Sarah Fielding. Mrs. Lennox. Mrs. Haywood. Mrs. Sheridan
About the middle of the eighteenth century, some interesting novels were
written by women, but their fame was so overshadowed by the early
masters of English fiction, who were then writing, that they have been
almost forgotten. For in 1740 _Pamela_ was published, the first novel of
Samuel Richardson; in 1771, _Humphry Clinker_ appeared, the last novel
of Tobias Smollett; and during the thirty-one years between these two
dates all the books of Richardson, Fielding, Sterne, and Smollett were
given to the world, and determined the nature of the English novel. The
plot of most of their fifteen realistic novels is practically the same.
The hero falls in love with a beautiful young lady, not over seventeen,
and there is a conflict between lust and chastity. The hero, balked of
his prey, travels up and down the world, where he meets with a series of
adventures, all very much alike, and all bearing very little on the main
plot. At last fate leads the dashing hero to the church door, where he
confers a ring on the fair heroine, a paltry piece of gold, the only
reward for her fidelity, with the hero thrown in, much the worse for
wear, and the curtain falls with the sound of the wedding bells in the
distance.
The range of these novels is narrow. They describe a world in which the
chief occupation is eating, drinking, swearing, gambling, and fighting.
Their chief artistic excellence is the strength and vigour with which
these low scenes are described. Sidney Lanier says of them: "They play
upon life as upon a violin without a bridge, in the deliberate endeavour
to get the most depressing tones possible from the instrument." And
Taine, who could hardly endure any of them, writes of Fielding what he
implies of the others: "One thing is wanted in your strongly-built
folks--refinement; the delicate dreams, enthusiastic elevation, and
trembling delicacy exist in nature equally with coarse vigour, noisy
hilarity, and frank kindness."
The women who essayed the art of fiction during these years did not have
so firm a grasp of the pen as their male contemporaries, and they have
added no portraits to the gallery of fiction; but they saw and recorded
many interesting scenes of British life which quite escaped the
quick-sighted Fielding, or Sterne with the microscopic eyes.
In 1744, when Richardson had written only one book, and Fielding had
published only two, before _Tom Jones_ or _Clarissa Harlowe_ had seen
the light of day, Sarah Fielding published _David Simple_, under the
title of _The Adventures of David Simple, containing an account of his
travels through the cities of London and Westminster in the search of a
real friend, by a Lady_. The author commenced the story as a satire on
society. For a long time David's search is unsuccessful. Although he
changed his lodgings every week, he could hear of no one who could be
trusted. Many, to be sure, dropped hints of their own excellence, and
the pity that they had to live with inferior neighbours. Among these was
Mr. Spatter, who introduced him to Mr. Varnish. The former saw the
faults of people through a magnifying glass; while the latter, when he
mentioned a person's failings, added, "He was sure they had some good in
them." But David soon learned that Mr. Varnish was no readier to assist
a friend in need than the fault-finding Mr. Spatter.
Like her brother Henry, Sarah Fielding is often sarcastic. In one of the
chapters she leaves David to his sufferings, "lest it should be
thought," she added, "I am so ignorant of the world as not to know the
proper time of forsaking people." But the pessimistic vein of the first
volume changes to a more optimistic tone in the second. David, in his
search for one friend, finds three. Fortunately these consist of a
brother and sister and a lady in love with the brother. Even at this
early time, an author had no doubts as to how a novel should end. The
heading of the last chapter in the book informs us that it contains two
weddings, "and consequently the Conclusion of the Book."
In its construction, the plot is similar to that of the other novels of
the period. David has plenty of time at his disposal, and listens with
more patience than the reader to the detailed history of all the people
he meets, and often begs a casual acquaintance to favour him with the
story of his life.
But Sarah Fielding's chief charm to her women readers is the feminine
view of her times. In _David Simple_ we have the pleasure of travelling
through England, but with a woman as our guide. As Harry Fielding
travelled between Bath and London, the fair reader wonders what he
reported to Mrs. Fielding of what he had seen and heard. Surely at these
various inns there must have been some by-play of real affection, some
act of modest kindness, some incident of delicate humour. Did he regale
Mrs. Fielding with the scenes he has described for his readers? Probably
when she asked him if anything had happened _en route_, he merely yawned
and replied, "Oh, nothing worth while." He had too much reverence for
his wife to repeat these low scenes to her, and we suspect he had eyes
for no others. What would Addison or Steele have seen in the same place?
Sarah Fielding also takes her characters on a stage-coach journey, but
here we sit beside the fair heroine, an intelligent lady, and gaze at
the men who sit opposite her. There is the Butterfly with his hair
pinned up in blue papers, wearing a laced waistcoat, and humming an
Italian air. He admires nothing but the ladies, and offered some little
familiarity to our heroine, which she repulsed; upon this he paid her
the greatest respect imaginable, being convinced, as she would not
suffer any intimacy from _him_, she must be one of the most virtuous
women that had ever been born. There is the Atheist, who being alone
with her for a few moments makes love to her in an insinuating manner,
and tries to prove to her that pleasure is the only thing to be sought
in life, and assures her that she may follow her inclinations without a
crime, "while she knew that nothing could so much oppose her _gratifying
him_, as her _pleasing herself_." Then there is the Clergyman who makes
honourable love to her, but by doing so puts an end to the friendship
which she had hoped might be between them; until at the end of the
journey, "she almost made a resolution never to speak to a man again,
beginning to think it impossible for a man to be civil to a woman,
unless he had some designs upon her."
Whether or not women have ever portrayed the masculine sex truthfully is
an open question. But a gentleman mellowed and softened in the light of
ladies' smiles is quite a different creature from the same gentleman
when seen among the sterner members of his own sex, and there are
certain phases of men's characters portrayed in the novels of women
which Fielding, Scott, and Thackeray seem never to have seen.
Miss Fielding descants upon many familiar scenes in a manner that would
have made her a valuable contributor to the _Tatler_ or _Spectator_. All
kinds of human nature interested her. There is the man who advises David
as a friend to buy a certain stock which he himself is secretly trying
to sell because he knows it has decreased in value, thus showing that
money transactions in London in the reigns of the Georges differed
little from money transactions on the Stock Exchange to-day. In some
respects, however, society has improved since the days of Sarah
Fielding. She describes the gentlemen of social prominence who tumble up
to the carriages of ladies who are driving through Covent Garden in the
morning, and present them with cabbages or other vegetables which they
have picked up from the stalls, too intoxicated to know that their
conduct is ridiculous. There are the crowds at the theatres who show
their displeasure with a playwright by making so much noise that his
play cannot be heard on its first night and so is condemned. Other
writers of the period complain of having received this kind of treatment
at the hands of the gentlemen mob. And then we are introduced to a scene
in the fashionable West End which is a familiar one to-day, where the
ladies of quality have their whist assemblies and spend all the morning
visiting each other and discussing how the cards were played the
previous evening and why certain tricks were lost.
We recognise the fact, however, that Miss Fielding's knowledge of life
was but slight. She writes from the standpoint of a spectator, not like
her brother as one who had been a part of it. She was one of that group
of gentlewomen who gathered around Richardson and heard him read
_Clarissa_, or discussed life and books with him at the breakfast table
in the summer-house at North End, Hammersmith. Life was not lived there,
but philosophy often sat at the board, and there was fine penetration
into the characters and manners of men. Richardson transferred to Miss
Fielding the compliment which Dr. Johnson had bestowed upon him, and it
was not undeserved by the author of _David Simple_:
"What a knowledge of the human heart! Well might a critical judge of
writing say, as he did to me, that your late brother's knowledge of it
was not (fine writer as he was) comparable to yours. His was but as the
knowledge of the outside of a clock-work machine, while yours was that
of all the finer springs and movements of the inside."
* * * * *
It is not difficult to conjure up a picture of the literary gentlemen
and gentlewomen who used to breakfast with Richardson in the
summer-house at North End; the gentlemen in their many-coloured velvet
suits, the ladies wearing broad hoops, loose sacques, and Pamela hats.
One of these ladies was Charlotte Ramsay, better known by her married
name of Mrs. Lennox. Her father, Colonel James Ramsay, was
lieutenant-governor of New York, where his daughter Charlotte was born
in 1720. She was sent to England at the age of fifteen, and soon after
her father died, leaving her unprovided for. She turned her attention to
literature as a means of livelihood, and at once became a favourite in
the literary circles of London, where she met and won the esteem of the
great Dr. Johnson.
When her first novel, _The Life of Harriet Stuart_, was published, he
showed his appreciation of its author in a unique manner. At his
suggestion, the Ivy Lane Club and its friends entertained Mrs. Lennox
and her husband at the Devil's Tavern with a night of festivity. After
an elaborate supper had been served, a hot apple-pie was brought in,
stuffed full of bay-leaves, and Johnson with appropriate ceremonies
crowned the author with a wreath of laurel. The night was passed in
mirth and conversation; tea and coffee were often served; and not until
the creaking of the street doors reminded them that it was eight o'clock
in the morning did the guests, twenty in number, leave the tavern.
Mrs. Lennox's claim to a place in English literature rests solely upon
her novel, _The Female Quixote_, published in 1752. Arabella, the
heroine, is the daughter of a marquis who has retired into the country,
where he lives remote from society. Her mother is dead; her father is
immersed in his books, so that Arabella is left alone, and whiles away
the hours by reading the novels of Mademoiselle de Scuderi. Her three
great novels, _Clelia_, _The Grand Cyrus_ and _Ibrahim_, are historical
allegories, in which the France of Louis XIV is given an historical
setting, and his courtiers masquerade under the names of famous men of
antiquity. There is no attempt at historical accuracy. But to Arabella
these books represented true history and depicted the real life of the
world.
In a fine satirical passage Arabella informs Mr. Selvin, a man so
deeply read in ancient history that he fixed the date of any occurrence
by Olympiads, not years, that Pisistratus had been inspired to enslave
his country because of his love for Cleorante. Mr. Selvin wonders how
this important fact could have escaped his own research, and conceives a
great admiration for Arabella's learning.
In the novels of Mademoiselle de Scuderi the characters, even in moments
of extreme danger, entertain each other with stories of their past
experiences. When Arabella has unexpected guests she bids her maid
relate to them the history of her mistress. She instructs her to "relate
exactly every change of my countenance, number all my smiles,
half-smiles, blushes, turnings pale, glances, pauses, full-stops,
interruptions; the rise and falling of my voice, every motion of my
eyes, and every gesture which I have used for these ten years past: nor
omit the smallest circumstance that relates to me."
All the people Arabella meets are changed by her fancy into the
characters of her favourite books. In common people she sees princes in
disguise. If a man approaches her, she fancies that he is about to bear
her away to some remote castle, or to mention the subject of love, which
would be unpardonable, unless he had first captured cities in her
behalf. Yet amid the wildest extravagances Arabella never loses her
charm. Her generosity and purity of thought make her a very lovable
heroine, much more womanly than Clarissa or Sophia Western, and we do
not wonder that Mr. Glanville continues to love her, although he is so
often annoyed by her ridiculous fancies.
But her belief in her hallucinations is as firm as that of the Spanish
Quixote for whom the book was named. Everyone will remember his attack
on the windmills, which he mistook for giants. Arabella was equally
brave. Thinking herself and some other ladies pursued, when the Thames
cuts off their escape, she addresses her companions in language becoming
one of her favourite heroines: "Once more, my fair Companions, if your
honour be dear to you, if an immortal glory be worth your seeking,
follow the example I shall set you, and equal, with me, the Roman
Clelia." She plunged into the river, but was promptly rescued. The
doctor who attended her in the illness that followed this heroic deed
convinced her of the folly of trying to live according to these old
books, and she consented to marry her faithful and deserving lover.
The character of Arabella is not drawn with the broad strong lines of
Fielding, nor with the attention to minute detail which gives life to
the characters of Richardson. But the girlish sweetness of Arabella, her
refusal to believe wrong of others, her ignorance of life, her contempt
for a lover who has not shed blood nor captured cities in her behalf, is
a reality, and shows that the author knew the nature of the romantic
girl. In the noble simplicity of Arabella, Mrs. Lennox has, perhaps
unconsciously, paid a high tribute to the moral effects of the novels of
Scuderi. Arabella is the only clearly drawn character in the book. But
one humorous situation follows another, so that the interest never
flags.
The other novels of Mrs. Lennox have no value save as they show the
trend of thought of the period. In _Henrietta_, afterward dramatised as
_The Sister_, the heroine, granddaughter of an earl, rather than change
her religion, leaves her family and becomes the maid of a rich but
vulgar tradesman's daughter. Of course her mistress, who has treated her
scurrilously, in time learns her true rank and is properly humbled. The
name given to one of the chapters might suffice for the most of them:
"In which our heroine is in great distress."
This would seem to be the proper heading for many chapters of many books
of the period. In the days of Good Queen Bess, heroines were good and
happy. In the merry reign of Charles, they were bad but happy. Pamela
set a fashion from which heroines seldom dared to deviate for over a
hundred years. They were good--but, oh, so wretched! This type of women
became such a favourite with both sexes, that even the sane-minded Scott
says:
And love is loveliest when embalmed in tears.
During her period of distress Henrietta lodged with a milliner. Her
landlady showed her a small collection of books and pointed with
especial pleasure to her favourite novels: "There is Mrs. Haywood's
Novels, did you ever read them? Oh! they are the finest love-sick
passionate stories: I assure you, you'll like them vastly." Henrietta,
however, chose _Joseph Andrews_ for her diversion. Mrs. Eliza Haywood
was never admitted into that inner circle of highly respectable English
ladies who clustered around Richardson. She was more of an adventuress
in the domain of letters. In her first novels she followed the fashion
set by Mrs. Manley and supplied the public with scandals in high life.
_Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to Utopia_, published in 1725,
_The Secret Intrigues of the Count of Caramania_, published in 1727, are
the highly suggestive titles of two of the most popular of her early
works.
After Richardson had made Virtue more popular than Vice, Mrs. Haywood
followed the literary fashion which he had set, and in 1751 wrote _The
History of Miss Betsey Thoughtless_. This has sometimes been called a
domestic novel, but that is a misnomer, since the characters are seldom
found at home, but rather are met in the various pleasure resorts of
London. As was the fashion in the novels of this time, and probably not
an uncommon occurrence in the English capital, the heroine was often
forced into a chariot by some lawless libertine, but fortunately was
always rescued by some more virtuous lover. The whole story is but a new
arrangement of the one or two incidents with which Richardson had wrung
the heart of the British public. It has one advantage over the most of
the novels which had preceded it. There is little told that does not
bear directly on the plot, the characters of the sub-plot being
important personages in the main story, and the book has a definite
conclusion.
None of the characters, however, are pleasing. The hero, Mr. Trueworthy,
a combination of Tom Jones and Sir Charles Grandison, is a hypocrite.
The other male characters are insignificant. Miss Betsey, the heroine,
is almost charming. Conscious of her own innocence, she repeatedly
appears in a light that makes her worldly lover, Mr. Trueworthy, suspect
her virtue, until at last he begs to be released from his engagement to
her. The author of the book stands as a duenna at Miss Betsey's side,
and points out by the misfortunes of the heroine how foolish it is for
girls to ignore public opinion, and strives to inculcate the lesson
that a husband is the best protection for a young girl. We are properly
shocked at Miss Betsey's levity, who, although she had arrived at the
mature age of fourteen, cared not a straw for any of the gentlemen who
sought her hand, but liked to have them about her only because they
flattered her vanity or afforded her a subject for mirth. Miss Betsey's
gaiety, wit, and generosity would be very attractive--in fact, she is
quite an up-to-date young lady--but we see how much better she would
"get on" if she had a little more worldly wisdom. She is punished, as
she deserves to be, by losing her lover, and marries a man who makes her
very unhappy. Mr. Trueworthy, however, learns of her innocence; her
husband fortunately dies, and the author takes the bold step of uniting
the widow to her former lover, after a year of mourning and passing
through much suffering, brought upon herself by her own thoughtlessness.
She is rewarded, however, very much as Pamela was rewarded, by marrying
a man of honour, who had judged her formerly by his own conduct, being
too willing to believe by appearances that she had lost her chastity,
or, at least, had sullied her good name.
In this novel, Mrs. Haywood is very near the line that divides the
artist from the artisan. Like a young girl with good health and good
spirits, Miss Betsey is ever on the verge of sweeping aside the
prejudices of her duenna, and asserting her own individuality, but is
constantly held back by the sense of worldly propriety. Had Mrs. Haywood
permitted Miss Betsey to carry the plot whither she would without let or
hindrance, she would have won for herself an acknowledged place among
the heroines of fiction.
_The History of Miss Betsey Thoughtless_ was an epoch-making book. The
adventures of its heroine in the city of London took possession of the
imagination of Fanny Burney, while little more than a child, and led to
the story of _Evelina_, the forerunner of Jane Austen and her school.
* * * * *
The fashion for weeping heroines was at its height, when, in 1761, Mrs.
Francis Sheridan published _The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph_. The
story is written in the form of letters, in which the heroine reveals to
a friend of her own sex all the secrets of her heart. All London
rejoiced over the virtues of Sidney Biddulph, and wept over her sorrows.
She had been educated "in the strictest principles of virtue; from which
she never deviated, through the course of an innocent, though unhappy
life." It was so pathetic a story that Dr. Johnson doubted if Mrs.
Sheridan had a right to make her characters suffer so much, and Charles
James Fox, who sat up all night to read it, pronounced it the best of
all novels of his time.
The book, as first written, was in three volumes. The author had brought
the story to a most fitting close. Both Sidney's husband and the man
whom she had really loved were dead, and the widow could have spent her
days in pleasing melancholy, contented with the thought that she had
never done a wrong. But the public demanded a continuation of the story.
In 1767, two volumes were added, giving the history of Sidney's
daughters, who seem to have inherited from their mother the enmity of
the fates, for their sufferings were as great as hers.
Authors are prone to draw upon their own history for the emotions they
depict. But Mrs. Sheridan's life did not furnish the tragic elements of
_Sidney Biddulph_, although it was not without romance. Before her
marriage, she wrote a pamphlet in praise of the conduct of one Thomas
Sheridan, the manager of the Theatre Royal in Dublin, during a riot that
occurred in the theatre. Sheridan read these words in his praise, sought
the acquaintance of their author, and before long married her.
History furnishes a long list of women of talent whose sons were men of
genius. Mrs. Sheridan's second son, Richard Brinsley, the author of the
light and sparkling _Rivals_, inherited his mother's talents without her
gloom. But Mrs. Sheridan also had some ability as a writer of comedy,
and the most famous character of the _Rivals_ was first sketched by her.
In a comedy, _A Journey to Bath_, declined by Garrick, one of the
characters was Mrs. Twyford, whom Richard Brinsley Sheridan transformed
into that famous blundering coiner of words, Mrs. Malaprop.
Mrs. Sheridan's place in literature rests upon _Sidney Biddulph_. This
novel was an innovation in English fiction. Nearly one hundred years
earlier, Madame de Lafayette had written _The Princess of Cleves_, one
of the most nearly perfect novels that has ever been written, and the
first that depended for its interest, not alone on what was done, but on
the subtle workings of the human heart which led to the doing of it.
From that time the novels of French women were largely introspective.
English women, however, were either less interested in the inner life,
or more reserved in laying bare its secrets. _Sidney Biddulph_ was the
first English novel of this kind, and it left no definite trace on
fiction, although it was the favourite novel of Charlotte Smith and had
some slight effect upon her writings, and Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs. Opie, and
Mary Brunton noted the feelings of their characters. Not until _Jane
Eyre_ was published, long after Mrs. Sheridan had been forgotten, was
there any great English novel of the inner life.
In its day _Sidney Biddulph_ was exceedingly popular on the continent of
Europe as well as in England. It was translated into German, and an
adaptation of it was made in French by the Abbe Prevost, under the
title, _Memoirs pour servir a l'histoire de la vertu_. But after all,
Sidney's sorrows were not real, or she herself was not real; and we of
to-day smile or yawn over the pages that drew tears from the eyes of the
mighty Dr. Johnson.
* * * * *
Notwithstanding the many excellencies of English fiction during the
middle of the eighteenth century, it was held in low repute. There had
been many writers attempting to portray real life who, without the
genius of the greater novelists, could imitate only their faults. In the
preface to _Polly Honeycomb_, which was acted at Drury Lane theatre in
1760, George Colman, the author, gives the titles of about two hundred
novels whose names appeared in a circulating library at that time.
_Amorous Friars, or the Intrigues of a Convent_; _Beauty put to its
Shifts, or the Young Virgin's Rambles_; _Bubbled Knights, or Successful
Contrivances, plainly evincing, in two Familiar Instances lately
transacted in this Metropolis, the Folly and Unreasonableness of Parents
Laying a Restraint upon their Children's Inclinations in the Affairs of
Love and Marriage_; _The Impetuous Lover, or the Guiltless Parricide_;
these are the titles of a few of the popular books of that period.
Colman in the character of Polly Honeycomb, an earlier Lydia Languish,
attempts to show the moral effects of such reading. Her head had been so
turned by these books that her father exclaims, "A man might as well
turn his daughter loose in Covent-Garden, as trust the cultivation of
her mind to A CIRCULATING LIBRARY."
Fiction at this time lacked delicacy and refinement. The characters
lived largely in the streets or taverns, and were too much engrossed in
the pleasures of active life to give any heed to thoughts or emotions.
Though love was the constant theme of these books, as yet no true love
story had been written. The fires of home had not been lighted. The
refinements, the pure affections, the high ideals which cluster around
the domestic hearth had as yet no place in the novel. It needed the
feminine element, which, while no broader than that which had previously
made the novel, by its own addition gave something new to it and made it
truer to life.
While no woman of marked genius had appeared, the number and influence
of women novelists continued to increase throughout the eighteenth
century. Tim Cropdale in the novel _Humphry Clinker_, who "had made
shift to live many years by writing novels, at the rate of five pounds a
volume," complains that "that branch of business is now engrossed by
female authors, who publish merely for the propagation of virtue, with
so much ease, and spirit, and delicacy, and knowledge of the human
heart, and all in the serene tranquillity of high life, that the reader
is not only enchanted by their genius, but reformed by their morality."
Schlosser in his _History of the Eighteenth Century_ pays this tribute
to the moral influence of the women novelists: "With the increase of the
number of writers in England in the course of the eighteenth century,
women began to appear as authors instead of educating their children,
and their influence upon morals and modes of thinking increased, as that
of the clergy diminished."