The Travel Writings of Marguerite Blessington: The Most Gorgeous Lady on the Tour by Aneta Lipska (review)

Past exegesis has chiefly appraised the life and literary output of Marguerite Blessington according to her status as novelist and editor, scandalous aristocrat, and popular London salonnière, with scant reference to her travelogues. In her landmark study Aneta Lipska redresses the omission, defining Blessington (1788–1849) as an astute if privileged European visitor at a time when Continental travel was proportionately limited to male excursionists of the Grand Tour, and women’s travel opportunities were only beginning to expand. Four works, evincing Blessington’s evolution from chaperoned ‘apologist’ and ‘modest novice’ (p. 25) to seasoned traveller and confident travel writer come under review: A Tour in the Isle of Wight, in the Autumn of 1820; Journal of a Tour through the Netherlands to Paris, in 1821; The Idler in Italy (1839 and 1840); and The Idler in France (1841). From the outset Lipska argues that Blessington’s socio-economic position did much to determine the nature of her sojourns at home and abroad. As a member of the leisured class, she had occasion to ‘idle’: to tarry in museums, churches, and art galleries, shop in fashionable locations, set up temporary households, fraternize with intellectuals, and closely observe foreign customs and lifestyles. In undertaking to ‘contextualise’ Blessington’s travel accounts ‘within the social, cultural and literary phenomena’ (p. xiii) of the time, Lipska draws on her impressive erudition, firm grasp of current literary theories, and keen critical acumen. A substantial Introduction situates Blessington’s life and work within the broad spectrum of the European travels and travel writings of her female contemporaries. Thereafter, over three parts in which biographical, cultural, and textual analyses interweave, Lipska points to key evidences of Blessington’s refinement, learnedness, and literary expertise: in particular, in Part One, her mastery in the early works of the received conventions and marketing strategies of travel diaries; in Part Two, her personal response to European visual culture (paintings, religious and sacred objects, classical antiquities, edifices, and ruins) and sensitive portrayals of landscapes, informed by an appreciation of antiquarian scholarship and the nineteenth-century aesthetic of the ‘picturesque’ and the ‘sublime’; in Part Three, the representation and interpretation of foreign ‘spaces’ (cityscapes, tourist sites, domestic interiors . . .), as seen and judged through the eyes of an Englishwoman abroad. Throughout, Lipska develops her underlying thesis that Blessington worked assiduously in the art of ‘self-fashioning’ (p. xiv), constructing multiple personae within her travelogues to promote the appeal of her works and affirm her authority to her readership at home. In this, it is maintained, she capitalized on her upper-class status, travel mobility, and the celebrity she had long acquired, variously presenting herself as memoirist, tour guide, social commentator, adventurer, aesthete, and littérateur. Highly readable, elegantly written, and rich in fresh insights, Lipska’s book is a valuable addition to scholarly critiques of late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British travel writings and a worthy homage to a woman who was, arguably, her era’s ‘most gorgeous lady on the tour’. A comprehensive bibliography, utilized to advantage across the study, attests to Lipska’s command of her field.