p. 38 Elizabeth Carter’s translation of the Greek Works of Epictetus (published in 1758) who noted that if ‘women had the bemefit of liberal instructions, if they were inured to study, and accustomed to learned conversation .. if they had the same opportunity of improvement as the men, there can be no doubt but that they would be equally capable of reacing any intellectual attainment”.
p. 42 “The Continent provided more inspiring examples of learning for women. Italy was famous for having at least one noted scientifically learned woman in its cultured cities, such as Laura Bassi, professor of Newtonian physics and mathematics in Bologna; Maria Gaetana Agnesi, mathemitician in Milan; and Christina Roccati, tutor in physics to the patricians in the Veneto. Women were featured as interlocutors in popular scientific pedagogical traces from Fontenelle’s Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (1686) to Francesco Algaraptti’s Newtownianism for Ladies, 1737, to Giuseppe Compagnoni’s Chemistry for Ladies, 1796. They were also respected translators of scientific treatises, including Guiseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola’s 1722 translation of Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy, or Emilie du Chatelet, whose acclaimed translation of Newton’s Principia was published in France in 1759.”
p. 52 Science and politics, national identity, ancient languages, religious toleration – these subjects, which were interwoven into travel narratives – were not ‘feminine’, nor considered appropriate points of contemplation for women. “To read,” warned Edmund Burke, the leading critic of the French Revolution, “is to lay oneself open to … Contagion.” What might look education and innocent enough might in fact be infected with infidel messages. They could lead the inquiring pupil to a world of hlasphemy and unbelief. Who would suspect the potential for ‘destruction which lurks under the harmless or instructive names of General History, Natural History, Travels, Voyages, Lives, Encyclopedias, Criticism and Roman?” asked Hannah More, later dismissing the growing fad for anything foreign by advising that ‘Religion is our Compass’/”
p. 65 “Promoting rational, friendly companions as spouses was the antidote to this. Lord Hillsborough, speaking in the House of Lords about the Marriage Act of 1753 – designed to eradicate reckless, clandestine marriages – opined that mutual love was certainly “a very proper ingredient” for a marriage, but it was a “sedate and fixed love, not a sudden flash of passion which dazzles the understanding”.
p. 87 “Lady Shadwell saw Lady Mary Wortley Montagu at Venice where she now resides, and asked her what made her leave England; she told them the reason was people had grown so stupid she could not endure their company; all of England was infected with dullness’ by the bye, what she means by insupportable dullness is her husband, for it seems she never intends to come back while he lives” Elizabeth Robinson in a letter to a friend, 22 July 1740
p. 122 “Emily, Duchess of Leinster … for the greater part of 25 years she had been steadfastly devoted to her husband … but following his death in 1773, 43-year-old Emily turned squarely towards he son’s tutor, Willian Oglivie, with whom she had begun a covert love affair just two years previously … she determined to take her family abroard. Later that year in Toulouse they were married, and, free from the shackles of social conventionality (and in a less expensive country to boot), they settled in their new lives.”
p. 159 For certain ladies of the Grand Tour, Beddoes’s book seemed to suggest ways in which controlling one’s environment could lead to emancipation. “Have you read Beddowes’ Book, Dear Ladies?” asked Hester Piozzi of the Ladies of Llangollen, Lad Eleanor Butler and Sarah Poronby. “All about Oxygen Air and Gas, and how we have Power over our own Lives, and I know not what strange things. It is a curious Performance.” This statement captures the spirit of how medicine – the controlling theory behind ‘gettting a breath of fresh air’ and therefore travelling for health – could emancipate women from the constrictions of life at home. This starkly contrasted with popular medical opinion that sough to exercise control over women’s bodies – with physiological theories enforcing a view that women were fragile and fit only for domesticity. Women also used the association between travel and health to find other ways to gain power over their own lives.”
Hester Thrale p. 176
“One encounter with a nun, a Miss Canning, who lived at the English convent Notre Dame de Sion in the Ruse des Fosses Saint Victor, she found especially remarkable. This woman, she noted, was once ‘a Beauty about London’ was well-travelled and well-read, possessed a notable library in her room, desired to learn Latin, played the church organ and ‘went over Handel’s Water Musick with great Dexterity”. She was struck with the candour with which the abbess and other nuns felt able to converse – “abusing the French Customs, wondering at the Hardships suffered by the Claires, tell and hearing in short whatever we had in mind”.
p. 178 Dressing to design identified the wearer with a particularsocial class. The Duchess of Portland noticed that even for those who had not been aboard during a certain season, having friends freshly returned from the Continent connected one to the latest styles. In London, a woman ‘of fashion’ was therefore able to associate herself with diverse continental locales and tastes in order to display that she was cosmopolitan. .. Imitating foreign coiffures, ruffles, tassels, festoons and plumes also engenderfed a thirving trade for French milliners, mantra makers and tailors living in London. “Nothing that is merely English goes down with our modern Ladies,” announced one successful mercer. “From their Shift to their Topknots they must be equipped from Deare PAris.” Similarly , attempts to ape the prevailing modes of dress in PAris put a premium on having a French maid, hired in all the most privileged households, who could suitabily adorn her mistress.”
p. 148 Sarah Scott .. in 1751, inside a year of her abusive marriage to George Lewis Scott, she had left him and joined Lady Barbara Montagu in Batheaston, in which Sarah’s sister joked was their ‘convent’, where she pursued a life of charitable enterprise.
“Sarag also wrote and had published a number of works of fiction and historical biography, including in 1762 her most well-known work, A Description of Millennium Hall – which presented an ideaolised vision of a society created and run by women … in what one of the women propreitors describes as “this heavenly society,” the residents study, paint, tend the garden, and manage their own intellectual and economic affairs.”
p. 261 “However scandalous the public considered the marriage of Lady Elizabeth Webster to Henry Richard Fox, the 3rd Lord Holland, in 1797, a bond was sealed that would withstand all future calumnious onslaughters. Lord HOlland inherited a powerful political legacy from his uncle, the Whig Charles James Fox, and became a prominent debater in the House of Lords in his own right. Elizabeth adapted perfectly to the role of political consort… her maverick manners and flamboyant free spirit that made her partnership with the politically minded Lord HOlland so perfectly complementary. And Lady Holland found herself in her element. As she once told her friend and confidante, Lady Bessborough, “all women of a certain age and in a situation to achieve it should take to Politicks”.
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