Vesey, Elizabeth (c.1715–1791), literary hostess, was born in Killaloe, Co. Kilkenny, second daughter of Sir Thomas Vesey (qv), bishop of Ossory, and his wife, Mary, daughter of Denny Muschamp (qv). Elizabeth married first William Handcock (1704–41) of Willsbrook, Westmeath, MP for Fore 1727–41. After his death she married, some time before 1746, her cousin Agmondesham Vesey (qv), MP for Harristown 1740–60. The Veseys lived in Lucan, Co. Dublin, in a house which Agmondesham Vesey, who was something of an architect, first improved (1750) and then rebuilt as a Georgian mansion (1776). The couple divided their time between Lucan and London, where they were intimates of the remarkable intellectual circle centred on Samuel Johnson. In 1773 Agmondesham Vesey was elected to the celebrated ‘Club’, an informal dining and conversational club, initiated by Joshua Reynolds and Johnson in 1763 and soon including among its members Adam Smith, Charles James Fox, Oliver Goldsmith (qv), Edmund Burke (qv), and Richard Brinsley Sheridan (qv). The women attached to this group, though unable to join the Club, were notable for the intellectual gatherings they held, and subsequently for their correspondences. Chief among them were Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Carter, Hannah More, Elizabeth Vesey, and Fanny Burney. They were well read on a range of subjects and were known loosely as the ‘Blue Stockings’, a term probably originated by Elizabeth Vesey in jest c.1756, which in 1786 was used by Hannah More in her poem ‘Bas bleu, or Conversation’ to symbolise intellectuals of both sexes. In subsequent years it was used exclusively to refer to intellectual women.
Mrs Vesey's parties in her house in Bolton Row, London, attained their chief fame between 1768 and 1780. Large and eclectic groups gathered in her blue salon room and were persuaded to mingle; on occasion she forcibly broke up settled groups by moving sofas and placing chairs back to back. She was determined to prevent a set circle forming in her assemblies, which were marked by their easy informality. Unlike the other Blue Stockings, Mrs Vesey made no attempt to shine herself, but rather concentrated on her guests’ comfort, moving rapidly from one group to the next and frequently missing the best of the conversation, as she was rather deaf. Ethereal, impulsive, flirtatious and wholly impractical, she was called ‘the Sylph’ by her friends, who praised her lavishly if condescendingly in their letters. She was held in universal affection; the usually caustic Horace Walpole exclaimed: ‘What English heart ever excelled hers?’ (Mrs Montagu: letters, 59), while according to Mrs Montagu, ‘even Samuel Johnson was seldom brutally rude in her company’ (ibid., 5). Laurence Sterne (qv) was held to have carried out a brief flirtation with her, although his biographer disputes this.
Mrs Vesey was frequently melancholic, especially when away from London in Lucan, where she wrote regularly to friends, confiding her religious uncertainties, and fear of memory loss and of insanity. She was romantic about the estate of Lucan, which was much admired by Arthur Young in 1780 in his tour of Ireland, but she disliked Dublin society, terming it busy and superficial. In 1780 she moved house in London from Bolton Row to Clarges St. and was less in Ireland, due to her husband's ill health. He died in 1785 and by his will left the estate to his nephew, left £1,000 to his mistress, and did not stipulate an income to his wife, who was only saved from destitution by the liberality of the nephew. This was in keeping with Vesey's treatment of his wife during his lifetime, but Mrs Vesey remained steadfastly loyal and plunged into a long period of mourning, from which she emerged only to decline gradually into senility. Her long-time companion, Miss Handcock, a relative of her first husband, kept house for her in Clarges St., where her friends continued to visit though she did not recognise them. She died in London in 1791. There were no children from either marriage.
Vesey remains the most enigmatic of the Blue Stockings: she published neither poems, essays, nor correspondence. Apart from a few letters appearing in the voluminous correspondences of her friends, which show her ranging impulsively over myriad subjects, our knowledge of her is secondhand.