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BRITISH LITERARY SALONS of the LATE EIGHTEENTH and EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURIES Copyright © Susanne Schmid, 2013

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BRITISH LITERARY SALONS of the LATE EIGHTEENTH and EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURIES Copyright © Susanne Schmid, 2013 Copyrighted material – 9780230110656 C o n t e n t s Acknowledgments vii Abbreviations xi 1 Traditions and Theories 1 Salons as Non-Places 1 Traditions I: The French Salons 3 Traditions II: The Bluestockings 7 Private, Public, and Sociable Spheres 11 The Theatricality of the Salon 15 Sources and Source Problems 17 Stages of Exploration 19 2 Mary Berry and Her British Spaces 23 Mary Berry: The Life of a Conservative Feminist 24 The Misses Otranto, Strawberry Hill, and Horace Walpole’s Family Romances 29 Anne Damer 35 From the Closet to Drury Lane: Fashionable Friends (1801) on Stage 40 3 Mary Berry as a Learned Woman: Out of the Closet 51 From a Parmesan Otranto to Malthus: Mary Berry’s Reading 51 In and Out of the Drawing-Rooms in North Audley Street and Curzon Street 55 The Freedom of the Road in France and Italy 59 Mary Berry as Editor and Historian 65 4 Holland House and Lady Holland 71 Holland House and Whig Culture 72 Lady and Lord Holland 76 Reflections on Traveling: Italy and Spain 82 Politics: Enthusiasm for Napoleon 88 Spontaneous Versification 92 Copyrighted material – 9780230110656 Copyrighted material – 9780230110656 vi Contents 5 The Holland House Set 97 The Circle and Its Oracle: The Edinburgh Review 98 Three Habitués: Samuel Rogers, Sydney Smith, and Thomas Moore 104 Byron and Holland House 109 Amorous Entanglements and Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon 113 6 The Countess of Blessington as Hostess 119 From Irish Country Girl to London’s Outcast Queen: Lady Blessington’s Life 120 The Conversations of Lord Byron 126 “Her Genius Lay in Her Tongue”: The Salons at Seamore Place and Gore House 133 Nathaniel Parker Willis: An American Connection 137 7 The Countess of Blessington as Writer and Editor 145 Sociable Idlers in Italy 146 Irishness: Female Idylls and an Irishwoman on the Loose 152 London Society in Blessington’s Silver-Fork Novels 158 The Book of Beauty and Other Keepsakes 165 8 Epilogue 173 Notes 177 Works Cited 217 Index 243 Copyrighted material – 9780230110656 Copyrighted material – 9780230110656 BRITISH LITERARY SALONS OF THE LATE EIGHTEENTH AND EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURIES Copyright © Susanne Schmid, 2013. All rights reserved. First published in 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–11065–6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schmid, Susanne, 1964– British literary salons of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries / Susanne Schmid. p. cm.—(Nineteenth-century major lives and letters) ISBN 978–0–230–11065–6 (hardback) 1. Salons—Great Britain—History—18th century. 2. Salons—Great Britain—History—19th century. 3. Great Britain—Intellectual life— 18th century. 4. Great Britain—Intellectual life—19th century. 5. English literature—18th century—History and criticism. 6. English literature— 19th century—History and criticism. I. Title. PR448.S3S36 2013 820.9Ј355—dc23 2012031260 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: February 2013 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyrighted material – 9780230110656 Copyrighted material – 9780230110656 C h a p t e r 1 Traditions and Theories S a l o n s a s N o n - P l a c e s When the Countess of Blessington, who lived in Naples between 1823 and 1826, ventured on an excursion to the ruins of Paestum with her friends, the company found instructive entertainment, later chronicled in Blessington’s travelogue The Idler in Italy ( 1839 ): A collation, that would not have shamed the Sybarite inhabitants said to have once possessed Paestum, was spread in the temple of Neptune; to which, after ample justice had been rendered, succeeded a highly intellectual treat, as Mr. George Howard complied with the pressing request of the company to recite a poem, written by him when at col- lege, on the ruins we were then contemplating. The poem was admi- rable, and so spirited as to convey an impression that it must have been written on the spot, and under the inspiration which the actual scene, and not merely a classical description of it, had created. (I 2:181) In the 1820s, the notorious Marguerite Blessington presided over a fairly informal “traveling” salon in Italy, which is well documented through her Conversations of Lord Byron ( 1832–1833) and The Idler in Italy , and this was later followed by several more formal and acknowledged salons in London in the 1830s and 1840s. British salons, veritable hothouses of political and cultural agitation, often cosmopolitan in their outlook, were gatherings of mixed-gender con- versation and resembled earlier, similar formations like the bluestock- ing circles and the French aristocratic salons. They were headed by hostesses. Blessington’s circle of wits and literati, likewise Holland House, the Whig political and cultural center, and Mary Berry’s Copyrighted material – 9780230110656 Copyrighted material – 9780230110656 2 British Literary Salons drawing-room, a meeting-place for famous as well as neglected con- versationalists, were well-known landmarks in and around London. These three salons spanned more than 60 years, from the Berrys’ first sociable encounter with Horace Walpole in 1788 to Blessington’s death in 1849, and counted Lord Byron, Thomas Moore, Joanna Baillie, and George Canning, writers, editors, reviewers, painters, scholars, and politicians among their guests. Whereas scholarship on French and German salons is blooming, 1 English Romantic salon sociability is regrettably under-researched, possibly because the lonely subject often dominates the “mental theatre” 2 of the major Romantic poets, who relished a cult of male solitude exemplified in poems such as Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Alastor (1816). However, 1798, the publica- tion of the Lyrical Ballads and the beginning of Romanticism proper, meant no caesura in terms of sociability, which was all-important to cultural alliances. Sociability not only enabled the production of these “lonely” poems but also a cultural exchange that did not necessarily have the great literary text at its center but rather a chain of commu- nicative acts, some of which have left traces in print, whereas others have disappeared for good. Research into salons faces a methodological problem because their central activity, conversation, is elusive: The spoken word evaporates immediately. The leftovers, sketchy diary entries, letters, dedicatory poems, or episodes in novels, resemble the ruins where our party finds itself, which inspire intellectual as well as culinary treats, a poetry recital and a picnic, all of which are ephemeral and perishable, too. Marc Fumaroli’s famous essay about French conversation as a site of cultural memory, published in Pierre Nora’s Lieux de mémoire , the grand récit of French cultural history, begins with the reflection that his project of writing a history of conversation is condemned to be considered as foolish as maybe “a history of tears, farewells, or first encounters.” 3 If the French salon, despite Fumaroli’s gesture of modesty, has been con- sidered the cradle of French thought, academics as well as literati have been surprisingly silent about its English counterpart. If, in France, conversation and thus the salon, is a “lieu de mémoire,” a major site of memory, has been allocated space, in fact constitutes a space, hardly anyone would list the British salon among the nation’s formative cul- tural sites. However, as salons, mixed-gender gatherings presided over by women, existed in Britain, my study aims to remedy this omission by restoring British salon sociability to the pantheon of culturally rel- evant sites, which has hitherto displayed coffeehouses, museum spaces, theaters, clubs, associations, and churches. It will also show that the Copyrighted material – 9780230110656 Copyrighted material – 9780230110656 Traditions and Theories 3 bluestocking tradition continued well into and beyond the Romantic period. Oscillating between historical and theoretical reflections, this introductory chapter will define salon space, explore its traditions in France, link it to the eighteenth-century bluestocking tradition, map out its place between the public and the private spheres, consider its fundamentally theatrical dimension, and reflect on the methodologi- cal paradoxes of research into a “non-place.” 4 Why do the Countess of Blessington, Lady Holland, and Mary Berry merit further investigation? Mary Berry (1763–1852), a conser- vative feminist, introduced into society in 1788 through her friend- ship with the then nearly octogenarian writer Horace Walpole, ran several salons and is close to the British bluestocking tradition, both through her learning and her ideals of female companionship. She was famous for her “drawing-room” sociability, which she conducted on a comparatively small scale. Elizabeth Vassall Fox, Lady Holland (1771–1845), was the hostess of Holland House, one of London’s leading cultural and political hothouses, gathering Whig politicians, reviewers, and writers around her. She was famous not as an author but as a Whig hostess presiding over one of the most prestigious London salons of her time. Marguerite Blessington (1789–1849) ran an informal traveling salon in Italy in the 1820s as well as several London salons after 1830 and is known today because of her friend- ship with and her publications about Byron, her silver-fork novels, and her editorial work for the Book of Beauty and other annuals.
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