon allows us to focus on a specific
instance of a provincial English salon, demonstrating conclusively that
not all English literary salons were centred upon London, just as not all
French salons took place in Paris.
In a letter from Horace Walpole to Lady Aylesbury, Walpole describes
Miller as having substantially altered since her tour of France and Italy
and, whether he approves of them or not, as bringing with her new ideas
from these countries:
Alas! Mrs Miller is returned [from abroad] a beauty, a genius, a
Sappho, a tenth Muse, as romantic as Mademoiselle Scudéri and as
sophisticated as Mrs Vesey . . . and that both may contribute to the
improvement of their own country, they have introduced boutsrimés as a new discovery. They hold a Parnassus fair every Thursday,
give out rhymes and themes, and all the flux of quality at Bath
contend for prizes.62
Upon leaving France, Miller took with her for her own salon the poetic
game involving the bout-rimé. These bout-rimés (“rhymes without lines”)
involved a literary game consisting of the composition of a poem based
on a set of rhyming words selected by the hostess for her guests. Moyra
Haslett has linked bout-rimés with sociability and clubbability, identifying their dependence upon associational life along with other sociable
poetic forms, such as anagrams, enigmas, and palindromes.63 The boutrimés at Miller’s salon were placed in an urn, the winner chosen by a
committee and subsequently crowned with myrtle by Mrs Miller. While
she joined Frances Burney’s mild ridicule of the bout-rimés, Hester Lynch
Thrale in fact submitted two poems to the collection, one a reflection on
dreams and another concerning the subject of music, both ancient and
modern.64
In an entry in Thraliana, Thrale declared that: “her [Anna Miller’s]
husband and she have a fine house.”65 Miller’s husband Captain John
Miller was originally from Ballycaseymore in the parish of Drumline, Co.
Clare.66 He was created a baronet in 1778, and thus Anna Miller became
Lady Miller three years before her death. Miller’s family, the Riggs,
were also from Ireland, and Anna was the sole heiress to her grandfather,
the Right Hon. Edward Riggs of Rigsdale, Co. Cork.67 Miller thus brought
her husband a large fortune and he adopted her surname before his own
on the death of Anna’s mother in 1788. The Millers used Anna’s fortune,
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145
in addition to Miller’s income from his family estates, to build a large
mansion in Somerset. Miller’s salon involved scheduled meetings. It was
a fortnightly occurrence, unlike at Edgeworthstown where the gatherings were held opportunistically, depending on the advent of visitors.
In spite of the mockery, Miller’s salon succeeded in attracting such attendees as David Garrick and the poet Anna Seward, and produced several
widely read collections of poetry. Edward and Charles Dilly published a
wide range of material during their partnership including many dissenting or unusual choices, for example, Lionel Chalmers’s An account of the
weather and diseases of South-Carolina (1776). It is perhaps this openness
to innovation and novelty that also led them to publish the poetical output of Anna Miller’s salon, Poetical Amusements at a Villa Near Bath, based
on the poetry competitions held in Miller’s salon. Once a year the most
meritorious of these poems were chosen for publication in the volume
of poetry. Four volumes (1775, 1776, 1777, 1781) were published before
Miller’s death in 1781, and Seward declares that the profits gained from
the sale of the poetry were dedicated not to personal gain but to benevolent purposes, being awarded to a local charity in Bath. The publication
was subject to much ridicule such as that found in the satirical The Sentence of Momus on the Poetical Amusements at a Villa Near Bath (1775),
but the first edition sold out within ten days. Interest in the volumes
did not lessen over the years as the following survey of domestic literature of 1781 makes clear: “The fourth volume of Poetical Amusements at
a Villa Near Bath forms a very agreeable collection. Several of them have
much excellence . . . This volume is not inferior to the preceding ones,
and, perhaps, may be considered as excelling them.”68
Another revealing example of a printer-publisher who had an important established relationship with the Batheaston salon was Richard
Cruttwell, a businessman whose success was founded on a provincial
newspaper, the Bath Chronicle.69 Cruttwell is credited as being one of
the earliest publishers to issue local guides through his annual publication of The New Bath Guide (1770–1799) as well as his publication of a
Guide to Cheltenham (1789). In 1778 he accepted the publication of Anna
Miller’s poetic composition, On Novelty: and on Trifles, and Triflers. Poetic
Amusements at a Villa Near Bath, which is described as being “printed
and sold by R. Cruttwell, in St James’s-Street. Sold also by all the booksellers in that city.”70 Although it must be remembered that, “neither
the colonies nor the provinces ever seriously challenged London as a
publishing centre in the eighteenth century,” the successful publication
and sale of On Novelty offers evidence of the possibility of profitable
publishing outside London.71
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Mary Alcock (1741?–1798) was another salon participant who is
thought to have entered the world of print following on from the
previous encouragement of Anna Miller and her salon. Mary Alcock,
née Cumberland, was daughter of “Dr. Denison Cumberland, bishop of
Kilmore, in Ireland.”72 The family moved to Co. Galway in 1763 and
Mary married an otherwise unidentified Irishman referred to variously
as Mr. or Archdeacon Alcock. Mary participated in the Bath salons and
it was “there she announced to her relatives that she had ‘turn’d out a
poet’ . . . through her participation in the celebrated literary salon of Lady
Anna Miller.”73 Markman Ellis postulates that it was “perhaps through
this encouragement, Alcock permitted the anonymous publication in
1784 of a seven-page poem, The Air Balloon, or, Flying Mortal.”74 After
her death in 1798, Alcock’s niece, Joanna Hughes, published Poems . . . by
the Late Mrs Mary Alcock (1799). This volume of poetry was published by
subscription, gaining a large 652 subscribers in total.
Perhaps the most famous beneficiary of Miller’s salon was Anna
Seward. Seward met Miller in 1778 when she was 35 years old and this
meeting and her subsequent involvement in Miller’s salon can be said
to have transformed the former’s life as a writer. After Seward’s poem,
“Invocation for the Comic Muse,” won the myrtle wreath at Miller’s
contest, the poet began attending the salon gatherings in person and
therein gained the courage to publish. Her recognition of the influence of the Batheaston salon in her publishing life is celebrated in
her poem “to the Memory of Lady Miller,” which was occasioned by
the death of that salon hostess in 1781. In her preface to the poem,
Seward declares that the salon was “calculated to awaken and cultivate ingenuity.”75 In the poem itself, Seward directly addresses Miller,
pronouncing: “tho’ all unknown to Fame its artless reed/My trembling
hand, at thy kind bidding, tried/To crop the blossoms of th’ uncultur’d
mead . . . .”76 It is owing to Miller’s “kind bidding” and her urging of
Seward to participate in the salon and the salon’s contests that Seward’s
poetic talents are fully realised. Such sanctioning was undoubtedly a
significant consideration, especially amongst the female members of
such salons who were sometimes reluctant to involve themselves in
print culture in case such an act would transgress the bounds of female
propriety.77
Not only is Miller’s salon represented as encouraging composition,
Miller herself played a key role in the eventual publication of the
resultant material also, as another extract from Seward’s poem further
illustrates:
Provincial Salons Across England and Ireland
147
Safe thro’ thy gentle ordeal’s lambent flame,
My Muse, aspiring dar’d the fiercer blaze,
Which Judgement lights before the hill of Fame,
With calm determin’d hand and searching gaze;
But for thy lib’ral praise, with awful dread,
Far from those burning bars my trembling feet had fled78
Clearly it is as a result of the approbation of Miller and her salon members that Seward felt the “power to pass unhurt the public fire” and enter
“the fiercer blaze,” the realm of print which she had previously feared,
by sending her verses to the London journals and by submitting her
Elegy on Captain Cook to be printed for John Dodsley, in Pall Mall in
1780. As in the Parisian salons, one of the hostess’s primary roles was
to direct and control conversation but her role as an intermediary in a
text’s transition to print was of equal significance. As her poem attests,
but for the “lib’ral praise” of Miller, Seward’s poetry might not have
reached the printing presses.
Seward herself held an important salon in Lichfield, and her gatherings reveal much about literary and associational life in Staffordshire.
Seward was born in Derbyshire but moved to Lichfield at the age of
seven and lived the remainder of her life in the town.79 Unlike
Miller, Seward was both unmarried and untitled, remaining at the
Bishop’s Palace with her father, Thomas Seward, canon residentiary of
Lichfield, and his wife Elizabeth, from the age of 13 onwards. Although
a small town, Lichfield held a strategic position in the English midlands at the time: “An important ecclesiastical centre and market town
from medieval times, it grew and prospered, becoming an important
post town and one of the principal leisure-based provincial towns of
pre-industrial England.”80 Lichfield’s position as both a cathedral and
leisure town attracted many members of the gentry and aristocracy to
the area and its population grew to “about 3,700” by the late eighteenth century.81 Like Birmingham and Bath, Lichfield had a flourishing
associational life to support its provincial elite.82 A playhouse existed
there from c.1736, and a musical society, with public subscription concerts from the 1740s, including annual St Cecilia’s day concerts from
1742, while winter subscription assemblies took place from the mideighteenth century.83 These modes of sociability were supplemented
by the gatherings at the Seward home, which welcomed both local
residents and visitors to the town: “every stranger, who came well recommended to Lichfield, brought letters to the palace.”84 Seward’s own
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
literary salons evolved from the earlier salons held by her parents in the
Bishop’s Palace in the 1760s and 1770s when she was a child and young
woman.85
The Bishop’s Palace, “the resort of every person in that neighbourhood who had any taste for letters,” was an impressive setting for
these literary gatherings.86 The ecclesiastical close in Lichfield had been
rebuilt after the Restoration. This renovation work included the Bishop’s
Palace, “in brick with stone facings.” Edward Pierce was the architect
who undertook the task, over 18 months, at a cost of £3,808 17s. 6d.87
The palace was an impressively substantial building, two storeys high
with dormer windows in the roof and “over thirty rooms, outbuildings and gardens, set in half an acre.”88 During the 1770s the Bishop’s
Palace “became the centre for an important local literary circle, which
included Lichfield physician Erasmus Darwin and at times visitors such
as Thomas Day and Richard Lovell Edgeworth.”89 The library was again
a central element for this literary group and their gatherings. Originally located in a specific building designated as a library, the collection
was transferred to above the chapter house in 1758. In the later eighteenth century the library had “about 3,000 books on loan.”90 The
collection began in 1671 with the Duchess of Somerset bestowing the
Cathedral with the gift of “nearly a thousand volumes.”91 The initial collection grew substantially and later included works by Addison,
Bacon, Swift, and Fielding, a complete set of the Gentleman’s Magazine, as
well as Burney’s and Hawkins’s histories of music, “which, according to
Bothfield, were not to be found within the precincts of any cathedral.”92
This uncommon privileging of musical histories was reflected in the
salon gatherings themselves with local intelligentsia and distinguished
visitors attracted to the Seward residence for both literary conversation
and to play music.93 The gatherings often included the musical talents
of John Saville, “sighing and singing to us, sharing or imparting our
enthusiasms.”94 Saville sang professionally, “organized concerts, conducted oratorios around the country and was under contract to Covent
Garden.”95 In addition to Saville, Day, and Edgeworth, these “musical
evenings” drew in families from the prebendary houses within the Close
including “the Addenbrooke’s, Smallbrooke’s, Woodhouse’s, Vyse’s and
the Garrick ladies.”96
Anna Seward’s own success as a writer occurred in the early 1780s,
after her contribution to the Batheaston salons, with the publication
of such works as the Elegy on Captain Cook (1780), Monody on Major
André (1781), and her 1784 sentimental novel, Louisa: A Poetical Novel
in Four Epistles. This success attracted new visitors to Lichfield who came
Provincial Salons Across England and Ireland
149
with the purpose of meeting the “swan of Lichfield.” The poet William
Hayley, for example, travelled to Lichfield to meet her in the early
1780s.97 As John Brewer has exclaimed: “she did not go to the literary
world; it came to her.”98 Brewer describes these later salons with Anna
Seward “ . . . receiving famous visitors like Johnson, Mrs Piozzi, Erasmus
Darwin, Walter Scott, and Robert Southey in her drawing room.”99 A letter from Seward to Rev. Henry Francis Cary describes the pleasure she
experienced from attracting such luminaries:
At two that day, Friday last, the poetically great Walter Scott came
“like a sun-beam to my dwelling.” . . . He had diverged many miles
from his intended track of return from our capital, to visit me ere
he repassed the Tweed. Such visits are the most high-prized honours
which my writings have procured for me.100
In his introduction to the posthumous edition of her letters, Archibald
Constable recognises this distinction of Seward in being able to attract
noted literary figures to her salon: “The celebrity of this Lady procured
her visits and letters from some of the most distinguished individuals
of her age.”101 As well as attracting established authors, Seward also
became an important patron for aspiring writers, who wished to gain the
salon hostess’s respect and patronage. Echoing the manner of patronage espoused by metropolitan hostesses, Seward’s method of patronage
“took the form of hospitable entertainment, social introductions, and
solid cash advances.”102 William Newton, whom Seward referred to as
“the Peak Minstrel,” represents an important example of a poet who
benefited from his interaction with the hostess. Born in Derbyshire,
Newton, the son of a carpenter, was introduced to Seward in summer 1783.103 This introduction led to the circulation of Newton’s verse
among members of the Bishop’s Palace salon, including William Hayley,
who greatly admired them.104 Indeed, several literary figures admired
the poems to the extent that they wrote verses of praise dedicated to
the poet, as Seward notes in a letter to Newton: “You must get above
idle scruples about shewing, or sending to your friends verses written in
your own praise. The bard, like the warrior, is privileged to display the
trophies he has won.”105 Seward also wrote letters of advice to Henry
Francis Cary, who she first met prior to his departure for Oxford in 1790,
and Francis Mundy, author of “The fall of Needlewood forest.”106
Another visitor of note to Lichfield was Lord Moira’s private chaplain,
Edward Berwick from Co. Down. A letter from Berwick to Seward, written from Moira House on 8 June 1788, reveals further connections
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
between the salons of England and Ireland. In the letter Berwick jokingly sets himself up as “the young Hibernian,” musing that the passing
of time will have led Seward to rejoice that she had “got rid of my
Irish correspondent.”107 He thanks Seward profusely for her hospitality
to him while he was ill in England:
I am now much better than what I was – was I not so well you might
perhaps see me again wandering about tho beneath walls of your
cathedral, or walking in that Parapet which Johnson used to stride a
long in his former & latter childhood . . . Your politeness and attention
to me whilst in Lichfield made such an impression on my heart that
as long as their traces remain I must have pleasure in expressing my
sense of them.108
He also thanks the hostess for a sonnet she sent to Ireland and remarks
on its applicability to his life. It is not only Berwick, however, who
admires Seward, but Lady Moira and all those at Moira House. The clergyman assures Seward of her fellow salon hostess Lady Moira’s esteem,
and offers an explanation thus:
I must tell you that Lady Moira likes you for many reasons of which
I will give you four – First she likes all English people. Secondly she
likes all people whose heads & spirits are sound. Thirdly she practically loves all people born in about Donington Park & fourthly she
thinks she remembers Mr Seward at her father’s and liked him.109
This admiration for Seward is further substantiated by Lady Moira’s
collation of all of Seward’s poems:
she seems well inclined to like you & as a proof of that good propensity has got all your works that have reached the country bound up in
one handsome volume – In short we all like & admire you & will have
great pleasure in hearing from you whenever you have a moments
leisure.110
Thus connections were established not only between provincial salons
and those of the capital within a single country, but also with those
abroad in the same manner as the metropolitan salons established such
networks of exchange.
The importance of the postal system in encouraging and maintaining this associational life has been noted by Brewer.111 Correspondence
Provincial Salons Across England and Ireland
151
was important not only for provincial hostesses such as Seward, but also
for the Bluestockings in London, who maintained contact throughout
the year via the written word. The Bluestocking letters often appear as
written dialogue and have a very conversational form, replicating the
conversation found in the salons.112 Seward herself, described as “a brilliant conversationalist,” was adept at both the written and spoken word.
Her personal writing style can be gleaned throughout her six volumes
of letters, preserved from the 12 she commissioned for posthumous
publication, while Norma Clarke has remarked upon her oral performances: “With her particularly good speaking and reading voice she was
in demand for reading aloud, and would recite her own verses, so it is
said, with a ‘fiery vivacity.’ ”113
In an early-twentieth century biography of Seward, Martin Stapleton
described her reigning as “Queen over the literary society in
Lichfield.”114 While Montagu reigned as Queen in London, and Alicia
Sheridan Lefanu acted as “vice-Queen” in Dublin, Seward presided over
provincial salon life. This provincial salon culture, however, experienced
a similar fate to that of the metropolitan cities: “Though this community of amateur and women poets survived into the next century, its
importance dwindled . . . The world of poetry was reconstructed in a way
that denied the ecumenical and diverse sentiments of the women and
provincial poets Seward championed.”115 The salons’ important role in
promoting the works of all writers, but particularly female and regional
writers, was no longer viable as “by the early nineteenth century . . . the
private world of the coterie has become more guarded and more familial, and sociability itself, whether worldly or textual, is presented more
as a temptation than an accepted aspect of a woman’s life.”116
Salons were still widespread in France at this time, however, and
another hostess, who also came from a dissenting background, Helen
Maria Williams (1759–1827), moved to France in 1790 and continued
the English salon tradition there. Williams’s salon on Rue Helvétius
in Paris began in autumn 1792 and continued there until c.1819.117
Her salon attracted many liberal republicans and anti-Bonapartists and
included the painter Pierre-Louis Ginguené, the natural philosopher
Georges Cuvier, the political economist J.B. Say, as well as Robert
Southey and Samuel Rogers among many others.118 The hostess was
influenced by aspects of both provincial associational life and the salon
tradition espoused by the English Bluestockings: “Her [Williams’s] roots
were in English provincial dissenting culture, and her understanding
of a female-dominated intellectual milieu in the pre-Paris years was
inspired by Elizabeth Montagu and the English Bluestocking circle.”119
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
The hostesses of the provincial salons in England and Ireland attracted
learned participants to their gatherings from both the provinces and
metropolitan areas. These salon hostesses welcomed such figures as
judges, playwrights, journalists, and mineralogists, whose participation
demonstrates that the prestige of a literary gathering was not due to
its geographical location, but rather to the calibre of its guests and
hosts, allowing for several successful salons to take place outside of
London or Dublin. These provincial salons were successful in promoting the sharing and dissemination of various forms of literature. Works
in circulation included novels such as Eliza Hamilton’s The Cottagers
of Glenburnie, poetry written by William Newton, John Sargent, Walter
Scott, as well as hostesses Anna Seward and Mary Tighe, in addition to
foreign-language works such as Tableau de Paris. The exchange of such
works enabled their enjoyment and discussion among families who may
not otherwise have had as ready access to such material. These salons
saw a different form of collaboration than their metropolitan counterparts, with overnight guests and increased reliance on friends for the
acquisition of new titles. In addition, the salons in the provinces were
often more likely to be single-author salons. Literary figures that resided
alternately in both the city and in the country, such as the Sheridan
family, also served to connect the capital and the provinces. During the
century the cultural distance between the urban and rural environments
in Ireland and England had become diminished, helped by this flourishing literary environment and the networks provided by provincial
salons across both countries.
6
“Dublin Is Attribilaire” – The
Changing Nature of Elite
Sociability
It is astonishing the changes that have taken place in the little circle
of my intimacy within a few years . . . .1
While salon gatherings were overwhelmingly literary in emphasis, they
were clearly not divorced from the wider social and political world.
As Ireland struggled to gain parliamentary independence in the late
1770s and early 1780s, an atmosphere was created which allowed
women to assert their own independence and to promote the importance of female participation and visibility within the public sphere.2
The position of salon hostess was central to the place of women in public life, and thus the prestige of the salon would have again risen as
Ireland gained temporary legislative independence in 1782, in what has
become known as Grattan’s Parliament. However, despite this brief elevation, literary associational life, and salon life in particular, was severely
disrupted throughout the country as a whole during the turbulent 1790s
and the early-nineteenth century.
The turmoil of the 1798 Rebellion and its subsequent socio-economic
impact on the country deeply affected the levels of participation in voluntary associations. The pervasiveness and levels of violence prevented
the possibility of normal life and literary gatherings were suspended.
Similarly, the 1801 Act of Union had a massive impact on Ireland’s
literary life, substantially altering Ireland’s social landscape, and the
composition of the salons in particular, as many prestigious salon participants quickly relocated to England. A German traveller to Ireland
in 1806, Phillip Andreas Nemnich, commented on the impact of this
relocation of the elite:
The emigration of the Irish gentry has really manifested itself only
since the Rebellion of 1798 and increased greatly since the Union
153
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
of 1801. The annual remittances from Ireland to the absentees in
England are calculated to be in the region of £2,000,000 sterling.
[Thomas] Newenham tends to think that they amount to almost
£3,000,000 . . . Dublin was formerly to be counted among the most
magnificent capitals of Europe. The nobility of the country had their
townhouses and squandered their incomes with an extravagance that
provided all classes with nourishment.3
Nemnich goes on to state succinctly that, “Now everything is dead in
Dublin, the mansions stand empty.”4
On their arrival in England, these elite Irish figures would have found
a similarly altered social environment. Events such as the Birmingham
riots of 1791, celebrating the second anniversary of the Fall of the
Bastille, resulted in widespread destruction and the collapse of Dissenting sociability: “the Old and New Meeting Houses of the Unitarians were
destroyed, and twenty-seven private houses burned or pulled down,”
whilst the mob also destroyed the laboratory and library of the chemist
and dissenting clergyman Joseph Priestly.5 The Two Acts of 1795,
the Seditious Meetings Act and the Treason Act, restricted sociability
and impacted on cultural life across the country. The retrenchment
of literary salons in provincial England during the 1790s echoed the
transformations that were taking place in elite social life in the capital. Successful salons across both metropolitan and provincial areas in
England and Ireland became more rare, and other forms of associational
life began to emerge.
Lady Charleville’s aunt, Mary Dawson, commented upon the changing make-up of Irish society in January 1806, contrasting the situation
in Ireland with that in England in the following, wonderfully snobbish,
declaration:
What a wise people the English are: if one of our Shopkeepers makes
the twentieth part of the sum you mention he sets up for a gentleman
for life. Cash the Lottery man has purchased your House in Granby
Row from Lord Belmore: indeed I think most of the best Houses are
now in the possession of them sort of people.6
As elite sociability began to alter and decline, more democratic institutions emerged, offering new opportunities for interested people to
engage with literary associational life, albeit in a very different manner.
Book clubs and reading parties developed across Ireland, with book clubs
held in Co. Longford, for example, in addition to various reading parties,
The Changing Nature of Elite Sociability
155
such as those held by Dorothea Herbert (c.1770–1829) in Co. Tipperary.
Unlike the salons, these gatherings in both England and Ireland did not
involve the literati themselves. They also did not generally consist of
members of the upper echelons of society, apart from those in positions
of patrons or founders.
Some elite forms of sociability did, of course, survive into the nineteenth century, such as Edgeworth’s single-author salons. Many of these
elite gatherings now existed in a considerably altered landscape, however. This is true of Mary Tighe’s salon that took place in Dominick
Street in Dublin in the first decade of the nineteenth century. As well
as salons, another elite form of mixed-gender associational life that
existed in Ireland was the private theatrical. There are many instances of
elite theatrical performances in the 1780s in particular, and the examples emanating from Shane’s Castle offer much information on the
conduct of these gatherings – their participants, their aspirations, the
consumption of food and drink, plays performed – while the comparative framework also allows for a greater sense of salon life through
contrasting definitions.
Shane’s Castle and private theatricals
The diary of Mrs Anna Walker, who spent time in Ireland from 1802
until 1807 as a Colonel’s wife, contains several references to theatre performances in Belfast from 1802 and 1803. Walker mentions going to
see Sarah Siddons perform in the Stranger with her husband in October
1802: “We got Places in the Marchioness’s Box, & were very highly
amused,” and attended Way to get Married and Blue Beard the following
month, although with less positive comment: “badly represented, and
the House so Miserably thin that it was quite Melancholy.”7 In addition
to such public performances as these, there were also many instances
of private theatricals across Ireland, such as those associated with Alicia
Sheridan Lefanu. These formed part of salon sociability, and also took
place within the home in the intersection between the private and public spheres. Susanne Schmid has described private theatricals thus: “They
often occurred beyond the immediate circle of the family, included
friends and neighbors, and, as the reviews some of them received in
print publications like The Times or The Morning Post document, could
be brought to the attention of the public.”8 In Ireland, these private
theatricals could occasionally be impacted by religious considerations.
Finola O’Kane mentions the private theatricals at Castletown House and
Carton House in Co Kildare and remarks that “Ascendancy society in
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
Ireland, possibly conscious of the political importance of strict public
adherence to the tenets of Protestant faith, may have frowned upon
the theatre and its attendant milieu more consistently than their counterparts in England.”9 Nevertheless, private theatricals were widespread,
and one particularly important example is that at Shane’s Castle, Co.
Antrim.
In a letter to her brother William Drennan, Martha McTier enquires,
“Do you read our Mercury? In the last you will see your name in the
company with Mrs Siddons and Mrs O’Neill, a strange sort of an illwritten rant, by whom I know not.”10 This Mrs O’Neill was Henrietta
O’Neill (1757/58–1793), the grand-daughter of John Boyle, the 5th Earl
of Cork and Orrery, and thus the niece of the London salon hostess Mary Monckton’s husband, Edmund Boyle, the 7th Earl of Cork
and Orrery. Henrietta married John O’Neill of Shane’s Castle, near
Randalstown on the northeast shore of Lough Neagh in Co. Antrim,
in 1777 (see Figure 6.1). The Castle, originally Edenduffcarick, was the
seat of the O’Neill family of Clandeboy, the former high kings of Ireland.
After the birth of O’Neill’s three children and until the onset of illness
Figure 6.1 Shane’s Castle in Lough Neagh, the Honble. Mr O’Neil’s in the county of
Antrim, 1780. Image courtesy of the National Library of Ireland
The Changing Nature of Elite Sociability
157
in 1791, Shane’s Castle was the site of many spectacular theatrical
performances.
In her position as hostess at the Castle, Henrietta became “leader of
the social and artistic circles of Antrim.”11 Henrietta’s death in Portugal
in September 1793 was recorded by an extensive entry in Anthologia
Hibernica, outlining her role as hostess at Shane’s Castle. The entry hails
O’Neill as “a lady whose elegance of mind could only be surpassed by
the charms of her person: uniting with the polish of courts the brilliancy
of genius, she shone preeminent in the fashionable world.”12 This preeminence in the fashionable world clearly arose from her role as hostess
at Shane’s Castle, but the obituary also celebrates her espousal of the
roles of poet and patron. Both Henrietta and her husband were patrons
of the arts, and have been especially noted for their patronage of music
and theatre, as well as their support of Lady Moira’s protégé Thomas
Dermody.13 Henrietta also supported “her ingenious and unfortunate
friend,” the English poet and novelist Charlotte Smith, author of Elegiac
Sonnets (1784). Smith’s verse in eulogy of her patron is included in the
journal, praising her “native grace” and “native goodness.”
Amateur theatre gatherings, such as those at Shane’s Castle, offered
their participants much fluidity and a multiplicity of roles, with guests
shifting between performers and spectators, as well as offering the possibility of embracing such diverse roles as author or director, which could
be particularly liberating for women, generally denied such creativity.14
Henrietta was herself an enthusiastic amateur actress and performed
with Lord Edward Fitzgerald in a production of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline
at the theatre, which they had constructed at Shane’s Castle.15 Cymbeline
took place on 20 November 1785, and the dramatis personae for earlier
plays at Shane’s Castle have also been preserved.16 The School for Scandal
was acted on 30 March 1781 by a variety of men and women, among
them several members of the Gardiner family male and female: Mr
Jephson, Miss Whittingham, and Mr North. The Farce of Polly Honeycomb
was also performed in 1781, with Mrs O’Neill playing Mrs Honeycombe
and Mrs Gardiner as the eponymous Polly.17
The style of entertaining at Shane’s Castle can be seen in a letter by
William Drennan from Newry to his sister in Belfast in 1784, in which
he describes a “very elegant entertainment and ball,” held by a Mrs
Browne that was “conducted as much in the Shane’s Castle style as a
small house could permit.”18 This elegant entertainment involved “an
excellent supper, good music, and great good-humour, or the endeavour after it.” Despite Twiss’s conviction that music was not cultivated to
any degree outside of Dublin, it did in fact play a substantial role in the
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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
gatherings at Shane’s Castle as it did at McTier’s with “good music and
sweet singing.”19 The O’Neills’ private band was made up of their own
servants who were required to be musicians in addition to their more
usual duties. William Birch and John Sharp, organists at Randalstown’s
town church, directed this band.20 The food and music at Mrs Browne’s
gathering would have been accompanied by dramatic performance at
the O’Neills’ residence. William records a particular performance in a
letter from the following year, in which he criticises the choice of play,
but recognises other merits of the Shane’s Castle production: “The play
was badly chosen, except for dress and scenery, and there will not be
one in ten in the house will understand the language.”21
The clergyman Edward Berwick penned “an account of a tour to the
Giant’s Causeway in the year 1787,” which included a visit to Shane’s
Castle in September of that year. Berwick states that, “We visited O’Neil’s
Castle – there are few people to whom a description of it would not
be useless, for Irishmen have long found easy access to his Door, and
have been entertained in a manner worthy of the Descendants of the
Kings of Ulster by the Noble Proprietor.”22 Berwick expands on this
welcome, mentioning the hospitality of Mr O’Neill and the “condescension and affability” of Mrs O’Neill. He notes the castle’s alteration
in form, but is emphatic that “with those alterations some magnificent
circumstances have been superinduced – Hot and cold Baths in perfect
style – a conservatory built along the Lake [Lough Neagh] consisting
of a great variety of Tropical plants and flowers – and a Theatre well
appointed.”23 While Berwick dismisses the importance of art within the
home, he does note that there are two pictures by Sir Godfrey Kneller,
the illustrious portrait painter, of William and Mary, which he states are
said to have been given to Mr O’Neill’s grandfather by King William
himself.
Perhaps the most famous visitor to the theatrical events at the Castle
was the celebrated tragic actress, Sarah Siddons, mentioned by Walker as
performing in Belfast in the early-nineteenth century. The anticipation
with which this event was awaited can again be seen in Drennan’s correspondence: “I wish Mrs Siddons would pay Mrs O’Neill a visit. Do you
hear anything of it?” (1783). While O’Neill first met Siddons in 1774
after she attended a performance of Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserv’d in
Cheltenham, it was not until 1785 that Sarah Siddons was invited to
Shane’s Castle.24 Siddons’s account of Shane’s Castle in the Life of Mrs
Siddons provides a fascinating insight into the spectacle and is worth
quoting in its entirety to fully appreciate the splendour of the particular
event:
The Changing Nature of Elite Sociability
159
When it was ended I made a visit to Shane’s Castle, the magnificent
residence of Mr and Mrs. O’Neil. I have not words to describe the
beauty and splendour of this enchanting place, which, I am sorry to
say, has been since levelled to the earth by a tremendous fire. Here
were often assembled all the talent, and rank, and beauty, of Ireland.
Among the persons of the Leinster family whom I met here was poor
Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the most amiable, honourable, though misguided youth, I ever knew. The luxury of this establishment almost
inspired the recollections of an Arabian Night’s entertainment. Six
or eight carriages, with a numerous throng of lords and ladies on
horseback, began the day, by making excursions around this terrestrial paradise, returning home just in time to dress for dinner. The
table was served with a profusion and elegance to which I have
never seen anything comparable. The sideboards were decorated with
adequate magnificence, on which appeared several immense silver
flagons, containing claret. A fine band of musicians played during the
whole of the repast. They were stationed in the corridors, which led
into a fine conservatory where we plucked our dessert from numerous trees, of the most exquisite fruits. The foot of the conservatory
was washed by the waves of a superb lake, from which the cool and
pleasant wind came, to murmur in concert with the harmony from
the corridor. The graces of the presiding genius, the lovely mistress of
the mansion, seemed to blend with the whole scene.25
This theatrical event shares many characteristics with the literary salon.
Firstly, the location of the gathering is one of great luxury and splendour; indeed it is among the most opulent of the gatherings described
during this period, with copious amounts of fine food and drink. The
rank of the guests is also extremely high, distancing the event significantly from the more humble reading parties held by Martha McTier
in nearby Belfast, which will be described shortly, and especially those
of Dorothea Herbert in Tipperary. The Leinster family, who have previously been linked with the salons of both Moira House and Lucan
House, are represented here in the person of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and
Siddons’s description of the assemblage of “all the talent, and rank, and
beauty, of Ireland” clearly resonates with previous descriptions of Moira
House. Interestingly, as in the salons in both Britain and Ireland it is Mrs
O’Neill, “the lovely mistress of the house,” who is singled out as hostess
rather than her husband. Siddons’s particular choice of phrasing serves
to clearly connect Henrietta with salon hostesses through their governing and harmonising roles, as she “blend[s] with the whole scene”
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and presides over it in graceful fashion. Nevertheless, despite all these
characteristics, the gathering lacks the essential point of the salon in its
insistence on the performing aloud of plays after the fashion of a reading party, rather than discussion of the chosen work’s merits. It thus
represents a more spectacular, opulent version of the modest reading
parties of McTier and Herbert rather than adhering to the salons’ focus
on literary criticism and creation.
Reading parties and book clubs
Even as these elite gatherings began to decline, other forms of literary
association increased both in number and importance. This was particularly true of book clubs and reading parties. These provincial book
clubs, “a phenomenon of small towns and large villages,” originally represented a form of sociability for the local male elite, allowing them to
come together to eat, drink, debate, and decide upon the material to
be purchased by the club.26 Peter Borsay’s research details these book
clubs in early and mid-eighteenth-century England, up until 1770. He
explains the ephemeral nature of these clubs’ acquisitions and their
general method of operation:
The books they bought were overwhelmingly controversial and topical, pamphlets and slim volumes on politics and religion. The
ephemeral character of these books is indicated by the common practice of auctioneering them or selling them to members by lottery at
the end of each year. Lack of storage space for the books may also
account for these sales, but the value of them was as short lived as
the controversies they contained.27
Later book clubs continued this association with the ephemeral, but
began steadily to acquire a much more permanent nature, even establishing libraries by the close of the eighteenth century.28 Book clubs and
their “larger, more formal and most evolved form” of library societies
existed primarily to accumulate books for personal perusal, rather than
reading them aloud, as they allowed the club to “use the purchasing
power of a large group to facilitate the reading of the individual.”29
The book clubs were originally all male in composition but women
began participating in them towards the beginning of the nineteenth
century. The Woodstock Book Club, the Deritend and Bordesley Book
Club, and the Clapham Book Society all include women in their lists
of members.30 Similarly, the York Book Society was exclusively male
The Changing Nature of Elite Sociability
161
when it was founded in 1794, but by 1803 it included eight women
among its members.31 Admittedly, women were still a small minority in
these clubs. Records at the time show that women were more likely to
be members of circulating libraries, which allowed them access to (predominantly imaginative) print culture, but did not offer them the same
degree of sociability as the book clubs.32 This gap in associational life was
overcome by the establishment of book clubs headed by women, such
as the Oswestry Book Society founded in Shropshire c.1815, whose 34
members included 22 women.33 In Hampshire, Jane Austen was a member of the Chawton Book society, and her letters also associate women
with book clubs and their formation: “the Miss Sibleys want to establish
a Book Society in their side of the country like ours.”34
Amanda Vickery’s The Gentleman’s Daughter (2006) notes the lack of
reference to female intellectual societies, such as these, in diaries and
letters from the late eighteenth century, but then exclaims, “From the
1810s, however, it is another story.”35 Vickery lists book societies established by various women in Lancashire including “Eliza Whitaker in
Clitheroe, Alice Ainsworth in Bolton, by ‘A. B.’ in Preston and probably by Sarah Horrocks in the same town by 1816.”36 The formal
elements of the male clubs were embraced by these gatherings, which
provided for formal officers. While many of these clubs, including that
at Preston, concentrated on novels, the material chosen by the clubs
was not limited to these, but also included “biographies, travelogues
and improving tomes.”37 Alice Ainsworth, whose club had a separate
English and French gathering, expressed her opinion on contemporary
novels thus: “we do not tolerate the common novels of the day.”38
These founding women were of a less elevated social status than the
various Bluestockings hostesses and salonnières from the previous century, but were very much considered as members of the local elite.
Alice Ainsworth, for example, had “married into a family of gentlemen farmers,” while Sarah Horrocks was the second daughter of Samuel
Horrocks, a cotton manufacturer, who later became extremely wealthy
and a member of parliament.39
The situation was reflected in early-nineteenth-century Ireland. Book
clubs and societies in north-east Ulster, for example, “provided access
to books that were beyond the purchasing power of individuals, which
appealed strongly to educated artisans, farmers and weavers in counties
Antrim and Down.”40 As well as these Ulster examples, there are also
instances of such clubs elsewhere in Ireland, which included women.
Lady Moira’s daughter, Selina Forbes, participated in a book club of
her own, which is thought to have taken place at either Mullingar,
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Co. Westmeath, or Castle Forbes itself. Happily, “rules for the book
club” in Selina’s own hand are included in the Granard Papers, dating from c. 1815.41 This allows us a rare look at the conventions of
such a club in Ireland and particularly one in which a woman was at
its centre. Selina’s club was a small one: “The number to be limited –
to 15 – or more according to the wishes of the society,” and there was
an “annual subscription of two guineas each,” which was to be paid to
the Secretary. The book club’s first secretary seems to have been male.
Originally Forbes had written “the Secretary to have the first reading of
all books, as a compensation for their trouble,” but she later crossed out
“their” replacing it with “his.” As with Alice Ainsworth’s Preston club,
no novels, or professional books, were to be admitted. No subscriber was
permitted to write “notes, or marks in the books.” The rules also explicitly outline the fate of the books after the year’s reading, which recall
the earlier book clubs in England:
At the end of the year all of the books to be sold by auction, & the
money to be added to the next years’ fund – all subscribers are obliged
to take the books they have selected at half price, if no one will purchase them for as much or more. All accounts to be settled of Postage,
Coinage &c, with the Secretary & a new one selected, for the coming
year & the new subscription paid in to him.42
These rules are a fascinating body of evidence for the book club and
its policies, enabling us to appreciate its size, subscription fee, choice
of books, and means of purchase. As Archbold suggests, book clubs
allowed members “a relative sociability” and added greatly to the literary associational life discussed thus far.43 These book clubs generally
consisted either of the middle class or “literate lower orders,” making a distinct class distinction between the book clubs and literary
salons.44
There also appears to have been effectively a social difference between
the reading parties and the salons of Anna Miller, for example, with
the reading party generally having no pretensions to be a salon. These
gatherings still retained a literary emphasis, but were generally not concerned or connected with elite guests, well-known authors, or luxurious
surroundings. Dorothea Herbert’s Retrospections 1770–1806 allows us a
glimpse into the world of the gentry in rural Munster, as it centres on
various areas in Co. Tipperary, including Rockwell House, Knockgrafton,
Carrick-on-Suir, and Cashel. Herbert’s memoirs refer explicitly to a
“reading party” that she had attended during her childhood:
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163
Every Evening Miss English used to come up to Tea and a Reading
Party consisting of Mr Rankin the Carshores and Mrs Cooke who
was a great Amateur and Transcriber of Poetry – Miss English being
a remarkable Reader was chief Lecturer . . . Miss Carshore now Supplied her place as Lecturer aided by the Reverend Thomas Rankin,
who being highly enamoured of the fair Widow Cooke was with us
every Evening – Whilst my Mother and Mrs Carshore wished the
Belle Lettres at the devil as it interrupted all Vulgar Chat and Social
Converse.45
This entry allows us to establish a clear sense of what a reading party
was. It took place during the evening rather than the afternoon or earlier
in the day, and refreshments were served in the form of tea. In this
instance, there seems to have been a “chief lecturer,” with the role filled
by Miss English, who was then later replaced by Miss Carshore. These
readers at the party are explicitly linked with literary endeavours, with
Mrs Cooke described as a “transcriber of poetry,” while Miss English
was “the Daughter of a Clergyman Schoolmaster – And was in every
Sense a compleat Learned Lady.” It is also interesting to learn of the
opposition to the reading parties raised by Herbert’s mother and Mrs
Carshore, as they disturbed the usual flow of gossip and instead directed
attention upon the perusal of belles lettres. There were other gatherings
in the neighbourhood apart from those in the Herberts’ family home, as
we are told of a Mrs Honoria English, “a gay old widow lady” who “had a
general Levee every Sunday of All Sorts and Sizes and her house was the
general Resort of Young and Old, Grave and Gay.”46 Again, like the chief
lecturers at the Herbert reading party, Mrs English’s intellect and literary
capabilities are highlighted: “In her Retirement she had read much and
Philosophized more.”47
When Herbert herself began writing poems these were circulated
throughout the county, being read aloud at what she describes as a
levée in Cashel, for example: “My poems were now carried to Cashel
and read every Morning at Mr Hares to a Levee of Roscommon Officers
and all the Literati of the Place.”48 They were also sent to Rockwell, the
home of Andrew Roe, with whom Herbert was besotted: “Mrs Walsh got
Andrew Roe to apply to me for a Perusal of them – I gave them up with
a Palpitating Heart but could never learn what Reception they met at
Rockwell though it may be supposed I was rather curious about it.”49
Herbert’s poetry was also disseminated in the capital where it met with
success: “My poems were shewn to all the Circle of our Friends in Dublin
who honourd [sic] them with great Applauses, but I soon grew tired of
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trite Eulogiums.”50 This reception of her poems is a far remove from her
previous recollections of “A Dublin reception” as a youth in 1779: “The
first thing Mrs Fleming did was to give me a compleat scrubbing from
top to toe as a Quarentine from the Land of the Potatoes.”51
Herbert’s Retrospections span the period 1770–1806 and although her
focus is ultimately personal – romantic and literary – there is nonetheless
a strong sense of context and external circumstance. Herbert notes the
effects of the French Revolution across the European continent:
After the Murder of the Royal Bourbon Race War broke out all
over Europe and England after long Parliamentary Debates agreed
to avenge the Murder’d Monarch – My Design does not Extend to
a Delineation of Publick Disasters but History will show that there
were times of unprecedented Horror and Misfortune – War, Famine,
Pestilence, and intestine Rebellion ravaged all Europe.52
Herbert above explicitly states that her intention is not to delineate on
public affairs, leaving that task to historians, but it is nonetheless important to reflect on how reading parties and salons were clearly affected
by the turbulent events throughout Europe. Unsurprisingly perhaps,
while the ideas emerging from the pamphlet wars, and indeed the Revolution itself, were disseminated throughout England and Ireland and
changed the ideological leanings of both salon hostesses and participants, their espousal by members of the United Irishmen, leading to
the events of 1798, actually interrupted many elite physical gatherings
in Ireland, and prevented much discussion and assembly. Herbert documents the Rebellion of 1798 in her entries from this time: “We soon
after returned to Carrick as the Kingdom was in such a State that
all the Country Gentlemen fled to the Towns for protection – The
grim Horrors of War now took place almost universally, but Carrick
escaped the Carnage that ensued.”53 Her work refers to “open war”
and how “Poor Shortis seem’d to have been killed with a Hatchet . . . ,”
clearly causing the suspension of mundane undertakings such as literary
gatherings.
Johanna Archbold notes that “The foundation of the Society of United
Irishmen in 1791 was a turning point in the use of print in Irish political and associational culture, as the society used book clubs and reading
societies as surrogate bodies to recruit and to inform supporters.”54
While many of these clubs and societies were not merely “surrogate
bodies” but functioned in their own right, the majority were certainly
radical in nature. In the early 1790s, the Presbyterian physician and
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165
patriot William Drennan (1754–1820) writes from Dublin to his sister
Martha in Belfast:
Mrs Bruce hinted to me that infidelity was becoming the order of the
day in Belfast, but I thought she meant too great freedom in religion.
No wonder Kennedy is afraid to trust his wife in your reading parties.
Here, they were merely for intrigue and very stupid to those who were
not worthy of initiation into the mysteries of the metropolis.55
The reading parties denominated by Drennan are sharply opposed here
with those “very stupid” parties taking place in Dublin. The Dublin parties are “merely for intrigue,” whilst those in Co. Antrim at the time
of this letter’s composition in 1794, are clearly linked by Drennan with
radicalism, the United Irishmen, and “infidelity.” Drennan continues
to paint a derogatory picture of the capital’s reading parties in the
following description: “They were generally made to set off one good
reader who thought herself too good for the stage . . . you heard on the
whole very uninteresting, inanimate reading, and long before it was
done there was an eager looking out and longing for supper.” This contrasts greatly with his later description of Martha’s parties as a species
of “Attic entertainment.”56 In addition to opposing reading parties in
Dublin and Belfast, Drennan’s account enables us to further clarify the
actual functioning of a reading party, and to again understand their significant distinction from salons. As in Herbert’s parties there was “one
good reader” who read aloud from a given text, and there was no reference to literary debate or critical thinking, both of which were essential
to the salons. Although he does qualify it as inanimate, Drennan’s reference to the stage highlights the dramatic quality of the reading that
took place.
At the time of Drennan’s above letters from Dublin, Belfast was significantly smaller than the capital: “By 1791 its population was about
one-tenth that of Dublin, a quarter of that of Cork and about the same
as that of Drogheda and Waterford.”57 It is unlikely that established literary figures would have travelled to Belfast, as they did to Dublin, in
order to participate in the capital’s literary life. While its size and the
lack of resident literary figures such as Edgeworth in Longford or Seward
in Lichfield may have inhibited the formation of salons in Belfast,
reading parties like Martha’s flourished, as did many other forms of
associational life. The absenteeism of Belfast’s dominant landlord, Lord
Donegal, as well as that of other important landlords near the town
combined with the related ineffectiveness of the town’s corporations,
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meant that voluntary associations such as the Freemasons and Volunteers became extremely important within Belfast society.58 Associations
involving women for the promotion of public good were also prominent in Belfast, such as Martha McTier’s association with the Humane
Female Society: “I was most unexpectedly voted secretary to a society of ladies formed for the purpose of relieving lying-in women.”59
Drennan above described Martha’s reading parties as radical in tone,
and this description can also be applied to the town’s other literary societies and its publishing community, all of which spread radical ideas:
“Reading societies such as the Belfast Reading Society (later the Belfast
Society for Promoting Knowledge) founded in 1788, printers, including the Joy family, booksellers and newspapers all served to disseminate
radical ideas through print.”60
Letters pertaining to specific details of Martha McTier’s own reading
parties occur in her correspondence with her brother in the autumn
of 1794, although those described are not radical.61 In a letter with a
Belfast postmark dated 4 October from Martha to William, the former
begs Drennan to write something new for the party to read: “[I] beg you
to consider what a disappointment it will be if I do not get it by return
of post, as Monday is our night and I am to have an audience, which,
with readers, is to be entirely female.”62 The next letter in the sequence
is undated but strongly related to the previous, as the letter encloses
a review of the evening’s entertainment and urges Drennan: “I do not
enclose it to you merely to read, but in hopes it may afford you some
little ground to go on, for a prologue to the same play repeated. I really
do depend on you for some agreeable little piece of complimentary
locality.” The same letter affords us a picture of the gathering itself. Its
members were all young women, the gathering took place on a Saturday
night and it consisted of music, reading, wine, and good food:
Our play was read on Saturday night, and went off much to my satisfaction, and that of my young company, without the help of one
man but Sheridan. My room was well lit, adorned with flowers, an
orchestra which faced the readers, who sat at one end round a table
nearly half circle, and covered with green cloth – good music and
sweet singing, and fruit, cakes, wine etc., afterwards, charmed all the
young ones to such a degree that they now pant for a repetition to a
female audience – my poor-school and servants were the last.63
An enclosed review stated that the reading of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s
The Rivals “afforded an innocent, rational, and animated entertainment
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167
to some ladies.” The play was read in parts by those invited by McTier.
The editors of The Drennan-McTier Letters have helpfully provided a list
of the cast:
Martha herself, Anne, niece of Dr Alexander Haliday; Margaret
McTier, two daughters of the merchant John Galt Smith, Catherine,
daughter of Valentine Jones, two daughters of Arthur Buntin, Abigail
and Mary Hamilton, daughters of John Hamilton the banker; Mary
and Hannah Patterson, neighbours of Martha McTier, Bess, daughter of John Goddard of Newry, the daughters of James Fergusons and
others.
Thus indicating the exclusively female nature of the gathering, its
middle-class composition, and its local emphasis.64
Drennan’s failure to send written material for the party angered his
sister, who then refrained from giving him details of another gathering, despite his urging her to do so in two letters. Martha’s eventual
response, dated Friday 24 October, informed Drennan that his place had
been taken by Joseph Crombie, son of the Rev. Dr James Crombie, who
provided her with a prologue and “an excellent modest humorous letter” which she read aloud to her assembly. The “little entertainment”
on that occasion (a Monday) consisted of “a company of forty ladies”
in addition to one man, J. Ferguson, who Martha allowed to partake,
“merely that Sam [Martha’s husband] might have a companion.” New
material was also provided by the United Irishman and lawyer William
Sampson, who submitted a song entitled “a parody on Rule Britannia”
for the amusement of the group, while Joseph Crombie, another United
Irishman, provided a prologue and “an excellent modest humorous
letter.”65 Clearly then, the reading parties could in fact provide a platform for the perusal of new work, albeit of a more ephemeral, much
lighter nature than the work generally submitted to the salons. McTier’s
reading parties were evidently almost exclusively female gatherings,
although concerned with the productions of both the male and female
pen, and thus would have been viewed as virtuous and exempt from the
censure that Louisa Conolly suffered.
Perhaps the most interesting contributor to the party was the novelist
Elizabeth Hamilton:
Acres spoke an epilogue that was also wrote after one o’clock that
day, by a Miss Eliza Hamilton, who just then came to town with her
sister Mrs Blake – Kitty that was. They applied for admittance by a
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good note which I also sent you, from Mary Patterson. She is connected with all the literati in London and is author of a poem called
the Tomb of Columbus, sensible, agreeable, modest, and a Belfast
woman.66
Although not yet a salon hostess, Hamilton’s fame was growing at
this time and her connections with London’s literary figures is clearly
highlighted by Martha. Drennan himself recognizes the importance of
Hamilton’s participation in raising the status of his sister’s reading party:
“Miss Hamilton is a great scribe and genius and her coming among
you as I hear she intends must improve your society much” (January
1796).67 McTier’s gatherings were undoubtedly reading parties rather
than salons, but the contributions of figures such as Sampson, Crombie,
and Hamilton would have “improved” the society and raised them
higher in public perception than those more modest reading parties
described by Herbert.
Post-act of Union salons
Like those in England, salons in Ireland witnessed a decline at the close
of the eighteenth century. While the 1798 Rebellion disrupted habitual life for a specific period of time, as outlined by Herbert, the Act
of Union, which took force on 1 January 1801, changed the make-up
of Irish society dramatically and permanently.68 In a letter from Lady
Moira to Lady Granard, the former outlines the essential political implication of the Act: “You will see the King’s proclamation respecting the
Imperial Parliament, and that ours will therefore not meet again” (10
November 1800).69 Maria Edgeworth records the changes that took place
as a consequence of the Act in her novel The Absentee:
From the removal of both Houses of Parliament, most of the nobility
and many of the principal families among the Irish commoners either
hurried in high hopes to London, or retired disgusted and in despair
to their houses in the country. Immediately, in Dublin, commerce
rose into the vacated seats of rank; wealth rose into the place of birth.
New faces and new equipages appeared . . . 70
All the hostesses and literary participants were affected by Ireland’s
union with Britain. In her biography of Owenson, Mary Campbell states
that Lady Morgan’s salon was the only one operating in Dublin in
1813. She notes that “there had been a great change in that city’s social
The Changing Nature of Elite Sociability
169
climate. In 1800 the register showed 269 peers and 300 MPs with houses
in the city, but by 1821 only 34 peers, 13 baronets and 5 MPs lived
there.”71 The effect was felt throughout the country and caused lamentations such as the following, which was made by Lady Charlotte Rawdon
in a letter to Walter Scott:
Alas! all researches after antiquity, taste, literature, all! all! are
destroyed in this unfortunate country and I cannot forbear remarking
that I see since the Rebellion a ferocity of character gaining ground
among the common people that certainly did not exist formerly and
suspicion seems cherished as a virtue.
(21 June 1804)72
The literary salons continued on into the nineteenth century but they
took place in an altered environment, with the loss of many of their
prestigious members, peers, and politicians. While Dublin, owing to
its parliament, is often cited as the area most affected, clearly the
reverberations were felt across the country.
Mary Tighe’s gatherings offer much insight into both post-Act of
Union salons and provincial literary life before and after 1801. Tighe
was strongly associated with salon culture both in Ireland and abroad.
This was due initially to her ostensible attendance at several salons in
a manner reminiscent of Sydney Owenson, as “With the success of
Psyche, she [Mary Tighe] soon became the darling of the Dublin and
London literati, and she typically presented herself at various salons and
events attired as a modern-day Psyche, in pastoral garb with a chaplet
of roses.”73 Unfortunately, despite the extraordinary nature of this anecdote and its widespread circulation, it is difficult to ascertain the exact
location of these salons, or indeed to obtain any further information
pertaining to their characteristics. Due to Tighe’s correspondence with
her sister-in-law and cousin Caroline Hamilton (née Tighe), and more
importantly with Joseph Cooper Walker, we have evidence of her own
salons in the first decade of the nineteenth century, as well as her position within a literary network of family and local literary figures in Co.
Wicklow and its environs.74
Mary’s mother Theodosia Blachford (née Tighe) was born in Rosanna,
Co. Wicklow, as was her uncle William, who married Sarah Fownes of
Woodstock, Co. Kilkenny, and returned to Rosanna upon the death
of his father. Sarah Fownes’s granddaughter described the drawing
room at Rosanna as, “exactly the room to form young minds to be
busy & happy & prevent a drawing room life of working worsted &
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light reading.”75 The Tighes were a strong literary and artistic family. William Tighe was a poet and his brother, the politician Edward
Tighe, was also the author of political pamphlets and adaptations for
the theatre.76 William and Sarah’s daughter, Caroline (later Hamilton),
was a memoirist and artist, best known for her satirical works depicting
the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, such as Domestic Happiness as Acted in the
City: A Tragic Comic Farce and Society, while their second son, Henry, was
to become Mary’s husband in October 1793. Unlike the majority of the
Anglo-Irish gentry, Henry and Mary spent most of the 1790s in England
before returning to Ireland in 1801, whereupon Mary “immersed herself in her writing.” It was during this period, from 1801 to her death
in 1810, that Mary gained great literary fame and established an important literary circle that visited her in both Co. Wicklow and at Dominick
Street in Dublin.
In addition to the Tighe family, important literary and antiquary
figures such as J.C. Walker, Isaac Ambrose Eccles, and William Parnell
also resided in Co. Wicklow, making it another important literary location on the Irish landscape, along with Counties Down, Longford and
Cavan. I.A. Eccles was “an eminent drama critic” as well as publisher of
several of Shakespeare’s plays, which he believed had not been edited
correctly previously.77 In an undated letter, written at Rosanna and
directed to J.C. Walker, Mary Tighe refers to this neighbouring literary
scholar:
I think you know our next neighbour Mr Eccles – he has a very fine
library I have heard, but he is not quite so liberal in that way as some
other friends of mine for tho pretty well known at Cronroe I never to
my knowledge saw even the outside of one of his books – I am told
he scarcely regales himself with the view of his valuable collection &
that his treasures are three deep in the shelves . . . .78
The success of both literary gatherings and, by default, literary correspondence, depended on the procurement of books by the gatherings’
hosts. Outside of the capital, members of literary circles were even more
dependent on each other for obtaining new works, or indeed older,
more obscure titles if they did not possess a great collection of their
own, as the Edgeworths did. Tighe’s scathing comments above highlight
the expectation that books would be circulated amongst reading circles
rather than selfishly hoarded.
Tighe does refer frequently to her own family library, although generally in mournful terms: “There are a vast number of Italian books in this
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171
library but almost all old travels – I wish my ancestors hadn’t happen’d
to like books more in my way.”79 Walker’s collection, however, seems to
have been extremely well furnished and Tighe is repeatedly allowed to
access it – “I shall put your patience further to the test & myself reap
much pleasure by a pillaging visit to your library.”80 Tighe also refers to
the importance of circulating libraries in obtaining books:
Have you read the Lay of the last Minstrel? I confess I was a little
disappointed . . . & besides I was a little provoked at the magnificent
expense of the work, which – [presumably ‘placed it’] beyond the
reach of common readers, except this the medium of a circulating
library & great perseverance by which I at last obtained it. . . .
(19 April 1806)
Despite these lamentations, Tighe nevertheless did manage to acquire
many new works, which she then generally put into further circulation: “I believe I have at this moment the only Ida yet in Ireland” and
“We have been much entertained with Miss Edgeworth’s new tales –
I got them and Madme Genlis last novel Alphonse by post & when
I return to Dublin will forward them for your perusal if you have not
had them first.”81 This exchange of literary material extends also to the
communication of manuscript material, as the following makes clear:
“I also send Mrs Wilmot’s canzone which I value as a gift from the lady
herself, & also for its merit. I send you also for your perusal a few of her
MSS poems which I think very pretty.”82
Mrs Wilmot was amongst those invited to Tighe’s parties in Dominick
Street, which are dated in the journals by Theodosia Tighe as having
taken place from November 1805 to June 1806, although some participants, such as Owenson, date their continuance into 1809.83 In Caroline
Hamilton’s 1825 memoirs of her cousin, she relates that, “While Mary
lived in Dominick Street she was visited (as she says herself in one
of her letters) by ‘troops of friends’ all vieing with each other which
should contribute most to her amusement.”84 Caroline described these
as “little evening parties,” in which “Moore sang his sweetest songs
to a few (perhaps not more than 8 or 10) of those who were then
the most esteemed in Dublin, for rank or talents.”85 These eight or
ten included Sydney Owenson, William Parnell, and Lydia White, as
well as Mrs Wilmot, her sister Lady Asgill, and Lady Charlemont (Anne
Bermingham of Marion House, Dublin). Tighe mentions Owenson’s
presence in an undated letter to J.C. Walker in which she states: “I see a
good deal of Miss Owenson & Moore – Miss White is settled in Dublin
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for the winter – I wish my dear Sir I could sometimes have the pleasure & improvement of your society in my evening circles which are
often very agreeable to me.”86 According to Hamilton, referring to these
evening parties, “she [Mary Tighe] tried to bring together those who
could talk to amuse her, while she often remained silent, at her work,
the little she ever said, at such times, was pointed and interesting.”87
Tighe is described as lying on the couch during these gatherings rather
than taking an active part in proceedings or governing and dominating
them as Edgeworth did. Indeed her portrayal as host is quite distinct
from the governing role of the salon hostesses described throughout
both Ireland and Britain. However, it must be remembered that Tighe
had been ill with tuberculosis since her diagnosis in 1804, and this
would have significantly impacted on her embracing of the role of salon
hostess. Despite these considerations, the reputation of the guests, as
well as the musical accompaniment, make the gatherings seem akin to
the salons of Vesey or Lady Moira. Thomas Moore directly links Tighe
to the Bluestockings in a letter to a Miss Godfrey in 1806: “I regret
very much to find that she [Mary Tighe] is becoming so ‘furieusement littéraire’: one used hardly to get a peep at her blue stockings
but now I am afraid she shows them up to the knee.”88 While this is
clearly stated in a disapproving fashion, Tighe was nonetheless explicitly associated with the Bluestocking network at the time of her literary
gatherings.
We are told by Hamilton that “Moore visited her [Mary Tighe] constantly & often submitted his works, to her criticism, while they were yet
in manuscript,” but it does not seem that these works were submitted
for general discussion and editing by the participants, but rather solely
by Tighe herself. Tighe was no doubt very interested in Moore’s Irish
melodies, as her letters to Walker trace the development of the poet’s
awakening to the attractions of Irish history, with questions directed at
Walker including: “Is there such a thing as a map of Ireland with the
ancient native unlatiniz’d names? What is the best work to gain information with respect to the situation of Ireland or the legends concerning
it?” or statements such as, “When I do get an hour to read I am still
entirely in Irish hist[ory] – I have got [Sir James] Ware but find him very
heavy on hand – not like the engaging, naïf, credulous good Keating”
(Tighe’s own emphasis).89 Her interest in Irish history extends also to
Gaelic language and to Gaelic literature:
. . . Delighted with the Reliques of Irish poetry & knew your Miss
Brooke well when a child . . . Rosanagh is the old name & I have been
The Changing Nature of Elite Sociability
173
told signified wholesome dews – you are an Irish scholar & I envy you
for being able to ascertain this from your own knowledge.90
Moore’s “sweetest songs,” which Caroline records as being sung during
the evening parties, were perhaps, one can speculate, belonging to his
Irish melodies, of which Moore had “completed the first and second
numbers” by June 1807.91
Hamilton above refers to these gatherings as “evening parties,”
Owenson as “petites parties”: “Dublin is attribilaire, [atrabilaire: bilious]
and though I am asked to whatever is going on, I scarcely appear anywhere, except at les petites parties of the dear Psyche” (1809). Owenson’s
choice of atrabilaire to describe the city tells us much about her view of
Dublin society at this time. Atra bilis, or “black bile,” is a translation
of the Greek melanckholia, and it is as though Tighe’s parties represent
something of a refuge from the melancholy state of the capital. There is
a clear sense that Dublin is a very different place in the wake of the Act
of Union.92 The prestige of the Irish literary gatherings diminished with
the relocation of government and power to England, although some still
offered solace for Owenson and others. These solace-filled “petites parties” were unfortunately of short duration, owing to Tighe’s ill health
and her early death at age 37. By 1812, Owenson was lamenting the
loss of her literary acquaintances due both to relocation to England
caused by the Act of Union and natural death: “It is astonishing the
changes that have taken place in the little circle of my intimacy within
a few years, either by death or departure to England. Among my literary
friends, dear Psyche, Cooper Walker, and Kirwan are no more!”93
Transfers and transformations
While literary associational life continued to flourish, social and political challenges faced by members of Irish and English society at the
close of the eighteenth century were mirrored in reduced salon activity. The original circumstances that allowed for the emergence of salons
as important examples of elite associational life included the feminisation of culture and the promotion of female genius; political stability
and the secure position of elite communities; the importance of politesse
for conversation; and the agreeable environment for publishing, particularly with regards to female authors. These conditions persisted for
most of the eighteenth century, allowing for the salon’s continuance,
through various transformations, across eighteenth-century Britain and
Ireland. The salon’s key elements – luxurious space, select company,
174
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
female governance, and polite conversation – were augmented by
salon hostesses’ espousal of particular emphases for their individual
gatherings, such as the promotion of self-education, access to literary
networks, the negotiation of national identity, or the dissemination
of regional writing. Salon life was temporarily disrupted by events
such as the French Revolutionary Wars, the 1798 Rebellion, and the
Birmingham riots, but the changes in elite sociability at the close of the
eighteenth century, for which these events were catalysts, were more
permanent and altered the social landscape of the salons dramatically.
Changes brought about by the revolution of 1789 affected the aristocracy’s relationship to political life, England’s attitude to French culture,
and women’s position within society, as well as literature. Associational
life became more radicalised and there were changes with regards the
role of politeness in conversation as radical societies multiplied in the
1790s. Legislation such as the Two Acts of 1795 and Article 291 of
the 1810 code affected the possibility of associational life, while the
Act of Union transformed the make-up of Ireland’s elite. Perhaps the
most important consequence of the French Revolution, however, was
the gradual democratisation of society and the resultant effect on elite
sociability and salon life. The luxurious lifestyles of the elite in France
became anachronistic, whilst the “glitter” and opulence of Bluestocking
salons or the splendour of Moira House were no longer apposite. With
the retrenchment of salons, less elite literary gatherings emerged, with
the simultaneous proliferation of reading parties, cercles, and book clubs,
such as those held by Dorothea Herbert, Martha McTier, Selina Forbes,
and Alice Ainsworth. As had occurred in France with the popularity of
the cercles, literary associational life had become largely democratised,
with the salon’s elite structure and exclusivity becoming widely replaced
by popular literary gatherings, which allowed access to a greater number
of enthusiastic men and women.
Despite these circumstances, there is evidence of a tenuous continuation of salon life. In addition to Mary Tighe’s gatherings in a vastly
changed post-Act of Union Dublin, salons were also held by nineteenthcentury hostesses such as Lady Holland and Lady Morgan in London
and Dublin respectively. Equally, the musical salons of Winaretta Singer,
later the Princesse de Polignac, in Venice and Paris, demonstrate the continuing emulation of the original French salon, as does that hosted by
Lady Jane Wilde in Dublin’s Westland Row and Merrion Square.94 The
literary salon does, in fact, continue to the present day, albeit it in highly
altered form, and generally without a host or hostess. The organisers
of “Stornoway Literary salon,” held in Stornoway Library, in Scotland’s
The Changing Nature of Elite Sociability
175
Outer Hebrides claims: “The literary salon will present regular events,
readings, networking and socialising opportunities for everyone with an
interest in writing, books, ideas and all things literary.”95 Unlike many
contemporary book clubs which misuse the term “salon” entirely (such
as the London Literary salon whose tagline initially read “a book club
worth paying for”), the Stornoway salon aims for a degree of emulation
and includes established and aspiring writers as well as avid readers.96
Current discussions of literary salons are also frequent in newspapers
such as The Sunday Times and The Guardian, which published “Tweeting
of minds in the 21st century literary salon” (February 2010) and “where
are our literary salons?” (Book blog April 2008), respectively. A publication by the American digest “Utne Reader,” entitled Salons: the joy of
conversation (1991; republished 2001), offers readers a guide to establishing their own literary salons, using examples of eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century salons as models. However, it is the Internet that is
suggested by many as the site for modern literary salons, allowing for discussion and debate of contemporary publications online.97 The online
espousal of the term “salon” represents the ultimate departure from the
original incarnation of the word. This form of the modern literary salon
eschews hostess, physical site, meritocracy, refreshments, and such qualities as harmony and politesse, distancing it too much from the various
intentions and essential qualities of the salon through the centuries.
One contemporary salon has stayed remarkably true to the original
sense of the term, however, and that is the Shoreditch literary salon
in London. Rather than replicate the salons of earlier centuries, it has
altered and adapted the salon to meet present needs and to incorporate present technologies, echoing the French salon’s transformations
from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Damian Barr, columnist, playwright, and writer is described as “a modern day salonnière.”98
The salon commenced in 2008 and its success is apparent from decisions of authors such as Helen Fielding to write the first three pages of
what was to become Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy for the salon’s participants, or David Nichols to launch his novel One Day at the salon.99
Its success has sparked a huge interest in such salons and others are
now beginning in London and elsewhere. Thus, while the salons suffered decline from the early-nineteenth century, there have been many
important examples of salons, which have survived until the current
day, emulating and exporting the idea of the salon to new generations.
These literary salons illustrate the changing nature of sociability and the
continuing importance of the transfer of literary works and ideas across
national boundaries.
176
Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century
Those who engage in the study of cultural transfers insist upon the
fact that “transfer always entails transformation.”100 The eighteenthcentury salons played a central role in the transnational circulation
of ideas, goods, and practices, and a comparative approach to salon
sociability, incorporating cultural transfer theory, allows a reconfiguration of both their role and influences. It enables us to understand the
salons in a new way, through attention to these transfers and exchanges,
as well as the salon’s place within the contemporary social environment in France, Britain, and Ireland. The transfer model also highlights
“the large share of foreign cultural import in each of the ostensibly selfcontained national cultures.”101 The Irish contribution to the literary
salons offers a new understanding of both French and British salons,
with elite Irish men and women active in shaping salons across France
and Britain, as well as participating in and structuring debate at home.
Literary gatherings within the homes of the elite in Ireland,
whether at Moira House or Lucan House, on Dominick Street or in
Edgeworthstown, played an instrumental role in crossing the distance
between private and public social realms, articulating and supporting
innovations in contemporary literary culture and knowledge production more broadly. They offered interested participants a forum for the
development of new research and literary texts, while they enabled all
participants to come together to engage in conversation and debate on
a range of topics. Long neglected, Irish literary salons had a significant
role to play within both Britain and Ireland with respect to literature,
antiquarianism, performance, translation, and art. They also played an
important role in creating and sustaining cosmopolitan networks and
influencing intellectual debate. Current interest in the literary, cultural,
and architectural history of Ireland will, it can be hoped, add to the
understanding and appreciation of the importance of literary salons
across both Ireland and Britain in the long eighteenth century.
Notes
Introduction
1. Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon, Journal de Marquis de Dangeau avec les
Additions du Duc de Saint-Simon, vol. 3 (Paris, 1854) 125, referring to the salon
of Mme de Rambouillet,
Une espèce d’académie des beaux esprits, de galanterie, de vertu et de
science, car toutes ces choses-la s’accomodoient alors merveilleusement
ensemble, et le rendez-vous de tout ce qui étoit le plus distingué en condition et en mérite, un tribunal avec qui il falloit compter, et dont la
décision avoit un grand poids dans le monde.
All translations are my own unless otherwise stated.
2. Ute Brandes, “Salons,” The Blackwell Companion to the Enlightenment (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1991) 471.
3. “Sociability,” n. Third edition of Oxford English Dictionary, September 2009;
21 January 2015. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/183735.
4. Vicesimus Knox, Essays Moral and Literary . . . vol. 2 (London, 1782) 81.
5. Siobhán Kilfeather, “The Profession of Letters, 1700–1810,” in The Field Day
Anthology of Irish Writing: Irish Women’s Writing and Traditions, vol. 5, ed.
Angela Bourke et al. (Cork: Cork UP, 2002) 776.
6. See for example, James Kelly and Martyn Powell, eds., Clubs and Societies in
Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010).
7. Markman Ellis, “Coffee-Women, The Spectator and the Public Sphere in the
Early Eighteenth Century,” Women, Writing and the Public Sphere, 1700–1830
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001) 27–52.
8. Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies 1580–1800, The Origins of an
Associational World (Oxford: OUP, 2002) 204.
9. Indeed a footnote advises “see below, pp 198–204” and this is the extent to
which women feature in the book.
10. Toby Barnard, “ ‘Grand Metropolis’ or ‘The Anus of the World’? The Cultural Life of Eighteenth-Century Dublin,” in Two Capitals. London and Dublin
1500–1840, ed. Peter Clark and Raymond Gillespie (Oxford: OUP, 2001)
191. There are, however, important exceptions, such as the significant work
carried out by Lady Arabella Denny with regards to the Dublin Foundling
Hospital and Magdalen asylum, see Frances Clarke, “Lady Arabella Denny,”
Dictionary of Irish Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, with Royal Irish
Academy, current) henceforth DIB.
11. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans.
Thomas Burger (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002) 30.
12. For discussion of the “problem of orders” and an understanding of the different members of elite society including peers, aristocrats, and gentry, see Toby
Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland, The Irish Protestants, 1649–1770 (New
177
178
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
Notes
Haven and London: Yale UP, 2004), and Katharine Glover, Elite Women and
Polite Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011).
John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination (London: HarperCollins, 1997)
34; 37. Of course, there were also aristocratic clubs and societies in existence,
the most famous perhaps being the Kit Cat Club (c.1696–1720), “It included
many of the powerful Whig grandees of taste and no fewer than ten of its
members were dukes,” Brewer 41.
There were also examples of male hosts or joint male and female hosts,
generally a married couple, and these are included throughout the current
study.
Necker to Grimm, 16 January 1777, in Necker, Nouveaux Mélanges extraits des
Manuscrits de Mme Necker,
r ed. Jacques Necker (Paris, 1801) 344–345.
Chauncey Brewster Tinker, The Salon and English Letters: Chapters on the Interrelations of Literature and Society in the age of Johnson (New York: Macmillan,
1915) 223.
David Hume, Essays Moral Political and Literary, ed. Eugene Miller, Revised
Ed. (Indianapolis, Liberty Classics, 1987) 271.
Barbauld, quoted in Christina de Bellaigue, Educating Women: Schooling and
Identity in England and France, 1800–1867 (Oxford: OUP, 2007) 19.
Elizabeth Eger, Bluestockings: Women of Reason From Enlightenment to Romanticism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) 106.
E.J. Clery, The Feminization Debate in Eighteenth-Century England: Literature,
Commerce and Luxury (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
Benedetta Craveri, The Age of Conversation, Trans. Teresa Waugh (New York:
New York Review Books, 2005) xiv.
Stephen Conway, Britain, Ireland, and Continental Europe in the Eighteenth
Century, Similarities, Connections, Identities (Oxford: OUP, 2011) 112.
Amanda Vickery and John Styles, eds., Gender, Taste and Material Culture
in Britain and North America, 1700–1830 (New Haven: The Yale Centre for
British Art, 2006) 285. Vickery’s Behind Closed Doors, at Home in Georgian
England (2009), is also very useful in relation to British material culture,
as is such collaborative work as Jeremy Aynsley and Charlotte Grant’s
Imagined Interiors: Representing the Domestic Interior since the Renaissance
(2006).
As Patrick Walsh has noted, “Some of this neglect can be attributed to postcolonial political and cultural concerns which have pushed the study of
country houses to the margins of Irish historiography except where they
dealt with the break-up of the great estates during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century.” Patrick Walsh, “William Conolly and Castletown,”
in The Irish Country House, Its Past Present and Future, ed. Terence Dooley and
Christopher Ridgway (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011) 25.
Dooley 16.
Examples include the National University of Ireland Maynooth’s Centre
for the Study of Historic Houses in Ireland, www.historicirishhouses.ie, and
NUI Galway’s comprehensive database on landed estates and historic houses
in Connacht and Munster – Landed Estates Database, www.landedestates.ie.
Granard Papers, T3765/N.
Madame de Rambouillet is said to have drawn up the plans for the 1619
and 1627 renovations of the Hôtel de Rambouillet herself, see Pamela
Notes
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
179
Plumb-Dhindsa, “From Royal Bed to Boudoir: The Dissolution of the Space
of Appearance Told Through the History of the French Salon,” MA thesis,
McGill University, 1998, 10.
Le Trésor de la Langue Française dates its first use in this manner to 1793, but
Jacqueline Hellegouarc’h has traced that use to 1783 after discovering the
term in volume VI of Tableau de Paris. Jacqueline Hellegouarc’h, L’Esprit de
société: cercles et “salons” parisiens au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Garnier, 2000) 450.
The OED suggests Frances Burney’s reference to “the conversazione” in 1782
as one of the first examples of the entrance of the term into English but there
are many examples of earlier usage, including the following from Hannah
More: “I was engaged at Mrs Boscawen’s to meet by appointment a party.
It was a conversazione, but composed of rather too many people . . . ” (1776),
Hannah More, Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs Hannah More,
ed. William Roberts, vol. 1 (London, 1834) 92, while Thomas Gray mentions
them as early as 1739 in a letter to Richard West, where he refers to “the
Marquise de Cavaillac’s Conversazione,” Thomas Gray, The Works of Thomas
Gray, vol. 2 (London, 1835) 70.
Máire Kennedy, “Readership in French: The Irish Experience” in Ireland and
the French Enlightenment, 1700–1800, ed. Graham Gargett and Geraldine
Sheridan (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999) 14.
Elizabeth Carter,
r A Series of Letters between Mrs Elizabeth Carter and
Miss Catherine Talbot, from the Year 1741 to 1770 . . . (London, 1808) 374; 177.
Stefanie Stockhorst, ed. Cultural Transfer through Translation, The Circulation
of Enlightened Thought in Europe by means of Translation (Amsterdam and
New York: Rodopi, 2010) 20.
Ann Thomson, Simon Burrows, and Edmond Dziembowski, eds. Cultural
Transfers, France and Britain in the Long Eighteenth Century (Oxford: SVEC,
2010) 4.
Conway 213.
Emma Major, “Femininity and National Identity: Elizabeth Montagu’s Trip
to France,” ELH 72 (2005): 901–918.
Joep Leerssen, Mere Irish and Fíor-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality,
its Development, and Literary Expression Prior to the Nineteenth Century (Cork:
Field Day Press, 1996) 17.
Andrew Carpenter, “Poetry in English, 1690–1800: From the Williamite
Wars to the Act of Union,” Cambridge History of Irish Literature (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2006).
Emily Fitzgerald, “Duchess of Leinster,” in Correspondence of Emily, Duchess of
Leinster (1731–1814), ed. Brian Fitzgerald, vol. 3 (Dublin: Stationery Office,
1949–1957) 379.
Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance, Culture and Society in the Provincial
Town, 1660–1770 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) 135.
Toby Barnard, “Reading in Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Public and Private
Pleasures,” in The Experience of Reading,
g ed. Máire Kennedy and Bernadette
Cunningham (Dublin: Rare Books Group, 1999) 65.
Barnard 68.
Mark Purcell, The Big House Library in Ireland, Books in Ulster Country Houses
(Swindon: The National Trust, 2011) 13.
Purcell 13.
180
Notes
45. Anthony Malcolmson, The Pursuit of the Heiress: Aristocratic Marriage in Ireland
(Belfast: Ulster History Foundation, 2006) 122.
46. Granard Papers, T3765/N/2; Ross Balfour, ed., The Library of Mrs Elizabeth
Vesey (Newcastle-on-Tyne: Robinson, 1926).
1 The French Salon: Its Foreign Participants and Hosts
1. Dashkova, The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova, ed. Kyril Fitzlyon (Durham,
NC: Duke UP, 1995) 127.
2. Edward Gibbon, Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq. with Memoirs of
His Life and Writings, Composed by Himself . . . (London, 1796) 432.
3. Steven D. Kale, French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the
Old Regime (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 2004) 229.
4. André Morellet, Mémoires Inédits de l’abbé Morellet de l’Académie
française . . . (Paris, 1822) 85, “Many foreigners from all different countries
who would not have believed they had really seen Paris if they had not
been admitted to Mme Geoffrin’s.”
5. For further discussion regarding how war interrupted travel to France
throughout this period, see Jeremy Black, “War, Disputes, Accidents and
Crime,” in The British Abroad, The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century
(New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992) 159–181.
6. “Mme de Tencin [1682–1749] was in fact one of the first hostesses to regularly receive foreign visitors,” Benedetta Craveri, The Age of Conversation,
trans. Teresa Waugh (New York: New York Review Books, 2005) 288.
7. Marianne D’Ezio, “Literary and Cultural Intersections between British and
Italian Women Writers and Salonnières during the Eighteenth Century,”
in Readers, Writers, Salonnières, Female Networks in Europe, 1700–1900, ed.
Hilary Brown and Gillian Dow (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011) 29.
8. The substantial material dealing with the close relationship between Ireland
and France in the eighteenth century has been added to with the publication of two collected editions: Graham Gargett and Geraldine Sheridan’s
Ireland and the French Enlightenment, 1700–1800 (1999) and Jane Conroy’s
Franco-Irish Connections (2009). Thomas O’Connor’s The Irish in Europe:
1580–1815 (2001), though broader in range, also adds significantly to our
understanding of Franco-Irish relations at this time.
9. O’Connor 9.
10. Mme de Lambert, Réflexions nouvelles sur les femmes (Paris: Cote-femmes,
1989) 93, “In the past there were houses where one could both speak and
think, where the muses were in company with the graces.”
11. Nicole Pohl, “Perfect Reciprocity: Salon Culture and Epistolary Conversations,” Women’s Writing 13.1 (2006): 139–159.
12. Craveri 210.
13. It is important to bear in mind that, although useful, salonnière is a recent
coinage, and probably of American origin rather than French.
14. Jean-François Marmontel, Mémoires de Marmontel, secrétaire perpétuel de
l’académie française (Paris, 1846) 231. “Lespinasse was the only woman
Geoffrin would ever allow attend her dinner in honour of the men of
letters.”
Notes
181
15. Suzanne Curchod Necker, Nouveaux Mélanges extraits des manuscrits de Mme
Necker,
r ed. Jacques Necker (Paris, 1801) 1:49–50, 1:34.
16. When he [l’abbé de Saint-Pierre] was leaving, Mme Geoffrin said to him:
Sir, you have given us some excellent conversation. Madame, he said,
I have been but an instrument on which you have played well. André
Morellet, Eloges de Madame Geoffrin, Contemporaine de Madame du Deffand
par Marmontel, Thomas et D’Alembert (Paris, 1812) 12.
17. Faith E. Beasley, Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth Century France:
Mastering Memory (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006); Dena Goodman, “Enlightenment Salons: The Convergence of Female and Philosophic Ambitions,”
Eighteenth-Century Studies 22.3 (Spring 1989): 337.
18. Perhaps the most significant political event in seventeenth-century
France was the Fronde: a series of civil wars from 1648 to 1653 that
occurred when the nobility rebelled against Cardinal Mazarin and the
Court in order to curb the power of the monarchy during Louis XIV’s
minority.
19. Antoine Lilti, Le monde des salons: sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe
siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2005).
20. Comtesse de Genlis, Memoirs of the Countess de Genlis, Illustrative of the History of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London, 1825) 2:171; Craveri
455. Chastellux contributed to the Encyclopédie with the article “Public
Happiness.”
21. Roger Picard, Les salons littéraires et la société française, 1610–1789
(New York: Brentano’s, 1943) 212, “General Barington: made me dine with
Milord Grosvenor, he is very ugly and pox-ridden. Grosvenor, in English, is
pronounced ‘Gros Veneur’ [i.e. Great Hunter].”
22. Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution
(Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988).
23. Alan Kors, D’Holbach’s Coterie: An Enlightenment in Paris (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton UP, 1976) 96. Baron d’Holbach represents a notable exception to
the generally female rule of the salons. There were also salons that were seen
as being governed by both male and female hosts such as chez Helvétius
where husband and wife were both considered hosts.
24. Morellet, Eloges, 12, “With her gentle that’s enough for now, she never ceased
to hold our thoughts as if on a leash; I had dinners elsewhere where one
felt more relaxed.”
25. Julie de Lespinasse, Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse, with Notes on her Life and
Character . . . (London: Heinemann, 1902) 34.
26. Picard 139.
27. Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French
Enlightenment (Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1994).
28. Bachaumont, “Mémoires de Bachaumont,” in Mémoires de Madame du
Hausset . . . ed. Fs. Barriere, M. (Paris, 1846) 406, “very well-known in the
world owing to the sanctuary she gave to M d’Alembert as well as for her
passion for l’Encyclopédie and the encyclopédistes . . . ” Lespinasse is often
cited alternatively as d’Alembert’s mistress, lover or muse.
29. Margaret Ezell, Social Authorship and the Advent of Print (Baltimore, MD: John
Hopkins, 1999).
30. Goodman, “Enlightenment Salons,” 344.
182
Notes
31. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, quoted
in Goodman 344.
32. Landes 25.
33. Morellet, Eloges, 210. Morellet states that Geoffrin is writing to one of the
men she liked best, “un des hommes qu’elle aimait le plus.”
34. D’Ezio 15.
35. Emily Fitzgerald, “Duchess of Leinster,” in Correspondence of Emily, Duchess
of Leinster (1731–1814), ed. Brian Fitzgerald, vol. 1 (Dublin: Stationery
Office, 1949–1957) 377; 399.
36. Fitzgerald, vol. 1, 463.
37. See afterword by Woronzoff-Dashkoff to Dashkova, The Memoirs of Princess
Dashkova, ed. Kyril Fitzlyon (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1995), as well as
Angela Byrne, “Supplementing the autobiography of Princess Ekaterina
Romanovna Dashkova: The Russian Diaries of Martha and Katherine
Wilmot,” Irish Slavonic Studies 23 (2011): 25–34.
38. Dashkova 124.
39. Dashkova 158.
40. Goodman, The Republic of Letters, 84.
41. For more on this, see Kale, “Women the Public Sphere and the Persistence
of Salons,” French Historical Studies 25.1 (2002): 116–126.
42. Craveri 332.
43. Barbara B. Diefendorf, “Contradictions of the Century of Saints: Aristocratic
Patronage and the Convents of Counter-Reformation Paris,” French Historical Studies 24.3 (2001): 469–499.
44. Lilti 227.
45. For further information, see Julie de Lespinasse, Letters of Mlle. de Lespinasse,
with Notes on her Life and Character by d’Alembert, Marmontel, De Guibert, Etc.
(London: Heinemann, 1902).
46. Craveri 311–315.
47. Fitzgerald, vol. 2, 183.
48. Fitzgerald, vol. 2, 191.
49. Fitzgerald, vol. 1, 462.
50. In Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, “artisan” is described by Johnson as “Artist;
professor of an art,” echoing his description of “artist.” See Samuel Johnson,
A Dictionary of the English Language . . . vol. 1 (London, 1755).
51. Marmontel 239, “the food there was frugal.”
52. Lilti 227, “what a lot of fuss over a spinach omelette.”
53. Morellet, Eloges, 57, “her apartment was decorated with their works.
Paintings by Vanloo, Greuze, Vernet, Vien, Lagrenée, Robert, portrait by
Lemoine, etc; pieces of furniture and some bronzes of the very best taste
everywhere showed her love for the arts and artists.”
54. Goodman, The Republic of Letters, 86–89.
55. Morellet, Eloges, 60.
56. William Cole, A Journal of My Journey to Paris in the Year 1765, ed. Francis
Griffin Stokes (London: Constable, 1931) 81–82.
57. Kimberly Chrisman, “Unhoop the Fair Sex: The Campaign Against the
Hoop Petticoat in Eighteenth-Century England,” Eighteenth Century Studies
30.1 (1996): 10.
58. Fitzgerald, vol. 1, 374.
Notes
183
59. Fitzgerald, vol. 1, 395.
60. Fitzgerald, vol. 1, 383.
61. See Marcia Pointon, Strategies for Showing: Women, Possession and Representation in English Visual Culture (Oxford: OUP, 1997).
62. Morellet 154.
63. Vicomte d’Haussonville, Le Salon de Madame Necker d’après des documents
tirés des archives de Coppet (Paris, 1882) 121.
64. “A social geography of Paris began to establish itself from the 18th century
which would later mark the 19th and 20th centuries with the setting up
of what one would later call the ‘beaux quartiers’ or fine neighbourhoods.”
Lilti 137.
65. Rosena Davison, “Salons,” in Encyclopaedia of the Enlightenment,
t ed. Alan
Charles Kors, vol. 4 (Oxford: OUP, 2003).
66. Genlis, vol. 1, 381.
67. René Moulinas, “James Butler, Second Duke of Ormonde in Avignon,”
in The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610–1745, ed. Toby Barnard and Jane Fenlon
(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000) 255.
68. Moulinas 256.
69. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, ed. Robert Halsband, vol. 2, 1721–1751 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1966) 289–290.
70. The Marquis d’Argens, Memoirs of Count du Beauval, trans. Samuel Derrick
(London, 1754) 193–194.
71. Wortley Montagu, vol. 2, 290.
72. Christine Adams, A Taste for Comfort and Status: A Bourgeois Family
in Eighteenth-Century France (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University,
2000) 58.
73. André Grellet-Dumazeau. La Société bordelaise sous Louis XV et le salon de
Mme Duplessy (Bordeaux, 1897) 20.
74. For example, works such as Janet Aldis, Madame Geoffrin, her salon and her
times (London, 1905).
75. Grellet-Dumazeau 22–23.
76. Grellet-Dumazeau 31, “The most distinguished members were joined by
other local celebrities, savants, artists, learned women: a whole phalanx of
educated people.”
77. Adams 2.
78. Adams 226.
79. Grellet-Dumazeau 20, “ . . . soon, there was no longer any literary renown
that didn’t bear the stamp of her salon, and Montesquieu himself accepted
the honour of being counted among her friends.”
80. James Caulfield, Memoirs of the Political and Private Life of James Caulfield,
Earl of Charlemont,
t ed. Francis Hardy (London, 1810) 36.
81. In Cynthia O’Connor’s The Pleasing Hours (1999), O’Connor also recognises
this difference of perspective, “others told of Montesquieu being nearly
blind and not nearly as lively as Charlemont related” but that “we have
no reason to doubt Hardy’s transcription” of Charlemont’s words from the
now missing manuscript; O’Connor 149.
82. Charlemont MS at Royal Irish Academy, MS 12 R 5. Travellers Essays, vol. 1.
83. Michael Clancy, Memoirs of Michael Clancy MD, vol. 2 (Dublin, 1750) 52; 50.
184
Notes
84. Patricia Fleming, Gilles Gallichan and Yvan Lamonde, eds., History of the
Book in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004) 345.
85. Fleming et al. 345.
86. See, Hilary Brown and Gillian Dow, Readers, Writers, Salonnières, Female
Networks in Europe, 1700–1900 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011). This collection
includes several essays on eighteenth-century salons in France, Italy, and
Germany, although it concentrates explicitly on the female members of
these salons and on female networks, with little mention of Ireland apart
from inclusion of Maria Edgeworth.
87. Eve-Marie Lampron, “From Venice to Paris: Fame, Gender and National
Sensibilities in Late Eighteenth-and Early Nineteenth-Century Female Literary Networks,” in Readers, Writers, Salonnières, ed. Hilary Brown and Gillian
Dow (2011) 31.
88. Pohl 143.
89. Pohl 143–144.
90. Emily D. Bilski and Emily Braun, Jewish Women and Their Salons, The Power
of Conversation, (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2005) 16; Pohl 144.
91. Pohl 150.
92. Bilski and Braun 25.
93. David Shields, Civil Tongues, Polite Letters in British America (Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press, 1997) 311.
94. Shields 310; 309. Shields does, however, observe that the salons had to
diversify their practices, and gives the example of how they “projected a
presence in print.”
95. PRONI, Joseph Cooper Walker to Lady Moira, T3048/A/5.
96. PRONI T3048/A/5.
97. “Anastacia Daly,” 21 January 2015. www.thepeerage.com/p4892.htm#
i48915.
98. “Anastacia Daly,” 21 January 2015. www.thepeerage.com/p4892.htm#
i48915.
99. For details of the houses and estates associated with the Fitzmaurice family, see Landed Estates Database, 21 January 2015. http://landedestates
.nuigalway.ie/LandedEstates/jsp/estate-show.jsp?id=2198.
100. C. J. Woods, “Notes on Some Irish Residents in Paris,” in Franco-Irish
Connections, ed. Jane Conroy (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009) 337.
101. Lady Mary Campbell Coke, Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke, vol. 3.,
1769–1771 (Edinburgh, 1889) 75.
102. Lord Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, Afterwards First Marquess
of Lansdowne, With Extracts From his Papers and Correspondence (London:
Macmillan and Co., 1912) 3.
103. Richard Hayes, “Biographical Dictionary of Irishmen in France,” Studies:
An Irish Quarterly Review, 32.126 (1943): 241–242. I am indebted to Niall
Gillespie for bringing this quotation to my attention.
104. Phillippe Bechu, “Papiers d’origine privée tombés dans le domaine public,”
Centre Historique des Archvies Nationales, “documents sequestered during
the Revolution in the Seine department, from emigrants and condemned
individuals and from some lay communities.”
105. Nigel Aston and Clarissa Campbell Orr, An Enlightenment Statesman in Whig
Britain: Lord Shelburne in Context, 1737–1805 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press,
2011) 18. Aston and Orr refer also to an MA thesis by Patrick Pilkington.
Notes
185
106. “Stephen Slaughter, Art Auction Results, Prices and Artworks Estimates,”
Arcadja Auctions, 21 January 2015. http://www.arcadja.com/auctions/en
/slaughter_stephen/artist/26825/.
107. The Hôtel de Charost is now home to the British embassy in Paris and is
open to the public on certain days.
108. NLI Pos 7421, “by Granhez, jeweller to the Queen.”
109. Household and personal accounts of Francis Thomas Fitzmaurice, 3rd
Earl of Kerry in France and England, National Library of Ireland, Pos
7241.
110. “2000 dinner invitation cards printed on superfine Annonay velum with
gilt edges.”
111. Hayes 242.
112. Slaughter.
113. Goodman, “Enlightenment Salons,” 349.
114. “Assemblée national – Loi de 1901 relative au contrat d’association,”
17 April 2014. http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/histoire/loi-1901/loi
1901-5.asp.
115. Kale, French Salons 3; 200–201.
116. Genlis, vol. 1, 8.
117. Genlis, vol. 5, 85.
118. Genlis, vol. 5, 186.
119. Kale French Salons 232. In 1807 the Marquise’s daughter Eliza married
the Irish politician and revolutionary Arthur O’Connor, who assumed the
name Condorcet-O’Connor. James Kelly “Arthur O’Connor,” DIB.
120. For more information on these and other nineteenth century salonnières,
see Kale French Salons 231–236.
121. Maria Edgeworth, The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, ed. Augustus J. C.
Hare, vol. 1 (London, 1984) 101.
122. Edgeworth 280.
123. Edgeworth 115.
124. Edgeworth 115.
125. J. G. Alger “Thomas Plunket,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford: OUP, 2004) henceforth ODNB, and Jean Main, “An Irish life in
Austrian service: General Thomas Von Plunket,” Sabretache (Melbourne:
Military Historical Society of Australia, 2003).
126. Alger, “Thomas Plunket.”
127. Genlis, vol. 2, 113–114. Plunket is described as having had no wealth, and
the marriage was greeted with “great displeasure” by the Marquis’s family.
128. Genlis, vol. 2, 114.
129. Hayes 245.
130. “Morris, Gouverneur, (1752–1816)” Biographical Dictionary of the United
States Congress, 17 April 2014. http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts
/biodisplay.pl?index=M000976.
131. Gouverneur Morris, The Diary and Letters of Gouverneur Morris, Minister of the
United States to France etc., ed. Anne Cary Morris (New York, 1888) 73.
132. Morris 190.
133. Morris.
134. Morris 248.
135. Morris 202.
136. Morris 268.
186
Notes
137. Morris 227.
138. Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson Digital Edition, eds. Barbara
B. Oberg and J. Jefferson Looney (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia
Press, 2008) 312.
139. John G. Alger, Englishmen in the French Revolution (London, 1889) 158.
140. Alger 156.
141. Jefferson 463.
142. Jefferson 344; 312.
143. Geoffrey Ellis, Napoleon (Harlow: Pearson Education: 2000) 182.
144. Kale French Salons 53.
145. Peter McPhee, A Social History of France, 1789–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004).
146. Carol E. Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen in Nineteenth-Century France: Gender,
Sociability, and the Uses of Emulation (Oxford: OUP, 1999) 89.
147. Harrison 95.
148. Harrison 95.
149. Harrison 89; 94.
2 A French Phenomenon Embraced: The Literary Salon in
Eighteenth-Century Britain
1. Alison Rutherford Cockburn, The Letters and Memoirs of Mrs A Rutherford or
Cockburn, ed. T. Craig Brown (Edinburgh: Douglas, 1900) xxvii.
2. See, for example, Peter Clark’s study, British Clubs and Societies 1580–1800,
The Origins of an Associational World (2002), which devotes extraordinarily
little space to addressing women and their absence from such gatherings.
3. Several attempts were made to establish salon culture in England as
early as the first decades of the Stuart period, during the reign of
James I (r. 1603–1625). James van Horn Melton, in his study The
Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (2001), details the circles surrounding the countesses of Bedford and Carlisle as instances of early
English salons. Echoing Melton, Roy E. Schreiber lays particular emphasis on the fact that “the French provided the model for these gatherings, and the duchesse de Chevreuse, a good friend of the countess, undoubtedly encouraged her [the countess of Carlisle] during her
stay in England,” Schreiber, “Lucy Hay, countess of Carlisle,” ODNB.
This manner of imitation and emulation of the French prototype by
seventeenth-century courtiers anticipates the salon hostesses of the eighteenth century and their method of adoption and adaptation of the French
prototype.
4. Melton 211.
5. Melton 211.
6. Elizabeth Montagu’s only child died unexpectedly when under one year
old; Frances Boscawen outlived two children; and Hester Lynch Thrale
“resented the endless pregnancies, thirteen between 1764 and 1778,
producing twelve children, only four of whom survived to maturity.”
Michael Franklin, “Hester Lynch Piozzi,” ODNB. Monckton married aged
40 and is not said to have had any children.
Notes
187
7. Sylvia Myers, The Bluestocking Circle, Women, Friendship, and the Life of
the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)
8–12.
8. See Moyra Haslett, “Bluestocking Feminism Revisited: The Satirical Figure
of the Bluestocking,” Women’s Writing 17.3 (2010): 432–451.
9. Emma Major, “Femininity and National Identity: Elizabeth Montagu’s trip
to France,” ELH 72 (2005): 901–918; Barbara Darby, Frances Burney, Dramatist: Gender, Performance, and the Late-Eighteenth-Century Stage (1997); Bridget
Hill, The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian (1992). Sylvia Myers’s The Bluestocking Circle is often referenced as a
full-length study of Bluestocking activity. However, in her preface Myers
laments the fact that many feminists continue to emphasise what she
describes as “the salon aspect” of the Bluestockings and the work subsequently concentrates uniquely on the contribution of the Bluestockings
as women writers and proto-feminists rather than salon hostesses. Similarly, Gary Kelly’s six-volume set, Bluestocking Feminism, Writings of the
Bluestocking Circle 1738–1790 (1999) considers the literary output of these
women, only briefly mentioning their roles as hostesses thus illustrating
further the little interest there has been in the Bluestockings as putative
salon hostesses.
10. I use the capitalised “B” for Bluestockings throughout in order to indicate
the specific participants rather than the lower-case “b,” which would indicate the more generic term. Additionally, in order to differentiate between
the French and the British and Irish salon hostesses, the term salonnière
should be understood to refer specifically to the hostesses of the French
salons rather than those of the Bluestockings who will be referred to as
salon hostesses for the purpose of clarity.
11. Paul Wood, The Scottish Enlightenment: Essays in Reinterpretation (Rochester,
NY and Woodbridge: University of Rochester Press, 2000) 44.
12. Elizabeth Carter, A Series of Letters between Mrs Elizabeth Carter and
Miss Catherine Talbot, from the year 1741 to 1770 . . . (London, 1808) 16.
13. Hannah More, Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs Hannah More,
ed. William Roberts, vol. 1 (London, 1834) 76. Though Elizabeth Sheridan,
for example, enjoyed cards, even while she enjoyed serious conversation
as well.
14. Deborah Heller argues: “The project of providing a site for sociable communication is the overriding goal of English salon activity from its beginnings
in about 1750 through its golden age stretching from the early 1760s
into the early 1780s.” Deborah Heller, “Bluestocking Salons and the Public
Sphere,” Eighteenth-Century Life 22.2 (1998): 62.
15. Susanne Schmid, British Literary Salons of the Late Eighteenth and
Early Nineteenth Centuries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013)
3–4.
16. While it does not deal explicitly with comparative analysis, Nicole Pohl’s,
“Perfect Reciprocity: Salon Culture and Epistolary Conversations,” Women’s
Writing 13.1 (2006): 139–159 offers some examples of similarities between
the different countries’ salons. See also, Hilary Brown and Gillian Dow,
Readers, Writers, Salonnières, Female Networks in Europe 1700–1900 (2011),
discussed in Chapter 1.
188
Notes
17. Chauncey Brewster Tinker, The Salon and English Letters: Chapters on the
Interrelations of Literature and Society in the Age of Johnson (New York:
Macmillan, 1915) 63.
18. Tinker 213.
19. Tinker 210.
20. Evelyn Gordon Bodek, “Salonnières and Bluestockings: Educated Obsolescence and Germinating Feminism,” Feminist Studies 3 (1976): 185–199.
21. This new edition was Lettres nouvelles . . . Pour servir de supplément à l’édition de
Paris en six volumes, 1754. Horace Walpole, Selected Letters of Horace Walpole,
ed. W.S. Lewis (New Haven: Yale UP, 1973) 60; Elizabeth Sheridan, Betsy
Sheridan’s Journal, Letters from Sheridan’s Sister 1784–1786 and 1788–1790,
ed. William Le Fanu (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1960) 128.
22. Edward Gibbon, Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq. With Memoirs
of His Life and Writings, Composed by Himself . . . (London, 1796) 115–116.
Horace Walpole, Horace Walpole’s Correspondence with Thomas Gray, Richard
West and Thomas Ashton, ed. W.S. Lewis, George L. Lam and Charles
H. Bennett (New Haven: Yale UP, 1948) 150.
23. Reginald Blunt, Mrs Montagu “Queen of the Blues” Her Letters and Friendships
from 1762 to 1800, vol. 1 (London: Constable, 1923) 317.
24. Blunt, vol. 1, 326.
25. For further biographical details of the female Bluestockings, see Anna
Miegon, The Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 65, No. 1/2, Reconsidering the
Bluestockings (2002): 25–37.
26. Katharina M. Wilson, Paul Schlueter, and June Schlueter, eds. Women Writers of Great Britain and Europe: An Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 1997)
41; Blunt, vol. 2, 3. Marmontel alludes to du Bocage’s salons, although he
describes them a lot less favourably than those of Geoffrin, Marmontel,
Mémoires de Marmontel, secrétaire perpétuel de l’académie française (Paris,
1846) 304.
27. Georges Solovieff, “Deux Lettres de Madame Necker à Lady Montagu et une
lettre de Necker à Bonstetten,” Cahiers Staeliens 25 (1978): 57; “the pleasure
we had in receiving England’s muse here in France.”
28. See Chapter 1. David Hume’s letters from the 1760s also reveal much
regarding the competition and animosity that could exist between the
salonnières, particularly Lespinasse and Deffand. Speaking of a later period,
Schmid observes that “the cult of female friendship, sometimes nostalgically evoked in salon research, had no place among the London hostesses
of the 1830s.” 135.
29. More, Memoirs, vol. 2, 73. While Boscawen’s letters were never published
during her lifetime, they were very well known amongst her circle of
friends.
30. Christine Casey, “The Dublin Domestic Formula,” in The Eighteenth-Century
Town House, ed. Christine Casey (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010) 46.
31. “14 South Audley Street W1 – Westminster . . . ” 21 January 2015. www
.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk.
32. The house become listed on 1 December 1987. Ibid.
33. “South Audley Street: East Side,” Survey of London: volume 40: The Grosvenor
Estate in Mayfair, Part 2 (the Buildings) (1980) 21 January 2015. http://www
.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42153#n4.
Notes
189
34. Elizabeth (Robinson) Montagu Papers, Montagu to Vesey, MO 6502.
35. Rachel Stewart, The Town House in Georgian London (New Haven: Yale UP,
2009) 193.
36. Jeremy Aynsley and Charlotte Grant, eds. Imagined Interiors: Representing the Domestic Interior since the Renaissance (London: V&A Publications,
2006) 114.
37. Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, ed. Admiral’s Wife, Being the life and letters of the
Hon Mrs Edward Boscawen from 1719 to 1761 (London: Longmans, 1940) 72,
“I know people who are so jealous of my house and furniture that they are
almost ill because of it.”
38. For further information on this style see “Influence of Chinese Art upon
European Artists,” in David E. Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and
the West, 1500–1800 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005) 98–103.
39. Rosemary Baird, “ ‘The Queen of the Bluestockings’: Mrs Montagu’s house
at 23 Hill Street Rediscovered,” Apollo 498 (August 2003).
40. Emily Climenson, Elizabeth Montagu, the Queen of the Blue-Stockings: Her
Correspondence From 1720 to 1761 (London: Murray, 1906) 203.
41. Baird.
42. Blunt, vol. 2, 3.
43. Aspinall-Oglander, Admiral’s Wife, 72.
44. Aspinall-Oglander, Admiral’s Wife, 73.
45. Aspinall-Oglander, Admiral’s Wife, 66.
46. Aspinall-Oglander, Admiral’s Wife, 73.
47. Aspinall-Oglander, Admiral’s Widow, Being the life and letters of the Hon Mrs
Edward Boscawen from 1761 to 1805 (London: Hogarth, 1942) 33.
48. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6379.
49. “Hatchlands Park History,” National Trust,
t 21 January 2015. http://www
.nationaltrust.org.uk/hatchlands-park/history/.
50. Aspinall-Oglander, Admiral’s Wife, 188.
51. Aspinall-Oglander, Admiral’s Wife, 248.
52. Elizabeth Eger, Bluestockings: Women of Reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) 67.
53. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6423.
54. Quoted by Major 212.
55. More, Memoirs, vol. 1, 141.
56. Blunt, vol. 2, 103.
57. More, Memoirs, vol. 1, 62.
58. More, Memoirs, vol. 1, 57; 92.
59. More, Memoirs, vol. 1, 93.
60. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson. Everyman’s Library. (London:
Campbell, 1992) 502. See also Ethel Roth Wheeler, Famous Bluestockings
(London: Lane, 1910) 149: “Mrs Montagu’s guests came to hear her talk;
Mrs Vesey’s guests came to talk themselves; Mrs Thrale’s guests came to talk
to Mrs Thrale. Mrs Vesey’s parties were, therefore, the most enjoyable; Mrs
Thrale’s the liveliest; Mrs Montagu’s the most intellectual.”
61. After Montagu’s falling out with Johnson, when he insulted her friend,
the poet Lord Lyttelton, author of Dialogues of the Dead (1760), her most
powerful weapon of revenge was in fact to withdraw this lively conversation, thus preventing Johnson’s delight in dialogue and exchange:
190
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
Notes
“He addressed his hostess two or three times after dinner with a view to
engage her in conversation; receiving only cold and brief answers,” Blunt,
vol. 1, 231.
Bruce Redford, ed., The Letters of Samuel Johnson, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1992) 250, 251. See Marmontel 239, for example, where he states
that he felt more at his ease in other gatherings, despite his praise of
Geoffrin.
Oliver Goldsmith, quoted in Tinker 221.
More, Memoirs, vol. 1, 317.
More, Memoirs, vol. 1, 54. For a heated debate between Monckton and
Johnson regarding Laurence Sterne’s writings, see Boswell, vol. 2, 382.
Chapone 174. One imagines that the Abbé Reynal may have caused the
hostess similar problems to Johnson with his “unceasing torrent.”
Amanda Vickery, “Not Just a Pretty Face,” The Guardian. Saturday 8 March
2008, 21 January 2015. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/mar/08
/art. For a more detailed discussion of female education during the eighteenth century, see Susan Skedd, “Women Teachers and the Expansion of
Girls’ Schooling in England, c1760–1820,” in Gender in Eighteenth-century
England, ed. Elaine Chalus and Hannah Barker (1997).
Barbara Brandon Schnorrenberg, “Elizabeth Montagu,” ODNB.
Elaine Chalus, “Women and Electoral Politics in the Eighteenth Century,”
in Gender in Eighteenth-century England, ed. Elaine Chalus and Hannah
Barker (London: Longman, 1997) 171. Montagu generally spent spring and
autumn near Newcastle, managing her husband’s coal mines and her letters
reveal her pride in her role there.
Hester Lynch Thrale, Thraliana, The Diary of Hester Lynch Thrale (Later
Mrs Piozzi) 1776–1809, ed. Katherine C. Balderston (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1951) vol. 1, 231. While this book deals with literary salons, political salons were also recorded as having taken place in eighteenth-century
England, the most (in)famous of these being that of Georgina, the Duchess
of Devonshire. For more information see, Amanda Foreman, Georgiana:
Duchess of Devonshire (London: Harper Collins, 1998).
Kelly xiii.
Kelly xiii.
See “Queen Charlotte, ‘Scientific Queen,’ ” in Clarissa Campbell Orr,
Queenship in Britain 1660–1837 (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002).
Of course the Ascendancy were also removed from Irish Presbyterians and
Protestant dissenters in general. See Toby Barnard, A New Anatomy of Ireland
(New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2004).
Major 167.
Elizabeth and Florence Anson, Mary Hamilton, at Court and at Home, From
Letters and Diaries 1756 to 1816 (London: Murray, 1925) 174.
Iain Maxwell Hammett, “Burnett, James, Lord Monboddo (1714, d. 1799),”
ODNB.
More, Memoirs, vol. 1, 53.
Hester Mulso Chapone, Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, Addressed to
a Young Lady (London, 1773) iii.
Myers 231.
Montagu to Vesey, MO 6496.
Notes
191
82. Hester Mulso Chapone, The Works of Mrs Chapone (Edinburgh, 1807) 64.
83. Elizabeth Carter, Letters from Mrs Elizabeth Carter to Mrs Montagu between
the Years 1755 and 1800 (London, 1817) 138, 28 October 1761; Carter 142,
10 November 1761.
84. Carter 149.
85. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6471.
86. Moyra Haslett records the large numbers of readers of More’s manuscript
poem, including Vesey, Carter, Montagu, and Boscawen, as well as Lady
Dartrey, Lady Rothes, the Duchess of Portland, Lord and Lady Lucan, “every
reading and writing Miss at Margate,” Dr Heberden, Horace Walpole, and
Samuel Johnson among many others. Haslett, “Becoming Bluestockings,
Contextualising Hannah More’s ‘The Bas Bleu,’ ” Journal for EighteenthCentury Studies 33.1 (2010): 107.
87. Frances Burney, A Known Scribbler: Frances Burney on Literary Life, ed. Justine
Crump (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002) 278.
88. Burney 20–21.
89. Myers 20.
90. Blunt, vol. 2, 118.
91. Pamela Edwards, “Mary Monckton,” ODNB.
92. Edwards, “Mary Monckton.”
93. Tinker 153, Both Mrs Greville and Lady Lucan had connections with
Ireland. Lady Lucan (Margaret Bingham) was English but associated with
Ireland through her Mayo-born husband. She sympathised with Ireland’s
plight as outlined in her Verses on the Present State of Ireland (Dublin, 1768).
The author Frances Greville was born in Ireland to James Macartney who
was MP for Longford and Granard and was closely connected to the Lennox
sisters.
94. Frances Burney, Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay, ed. Charlotte Barrett
(London, 1876) 460.
95. Boswell, vol. 2, 381. Of course one cannot always take Boswell entirely for
granted as a recorder of Johnson and much scholarship exists which draws
his objectivity and accuracy into question.
96. Monckton’s guests also included political figures such as Lord Castlereagh,
who was for a time Secretary for Ireland, as well as George Canning who
had served as prime minister.
97. NLI Edgeworth Papers, Pos. 9029/473. 15 June 1805 RLE to Maria
Edgeworth.
98. R. Warwick Bond, ed. The Marlay Letters 1778–1820 (London: Constable and
Company, 1937) 212–213.
99. Bond 351.
100. Bond 348.
101. Bond 348.
102. Elizabeth Eger, Brilliant Women: 18th-Century Bluestockings (London:
National Portrait Gallery, 2008) 52. This represents the collection of essays
and portraits that accompanied the exhibition of the same name that took
place at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2008.
103. Tate Collection, “The Honourable Mrs Monckton by Sir Joshua Reynolds,”
21 January 2015. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/reynolds-the-hon
-miss-monckton-n04694.
192
Notes
104. Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan), “My First Rout in London,” in The Book
of the Boudoir (London, 1829) 102–103.
105. Burney 76.
106. Mary Berry,
y Extracts of the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry from the
year 1783–1852, ed. Lady Maria Lister, vol. 2 (London, 1866) 484.
107. Owenson 101; 106. Owenson explains that these memories of her first time
at Lady Cork’s were stirred up shortly before she wrote the sketch by speaking at Lady Cork’s “with a lady who had been present” on her first visit to
the salon, 112.
108. Owenson 101–102.
109. Owenson 105.
110. Owenson 107, “an intimate little dinner.”
111. Julie Donovan, Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan and the Politics of Style (Palo
Alto, CA: Academica Press, 2009) 113.
112. Michael J. Franklin, “Hester Lynch Piozzi,” ODNB.
113. Thrale, vol. 1, 494; vol. 2, 729.
114. A letter from Elizabeth Montagu to Elizabeth Vesey offers an example of the
early response to the marriage: “Mrs Thrale’s marriage has taken such horrible possession of my mind I cannot advert to any other subject. I am sorry
and feel the worst kind of sorrow, that which is blended with shame . . . and
I am myself convinced that the poor woman is mad,” Clifford 229.
115. Frank Hedgcock, A Cosmopolitan Actor, David Garrick and his French Friends
(London: Stanley Paul, 1912).
116. Lady Mount Cashell held salons in Italy when she resided there with her
second husband, George Tighe, under the name “Mrs Mason.” This Italian
salon, or accademia letteraria, has been juxtaposed with the more common
conversazioni: “of a more elevated kind than the usual ‘conversazioni’ of
exclusively world concerns,” trans. Ian Campbell Ross. See Mario Curelli,
“Lady Mountcashell alias Madam Mason,” in Leopardi in Pisa, ed. Fiorenza
Ceragioli (Milan: Electa, 1998): 306–320.
117. Hester Lynch Piozzi, Observations and Reflections made in the Course of a
Journey through France, Italy and Germany (London, 1789) vol. 1, 179. See
also, Paula Findlen, Italy’s Eighteenth Century: Gender and Culture in the Age
of the Grand Tour (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2009). Marianne D’Ezio highlights the difficulty of examining Italy’s eighteenth-century salons, as Italy
was then “a sort of patchwork of states with different rules, laws, and of
course habits,” D’Ezio in Readers, Writers, Salonnières (Oxford: Peter Lang,
2011) 12.
118. Thrale, vol. 1, 47.
119. Thomas Campbell, Dr Campbell’s Diary of a Visit to England in 1775, ed.
James L. Clifford (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1947) 67.
120. Thrale, vol. 1, 172.
121. Thrale, vol. 1, 167.
122. Those depicted were Lord Sandys, Lord Westcote (William Lyttelton), Dr
Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Murphy, Garrick, Baretti, Sir Robert Chambers, and Dr Burney. See James L. Clifford, Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale)
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952) 157.
123. Clifford 157.
124. Clifford 121.
Notes
193
125. Katharine C. Balderston, ed., The Collected Letters of Oliver Goldsmith
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1928) 121.
126. Mary Hyde, ed., The Thrales of Streatham Park (Cambridge, MA and London:
Harvard UP, 1977) 238.
127. The Piozzi Letters, vol. 2, 46.
128. Clifford 123.
129. Clifford 57.
130. Clifford 194–195.
131. Campbell 61.
132. Thrale, vol. 1, 443.
133. Clifford 195.
134. Clifford 353.
135. Anne Janowitz, “Amiable and Radical Sociability: Anna Barbauld’s ‘Free
Familiar Conversation,’ ” in Romantic Sociability, ed. Gillian Russell and
Clara Tuite (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002) 62–81.
136. Jon Mee, Conversable Worlds (Oxford: OUP, 2011) 140. See also Mee’s
chapter “Critical Conversation in the 1790s: Godwin, Hays, and
Wollstonecraft.”
137. See, Michèle Cohen, Fashioning Masculinity: National identity and language in
the eighteenth century (London: Routledge, 1996).
138. Cohen 52; 61.
139. Jacqueline M. Labbe, ed., The History of British Women’s Writing, 1750–1830
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) 18.
140. Schmid 120.
141. Frances Clarke and Sinéad Sturgeon, “Marguerite (Margaret) Gardiner,” DIB.
Blessington held a third salon at Gore House, Kensington from 1836 until
1849, just before her death in 1850.
142. Katharine Glover, Elite Women and Polite Society in Eighteenth-Century
Scotland (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011) 85.
143. “Although a few eighteenth-century Scotswomen (sometimes reluctantly,
sometimes less so) published poetry, this move was much less pronounced
in Scotland than in England,” Glover 75.
144. Richard B. Sher, The Enlightenment and the Book, Scottish Authors and
their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland & America (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2010) 101.
145. Jane Rendall, “ ‘Women that Would Plague Me with Rational Conversation’:
Aspiring Women and Scottish Whigs, c. 1790–1830,” in Women, Gender and
Enlightenment,
t ed. Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005) 326–348.
146. Pam Perkins, “Enlightenment Culture,” in The Edinburgh Companion to
Scottish Women’s Writing, ed. Glenda Norquay (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP,
2012) 47. Perkins also mentions Harriet Guest, Moyra Haslett, and Betty
Schellenberg’s work in this area.
147. Karen O’Brien, “From Savage to Scotswoman: The History of Femininity,”
in Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2009) 68–109.
148. William Alexander, The History of Women, From the Earliest Antiquity, to the
Present Time . . . vol. 1 (London, 1782).
149. John Dwyer, “Alison Rutherford Cockburn,” ODNB.
194
Notes
150.
151.
152.
153.
154.
155.
Cockburn xxvii.
Cockburn 55; 37.
Cockburn xxxii.
Dwyer ODNB.
Cockburn 132.
Ernest C. Mossner, ed., The Life of David Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1979) 406.
NLI Pos. 9029/439.
“Mapping memorials to women in Scotland,” 21 January 2015. http://
womenofscotland.org.uk/memorials/wall-plaque-mrs-alison-cockburn.
“Lost Edinburgh – George Square” The Scotsman, 24 June 2013, 21 January
2015. http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/heritage/lost-edinburgh-georgesquare-1-2974261.
Miles Glendinning, Ranald MacInnes, and Aonghus MacKechnie, eds.
A History of Scottish Architecture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2002) 136.
Dashkova, The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1995).
Susan Manly, “Maria Edgeworth,” Women Writers, Chawton House
Library, 21 January 2015. http://www.chawtonhouse.org/wp-content
/uploads/2012/06/Maria-Edgeworth.pdf.
Sinéad Sturgeon, “Elizabeth Hamilton,” DIB.
E.O. Benger, Memoirs of the Late Mrs. Elizabeth Hamilton (London, 1818)
152–154.
Stana Nenadic, “Middle-Rank Consumers and Domestic Culture in
Edinburgh and Glasgow 1720–1840,” Past & Present 145 (1994): 126.
In Tobias Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (1771) it is the wonders of Glasgow rather than Edinburgh that are enthused upon at length:
“But Glasgow is the pride of Scotland, and, indeed, it might very well pass
for an elegant and flourishing city in any part of Christendom.”
Benger 132; Sturgeon, “Elizabeth Hamilton.”
Benger 177–178.
Elizabeth Fletcher, Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher with Letters and Other Family
Memorials, edited by the survivor of her family (Edinburgh, 1875) 85.
Fletcher 86.
Benger 174.
“Elizabeth Hamilton, Sir Henry Raeburn,” National Galleries of Scotland,
21 January 2015. https://www.nationalgalleries.org/object/PG 1486.
Perkins.
Fletcher 64; Pam Perkins, “Helen D’Arcy Stewart, née Cranstoun,” ODNB.
Cited in Rendall 336.
Qtd. in Blunt, vol. 2, 38; Solovieff 57.
156.
157.
158.
159.
160.
161.
162.
163.
164.
165.
166.
167.
168.
169.
170.
171.
172.
173.
174.
3 “Never Was a Flock So Scattered for Want of a
Shepherdess”: Elizabeth Vesey Between England and Ireland
1. Elizabeth Carter, A Series of Letters between Mrs Elizabeth Carter and
Miss Catherine Talbot, from the year 1741 to 1770: to which are added, letters from Mrs Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Vesey, between the years 1763 and 1787
(London, 1808) 227.
Notes
195
2. “From 1715 until the 1780s Parliament usually met in Dublin every second
winter for five to eight months.” Tighearnan Mooney and Fiona White,
“The Gentry’s Winter Season,” in The Gorgeous Mask: Dublin 1700–1850
(Dublin: Trinity History Workshop, 1987) 2.
3. Carter 253.
4. Mary Muschamp was the only surviving child and thus heir of Denny
Muschamp, the successful land speculator.
5. Vesey’s husband Agmondesham was a member of the Irish Parliament as
well as Privy Councillor and Accountant General to Ireland, making him
an influential figure in Anglo-Irish society.
6. Even Elizabeth Eger’s, Bluestockings, Women of Reason from Enlightenment to
Romanticism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) refers only sporadically to Vesey, generally presenting her as dear friend of Montagu rather
than emphasising her Irish salons.
7. See, for example, Elizabeth Sheridan, Betsy Sheridan’s Journal, Letters from
Sheridan’s Sister 1784–1786 and 1788–1790, ed. William Le Fanu (London:
Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1960); Emily Climenson, Elizabeth Montagu, the
Queen of the Blue-stockings: Her Correspondence From 1720 to 1761 (London:
Murray, 1906); and Reginald Blunt, ed., Mrs Montagu, “Queen of the blues”:
Her Letters and Friendships from 1762 to 1800, 2 vols. (London: Constable, 1923). The Elizabeth (Robinson) Montagu Papers, MO 1–6923, at The
Huntington Library, San Marino, California, contain many letters to and
from Elizabeth Vesey. There are 96 letters written by Vesey herself between
1761 and 1785; 90 of these are directed to Montagu and the remaining
six to Lord Lyttelton, in addition to 260 letters received by Vesey from
Montagu dating from almost the identical time period, from 1761 to 1786 –
Montagu Papers MO6265–6360 and Montagu Papers MO 6361–6614.
8. The University of Manchester Library, Ham/1/6/2/3, Mary Hamilton Papers.
9. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6557.
10. Carter 92; 159; 198; Montagu to Vesey, MO 6513.
11. Carter 120.
12. Mary Delany is often named, erroneously, as the joint host of an Irish literary salon dating from the early decades of the eighteenth century. It seems
as though the salon that historians repeatedly refer to as being hosted
by Mary and Patrick Delany was that which was held by Patrick (exclusively) until 1735, when correspondence between Mary Delany (then Mary
Granville) and Jonathan Swift reports it to have ended: “I am sorry the
sociable Thursdays, that used to bring together so many agreeable friends at
Dr Delany’s, are broken up” (London 16 May 1735). Patrick Delany’s salon
is often referred to by historians and literary critics alike as the Delanys’
salon or “The Thursday literary salons of Mary and Patrick Delany,” entirely
ignoring the fact that the couple only married in 1743. Indeed it is
extremely unlikely that Mary Delany played a role in any way resembling
that of a salon hostess. Her comments give us much evidence of her participation, during 1733, in the salon, but exclusively as a guest: “I recollect
no entertainment with so much pleasure, as what I received from the
company; it has made me very sincerely lament the many hours of my
life that I have lost in insignificant conversation” (Gloucester, 24 October
1733).
196
Notes
13. Angelique Day, ed. Letters from Georgian Ireland. The Correspondence of Mary
Delany, 1731–68 (Belfast: Friar’s Bush Press, 1991) 109.
14. Day 154.
15. Elizabeth Carter, Letters from Mrs Elizabeth Carter to Mrs Montagu between the
Years 1755 and 1800 (London, 1817) 40.
16. “Agmondisham Vesey,” Dictionary of Irish Architects, 21 January 2015.
http://www.dia.ie/architects/view/5435/vesey-agmondisham.
17. Seán O’Reilly and Alistair Rowan, eds., Lucan House County Dublin (Dublin:
Eason, 1988) 4.
18. Elizabeth Carter, Letters from Mrs Elizabeth Carter to Mrs Montagu, 357.
19. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6507.
20. Vesey to Montagu, MO 6298.
21. Arthur Young, A Tour in Ireland; With General Observations on the Present State
of that Kingdom . . . (London, 1780) 17.
22. Sheffield Archives, WWM/BkP/2/3, Letter from Mrs Vesey to Edmund
Burke, n.d.
23. The subscription list reflects the choice of views and includes such figures
as the Earls of Aldborough, Belvedere, and Moira, as well as Lady Louisa
Conolly and the Duke of Leinster.
24. Thomas Milton, A Collection of Select Views from the different seats of the Nobility and Gentry in the Kingdom of Ireland. Engraved by Thomas Milton. From
original drawings, by the best masters (London, 1793) v.
25. Finola O’Kane, Landscape Design in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Cork: Cork
UP, 2004) 70–71.
26. O’Reilly and Rowan 9–26.
27. Vesey to Montagu, MO 6319.
28. Carter, A Series of Letters between Mrs Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine
Talbot, 261.
29. This is probably a reference to Grace-Anne Newenham née Burton
(b. c. 1735), wife of Sir Edward Newenham. James Kelly, “Sir Edward
Newenham,” ODNB.
30. Francis Elrington Ball, A History of the County Dublin: The People, Parishes
and Antiquities (Dublin: Alex. Thorn and Company, 1906).
31. Francis Bickley, ed., Report on the Manuscripts of the Late Reginald Rawdon
Hastings, Esq. . . . Vol. 3. Historical Manuscripts Commission (London:
HMSO, 1934) 144.
32. In a later letter to her brother (c.1770 or 1771) Lady Moira refers to a
masquerade ball, held at Moira House, where many women attempted to
temporarily embrace the role and dressed in like manner: “There was so
many shepherdesses that their crooks formed a little thicket.” Bickley 151.
33. Vesey to Montagu, MO 6283.
34. Anon. A New Ballad on the Masquerade Lately Given by the Countess of Moira
(Dublin: 1768).
35. Mary O’Dowd, History of Women in Ireland, 1500–1800 (London: Pearson
Education, 2005) 56.
36. Edward Evans, “Old Dublin Mansion-houses, Moira House, Residence of
Earl Moira . . . ” The Irish Builder 36.835 (Dublin, 1 October 1894): 222.
37. Thomas B. Bayley, Thoughts on the Necessity and Advantages of Care
and Oeconomy in Collecting and Preserving different Substances for Manure.
Notes
197
Addressed to the Members of the Agriculture Society of Manchester, October the
12th, 1795 (Manchester, 1796) 6.
38. Leverian Museum. A Companion to the Museum (late Sir Ashton Lever’s)
Removed to Albion Street, the Surry End of Black Friars Bridge (London,
1790) 27.
39. MO 6419. This seems to have been the general consensus at the time with
Elizabeth Sheridan making a similar comment relative to the beauty of Irish
clothes:
. . . I never had a gown so admired as my Irish Lawn. It has been washed
3 times and appears now if any thing better than when new, so tell Mr
Porter if you think of it. It is always taken for a dutch Chintz but I take
care to publish its country, (Tunbridge Wells, 5 July 1785) Sheridan 59.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
O’Dowd 58.
Montagu to Vesey, MO 6587.
Montagu to Vesey, MO 6541.
Montagu to Vesey, MO 6424.
A macaroni was a largely dismissive term used to refer to young men who
embraced an affected love for fashion and elaborate forms of expression,
usually following continental influences.
Otaheite = Tahiti, which was visited by James Cook in 1769. Montagu to
Vesey, MO 6525.
Frances Burney, Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay, ed. Charlotte Barrett,
vol. 4 (London, 1876) 338.
Hannah More, “The Bas Bleu,” from Florio: A Tale, for Fine Gentlemen and
Fine Ladies: And, The Bas Bleu; or, Conversation (London: 1786) 76.
Carter, A Series of Letters between Mrs Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine
Talbot, 132.
Eger 109.
I am indebted to Finola O’Kane for this observation, “The London Irish in
the Long Eighteenth Century” Warwick University conference, April 2012.
Henry Benjamin Wheatley, Peter Cunningham, London Past and Present: Its
History, Associations, and Traditions (London, 1891).
Carter, A Series of Letters between Mrs Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine
Talbot, 241.
Rachel Stewart, The Town House in Georgian London (New Haven: Yale UP,
2009) 73. Stewart has noted that “Rent for good houses in good areas
were generally between £100 and £400 per annum, although the range was
much wider.”
Betty Rizzo, Companions Without Vows (Athens: University of Georgia Press,
1994) 369. Rizzo cites the Daily Advertiser for 27 November 1779.
Stewart 73.
Sheridan 43–44.
Sheridan, Betsy Sheridan’s Journal 43.
Sheridan, Betsy Sheridan’s Journal 43; Soame Jenyns (1704–1787) was
a politician, satirist, and philosophical writer who frequented the
Bluestocking salons.
Sheridan, Betsy Sheridan’s Journal 43.
Sheridan, Betsy Sheridan’s Journal 40.
198
Notes
61. John R. Redmill, “The Lady Anne Dawson Temple, Dartrey, Co.
Monaghan,” Irish Georgian Society Newsletter (Autumn 2010) 14.
62. Carter, A Series of Letters between Mrs Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine
Talbot, 349.
63. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6394; Carter, Letters from Mrs Elizabeth Carter to
Mrs Montagu 14; Carter, A Series of Letters between Mrs Elizabeth Carter and
Miss Catherine Talbot 333.
64. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6395.
65. Vesey to Montagu, MO 6283.
66. Carter, A Series of Letters between Mrs Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine
Talbot 333.
67. “The Dartrey Papers, D3503,” (PRONI: 2007) 7.
68. Redmill 15.
69. Elizabeth Carter, Poems on Several Occasions, 3rd ed. (London, 1776) 104.
70. Redmill 15.
71. “The Dartrey Papers” 9.
72. Sheridan, Betsy Sheridan’s Journal, 39.
73. Patrick Kelly, “Anne Donnellan: Irish Proto-Bluestocking,” Hermathena, cliv,
(Summer 1993): 39–68, 57.
74. See Laetitia Pilkington, Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington. ed. A.C. Elias Jr., 2
vols. (London: University of Georgia Press, 1997).
75. Mary Granville Delany to Anne Granville Dewes, 8 June 1731. The Mr
Wesley mentioned is Richard Colley Esq.
76. F. Elrington Ball, ed., The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, DD, vol. V
(London: G. Bell and Sons, 1913) 126–127.
77. “It may be surmised that his wife did not find the arrangement distasteful, as there had been a suggestion that her first husband should be
transferred to the English bench” (British Museum Addit. Mss., 28, 886,
f. 41).
78. Elizabeth Montagu, The Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu . . . vol. 2 (Boston,
1825) 150.
79. Frances Clarke, “Robert Jephson,” DIB.
80. Vesey to Montagu, MO 6325.
81. Vesey to Montagu, MO 6270.
82. There are references to Vesey in the Duchess’s correspondence, such as in
the following letter to Emily from her son Lord Edward Fitzgerald: “Mrs
Vesey and Mrs Handcock called to see us and enquired very kindly for you”
(Black Rock, 23 March 1774). Emily Fitzgerald, The Correspondence of Emily,
Duchess of Leinster,
r ed. Brian Fitzgerald, vol. 2 (Dublin: Stationery Office,
1949–1957) 13.
83. Vesey to Montagu, MO 6271.
84. Vesey to Montagu, MO 6271.
85. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6424.
86. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6422.
87. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6395.
88. Vesey to Montagu, MO6326. It is difficult to ascertain which tragedy this
refers to, those dating from the time the letter was written seem to have
been favourably received.
89. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6524.
90. Clarke DIB.
Notes
199
91. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6400.
92. Thos. U. Sadleir, “The Manor of Blessington,” The Journal of the Royal Society
of Antiquaries of Ireland 18.2 (1928): 130.
93. Sadleir 130.
94. Sadleir 130.
95. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6574.
96. Eger 78.
97. Barbara Brandon Schnorrenberg, “Elizabeth Montagu,” ODNB.
98. His library, which is still almost intact, is preserved at Queen’s
University Belfast and contains approximately 741 volumes as well
as 1,225 pamphlets. “Thomas Percy Library,” Queen’s University
Belfast, at RASCAL, Research and Special Collections Available Locally
(Ireland) 21 January 2015. http://www.rascal.ie/index.php?CollectionID=
380&navOp=locID&navVar=25. Percy Collection, Queen’s University
Belfast, Percy/635.
99. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6392.
100. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6393.
101. Percy Collection, QUB.
102. Percy Collection, QUB, Percy/495.
103. Elizabeth Meade was Percy’s daughter. This copy is held at the Bodleian
Library, Oxford. Percy 127/1–2.
104. Frances Burney, Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay, ed. Charlotte Barrett,
vol. 5 (London: Macmillan, 1904–1905) 30–31.
105. Ethel Roth Wheeler, “An Irish Blue Stocking,” The Irish Book Lover,
r VI (June
1915): 176–178.
106. Horace Walpole, Correspondence with Hannah More (and others) ed. W. S.
Lewis (and others) (London: OUP, 1961) 247.
107. Walpole 227.
108. Vesey to Lyttelton, MO 6267.
109. Vesey to Montagu, MO 6302.
110. Vesey to Montagu, MO 6302.
111. Vesey to Montagu, MO Fragment. See JoEllen DeLucia, “ ‘Far Other Times
are These’: The Bluestockings in the Time of Ossian,” Tulsa Studies in
Women’s Literature 27.1 (2008): 39–62.
112. Vesey to Montagu, MO 6322.
113. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6375.
114. Carter, Letters from Mrs Elizabeth Carter to Mrs Montagu, 63.
115. Vesey to Montagu, MO 6285.
116. Carter 163; 145.
117. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6378.
118. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6507.
119. Edmund Burke, The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, ed. Thomas
W. Copeland, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1958) 476.
120. Burke 474.
121. Bingham’s presence in Vesey’s salon is recorded by Sheridan in her journal:
“Our party consisted only of Lady Dartree and Mr Bingham, son to Lord
Lucan – a pleasing young Man perfectly free from the present fashionable
airs.” Sheridan 40.
122. David Hume, Essays Moral Political and Literary, ed. Eugene Miller, Revised
ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1987) 271.
200
Notes
123. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6437; Montagu to Vesey, MO 6489. Lettres Nouvelles:
Ou Nouvellement Recouvrées de La Marquise de Sévignée (Paris, 1774). Madame
du Bocage’s verses possibly refer to Recueils des œuvres de Madame du Bocage
(1770) but more probably refer to unpublished material.
124. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6509.
125. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6517. The state papers referred to are Miscellaneous
State Papers from 1501–1726 (1778).
126. Carter, A Series of Letters between Mrs Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine
Talbot. Possibly Essays on Various Subjects to Which are Added Reflections on
the Seven Days of the Week by Mrs Talbot,
t 2nd ed. (1772).
127. Vesey to Montagu, MO 6280; Montagu to Vesey, MO 6375.
128. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6437.
129. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6540.
130. Vesey to Montagu, MO 6323.
131. Dustin Griffin in Literary Patronage in England, 1650–1800 (1996) notes the
“disproportionate amount of attention” money has received as the key
element provided by patrons. See especially Chapter Two, “The Cultural
Economics of Literary Patronage” for details of what patrons offered.
132. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6423. Braganza was later dedicated to Lady
Nuneham.
133. Robert Jephson, Braganza. A Tragedy . . . (London, 1775) iv.
134. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6388.
135. Griffin 191.
136. Montagu to Vesey, MO 6394.
137. Gary Kelly, Bluestocking Feminism, Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738–
1790, vol. 2 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1999) xxxi; Blunt 226.
138. Quoted in Kelly, vol. 1, lxxx.
139. M. Pollard, Dublin’s Trade in Books 1550–1800, Lyell Lectures, 1986–1987
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) 161.
140. It must be borne in mind, however, that during the period c.1788–1800,
from the formation of the Irish Volunteers until the Act of Union, most
polemical work written by Irish people was first published in Ireland rather
than England. See, Niall Gillespie, Irish Political Literature, c. 1778–1832:
The Imaginative Prose, Poetry and Drama of the Irish Volunteers, the United Irish
Society and the Anti-Jacobins (PhD Thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2013).
141. Epictetus was published after 1,031 advance subscriptions had been secured
from within the Bluestocking circle and their friends. Gerda Lerner, “Female
Clusters, Female Networks, Social Spaces,” in The Creation of Feminist
Consciousness (Oxford: OUP, 1994) 230–231.
142. Carter, A Series of Letters between Mrs Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine
Talbot 36.
4
Moira House Salon: A Site for Irish Scholarship
1. Walker’s Hibernian Magazine: Or, Compendium of Entertaining Knowledge. For
May, 1808 (Dublin, 1771–1809) 258.
2. Lady Moira was John Rawdon’s third wife, Rawdon married firstly Lady
Helena Perceval, daughter of John, 1st Earl of Egmont and Catherine
Notes
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
201
Parker in 1741, and secondly Hon. Anne Hill, daughter of Trevor Hill,
1st Viscount Hillsborough and Mary Rowe, in 1746. See Rosemary Richey,
“John Rawdon,” DIB.
Lady Moira’s full title, as listed in the ODNB, is Elizabeth Rawdon, née
Hastings, suo jure Baroness Botreaux, suo jure Baroness Hungerford, suo jure
Baroness Moleyns, suo jure Baroness Hastings, and countess of Moira. For
the sake of brevity and ease of identification, Elizabeth Rawdon will be
referred to throughout as Lady Moira, which is how she was generally
addressed in her correspondence.
Sir John Thomas Gilbert. A History of the City of Dublin, vol. 1 (Dublin, 1854)
393; “I have kept pretty good company here. Last Wednesday I dined with
three countesses – Countess-dowager Moira (it was at her house), Earl and
Countess Granard, and Countess Mountcashel . . . I mean to call on Lady
Moira the moment I have quitted this letter,” William Godwin to J. Marshal, Dublin, 2 August 1800, in Paul C. Keegan, William Godwin: His Friends
and Contemporaries (Boston, 1876) 366.
Ushers Island/Quay RWD 444T, Press cuttings folder.
Frances Gerard, “The Vicisssitudes of Moira House,” in Picturesque Dublin
Old and New (London, 1898).
Edward Evans, “Old Dublin Mansion-houses, Moira House, Residence of
Earl Moira . . . ” in The Irish Builder 36.835 (Dublin, 1 October 1894): 222.
Wilmot Harrison, “Memorable Dublin Houses – A Handy Guide with Illustrated Anecdotes,” in The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, ed. John Wesley
(Philadelphia, 1826) III, 410 May 1890.
Granard Papers, T3765/L/4, Castle Forbes, Co. Longford.
Granard Papers, T3765/L/4.
For more information, see Beverly Lemire’s, “Domesticating the Exotic:
Floral Culture and the East India Calico Trade with England, c. 1600–1800,”
Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture 1.1 (2003): 64–85.
Granard Papers, T3765/L/4.
Granard Papers, T3765/J/9/2/11.
Granard Papers, T3765/J/9/2/11.
Richard Twiss, A Tour in Ireland in 1775 (London, 1775) 23.
“Coreggio, Antonio Allegri,” The Oxford Companion to Art, ed. Harold
Osborne (Oxford: OUP, 1978) 283.
In art history Baroque is understood as a period of style “between roughly
the later 16th c. and the early 18thc. . . . [that] expresses a concern for
balance and above all wholeness.” The Oxford Companion to Art,
t 108.
“Salvator Rosa,” The Oxford Companion to Art,
t 1014.
“Salvator Rosa,” The Oxford Companion to Art,
t 1014.
Aidan O’Boyle, “The Earls of Moira, their property and cultural interests,”
Artefact 1 (2007): 75. It is possible that these pictures may have been moved
to this room at a later date to make it easier to divide them amongst Lady
Moira’s children, as Ruth Thorpe has suggested to me.
O’Boyle 79.
Stephen Conway, Britain, Ireland, and Continental Europe in the Eighteenth
Century, Similarities, Connections, Identities (Oxford: OUP, 2011) 192.
PRONI D2924/1. Correspondence of Sir John (later Lord) Rawdon.
PRONI D2924/1.
202
Notes
25. In her obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine 78.2 (1808), it is stated that,
“[Lady Moira] resided in Dublin, or the North of Ireland (with the exception of one year’s absence in France) for more than half a century for the
long period of 56 years.” Details of this one year absence in France appear
in another obituary, that of John Beresford, M.P. for Waterford. Beresford’s
wife, Anne Constantia Ligondes, was a direct relative of Lady Moira and
Lady Moira had obtained permission for the young woman “to accompany her to Ireland” whilst she herself was visiting the Auvergne region.
Beresford and Ligondes were married on 12 November 1760, and we can
extrapolate from this that Lady Moira may have been in France in the late
1750s or very early in 1760, Gentleman’s Magazine 75.2 (1805) 1083.
26. Máire Kennedy, French Books in Eighteenth-century Ireland (Oxford: Voltaire
Foundation, 2001).
27. Máire Kennedy, “Nations of the Mind: French culture in Ireland and
the International Booktrade,” in Nations and Nationalisms: France, Britain,
Ireland and the Eighteenth-Century Context, ed. Michael O’Dea and Kevin
Whelan (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1995) 152.
28. Granard Papers, T3765/N/2.
29. Granard Papers, T3765/L/3/3.
30. Joseph Cooper Walker, An Historical Essay on the Dress of the Ancient and
Modern Irish (Dublin, 1788) vii.
31. See Clare O’Halloran, Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations Antiquarian Debate
and Cultural Politics in Ireland, c.1750–1800 (Cork: Cork UP, 2004).
32. These societies faltered due to financial difficulties as well as internal
rivalries. See O’Halloran 165–166.
33. Charlotte Brooke’s Reliques of Irish poetry, ed. Lesa Ní Mhunghaile (Dublin:
Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2009) v.
34. Charlotte Brooke’s Reliques, iv.
35. Norman A. Jeffares and Peter Van de Kamp, Irish Literture: The Eighteenth
Century (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006) 297.
36. Tim Burke, “Eliza Dorothea Cobbe, Lady Tuite,” in Irish Women Poets of
the Romantic Period, ed. Stephen Behrendt (Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street
Press, 2008).
37. Charlotte Brooke’s Reliques, cxxii; Monica Nevin writing in The Journal of the
Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland dates their acquaintance to 1786.
38. Charlotte Brooke’s Reliques, ix.
39. Rosemary Richey, “Lady Moira,” DIB.
40. Liz Bellamy, “Regionalism and nationalism: Maria Edgeworth, Walter Scott
and the definition of Britishness,” in Snell, The Regional Novel in Britain and
Ireland, 1800–1900, 57–58. Leith Davis also records that “In the later eighteenth century, more Anglo-Irish writers in particular turned their attention
to antiquarian research into traditional Gaelic culture as a means of connecting further with the native tradition” although she recognises the
myriad problems and ambiguities associated with such an attempt, Music,
Postcolonialism and Gender, The Construction of Irish National Identity 1723–
1784 (Notre Dame, Notre Dame UP, 2005) 56. See also, Joep Leerssen, Mere
Irish and Fíor Ghael (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1986) ch x.
41. Charlotte Brooke’s Reliques, ix. Brooke does however frequently disagree with
Walker’s opinions, see Davis 79–81.
Notes
203
42. Though not in possession of the reference book Lady Moira wanted, Lord
Charlemont refers her to the History of Nicetas Acominatus, translated by
Cousin, to support her investigations into Byzantine history, National
Library of Ireland, F.S. Bourke Collection, MS 10,756.
43. Granard Papers, T3765/M/3/5.
44. Granard Papers, T3765/M/3/5.
45. Walker iii.
46. Walker vii.
47. Joseph Cooper Walker, Memoirs of Alessandro Tassoni, ed. Samuel Walker
(London, 1815) xlix.
48. We know from Gilbert’s, A History of the City of Dublin (Dublin, 1854) that
“Lord Moira was one of Lord Charlemont’s earliest friends, and for many
years his Parliamentary coadjutor in the House of Peers,” 394. Walker refers
to his correspondence with Hardy and their mutual intimacy with him in
a letter to Lady Moira during the time of the 1798 rebellion: “I had a letter
this day from Mr Hardy. He says all is quiet about Castle Forbes . . . What
times!” Granard Papers, T3765/M/3/5.
49. Horace Walpole, Horace Walpole’s Correspondence with the Countess of Upper
Ossory, eds., Lewis W.S. and Dayle Wallace A., The Yale Edition, vol. 33 (New
Haven: Yale UP, 1965) 474.
50. Lady Moira, “Particulars relative to a human skeleton, and the garments that were found thereon, when dug out of a bog at the foot of
Drumkeragh, . . . ” Archaeologia (1785): 100.
51. Lady Moira 93.
52. Lady Moira 90.
53. Walker, Historical Essay, v.
54. Lady Moira 92–93.
55. Lady Moira 92.
56. Walker, Historical Essay, vi.
57. Walker, Memoirs, lxiii; Henry Boyd, trans., A Translation of the “Inferno” of
Dante Alighieri in English Verse, 2 vols. (Dublin, 1785).
58. Thomas Moore, Irish Melodies, National Airs, Sacred Songs, Ballads, Songs, etc.
(Jersey, 1828) 25.
59. Lesa Ní Mhunghaile, “Anglo-Irish Antiquarianism,” in Anglo-Irish identities
1571–1845, ed. David A. Valone and Jill Marie Bradbury (Lewisburg, PA:
Bucknell UP, 2008) 191.
60. Thomas Moore, The Journal of Thomas Moore, 1836–1842, ed. Wilfred
S. Dowden, vol. 5 (London: Associated UP, 1988) 1864.
61. The Gentleman’s Magazine: And Historical Chronicle (July to December, 1818)
88 2: 477.
62. Andrew James Symington, Thomas Moore the Poet: His Life and Works
(New York, 1880) 13.
63. Symington 13.
64. Harry White, “Thomas Moore,” DIB.
65. Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin, Established for the Investigation and
Revival of Ancient Irish Literature . . . vol. 1 (Dublin, 1808) ix.
66. Royal Irish Academy, Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in Royal Irish
Academy, 2. MS 23 F 16.
67. RIA 2. MS 23 F 16.
204
Notes
68. Theophilus O’Flanagan, ed., Advice to a Prince . . . (Dublin, 1808) 29.
69. O’Flanagan 29.
70. It is listed in the Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy
just as O’Flanagan had described it: written on seventeenth-century paper,
“bound in leather, tooled, and gilt; gilt edges.” Lady Moira’s name, recorded
as “E. Moira Hastings, &c. &c.” is written on the inside of the front
cover. RIA MS 23 F 16.
71. O’Flanagan iv.
72. O’Flanagan iv.
73. Lesa Ní Mhunghaile, “Theophilus O’Flanagan,” DIB.
74. Augusta Hall, ed., Life and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs Delany,
vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP) 552.
75. Honora Edgeworth to Charles Sneyd Edgeworth, 11 Feb 1808, Edgeworth
Papers, National Library of Ireland, Pos. 9030/615.
76. John Bowyer Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth
Century Consisting of Authentic Memoirs and Original Letters of Eminent
Persons . . . (London, 1858) 6.
77. Granard Papers, T3765 M/3/14/26.
78. Invitations to Moira House are included amongst the Scully correspondence
at the NLI as is the comment “In our Moira House society we look forward
to having you sir of our party, as when I was last in town,” again explicitly
referring to a society at Moira House. NLI MS 27485/16.
79. Morgan 92 and Granard Papers T3765/M/2/33.
80. See James Grant Raymond, The Life of Thomas Dermody, 2 vols. (London
and Dublin, 1806); Lady Morgan, Lady Morgan’s, Memoirs. Autobiography,
Diaries and Correspondence (London, 1862).
81. Granard Papers T3765/M/2/33/1.
82. Granard Papers T3765/M/2/33/3.
83. Granard Papers T3765/M/2/33/4.
84. Michael Griffin, “ ‘Infatuated to his ruin’: The fate of Thomas Dermody,
1775–1802,” History Ireland (May/June 2006).
85. Todd 105.
86. Snell 1. Edgeworth’s and Scott’s works have generally been classified as
regional novels although many critics insist that they simultaneously fall
into the genre of national tale, see Ina Ferris, The Romantic National Tale and
the Question of Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002).
87. Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent,
t in The Novels and Selected Works of
Maria Edgeworth, ed. Jane Desmarais, Tim McLoughlin and Marilyn Butler,
I (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1998) 54.
88. Granard Papers, T3765/2/31/3.
89. Maria Edgeworth, The Absentee, in The Novels and Selected Works of Maria
Edgeworth, ed. Heidi Van de Veire, Kim Walker and Marilyn Butler, vol. V
(London: Pickering and Chatto, 1998) xvii.
90. Edgeworth Papers, Pos. 9029/493.
91. Maria Edgeworth, Patronage, in The Novels and Selected Works of Maria
Edgeworth, ed. by Connor Carville and Marilyn Butler, vol. VI (London:
Pickering and Chatto, 1998) xi; Richey, “Lady Moira” DIB.
92. Maria Edgeworth, Ormond, in The Novels and Selected Works of Maria
Edgeworth, ed. by Claire Connolly, vol. VIII (London: Pickering and Chatto,
Notes
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
115.
205
1998) 5. Hester Chapone refers to the perils of card-playing thus: “I have
always considered the universal practice of card-playing as particularly
pernicious in this respect, that, whilst it keeps people perpetually in company, it excludes conversation.” Hester Chapone, The Works of Mrs Chapone,
Containing Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, vol. 2 (Dublin, 1775) 16.
Edgeworth, Ormond 152 and 10.
Edgeworth, Patronage 48.
Edgeworth, Ormond 55.
Edgeworth, Ormond 208.
Voltaire and Rousseau, two of the key members of the eighteenth-century
salon, are noted as being absent, the former not being in France at the time,
and the latter in the midst of another quarrel.
Edgeworth, Ormond xi.
Maria Edgeworth, Letters for Literary Ladies. To Which is Added, An Essay on
the Noble Science of Self-justification. 2nd edition (London, 1799) 110.
Edgeworth, Letters for Literary Ladies 111. For more on Edgeworth’s gatherings, see Chapter Five.
Granard Papers, T3765 M/3/14/29.
Granard Papers, T3765 M/3/14/31.
Of course it must be borne in mind that, as Hugh Trevor-Roper notes, “the
creation of an independent Highland tradition, . . . was the work of the later
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.” Thus rather than recording
history, Trevor-Roper argues that Scott and many like him were instead
contributing to a myth of antiquity, through their false presentation of
Highland traditions as “ancient, original and distinctive.” “The Invention
of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland,” The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1983) 16.
Granard Papers, T3765 M/3/14/29.
Thomas Brydson to Lady Moira, Edinburgh, 25 July 1785, Granard Papers,
T3765/M/3/14/17.
Granard Papers, T3765/M/3/14/17.
Granard Papers, T3765 M/3/14/31.
For further discussion on English-Irish politeness, see Martyn Powell, The
Politics of Consumption in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005) 212–218.
Granard Papers, T3765 M/3/14/31.
The Peerage of Ireland: or, a Genealogical History of the Present Nobility of that
Kingdom . . . By John Lodge . . . vol. 3 (London, 1789) 109–110.
James N. Brewer, The Beauties of Ireland: Being Original Delineations, Topographical, Historical, and Biographical, of Each County (London, 1826).
Mrs Edgeworth [Harriet Butler and Lucy Robinson], A Memoir of Maria
Edgeworth, With a Selection From Her Letters by the Late Mrs Edgeworth, 3 vols
(Privately published, 1867) 14.
Maria Edgeworth to Margaret Ruxton, 1 April 1805, NLI, Edgeworth Papers,
Pos. 9029/456.
Edgeworth, A Memoir 14.
“Moira House at Two Epochs,” Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, ed. William
and Robert Chambers (Edinburgh, 1848) 122.
206
Notes
116. Lady Morgan, Lady Morgan’s Memoirs, vol. 1, 35.
117. Sydney Owenson, Poems: Dedicated by Permission, to the Right Honourable the
Countess of Moira . . . (Dublin, 1801).
118. Morgan 177.
119. Letter from Lady Stuart Lonsdale to Lady Loisia Stuart, 26 August 1806,
Gleanings from an Old Portfolio Containing Some Correspondence between Lady
Louisa Stuart and Her Sister . . . (Edinburgh, 1898).
120. Both Jim Shanahan and Susan Egenolf remark on the frequency with which
Lady Morgan subtitled her novels as national tales and how she thus
“actively fostered the national tale as a genre”; Ireland and Romanticism,
ed. Jim Kelly (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011).
121. Sydney Owenson, The Wild Irish Girl, ed. Kathryn Kirkpatrick (Oxford: OUP,
2008) 88.
122. Owenson 48, 89.
123. Mary Helen Thuente, The Harp Re-strung, The United Irishmen and the Rise of
Irish Literary Nationalism (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1994) 17.
124. Thuente, “Who Fears to Speak of Ninety-Eight?” 1–16.
125. Pamela Fitzgerald can herself be read as a product of Anglo-French-Irish
exchanges. The assumed daughter of Mme de Genlis and Louis Philippe
II, Duke of Orleans, she met Edward at the theatre in Paris and they later
married in Tournai in 1792. Fitzgerald, vol. 2, xii.
126. John Carr, The Stranger in Ireland: Or, A Tour in the Southern and Western Parts
of that Country, in the year 1805 (Hartford, 1806) 256.
127. Patrick Geoghegan, “In the courtroom he established himself as the leading defender of the United Irishmen, and was later described as being the
barrister most obnoxious to the government,” in “John Philpot Curran,”
DIB.
128. Curran was Master of the Robes in Ireland from 1806 and he in fact assisted
Lady Granard in this capacity in suppressing the publication of 300 letters
written by Lady Moira to Lady Tryawley, which had been seized by the
house’s tenants (Ann and Col. John Dunkin) upon her demise. Granard
Papers T3765/J/5/10.
129. Theobald Wolfe Tone, Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, ed. William Theobald
Wolfe Tone (Washington, 1826) 214.
130. Sunday 23 August 1792, Tone 184.
131. Janet Todd, “Ascendancy: Lady Mount Cashell, Lady Moira, Mary
Wollstonecraft and the Union Pamphlets,” Eighteenth-Century Ireland 18
(2003): 105–106. Todd refers only briefly in her article to Lady Moira’s salon
and when she does so it is to place great emphasis on it as a political gathering, open to women, and presumably men “with a political agenda from
whatever religious background.” While accurately reflecting the political
interests of the salon’s hostess and her husband, who along with Henry
Grattan and other liberal members of the Irish Parliament, formed the Irish
Whig Club in 1789, Todd misrepresents the salon’s focus and aims, which
cannot be limited to the political.
132. Lady Moira to George Townsend, 14 March 1772, cited in Angela Bourke,
et al., eds. The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing,
g vol. 5 (Cork: Cork UP,
2002) 45–46.
Notes
207
133. Scully Papers, MS 27485/16/17, National Library of Ireland, “Letters to
Denis Scully and others from members of his family and friends, and
ecclesiastics.”
134. NLI MS 27485/15/10.
135. T3765/J/9/2/13. Lady Moira to Lady Granard: “Many of the members of
both Houses who voted for the Union bitterly and loudly repent, from the
most feeling source, disappointed in promises made to them.”
136. NLI MS 27485/15/10.
137. Irish Architectural Archive, Ushers Island/Quay RWD 444T.
138. For further information on the Mendicity Institution, see Audrey Woods,
Dublin Outsiders: Mendicity Institution, 1818–1998 (A & A Farmar, 1999).
139. “The Mendicity Institution, about us and history,” 21 January 2015. http://
www.mendicity.org/about.htm.
140. O’Halloran 122.
5 Collaborative Hospitality and Cultural Transfers:
Provincial Salons Across England and Ireland
1. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. Chapman R.W (Oxford: Press,
2008) 405–406.
2. Elizabeth Child, “ ‘To Sing the Town’: Women, Place, and Print Culture in
Eighteenth-Century Bath,” Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 28 (1999):
157. See also Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies 1580–1800, The Origins of an Associational World (Oxford: OUP, 2002), “By the 1760s Bristol
might boast that it had the biggest concentration of associations in the
West of England, and that these recruited across the regional hinterland,”
Clark 456.
3. Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the
Provincial Town, 1660–1770 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989).
4. Clark 111.
5. Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester,
r vol. IV
(Manchester, 1793) v.
6. Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future, 1730–1810
(London: Faber, 2002).
7. For further discussion of reading parties, book clubs, and private theatricals,
see Chapter 6.
8. Laura Kirkley, “Translating Rousseauism: Transformations of Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie in the Works of Helen Maria Williams and
Maria Edgeworth,” in Readers, Writers, Salonnières, ed. Hilary Brown and
Gillian Dow (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011) 93.
9. Lady Morgan (Sydney Owenson), Lady Morgan’s Memoirs, Autobiography,
Diaries and Correspondence, ed. William H. Dixon, vol. 1 (London, 1862)
144.
10. “Provincial Lichfield life might seem strange in one who was so ambitious to hold sway on the public stage, but Anna always declared
her condemnation of that ‘Great Babylon’, London and its high society, refusing to move, either to there or to Bath,” Marion Roberts,
208
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
Notes
“Anna Seward (1742–1809),” Chawton House Library and early women’s
writing, 21 January 2015. http://www.chawtonhouse.org/wp-content
/uploads/2012/06/Anna-Seward.pdf.
Jan Fergus, Provincial Readers in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: OUP,
2006) 22.
See Fergus, “Introduction,” 28–29.
Julia M. Wright, “ ‘All the Fire-side Circle’: Irish Women Writers and the
Sheridan-Lefanu Coterie,” Keats-Shelley Journal 55 (2006): 63–72.
References to these literary women also occur in James Boswell’s London
Journal 1762–63; Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Samuel
Richardson’s correspondence (1804), Samuel Whyte’s Miscellanea Nova
(1800), and Lady Morgan’s Memoirs (1862), amongst other works. More
recently, Aileen Douglas and Ian Campbell Ross’s edition of The Triumph of
Prudence over Passion (1781) for the Early Irish Fiction series has attributed
that novel’s authorship to Elizabeth Sheridan, and their introduction provides biographical detail pertaining both to Elizabeth herself and to her
immediate family, Elizabeth Sheridan, “Introduction,” 9–26.
Alicia Lefanu, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mrs. Frances Sheridan
(London, 1824) 31.
See “The Peregrinations of Fiachra McBrady, literally translated from the
original Irish,” in Andrew Carpenter, Verse in English from Eighteenth-Century
Ireland (Cork: Cork UP, 1998) 498.
Lefanu 34.
Lefanu 35.
Sean P. Popplewell, “Domestic Decorative Painting in Ireland: 1720–1820,”
Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 68. 269/270 (1979): 50.
Swift refers to Quilca as “a rotten cabin” in his poem “To Quilca,” and it
certainly seems that a process of refinement of the building took place in
the decades after Swift’s visits.
Lefanu 39.
Lefanu 199.
Lefanu 198.
Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, vol. 1, 244; Lady Eliza Echlin to Mr
Richardson, 2 August 1756 from The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson,
ed. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, 6 vols. (London, 1804) 75.
James Boswell, Boswell’s London Journal 1762–63, ed. Frederick A. Pottle,
vol. 2 (London: The Folio Society, 1985) 111. Boswell here refers to Robert
Jephson who also frequented the Bluestocking salons.
Lefanu 235.
Thomas Seccombe, rev. Raymond Refaussée, “Philip Le Fanu,” ODNB.
Wright 66.
Morgan, vol. 1, 143.
Morgan, vol. 1, 144.
Morgan, vol. 1, 183.
The Provost was strongly associated with Moore and his early career, being
among the first to encourage the young poet. See Jim Shanahan, “John
Kearney,” DIB.
The National Library of Ireland is in possession of the Edgeworth Papers,
which are available in microfilm format (Pos. 9206–9035), some of which
Notes
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
209
have been transcribed and are available in Augustus Hare’s The Life and
Letters of Maria Edgeworth (1894).
National Library of Ireland, Edgeworth Papers, Pos. 9028/416.
NLI Pos. 9028/416.
Clíona Ó Gallchoir, Maria Edgeworth: Women, Enlightenment and Nation
(Dublin: UCD, 2005) 24.
Toby Barnard, “Reading in Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Public and Private Pleasures,” in The Experience of Reading: Irish Historical Perspectives, ed.
Máire Kennedy and Bernadette Cunningham (Dublin: Rare Books Group,
1999) 68.
James Quinn, “William Henry Hamilton,” DIB.
NLI Pos. 9030/688.
Hare 157.
Hare 13.
NLI Pos. 9030/667.
Hare 31 (18 November 1793). The English Short Title Catalogue lists nine
editions of Gay’s Trivia, including two printed after 1735, both of which
were printed in London.
In reference to Montesquieu sur la Grandeur et Decadence des Romains, and
Dallas’s History of the Maroons (26 February 1805).
Hare 88, 145, 206, 225, 231.
Hare 145.
Hare 33.
Hare 151. This is most probably a reference to John Sargent’s The Mine:
A Dramatic Poem (1785).
Hare 315.
NLI Pos. 9029/501.Thomas Tyrwhitt, The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer,
r 4
vols. (London, 1775), 5th volume (Glossary) added in 1778. See Derek
Pearsall, “Principal editions of the Canterbury Tales,” in The Canterbury
Tales (New York: Routledge, 1985).
Thomas O’Beirne was a Church of Ireland bishop who had also written for
the press and the theatre, as well as translating two dramas into English
from French.
It is unclear as to who this Mr. Jephson is, as Robert Jephson had died
in 1803.
Hare 173.
PRONI Berwick Papers T415/44.
PRONI T415/50, undated.
Hare 160.
NLI Pos. 9029/528.
NLI Pos. 9029/532. The identity of Miss Fortescue is unspecified.
Harriet Kramer Linkin, The Life and Legacy of Mary Tighe (Alexandria, VA:
Alexander Street Press, 2008).
NLI Pos. 9029/532.
David Gadd, Georgian Summer: Bath in the Eighteenth Century (Bath: Adams
and Dart, 1971) 157.
Ruth Avaline Hesselgrave, Lady Miller and the Batheaston Literary Circle (New
Haven: Yale UP, 1927) 5.
210
Notes
63. Moyra Haslett, “The Poet as Clubman,” in The Handbook of British Poetry,
1660–1800 (Oxford: OUP, 2013).
64. Thrale 231.
65. Thrale 229.
66. “Estate: Miller (Ballycaseymore),” Landed Estates Database, 17 April 2014.
landedestates.nuigalway.ie.
67. Landed Estates Database.
68. The New Annual Register, or General Repository of History, Politics and Literature,
for the Year 1781 (London, 1782) 239.
69. Before the lapse of the licensing Act in 1695 printing was restricted to
London, York, Oxford, and Cambridge. Borsay’s The English Urban Renaissance provides a lengthy discussion of the development of provincial
newspapers after the lapse of the Act, which resulted in massive, sustained
growth in the provincial publishing industry.
70. Anna Riggs Miller, On Novelty: And On Trifles, and Triflers. Poetic Amusements
at a Villa Near Bath (Bath, 1778) 1.
71. Terry Belanger, “Publishers and Writers in Eighteenth-Century England,”
in Books and Their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Isabel Rivers
(Leicester: Leicester UP, 1982) 12.
72. Joanna Hughes, ed., Poems, &c. &c. by the late Mrs. Mary Alcock (London,
1799) v.
73. Markman Ellis, “Mary Alcock,” ODNB.
74. Ellis.
75. Anna Seward, Poem to the Memory of Lady Miller (London, 1782).
76. Seward 79–81.
77. Anonymity is one such indication of this uncertain approach. Elizabeth
Montagu’s name only appeared in print for example in the fourth edition
of her work, An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear (1777). Her
sister, Sarah (Robinson) Scott also refrained from including her name on the
title page, opting instead to declare herself simply as “ a person of quality”
in A Journey Through Every Stage of Life (1754).
78. Seward 85–90.
79. “I was born 50 miles nearer Scotland than is Lichfield, and passed the first
seven years of my existence in my native village, amidst the eminences
of the Peak of Derbyshire,” Anna Seward, Letters of Anna Seward: Written Between the Years 1784 and 1807, ed. A. Constable, vol. 6 (Edinburgh,
1811) 39.
80. Marion Roberts, “Close Encounters: Anna Seward, 1742–1809, A Woman in
Provincial Cultural Life,” ML thesis, University of Birmingham, 2010, 43.
81. Roberts, “Close Encounters” 44.
82. For details of horse racing and associated sociability, see Borsay, “Sport,”
The English Urban Renaissance 173–196. Additional links include Samuel
Johnson’s father having been a bookseller in the town and David Garrick,
another native, having begun acting there.
83. Borsay 329, 333, 342; Roberts, “Close Encounters” 44.
84. Maria Edgeworth, ed., Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, vol. 1 (London,
1820) 237.
85. As Claudia Kairoff has noted in Anna Seward and the End of the Eighteenth
Century (2012), “She [Seward] replaced her mother and, eventually, her
Notes
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
107.
108.
109.
110.
111.
112.
113.
114.
115.
116.
211
father as host of the Bishop’s Palace salon. It was important to Seward that
she maintained her social as well as literary status, owing to her need to
take over her parents’ roles . . . ”
Edgeworth, Memoirs, vol. 1 237.
Roberts, “Close Encounters” 45.
Roberts, “Close Encounters” 45.
Sylvia Bowerbank, “Anna Seward,” ODNB
Borsay 132.
Paul Kaufman, “Readers and their Reading in Eighteenth-Century
Lichfield,” Library 28 (1973): 110.
Kaufman 110.
Brewer 577. Seward herself was a great appreciator of music and went to
Birmingham to the harmonic festival where she encountered “perilous
crowds and Calcutta heat in the morning and evening performance, three
days together, eight hours music out of the twenty four. It was hazarding martyrdom to the second favourite science of my life,” Seward, Letters,
vol. 6, 49.
Norma Clarke, The Rise and Fall of the Woman of Letters (London: Pimlico,
2004) 40.
Clarke 40.
Marion Roberts, Chawton House Library.
Bowerbank, “Anna Seward,” ODNB.
Brewer 573.
Brewer 573.
Seward, Letters, vol. 6, 339.
Seward, Letters, vol. 1, ix.
Margaret Ashmun, The Singing Swan: An Account of Anna Seawrd and Her
Acquaintance with Dr. Johnson, Boswell and Others of Their Time (New Haven:
Yale UP, 1931) 280.
Charlotte Fell-Smith, rev. Sarah Couper, “William Newton,” ODNB.
Fell-Smith, ODNB.
Seward, Letters, vol. 1, 292.
Brewer 604.
Lichfield Archives D262/1/24.
Lichfield Archives D262/1/24.
Lichfield Archives D262/1/24.
Lichfield Archives D262/1/24.
Brewer 575.
While speaking of Montagu and Carter’s correspondence, Elizabeth
Eger refers to “the immediacy of their dialogue, the sense in which
it tries to emulate conversation,” Eger, Bluestockings, Women of Reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2010) 99.
Clarke 25.
Martin Stapleton, Anna Seward & Classic Lichfield (Worcester: Deighton,
1909).
Brewer 612.
Jacqueline M. Labbe, ed., The History of British Women’s Writing, 1750–
1830 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) 18. See also, Harriet Kramer
212
Notes
Linkin, “Mary Tighe and the Coterie of Women Poets in Psyche,” in the
same edition.
117. Nigel Leask, “Salons, Alps and Cordilleras: Helen Maria Williams, Alexander
von Humboldt, and the Discourse of Romantic Travel,” in Women, Writing
and the Public Sphere, ed. Elizabeth Eger, Charlotte Grant, Clíona Ó Gallchoir
and Penny Warburton (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2001) 223. The salon did
not continue without interruption, Williams, her sister and mother were
all imprisoned for six weeks in 1793 for example.
118. Leask 224.
119. Leask 221.
6 “Dublin Is Attribilaire” – The Changing Nature of Elite
Sociability
1. Lady Morgan, Lady Morgan’s Memoirs, Autobiography, Diaries and Correspondence, vol. 2 (London, 1862) 22.
2. Elizabeth Sheridan, The Triumph of Prudence over Passion, ed. Aileen Douglas
and Ian Campbell Ross (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011) 24. See Mary
O’Dowd, “Women and Patriotism in Eighteenth-Century Ireland,” History
Ireland 14.5 (September/October, 2006): 25–30.
3. Eoin Burke, “Poor Green Erin,” in German Travel Writers’ Narratives on
Ireland from Before the 1798 Rising to After the Great Famine (Oxford: Peter
Lang, 2011) 70–71.
4. Burke 71.
5. Deirdre Coleman, “Firebrands, Letters and Flowers: Mrs Barbauld and
the Priestleys,” in Romantic Sociability, ed. Gillian Russell and Clara Tuite
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002) 93.
6. R. Warwick Bond, ed. The Marlay Letters 1778–1820 (London: Constable and
Company, 1937) 97.
7. PRONI T1565/1, The Diary of Mrs Walker, 42; 45.
8. Susanne Schmid, British Literary Salons of the Late Eighteenth and Early
Nineteenth Centuries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) 41.
9. O’Kane remarks on the Duke of Leinster’s anxiety and Louisa Conolly’s
censure in the press.
10. Jean Agnew, The Drennan-McTier Letters, 1776–1819, vol. 1 (Dublin: Irish
Manuscripts Commission, 1998) 213. Drennan wrote more than 1,500
letters to his sister Martha, and these are now in PRONI.
11. Bridget Hourican, “Henrietta O’Neill,” DIB. See also Andrew Carpenter, 475.
12. Anthologia Hibernica (October 1793) 319–320.
13. Bridget Hourican, “John O’Neill,” DIB. Henrietta also wrote poetry herself and her poems, “The Ode to the Poppy” and “Written on Seeing her
Two Sons at Play,” are included in Andrew Carpenter’s Verses in English in
Eighteenth-Century Ireland (1998).
14. See Schmid 41.
15. PRONI T1839/1, volume of copy letters, correspondence of Sir John
Rawdon.
16. PRONI T1839/1.
17. PRONI T1839/1.
Notes
213
18. Agnew, vol. 2, 110.
19. For further information see, Karol Mullaney Dignam, Music and Dancing at
Castletown, Co. Kildare, 1759–1821 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2011).
20. Bridget Hourican, “John O’Neill,” DIB.
21. Agnew, vol. 2, 214.
22. PRONI T415/62.
23. PRONI T415/62.
24. Sarah M. Zimmerman “Henrietta O’Neill,” ODNB; Bridget Hourican,
“Henrietta O’Neill,” DIB.
25. Thomas Campbell, Life of Mrs Siddons, vol. 1 (London, 1831) 263–264.
26. Borsay 182.
27. Borsay 182.
28.
Many book clubs, which in their early days disposed of the books after
they had done their rounds, later decided to keep them. They began
with a cupboard, then a room. Soon they needed a part-time librarian, and then specially designed premises. A book club could over time
transform itself into a permanent library.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
William St. Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2004) 252.
Johanna Archbold, “Book Clubs and Reading Societies in the Late Eighteenth Century,” Clubs and Societies in Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin:
Four Courts Press, 2010) 138–162.
St Clair 250.
St Clair 668.
St Clair 244.
St Clair 251.
St. Clair, “Appendix 10,” 669.
Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian
England (London: The Folio Society, 2006) 251.
Vickery 251.
Vickery 251.
Vickery 251.
Vickery 397, 400.
Archbold 142.
Granard Papers, T3765/J/8/13.
Granard Papers, T3765/J/8/13.
Archbold 141.
Archbold 141. The two guineas needed to join Selena’s book club was quite
a significant sum of money and so would have excluded the literate lower
orders.
Dorothea Herbert, Retrospections of Dorothea Herbert 1770–1806, ed. Louis
M. Cullen (Dublin: Townhouse, 2004) 82–83 (1782).
Herbert 74.
Herbert 74.
Herbert 324 (1793).
Herbert 324.
Herbert 328 (1794).
Herbert 43.
214
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
Notes
Herbert 290–291.
Herbert 386.
Archbold 142.
Agnew, vol. 2, 96.
Agnew, vol. 2, 96; 101.
Raymond Gillespie and Stephen A. Royle, No.12 Belfast, Part I, to 1840, Irish
Historic Town Atlas Series (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2003) 6.
Gillespie and Royle 7.
Agnew, vol. 2, 35.
Gillespie and Royle 7.
This could, of course, be owing to the secretive nature of the correspondence, which was often written in code to prevent suspicion.
Agnew, vol. 2, 97.
Agnew vol. 2, 101.
Agnew vol. 2, 100.
Agnew vol. 2, 105.
Agnew vol. 2, 105.
Agnew vol. 2, 199.
For further details of the 1798 Rebellion see Ian McBride Eighteenth–Century
Ireland (2009) although as McBride notes in speaking of ’98: “no single
event has received more attention from the current generation of Irish
historians,” 346.
Granard Papers T3765/J/9/2/13.
Maria Edgeworth, The Absentee, in The Novels and Selected Works of Maria
Edgeworth, ed. Heidi Van de Veire, Kim Walker, and Marilyn Butler, vol. V
(London: Pickering and Chatto, 1998).
Mary Campbell, Lady Morgan, The Life and Times of Sydney Owenson
(London: Pandora, 1988) 184.
Walter Scott, The Letters of Walter Scott 1787–1807, ed. H.J.C. Grierson
(London: Constable, 1932) 234.
Alexander G. Gonzalez, ed. Irish Women Writers: An A-to-Z Guide (Westport:
Greenwood Press, 2006) 311.
NLI MS 4239 and TCD MS 1461/5–7.
E. Wingfield “Isabella, Frances Wingfield, 24th December, 1860,” 48,
Genealogical Office, NLI. Quoted in Harriet Kramer Linkin, “Mary Tighe:
A Portrait of the Artist for the Twenty-first Century,” in A Companion to Irish
Literature, ed. Julia M. Wright, vol. 2 (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2010).
Hare 339; Frances Clarke “Caroline Hamilton,” DIB; C.J. Woods, “Edward
Tighe,” DIB.
A.P. Woolrich, “Isaac Ambrose Eccles,” ODNB.
Trinity College Dublin, Correspondence of J.C. Walker with Mary Tighe, MS
1461/7/44.
TCD MS 1461/6/21.
TCD MS 1461/7/36.
TCD MS 1461/7/30.
TCD MS 1461/5/8. Mrs Wilmot was born Barbarina Ogle and later married
Valentine Wilmot. Upon his death she married Thomas Brand thus becoming Lady Dacre. She has been described as “one of the most accomplished
women of her time, an excellent horsewoman, sculptor, and a French and
Notes
83.
84.
85.
86.
87.
88.
89.
90.
91.
92.
93.
94.
95.
96.
97.
98.
99.
100.
101.
215
an Italian scholar, as well as a writer of some note.” Thompson Cooper, rev.
Rebecca Mills, “Lady Dacre,” ODNB.
Harriet Kramer Linkin, ed. The Collected Poems and Journals of Mary Tighe
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005) 235.
Linkin, The Collected Poems 263.
Linkin, The Collected Poems 263.
TCD MS 1461/7/55.
Linkin, The Collected Poems 263–264.
Lord John Russell, ed., Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence of Thomas Moore
(London, 1856) 61.
TCD MS 1461/7/41.
TCD MS 1461/7/41.
Harry White, “Thomas Moore,” DIB.
This impression is further substantiated by Caroline Hamilton’s drawings.
Society, for example, has been described as capturing “the boredom of a
Dublin drawing room, paralysed by post-union torpor,” and the decline of
Dublin society in general after 1801.“Details of Lot 430” Adam’s Catalogue
Details, 21 January 2015. http://www.adams.ie.
Morgan, vol. 2, 22.
“[Lady Wilde] built up a large literary circle around her married homes, 21
Westland Row and (from 1855) 1 Merrion Square,” Owen Dudley Edwards,
“Jane Francesca Agnes (‘Sperenza’) Wilde,” DIB.
“New Stornoway Literary Salon Launches,” publ. 26 November 2010,
21 January 2015 http://www.hebrides-news.com/stornoway_literary_salon261110.html.
“The London Literary Salon,” 21 January 2015. http://www.litsalon.co
.uk/.
“Twitter – The Virtual Literary Salon,” publ. 11 January 2012, 21
January 2015. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/jan/11
/twitter-virtual-literary-salon.
“Nonesense & Sensibility – Shoreditch House Literary Salon,” publ.
7 March 2012, 21 January 2015. http://nonsensesensibility.com/blog
/2012/03/shoreditch-house-literary-salon/.
“Nonesense & Sensibility.”
Stefanie Stockhorst, ed. Cultural Transfer through Translation, The Circulation
of Enlightened Thought in Europe by means of Translation (Amsterdam and
New York: Rodopi, 2010) 7.
Stockhorst 21.
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Index
Note: The letter ‘n’ following locators refers to notes.
Académie Française, 15, 31, 38
Act of Union, 130, 153–4, 168–9, 173,
174, 207n135
Adam, Robert, 7, 52, 53
Agriculture Society of Manchester, 85
Ainsworth, Alice, 161, 162
Alcock, Mary, 146
d’Alembert, Jean le Rond, 20, 123
Alexander, William, The History of
Women, 72
American literary salons, 33
antiquarianism, 9, 29, 97, 111–20,
121, 127, 131
Co. Antrim, 161, 165
Shane’s Castle, 155–60
Archbold, Johanna, 162, 164
architects, see under individual names
Atkinson, Joseph, 118
Austen, Jane, 161
Avignon, 28–9, 33
Barbauld, Anna Laetitia, 5
Barnard, Toby, 3, 11, 139
Bath, 132, 147, 207n10
Batheaston, Somerset, 133, 143–6
Beasley, Faith, 17
Belfast, 155, 157, 158, 165–6
Belfast Reading Society, 166
Berwick, Edward, 106, 115, 119, 142,
158
in Lichfield, 149–50
Bingham, Charles, 100, 199n121
Birmingham, 133, 211n93
Birmingham Riots, 154
Bluestockings, 45–66, 71, 78–105, 138,
143, 151, 172, 174,
187n9
the term bluestocking, 45–6, 76,
187n10
du Bocage, Anne-Marie Fiquet, 49,
101, 188n26, 200n123
Bordeaux, 28, 29–31
Borsay, Peter, 11, 160
de Bourbon-Penthièvre, Adélaïde,
Duchess of Orléans, 38–41
Boscawen, Edward, 50, 51, 53
Boscawen, Frances, 45, 46, 50–6, 58,
61, 188n29
Boswell, James, 61–2, 67
Life of Johnson, 62, 191n95
London Journal, 136–7
Boyd, Henry, 106, 117, 121, 129
Boyer, Jean-Baptiste de, Marquis
d’Argens, 28–9
Brewer, John, 3, 149, 150
Bristol, 139, 207n2
Brooke, Charlotte, 112, 113, 117, 128,
135
Reliques of Irish poetry, 97, 112, 113,
172
Burke, Edmund, 46, 61, 62, 67, 68, 82,
86, 100–1
Burney, Charles, 66–7
Burney, Frances, 57, 60, 61, 64, 69–70,
87, 97, 144
Camilla, 60
Evelina, 56
Bury, Catherine Maria, Lady
Charleville, 63
Butler, James, 2nd Duke of Ormonde,
28–9
Campbell, Thomas, 46, 69
Canadian literary salons, 31–2
cards and card parties, 2, 46, 84, 122,
187n13, 204n92
Carter, Elizabeth, 46, 49, 58, 59, 78,
80, 81, 86, 87, 88, 90–1, 96, 99,
101, 104, 105
Epictetus, 49, 104
“Inscription on Lady Ann Dawson’s
Monument”, 91
232
Index
Poems on Particular Occasions, 59
Poems on Several Occasions, 59, 91
Casey, Christine, 50
Caufield, James, 1st Earl of
Charlemont, 16, 31, 114, 203n42,
203n48
Co. Cavan, 133, 135, 170
Quilca House, 135–6, 208n20
cercles, 42, 174
Chambers, William, 81, 88
Chapone, Hester Mulso, 54, 56
Letters on the improvement of the
mind, 58–9
Miscellanies, 104
Charlotte, Queen, 57
de Chastellux, Marquis, 19, 38–9, 41,
181n20
chinoiserie, 7, 45, 51–2, 109
Clancy, Michael, 31
clothing, 25–6, 35, 45, 110
Irish textile industry, 197n39
see also under Rawdon, Elizabeth
clubs, 2–3, 44, 47, 178n13
book clubs, 11, 133, 154, 160–4,
174, 175, 213n28
see also under individual names
Cockburn, Alison Rutherford, 9, 46,
72–4
coffee, 23, 52
coffee houses, 2–3, 45
Cole, Rev. William, 15, 25
Conolly, Lady Louisa, 95, 167,
196n23, 212n9
Cork, 98–9
Crombie, Joseph, 167
Curran, John Philpot, 106, 112,
128–9, 206n127, 206n128
Darwin, Erasmus, 133, 148, 149
Dashkoka, Princess Ekaterina
Romanovna, 15, 22, 75
Daventry, Northamptonshire, 134
Dawson, Lady Anne, 10, 79, 90–1
Dawson, Thomas, later Lord Dartrey,
90–2
Dawson, Philadelphia, Lady Dartrey,
79, 91–2
Day, Thomas, 133, 148
Delany, Mary, 57, 81, 93, 120, 195n12
233
Delany, Patrick, 9, 195n12
Derby, 132
Dermody, Thomas, 107, 121, 157
Diderot, Denis, 20, 22
Dijon, 27
Donnellan, Anne, 92–3
Dooley, Terence, 6
Co. Down, 97, 130, 161, 170
Montalto House, 109, 130
Drennan, William, 156, 164–8
Dublin, 1, 2, 6–7, 74, 78–85, 89, 93,
94, 103–4, 106–131, 134, 137,
154, 163–4, 165, 169, 173, 174
Dominick Street (Tighe), 155, 170,
171–2
Dorset Street (Sheridan), 135
Moira House, 9, 106, 107–111, 114,
125, 126–7, 128–9, 130–1
Smock Alley, 135
Trinity College Dublin, 9, 121, 138
Westmoreland Street (Vesey), 80
Co. Dublin
Lucan House, 80–3, 94–5, 99
du Deffand, Marie de
Vichy-Champrond, 17, 23–4, 27,
32, 47, 48–9, 133, 188n28
Dunbar, Charles, 95–6
Dunbar, Penelope, 91, 95–6, 101
Duplessy, Jean-Marie, 28, 29–32
Eccles, Isaac Ambrose, 170
Edgeworth, Maria, 22, 107, 121–3,
124, 126, 133–4, 138–43, 155
The Absentee, 122, 168
Belinda, 38
Castle Rackrent,
t 121–2
in Edinburgh, 46
Emilie de Coulanges, 140
Ennui, 122, 140
in France, 37–8, 123
Leonara, 122
Letters for Literary Ladies, 123
Ormonde, 122–3
Patronage, 122
Tales of Fashionable Life, 122
Edgeworth, Richard Lovell, 46, 62, 74,
122, 133, 148
234
Index
Edinburgh, 1, 15, 44, 45, 46, 71–7
George Square, 74–5
Holyrood House, 75
education – self-education for women,
2, 5, 9, 44, 56
Eger, Elizabeth, 5, 46, 63, 87
Encyclopédie, 19, 20
Enlightenment, 8, 10, 15–16, 18, 20,
32, 46, 64, 72, 113, 139
February Revolution of 1848, 14,
37, 42
Fitzgerald, Emily, Duchess of Leinster,
10, 16, 94
Fitzgerald, Lady Pamela, 128, 206n125
Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 128, 157,
159
Fitzmaurice, Anastacia, Countess of
Kerry, 12, 16, 34–6
Fitzmaurice, Francis Thomas, 3rd Earl
of Kerry, 34–6
Fletcher, Elizabeth, 76
food and drink, 24, 35–6, 52, 69, 89,
111, 159, 166
see also coffee; tea
Forbes, Selina, Lady Granard, 12, 85–6,
107, 109, 110, 126, 130, 161–2
Fox, Caroline, Lady Holland, 22,
24, 25
Fox, Elizabeth Vassall, Lady Holland,
47, 174
French language, 8, 70, 123, 131, 141
books in Ireland, 110–11
French Revolution, 12, 14, 27, 70–1,
76, 116, 164, 174
French Revolutionary Wars, 15, 174
post-Revolutionary salons, 33–42
Reign of Terror, 33, 36, 37, 39, 40
friendship, 44, 50, 60–1, 92, 104
the Fronde, 18, 113, 181n18
furniture, 25, 36, 51, 52, 108, 109
Gardiner, Margaret, Countess of
Blessington, 71
Garrick, David, 15, 49, 66–7, 86, 145,
210n82
Genlis, Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse
de, 32, 37–9, 122, 141, 171
Geoffrin, Marie Thérèse, 15,
17–19, 21–2, 24–6, 56, 67, 68, 123
German literary salons, 32–3
Gibbon, Edward, 14, 15, 48, 49
Glasgow, 75, 194n164
Godwin, William, 106, 201n4
Goldsmith, Oliver, 55, 67, 68
Goodman, Dena, 17–18, 20, 36
Grand Tour, 7, 15, 22, 31, 67, 110
Grattan, Henry, 153, 206n131
Guibert, Jaques Antoine Hippolyte,
Comte de, 19, 20, 22
Habermas, Jürgen, 3, 23
Hamilton, Caroline, 169, 170, 171–3,
215n92
Hamilton, Elizabeth, 46, 72, 75–6,
167–8
The Cottagers of Glenburnie, 142
Hamilton, Mary, 57, 58
Hardy, Francis, 106, 115, 203n48
Haslett, Moyra, 144, 191n86
Hayes, Richard, 34, 39
Herbert, Dorothea, 155, 159, 160,
162–4, 168, 174
d’Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry, Baron,
15, 19, 67
Humane Female Society, 166
Hume, David, 15, 48, 73
“Of Refinement in the Arts”, 4, 72,
101
Irish Absentee Tax, 100–1
Irish language, 112, 113, 115–16,
117–19, 128, 131, 172–3
Gaelic Society of Dublin, 118–19
Italian conversazioni, 67, 192n116,
192n117
Jefferson, Thomas, 50–1
Jephson, Robert, 46, 79, 94–5, 102,
103, 105, 136, 157
Braganza, 55, 94, 103
Johnson, Joseph, 70
Johnson, Samuel, 4, 54–5, 56, 61–2,
68, 69, 129, 132, 143, 149, 150,
189n61
Johnson’s Club, 55, 94, 97
July Monarchy, 10, 36, 42
Index
Kale, Steven D., 23, 36, 40
Kearney, John, later Bishop of Ossory,
148, 208n32
Kelly, Gary, 57
Kennedy, Máire, 7, 110
Co. Kildare
Carton House, 155
Castletown House, 82, 95, 155
Knox, Vicesimus, 2
Leeds, 132
Leerssen, Joep, 19
Lefanu, Alicia, 135–6, 137
Leicestershire
Ashby-de-la-Zouche, 142
Donington Park, 110, 150
Lennox, Sarah, later Napier, 10, 24
Lespinasse, Julie de, 4, 17, 20, 23,
24, 25, 27, 180n14, 181n28,
188n28
libraries (building or room), 11–12,
30, 68, 109, 132, 139, 154, 170–1,
174, 213n28
circulating libraries, 161, 171
libraries (collection of books), 96–7,
111, 119, 121, 199n98
library societies, 160
see also Bishop’s Palace at Lichfield;
Edgeworthstown
Lichfield, Staffordshire, 133, 134, 147,
149, 150, 207n10
Bishop’s Palace at Lichfield, 147–8,
149
Lilit, Anotine, 18, 27
Linkin, Harriet Kramer, 143
London, 1, 2, 7, 8, 32, 35, 45–6, 49,
50–65, 78–9, 86, 91, 93, 94, 95,
100, 104, 118, 131, 132–3,
134–6, 144, 145, 151, 168, 169,
174, 175
Boscawen’s town house: South
Audley Street, 50, 51–3
Monckton’s town houses: Charles
Street, Berkeley Square, 61; New
Burlington Street, 64–6
Montagu’s town houses: Hill street,
Berkeley Square, 45, 50–1, 54,
235
56, 61; Portman Square, 50–1,
54, 57
Shoreditch, 175
Vesey’s town houses: Bolton Row,
86, 88, 91, 100; Clarges Street,
88–9
Co. Longford, 138, 141, 170
Castle Forbes, 12, 109, 110, 111,
126, 130, 141–2, 162, 203n48
Edgeworthstown, 122, 133, 138–43,
145
muniment room at Castle Forbes, 6,
107
Lunar Society, 133
Lyttelton, Lord George, 86, 98,
189n61
Macpherson, James, Fragments of
Ancient Poetry, 99
Major, Emma, 57
Manchester Literary and Philosophical
Society, 132–3
manuscript circulation, 11, 20–1, 44,
59–60, 68, 72, 77, 101, 138,
142–3, 171, 172, 191n86
compare print culture
Marlay, George, Dean of Ferns, later
Bishop of Waterford, 79, 94–5,
102, 105
Marmontel, Jean-François, 15, 17, 18,
19, 24, 25, 26, 27, 55, 123
marriage, 9–10, 38, 45, 96, 185n127
scandalous marriages, 34, 66, 70,
192n114
McTier, Martha, 156, 158, 159, 165–8
Co. Meath, 138, 141, 142
Black Castle, 140
Miller, Anna, 45, 133, 143–7, 162
Poetical Amusements at a Villa near
Bath, 145
Milton, Thomas, A Collection of Select
Views, 82
Moira, Countess of, see Rawdon,
Elizabeth
Co. Monaghan
Dawson Temple, 91
Monckton, Mary, later Countess of
Cork and Orrery, 45, 61–6, 87,
186n6, 190n65, 192n107
236
Index
Montagu, Edward, 53, 57, 96
Montagu, Elizabeth, 5–6, 45–6, 48, 49,
50–2, 53–5, 57–9, 61, 63–4, 70, 77,
80, 84, 85–7, 91, 92, 93, 95–7,
100, 101–4, 186n6
An Essay on the Writings and Genius
of Shakespear,
r 96–7, 103–4,
210n77
Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat,
baron de, 31, 183n81
Moore, Thomas, 71, 106, 112, 117–18,
119, 172
Irish Melodies, 117, 118, 172, 173
Odes, 118
More, Hannah, 54, 55–6, 58, 60, 70,
89, 97, 98
“The Bas Bleu”, 60, 87, 191n86
Morellet, André, 15, 18, 26, 27, 123
Morris, Gouverneur, 39–41
Murphy, Arthur, 46, 67, 68
music, 65, 66, 67, 138, 148, 157–9,
166, 174, 211n93
Napoleon, 36, 41
Nattier, Jean-Marc, 26, 64
Necker, Suzanne, 4, 17, 19, 22, 26–7,
42, 49, 56
Newton, William, 149, 152
O’Flanagan, Theophilus, 118–19
Ó Gallchoir, Clíona, 139
Ó Gormáin, Muiris, 117, 118
O’Halloran, Clare, 131
O’Kane, Finola, 82–3, 155–6, 197n50
O’Neill, Henrietta, 156–9, 212n13
Oswestry Book Society, 161
Owenson, Sydney, later Lady Morgan,
63, 65–6, 106, 121, 127, 137–8,
168, 169, 171, 173, 174
The Book of the Boudoir,
r 65
The Wild Irish Girl, 65, 127–8
Paris, 15, 16–27, 30, 31, 32, 33–43,
58–9, 73, 123, 134, 144, 151, 174
les “beaux quartiers”, 26–7, 52
former convent of Saint-Joseph (du
Deffand), 23
former Austin convent (Plunket),
39, 40
Hôtel de Charost (Fitzmaurice), 35,
185n107
Hôtel Leblanc (Necker), 26–7
Hôtel de Rambouillet, 178n28
rue du Bac (Staël), 41
rue Saint-Honoré (Geoffrin),
24–5, 27
rue St Dominique/rue de Belle
Chasse (Lespinasse), 23–4
patronage, 44, 58–9, 79, 97, 102–5,
118, 120–1, 127, 128, 149, 155,
157, 200n131
Perceval, Martha, 93
Percy, Bishop Thomas, 68, 96–7, 120
Reliques of ancient English poetry, 97
Perkins, Pam, 71–2, 76
Philadelphia, 33
Pierce, Edward, 148
Plunket, Bridget, Madame de
Chastellux, 12, 16, 38–41
Pohl, Nicole, 16, 32
politesse, 5, 8, 15, 29, 49, 55, 62, 70,
173, 175
portraits and portraiture, 18, 25, 26,
45, 63–4, 68, 69, 76, 109–10, 158
Preston, Lancashire, 161
print culture, 15, 21, 43, 44, 58–60,
71, 101–2, 103–4, 118, 121, 124,
133, 137, 140, 145, 146–7, 173,
193n143, 200n140, 210n69,
210n77
booksellers, 60, 102, 120, 121, 124,
133, 134, 210n82
printer-publishers, 145
subscription, 35, 60, 104, 112, 146,
162, 196n23, 200n141
compare manuscript circulation
private theatricals, 133, 137, 155–60
Purcell, Mark, 6, 12
Quesnel, Joseph, 31–2
Rawdon, Charlotte, 126, 142, 169
Rawdon, Elizabeth, Lady Moira, 6, 10,
12, 33, 83–4, 97, 106–31, 150,
168, 200n3, 202n25
genealogical research, 120
“Particulars relative to a human
skeleton . . . ”, 115–16
Index
portrayal in Edgeworth’s novels,
122–3
promotion of Irish manufacture,
84–6, 115
sense of identity, 113, 125, 129
Rawdon Hastings, Francis, 2nd Earl of
Moira, 110, 118, 119, 126, 130
Rawdon, John, 1st Earl of Moira, 106,
110, 200n2
Rawdon, Selina, see Forbes
reading parties, 11, 133, 138, 154–5,
159, 160, 162–8, 174
Rebellion of 1798, 91, 128, 130,
153–4, 164, 168, 174, 203n48,
214n68
Récamier, Mme, 37–8
receipts and accounts, 35–6, 111
Reeve, Clara, 60
religion, 9, 32–3, 57–8, 83, 112, 113,
119, 130, 151, 155–6, 190n74,
206n131
Rendall, Jane, 71–2
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 58, 64, 68
rococo, 23, 110
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 20
Royal Dublin Society, 85
Royal Irish Academy, 97, 112, 118
Ruxton, Margaret, 126, 140–1, 142
Ruxton, Sophy, 140–1, 142–3
salon hostesses, see under individual
names
Schmid, Susanne, 47, 71, 155
Scott, Walter, 73–4, 76, 121, 124–5,
142, 149, 205n103
The Lady of the Lake, 142
Lay of the Last Minstrel, 124, 125,
171
Waverly, 141
seating, 7, 65, 87
seventeenth-century salons, 8, 16–18,
21, 45, 48, 186n3
Sevigné, Marie de Raboutin-Chantal,
Mme de, 16, 32, 48, 50, 101
Seward, Anna, 133, 134, 145–52, 165,
207n10, 210n85
Elegy on Captain Cook, 147, 148
“Invocation for the Comic Muse”,
146
237
Sheridan Lefanu, Alicia, 89, 134, 135,
137–8, 151, 155
Sheridan Lefanu, Elizabeth (Betsy), 46,
48, 88–9, 92, 134, 135, 187n13,
208n14
Sheridan, Frances, 133–4, 135–7, 139
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 62, 135,
137
The Rivals, 166–7
School for Scandal, 157
Sheridan, Thomas, 9, 89, 135–6
Siddons, Sarah, 70, 155, 156, 158–9
Smith, Charlotte, 157
social mobility, 8, 21
societies, 2–3, 44, 47, 132, 161, 164,
174, 178n13, 202n32
see also under individual names
Society of Antiquaries of London,
115–16
Staël, Germaine, Baronne de, 17, 32,
40, 41–2
Corinne, 41, 141
Sterne, Laurence, 15, 48, 190n65
Stewart, Rachel, 7, 197n53
Stornoway literary salon, 174–5
Streatham, 46, 66–70
Stuart, James, 7, 52, 54
Surrey
Hatchlands Park, 53
Swift, Jonathan, 136, 208n20
taverns, 2–3
tea, 23, 51, 52, 69, 136, 163
Thrale, Hester Lynch, later Piozzi, 45,
46, 55, 66–70, 73, 144, 186n6
Observations and Reflections, 67, 97
Thraliana, 66, 67
Thuente, Mary Helen, 128
Tighe, Mary, 121, 137, 142–3, 155,
169–73
Psyche; or, the Legend of Love, 142–3,
169
Tinker, Chauncey Brewster, 47, 61
Co. Tipperary, 155, 162–3
Tone, Theobald Wolfe, 129
translation, 111–19
see also Brooke, Charlotte; French
language; Irish language; Ó
Gormáin, Muiris
238
Index
twenty-first century literary salons,
174–5
Twiss, Richard, Tour of Ireland, 109,
157
Vesey, Agmondesham, 79, 81, 88, 91,
94, 100, 195n5
Vesey, Elizabeth, 8, 12, 46, 49, 60,
78–105, 144
patronage, 102–5
sense of identity, 79, 97–100
Vickery, Amanda, 5, 161
Voltaire (François Marie Arouet),
20, 27
Wales, 66, 70
Walker, Anna, 155, 158
Walker, Joseph Cooper, 33–4, 112,
113–17, 119, 128, 169, 170, 171–3
An historical essay on the dress . . . ,
114
Historical memoirs of the Irish bards,
113
Memoirs of Alessandro Tassoni, 114
Walpole, Horace, 48, 49, 55, 58, 98,
115, 120, 143–4
Co. Westmeath, 138, 139, 161
Pakenham Hall/Tullynally Castle,
12, 140, 141–2
Co. Wicklow, 169–70
Williams, Helen Maria, 151, 212n117
Wilmot, Barbarina, 171, 214n82
Woodhouse, James, 103, 115
Wortley Montagu, Lady Mary, 28–9
Wright, Julia M., 135, 137
Wyatt, James, 81, 91
York Book Society, 160–1
Young, Arthur, 82