222
NOTES AND QUERIES. [ii s. i. MAE. 19, 1910.
bellowed. Voltaire permits actors to bellow ;
and St. Simon extends the same indulgence
to valets who have lost their master.
It seems a little hard on the lion, but a great dignity carries with it certain obligations. It is a lion's duty to roar, leaving bellowing to meaner things such as bulls, hurricanes, and volcanoes.
WILLIAM E. A. AXON.
" BLUESTOCKING : ORIGIN OF THE
TERM.
THE following are the various explana- tions offered of the origin of the word ' ' blue- stocking.'*
Boswell says that
" one of the most eminent members of these societies, when they first commenced, was Mr. Stillingfleet, whose dress was remarkably grave, and in particular it was observed, that he wore blue stockings. Such was the excellence of his conversation, that his absence was felt as so great a loss, that it used to be said, ' We can do nothing without the blue stockings,' and thus by degrees the title was established."
Fanny Burney relates how one day at Bath Stillingfleet declined one of Mrs. Vesey's parties, as he had no evening dress with him. " Pho ! pho ! " said Mrs. Vesey, ' ' don't mind dress ! Come in your blue stockings ! "
"With which words, humorously repeating them as he entered the chosen coterie, Mr. Stillingfleet claimed permission for entering according to order." Hence the name arose.
Forbes gives us another variation in his life of Beattie. Admiral Boscawen noticed Stillingfleet's carelessness in wearing blue woollen instead of black silk stockings in the evening, and christened the gatherings accordingly.
These are all versions of what may be called the orthodox view.
Pennington in his life of Mrs. Carter says that so indifferent was the whole coterie to dress that a foreign gentleman was told by a friend that he might go in his blue stockings. The story became known, and gave rise to the name.
Hayward, on the other hand, received a different account from Lady Crewe, who had heard it from her mother, Mrs. Greville. Madame de Polignac, in the infancy of the gatherings, came in blue stockings, then the latest fashion in Paris, which was instantly adopted by Mrs. Montagu and her followers. A foreign gentleman, describing the parties to a friend, said they had one rule they all wore blue stockings.
It seems inconceivable that the Stilling-
fleet story is not the true one. The last two-
versions have a distinct suggestion of having;
been prepared after the event by people
who thought the ordinary theory untenable.
Mrs. Montagu makes the first reference
to the stockings in a letter of 1757 to Dr.
Messenger Monsey, saying that Mr. Stilling-
fleet ' ' has left off his old friends and his blue
stockings " an obvious allusion. The origin
of terms like " Tory n and " Jingo " shows
how easily strange nicknames are caught up.
If the Countess of Salisbury's garter could
give a name to a great Order, surely the
stockings of the learned and respectable
Mr. Stillingfleet can be allowed to christen
this learned and respectable body of ladies,,
who would certainly have been the first to-
exclaim, " Honi soit qui mal y pense."
Dr. . Brewer suggests that the idea originated with the " Compagnie della Calza n so common in Venice in the early- part of the sixteenth century ; but this is impossible. These societies were privately constituted by groups of young men, usually nobles, for their own amusement. The members adopted a peculiar stocking as a badge. The Reali Juniores, for instance, wore a scarlet stocking on the right leg, while the inside part of the left stocking was blue, and the outside violet. The left stocking was generally of two colours, some- times of three. A foreign prince was, as a rule, selected as patron, to whom the stock- ing was sent in a special bowl. These clubs, the members of which were usually occupied in giving gorgeous entertainments, never lasted more than a few years, when the stocking was solemnly laid aside. The clubs had nothing whatever to do with literature, except for the comedies which they had
Serformed on floating theatres on the Grand anal and the Giudecca comedies from which our " Bluestockings - l would have fled in horror, for they were sometimes too much even for the Venetian authorities. Cp. Lionello Venturi, ' Le Compagnie della Calza,' in Nuovo Archivio Veneto, N.S. Ann. VIII., No. 16, p. 2 (1908).
LACY COLLISON-MOBLEY.
[The ' N.E.D.' has a long historical note t Bluestocking, supporting the view connectn the name with Mrs. Montagu and Stillingfleet The Dictionary shows, however, that this was* transferred sense, the term having originally been applied to the " Little Parliament 1653 Sir J. Bramston speaking of it contempto ously as " that Blew-stocking Parliament, Bare- bone Parliament," &c. This article well illustrate* the value of the historical method on which Dictionary is based.]
