The Queen of the Blues vs The Queen of Hell

November 4, 2023 Comments Off

Michael Duncan introduces us to a few of the colourful characters from his walking tour The Haves and Have-nots of Marylebone. You can join him on Sunday 26th November to discover more, follow the link for details and booking.

The Blue Stockings are little talked of nowadays but in the mid to late 1700’s they were a radical group seen by some as pioneers of feminism.

They were co-founded by Elizabeth Montagu, “the Queen of the Blues”. She is thought to have been the richest woman in England at the time. She held the then revolutionary idea that women and men should speak as equals, the aim being to engage in “rational conversation” to achieve moral development and “civic virtue”.

Among the Bluestockings were women who strongly disagreed with contemporary ideas of marriage (Montagu among them). Others were abolitionists, some were acclaimed poets and artists.

In the group’s later years they met at Montagu’s new house on the North West corner of Portman Square and it was across the road where another Elizabeth, the Countess of Home built her own rather grand house.

Montagu was mortified. Hume was known for her “irascible behaviour and lavish parties”.

Yes she was rich, but her first fortune came from plantations in Jamaica where she was born. Perhaps it was snobbishness, perhaps prurience or perhaps Elizabeth Home’s behaviour was really out of order. Whatever the reason, Montague took a dim view of her new neighbour and dubbed her the “Queen of Hell”.

Elizabeth Home came to London after marrying the son of the Governor of Jamaica. Little is known of her married life or of her subsequent years as a widow. But when she married again, to the feckless spendthrift 8th Earl of Home, her fame began to grow.

They married on Christmas Day 1742. By February 1743 he was gone. Nobody really knows why; some say he wanted to conceal his homosexuality, others that he simply needed the cash. Either way he went on to live well for the remaining nineteen years of his life ending up as the Governor of Gibraltar.

Despite separating from her husband, Elizabeth clung to the title Countess of Home and launched herself full tilt into London society. This was not as easy as it may seem. The colonial elite usually found it difficult to integrate into the London equivalent. Some overcompensated by throwing extravagant parties or showing off their wealth. Elizabeth Home fitted that stereotype.

She had no need to build the extravagant Home House. She had no husband to talk of and she had no children. But she engaged the pre-eminent architects of the age to design it. It was a party house.

A key part of its layout was that it had to be able to accommodate two large portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland. They were great friends of Home, but were were the black sheep of the royal family as King George III disapproved of the marriage.

The King’s objection was because Anne Luttrell, the Duchess of Cumberland , was a Marylebone girl, a commoner who had been widowed. She was also Hume’s niece (through her first marriage ) and daughter of Simon Luttrell whose reputation earned him the title “the King of Hell”. So perhaps “the Queen of Hell” was too easy an insult to pass up for “the Queen of the Blues”.

Sadly it’s impossible to judge if Home deserved the name. Her house however still stands and boasts one of the finest interiors in London. Despite her disreputable reputation she was buried in Westminster Abbey.

As for her clever and disapproving neighbour; Elizabeth Montague, her house was destroyed in the Blitz and a modern hotel now stands on the site.