The Honble. Miss Monckton.

John Jacobe after Sir Joshua Reynolds

The Honble. Miss Monckton.

London, John Boydell Jan. 1^st 1781

Mezzotint

640x380mm

Restauration to margins, affecting top of image

£280

A large, rare, charming mezzotint portrait of the celebrated literary hostess and bluestocking Mary Monckton (1746-1840, later Countess of Cork and Orrery), as a young woman. The view shows the beautiful, smiling Miss Monckton, seated on a low parapet in a wooded park, her spaniel at her feet, resting her left elbow on a pedestal, with her finger on her lips. Her right arm lies across her lap and a large carved urn, partially concealed by foliage rests on the pedestal. She has fair hair, dressed high, wears a gauze scarf and flowing satin dress. The youngest child and only surviving daughter of John Monckton, 1^st Viscount Galway (1695-1751), by his second wife, from an early age she interested herself in literature and learning, and as a young woman became known as a ‘blue-stocking.’ During the whole of her long life she was renowned for her vivacity, sparkling wit, and great conversational powers. While young she made her mother’s house in Charles Street, Berkeley Square, London, the rendezvous of persons of genius and talent. Dr. Johnson was often her guest, and Boswell describes her in 1781 as ‘the lively Miss Monckton who used to have the finest bit of blue’ at her house. ‘Her vivacity,’ he goes on, ‘enchanted the sage, and they used to talk together with all imaginable ease.’ In June 1786 Miss Monckton married Edmund Boyle, 7^th Earl of Cork and Orrery, who died in 1798. She was his second wife and there were no children of the marriage. Her love of entertaining and society continued to the end, and her memory was extraordinary. One evening, when past eighty, she recited, at a friend’s house, half a book of Pope’s ‘Iliad’ in the original Greek while waiting for her carriage. Until a few days before her death she rose at six in the morning, and dined out when she had not company at home. When out of London she spent much time at Fineshade Abbey, Northamptonshire, with her brother, Colonel the Hon. John Monckton. She died in London at her house in New Burlington Street on 30^th May 1840, at the age of 94, and was buried at Brewood, Staffordshire, where there is a tablet to her memory in the church.