ABSTRACT
In January 1783 the editors of the Town and Country Magazine introduced their tête-à-tête history of the affair between Lord Hinchinbroke and the actress Mrs Wilson in the following self-congratulatory manner: ‘We have been peculiarly happy at the opening of this Literary Campaign, in being enabled to usher to our readers two well-known characters in the annals of gallantry, who now attract the chief attention of the Bon Ton, and are the immediate subject of conversation at all the polite tea-tables about town.’ 1 Three aspects of the editors’ comment are revealing: firstly, the emphasis on the timeliness of the report, which allegedly relates to a brand-new love affair; secondly, the deliberate invocation of both high society – the Bon Ton – and a more middling social group, whose predilection for exchanging gossip across the ‘polite tea-tables about town’ recalls Addison’s image of the readership of The Spectator, and thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the allusion to a ‘Literary Campaign’ to track down and record the activities of men and women who have caught the public’s attention. 2 These three aspects of the tête-à-tête – its topicality, its appeal to both fashionable and middle-class elements of society, and its place within an ongoing commentary on gender roles and relations between the sexes – explain its remarkable success in the highly changeable world of gossip columns, andreflect eighteenth-century society’s preoccupation with comparing individuals’ private lives with their public characters.
