A note on the origin of the Society's conversaziones

Abstract

The Royal Society’s conversaziones were originally the sole responsibility of the President, and until 1872 the Society, as a body, had no part in their organization. In the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Presidents were, with a few notable exceptions, men of wealth and high social rank rather than men eminent for their scientific attainments, and the entertainment of the Fellows from time to time throughout the Society’s session appears to have been considered one of their principal responsibilities. Since the conversaziones (or other functions) were a private responsibility of the President, the archives of the Society give no help in discovering what kind of entertainment was given, or how frequently. There is, however, some information on the subject in the Record of the Royal Society , and Sir John Barrow, F.R.S., gives us a few valuable details in his Sketches of the Royal Society and Royal Society Club (London, John Murray, 1849). There is also a short historical note prefaced to the account of the conversaziones of 1939 in Notes and Records ; this includes a reproduction of the catalogue of exhibits at the conversazione held on 31 May 1862 (1) . From Barrow’s book and the Record I have extracted some quotations which show the ways in which the Presidents o f the Society in the earlier part o f the nineteenth century discharged their social obligations. Sir Joseph B anks. ‘Every Thursday morning a breakfast was prepared for all who would come to partake of it . . . each Sunday evening after dinner he held a conversation , like Sir John Pringle, at which the literati of all nations were to be met; curiosities o f every description were brought by the visitors and exhibited . . .’ (2) .