‘We Had a Row on the Politics of the Day’

In 1788, Duchess Charlotte, sister-in-law to the Swedish king Gustavus III, wrote a hasty note to her best friend Sophie Piper: ‘Will the Club take place or not, and if the party decides that it will, when do we go there, [I ask you for] one word as reply’. ¹ The Duchess referred to the fashionable novelty of elite Stockholm society, the Ambassador’s Club – the Société – which assembled regularly in a rented house close to the Royal Opera House. ² In the late eighteenth century, coffee houses had lost their appeal among the upper classes in Stockholm. The club replaced these as an arena where foreign envoys and the Swedish elite might mingle, gather news and make useful contacts. Duchess Charlotte’s note reveals that aristocratic ladies attended the club, most likely because of their political influence as patrons and social moderators. ³ Not more than 15 years later, however, this aristocratic club had been joined with another for wealthy merchants – and women were excluded from both. This chapter explores spaces for political engagement in late eighteenth-century Sweden, demonstrating the opportunities and boundaries that different urban spaces played for the making of a political community. ⁴