¹ Evidence of repeated visits to London by Godfrey Bosville and his in-laws the Wentworths can be found in Papers of Bosville-MacDonald Family of Gunthwaite, in Hull University Library Archives (hereafter Hull), Thorpe and Skye Collection, DDBM/32/7–9.

² Letter from Godfrey Bosville, London, to John Spencer at Cannon Hall, 28 January 1765, Hull, DDBM/32/9.

³ Borsay, Peter, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1760 (Oxford, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brewer, John, Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (London, 2000)Google Scholar. For European comparisons, see van Horn Melton, James, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Blanning, T. C. W., The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime Europe, 1660–1789 (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar. On colonial America, see Shields, David S., Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997)Google Scholar.

⁴ A number of historians have recently drawn attention to this imbalance between practice and ideology. See, e.g., Heller, Benjamin, “The ‘Mene Peuple’ and the Polite Spectator: The Individual in the Crowd at Eighteenth-Century London Fairs,” Past and Present 208, no. 1 (August 2010): 132CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Whyman, Susan, Sociability and Power in Late Stuart England: The Cultural World of the Verneys, 1660–1720 (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar; and Chalus, Elaine, Elite Women in English Political Life, ca. 1754–1790 (Oxford, 2005), esp. 75–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Letter from Godfrey Bosville, London, to John Spencer at Cannon Hall, 28 January 1765, Hull, DDBM/32/9.

⁶ Here “titled” is used to describe members of the peerage (from dukes to barons), their wives and children, including daughters and younger sons (who may not necessarily carry a hereditary title of their own). It does not include the lesser gentry such as baronets and knights.

⁷ See, esp., Russell, Gillian, Women, Sociability and the Theatre in Georgian London (Cambridge, 2007)Google Scholar; and Russell, Gillian and Tuite, Clara, Romantic Sociability: Social Networks and Literary Culture in Britain, 1770–1840 (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar. For the relationship between ideals of sociability and social practices in the early eighteenth century, see Tague, Ingrid, Women of Quality: Accepting and Contesting Ideals of Femininity in England, 1690–1760 (London, 2002), 162–93Google Scholar. For the theoretical traditions underpinning historians’ analysis of public sociability, see Cowan, Brian, “Public Spaces, Knowledge and Sociability,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption, ed. Trentmann, Frank (Oxford, 2012)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Cowan for sharing this paper with me.

⁸ McVeigh, Simon, Concert Life in London from Mozart to Haydn (Cambridge, 1993), 11–27Google Scholar. Also see Hall-Witt, Jennifer, Fashionable Acts: Opera and Elite Culture in London, 1780–1880 (Lebanon, NH, 2007), 118Google Scholar. See also Blanning on concert culture in Blanning, The Culture of Power, 161–81.

⁹ These essential elements of Habermas's model are widely referenced across early modern political, social, and intellectual histories. See Habermas, Jürgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA, 1989), 28–35Google Scholar. Appraisals and reappraisals of Habermas followed swiftly after the publication of his work in translation. See Calhoun, Craig, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA, 1992)Google Scholar; Condren, Conal, “Public, Private and the Idea of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England,” Intellectual History Review 19, no. 1 (2009): 15–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Downie, James Alan, “Public and Private: the Myth of the Bourgeois Public Sphere,” in A Concise Companion to the Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, ed. Wall, Cynthia (Oxford, 2004), 58–79Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Habermas's emphasis on newly egalitarian associations is highlighted in Russell, Women, Sociability and the Theatre, 7; Downie, “Public and Private,” 62; and Brewer, John, “This, That and the Other: Public, Social and Private in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Shifting the Boundaries: The Transformation of the Languages of Public and Private in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Castiglione, Dario and Sharpe, Lesley (Exeter, 1995), 1–21Google Scholar.

¹¹ Key criticisms rapidly focused on gender and whether or not women were incorporated in Habermas's public. See, e.g., Landes, Joan B., Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY, 1988)Google Scholar. For subsequent and recent reappraisals, see Goodman, Dena, “Public Sphere and Private Life: Toward a Synthesis of Current Historiographical Approaches to the Old Regime,” History and Theory 31, no. 1 (February 1992): 1–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cowan, Brian, “What Was Masculine about the Public Sphere? Gender and the Coffeehouse Milieu in Post-Restoration England,” History Workshop Journal 51 (2001): 127–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Historical studies that argue for the ongoing significance of the Habermasian model include Miles Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity: London's Geographies, 1680–1780 (London, 1998), esp. chap. 3, “The Street”; van Horn Melton, The Rise of the Public; and Russell, Women, Sociability and the Theatre.

¹² Brewer, Pleasures, xvii–xviii.

¹³ Klein, Lawrence E., “Politeness and the Interpretation of the British Eighteenth Century,” Historical Journal 45, no. 4 (December 2002): 869–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1994).

¹⁴ Borsay, English Urban Renaissance, 277–79.

¹⁵ Porter, Roy, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1990), 232Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Langford, Paul, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1992), 102Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Borsay, English Urban Renaissance, 278.

¹⁸ Castle, Terry, Masquerade and Civilization: Carnivalesque in Eighteenth-Century English Culture and Fiction (Palo Alto, CA, 1986), 28Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Steven Pincus, “The State and Civil Society in Early Modern England: Capitalism, Causation and Habermas's Bourgeois Public Sphere,” in The Politics of the Public Sphere, ed. Steven Pincus and Peter Lake (Manchester, 2007), 215. Condren makes the same point, warning that “taking space as its syndedoche rather than as contingent condition can create confusion”; see Condren, “Public, Private and the Idea of the Public Sphere,” 16. In the context of this discussion, Cowan offers a distinction between the normative and the practical public sphere as one way to negotiate the distinctions between physical space and abstract ideals; see Cowan, “What Was Masculine about the Public Sphere?” 133–34.

²⁰ Borsay, English Urban Renaissance, 293.

²¹ Klein, Lawrence E., “Politeness for Plebes: Consumption and Social Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century England,” in The Consumption of Culture, 1600–1800: Object, Image and Text, ed. Bermingham, Ann and Brewer, John (London, 1995), 362–82Google Scholar.

²² Examples of recent recitations of the mixing model, which tend toward a more uncritical application in different disciplinary contexts, include Wilson, Ben, Decency and Disorder: The Age of Cant, 1789–1837 (London, 2007), 58Google Scholar; and, with particular reference to pleasure garden mixing, Bruno, Guiliana, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture and Film (London, 2002), 196Google Scholar; and Chico, Tita, Designing Women: The Dressing Room in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Culture (Lewisburg, PA, 2005), 205Google Scholar.

²³ For Vauxhall, see Coke, David and Borg, Alan, Vauxhall Gardens: A History (London, 2011)Google Scholar. For the London gardens in general, see Wroth, Warwick, The London Pleasure Gardens (London, 1896)Google Scholar; and Curl, James Stevens, Spas, Wells and Pleasure Gardens of London (London, 2010)Google Scholar. For English pleasure gardens more broadly, see Borsay, English Urban Renaissance, 170. European cities boasted similar commercial grounds and, tellingly, in Paris and Bath, many were named Vauxhall or Ranelagh in homage to London's famous trendsetters. For the Paris example, see Conlin, Jonathan, “Vauxhall on the Boulevard: Pleasure Gardens in Paris and London, 1764–1784,” Urban History 35, no. 1 (May 2008): 24–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Coke and Borg, Vauxhall Gardens, 20–23.

²⁵ Early studies include James Southworth, Granville, Vauxhall Gardens: A Chapter in Social History (New York, 1941)Google Scholar; and Scott, Walter Sidney, Green Retreats: The Story of Vauxhall Gardens, 1661–1859 (London, 1955)Google Scholar. More recent studies include Edelstein, T. J., ed., Vauxhall Gardens (New Haven, CT, 1983)Google Scholar; Solkin, David, “Vauxhall Gardens or the Politics of Pleasure,” in Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1993)Google Scholar; Ogborn, “The Pleasure Garden,” in Spaces of Modernity; Peter de Bolla, ”Vauxhall Gardens: The Visibility of Visuality, ” in The Education of the Eye: Painting, Landscape and Architecture (Palo Alto, CA, 2003); Conlin, Jonathan, “Vauxhall Revisited: The Afterlife of a London Pleasure Garden,” Journal of British Studies 45, no. 4 (October 2006): 718–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Corfield, Penelope, Vauxhall and the Invention of the Urban Pleasure Garden (London, 2008)Google Scholar; and, the most substantial work on Vauxhall to date, Coke and Borg, Vauxhall Gardens. New work in progress on Vauxhall Gardens was showcased at the 2008 Tate Britain conference “Vauxhall Revisited: Pleasure Gardens and Their Publics, 1660–1880,” convened by Jonathan Conlin. For a review of the conference, see Weber, William, “Vauxhall Revisited: Pleasure Gardens and Their Publics, 1660–1880, Tate Britain, London, 14–16 July 2008,” Eighteenth-Century Music 6, no. 1 (2009): 151–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A selection of papers from the conference will be published in Jonathan Conlin, ed., Grounds for Pleasure: Pleasure Gardens in England and the United States, 1660–1914 (Philadelphia, forthcoming).

²⁶ Ranelagh is dealt with in Wroth, London Pleasure Gardens; and also in John Timbs, Clubs and Club Life in London (London, 1899). One of the few volumes to focus exclusively on Ranelagh is Sands, Mollie, Invitation to Ranelagh, 1742–1803 (London, 1946).Google Scholar

²⁷ Solkin, “Vauxhall Gardens or the Politics of Pleasure.” Solkin's direct linkage to the concept of a public sphere has not gone without criticism. See, e.g., Gallagher's, Susan review of Solkin's Painting for Money, titled “Portraying the Public,” Oxford Art Journal 17, no. 1 (1994): 96–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Solkin, Painting for Money, 106.

²⁹ Wroth, for example, asserts that “although Ranelagh fairly maintained its position as a fashionable resort … at all periods the company was a good deal mixed.” See Wroth, London Pleasure Gardens, 206.

³⁰ Castle's study remains the principal cultural history of the masquerade: Castle, Masquerade and Civilization; see 6, 21, and 98 for references to masquerades at Vauxhall and Ranelagh. Both Ogborn and Solkin apply Castle's work to their detailed studies of Vauxhall, exploring the pleasure garden's culture of masquerade. See Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity, 128–33; and Solkin, Painting for Money, esp. 135–39.

³¹ Ogborn, “The Pleasure Garden,” 116–55.

³² Burney, Fanny, Evelina: Or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World, letter 15 (Oxford, 1982), 193–206Google Scholar.

³³ A Trip to Vauxhall or a General Satyr on the Times by Hercules MacSturdy of the County of Tiperary (London, 1737)Google Scholar. See also Solkin's discussion of this poem in Painting for Money, 121–24.

³⁴ Anon. [attributed to Joseph Warton], Ranelagh House: A Satire in Prose in the Manner of Monsieur Le Sage (London, 1747).

³⁵ Anonymous cutting from July 1824, “Vauxhall Scrapbook,” Bodleian Library, Oxford, G A Surrey, c. 21. Both Jonathan Conlin and Pierre Dubois cite this article to illustrate the gardens’ potential for facilitating “mingling.” See Conlin, “Vauxhall Revisited,” 722; and Dubois, Pierre, “Resorts of Ambiguity: The Eighteenth-Century Pleasure Gardens, a Bewitching Assemblage of Provocatives,” Revue française de civilisation britannique 14, no. 2 (June 2007): 66Google Scholar.

³⁶ Solkin, Painting for Money, 123.

³⁷ Langford, Polite and Commercial People, 101.

³⁸ Marshall, Dorothy, Dr Johnson's London (London, 1968), 161Google Scholar.

³⁹ Edelstein, T. J., “Vauxhall Gardens,” in 18th Century Britain: The Cambridge Cultural History, ed. Ford, Boris, 9 vols. (Cambridge, 1992), 5:203Google Scholar; Van Horn Melton, Rise of the Public, 169.

⁴⁰ Corfield, Vauxhall, 15.

⁴¹ Dubois “Resorts of Ambiguity,” 52–66.

⁴² Letter from George John Spencer, second earl Spencer to his mother, Margaret, dowager countess Spencer, April 1785, British Library (BL), Althorp Papers, Add. MSS 75581 f. 12.

⁴³ Diaries of Elizabeth, duchess of Grafton, second wife of Augustus Henry, third duke of Grafton, covering period 1787–812, Suffolk Record Office (Bury St. Edmunds Branch), Grafton Papers, HA 513/4/121–130. See, e.g., HA 513/4/122, diary for 1789, entries every Tuesday and Saturday in March 1789.

⁴⁴ Letter from the Hon. Frederick (Fritz) Robinson, Whitehall, to his brother Thomas Robinson, second baron Grantham, ambassador to Madrid, 4 May 1778, Bedfordshire Record Office, Wrest Park (Lucas) Papers (hereafter BRO, WPP), L30/14/333/91.

⁴⁵ By “collection” I refer to extensive sets of personal papers attributed to a prominent aristocratic individual or, more often, the collected papers of multiple members of an aristocratic family. I consider, for example, the Wrest Park Papers of the Grey family at Bedfordshire Record Office or the Chatham Papers at The National Archives as single collections, but they encompass many hundreds of letters and include the personal records of numerous family members.

⁴⁶ The Oxford English Dictionary defines “beau monde” as “fashionable world” and cites its common usage between 1714 and 1823. Largely obsolete by the mid-1800s, it was a peculiarly eighteenth-century designation for London elite culture. The earliest use I have found is Gerard Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets (1691), 406, who noted that the death of Katherine Philips was “to the regret of all the beau monde in general.” Also predating the OED's suggested first use, in 1705 Lord Raby, later earl of Strafford, referred to the beau monde when describing the London society based abroad: The Wentworth Papers, 1705–1739: Selected from the private and family correspondence of Thomas Wentworth, Lord Raby (later Earl of Strafford), ed. J. J. Cartwright, 2 vols. (London, 1883), 2:137. Here I use “beau monde” to refer to culture and society of the titled elite when in London for the season.

⁴⁷ Daily Post, London, 21 June 1742.

⁴⁸ Daily Advertiser, 23 May 1743.

⁴⁹ Daily Post, 21 May 1744.

⁵⁰ Westminster Journal or New Weekley Miscellany, 31 August 1745. In the same report, it is noted that Their Royal Highnesses also attended the lesser-known Cuper's Gardens.

⁵¹ Press cuttings, 1732–1823, dated 1759 [unknown publication], Vauxhall Gardens Archive (VGA), fiche 36. The VGA microfilm collection comprises the Vauxhall collection held by Lambeth Palace Archive and covers the period 1660–1859.

⁵² Ibid; and also “Collection of images and adverts relating to Ranelagh,” BL, 74/LR 282.b.7.

⁵³ Press cuttings, 1732–1823, and unknown newspaper clipping, 1805, VGA, fiche 2.

⁵⁴ Morning Post, 10 June 1810.

⁵⁵ Castle makes a similar point with regard to the commercial masquerade, suggesting that the emphasis on elite company was a marketing strategy. Castle, Masquerade and Civilization, 27.

⁵⁶ Gillian Russell has recently offered an alternative reading of these puffs, suggesting that they might be approached as an attempt to commercialize the systems of patronage associated with elite sociability. Russell, Women, Sociability and the Theatre, 11 and 17–37.

⁵⁷ Travel journals of Dorothy Richardson, III, diary of visit to London, 1775, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, GB 133 Eng. MSS 1124. See journal entry for 14 July 1775.

⁵⁸ Ibid., entry for 17 July 1775.

⁵⁹ Peter de Bolla, The Education of the Eye, 102.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 72–103.

⁶¹ Nosan, Gregory, “Pavilions, Power and Patriotism: Garden Architecture at Vauxhall,” in Bourgeois and Aristocratic Cultural Encounters in Garden Art , 1550–1850, ed. Conan, Michael (Washington, DC, 2002)Google Scholar. For additional and different applications of de Bolla, see Conlin, “Vauxhall Revisited,” 719; and Russell, Women, Sociability and the Theatre, 104–5.

⁶² This is also suggested by Simon McVeigh, who notes, with reference to Vauxhall, that “one of the main objects of visiting the gardens was in fact to relish social distinctions.” See McVeigh, Concert Life, 43.

⁶³ Press cutting (anon.), 1809, VGA, fiche 36.

⁶⁴ These attributions (taken from contemporary references) are widely cited but also, more recently, disputed. These particular attributions are given in Riely, John, Rowlandson's Drawings from the Paul Mellon Collection (New Haven, CT, 1978), 5Google Scholar. Diana Donald has questioned the likenesses and argues that they might be better regarded as “types” rather than portraits. See Donald, Diana, The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III (London, 1996), 137Google Scholar. David Coke and Alan Borg have recently reaffirmed the attributions in Coke and Borg, Vauxhall, 238.

⁶⁵ Letter from Elizabeth Herbert, countess of Pembroke, Whitehall, to Lady Susan Stewart, 11 June [1765], The National Archives (hereafter TNA), PRO 30/29/4/1, f. 12.

⁶⁶ From Jemima Yorke, Marchioness Grey, to Lady Gregory, 21 June 1740, BRO, WPP, L30/9a/1/106.

⁶⁷ Mary Grey to Amabel Polwarth, 20 May 177, BRO, WPP, L30/11/123/214.

⁶⁸ Memorandum book of marquess of Carnarvon, BL, Add. MSS 70964; see entries for 22–29 May 1752.

⁶⁹ Private Diary of Henry Brydges, second duke of Chandos, Huntington Library, Stowe Papers, ST 108 v.2.

⁷⁰ Letter from William Pitt, London, to his mother, Lady Chatham, 13 June 1781, TNA, PRO/30/8/12, f. 227.

⁷¹ See, e.g., letter from Maria Josepha Holroyd, baroness Stanley of Alderley, Portland Place, to Ann First, 14 May 1794, reprinted in The Girlhood of Maria Josepha Lady Stanley of Alderley, recorded in the letters of a hundred years ago from 1776 to 1796, ed. Jane Henrietta Adeane (London, 1896), 281.

⁷² A fee of twenty-five shillings was advertised in Daily Post, 14 April 1741.

⁷³ Memorandum book of the Marquess of Carnarvon (1752), BL, Add. MSS 70964.

⁷⁴ Letter from Lady Sutherland to Lady Elgin, London, 17 September [no date], National Library of Scotland, Sutherland Papers Dep. 313/716, f. 58.

⁷⁵ Diary entry for May 1767, in Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke, ed. David Douglas, 4 vols. (London, 1886), 2:6.

⁷⁶ Frederick Robinson to Thomas Robinson, 20 April 1779, BRO, WPP, L30/14/333/199.

⁷⁷ Letter from Lady Louisa Stuart to Lady Dawson, Caroline, countess of Portarlington, 24 June 1784, in Gleanings from an Old Portfolio: Containing some correspondence between Lady Louisa Stuart and her sister Caroline, Countess of Portalington, ed. Clark, Alice, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1895), 1:254.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Letter from Elizabeth Herbert, countess of Pembroke, Whitehall, to Lady Susan Stewart, 11 June [1765], TNA, PRO 30/29/4/1, f. 12. See also letter from same to same, May 23 [1763], Wilton House, PRO 30/29/4/1. f. 5.

⁷⁹ Letter from Lady Mary Grey to Amabel, Countess Polwarth, 28 June 1777, BRO, WPP, L30/11/123/56; Letter from Frederick Robinson to Thomas Robinson, 19 May 1778, BRO, WPP, L30/14/333/96.

⁸⁰ Letters from Lady Harriot Pitt to her mother Hester, Lady Chatham 1 June 1781 and 13 June 1781, reprinted in The Letters of Lady Harriot Eliot, 1766–1786, ed. Cuthbert Headlam (Edinburgh, 1914), 59 and 61.

⁸¹ Henry Seymour Conway to Horace Walpole, 1 August 1758, The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, ed. W. S. Lewis, 48 vols. (New Haven, CT, 1974), 37:557.

⁸² Letters from Lady Harriot Pitt to Hester, Lady Chatham, written on 1 June 1781 and 6 May 1783, reprinted in Headlam, Letters of Lady Harriot Eliot, 59.

⁸³ Ibid., 61.

⁸⁴ Henry Angelo, Reminiscences of Henry Angelo with Memoirs of his late father and friends, 2 vols. (London, 1828), 2:1. Quoted in VGA, fiche 1.

⁸⁵ Chancellor, Edwin Beresford, The 18th Century in London: An Account of Its Social Life and Arts (London, 1920), 103Google Scholar.

⁸⁶ M. Gresley at Brighton to Rev. William Gresley, Netherseale, 11 June 1790, Derbyshire Record Office, Gresley of Drakelow Papers, D 803 M/F 64.

⁸⁷ Hon. Frederick (Fritz) Robinson, Whitehall, to his brother Thomas Robinson, second baron Grantham, ambassador to Madrid, 22 May 1778, BRO, WPP, L30/14/333/97.

⁸⁸ Angelo, Reminiscences of Henry Angelo with Memoirs of his late father and friends, 2:1. Quoted in VGA, fiche 1.

⁸⁹ Goldsmith, Oliver, The Citizen of the World (London, 1762), 203Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ Horace Walpole to George Montagu, 27 May 1757, in Lewis, Walpole's Correspondence, 9:207.

⁹¹ It is widely accepted that Walpole is in many ways atypical of his aristocratic generation. See Snodin, Michael, Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill (London, 2009)Google Scholar.

⁹² For the use of this same Walpole quote as evidence of “mingling,” see Solkin, Painting for Money, 124.

⁹³ Horace Walpole to George Montagu, 27 May 1757, in Lewis, Walpole's Correspondence, 9:207.

⁹⁴ Diary entry for May 1767, in Douglas, Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke, 2:7.

⁹⁵ For box subscriptions and the division of the opera audience, see Hall-Witt, Fashionable Acts, 55–81.

⁹⁶ Lady Sarah Bunbury to Lady O’Brien, Susan, Barton, 9 January 1766, in The Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, 1745–1826, ed. of Ilchester, Countess and Stavordale, Lord, 2 vols. (London, 1901), 1:176Google Scholar.

⁹⁷ The remarkable diaries of gentlewoman Anna Larpent, wife of civil servant John Larpent, have been the principal resource for historians looking for evidence of gentry and middling-sort engagement with commercial leisure. For the use of Larpent's diary in this way, see Brewer, Pleasures, chap. 2, esp. 55–60; and Vickery, Amanda, The Gentleman's Daughter: Women's Lives in Georgian England (London, 1998), 231–32 and 263–34Google Scholar. Larpent's diaries reveal extensive, although not always consistent, participation in London's leisure venues, but without wider exploration of other non-elite papers it is hard to establish whether Larpent's routine was typical for a woman of her age and rank (and both Vickery and Brewer note her “unusual background”). As the wife of the inspector of plays, it is quite possible that Larpent's social routine was unusual, and as the daughter of Ambassador Sir James Porter, Larpent was perhaps not as far removed from aristocratic London society as her married name might imply.