Tory Lesbians: Economies of Intimacy and the Status of Desire 1

In 1750, the Bluestocking intellectual Elizabeth Robinson Montagu wrote the following letter to her sister after learning that two women friends planned to live together:

I must confess I am sorry for [it], as it will add to the jests the men made on that friendship, & I own I think those sort of reports hurt us all. And fall in their degree on the whole Sex: and really if this nonsense gains ground one must shut oneself up alone; for one can not have Men Intimates, & at this rate the Women are more scandalous. So we must become Savages & have no friendships or connexions: I cannot think what Mrs L[ytleton] and Miss R [or K?] can mean by making such a parade of their affection, they might know it wd give occasion to Lies. ²

If we can assume that Montagu is a reliable (though skittish) witness, this letter tells us a good deal about the climate for intimacies between English gentlewomen in the middle of the eighteenth century. Female friendships are not necessarily presumed innocent; they may give even greater cause for concern than friendships between women and men. Cohabitation between eighteenth-century women of the gentle classes cannot be dismissed as innocuous, as modern scholars are wont to believe. ³ A questionable intimacy between two women threatens to taint ‘the whole Sex’ or at least risks tainting Montagu, though she is the highly respectable wife of a member of Parliament, along with whatever coterie she implies as ‘us all’. And the sin of Mrs L and Miss R is not desire but its display – not private behaviour but public performance. Their failure is a failure of management.