When the breakfasts gave way to the evening coteries for conversation (with orgeat, lemonades, tea, and biscuits) is not known. After these had lasted a few years, the word “Bluestocking” occurs for the first time in Mrs. Montagu’s letters. Writing, in March, 1757, to Dr. Monsey, she says: “Our friend, Mr. Stillingfleet, is more attached to the lilies of the field than to the lilies of the town, who toil and spin as little as the others, and, like the former, are better arrayed than Solomon in all his glory. I assure you, our philosopher is so much a man of pleasure, he has left off his old friends and his blue stockings, and is at operas and other gay assemblies every night; so imagine whether a sage doctor, a dropsical patient, and a bleak mountain are likely to attract him.” Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet used to be seen as often at Mrs. Vesey’s gatherings as at Mrs. Montagu’s. “Bluestocking” was not a term exclusively applied to Mrs. Montagu’s assemblies. To all assemblies where ladies presided and scholars were welcomed, the name seems to have been given. A “Bluestocking club” never existed. The title was given in derision by persons who, as before said, lacked the brains, or who were not distinguished by other merits that would have entitled them to an invitation. The assemblies of Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Vesey, and Mrs. Ord were spoken of indifferently as _bas-bleu_ assemblies. Sir William Forbes, in his “Life of Beattie,” states that the society of eminent friends who met at Mrs. Montagu’s originally consisted of Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Vesey, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. Carter, Lord Lyttelton, the Earl of Bath (Pulteney), Horace Walpole, and Mr. Stillingfleet. Around these some of the most distinguished persons of intellect used to assemble. Mrs. Vesey (daughter of the Bishop of Ossory and wife of Agmondesham Vesey), says Sir William, was another centre of pleasing and rational society. Without attempting to shine herself, she had the happy secret of bringing forward talents of every kind, and for diffusing over the society the gentleness of her own character. Mrs. Boscawen (née Granville, wife of the renowned admiral), unknown to the literary world, but made familiar to modern readers by her pleasant letters in the Delany correspondence, made herself welcome by “the strength of her understanding, the poignancy of her humour, and the brilliancy of her wit.” Sir William adds, that Stillingfleet was a learned man, negligent in his dress, and wearing gray stockings, which attracted Admiral Boscawen’s notice, and caused the gallant seaman to call the assembly of these friends the Bluestocking Society, as if to indicate that when those brilliant friends met, it was not for the purpose of forming a dressed assembly.