VII

A LIGHT-BLUE STOCKING

SOMETIME, when seated in your library, as it becomes too dark to read and is yet too light,

to ring for candles, I was going to say, but nowadays we simply touch a button, let your thoughts wander over the long list of women who have made for themselves a place in English literature, and see if you do not agree with me that the woman you would like most to meet in the flesh, were it possible, would be Mrs. Piozzi, born Hester Lynch Salusbury, but best known to us as Mrs. Thrale.

Let us argue the matter. It may at first seem almost absurd to mention the wife of the successful London brewer, Henry Thrale, in a list which would include the names of Fanny Burney, Jane Austen, George Eliot, the Brontës, and Mrs. Browning; but the woman I have in mind should unite feminine charm with literary gifts: she should be a woman whom you would honestly enjoy meeting and whom you would be glad to find yourself seated next to at dinner.

The men of the Johnsonian circle affected to love "little Burney," but was it not for the pleasure her "Evelina" gave them rather than for anything in the author herself? According to her own account, she was so easily embarrassed as to be always "retir

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ing in confusion," or "on the verge of swooning." It is possible that we would find this rather limp young lady a trifle tiresome.

Jane Austen was actually as shy and retiring as Fanny Burney affected to be. She could hardly have presided gracefully in a drawing-room in a cathedral city; much less would she have been at home among the wits in a salon in London.

Of George Eliot one would be inclined to say, as Dr. Johnson said of Burke when he was ill, "If I should meet Burke now it would kill me." Perhaps it would not kill one to meet George Eliot, but I suspect few men would care for an hour's tête-à-tête with her without a preliminary oiling of their mental machinery - a hateful task.

The Brontes were geniuses undoubtedly, particularly Emily, but one would hardly select the author of "Wuthering Heights" as a companion for a social evening.

Mrs. Browning, with her placid smile and tiresome ringlets, was too deeply in love with her husband. After all, the woman one enjoys meeting must be something of a woman of the world. She need not necessarily be a good wife or mother. We are provided with the best of wives and at the moment are not on the lookout for a good mother.

It may at once be admitted that as a mother Mrs. Thrale was not a conspicuous success; but she was a woman of charm, with a sound mind in a sound body. Although she could be brilliant in conversation, she

would let you take the lead if you were able to; but she was quite prepared to take it herself rather than let the conversation flag; and she must have been a very exceptional woman, to steady, as she did, a somewhat roving husband, to call Dr. Johnson to order, and upon occasion to reprove Burke, even while entertaining the most brilliant society of which London at the period could boast.

At the time when we first make her acquaintance, she was young and pretty, the mistress of a luxurious establishment; and if she was not possessed of literary gifts herself, it may fairly be said that she was the cause of literature in others.

In these days, when women, having everything else, want the vote also (and I would give it to them promptly and end the discussion), it may be suggested that to shine by a reflected light is to shine not at all. Frankly, Mrs. Thrale owes her position in English letters, not to anything important that she herself did or was capable of doing, but to the eminence of those she gathered about her. But her position is not the less secure; she was a charming and fluffy person; and as firmly as I believe that women have come to stay, so firmly am I of the opinion that, in spite of all the well-meaning efforts of some of their sex to prevent it, a certain, and, thank God, sufficient number of women will stay charming and fluffy to the end of the chapter.

On one subject only could Mrs. Thrale be tedious - her pedigree. I have it before me, written in her