The Attic Chest

Anna Jane Vardill’s ‘An Englishman’s Farewell to a Converzazione’, published in the European Magazine for September 1820 (Vol. 78, p. 263) is a whimsical account of the ignominious expulsion from an unnamed literary circle of a member caught dozing during the reading of a contribution by a lady called “Ida”.

In several beautifully crafted lines Vardill captures the tense anticipation of circle members awaiting comments on their anonymous contributions:

... starry eyes which shun th’ enquirer’s gaze,
 And cheeks whose blushes mean a kind reply.

and their joy upon receiving favorable criticism:

How rich, how balmy, to the fainting bard,
 One drop of comfort from that stream to sip,
Or from his fair one’s hand to claim reward,
 While praise and custard mingle on her lip.

In memorable lines reminiscent of Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, but predating that translation by over thirty years, the unfortunate “Englishman” offers the following excuse for the drowsiness that overcame him:

One long, long day, and half a tedious night,
 In vain for tuneful syllables I sought;
I dipp’d my silver pen, but could not write,
 And nought was all, and every thing was nought.

Interested readers will find a complete version of this poem on this website.

Vardill does not provide footnotes for this poem and the reader is left wondering how much of the story is fiction, and how much is based on fact. Particularly puzzling are two references:

Ah! who can tell the transports of that hour,
 When licens’d hands the rich portfeuille unlock,

* * *

When the light Graces tempt th’ elastic floor,
 And Phœbus drops his lyre—to call a dance.

What are the “licens’d hands” that unlock the portfolio of literary contributions? Is the portfolio physically or metaphorically unlocked, and who has the authority to open it?

The poem informs us that the reading of contributions is followed by a torrent of bright chit-chat and, presumably, snacks and confections—including custard.

This break for refreshments is followed by dancing, which seems a little extravagant for a small literary soirée.

A solution to these puzzles may be found in William Axon’s paper[1] on the authorship of a sequel to Coleridge’s Christobal published in the European Magazine for April 1815.[2] Axon identifies the author as Anna Jane Vardill. He also embellishes his paper with quotations and anecdotes relating to Vardill’s life and work.

Perhaps the most intriguing of these quotations comes from Vardill herself, in a manuscript written for her daughter Agnes, and dated December 30, 1830. She writes of a “young friend” who kept a locked box of Athenian cedar, through an aperture in which acquaintances slid pieces of prose or verse. On the first and second Wednesdays of the winter months the owner of the “Attic Chest” unlocked the box and the anonymous contents were read to a small group of select friends.[3]

Vardill’s “young friend” was Eleanor Anne Porden[4], the hostess of a small literary group called the Attic Chest.

Her ownership of an authentic Greek chest and her unlocking of it twice a month solves the puzzle of the “licens’d hands” opening the portfolio.

The puzzle of the dance is also solved in Vardill’s note to her daughter. She writes:

On the last of these evenings each acknowledged his or her share, and a dance concluded the social pastime.

The “last” presumably refers to the last of the winter gatherings, and a dance to celebrate the conclusion of the literary season is not unreasonable.

The Attic Chest was far more than a small côterie of female authors of the kind parodied by Vardill in her “Tabby Hall” contributions to the European Magazine. In her manuscript Vardill lists the principal contributors as “Dr. Benjamin Franklin’s only son, Dr. Hutton [or Hatton] and his grandson, Flaxman[5] and his gifted wife and sisters, William Mayley and two or three friends of Walter Scott and Lord Byron Coleridge and Wordsworth”, all of whom, she notes, had passed away at the time of writing.

This clarification from the pen of Vardill herself does, however, leave one or two tantalising loose ends. One is the identity of the Englishman who falls asleep during the reading of a contribution by “Ida”; the other is the identity of Ida herself.

Confirmation that the unnamed literary circle was the Attic Chest, and that Ida and Eleanor Anne Porden were one and the same, can be found in a poem that Vardill submitted to the Attic Chest meeting of 12 May 1813. This poem, entitled ‘An Ex-Member’s Lamentation & Remonstrance’, is an early draft of the ‘Englishman’s Farewell to a Converzazione’ and identifies the host of the meeting as Ellen, the name by which Eleanor Anne was known to the members of the circle. The last stanza of the poem runs:

Yet let me still in transient dreams enjoy
The bliss, the triumph by a Bard possess’d;
Poetic visions must the soul employ
Of him who slumbers near the Attic Chest! [6]

Vardill submitted this poem under the pen-name “Atticus Scriblerus”, a persona also used by William Porden. In a preface to the poem she notes that it was written on behalf of a member “lately expelled”. The identity of that member remains a mystery.

Notes