Officers from Flanders et al. in Canterbury - early January, 1748, at night
from A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot, from the Year 1741 to 1770, pages 246-247:
This place is at present a perfect scene of gaiety. There is a set of officers from Flanders, extremely well-bred agreeable men, who are very fond of music and dancing, and this gives great life to all our public diversions. On twelfth night we had an assembly of about ninety people, and there was fine crowding to make one's way through them, as the room is much too small for such a place as this. The first part of the evening, as it was properly a card … more >>
Miss Catherine Talbot and Mrs Elizabeth Carter, and Montagu Pennington (ed.), A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot, from the Year 1741 to 1770, volume 1 (New York, 1973), p. 246-247. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1674744964260 accessed: 19 April, 2024
Listeners
Listening to
hide composers| unspecified entertaining music | performed by military officers |
Experience Information
| Date/Time | early January, 1748, at night |
| Medium | live |
| Listening Environment | in the company of others, in private, indoors |
Notes
The listening experience is found in a letter from Elizabeth Carter to her life-long dearest friend Catherine Talbot dated 20 January 1748. Original spelling, punctuation and capitalisation retained. Elizabeth Carter was a member of the Bluestockings Society, educated women who met and exchanged letters about a wide variety of intellectual interests. The origin of the term may reference a gentleman who participated in the group wearing blue stockings, not the formal black stockings that convention required. He was welcomed none the less, suggesting a spirit of intellectual enquiry and companionship that changed by the Victorian era when ‘Bluestocking’ became a derogatory term directed at women interested in intellectual pursuits.