ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a collection of letters between Henrietta Fermor, Countess of Pomfret, and Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford, in which the two women demonstrate a friendship sustained by conversation and objects, whether physical or imagined. The letters cover the period 1738 to 1741, when Henrietta embarked upon a tour of Europe, accompanied by her husband and her two eldest daughters, which she documented extensively for Frances, who remained at home in England. Through the utilisation of key episodes within the letters, this chapter will determine how these women understood collecting as an activity and the significance of collections as a repository. It will also look to the importance of different types of sociability in immersing women in the worlds of learning and collecting in an Enlightenment mode of discovery and understanding the world. Collecting and visiting other collections made the artistic, scientific and historical worlds tangible to both women, with these places both cementing their friendship and embedding them within a social network stretching across Europe, both by physical and epistolary means. Ultimately, this chapter will offer a window into a female friendship that connected women with collections and the activity of collecting on a variety of levels.
