Note 214 — Chapter VII · The Bluestocking Club

The following quotation from Mrs. Montagu’s Letters (4. 117) has been cited (notably in the New English Dictionary and in Hill’s edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson) as showing that the term bluestocking was in use as early as March 8, 1757, on which day Mrs. Montagu writes: ‘I assure you our philosopher (Mr. Stillingfleet) 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.’ Personally I do not think that this can be regarded as an occurrence of the word bluestocking at all. I incline to think that Mrs. Montagu means no more than she literally says, that Mr. Stillingfleet has left off the homely garb for which he was noted. But, in any case, it is interesting as a reference to the fame of his stockings, and tends to support Boswell’s explanation of the term.