Mrs Carter and Mrs Montagu fully agreed in their admiration for Mrs Vesey, whom they familiarly called "our Sylph." Hannah More in her _Bas Bleu_ seems to reckon her the first of the Blues, and specially commends her for the skill she displayed in breaking the formidable circle that Mrs Montagu's guests were forced to make. Her lively Irish nature was refreshing to Mrs Carter, her head full and aching after a strenuous tussle with Aristotle's _Ethics_. She wrote to Mrs Montagu: "As little of the turbulent as there is in her (our Sylph's) composition, the uproar of a mighty sea is as much adapted to the sublime of her imagination, as the soft murmurs of a gliding stream to the gentleness of her temper."
The conversaziones of the Blue-stockings were as successful as might be. There was always a difficulty in procuring men. Dr Johnson could be baited from time to time. Horace Walpole, driven by curiosity, appeared and disappeared. At Mrs Ord's, 35 Queen Anne Street, where Fanny Burney met "everything delectable in the Blue way," one catches a glimpse of Mr Smelt, Captain Phillips, Dr Burney, Lord Mulgrave, Sir Lucas Pepys, and the Bishop of London. The kindness and patronage of Lord Bath and Lord Lyttelton could always be relied upon. Yet there was no full and easy interchange of ideas with men. The time had not yet come. In France it had been accomplished by the ladies who were willing to step beyond the bounds of strict propriety, but the pious English Blues were the last to wish to follow the example of their French sisters. And so their best chance of getting a man was to catch one young and struggling whom they might patronize and be kind to.
In this way all the luck fell to Mrs Mathew, of 27 Rathbone Place. If Mrs Montagu had the advantage of a rich and indulgent husband, Mrs Mathew excelled all in the respectability of hers. The Reverend Henry Mathew was incumbent of Percy Chapel, Charlotte Street, and afternoon preacher at St Martin's-in-the-Fields. The latter church alone is sufficient to make a man's reputation; but Mr Mathew had already made his both by his piety and his taste.
No one has such opportunities as one of the priesthood for discovering promising young men. Mr Mathew's first find was little Flaxman struggling with a Latin book. Learning the nature of the book, he promised him a better and invited him to his house. Mrs Mathew herself was well read in Latin and Greek, and here was a boy of genius thrown into her very lap. Rising to the great occasion, she taught him, read to him while he sketched, and by her treatment of him alone made more than amends for being a Blue.