Blog #5: Archives Wrapped

It’s almost the end of 2025, so I’d like to offer my own version of a year in wrap: here are my favorite archival finds.

I often have found that while I may enter an archive or Special Collections library with the intention of learning about Catharine Macaulay, and Macaulay only, I’ve found dozens of other fascinating sources related to gender, literature, and history in eighteenth-century Britain. Many of these sources haven’t yet made their way into polished scholarly works, but I find them endlessly fascinating. Sometimes, I’ve even read quotations aloud to friends simply because they’re that compelling.

For 2025, three discoveries stood out. Together, they reveal a thematic thread in Macaulay’s world: the intersections of the bizarre, the constrained, and the critical. They illuminate the eccentricity of eighteenth-century health practices, the paradoxes of female education, and the moral critique of social institutions, all of which that Macaulay navigated as a reader, thinker, and writer.

I’ll highlight each find, provide some context, share favorite quotes, and explain how it connects to Macaulay’s life and intellectual universe.

Let’s start with a find that blends scandal, science, and spectacle—a vivid window into the world Macaulay inhabited, even if it seems almost unbelievable today.

#1: The Bed That Shook London: James Graham’s Celestial Spectacle

In 1778, Catharine Macaulay married twenty-one-year-old William Graham, twenty-six years her junior and socially inferior. Her marriage provoked social ostracism and damaged her literary reputation. Yet behind the gossip lies a surprising connection: William Graham was the younger brother of Dr. James Graham, the inventor of one of the most peculiar medical spectacles of the eighteenth century. [1]

Macaulay had long struggled with chronic ill health and sought remedies from Graham, who practiced in Bath where she lived. This decision fueled rumors that she had been romantically involved with the elder Graham and intensified criticism of her socially unconventional marriage. Beyond scandal, however, Graham’s medical ventures reveal much about the interplay between health, spectacle, and Enlightenment culture.

The eighteenth century was an era of scientific entertainment, and London exhibitions combined demonstrations of natural forces with theatricality to awe and educate the public. James Graham epitomized this trend. Described by the British Medical Journal as “one of the vilest imposters in the history of quackery,” he was both handsome and showman, blending medical practice with theatrical flair. [2] In 1780, he opened the Temple of Health on Pall Mall Street, a space featuring medical-electrical apparatus, lectures, and performances. [3] Some visitors came to be treated, others to gawp. Many came to hear his lectures, which concluded when guests were literally shocked by conductors under their seats. [4]

But the most infamous feature of the Temple of Health, and the one I find most interesting, was Graham’s Celestial Bed. Constructed from glass atop forty pillars, perfumed with flowers and spices, and charged with electricity, the bed was advertised as a guaranteed means of conception. Its adjustable frame allowed a multitude of positions, blending science, sensuality, and spectacle in a uniquely eighteenth-century fashion.

On 25 November 1782, Graham delivered a lecture, which I had the opportunity to read at the British Library, in which he sought to situate love within the broader context of philosophical inquiry. [5] From the outset, Graham frames love not as a mere emotion or social convention but as a subject worthy of rational investigation. The first part of his speech engages with established philosophical traditions, tracing how earlier thinkers attempted to understand the origin and nature of human passion. He begins with the Platonists, summarizing their view that “the passion of love is produced when … a person is presented to our sight, the image of this person having passed thro’ the organs of vision, offers itself to the soul; the soul having saluted it contemplates it, examines it, and in a moment, yes, with inconceivable facility, compares it with those ideas of beauty, which it received from the Deity, at its original infusion into the body.” [6] Graham treats this account with measured skepticism, suggesting that while it captures certain imaginative or aesthetic truths, it remains insufficient as a practical or empirical explanation of human desire.

He then turns to René Descartes, whose rationalist approach he similarly critiques. Descartes, according to Graham, offers a hypothesis of love that “has scarce any merit but that of being an ingenious or a brilliant fiction.” [7] By juxtaposing these perspectives, Graham demonstrates both his familiarity with the major intellectual currents of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and his willingness to challenge them. His method blends philosophical commentary with theatrical flourish, prefiguring the way his Temple of Health would combine instruction, spectacle, and quasi-scientific demonstration.

In this way, Graham’s lecture not only engages with prior theories of love but also signals his larger project: to develop a system in which emotional experience, bodily influence, and philosophical reasoning converge. The early sections, where he critiques the Platonists and Descartes, thus lay the groundwork for his later, more inventive claims about magnetico-electrical forces and the “celestial fire” of passion.

Graham systematically critiques the major philosophical schools of his time, arguing that the Platonists, the Peripatetics, the Cartesians, and the Sympathists all fail to adequately account for the phenomenon of love. Each tradition, in his view, either abstracts love into metaphysical speculation or reduces it to a mechanical process, neglecting the interplay between the senses, the body, and the imagination. Against this backdrop, Graham invokes what he calls “ye aerial, athereal, musical, magnetical, and electrical powers and influences! while I attempt to unfold the great mystery.” [8] In doing so, he positions himself as both a philosopher and a showman, claiming to access forces that bridge natural philosophy and human experience. He further dramatizes his lecture by calling upon historical and mythological figures Aesculapius, Alexander, Alfred, and Britannia to witness the effects of this mysterious power. [9] Having called on those figures, he offers the following, somewhat bizarre conclusion:

“To illustrate this matter more particularly, figure to your glowing imagination Gentlemen! an ardent lover in the company of his beautiful mistress; behold them, in idea, the magnetico-electrical effluvium— the celestial invisible fire! proceeding in all directions from the fair one, and sweetly striking on the eyes, and on the heart of her lover. The complacency and sparkling of this countenance shews visibly the pleasure he enjoys; and nothing can be easier than to perceive the tender impressions that are made on his soul … Thus it is, but with greater security, that a lover, struck and penetrated by the rays of this magnetico-electrical fire, conceives those vehement desires which hurry him with such violence towards the object that gives rise to them” [10]

In this passage, Graham moves from philosophical abstraction to vivid sensory description, transforming love into a physical, energetic exchange between bodies. The “magnetico-electrical effluvium,” or celestial fire, is at once a metaphorical and quasi-scientific principle, a fusion of ideas about magnetism, electricity, and vital forces. It represents a radical departure from traditional accounts of love, emphasizing bodily responsiveness, sensory perception, and affective intensity.

Graham’s conclusion, that love derives from this magnetico-electrical fire, “the essence of ages! — the liquor of life! — and the true pabulum of all pleasure !!!”[11] , crystallizes the central claim of his lecture: desire is not merely moral, spiritual, or rational, but fundamentally energetic, material, and interactive. By linking this theory to his Celestial Bed (which he conveniently advertised at the end of the printed edition of his speech), Graham created a practical, performative application of his philosophy: the bed itself becomes a conduit through which the invisible forces of attraction and vitality might be harnessed. 

Despite the spectacle, the Temple of Health was short-lived. By 1782, Graham was bankrupt and forced to sell the Celestial Bed. By 1790, he had shifted to a new, equally eccentric theory: the human body could absorb all the nutrients it needed through contact with soil, thenceforth delivering his lectures buried up to the neck in dirt.

Why does this archival material matter? Beyond its humor and strangeness, it illuminates Macaulay’s lived experience. Perhaps we ought to take more seriously the fact that Macaulay struggled with continual ill health, and I’d like to wager in her desperation turned to doctors crazy enough to try new medical conventions, like Graham. Indeed, her engagement with Graham reflects the realities of eighteenth-century health practices, the social risks of unconventional choices, and the porous boundary between serious science and theatrical entertainment. 

I think I also really enjoy these selections because they remind us that history is not only a sequence of wars, intellectual developments, or cultural milestones. Instead, it can be Graham constructing giant, electrified beds in the service of love, desire, and curiosity. Figures like Graham, while often dismissed as quacks, intersected with the lives of those, like Macaulay, whom we now study with reverence. In other words, the bizarre, the scandalous, and the brilliant were not peripheral to history, they are central to its texture.

While Graham shows the eccentric and theatrical side of eighteenth-century life, my next find reveals the intellectual and moral debates that shaped women’s lives in Macaulay’s world.

#2 ​​Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education: Hannah More, Bluestockings, and the Paradox of Virtuous Learning

On my first visit back to Cambridge, I visited Queen’s College Special Collections where I read Hannah More’s Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education (1799). More (1745-1833), an English religious writer, poet, and playwright, devoted much of her career to moral and religious subjects. She was also an active member of the London literary elite and part of the infamous bluestocking circle, a network of educated women and men engaged in intellectual debate, of which Catharine Macaulay was also a member.

The bluestocking circle represented a broader culture of learned Britons committed to combining intellectual pursuit with Christian piety. [12] Their emphasis on virtue often shielded them from some of the prejudices aimed at women’s learning, and their success derived not only from scholarship but from the cultivation of friendships across genders. [13]

Not all bluestockings shared the same views, however. Macaulay’s political radicalism and ambition sometimes placed her at odds with other members. In 1775, Elizabeth Montagu refused to read one of Macaulay’s works, whereas Elizabeth Carter praised Macaulay’s intellect, having spent hours with her in conversation. Carter concluded that Macaulay possessed “a very considerable share both of sense and knowledge,” reflecting the diversity of opinions within the circle. [14]

Perhaps Richard Samuel’s painting best demonstrates public perception of the bluestocking circle. Samuel’s work is classical in theme and setting. While the reason for such a gathering may not be explicit, the presence of the women demonstrates their accomplishments in languages, history, poetry, drama, art, and music. Macaulay appears below the statue of Apollo, holding a scroll representing Clio, the muse of history, while More stands above her, chalice in hand, looking skyward. The paintings, scrolls, statues, and classical garb all signal that all these learned women would have been acutely aware of the ancient world and their place within it – as historians, musicians, poets, or inspired by the past. They further signal outwardly to the viewer the importance of the painting – that antiquity would have bestowed some gravity onto the painting, that the women depicted were learned and intellectual, that they deserved to be thought of on the same level as other men worthy of entering Apollo’s temple.

Macaulay might be seen, then, to stand both a parallel and damaging relation to contemporary representations of learning. [15] She is parallel to these representations in that they often appear to celebrate liberal politeness; damaging since she was often regarded as someone whose radical politics and public status made her uncommon or exceptional. Sometimes in the same image she would have been seen as all of these things at once. By the mid-1770s, Macaulay, a radical with pro-American sympathies and a non-conformist, did not socialize with the women of Britain’s bluestocking circles, but she did find it helpful to think of herself in terms of great allegiance to them as women of learning instead of as in opposition to them.

And while I literally wrote most of the above paragraph almost a year ago, I did not heed my own advice. It turns out that Hannah More is infamous for her political conservatism, having been described variously as an anti-feminist, a counter-revolutionary, or even a conservative feminist. Her conservatism was not merely a matter of personal belief; it manifested in concrete efforts to influence public opinion and social behavior. In the 1790s, for instance, she authored the Cheap Repository Tracts, a series of moral, religious, and political pamphlets aimed at the literate poor. These tracts were intended as a direct response to radical ideas circulating at the time, most famously Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, which advocated for republican principles and defended the French Revolution

Nevertheless, I was so excited to read from one of the other bluestocking ladies I had read and seen portraits of that I dove right into Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education. Despite her conservatism, More’s Strictures is striking and, at times, paradoxical. She opens with a critique of women’s limited educational opportunities:

“It is a singular injustice which is often exercised towards women, first to give them a very defective Education, and then to expect from them the most undeviating purity of conduct;–to train them in such a manner as shall lay them open to the most dangerous faults, and then to censure them for not proving faultless” [16]

Here, More situates herself as an evangelical conservative concerned with moral education, yet her work also reveals an appreciation for the intellectual capacities of women. Her advice emphasizes influence, propriety, and practical knowledge. Here’s some of my favorite of her advice:

1. Women must recognize the importance of their social influence: “Among the talents for the application of which women of the higher class will be peculiarly accountable, there is one, the importance of which they can scarcely rate too highly. This talent is influence.” [17]
2. Propriety is essential; wit or talent without it cannot make a woman amiable: “Propriety is to a woman what the great Roman critic says action is to an orator; it is the first, the second, the third requisite. A woman may be knowing, active, witty, and amusing; but without propriety she cannot be amiable.” [18]
3. Education should cultivate judgment and virtue, rather than simply prepare women for literary reproduction or professional pursuits: “It is far from being the object of this slight work to offer a regular plan of female education, a task which has been often more properly assumed by far abler writers; but it is intended rather to suggest a few remarks on the reigning mode” [19] … ”The chief end to be proposed in cultivating the understandings of women, is to qualify them for the practical purposes of life. Their knowledge is not often like the learning of men, to be reproduced in some literary composition, nor ever in any learned profession; but it is to come out in conduct.” [20]
4. Religious instruction should align with biblical principles rather than human invention: ”It is undoubtedly our duty, while we are instilling principles into the tender mind, to take peculiar care that those principles be found and just; that the religion we teach be the religion of the Bible, and not the inventions of human error or superstition.” [21]

More’s prescriptions reveal a paradox: she advocates for rigorous female education while simultaneously reinforcing social hierarchies and circumscribing women’s intellectual engagement. Yet the depth and sophistication of her writing demonstrate that she herself possessed a formidable education, rivaling that of men of her time.

Engaging with More’s work alongside portraits and archival sources highlights this tension between education and constraint. While she encourages women to cultivate virtue and knowledge, she simultaneously discourages them from fully entering scholarly or public life (a stance that contrasts sharply with Macaulay’s radical intellectualism). In this way, More embodies the complexities of the bluestocking ethos: the pursuit of knowledge was both empowering and circumscribed by social and moral expectations.

When I told all of this to a librarian on Queen’s staff, she told me More almost seemed like Erika Kirk. I don’t think that’s a perfect association, but it’s also not too far off. Studying More’s work illuminates the rich and sometimes contradictory philosophies that shaped women’s education in eighteenth-century Britain, offering a nuanced perspective on the intellectual landscape navigated by figures like Macaulay and More alike.

If More’s work illuminates the moral and intellectual constraints women faced, my next find, a satire, offers a glimpse of the broader social critique circulating at the time, targeting clergy, government, and the very structures Macaulay would later analyze in her histories.

#3: Satire and Social Reform: John Eachard’s Contempt of the Clergy

My final archival discovery came from St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge. While queuing for manuscripts related to Catharine Macaulay or her circle, I also requested The Grounds & Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion Enquired Into, in a Letter Written to R.L. (1670) by John Eachard. The library catalogue noted that this manuscript was signed by Eachard, master of Catharine Hall, and suggested that “Macaulay is said to have made use of / this book for his account of the / English clergy in the 17th century.” The text had been described as “scandalous” in the preface to George Herbert’s Priest to the Temple (1671), and Mary Astell, in her Essay on the Defence of the Female Sex (1696), claimed it “must be more splenetick than Heraclitus, or more stupid than the ass he laughed at.” [22] Needless to say, the prospect of engaging with a source potentially read by Macaulay, and one that had drawn the attention of earlier female writers, was thrilling.

I soon discovered, however, that the historian who actually drew on Eachard’s Contempt of the Clergy was Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859), the British historian, poet, and Whig politician. Best known for his History of England, he advocated a teleological vision of progress in English political and social history. Despite this confusion, and having a few hours to spare before my train back to London, I decided to read the manuscript anyway, and it proved entirely worth the effort: Eachard’s satire is both sharp and hilarious.

In his satire, Eachard attributes the contempt in which the English clergy had fallen to their imperfect education, insufficient incomes, and the want of a true vocation. Though his claims are somewhat exaggerated, Eachard argues that not only the clergy and religion have become corrupt and lost sight of their true purpose but also that the government ought to have less influence over the church. 

Particularly striking are Eachard’s criticisms of the classical curriculum. He questions the utility of overburdening boys with Greek and Latin:

“First of all, it were certainly worth the considering, whether it be unavoidably necessary to keep Lads to sixteen or seventeen years of Age, in pure slavery to a few Latin and Greek words?” [23] 

Instead, he advocates practical instruction in English authors, arithmetic, and geometry, rather than tedious classical stories about Phaeton or Tityrius. As a reader trained in Latin and Greek, I found these observations both hilarious and painfully accurate: the minutiae of grammar and obscure myths sometimes feel as though they overshadow more practical learning.

Eachard links inadequate education directly to the quality of sermons. Poorly educated clergy produce confusing or ridiculous preaching, leaving parishioners disillusioned: “The first main thing, I say, that makes many Sermons so ridiculous, and the Preachers of them so much disparag’d and undervalued, is an in∣considerate use of frightful metaphors; which making such a remarkable im∣pression upon the Ears, and leaving such a jarring twang behind them,” [24] and the second might be that “since the Reformation, nothing has more hindered People from a just estimation of a Form of Prayer, and our Holy Liturgy, than employing a 100  company of Boys, or old illiterate Mumblers, to read the Service.” [25] In Eachard’s view, inadequate educational preparation bred a cycle of clerical incompetence, public contempt, and diminished authority, a critique delivered with both wit and moral purpose.

Beyond education, Eachard’s satire addresses broader structural issues: the Church attracts men without vocation, faces unreasonable public expectations, and is prone to vanity and pretension. His playful yet pointed tone encourages reflection and reform, situating the work within the lively pamphlet culture of Restoration England. Written shortly after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, a period of religious tension and church rebuilding, Contempt of the Clergy is part of a broader tradition of satire aimed at social and institutional reform.

Although Catharine Macaulay did not directly use Eachard’s text, her historical perspective engages with similar concerns. She examined the Restoration period through the lens of moral and political critique, emphasizing clerical and governmental corruption as obstacles to liberty and civic virtue. Eachard’s satire aimed to provoke reflection and corrective reform within the Church, while Macaulay’s histories situated the same failings within a broader narrative of societal decay and the need for rational governance. Her histories reflect concerns about rational governance and civic responsibility, and they provide a critical perspective on the same social structures Restoration satirists like Eachard targeted in their contemporary pamphlets. 

Taken together, these three archival discoveries, from Graham’s electrified bed to More’s educational prescriptions to Eachard’s clerical satire, highlight the rich, often surprising context in which Macaulay lived, read, and wrote

Overall Takeaways

And so, as we wrap up this archival year, my top discoveries are in: a giant electrified Celestial Bed, a manifesto on female education, and a satirical smackdown of the English clergy. Each taught me something unexpected: that the past can be absurd, brilliant, scandalous, and deeply human all at once. They remind us why Catharine Macaulay mattered as she navigated these worlds turning the bizarre, the conservative, and the corrupt into lessons about liberty, learning, and civic virtue. History isn’t just dates or debates; it’s Graham shocking guests, More schooling her readers, and Eachard calling out a church that takes itself too seriously. And Macaulay? She’s right there in the mix, reading, reacting, and writing in ways that make us pause, laugh, and rethink what we thought we knew. That’s my 2025 archival wrap: eclectic, electrified, and endlessly fascinating.

Works Cited

1.  Rodrigues, Patricia. “Catharine Macaulay: The Outcasting of a Genius,” International Journal of Arts & Sciences, vol. 4, no. 14, (2011): 41; Sandrine Berges, Eileen Hunt Botting, and Alan Coffee, eds., The Wollstonecraftian Mind (Abingdon, Oxon; Routledge, 2019), 199. Although Graham had studied medicine in Edinburgh, he had not completed the proper exams, yet still styled himself as a doctor.
2.  “Nelson’s Egeria And The ‘Temple Of Health.’” The British Medical Journal 2, no. 2912 (1916): 564–564. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20305493.
3.  For an image of the advert, see: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/feqwt2eb/items?sierraId=.
4.  “Some Notable Quacks.” The British Medical Journal 1, no. 2630 (1911): 1264–74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25286652.
5. Hebe Vestina and James Graham, Il Convito Amoroso; or a Serio-Comico-Philosophical Lecture on the Causes, Nature and Effects of Love and Beauty… Delivered by Hebe Vestina, the… Goddess of Youth and Health… at the Temple of Hymen, in London, 2nd ed. (London: n.p., 1782).
6. Ibid., 15.
7. Ibid., 27. “He has done however considerable service to Philosophy, as he certainly was the first who dared to shake off the yoke of the ancients, and break thro’ the superstitious reverence for their authority” (Ibid).
8. Ibid., 51.
9.  “*Alluding to the Figures on the top, and in the front of the Temple of Hymen Those particles of odorous of luminous matter therefoe that continually emanate, with such astonishing rapidity of ease from the human body, must be as subtile as globules or particles of electrical fire, or of the solar light; and I shall have but little difficulty, Gentlemen, in convincing you, that they are, what may very properly be called ANIMAL ELECTRICITY!” (Ibid., 53).
10. Ibid., 60-1.
11. Ibid., 68. Graham continued, “From what has been said, Gentlemen, is it not perfectly reasonable and philosophical to conclude that the elegant — the generous — the universal passion which is the subject of this Lecture, depends entirely on the action of this animal fire, or magnetico-electrical affluvium, which we have proved to emanate, more or less copiously, from every animal body. Where this matter does not act, there can be no inclination: and where it does, love or hatred, inclination of aversion, are lively and affecting, in proportion to the force with which it acts, and to the degree of sensibility in the person acted upon” (Ibid., 74).
12. Sylvia Harcstark Myers, The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 2.
13.  Not all bluestockings shared the same beliefs. For some, Macaulay’s ambition and political radicality made her presence a hard pill to swallow. Some of the first of the bluestocking generation were not in favor of her political views: Elizabeth Montagu announced that she would not read one of Macaulay’s books in 1775; Elizabeth Carter replied that she would, as she had a “higher opinion of her [Mrs Macaulay’s] talents” than Mrs Montagu had. Elizabeth Carter explained that she had spent two or three hours in a tête-à-tête with Mrs Macaulay, and found that she had “a very considerable share both of sense and knowledge” (Myers, The Bluestocking Circle, 244 cited as Carter, Letters (1817), i. 309).
14.  Myers, The Bluestocking Circle, 244 cited as Carter, Letters (1817), i. 309. 
15. Kate Davies, Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren: The Revolutionary Atlantic and the Politics of Gender (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 86.
16. Hannah More, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education. … By Hannah More. In Two Volumes. … Fifth Edition, vol. 1 (London: T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1799), ix.
17. Ibid., 1.
18. Ibid., 6.
19. Ibid., 62.
20. More, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, vol. 2, 1.
21. More, Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, vol. 1, 244.
22. An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex, published anonymously in 1696 and widely regarded as an important early feminist text, argues for the intellectual and moral equality of women. Although the work was once attributed to Mary Astell because of her influence and the overlap in their intellectual circles, it is now generally credited to Judith Drake, with possible support or promotion from her husband, James Drake. Astell advanced similar ideas about women’s education in her own writing, like A Serious Proposal to the Ladies. The essay begins with the author’s declared aim of countering the disparaging judgments made by male writers and by social norms that limit women’s roles. Through sharp wit, vivid character sketches, and pointed observations, Drake critiques the barriers women face, particularly the restrictions placed on their education and opportunities. She argues that men are often poor judges of women’s abilities and highlights the intellectual, emotional, and moral strengths that women possess. The opening sections present the work as both a rebuttal to misogynistic criticism and a call for genuine recognition of women’s capabilities.
23. John Eachard, Ralph Holt, Obadiah Blagrave, and Thomas Neale, The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion Enquired into, &c.: Together with Some Observations upon an Answer Thereto. With Mr. Hobbs’s State of Nature Considered in a Dialogue between Philautus and Timothy: To Which Are Added Five Letters from the Author of The Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy (London: Printed by R. H[olt] for Obadiah Blagrave, 1685), 4.
24. Ibid., 45.
25. Ibid., 100.