THE BLUE STOCKING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10065, 10 June 1910, Page 4

THE BLUE STOCKING.

There are books which open unsuspected door 3 that usher us into the select society of vanished age, and Mrs Wheeler's "Famous Blue Stockings," can claim to be one of them. She seems to think that the term originated in the reign of George TI., but in reality we must go a great deal farther back to aci count for it. It was in vogue in Italy as far back as the beginning of the fifteenth century, when it was applied to a cultivated men and women at Venice, who were distinguished by the colour of their stockings, and called della calza. Towards the end of the sixteenth century the phrase invaded France, and there it seems to have been given exclusively to ladies with aspirations to shine in literary society. Finaly, in 1756 it crossed the Channel, and was used in the first instance to denote both men and women of bookish tastes. "Don't mind dress; come in your blue stockings," became a famous phrase, which meant —do not stand on ceremony, but come prepared for intellectual talk. The blue stockings really meant morning dress, for they were, in the first instance, at least, of worsted, and the term was used, in contrast to evening dress, when black silken hose was always worn.