English Bluestockings

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 413, 23 May 1947, Page 11

English Bluestockings

] ALWAYS enjoy Miss Cecil Hull’s talks. To begin with, the firm femininity of her utterance is a nice change from the mellifluous masculinity we are accustomed to associate with the givers of literary talks. Moreover, she ‘has a happy knack of choosing her subjects; she breaks new but not unploughed ground, ground that has lain fallow for some time and which, though neglected, can easily be made to blossom like the rose, given Miss Hull’s intensive cultivation. Her first talk explored Saint Paul, her second, the English Bluestockings. One of Miss Hull’s great merits as a giver of talks is that she never allows her enthusiasm to run completely away with her, even when she is speaking on a topic as close to her heart as the Bluestocking Movement. A more obsequious commentator would have hesitated to mention that one of her heroines, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, was not above telling a tall story, and moreover remarked of a young man who proposed devoting himself to music, "I had never heard that he was vicious." Concerned in confuting the "monstrous slander" that the original bluestocking was. "long on learning, short on sex-appeal," she makes good use of her material. If. we ‘remember that Elizabeth Carter, mistress ‘of nine languages, sat far into the night to master them, keeping herself awake by "chewing green tea and coffee, taking snuff, and binding wet _towels round her head" we also remember that Mrs, Montagu was very fond of balls, and that her social gatherings lasted from 11 o’clock in the morning till 11 at night. To a generation that is more likely to think of the proud title of "Queen of the Blues," bestowed by Doctor Johnson, as referring to Gershwin’s girl-friend rather than to the inimitable Mrs. Montagu, Miss Hull’s talk was timely. I wish she would devote another to the same subject. 7