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

Apollo, August, 2003 by Rosemary Baird

(17) Eileen Harris has pointed out the following passage in a letter from John Adam in Rome to his sister, 20 February 1762: 'Bob's Mrs Montagu was a relation of ours being also a Robertson or Rather a Robinson.' (Soane Museum, SRO 4927).

(18) Gervase Jackson-Stops (ed.), The Treasure Houses of Britain. Five Hundred Years of Private Patronage and Art Collecting, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1985, pp. 273-74. Adam's initial design of 1762 was for a simpler sofa than that illustrated on p. 274 for Lord Scarsdale, and Mrs Montagu used this design. Lord Scarsdale's version, of which he had four, was modified by John Linnell. They are still in the drawing room at Kedleston.

(19) They are both in Sir John Soane's Museum, nos. 11/200 (ceiling) and 17/166 (carpet).

(20) HL, MO 5331, letter from Sarah Scott to Mrs Montagu, June 1766.

(21) HL, MO 5839, letter from Mrs Montagu to Sarah Scott, 15 June 1766.

(22) HL, MO 5330, letter from Sarah Scott to Mrs Montagu, 21 June 1766.

(23) HL, MO 5840, letter from Elizabeth Montagu to Sarah Scott, 17 July 1766.

(24) HL, MO 1, letter from Robert Adam to Mrs Montagu, 11 October 1766.

(25) HL, MO 5846, letter from Elizabeth Montagu to Sarah Scott, 8 January 1767; quoted in Reginald Blunt (ed.), Mrs Montagu, 'Queen of the Blues': her Letters and Friendships from 1762 to 1800, London, 1923, vol. I, p. 153.

(26) Ibid., vol. I, p. 152.

(27) Quoted in Doran, op. cit., p. 273, undated letter from Elizabeth Montagu to Lord Kames.

(28) HL, MO 1394, letter from Elizabeth Montagu to Lord Lyttelton, 15 January 1760.

(29) HL, MO 1302, letter from Lord Lyttelton to Mrs Montagu, Hagley, 15 October 1762; HL, MO 1421, to Lyttelton, Sandleford Priory, 21 October (1762).

(30) HL, MO 5339, letter from Sarah Scott, at Bath, to Mrs Montagu, 6 December 1766.

(31) HL, MO 2603, letter from Elizabeth Montagu to Mr Montagu, 21 April 1766.

(32) HL, MO 4994, letter from Elizabeth Montagu to Leonard Smelt, Hill Street, 3 November 1767.

(33) See Clarke, op. cit., p. 22. Roberts, op. cit., vol. I. p. 52, Hannan More to one of her sisters, 1775.

(35) Ibid., pp. 62-63, 1776.

(36) Quoted in Clarke, op. cit., p. 2.

(37) Diary and Letters of Madame d'Arblay, edited by her niece, London, 1842, vol. II, p. 8, letter from Mrs Thrale to Fanny Burney, 7 February 1781.

Rosemary Baird is the Curator of the Collection at Goodwood House, West Sussex, the home of the Dukes of Richmond, where she has been the historical adviser for the recent refurbishment of the State Apartments. She has previously worked in the Department of British Paintings at Sotheby's and at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.