To one of the so-called Bluestocking Ladies, the once renowned Literary Club owed its name. Sir Joshua Reynolds proposed the formation of such a club; Johnson joyfully acceded, and “the club” was formed. Hawkins, one of the members, has left on record that “a lady, distinguished by her beauty and taste for literature, invited us two successive years to dinner at her house.” Hawkins does not name the hostess (opinion is divided between Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Vesey, and Mrs. Ord); but he ascribes her hospitality to curiosity as to a desire to intermingle with the conversation of the members the “charms of her own.” This idea of “conversation” in place of gambling and other fashionable follies, was the leading idea with the ladies who share the merit of having founded the Bluestocking assemblies. The hostess who received the club “affected,” says Hawkins, “to consider the members as literary men;” and he thinks it probable that the club thence derived an appellation which it never arrogated to itself. The Bluestockings and the Literary Clubbists seem to have had this in common: their discourse was miscellaneous, chiefly literary; politics were alone excluded. The last, however, were sometimes quietly discussed in one or other of the groups into which the assemblies under the leadership of ladies divided themselves. Mrs. Montagu, being a thorough woman of business as well as a recognised leader in social life, did not make her house in Hill Street a “court for the votaries of the muses” all at once. She had a wholesome horror of being in debt, and she indulged her tastes only when her purse authorised the outlay. In 1767, she completed the Chinese-room which had charmed Madame du Bocage years before. “Mr. Adams,” as Mrs. Montagu informed Lord Kames, “has made me a cieling, and chimney-piece, and doors which are pretty enough to make me a thousand enemies. Envy,” she said, jestingly, “turns livid at the first glimpse of them.”