BLUE STOCKINGS

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 114, 11 February 1928, Page 24

BLUE STOCKINGS

The wearer of the original blue stockings, was Benjamin Stillingfeet, botanist, athlete, verse-maker, and conversationalist. His dress was remarkably grave, and in particular it was observe, ed 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 withdut the blue stockings,” and thus'bv degrees the title was established. ’So wrote Boswell, who knew him well. The “title” at first served both men and women, and stood for wit and wisdom, or, rather, for a happy union of both qualities. The “blue stockings” prized, as the best of all knowledge, “the wav bow wits maybe both team’d and gav.” They were famed, not only' for learning, but for ; those “arts and graces” of conversa- : tion which could display learning ; readily, appropriately, and with charm. I

Later the title became restricted to women, and, finallv, when the first great age of the “blue stockings” had passed away, the phrase lost its honourable meaning, and became a byword and a term of reproach. In our day it has been used (perhaps unfairly) for women of much learning but little charm, well informed but ill-dressed; for scholars skilled, maybe, in Greek, but ignorant of the making of a pudding, an art which Dr. Johnson thought to be the test of a true woman (says the author of “English Women, in Life and Letters”). We ourselves owe no small debt to the blue stockings. They made life a larger thing for women. They gave ample proof, and at a time when it was badly needed, that women were worthy of education, and although it was left for a later generation to devise an education more worthy of women, it was the blue stockings who first blazed the trail.