the nephew and heir acted with great kindness and liberality.’
Mrs. Vesey sought ‘to see everything and everybody;’ and she was popular with every one (even with Horace Walpole, who called her parties ‘Babels’). So early as 1755 Mrs. Montagu made her acquaintance at Tunbridge Wells, and found in her an easy politeness ‘that gains one in a moment,’ while ‘in reserve she has good sense and an improved mind’ (Mrs. Montagu, Letters, 1813, iii. 306, 310). Her London parties attained their chief fame between 1770 and 1784. Her house in London was at first in Bolton Row, and Mrs. Carter wrote with enthusiasm, both in January 1768 and in October 1779, of its ‘dear blue room;’ but in 1780 Mrs. Vesey purchased and removed to ‘Mrs. Digby's house in Clarges Street.’ Her sister-in-law, Mrs. Handcock, lived with her and managed the house. She was called ‘body’ and Mrs. Vesey ‘mind.’ From her ‘spirit, wit, and vivacity’ she was known to Mrs. Carter and many friends as ‘The Sylph.’ The ‘Blue Stocking’ parties of Mrs. Vesey were given every other Tuesday, the day when the members of ‘The Club’ dined together and came to her afterwards. Details of these parties are given by Bennet Langton (Boswell, Johnson, ed. Hill, iii. 426), Wraxall (Hist. Memoirs, ed. Wheatley, i. 103–4, 115), Madame d'Arblay (Diary, ii. 286–93), and Montagu Pennington (Memoirs of Mrs. Carter, i. 466–70). Pennington praises her magic art of putting people at their ease; but her hatred of formalities occasionally led her into extremes (D'Arblay, Diary, i. 184). She wished to introduce the Abbé Raynal to Johnson (Mrs. Chapone, Posthumous Works, 1807, i. 172), and Hannah More in 1781 writes of her party as collected ‘from the Baltic to the Po, a Russian nobleman, an Italian virtuoso, and General Paoli.’ Wraxall claims that her gatherings were ‘more select and more delicate’ than those of Mrs. Montagu (cf. Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th Rep. app. x. 279). By 1786 Mrs. Vesey was much depressed and her memory impaired; but she received her friends down to January 1788. Mrs. Handcock died in February 1789, and Mrs. Vesey was then ‘bereft of her faculties,’ a fate which she always dreaded. She lingered in this state until 1791. Pennington possessed a portrait of her in crayons.
Hannah More sent to Sir W. W. Pepys on 24 July 1783 ‘a parcel of idle verses,’ with which she hoped to divert Mrs. Vesey, whose sight was then very bad, and who was ‘banished from London.’ This was the poem of ‘Bas Bleu, or Conversation,’ which, after circulation in manuscript and much alteration, was published in 1786 and ‘addressed to Mrs. Vesey.’ It began with the words
Vesey, of verse the judge and friend,
dwelt on the qualities of many of the guests at her parties, and gave to her, with Mrs. Boscawen and Mrs. Montagu, the ‘triple crown’ for dispelling cards by conversation.
Mrs. Vesey urged Mrs. Montagu to publish her letters, and a letter from that lady to her is in the ‘Letters of Mrs. Montagu’ (1813), iv. 337–8. The letters of Mrs. Carter to Miss Catherine Talbot [q. v.] and Mrs. Vesey were published by Montagu Pennington in four volumes in 1809, and other letters to her from Mrs. Carter are in Pennington's ‘Memoirs’ of that lady (i. 358–63, 408–10, 458–60). A poem ‘to Mrs. Vesey, 1766,’ is in the same work (ii. 108–11). The ‘Ode to Humanity’ appended to vol. ii. in the first edition of Mrs. Carter's ‘Letters’ as by Mrs. Vesey was written by John Langhorne [q. v.] and it was omitted in the edition of 1809 (Gent. Mag. 1808, ii. 1144). A lively letter from her is in Roberts's ‘Memoirs of Hannah More’ (i. 336–8).
[Letters of Mrs. Carter to Mrs. Montagu (1817); Roberts's Hannah More; Walpole's Letters, vii. 497, 510, viii. 525, ix. 115; Mrs. Delany's Life, ii. 415, 503, 557, vi. 219, 267; Boswell's Johnson, ed. Hill, i. 479, ii. 318, iv. 28, v. 108; Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, ed. 1835, p. 112; Johnson's Letters, ed. Hill, ii. 88; Johnsonian Misc. ed. Hill, i. 229, ii. 58–60; Madame d'Arblay's Diary, i. 244–5, ii. 270–71; Sherlock's Letters (1781), ii. 165–6; Mrs. Carter's Letters (1809), preface and iii. 244, 287; Gent. Mag. (1808), ii. 581.]
VESEY, JOHN (1638–1716), archbishop of Tuam, born at Coleraine on 10 March 1638, was the only son of Thomas Vesey, sometime presbyterian minister, afterwards rector of Coleraine. His grandfather, William, a scion of the house of De Vescy in Cumberland, was the first of his family to settle in Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth. John was educated at Westminster school and Trinity College, Dublin, where he proceeded M.A. in 1667 and D.D. in 1672. He had already, it is said (Ware, i. 516), before attaining canonical years, been ordained deacon and priest by John Lesly, bishop of Raphoe in the time of the Commonwealth. In 1661 he was appointed chaplain to the House of Commons in Ireland, and on 29 June presented to the rectories of Ighturmurrow and Shandrum in the diocese of Cloyne. Being also vicar of Rathgonil, alias Charleville, in the same diocese, he was instituted archdeacon of Armagh on 16 Oct. 1662; but he held
