'The Queen of the Bluestockings': Mrs Montagu's house at 23 Hill Street rediscovered

Apollo, August, 2003 by Rosemary Baird

She [Mrs Montagu] is not only the finest genius, but the finest lady I ever saw; she lives in the highest style of magnificence; her apartments and table are in the most splendid taste ...

Hannah More, on visiting Hill Street, 1775. (1)

Elizabeth Montagu, a leading member of what Admiral Boscawen called 'The Bluestocking Circle' was a celebrated London hostess, described by Dr. Johnson as 'The Queen of the Blues'. (2) While she is well known for her literary interests and her friendships, not least with the Duchess of Portland, less attention has been paid to her building activities. Mrs Montagu was the builder of not one but two London houses, one in Hill Street, to the west of Berkeley Square, and, from 1777, the magnificent Montagu House at 22 Portman Square. She also made remarkable changes to her country seat at Sandleford Priory, near Newbury in Berkshire.

Little attention has been paid to her earliest house at no. 23 (now 31) Hill Street, though some redress has been made in the last couple of years with the publication of two articles by Kerry Bristol discussing the work commissioned by Mrs Montagu from James 'Athenian' Stuart for both the London houses. (3) However, the Hill Street house was thought not to survive. Indeed, earlier scholars variously cited her celebrated 'Zephyr' bedroom as being at Sandleford Priory or even at Portman Square. By reviewing the largest collection of her letters, now in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, known previously only through selections in early and patchy publications, it has proved possible to establish that the Zephyr bedroom was definitely at Hill Street. Better yet, it transpires that it is still there, in the original house.

Mrs Montagu's house in Hill Street is currently occupied by the HSBC Republic Bank (UK) Limited (Fig. 1). The three first floor rooms exactly match the Montagu documentation, not least thanks to the survival of James 'Athenian' Stuart's fabulous Zephyr ceiling, described by Mrs Delany in May 1773 as 'Mrs M's (Hill Street) room of Cupidons' (Figs. 5-8). It had recently been opened--in the words of Mrs Delany--'with an assembly for all the foreigners, the literati, and the macaronis of the present age'. Painted 'with bowers of roses and jessamines entirely inhabited by little cupids in all their wanton ways', Mrs Delany felt that the choice was generally seen as rather a lapse of judgement, the comments being 'many and sly. (4)

[FIGURES 1, 5-8 OMITTED]

Before looking at Stuart's work in detail, it is important to establish the chronology of 23 Hill Street. This was Mrs Montagu's first major building scheme, offering a project in which to immerse herself after the tragic death of her young son Punch, her only child. From her first married home nearby in fashionable Dover Street (lampooned as 'Dovershire' by the wits of the day), she supervised the building of the handsome brick house from 1744. Her elderly husband, Edward Montagu, apparently took little interest, but was generally supportive: 'We shall stay in London about a week getting a plan for finishing a house which we are to have in a street near Berkeley Square, in a street not yet Built ...', she wrote. (5) The house was round the corner from Lady Isabella Finch's house, 44 Berkeley Square, which had recently been built by William Kent. Elizabeth Montagu was determined to get the details right: '... it will be better to stay a year for the finishing than to take what one does not like ...' (6) As a result, when she was about to move out of her 'disfurnished house', the new one was unready. As she was unwell, her husband inspected it for her in November 1747, and was not satisfied with its progress. (7) They had to borrow a house in Golden Square during the changeover, but the delays continued so that when they eventually moved into Hill Street, only two bedrooms were available. (8)

Mrs Montagu's house is four bays wide, broader by one bay to the right than that of Lady Isabella Finch. The small entrance hall has a delicate ceiling decorated with simple swags, and contains the principal staircase. The ground floor rooms to the right have been altered, but Mrs Montagu's three principal rooms for entertaining on the first floor survive. Her Great Room occupying the front of the house has a fine rococo ceiling, newly fashionable as a feature at the time (Fig. 2). At the rear, overlooking the garden there was a 'dressing room', approached either from the landing or through the formal bedchamber to the right.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Always a trail-blazer, Elizabeth Montagu was one of the first hostesses to attempt a complete Chinese scheme for her dressing room at Hill Street. This room was used for entertaining on an intimate scale, for instance for her meetings with her bluestocking friend, the reclusive Elizabeth Carter, (9) but also served as a public room when opened up with the rest of the apartment. Not only were the walls hung with oriental wallpaper, as in other bedroom and dressing room schemes, but it included Chinese furniture and porcelain as well. She discussed the fashion for chinoiserie in self-mocking terms: 'Sick of Grecian elegance and symmetry, or Gothick grandeur and magnificence, we must all seek the barbarious gaudy gout of the Chinese; and fat-headed pagods and shaking mandarins bear the prize from the finest works of antiquity.' (10) In practice, however, her enthusiasm was whole-hearted: in January 1750, she told her sister Sarah that: 'It is like the Temple of some Indian God', adding: 'The very curtains are Chinese pictures on gauze, and the chairs Indian fan-sticks with cushions of japan satin painted: as to the beauty of colouring, it is carried high as possible ...' (11) The visiting salonniere Mme du Bocage was very impressed when she called in April that year: 'We thus breakfasted to-day at my Lady Montaigu's in a closet lined with painted paper of Pekin and adorned with the prettiest Chinese furniture, a long table covered with pellucid linen, and a thousand glittering vases presented to the view coffee, chocolate, biscuits, cream ...' (12) On Christmas Eve 1752, Elizabeth Montagu described how the previous evening 'the Chinese-room was filled by a succession of people from eleven in the morning till eleven at night'. (13) The following spring she told her husband: 'I had rather more than an hundred visitants last night, but the apartment held them with ease, and the highest compliments were paid to the house and elegance of the apartments.' (14)